This weekend I got back on the main story quest for End of Dragons. I am not sure why I ultimately bail at times and have trouble following the main story thread, but it is definitely a thing. At least in the case of End of Dragons and Guild Wars 2, there are times when I know a major fight is about to happen which causes me to pause. I know from experience that no fight in Guild Wars 2 plays out quickly, and often times they last about two to three times longer than I feel like they should for a story mission. The end result is that I put off doing them, and return to my regularly scheduled nonsense. Then weeks if not months pass before returning to actually following that main story thread. I have this weird fear of being committed to doing something for an unknown period of time, that I cannot easily bail out of without forcing myself to do everything from the start. If you could restart story missions from the last checkpoint… this would probably alleviate my fears.
One cool thing that happened while questing my way across Echovald Wilds, is that I got to experience the zone meta event. Fighting this giant jade golem/mech thing was really fun and I liked the fact that the encounter moved to different locations. I greatly appreciate the new visualization mechanic of showing arrows in the direction that the entire party is supposed to go in. Older fights honestly could benefit from this, so it would be lovely if they shoehorned that into other encounters. I am specifically thinking of something like Tequatl with four points that need to be guarded, or Triple Trouble where there are three different worms in three different locations that need to be fought. Granted you can just do the tried and true “follow the mass of people” but I do appreciate having some indication of what to do.
As far as the final encounter of the expansion goes… it felt phenomenally epic but was also at times VERY busy. It was about as frenetic as I could possibly handle without just feeling overloaded by it. When it was over… I was thankful because honestly there was a little too much going on for me and I felt deeply overstimulated. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool as hell… but as someone who generally goes for maximalism, this was a bit much. It played out in a way that I more or less expected it to play out, which had a required amount of time associated with it and hoops to jump through… but it was a little overwhelming. I am honestly concerned about what this encounter looks like when you had in about sixty other players.
I guess I now need to join the vast numbers trying to get a turtle mount. I need to read up on the frequency of when the zone meta plays out and figure out a time that I can start doing it on a daily basis. I want my siege turtle because they are really cool looking, but also super handy for any sort of objective that requires breaking an obstacle. Then again I also need to buckle down and devote time and effort to finishing up my Skyscale and Griffon mounts as well, and sort out where to even begin my Rollerbeetle. I like that these long grinds exist, but I do find it hard to get excited over doing them. Now that I am done with the story and all caught up, however, I think it might actually give me the drive to start filling in the missing pieces.
As far as the story goes it was excellent. For me at least, each expansion has gotten better than the last… minus the bullshit with the dragon response missions. The problem with End of Dragons is that we are dumped off in a similar position to that of Final Fantasy XIV. In both cases, a decade-long journey has come to a close and for the most part, there is no obvious path forward. I will be interested to see where the Guild Wars 2 team goes from here now that the dragon magic crisis has been resolved. I have to admit there were moments in the epilogue that I teared up a little after reaching what was a pretty obvious point of conclusion for certain character arcs. I am very ready for the next expansion whenever it lands, and also deeply looking forward to the second part of Season 1 when it comes out in a few days.
Congratulations. We made the decision to plow through the story itself from Kaineng City onwards, and therefore have yet to finish any of the maps after Seitung Province, or the Echowald meta. Though we did finish the Dragon’s End meta before finishing the story, thanks to an achievement to do so.
I don’t think I’ve anything to start the turtle mount, but the other mounts are basically do some dailies until you have right currency for the step. We had the hardest time finishing the Griffin because it depends on an event chain that doesn’t progress very often.
Same as you , we eagerly await tomorrow’s “new” episode.