Finally! First off I wanna say I think your videos are always hilarious, both script and editing wise, especially how you catch little funny moments while playing, like Cerus plonking down on you. I don't play the other games you cover so I can't say much, but the GW videos are always a treat and I revisit them every couple of months. Now specifically for this: Zoijja's ascension: Nope, you didn't miss anything! She just did it off screen and then it wasn't mentionend and we were all confused and emotionally underwhelmed. Story: Yeah, I think the majority of the players that enjoy story felt the same way, general consesus I've seen was: It was too much story for too little time. This could've been first a wizards court and then a second kryptis civil war expansion. Doing both in one left us with a lot of underdeveloped NPC's you didn't feel much for when they died immediately and it felt rushed in a lot of parts. This is the first time I ever felt like I wasn't paying enough attention and I was missing stuff, but when I replayed... Nope, there's just a lot of gaps where stuff had to get dropped. Anet even adressed this and admitted that they bit off too much and have a better understanding now after doing it once of the scope they can pull off in a year. Questbar: This was a big critique this time and while it usually doesn't bother me, the constant bars you needed to fill felt a bit dull. I think it would be way less noticeable if they did it just a bit more elegantly and you just got a list of tasks/events and you have to to x amount of y, kind of like the dailies/weeklies in the wizards vault. "Help here" " Escort this" "Capture the fortress (i.e. do the meta)" just is immediately more engaging than " do events until the bar is satisfied" Overall I think it was fine. I like the expansion for the aesthetic and also the QoL Updates it brought, and I'm excited for Janthir Wilds!
Thank you! That's very kind of you to say and I appreciate it very much! ^^ Yeah, I liked what they were going for in the story but felt it needed more time in the oven. Even just making the story longer to have certain scenes have more meaning to them would help the overall experience. I know that there's a lot of people that play MMOs only for the gameplay and friends rather than the story, but the story is one of the things I look forward to in games. Stories help me to just get lost in a world and want to know more. See more even. It helps to make a world feel more full essentially. Yeah the fill bars were a bit excessive in this, especially with how I did the entire expansion all at once lol. Janthir Wilds is definitely sounding bigger in a lot of ways. Not tremendously bigger, but bigger at least. When plans on projects and development get changed, the scope can be harder to pinpoint down. I saw SotO as ANet learning how the scope should work and that the real test of their mettle would be in the following expansions. Definitely looking forward to trying JW actually ON content for the first time. It'll give me a different overall experience lol Once again, thank you so much! ^^
Very interesting to see someone doing it all at once. I did it patch by patch. One thing I found is some achievements had voiceacting behind them, telling more about Waiting Sorrow and her leaving. Was a nice unexpected and fun to grab up those achievements.
I stopped somewhere in the middle of the story. I enjoyed the Nayos meta and really wanted the demon armor for my sylvari necromancer. However, I realized, that I don’t care how this story ends. I don’t care what happens to this Eparc guy. I predicted Peytha will usurp him and that’s what happened. Mabon was a character I really wanted around more, but his death was so sudden and out of nowhere. There is another. There was a part, where you lead this small demon to safety and they join the camp. They are cute and shy and I was ready to watch smiling as they grow. But like 5 minutes later, they die tragicly. I… I was suppose to feel something here. But I can’t, since it happened so fast. Overall… SoTO is mixed for me. I tried to enjoy it with an open mind. But they just don’t let you be with these character to know them. They introduce them to be interesting, then you barely do anything together.
Aw, you're ahead of me! (Just getting into exploring the first Nayos Map to 100%). What I never heard mentioned is all the callbacks to everything our Commander has been through. The floating islands filled with "what ifs?" And the return of my second favourite character from PoF: Awakened Merchant! "You... buy!" He's so nice, even saying, "You... bye!" His reports on us are a brilliant read. And JW is continuing the story so I want a PROPER convo with a Floaty Armour Dude instead of "Here he is, he dead now."
I'm glad you had a far better time with SotO than I did. I came to this from a very different angle. I played it as an Asura, so Zojja getting mindwiped off camera and us only finding out later when she can't really remember the Asura commander felt really off. "Go do rifts" got old very quickly when you did the story as it came out and doing rifts felt like half the content. It was also painful seeing yet another big thing (the Wizard's Tower) have its potential wasted with poor planning (like Jormag/Primordus). It's too bad the fight with Ignaxious wasn't on a platform so he could have yeeted himself off of it in full Dragoon glory!
Yea. Rift hunting is the majority of the content from me. As 3 month prior to launch, aside from strike and the meta is the only thing that stood out. It is not even good content as leggy armor was not even out yet. The metas on 3 map AND convergence was not even good at all. Massive downgrade in fun compared to EOD
SotO isn’t perfect by any means, but what was there was probably a bit more fun for me since I didn’t linger on things for months between patches. It’s just one of the things that makes my experience different from people that play everyday. One of the things I was indifferent about was the Wizard’s Tower. Since I started GW2 almost 2 years ago, I didn’t even know the tower existed lol Not until SotO anyway.
@@MegaMadVladMMO I think it helped that you had the opportunity to take it in one stretch. for the rest of us that took when dripfed it was 45 minutes of story and then wait three months. I'm so glad ANet learned a lot from this and I hope the pacing of JW will be a lot better.
Oh absolutely. My experience was bound to be far different since I didn’t have to wait between patches. That said, I’ll be in the same boat as everyone with Janthir Wilds. Here’s hoping that expansion runs better overall now that ANet dipped their toes in this new release cycle
Now the only thing you are missing is the Raid storyline aka the story of the raids. Like there is only ... (starts counting on his fingers) 3 ish stories.
lol Doing the raids is on my list, especially more so now since Janthir Wilds is getting one. Just currently too busy to try finding a group to run them with at the moment. Not to mention JW is pretty much right around the corner so there's that lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO I my self also need to start doing the raids but mostly for the legendary armour and trinkets. Just it is so hard to get into it. Seen this conversation yesterday in Lion's Arch: The game is really easy and because of that people are expecting you to do speed runs of the raids and fractals. Best way to enjoy them is to find a guild that is not full of try hard speed runners. Ans I can not agree more.
@@Auriorium Yeah I wanna do the raids to see what they're like. I've done normal raiding in FFXIV before, but considering how different GW2 is, I can only guess as to what the experience is like. Definitely looking forward to it at some point lol
As for the "story", there are 2 self contained (5 and 6-7), the real good one is 1-2-3 , though its too late my friend cuz they fill the gap between HoT and bloodstone fen and now you are completely spoiled off what "their are doing".. but may give you more lore context if you are into it What you REALLY wanna do wing 4. For starters its the easiest one, but that aside the story it tolds links to SotO and JW
@@MegaMadVladMMOeven if not a content creator, if you make an lfg and clearly state that you are inexp and wanna clear for story, you gonna find bored nerds that'll join and carry.. that or join the "ping 250 bananas" groups, the toxic meta applies mostly on mon/tue, after the weeklys are cleared we are bored, wanna play awfull meme builds or try another role and the elitism drags off (at least in EU)
It's funny how they "release" an expansion that takes a year to get all the content promised at purchase and when you get the final bit the "new expansion" is out... lol
My assumption to this was their plans changing to the yearly expansion release models mid-development of SotO. Not sure if it's going to be the same way with Janthir Wilds or not, but considering the story development has been happening with all the patches in SotO, I would expect it with JW too. We'll see though lol
While I did have a good time with it, it's definitely my least favorite expansion out of all of them. To be fair, I did expect that as well because of the nature of it being a smaller expansion to begin with. I'm hopeful it was a good way for the devs to figure out what they can and can't do with this yearly release schedule.
@@MegaMadVladMMO The whole stealth thing at the start of it enraged me so much that once I finally passed it, I played a bit with that character in the new zones and was done. I had no want what-so-ever to take any of my other alts through that intro hellscape again.
I strongly disagree. First 2 maps + their story were amazing. It is just that Demon story was weak, neglected characters established in the first part of the story and didn`t have any interesting twists.
@@procerator what story? literally every release was 1 hour of story less if you did not have to do boring events. Wizards tower was so under whelming we waited for decades to go to the wizards tower and the best they could do was an empty boring map. That mao should have been oozing lore, secrets and history and we got nothing. Not to mention they turned demons into poor misunderstood subjected people that only want to be free. In other words they turned something that could have been a great enemy into nothing.
Reading these complaints about the SotO story reminds me of how many times the GW2 development team has screwed up an opportunity to present and expand the great lore of this franchise. For a game that isn’t known as the best for its endgame or PvP, and that it has more casual story loving players, they really need to put more focus and effort into making the story great, if this game is going to survive.
"Is that dwarf NOT STONED?" enters the best quotes ever
Janthir Wilds. You're next! ;P
I just finished the other parts yesterday! what perfect timing!
LUL! The video would've been done sooner if Elden Ring didn't take my soul for a while there, regardless, we couldn't time that any better if we tried
Finally! First off I wanna say I think your videos are always hilarious, both script and editing wise, especially how you catch little funny moments while playing, like Cerus plonking down on you. I don't play the other games you cover so I can't say much, but the GW videos are always a treat and I revisit them every couple of months.
Now specifically for this:
Zoijja's ascension: Nope, you didn't miss anything! She just did it off screen and then it wasn't mentionend and we were all confused and emotionally underwhelmed.
Story: Yeah, I think the majority of the players that enjoy story felt the same way, general consesus I've seen was: It was too much story for too little time. This could've been first a wizards court and then a second kryptis civil war expansion. Doing both in one left us with a lot of underdeveloped NPC's you didn't feel much for when they died immediately and it felt rushed in a lot of parts. This is the first time I ever felt like I wasn't paying enough attention and I was missing stuff, but when I replayed... Nope, there's just a lot of gaps where stuff had to get dropped. Anet even adressed this and admitted that they bit off too much and have a better understanding now after doing it once of the scope they can pull off in a year.
Questbar: This was a big critique this time and while it usually doesn't bother me, the constant bars you needed to fill felt a bit dull. I think it would be way less noticeable if they did it just a bit more elegantly and you just got a list of tasks/events and you have to to x amount of y, kind of like the dailies/weeklies in the wizards vault. "Help here" " Escort this" "Capture the fortress (i.e. do the meta)" just is immediately more engaging than " do events until the bar is satisfied"
Overall I think it was fine. I like the expansion for the aesthetic and also the QoL Updates it brought, and I'm excited for Janthir Wilds!
Thank you! That's very kind of you to say and I appreciate it very much! ^^
Yeah, I liked what they were going for in the story but felt it needed more time in the oven. Even just making the story longer to have certain scenes have more meaning to them would help the overall experience. I know that there's a lot of people that play MMOs only for the gameplay and friends rather than the story, but the story is one of the things I look forward to in games. Stories help me to just get lost in a world and want to know more. See more even. It helps to make a world feel more full essentially.
Yeah the fill bars were a bit excessive in this, especially with how I did the entire expansion all at once lol.
Janthir Wilds is definitely sounding bigger in a lot of ways. Not tremendously bigger, but bigger at least. When plans on projects and development get changed, the scope can be harder to pinpoint down. I saw SotO as ANet learning how the scope should work and that the real test of their mettle would be in the following expansions.
Definitely looking forward to trying JW actually ON content for the first time. It'll give me a different overall experience lol
Once again, thank you so much! ^^
Very interesting to see someone doing it all at once. I did it patch by patch. One thing I found is some achievements had voiceacting behind them, telling more about Waiting Sorrow and her leaving. Was a nice unexpected and fun to grab up those achievements.
Nice you're all caught up now!!
Almost time to try my first on content release with Janthir Wilds!
I stopped somewhere in the middle of the story. I enjoyed the Nayos meta and really wanted the demon armor for my sylvari necromancer. However, I realized, that I don’t care how this story ends. I don’t care what happens to this Eparc guy. I predicted Peytha will usurp him and that’s what happened. Mabon was a character I really wanted around more, but his death was so sudden and out of nowhere. There is another. There was a part, where you lead this small demon to safety and they join the camp. They are cute and shy and I was ready to watch smiling as they grow. But like 5 minutes later, they die tragicly. I… I was suppose to feel something here. But I can’t, since it happened so fast.
Overall… SoTO is mixed for me. I tried to enjoy it with an open mind. But they just don’t let you be with these character to know them. They introduce them to be interesting, then you barely do anything together.
Aw, you're ahead of me! (Just getting into exploring the first Nayos Map to 100%). What I never heard mentioned is all the callbacks to everything our Commander has been through. The floating islands filled with "what ifs?" And the return of my second favourite character from PoF: Awakened Merchant! "You... buy!" He's so nice, even saying, "You... bye!" His reports on us are a brilliant read. And JW is continuing the story so I want a PROPER convo with a Floaty Armour Dude instead of "Here he is, he dead now."
There's so many characters in GW2 that seeing the phrase "Floaty Armour Dude" could be anyone at this point in my head lol
I'm glad you had a far better time with SotO than I did. I came to this from a very different angle. I played it as an Asura, so Zojja getting mindwiped off camera and us only finding out later when she can't really remember the Asura commander felt really off. "Go do rifts" got old very quickly when you did the story as it came out and doing rifts felt like half the content. It was also painful seeing yet another big thing (the Wizard's Tower) have its potential wasted with poor planning (like Jormag/Primordus).
It's too bad the fight with Ignaxious wasn't on a platform so he could have yeeted himself off of it in full Dragoon glory!
Zojja mindwipe makes sense. People forget that Zojja was actually a bitch.
Now they can change her personality to be much more loveable.
Yea. Rift hunting is the majority of the content from me. As 3 month prior to launch, aside from strike and the meta is the only thing that stood out. It is not even good content as leggy armor was not even out yet.
The metas on 3 map AND convergence was not even good at all. Massive downgrade in fun compared to EOD
SotO isn’t perfect by any means, but what was there was probably a bit more fun for me since I didn’t linger on things for months between patches. It’s just one of the things that makes my experience different from people that play everyday.
One of the things I was indifferent about was the Wizard’s Tower. Since I started GW2 almost 2 years ago, I didn’t even know the tower existed lol Not until SotO anyway.
@@MegaMadVladMMO I think it helped that you had the opportunity to take it in one stretch. for the rest of us that took when dripfed it was 45 minutes of story and then wait three months.
I'm so glad ANet learned a lot from this and I hope the pacing of JW will be a lot better.
Oh absolutely. My experience was bound to be far different since I didn’t have to wait between patches. That said, I’ll be in the same boat as everyone with Janthir Wilds.
Here’s hoping that expansion runs better overall now that ANet dipped their toes in this new release cycle
What is your build/gear Vlad?
I think it's Berserker armor for Power. I like Bladesworn best, use sword and pistol, as well as a defense banner and a damage banner.
Now the only thing you are missing is the Raid storyline aka the story of the raids. Like there is only ... (starts counting on his fingers) 3 ish stories.
lol Doing the raids is on my list, especially more so now since Janthir Wilds is getting one. Just currently too busy to try finding a group to run them with at the moment. Not to mention JW is pretty much right around the corner so there's that lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO I my self also need to start doing the raids but mostly for the legendary armour and trinkets. Just it is so hard to get into it.
Seen this conversation yesterday in Lion's Arch: The game is really easy and because of that people are expecting you to do speed runs of the raids and fractals. Best way to enjoy them is to find a guild that is not full of try hard speed runners.
Ans I can not agree more.
@@Auriorium Yeah I wanna do the raids to see what they're like. I've done normal raiding in FFXIV before, but considering how different GW2 is, I can only guess as to what the experience is like.
Definitely looking forward to it at some point lol
As for the "story", there are 2 self contained (5 and 6-7), the real good one is 1-2-3 , though its too late my friend cuz they fill the gap between HoT and bloodstone fen and now you are completely spoiled off what "their are doing".. but may give you more lore context if you are into it
What you REALLY wanna do wing 4. For starters its the easiest one, but that aside the story it tolds links to SotO and JW
@@MegaMadVladMMOeven if not a content creator, if you make an lfg and clearly state that you are inexp and wanna clear for story, you gonna find bored nerds that'll join and carry.. that or join the "ping 250 bananas" groups, the toxic meta applies mostly on mon/tue, after the weeklys are cleared we are bored, wanna play awfull meme builds or try another role and the elitism drags off (at least in EU)
i had to laugh, taco bell toliet sounds bad enugh if it looks like that
Lol I’ve never been in a Taco Bell bathroom before, but the stories I’ve heard
5:25 🤣
It's funny how they "release" an expansion that takes a year to get all the content promised at purchase and when you get the final bit the "new expansion" is out... lol
My assumption to this was their plans changing to the yearly expansion release models mid-development of SotO. Not sure if it's going to be the same way with Janthir Wilds or not, but considering the story development has been happening with all the patches in SotO, I would expect it with JW too. We'll see though lol
That was the expansion that made me quit the game. Completely terrible.
While I did have a good time with it, it's definitely my least favorite expansion out of all of them. To be fair, I did expect that as well because of the nature of it being a smaller expansion to begin with. I'm hopeful it was a good way for the devs to figure out what they can and can't do with this yearly release schedule.
@@MegaMadVladMMO The whole stealth thing at the start of it enraged me so much that once I finally passed it, I played a bit with that character in the new zones and was done. I had no want what-so-ever to take any of my other alts through that intro hellscape again.
After that you do like 2 "quests" and get the free tp to the hub, so no need to repeat
SOTO is uniquely shit yes.
I strongly disagree.
First 2 maps + their story were amazing. It is just that Demon story was weak, neglected characters established in the first part of the story and didn`t have any interesting twists.
@@procerator what story? literally every release was 1 hour of story less if you did not have to do boring events. Wizards tower was so under whelming we waited for decades to go to the wizards tower and the best they could do was an empty boring map. That mao should have been oozing lore, secrets and history and we got nothing. Not to mention they turned demons into poor misunderstood subjected people that only want to be free. In other words they turned something that could have been a great enemy into nothing.
@@MrVivi0001 there are a lot of things to do in Wizards Tower
@@procerator you mean old boring things that most people don't do or care about. And that lots is not really that much.
Reading these complaints about the SotO story reminds me of how many times the GW2 development team has screwed up an opportunity to present and expand the great lore of this franchise. For a game that isn’t known as the best for its endgame or PvP, and that it has more casual story loving players, they really need to put more focus and effort into making the story great, if this game is going to survive.