Guild Wars 2's Living World arc begins Season 2 on July 1

Guild Wars 2's Living World arc will kick off its second season on July 1 and players can use their Living World Journals to save their chapters to replay later.

Ozzie Mejia

June 5, 2014 5:30 PM

1

ArenaNet is preparing to launch the second season of Guild Wars 2's Living World story arc. The studio announced that the first chapter would begin on July 1 and would add a new "Living World Journal" to help users track their own progress through each episode.

Guild Wars 2's second season will pick up where the events of the first season left off. A player's personal story will resume after the story of Zhaitan, with NPC dialogue reflecting these events. However, players will not be required to complete the first season in order to participate in forthcoming story-related events. All subsequent story events will be reflected in a user's Journal, which can be used to save episodes and replay them at a later time, even after their two-week period has expired.

"We're modifying the story Journal in your character's Hero Panel so it will track all of your character's story steps," explained Arenanet game director Colin Johanson on the Guild Wars 2 website. "From that panel, characters who are level 80 will be able to select between playing their personal story and the Living World story. For the Living World story, you'll be able to select which unlocked episode you'd like to play. Characters under level 80 will be able to see the available episodes, but will not be able to play them until they reach level 80. Think of the Living World story as the constantly expanding continuation of your character's storyline once they reach level 80."

Players can permanently save Season 2 Living World episodes by logging into the game during their two-week run. Those that forget to log in during this time can still save previous episodes by paying 200 gems, which can be earned with real money or with in-game gold. However, players will not have the option to re-select personal story choices during select chapters, since those choices permanently alter a character for the remainder of the game. Season 1 episodes will also not be available, given that they were not designed to work with the Journal, however ArenaNet hopes to offer those episodes in the future.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?