Ive gotten into guild wars 2 recently, and have just beaten living world season one earlier today, and it got me thinking.
According to the wiki, the first season was originally run in real time: it started with the molten alliance showing up in January 2013, and concluded with Scarlet's death in the middle of March the following year, and with the re-release in 2022 you can kind of tell. The first episode is alright, although its later chapters do feel somewhat geared towards needing help from others. (putting my first 10 points into scrapper and feeling out being a melee class for the first time in the molten alliance base, only for a major boss fight to involve the last remaining enemy hovering above a constant damage zone outside of hammering distance, while Im (unknowingly) playing as one of the few classes that don't get to swap weapons felt... bad.)
However, playing through the later chapters really makes you realize that this was meant to happen in regular gameplay, rather than instances. The start of the dragon bash, and subsequent aetherbalde attack was likely a one-time event. Individual wiki articles for the original versions of the season's episodes detail actual changes made to the open world as events transpired. Several missions steps feel partially like forced versions of story-important exchanges and events that originally ran on a schedule. Tower of Nightmares and Battle for Lion's Arch are story mandated Raids, getting everyone working together.
Except... I'm playing this in 2026. Lion's Arch has long since been rebuilt, and the dragon bash in episode 2 was the *first* time I'd seen the old city. There's a trans woman near the fractal mist portals that asks if you recognize her from the relief efforts during scarlet's attack, despite the fact that you can talk to her before meeting Trahearne in your personal story. The essential services have long since been moved back out of the vigil's headquarters. There's a charr in constant disbelief that a building in the distance is stingray-shaped.
The game doesn't really draw attention to the fact that the city was attacked and rebuilt unless you read the plaques near some of the statues commemorating the fallen, and even then I honesty assumed it'd happened before the events of the game, until I started that second episode.
I understand why there's no easy way to see the old Lion's Arch before Living World 1, as it might confuse new players, but it makes me think of the other ways the world doesn't actually live all that much, even if I understand why.
The pact forces in and around Orr will never acknowledge Zhaitan's death in the personal story. The war between Kryta and the Tamini in Kessex Hills simply keeps going, regardless of the rubble from the giant toxic flower, or whether or not it's been destroyed. Rox and Braham sit in the camp outside the tower, with only dialogue for deciding how to chase scarlet afterward. These days you're lucky if someone's running the public versions of the mandatory raids, and there's a non-zero chance you dont get to see the cool encounters because you entered the instance 10 minutes behind the main spear pushing through.
It just all makes me think of the context I lose by being a new player, doing content in chronological order long after it's been released. Long after the changes to the world have become just how the world is.
