GW2 Secrets of the Obscure "The Midnight King" - Thoughts (Spoilers)

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[@LipeBD]

I finished the story on patch day. And with the Living World seasons on sale, I purchased LS4 and just finished playing through it a couple hours ago. And boy, what a difference... LS4 felt much more like an expansion (when it comes to character development, plot, story telling and the amount of new areas to explore) than SotO.

[@qwerty222999]

Path of Fire and Season 4 was peak story telling to me. Some of that carried into early Icebrood Saga too, but it was eventually rushed to a conclusion and the story writing has been dwindling ever since.

[@luca7675]

My biggest problem with the entire SotO story is the demons behaving just like one dimensional villains or or one dimensional allies. I didnt see any actual character traits i would connect with something demonic. There was almost no moral conflict, no treachery, and i still dont know why demons hunt humans in the first place if they can "stop" just like that. Like why would they ever start doing it in the first place? You could tell the exact same story and replace the demons with the white mantle or something and noone would notice.

[@insertname6143]

lol The Promised Neverland.

[@TiltRepairMan]

Amen.

[@ihaveaplan.ijustneedmoney.9777]

My initial theory when SOTO was about to come out was that the Kryptis and their dimension was the original world that humans came from. And the humans that were left in that world became the Kryptis. That's why they weren't straight up "demons" and just dubbed "cousins to demons" But alas, here we are.

[@NewNecro]

It's not just one-dimensional, a lot of recently introduced concepts seem thrown out the window the moment they're no longer the narrative focus. It does feel like it was directed by different people who had different ideas about the same themes between the story at release and the chunks we got through updates.

[@persona9709]

Still prefer this over what Blizz did with Shadowlands

[@Sylindria]

Mukluk ‘it was fine’. I think that was why a lot of players are underwhelmed, we’re not used to fine, we’re used to them blowing the bloody doors off (best Michael Cain impression).

[@Scigeraptor]

That's a really good way of putting it. It's fine which feels mediocre compared to the previous content we've had. They've spoiled us for so long. xD

[@AzureRoxe]

I don't think "it's fine" is good enough for a PAID expansion.

[@irispounsberry7917]

@@AzureRoxe Given that some idiots jump on paid games that turn out broken nowadays (and only get fixed months later if at all), "it's fine" seems good enough for me for a paid experience. They can't please all the people all the time.

[@guys-b3in-dudes]

I just think they should pivot back to releasing full expansions and having small content in between. Out of all 3 updates, I think I can only say that the 1st one was good. The rest felt kinda bad and Nayos suffered from being incomplete for 9 months. I'm also hoping that they expand the team a bit more so we get more content per expac. SoTo felt a little light on things to do outside of grinding for legendaries. I don't have any regrets with buying SoTo, but I feel like more COULD have been done if some resources were better managed

[@nv_spartan1771]

Even with the filler it didn't take long to complete. I just wasn't emotionally attached to any of the characters, except Zojja. I just didn't care about the story, I just haven't cared about the story since the beginning. Who are these people, and why should I care?

[@navareal3201]

The most interesting character for me was Mabon. Well, we all know what happened to my interest and mabon.

[@jonasgustafsson9807]

And even if you did like them they werent around after Base expac. I like several of the wizards tower charas but they were nowhere to be seen in the patches. So I felt stupid for getting invested

[@gahvno]

Unfortunately, they even turned Zojja into a dumpster fire hot mess of emotional angst that did not in any way contribute to our having empathy for her - she came off as a wildlife rather than the strong yet acid tongue character she was known for being.

[@RecklessFables]

@@jonasgustafsson9807 Agree. All the major NPCs in part 2 were amorphous blob demons aside from the Peitha. They are all one character to me, except maybe Sad General.

[@methanbreather]

even worse, I hate Zojja, she is an utterly dislikeable character who was a none-factor for me. And now I am supposed to care about her? Why? Because she was an arrogant, abrasive asstard in the LA instance of PS? Because she was an arrogant, abrasive arrogant asstard in the dungeons? Because she was utterly useless, arrogant abrasive asstard during Zhaitan?

[@zenzoudn]

The entirety of SOTO can be summed up as "they could have done this better"

[@Veritas.0]

They already have a template for what to do after the Dragons; PoF. Best-written expansion (I love EoD, and its content, and its story is a close second, but PoF takes it) with a Renegade God, and an even better "B" story in Joko. (Praise Joko) They know what to do, and they have plenty of content still available from day one that the fans are still interested in seeing as a story, and are far more invested in than some new development and new characters/villains. I mean, the choice to bring Zojja back and include the Wizard's Tower lore was a great start, but then they threw that reverence for the lore and the fan investment away right after with minimal writing about characters we don't know, villains we don't care about, and a new plane of existence with very little reason for being than just an obvious studio backdrop for the two-dimensional Soto characters.

[@utmastuh]

A lot of those people have either left or are working on gw3. The people left on GW2 are on maintenance mode

[@Veritas.0]

@@utmastuh True enough, but they should hire competent replacement writers. There's amateur writing books out there that will at least give you the foundations of making a properly structured story. A plot/B plot, three-act structure, Conflict, tragedy, and even a bit of humour. When the production manager, or lead designer assigned the main story to the employee they should have tossed them a basic book of story writing. Make plot points, and go for extra effort. I mean, it's no guarantee that it will result in a good story, but ignoring those 'rules' will definitely kill your story.

[@AzureRoxe]

Ah yes, the Gods.....oh wait, they decided to have the Gods fuck off and leave. Joko, cool villain, fan fave from GW1, what's he doing? Oh right, eaten by Aurene as a joke and to revive her when she's killed by Kralk. They wrote themselves into a corner.

[@FiLtheThriL]

​@@Veritas.0Also it would be nice to be the focus of the story once in a while. Sick of being a passenger.

[@Veritas.0]

@@FiLtheThriL Yep, dead on. Many of the actual story (as opposed to 'fill the bar') parts of the expac felt like an old Disney World ride, like the ones where you just sit there and ride while all the songs and robot dancing is going on.

[@j0rtsy]

They had the chance to somewhat redeem the story by proving Isgarren right in the end. The commander’s whole thing is overcoming impossible odds by doing the right thing (generally). This whole expansion was us trying to do that again with DEMONS! Peitha should have betrayed us and Isgarren should have destroyed Nayos entirely to the player’s dismay and chagrin. No one wins. Why didn’t we learn about this secret society protecting Tyria? Because we’re too optimistic and that doesn’t work against truly timeline ending odds, like Isgarren acts. He’s high and mighty and kind of just comes off like an a-hole, but he doesn’t have a “oh he was right” moment that redeems his motivations.

[@vvhitevvabbit6479]

Greg, from the expansion development team, watches your video scornfully.

[@altarium4220]

I think one of the reasons the finale felt so unsatisfying is the lack of a link between the two halves of SOTO. They could’ve made it so the Kryptis were a fractal created by Isgarren, to the surprise of the entire Astral Ward. Would explain his suspicious lack of involvement in taking them down, as well as flesh out the origins of the mursaat, which would tie nicely with Mabon and with the next expansion.

[@luisjosp5]

I still remeber when they "killed Aurene" at the end of the Thunderhead Peaks DLC... that was PEAK storytelling for this game... Everyone was like: "DUDE WTF!!!!!!!!?" But now every1 is like "Meh, lets hope the next xpac brings something better..."

[@Ralesk]

The one year cadence announcement is such a weird thing, considering how much they did with a one year storytelling in the past: * LS2 (2014-07-01 to 2015-01-13, half a year) * HoT (2015-10-23 with post-release updates for almost a year) * LS3 (2016-07-26 to 2017-07-25, one year) * PoF: gets released with a massive update late 2017, and within a month... * LS4 (2017-10-17 to 2019-05-14, okay, one and a half years) SotO content was comparably small and unexciting in the 9 months they released it. Some of the lore bits were great, enticing even, but they would have absolutely needed like a PoF or LS4 size engagement from ArenaNet to make it actually work properly. Now we have what feels like a bunch of throwaway characters, and the actual last mursaat dead when we could have had a great way to expand on that part of the GW lore...

[@elocfreidon]

That's because at the time Arenanet had one expansion team and two smaller living world teams that alternated episodes. When Arenanet content development was obvious in it's slow down and quality, NC soft noticed this and found out that a majority of the developers were working on projects that weren't Guild Wars 2. They forced Arena net to fire a bunch of its staff and divert who was left back onto Guild Wars 2. Following this we got end of dragons which had a noticeable quality jump. What we are seeing is a repeat of the Icebrood Saga decline on top of finding out that Guild Wars 3 might have been leaked. Arenanet is repeating history and diverting too many of its resources on things that aren't Guild Wars 2 again.

[@Kossage]

Mabon is not the last mursaat, however. There are teases that Nayos might've been the mursaat homeworld, or at least where they lived for a very long time, until the "brutal but fair" mursaat (seemingly including a female mursaat whom Mabon saw in his dreams even after the wizard Ascension messed with his memories) banished an apparent extremist mursaat faction (led by Optimus Caliph, and included other evil mursaat of note like Lazarus, Mabon, and Mercia) to Tyria of all places for some reason. While the Tyrian mursaat were massacred by Shining Blade and titans by GW1 time and Lazarus and Mabon seemed to have been the only survivors of that group (as far as we know), Isgarren and Mabon reference the existence of "mursaat external Tyria" whom Mabon has been trying to find plus Mabon placed an enchantment/ward around Janthir shortly after the Khilbron business had been concluded in GW1 as a SotO lore book reveals. Since we didn't see any mursaat reference in Nayos aside from one vague Janthir reference and the fact that the Eye of Janthir was observing our battle against Eparch in the throne room (when we know the Eye in GW2 time typically only moves to locations it can sense mursaat presence in, whether it seeks out an actual living mursaat or a mursaat who divided himself into phylacteries as Lazarus did unless you use wizard hacks like Mabon to hide yourself from the Eye) and that the mursaat statue in Mabon's room in the Tower has since begun glowing, it indicates that the "fair but brutal" mursaat referenced by Isgarren (who doesn't know where they are at the moment) might've sneaked into Janthir or somewhere else when Eparch's corruption began spreading in Nayos. Given the Eye's curious appearance in Eparch's stronghold in Zakiros, it's possible that Eparch might've even built his citadel on top of some mursaat fortress unless there's another reason why the Eye has been hanging around Zakiros. :)

[@Golladan]

Honestly I was glad they didn't do much voice acting in that final chapter. I hate how sloooow some of the characters talk and I'd much rather read stuff myself if I can't speed up the voice acting.

[@loadedexcrement]

I HATE the way Peitha speaks, holy moly. She speaks as slow as possible and the sound effect they use on her voice makes her really hard to understand. Don't know who thought that was a good idea.

[@luca7675]

The only good thing about this times green bar is you could completely fill it up by just doing all the adventures once and you need to do the adventures anyways for the mastery points. So no stupid event grinding this time.

[@Zedrinbot]

I was surprised at how short the story part was. SotO has at least introduced a lot of new mechanics and QoL features that have been great, and a lot of the metas are interesting. I really hope we get a story as impactful as LWS4 though, someday.

[@void2258]

As far as the voice acting things, it's seems to come down to who had been voice acted IN THIS RELEASE, plus a few random extras. Lhyr hasn't been voice acted since the original expac drop (same with R'tchik). Very much seems like a case of "who was already in the sound booth".

[@RavennosLoLs]

I think SoTo as a whole is acceptable, not the best, but not the worst. I said it right when the first update hit, but the story took a turn it definitely shouldn’t have going into the Kryptis stuff. We should have stuck to the wizards tower and explored the dark side of “playing god” as was teased with the archipelago. I actually liked most of the wizards, and couldn’t get invested in the kryptis. I think the wizards all being different races (and typically once we hadn’t had much time with either) really helped them be memorable, something the Kryptis didn’t have. As far as the story we got, I think I agree, it was not bad, but way too Disney. There was quite a few times when I got angry at the PC for their reactions and that’s never a good thing when I’m supposed to be the PC. That said, all the gameplay additions were awesome. Strikes (definitely could have used one more) and convergences were really great, and I actually had a good time with the meta they added this release, there’s a lot of little parts that I enjoyed moment to moment. Excited to see where they go from here, but I also think they need to reign their scope in away from world ending threats, and divide the content better among releases. The content rich first release was awesome with like 11 chapters but then at the end 9 months later we had 18 total. 2-3 chapters compared to 11 for a release just doesn’t cut it for a release window. That said, they only have 3 months to drop the next “first release” so we’ll see if it’s more split up or front loaded considering they must have been at least chipping away at it alongside the current content. Food for thought

[@renandutra7564]

I'm worried about GW2 future, that's the feeling I have since the start of that expansion and the last patch just assure me to feel that way.

[@ardonellmoonshadow6232]

When the progress bar appeared after 1st quest I knew you'd be calling it out x'D The weirdest thing in this expansion for me: I went to the Eleventh hour mission without doing the meta after the previous quest and was super confused what was going on, how did I end up wherever that was, what was Dagda doing there with a portal and why were Peitha&co saying that the BBEG was wounded and on the run. Aside from that it was okay, just short. On the other hand, it feels like a lot of things were scratched or forgotten since the original SoTO release, like wasn't Nayos a super toxic and deadly place to begin with? Plus noone really got possessed either since Isgarren.

[@Golladan]

Yeah I feel like they should have made you do the meta before doing the final fight.

[@roscuro9838]

I'm completely convinced that no one would have bought the expansion (unless they're a whale or content creator) without the weapon additions tied to it. The whole expansion, and we still know nothing about the kryptis or demons as a whole. Why are they the way they are, why do they exist, why does their realm look like it's from Tyria but corrupted by kryptis fleshiness, so many whys and none of them are answered. I also refuse to be called the Wayfinder over the Commander. The only thing I think that came out of the expansion that I'm probably going to remember is R'tchikk and Gladium. I love them.

[@pierrebuthaud7640]

I don't get why they didn't make Peitha turn on you in the end. Cause that's what I was dreading the entire story. It would have been way more intereseting that she planned all along to betray you and take over the Kryptis. Then you kill her and the Kryptis who followed her who believed in what she said start to rebuild a truce in a destroyed world or something. That would have been more interesting than good guys win, peace and love everywhere.

[@irispounsberry7917]

She still can, but I'm sure if she's going to, she'll wait for the kryptis as a whole to be in a better position to do so, not just fresh out of a civil war they needed our help to win. I think that was also the implication of why Isgarren didn't commit more wizards to the cause. They left some of the former king's higher ups in place, so it isn't outside the realm of possibility that there's a 'misunderstanding' later on down the line that threatens the tenuous peace. It is storytelling that doesn't wrap everything up in a neat bow to leave threads for later writers to weave anew, much like how GW1 seemed to have everything the characters do cause some sort of later trouble.

[@Warcrafter4]

Another option could have been setting her up like how king Joko was in guild wars 1: An ally for now but is very clearly set up to be a villain later on.

[@YasaiTsume]

I think it would have been more interesting if Mabon was kept alive. Mursaat was also originated from Nayos and thus he would be the one who has more reason to see Nayos "saved" from Eparch. I think what would be even more interesting is Mabon interjects at the end and absorbs Eparch's power to the shock of everyone involved and explains he has found a way to bring the Mursaat back and he has always felt the Mursaat did not deserve to be exiled from Nayos and eventually led to their extinction in a realm not their own and that he needed Eparch's energy to do so, and then just blinks away. Could set up an opprtunity in the future for Mabon to reappear, whether his plan to bring the Mursaat race back was a malicious one or a benign one due to being the sole survivor of his race, remains to be seen.

[@ringthatkill]

Fucking this x1000 i was so sus of mabon and after the skywatch meta, I really liked him. But no, anet just killing off likeable characters.

[@DanielLintott]

I agree that Mabon shouldn’t have died, his death was predictable and a complete waste, but this motive of him claiming eparchs power doesn’t fit his character. In one of his diaries, he talks about how he sensed the last mursaat’s death (Lazarus when he’s killed in lws3) and he basically says it’s for the best. Personally I think isgarren should have been revealed to be the big bad as he’s more obsessed with getting rid of eparch than saving Tyria, and is all for the genocide of the kryptis. And then you could have mabon fill that power vacuum.

[@gunarliepins]

ngl I was disappointed by demons just being random guys. Like they are almost just like reskinned humans, even the "normal" races of Tyria seem to have more distinct character than the Kryptis who are just... people. And this release being just the final confrontation instance after three months wait was _really_ too little, they should've paced this differently, at least one or more story instance steps on the way there to give you the feeling you're actually doing something would have helped. But as you said, considering the asking price it's not like I'm getting out the pitchforks here, it's more GW2 which is nice, but I hope they improve on this with the next iteration.

[@loadedexcrement]

What is all this discounting the criticism based on the price? Am I incorrect in that it's literally just $5 dollars cheaper? For $5 more dollars you could get EOD, or PoF + HoT. The price point really didn't matter, it should have been $10 off or more for how content light the whole thing was.

[@boonsterboom3470]

Edit: divide everything by 2, as you get 2 imbued runestones out of one The suffused obsidian armor is NOT free. You need a stack of ectos for each armor piece+ a bunch of other materials which you should have a good supply of, if you do it the "chill" way. still those could be transformed into liquid gold. i would guess it is at least 100g per armor piece. 600g for an armor set skin is quite expensive imo

[@DaosIures]

Story : The whole new chapter took me about 1 hour to complete. I never cared about the story in GW2, but even considering that the new content looked disappointing. I still have no idea why we are alive when Eparch proved that he can literally stun the entire room, including us and Peitha, with a snap of his fingers. Gives me the usual feeling of "bullshit scenario" that I have seen so often in video games (including GW2 a couple of times) where your character gets stunned by an enemy during a cutscene, and as soon as you are back in control of your character you just easily melt the baddies. Shiny armor : The requirements for the T2 seem quite easy to do, maybe not in a day but 3. If you do a soto meta rotation (Skywatch, Amnytas and whichever one in nayos) you'll be well on your way for the events in each map, then the convergences is simply a matter of doing your weekly convergences, the rift energy is also coming easily from the weekly or just standard rifts and the lanterns are about 1,5 map completions in soto... If you are currently hunting for a piece of the obsidian armor, all these things are stuff that you should already be doing, so I think it's pretty easy to "chain" your armors, like you craft one piece of armor, and then as you keep hunting for your second piece of armor you will easily complete the requirements for your first piece's T2.

[@jukeb0ks415]

My biggest issue was with the story being broken up over a whole year. By the time a new chapter comes along I've already forgotten what happened in the last one. That paired with fact that the characters were pretty uninteresting in general just killed any investment I had in the story.

[@untamedsensei]

on the 'filling the green bar' topic, you'll be shocked to know I was happy to do that, because it directed me to do fun new adventures that I might not have done if it hadn't suggested me to do them. HOWEVER, its true that there was not enough story to be satisfied. Not that it was bad (the stuff with Eparch was particularly interesting), it just needed more story given to us, all IMO.

[@beesh9810]

in terms of the meta clutter, Id love if they seperated character model limit for enemies and for other players cause i dont wanna fight invisible enemies just cause i dont want my game to run at 5 fps. its been a huge annoyance to me ever since i started playing years ago

[@wolfer5486]

I actually enjoyed the hallway fighting in the new meta. I think I was on a non-full map so it wasn’t as chaotic as your experience. The camera worked perfectly in the halls which is a huge achievement. Beyond that, it was just a new experience for a meta and the enemy density seemed to be paced properly.

[@joro148]

I am as casual as one gets and never complained about this in the past but this story was just sooo short.

[@gahvno]

Muck has probably the most diplomatic method of saying that this iteration of Guild Wars has finally jumped the shark that I have seen from any out here.

[@MuklukYoutube]

I like to think that I'm friends with some of the staff at arenanet. I made this video knowing there is a possibility of them seeing this, and while I want to be honest I also don't want to feel ashamed if they watch my videos, so I try to be, as you said, diplomatic.

[@Veritas.0]

@@MuklukKZbin Also, I don't think you ever said or even intimated that you think this expansion was a case of 'jumping the shark' as OP states. A low point, sure. But saying they jumped the shark as in it's all downhill from here is a bit speculative.

[@AzureRoxe]

@@MuklukKZbin They kinda SHOULD feel ashamed that THIS is what they delivered. This is a very big time for MMOs with expansions from the big MMOs and potential MMO launches, GW2 NEEDED to deliver and it simply did not.

[@choonblaze]

@@MuklukKZbin yes king, don't be a bootlicker for a crappy company with a dead game

[@TheScrootch]

I also liked Isgarren being aloof and arrogant, I'm glad at least he didn't become generic good guy. As for the kryptis, I didn't hate them, but they didn't really act like demons in my opinion. But I sure did not like seeing those quaggan demons... I think SotO had a pretty decent start but it kinda tapered off in Nayos, which is kinda unfortunate.

[@basvriese1934]

As to the meta of the map it feels like it would be way cooler if they turned it into a chain meta, where the three seperate metas work like checkpoints gaining control over nayos untill you conquer the citadel

[@BenaSPACE]

I wouldn't be terribly upset if they expanded the expac production time by another year, or had smaller, cheaper in between mini-content every other year. I feel like they need the extra time for polish.

[@einherjar4902]

I mean we have been there and people complained about content drought. I dont expect them to pick up dev speed so this is, amount of content wise, not going to increase. Its a lose lose. The only solution is ncsoft taking money into their hands and invest into more long term devs

[@Jmvars]

I agree. Either increase the time to allow for more polish or hire more devs. I'll still wait and see how the next two expacs feel, maybe they get into a rhythm and are able to do more.

[@bobiboulon]

17:12 that's the exact copy of an event happening in Nayos. There's just more and bigger towers, here.

[@MuklukYoutube]

Yeah, it's the same guys grenades. Realized after I saw it.

[@NaoyaYami]

I have yet to step into new area (not counting single fly through to my death when the barrier or something was up). I only did story and not only was it really short, it also stupidly assumes player will first complete the new meta before attempting last story instance. Amount of mentioned stuff I knew nothing about was staggering and at no point is it suggested to go do that meta. Heck, this is the only case where I think that green bar objective would be good: just use it to do stuff in new area before allowing players to do the story... (but no, doing adventures right before final battle against a dude that can cross worlds to invade whole planets is much more important).

[@SharkRoach1]

I feel like SoTO just felt like your part in the story was involved as a solution and at the same time not involved. Like such a side character moment. You're the hero. So why isn't the final boss super strong and threatening? I literally did circles around him not using any heals. It was over in 2 minutes it felt like.

[@luisjosp5]

5:15 OMFG!! I thought the same thing... specially cuz I ate the entire clown-fiesta that was SHADOWLANDS & the fckn Jailer... So... Eparch reminded me of him... like... a LOT!

[@dieselsandwich42]

They could have showed tons of essence orbs shooting through the ceiling when she blew him up, to show it wasn't a slurp but a release. That would've been a good subtle bit of storytelling.

[@PetrSzturc]

I also didnt understand the jump in story when out of nowhere you are in the Eparch's lair.

[@tiaanmoller1508]

Whilst I don't think SoTo was the best expansion, I still enjoyed a lot of the features that were released with it. I like the strikes and convergences. I love the weaponmaster training. I appreciate the new skyscale acquisition method as I probably would have never gotten the skyscale outside of it. Personally, the narrative swapped between interesting and a whole lot of nothing happening, but I think experiencing the story in release segments definitely soured the overall experience. Have a lovely day, everyone!

[@nielsjensen4185]

When you fight Eparch in the story The Eye of Janthir is hanging around in the corner.

[@MusPuiDiTe]

It's more of a teaser than the Livia letter, or maybe both?

[@nielsjensen4185]

@@MusPuiDiTe There are a lot of teasers that points in that direction, especially since The Eye of Janthir lorewise was destroyed at the end of LW s3. So, this is a new one.

[@MusPuiDiTe]

@@nielsjensen4185 if I remember correctly there's also the theory that the Eye was not actually destroyed, but shifted planes, going to the mists in search of other Mursaat...so there's a chance it could be the original

[@nielsjensen4185]

@@MusPuiDiTe That theory has to be player-made because in-game there's no ambiguity. After Lazarus dies the eye does as well. Livia even tells you to hurry up and ask your question to it before it dies.

[@GrubySzymek]

​@@nielsjensen4185the eye wasnt destroyed there

[@wyldlibrarian3549]

I am worried! The final meta might be good if you are a famous name like Muk or Mighty Teapot or someone with 50 do-good try-harders friends but I am not, so I am at the mercy of whichever group I can get into. This meta now has the “kiss of death” since even Muk won’t do it again. Sigh - this feels like Dragon’s End all over again but at least in the early days of that, people wanted the turtle so they wanted to do the meta - this SOTO meta has no chance of replay ability if it doesn’t inspire us!

[@PetrSzturc]

6:01 exactly. I had no idea what just happened. Also just as the fight starts one of the generals switched sides? But it happened in like 0,5s so I didnt know until later. Weird, rushed a lot probably.

[@chaoticneutral1090]

so i actually didnt mind that it started off with a green bar, because "adventures and skirmish events" gave extra progress bar, and each of the adventures gives a mastery point, so they were aiming for us to do the adventures, it was a clean sweep i did 3-4 adventures got a mastery point each and the green bar was filled in under 15 minutes, so i really didnt mind this time around

[@vaidazx12]

It's sad but it feels like GW2 has been going downhill since icebrood saga. EoD brought some hype back but it was short lived (I quit 2 months after the EoD expac). Even during the elite spec streams you could see that most of them were rushed and half-baked. I've watched trailers and Muk's reviews for SotO and never was I compelled to return to the game :(

[@nashi-nz]

It's so unfortunate, I've been playing since 2012. Came back for PoF & EoD, loved both - took a year break came back last week to play SotO and it feels so lifeless now :( a few days in and it feels like I'm just following map meta zergs and trying to get my head around the feature bloat.

[@irispounsberry7917]

The green bar I filled pretty quickly by going around the map getting at least silver on the Adventures (to get mastery points I knew I needed anyway as I hadn't done them yet). I agree that the update was disappointingly very short overall. I was also confused by the reliquary room but I think because the reliquaries had some souls we set free it was to represent the room, filled to the ceiling with those things, pinging as filled with the 'army'. Since they can get energy by cannibalizing each other, it makes a certain amount of sense that they have a 6th sense for each other's energy - predators adapting to seek their prey. It also could tie into how they do the telepathy thing (since they eat dreams? and are generally psychic). It wasn't explicitly said in the story, but it didn't feel that off to me. I still didn't like how we weren't powerful enough to take on the big bad even after all our prep and had to have Isgarren-ex-machina show up. Him being a jerk about it didn't help either. I think that the line "That strength was never yours to begin with" was more a poke at the big bad *stealing* the energy from the other kryptis as well as not taking it herself and making her an overt threat to Isgarren by just filling the previous king's shoes right away. The diving board I was disappointed didn't have diving goggles to show the guy how it's done and give him courage to make the leap himself (itself?). The legendary relic thing I didn't much care about until I went to do the achievements to actually add the SotO ones to the list. The achievements were annoying to complete. Thank goodness for the wiki giving better location data than the in-game 'hints', if they were even given. I already had about half of them through regular gameplay, but getting the last few (and there's the 'do 10 confluences' one I haven't finished yet) were a pain. The one bright spot was the Tyrian food collection, that was fun to go around and do. The dialog for its conclusion was hilarious too! I tried doing the fractal briefly on T4; my pug group only did 2 tries on the final boss before someone bailed and the rest gave up on it. It definitely feels like a challenge mode level difficulty and the boss is more of a damage sponge than the previous demon boss (silent surf). Having watched your stream when you cleared it helped a ton. But, it feels more like the boss is waiting for you to mess up rather than gauging how well you can do the mechanics with how many times you have to repeat the mechanics, if that makes sense. Minor errors in execution add up exponentially and there's no room to recover - it's not like you can boon strip those blasted boosts he vacuums up, some of which you don't even have time to deny him before the vacuum action happens. I won't be surprised if the boss's health total gets nerfed, and I hope it does.

[@omegasrevenge]

There's exactly two ways of how to make metas attractive and replayable to players. Effort and rewards. If something takes too long or too much work to do then even with good rewards people will avoid it. If something is fast but has no rewards people will avoid it. I don't know about what most people think but when I actually sat down with a calculator and checked how much gold per hour the meta events in soto were giving me I was super disappointed and haven't done a single meta in soto since. I can comfortably maintain 30 gold per hour just doing EoD meta events, in soto I struggle to maintain 15. If you are confused why that number is so low when the exotic weapons you can craft from the events sell for so much, then it's because the ingredients to craft those weapons are so expensive I am better off selling those and using the time I would need to farm the soto meta events on other events that give twice the reward.

[@AnthoJoh]

Were you more surprised by the ending credits at how many people worked on this expansion or how many people worked on it and how little content there was?

[@nd6886]

So how big of a sales plummet will the next expansion have?

[@michaelburke4048]

I thought of SotO as the quality of life expansion. Aside from the fact they gave Zojja back to us, I didn't much care for the new areas or the storyline. But giving us the ability to mount up during combat, and even blast fireballs from the sky? Game changer. I like the Wizard's Vault reward system, and the obsidian armor. I enjoy the added pets and the rift hunting mechanic. I haven't played it yet, but I have a feeling I'm going to love the new fractal as well (Hated the previous one). It feels like there's more, but that's plenty in itself.

[@joshuahng1]

The color n darkness theme really hit the spot....

[@ElderNewt]

For anyone who played city of heroes. You'd remember the 8 man Mastermind all pets team in Circle of Thorns caves.... THAT IS CHAOS hahaha I love how this meta reminds me of this every time haha

[@bosqueperenne]

That swiftness relic is absurd, basically puts fresh air Ele to rest, its like the whole fresh air archetype in a relic.

[@cynhanrahan4012]

I agree about it being rather short. I know it will take some time to go back finish all the achievos. The truce mortal enemies>allies/friends isn't a new concept. We've had to fight and then get all altruistic about several different species. And in the epilogue, did you notice in the Zojja conversation that we actually say goodbye? Have we seen the last of Zojja? Thinking back on SOTO, I recognized way too many retextured assets. I understand business economics, but it's a peeve. I felt the content was repetitive and I got bored. I used a lot of time to do map completion on other toons.

[@nickkuijt2950]

SOTO is the "Enter the Dragonfly" of the Guild Wars universe.

[@tropiq]

overall i'd rate this expansion a 6/10, some parts were better than that ( weapon proficiency, new weapons, some balance here and there, wvw vendor, new maps aside from amnytas, strikes, convergences ) and some worse ( fill the bar, kind of rushed story that seemed grand in scale from dialogue and very much not so in execution, amnytas ) like muk mentioned in the vid during this time they would set up content pipelines and workflow to more efficiently do things on schedule, also after the restructuring and new business model anet seem to be stable personnel wise and on recent ncsoft financial reports gw2 was even slightly up, so im very interested in the soto postmortem they announced about what they learned, that will be a hint at what the future holds

[@Eldar7431]

I think the reason they sensed those kyptis souls "the army" was cause they weren't exactly dead, they were preserved for consumption later, traped. As for the Hide-and-Seek I woudl think of the broodlings as refugeese so they just doing kid things and they probably aren't much of a threat? tho I see how it would be unsetlling to tyrians, but I don't remember any non kryptis children. The last (and some others) story bit was very short and kinda shallow, like the first bit had longer books more lore, if not all ppl read them at least maybe some KZbinr could read and make lore videos for us to watch and all.

[@njorun1829]

I have 1/2 masterry bar left and read up on what I'm actually getting. Apparently, there's a vendor unlock with random loot, but there's also a gizmo you can buy that also sells random loot, and these two cancel each other out. Because buying a gizmo PLUS alt parking in the tower, only to be able to compare daily or weekly purchases, makes all the sense... not. Ps: rangers role-playing necros?! I'm gonna have to name it Gorman Dize

[@1bonebreaker1]

did enyone else notice the eye of janthir in the corner in of the throne room? maybe a teaset for the next expansion?

[@SupraSav]

You hit the nail on the head right away. I never made it through the green bar and feel less enthused to play gw2 altogether. Time sinks are for games played by no lifer 16 year olds. NOT games with adult players who work and have responsibilities.

[@GKCanman]

I'm playing through some of the story missions again (for achievements) and one thing i notice is all of the dialogue is long winded with almost no way to skip. It reminds me of that scene with the Ents in Lord of the Rings. "We have just... decided... that you... are not orcs. =)" I wish it took itself a little less seriously.

[@MisterNo1111]

Thanx Muk, i like your video much. I am not entusiastic about this expac..., its just not my gem, this world and story-theme. I love GW2 and the gameplay of it and looking forward for next mini-story expansion!🔝🐣🔝

[@AraliciaMoran]

About the story, I found the end to be lacking in spectacle. The previous storylines had a big cinematic thing at the end; The fight against Zhai, Mord, Balt and Void at the end for the core and each expansion; Scarlet, the Shadow, Kralk and DS at the end of the living world. The only exception was Living World Season 3, whose last episode was basically a sidestory; but even then the end of the previous episode was pretty epic. Here... well all three of the nayos meta bosses (both the old two and the new one) are more impressive, both visually and mechanically than the end of the story. So yeah, it felt lacking.

[@Rsjabber_]

Think I'll just wait for GW3 at this point

[@metalmoory]

I had the same hope as you in the end scene, but I got extremely disappointed in the writers. They gave very high expectations but didn't have the courage to deliver. Sad.

[@turtleman56x]

The new convergence boss in a public group no cm failed because it killed zoj b4 we could get enough orbs.

[@olle3308]

I am never buying half an expansion again. Dirty cash grab!

[@fahlur]

how about the fact the Eye of Janthir was watching over the final battle in the story?

[@MuklukYoutube]

I didn't notice that myself but have seen others point it out. Maybe a hint at next expansion?

[@Wolfdoggie]

I was relieved when credits rolled cuz it's finally over~ onto the next dice roll. This one started off really interesting with Cerus and the overall tone shift, but then rolled multiple 'critical miss' as it kept going. Hope they learned enough from this experiment to make the next one much better. It's great I finally got movement speed back though, Wayfinder Relic was long overdue and I love it. Now I just need a Relic that brings back a minion pet. They shoulda added two Relics that summon a Kryptis minion to celebrate new frenship.... one for condi one for power.

[@leafcatcher4802]

yeah I had some friends that dropped when they added relics cause they removed all of the benefit that they had for having golomancy runes on all of their toons

[@boutch1993]

I liked this expansion very much. But i wish they bring something intricated like HoT again. I completely love all maps from that expansion.

[@Draxynnic]

It was pretty obvious to me that the "army of demons" had been consumed by Eparch somehow, it was just a question of exactly how he'd consumed them for their power while hiding the fact. For the finale of SotO, Eparch felt so anticlimactic that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop until the credits rolled. The big bad for the entire story should not have had an achievement for punking him in under five minutes, and I should not have been able to achieve that going in blind on the very first try. Cerus was a better final fight by far.

[@followthewolves1991]

I really liked the stuff with the astral ward and the wizards. It's such an awesome concept but it feels wasted on a boring story. The inner Nayos map is also really boring and kinda ugly to look at. Outside of that, I think soto was okay.

[@Danderson-pr4vj]

I would have loved some moral complexity in this story. Demons are bad, and the fact that we just trust the good guys made it seem childish or like the message was 'demons are people too'. Also, scrap what we got from day 1 and make it 'Commander and Zojja are trapped in Nayos and have to find a way back out in one piece. Along the way they make allies and uncover intrigue.'

[@Alphatox]

@29:12 "stone is not expensive" Dunno man 5 amalgamated kryptis essences feel quite expensive to me - not in a gold related way, but every time I need to do anything related to rifts I just wnat to kms. Also the special in vv that asks you to craft a piece of obsidian armor or this useless piece of visual noise should really have a option to claim it if you've already crafted the armor. I have full set of heave obsidian armor and I DO NOT feel like I should grind more of the essences just because I finished my armor before this patch rolled out.

[@monnarkh]

I like when a story is short, so I don't have to wait to see what happens next. The problem is when nothings happen at all. No conflict, no twist, no shocking, no nothing! >Peitha: Help... Me... Kill... The... Midnight... King... So... I... Can... Be... The... Midnight... King... >Wayfinder: ok >the end I mean, wat?!

[@theplaguepadart3743]

I must agree with you, Soto gave me no real happy juice. I hate Soto. BUT ill tell you why. I came back to the game after 3 years. Jumped right into Ibs & loved it. i had so much fun. Then jumped into EoD loved the maps, loved the stuff they added like fishing lol. and it was all happy juice all over. Then i jumped into Soto and was like .... the fuck is this? ok... so.... All the main Cast is pretty much not here. Commander is now "Wayfinder" ok. Maps just feel reused, original map is just all white and goldish, then were tossed into a Fleshy Moist map? Apart from needing achievement's and Masteries ...i dont see my self ever going to soto maps for fun.

[@yitrul]

I'm not sure what the point was in giving Zakiros POIs and Viewpoints... I think this should realistically just be instanced content.

[@basvriese1934]

Personally what I dislike the most is that the fantasy of what's going on just doesn't work in my opinion. They keep on talking a big game of how dangerous the kryptis are and then yeah in the beginning they do seem very dangerous with all the invasions, but then as you get nayos you see that the kryptis are living in an empty wasteland, scarcely populated, seemingly no coordination anywhere. Since entering Nayos it has become abundantly clear that the kryptis are hardly even an actual threat to tyria, so I am like why am I even here, this gross wasteland is useless and no threat, what are we waiting for, I can just march to the king and destroy him easy, I have already slain a damn god before, this guy is no match. Then when you finally do, it seems to be right that the midnight king was just a complete pushover, completely making all the steps you did before feel like an utter waste of time. The incongruance between the said threat and the shown threat really pulls me out of the fantasy for me and turns it just into a checklist to finish, waiting for some actual story

[@SylvesterAshcroft88]

This was an Eparch dissapointment, but it seems like the relics are good, and the fishing holes are cool, it's just a shame they didn't give us more time to use them after the event.

[@Draconicrose]

Thanks for the tip on starting suffused. Unfortunately, you have to have at least one piece of T1 crafted before you can do that :/

[@glowdonk]

SPOILERS BELOW: I wasn't fond of them doing the same "kill likeable character for the plot" thing they did in End of Dragons and Icebrood Saga I understand Trahearne because Mordremoth DID kidnap the others on that airship, I understood why we got killed in POF despite us coming back like William Afton, I understood why Aurene was "killed" by Kralk... I didn't understand why Ryland wasn't given a chance to reform, straight up being told that he was a mistake by his own mom and then killed by his father, I don't like how I hate Ankka only because she killed the one character from LWS1 before she could actually get some closure in her story, and now, I don't like how the only friendly Mursaat, Mabon, was killed just so we could have a reason to go to Nayos to end that conflict with the Kryptis The only reason I'd probably ever come back to SOTO is if I have the stuff for the legendary armor and collections, sadly the metas and grind in my current state is... Tedious, never liked having to straight up make countless materials to start doing a collection, and I don't get why research notes are being used so damn much And the Kryptis Skyscale skin's biggest sin is me having to get the Analytical charm, which needs me to do a crapload of things, alongside accrue a whole fortune of Ectoplasm just so I can make it, which yeah it COULD be worth it, but you were given a Warclaw skin for FREE WITHOUT GRIND in the current expansion, why couldn't we have done the same thing with the Kryptis Skyscale? Hell, why couldn't we just have it as a drop in the Amnytas Meta?

[@fallbranch]

How is the audio so low for this?

[@bamsebulle]

My favorit part was when i failed the Meta event and i thought everything was just going to reset. But no Eparch just straight up kills everyone 😅

[@orddan]

If I have to sum SoTo in few words : Scuffed, Repurposed, downgrade, lack of novelty, cool rewards.

[@nielsjensen4185]

My thoughts on the story "." and then it was done.

[@marcjensen9080]

This was the weakest expansion to me, a significant step down from what I've seen before. 😝The story lacked the pivotal character moments that we've seen previously: Eir falling, Trahearn's... act, the "Hell yeah!" moment of Ritlock after a long absence tearing unexpectedly out of the mists with a blindfold on, and so on. It seems like every major release had some memorable moment and then we go to Gyala Delve and it was all "meh" from there. The best I can think of was seeing Zojja again, which I can't even recall how it played out now. 😝The kryptis models are all just re-skins. I've fought these things before, in Maguuma, in the Crystal Desert. Recycling old things felt cheap. 😝The voice actors mangling names should have been an easily corrected problem. They botched Knut "Noot" Whitebear years ago and I've only ever made one norn to avoid listening to that again, and now they go and say Frode's _TWO_ syllable name with only one syllable and manage to get just one wrong as well. If I want to irritate myself like that I just have to stand next to a blackboard and drag my nails down it. 😝The final meta, WTF? Soo-won was a bit of a let down - lets look at the boss, not the floor - but this was far worse. More floor gazing to keep track of the danger fields, to dodge through the waves, to pick out the fountains that aren't recognisable as fountains. It's more of a mechanics fight than a boss fight. The super duper hell poison is scarier than the boss, the boss that you see for less than half the fight because knowing where your feet are going is more important. On the plus side: ✅ Enough of the weapon stuff is pretty cool to the point where I can give a thumbs up and say the weapon masteries were a net positive. ✅ My new favourite trader NPC in the Wizard's Tower takes hatched chili. Literally the best part of the expansion right there.

[@R.senals_Arsenal]

I liked many aspects of the expansion, like the added weapons, the use of elite weapons universally, the Obsidian Armor, many of the encounters and quests. Where the expac fails is the story. It started with a bang and finished with 2 whimper releases with no twists, no turns, nothing but a linear progression to a goal which, surprise, we achieve. This would be a bad D&D Campaign that would keep you from letting Rowan be DM ever again. Metas... SA & A maps had decent ones, IN has 1 ok, 1 meh, and finally 1 WTF one to finish. Middle one is probably meh because there is a similar boss in Convergence that's a better fight. In fact the Convergence is so much better than any of the metas it kinda overshadows them all. In getting my 18 armors I did that thing 130 times and thus I have no desire to grind for a 2nd glowy skin I won't even likely use cause I'm tired of all of them by now, metas, rifts, convergences - no more! Once I get my AP achieves done I'm out until next Expac. I have enough skins already. I got my Leggie Armor for functionality, not appearances. If I cared about appearance over function I never would have made anything but medium cause heavy and light are bland AF. And if you didn't play for the Leggies, what was even your motivation for doing these things again and again? They only give currencies you can use for making Leggies. Now that I'm done I've got the currencies piling up with nothing to spend them on. Even if I did the work for the glowy skin I'd be in the same boat at the end. I'm just a bit irked by this last patch so maybe my take will be more nuanced going fwd, but I feel let down right now.

[@bobiboulon]

22:41 the room is too small for a real epic battle. He takes all the space in the middle, then on the sides you have the puddles of "emotions", and not that much space in between. I don't know why they choose to put the final battle in that cell, but it wouldn't be possible to have him move, charge, and all. Maybe, for starter, they could have had designed that final part of the map bigger (it's not even the same size of either of the 2 previous parts) and from there making that boss actually do things. Balthazar's weapon played more animations than this boss!

[@MelonRoulette]

to me, i like the skyscale stuff but I do not enjoy the boss. I feel like i am just running around killing mobs

[@TheXTruthAbout]

Yeah this whole expansion was about humanizing evil. Making literal demons relatable and sympathetic was just atrocious story writing. Feels like someone on the writing staff was stuck in that 2010 mindset of subverting expectations in the simple-minded way.

[@-fossil_fairy-639]

(spell-casting effort) is what happened to Eparch

[@71775926]

Genshin Impact ships an update every 6 weeks and has more content playtime-wise (and not the grinding type of content, mind you. Actual unique-cutscene-unique-dialogue content) in one update than ANet can ship in 3 months. Shameful.

[@MakoByte]

It's not shameful, it's just a difference in investment. Genshin makes more money and has a larger development team

[@Derrek84]

I had a very similar experience to yours with the story and meta. The last chapter for me is very anticlimactic. They built this boss to be all powerfull and it was kind of a dud. Also, at first I thought Peitha DID absorb his powers or whatever. I think that would be the smart thing to do actually. And the meta is very confusing although I have problems with these metas sometimes so mayby I'm just not smart enough 😅 Sucks that the last Nayos region isn't open world. All in all SoTO is fine but I'm going back to HoT, EoD and the original maps.

[@ozirus3344]

I’m starting to think they’re using the Story to point to map updates. That’s fine. But then why not have the story ALSO make you complete (or optionally but highly suggested) the new Meta?? When I started the next chapter and Peitha started talking about Eparch being dealt a severe blow… WPs discord had to tell me to do the meta first to make it make sense.

[@Ottermomma]

Underwhelmed but also we lost track of the Commanders personal story - I would have liked to see that element finished out

[@joyboy6067]

Been taking a break for 2 months due to work condition miss my chance to do ToF CM with my guild,at least i tought the new patch get me covered but boy how wrong i was, - the conclusion of story left me with "thats it?"im not expecting much on story department with MMO but still felt disappointed. - new fractal its ok ( i know you guys gonna hate me for saying that ) it just there is one boss attack that give too much unnecessary visual clutter and why the heck we cant jump the ground wave attack?whats make this ground wave different from other? - legendary armor "upgrade" is such a bonker that you need to do so much just to have LED slap into your armor,i totally regret going heavy on obsidian armor now ,should have go with envoy for heavy instead of light,fuck

[@Ashendal]

Non-story stuff? Good to great. The new stuff like the vendor, if you ignore the blatant scams in there, is amazing for getting rid of all the old account bound junk that's been clogging up stuff like the mat storage for years at this point. Even things like the new weapons did overall pretty well, even if a few were still disappointing. They also managed to get enough resources allocated to finally, well in less than a month anyway, get restructuring out the door, something that was promised years ago. The story content is where this "expansion" fell apart. It was horrible, but if that's what they had to sacrifice for all the QoL updates and work they did to smooth out the rest of the game I guess I'm fine with it. The problem is I don't want them to repeat this for the next one as there aren't enough QoL updates left for them to do to sacrifice another expansion for. If it's a a/b situation where they focus on QoL for one and then story and maps for the next and just alternate I'm fine with that, but they can't let the next expansion just be miserable for the story.

[@fozz3498]

So does the suffused buffs indicate what I have or need completed? Kinda confusing Great thoughts on the expac. Overall the story = meh Legendary armor is great. Gw2 combat needs something. Its like a double edged sword. I want the combat to be more difficult but it is missing something. Not exactly sure what it is but I get very bored quickly.

[@CarlosHernandez-kn8sl]

For someone who quit WOW (and haven't return) because of Shadowlands and the Jailer, I played GW2 for something different, and anet pull this s... ehm... thing, yeah I'll think very carefully if I'm going to buy the next expansion