After seeing my thoughts here, what were your thoughts on Icebrood Saga? Did you experience it on launch or after everything was already out like I did? I'm really curious
Yes my experience is similar to yours i waited till the end of saga so my experience was more positive. My general thought was that we needed there one more map to introduce properly Primordus into that final clash. Those DRM missions was to much of the same thing , now they can make an easy fix and redo the way ppl play them , no need to play all of them and give ppl choice of 3 , after that next choice of 3 and so on , so they can play i don't know max ~3 DRM's in story.
@@shamanoty8115 I'd even go further and say redo Chapter 5 entirely. They likely won't, but it's always better to put your best foot forward rather than leaving it there to possibly get people to quit before End of Dragons. What we had before Chapter 5 was great stuff!
I played live and drms werent "as bad" cuz the release schedule.. they where born to keep us replaying story for loot instead of just ignoring it in 30mins, but the loot was so bad and ppl refuses to relive the story that they got canceled in the same chapter. Before EoD i replayed all and noticed that the story is way more cohesive if you play all off them in one go, but feels endless indeed.. As for context: before ibs anet claim that there wont be doing more exps, so they kicked hard with grothmar (google or wiki the magazine they made!!), bjora and drizzlewood.. then in full anet fashion, they bet on the opposite idea, throw all away by memeing primordus saga, throwing random bits of progress in mostly reused locations while they work on cantha and thats the reputation the entire project got. At least EoD worth it.
Icebrood saga started quite good, in my opinion. We got Grothmar Valley, we got the nice horror stuff but then they ran out of time with the new expansion to work on. it was weird without the voice lines. Had much fun replaying with the voice acting back in (chievos were nice too lol)
Yeah it was interesting to hop into and experience, but I could definitely see the flaws in how it was developed. It definitely felt like it was made during peak pandemic times, not to mention how EoD was apparently greenlit while they were working on IBS. It just seems like a bad combination at the time
Yeah, IBS is really good imo until the end. I don’t HATE the end…but I am disappointed by it. It’s been awesome to watch you play through and enjoy GW2 (I’ve caught every video)! I think it would be really cool to have a video at the end of this journey where you express your overall thoughts on GW2 as a FF14 vet, and what you like about each and how they complement each other. I hope you stick around to continue playing GW2!
Thank you! Yeah Champions is a bit of a shame but I can't hold it against the devs because it's not like the situation was the best during that time. Speaking of continuing to play GW2, that topic is going to be part of that news I reference at the end of this video. Gonna be talking about my plans for the future of the series in the next video. Obviously End of Dragons by this point lol
Who remembers that this part 9:02 "I trusted you" was the only voice line when they released it. (That time when pandemic happened and they could not record voices)🙋♀
Yeah, it is the end that's mostly what throws people off so much. That and Braham being Braham. I really liked the prologue map, but aside from that I never spent any more time in IBS than has been necessary. Aside from EotN and strikes. I'm glad you managed to get through it feeling alright, but yeah, that end is truly anticlimactic and disappointing. Especially for some of the gw1 veterans, who've been awaiting for Primordus for like 15 years.
Drizzlewood is likely the zone I'll be visiting most out of all 3. Just being in that event heavy area was quite fun. That said, Bjorn Marches had the best vibe. So well done. Yeah Dragonstorm needed more buildup in my opinion. Likely all of Champions needs a redo
Honestly, despite the lackluster end of DRM‘s I loved IBS. There were so many banger moments ( I am ashamed I BORE YOU! I should’ve bled you out and spared us all!!) and the horror of Bjora Marches was really cool. The whole writing team got drafted into writing EOD at the end, that’s why the ball got droped so hard on Champions unfortunately
I definitely enjoyed Episodes 1-4. They all felt really good and compelling. Seeing what Champions is now and hearing what it was on launch is a bit of a shock in comparison. Not the good shock either lol It has potential but it would need to be remade to really do that. Something I would not be against personally lol
Oh yes absolutely. I think the community consensus is to rework the DRMS by dropping the long pre-events so they work more like soloable fractals, and halve the numbers you need to do for the story. It's kind of like Game of Thrones, where the end is so bad, that everyone forgot that the first for seasons/episodes were good. Also a lot of gw1 players were disappointed that we didn't get to fight primordus and jormag ourselves, because those were the two dragons already present in gw1 (and kept as last alive for that reason by the story team), it's a shame they got hit with budget cuts and had to move on to eod so fast. Half of the drms, and a longer Dragonstorm more lilke the Kralkatorik fight and IBS would've been great, especially considering it was free to play back then. I think that's something a lot of people forget. And tbh I do replay a lot of IBS stuff still cause it is still relevant content and has good turnover, whereas I only ever touched PoF content again if I needed to for a legy. @@MegaMadVladMMO
@@ginster458 I'd even go farther to say overhaul the whole episode itself. Keeping the story beats is fine but making it into something with buildup, character development, twists and turns would be better than possibly hearing people talk during the DRMS. The idea I had for Dragonstorm in my head was better than what it is right now lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO if i remember correctly around the time of champions, a writer and another dev got fired for saying something disrespectful to the community or something.
Icebroodsaga is great until you reach the last chapter, then you just want to claw your eyes out and cry because those chapters within the chapters was just made to deley us so that Arena Net could make a expansion. It is well known that this was not suppose to be the ending of the Icebroodsaga it was suppose to go on further. The very last chapter where they kill of two dragons in one go and doing so to Primordus the dragon we all waited for to have some interactions since he was just a dragon with no feelings, no talking just very ready to destroy the world. He showed up with Jormag and 20 min later he was dead. I sat for a long time looking at the screen thinking how can this be the end. And yeah covid did not help us either since we had no voicelines through the Drizzlewood chapter at first. It was added later and i replayed it which made it a ton better. I loved the Rylands story arc though and how that ended was even better. I wish Bangar would not have been written off in the same way Zoja been for so long, until recently. Bangar was a favorite. On a good note End of Dragons story is fantastic, the areas are fantastic it over all felt really god to play through EoD.
For me personally, I would be absolutely fine if ArenaNet ever wanted to remake Champions to make it fit better and have it be a better product. It's not very likely to happen at all of course but the "what if" always feels good lol Yeah I enjoyed Ryland's character arc as well. He was such a wild card up to the very end. Sometimes you need a good wild card to make everything go off the rails in a good way.
I personally waited for the voice acting to come out before I played 😄Imo it's one of the most important parts of the game. I pretty much agree with everything you said about this season, some fun maps and events but story fell off a bit near the end. Now the next expansion is another beast, can't wait again to see you progress. (I also need to catch up with the newest expansion myself so you don't pass me, been slacking 😆)
Yeah a lot of the voice acting after the base game is really good. I saw some awkward spots in the base game cutscenes lol lol You've got time for sure
I took a break from GW2 at the start of season 4 and came back just in time to get the final champions update when I catched up with the story. So my experience was pretty much like yours. I think the most disappointment stems from people having to go through the wait between the content releases, which weren't exactly that big, especially during the "Champions" episodes. By the way, the "Visions of the past" contained some reactivated season 1 content additionally, which was their first step towards reinstalling the whole season 1. Consequently it was moved away from that living world episode. But I had some more stuff to do at that time, even though it kind of felt like being out of place. The remaining let down for those coming late to this season is the pure amount of very similar dragon response missions. At that time, they were already working on End of Dragons and had to cut down on development resources for these episodes + it was during the pandemic. So they also didn't add new maps but used old ones as instances. And to be honest, in principle I like the idea of repeatable open story missions and don't mind using existing zones as maps for these missions. It just didn't work out well, had serious (and exploitable) bugs and was released in a manner that immediately turned this content into a chore.
Yeah I think I was hearing that it took about 6 months or something for all of Champions to come out. Not a very ideal content release for a single episode. I feel for the team during that time. I'm certainly glad that I was able to play through LWS1 when it was brought back into the game. Definitely a tough piece of content for sure though lol While Champions was a disappointment in how it was executed, I am still looking forward to EoD. Been hearing good things about that expansion
It was interesting to see your take on this since you came at it from the complete opposite direction I did. I played it as it came out. I did the grinding for the achievements. I'm a big lore person. I played GW: Eye of the North, which set up the story of Jormag and Primordus. I watched the announcement of what they told us IBS would be then had to slowly watch that crumble one release at a time. I had such high hopes for it, which were admittedly my own fault. I wanted a siege devourer mount! Instead I watched my guild abandon the game one by one until I ended up grinding the DRMs solo. I'm glad you had a better experience with IBS than I did. I will say doing the DRMs straight through with another person was way more fun than doing them solo as they slowly came out. You did leave out Creepy Bear though!
As a Braham fan I was so on board for IBS when it began, as I mistakenly thought it would be the story that finally gave him time to properly shine and maybe even finally learn about his father Borje! When the pandemic hit and the DRMs started rolling out I was distraught, as I'm not huge on content you have to grind ad nauseum. So much wasted potential thanks to NCsoft chopping the dev team during a goddamn lockdown...
For GW2 being a fairly good money maker for NCsoft, you'd think they would put more funding into ArenaNet. But yeah, you can absolutely feel the effects of a pained development process in IBS
I’m going back through the Icebrood Saga now to complete the “Return to” achievements, which reward you with a Legendary amulet. I remember playing it the first time and liking the beginning chapters, but after the announcement of the End of Dragons expansion, it quickly became obvious that the developers were cutting corners on the second half of the Icebrood Saga story and the final fight between Primordus and Jormag was a huge disappointment. Killing off two Elder Dragons in such a rushed manner after 15 years of build up was almost criminal for the fans. It could have been handled so many different ways that would have been more acceptable to the community.
Loving the narration!!! Yeah, IBS it's not a bad season, and have good content too...the big nonoes for players have been: - the Dragon Response Missions (same mission, different location, as you clearly stated 😆)...it would have been better to have less missions but way different, like strike missions - the story leading up to the final battle...not because of the end, but because there's basically NOTHING on Primordus development, even thought it was the first dragon teased in GW1, and the story seems to jump to the conclusion leaving out important developments on the allied side too... I love that now, in-between new expansions the old content is getting updates, but I doubt they will ever get back to add to the old story itself unfortunately...
Thank you! Yeah the Dragon Response Missions were cool for the first 2, but after doing 10 in a row it really shows just how strapped the devs were at the time. Feels like they had a skeleton crew working on it. Primordus was like "Sup?" and then dead, no buildup whatsoever. Jormag had buildup but it also felt like they skipped some crucial parts to just killing them off too.
8:30 - My biggest complaint about the Icebrood Saga (other than the fact that the Charr had stolen the Norn themed spotlight) was THIS moment right here. This moment was a textbook example of character assassination directed towards Smodur and what he represented Pre-Icebrood Saga. You probably don't know much about him, but this is NOT something he would have done. The Smodur that I had known and experienced (from playing as a Charr, from content still missing from Season 1, and experiencing in-game dialog) was not someone who would backstab Cinder. Smodur was both just and cunning, and he had to be to claim his current seat as an Imperator. He was tactful enough to handle a split conflict between both the Flame Legion splinter groups and the continuous threat of the Ascalonian ghosts at the same time for a prolonged period. He was diplomatic enough to mediate, not only between the three active Legions (Iron, Ash, Blood - before Flame rejoined), but also held a meeting with the Humans in order to discuss the Ebonhawke Treaty, and didn't outright reject the Flame Legion rejoining the Charr during the events of the Icebrood Saga when Bengar invited them. During the Charr's personal story (Iron Legion specifically), he allowed the player to choose which faction he helped with his invention and gave you free reign and control on how it would be used and developed. During the original Season 1 Story (currently missing from recent events), he was constantly discussing the threats of the Molten Alliance and lead the Defense Quorum (defensive emergency military meeting) on how to handle them - one of which you were invited to despite not being a Charr if you weren't one (pretty sure this part us currently missing from the Live Season 1 story). Smodur was one of the first Charr (albeit reluctantly) willing to fight with other races on a unified front against Mordemoth once it was shown how threatening he actually was, something Bengar would have never done. He was strict enough to strip Rytlock of his rank when he repeatedly ignored and refused to follow orders, but he didn't outright murder nuke him and actually reinstated his rank after his task (which was simply "Report Back and tell us what happened" btw) was finished. Smodur even supplied troops during the fight with Kralkatorrik, with much of the inventions used during the fight had been developed by Iron legion. Smodur was also the first ranking Charr (not counting Rytlock) who didn't completely distrust Aurene during the first chapter of Icebrood Saga. During the events of No Quarter, they threw all of this away and made him a murder hobo with no tactical sense, strategy, or mercy. He did several things that he would have never done based on the character they built him as prior, and overall it felt like character assassination. Maybe, MAYBE, you could explain it away as Jormag's Whispers but there was no sign of this being a thing during the whole chapter. And the worst part? THEY KILLED HIM BEFORE HE COULD EXPLAIN HIMSELF. Like, bullet-to-the-head offed him during the VERY NEXT chapter. Why? Smodur was the most progressive Charr in the game and valued peace, discussion, and unity above everything else. Turning him into a murder hobo war criminal feels disingenuous at best and outright deceitful and manipulative at worst. TL:DR - Smodur killing Cinder made absolutely no sense and was something he would have never done. It was completely out of character for him to do and we were given no reason or explanation on why he did this other than move the plot forward and then being gaslighted by being told "he was always like that". Bullshit, #NotMySmodur Sorry for my word vomit, but re-experiencing this moment in your video reminded me why I absolutely hated Icebrood Saga as a story. (Edit) had to edit to clarify, Smodur did not strip Rytlock, he only stripped him of his military rank.
The only thing I liked from that moment was the fact I could make that joke off it lol For the most part, Icebrood Saga painting Smodur was a war criminal is how I, a new player, saw him. When I started my Charr character after Icebrood, seeing Smodur send them a letter, the way it was written was much nicer overall from how he is in Icebrood. Seeing that base game letter after Icebrood, I kind of figured ArenaNet didn’t know what to do with his character at that time. I figured his character in Icebrood was how he was written most of the game. After seeing 2 people now saying that Smodur wasn’t written the same, I can see why that would make people angry for sure
@@MegaMadVladMMO Smodur is definitely a lot less of a war criminal than Icebrood Saga made him out to be. Unfortunately, because Icebrood Saga is his biggest appearance in the game, this ends up how a lot of people viewed him overall as a character. And his death means there isn't chance for him to grow any deeper anymore. Don't get me wrong, the story for Icebrood Saga was great. But they really did Smodur dirty. (Edit) Was Great until the last chapters. I wish they had done more with the Boneskinner chapter.
From what I read somewhere (sorry can't find the source), the Icbrood Saga should had two more maps that were supposed to replace the dragon response mission with better pacing, more characters, and metas. One more visions of the past map telling how Brahm became the champion of Primordas. Sadly the pandemic, many devs working on the Icebrood saga shifter to End of Dragons, and NC soft firing about 170 employees from Anet sealed the deal. Anet had to make some changes to complete it.
Here's to hoping they look at Icebrood Saga again at some point to touch it up a bit in the future. Not expecting it, but I can hope. Shame about those layed off if that's the case.
The thing a lot of people misunderstand about Ryland is that they think that if his Warband was still around he would never have joined Jormag. This is incorrect as the dialogue between the two is focused on him always wanting power and opportunity. He would have thrown his Warband under the bus to get the power that Joirmag gave him.
I had my expectations about Ryland based on how a lot of stories go and it threw me through a loop with how they actually played it out lol In a good way too!
@@MegaMadVladMMO Yeah, I was also surprised when ANet went through with it as usual when narratives toy with characters embracing a Fascistic ideology only to pussy out in the last moment and redeem them rather than just killing them straight-up
Ep 5 was sub par and kinda tainted my view of IBS overall, but I'll still always come back to Drizzlewood. Partially because the rewards are insane compared to basically any other map in the game, but it's also a beautiful and fun zone.
The sheer amount of events in Drizzlewood makes it really rewarding. Not to mention it’s one right after the other in fast succession so there’s always something to do. It’s really great lol Loved how you get higher and higher up the further north you go so griffinriding back south is fun too lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO Yeah for sure, and also the Charr commendation collection achievements load you up with expensive crafting materials. If you ever get around to working on crafting some legendary items those are vital!
60% of IBS was great. I feel it was let down by the Dragon Response Missions(little variety and poor rewards) and being too quick in the story at the end. Really needed another zone focusing on Primordius and the Asura where we also make a plan to get the dragons to fight. Probably easier to get Primordius to go after Jormag than the other way round...
My first time doing Champions made me feel genuinely pissed off about the later-half of IBS, I basically went to Aurene, got interrupted by a member of the pact, go to a DRM, back to Aurene, rinse and repeat until fuckin Dragonstorm I wanted actual story, not being forced into content I don't want to do, DEAD CONTENT I don't want to do, I've already had to deal with Warframe's bullshit, so why did I HAVE to do Dragon Response Missions?
Yeah Champions was just a bunch of repeat quests with a different look. It was fine for the first 1 or 2 times but after doing 10, it was pretty bad. I understand the circumstances weren’t ideal to develop it so I’m a bit more lenient on it because of that. My hopes are they someday redo it in a better way
People say that Ice Brood Saga is bad, however to be true, only Champions is really bad, beside it everything else is really good. All the maps are fun and the Dragonstorm is a nice event. If Champions were better no one was saying any of that.
Just an outfit I put together because I love transmog in MMOs lol Gotta look better than average. Shoulders-Barbaric Pauldrons Chest-Draconic Coat Gloves-Tempered Scale Gauntlets Leggings-Carapace Tassets Boots-Tempered Scale Greaves
Well, it´s not ALL of the Icebrood-Saga that was horrible, but specific parts of it, even if you accounted for the fact of its release with often entirely missing voicelines (something that in the history of GW2 has NEVER happened before. but as the reason was covid, you cannot totally blame ANet for it). And the releases in so short episodes don´t really fit well with the repetetiveness in the end. It starts actually pretty good. Grothmar Valley was a very nice prologue and a change of pace. The events are fun, and as you would expect from a prologue-episode, a lot of setup, and stuff being done a bit different. The concert and Metal Legion are peak entertainment, and Braham getting wasted is just hilarious. The story around Bjora Marches is also pretty decent. Corrupted spirits of the wild, Almorra's fate, Jormag's minions, everything fits into place. Although, the betrayal of Bangar was absolutely no suprise (especially if you´ve seen trailer before, it was actualyl a good plot imo. Drizzlewood-coast (at least south, but north too u guess) is a fun map. At least for a player like me that likes maps that can be repetetively farmed for profit without any cap, and being a WvW-main it made my heart bump seeing actual siege-battles in PvE (ofc not even close to WvW, yet still a fun experience imo) After Ryland became Champion of Jormag, THAT's the part where IBS gets really messy, and THIS is exactly the part the majority of playerbase disliked the most. "Champions" (that should be the part with the dragon response missions iirc, ~12:07 in the video) is basically the whole reason of why people were upset about IBS. Hey, a DRM? okay. and another one. and another one. and another one. And after all that repetetiveness, we get to Dragonstorm. The encounter/instance itself is GREAT, but the END and conclusion is.... mediocre at best. Punching the champions, hitting the dragons a few times (without even using our own abilities, but a Special action key), and they blast each other off. To this day, i have yet to understand: how did the manage to get the dragons meet up exactly there? how did they even manage to get them fighting each other? let alone, KILL each other? as i said, it´s a great encounter, but the END is just stupid. You basically sum it up perfectly in the end. Unfortunately, ANet will NEVER remake that part of the game. They have NEVER touched already released content after SEason 1 and its re-release.
Yeah, starting GW2, I kept hearing IBS is bad. Just before hitting it is when I saw people saying it was only the ending that was bad. Add in the pandemic times, as well as ANet restructuring and EoD being greenlit, you can’t really place blame at any 1 point. It was just a bad storm all at once for IBS. All in all, my favorite parts are the fun of Drizzlewood, and the dark and mysterious themes of Bjora lol
Jormag and Primordus, from what Taimi explains right before Path of Fire, are polar opposites that clash whenever they have the chance, so having the two together wasn't hard, if you lure Primordus you will innevitably lure Jormag. Overall Icebrood Saga was very meh near the end because of pandemic constraints and trying to make the most with limited resources, remember Dragon Response Missions were meant to be recurring content at the time.
An ending confrontation like that between 2 Elder Dragons should've been much bigger in scope. It needed to be a spectacle, something that would bring people to want to do Dragonstorm not just for the rewards, but also to experience it again. It should've at least been on the same level as Dragon's Stand. But I'm not going to point fingers at the devs either. I know it was made under less than ideal circumstances. Would love if they redid Champions but not expecting something like that at all. Probably a miracle Dragonstorm exists as it does now tbh
just to name why Icebrood saga was bad: Changing Smodurs personality to just another blood legion charr while he was originally a tactician and much more open minded including the peace negotians with the humans. If you play as a charr you find your chosen warband buddy in the camp and they will tell you that all the other ones you recruited are basically gone now because they lack leading them or they got convinced to serve Ryland. The killing of Cynder is nothing Smodur would have done without completely changing his character. We talk about a charr that investigated his enemys closely before trial them. Again Smodurs reaction was just a bad joke. I can't blame you for the lack of understanding the charr point of view on this in the end you play a stupid bookah of a human that is no where near familiar with the Charr but Icebrood saga overall was basically eliminating all big Charr personalitys and threw them under the bus. Grothmar Valley was basically the best about icebrood saga afterwards they completely messed up the whole race. Stuff like the repeating missions at the end of icebrood saga were just more salt in the wound of how bad it was. Also you basically missed how the voice of Jormag was just a damage sponge that people were often unable to beat in time for different reasons like hiding in the wall while the timer runs out because he was smarter than the developers. Did I mentioned they basically also fucked up Almorras personality to fit in this situation? Not to mention how boring Brahams self finding trips are and we got multiple ones by now. The mastery system is also the worst of all episodes and often doesn't make sense. So we got unfair fights, bad story telling including getting rid of all loveable and strong characters on the side of the Charr race, bad missions, bad story ending, bad masterys, bad map exploration, issues during the release progress because of the corona virus situation and lack of voiced cutscenes therefore, not to mention a meta boss so hard to beat that not even experienced meta players get him down easely during lack of time and the hiding in the wall issue and of course you also needed the mastery system to defeat him....... This is basically in a nutshell why so much players hate Icebrood saga despite having such a great opening map.
I liked the new zones that came with icebrood saga. I'm not a fan of the IBS story overall, but it was passable. The ending was a disappointment they just quickly kiss each other to death.
ice brood saga personal wasn't bad but after drizzle wood the chapter just died off the story felt rushed and uninteresting crossed with there dragon missions and achievements that are just do the same thing over 100 times it was a 5/10 at most.
Yeah 1 or 2 Dragon Response Missions is fine, but after 10 of them basically in a row it wasn’t very interesting. They could’ve worked if there was far more variety or even more cinematic in nature
Yep. For me, it was a solid "meh". Luckily that was the worst story gw2 has to offer imo. Enjoy the next zone! Challenge-wise, it's somewhere between PoF solo roaming ease and HoT's 'HELP MEEEEE'.
After seeing my thoughts here, what were your thoughts on Icebrood Saga? Did you experience it on launch or after everything was already out like I did? I'm really curious
Yes my experience is similar to yours i waited till the end of saga so my experience was more positive. My general thought was that we needed there one more map to introduce properly Primordus into that final clash. Those DRM missions was to much of the same thing , now they can make an easy fix and redo the way ppl play them , no need to play all of them and give ppl choice of 3 , after that next choice of 3 and so on , so they can play i don't know max ~3 DRM's in story.
@@shamanoty8115 I'd even go further and say redo Chapter 5 entirely. They likely won't, but it's always better to put your best foot forward rather than leaving it there to possibly get people to quit before End of Dragons.
What we had before Chapter 5 was great stuff!
@@MegaMadVladMMO i agree with you that's best option for sure
I played live and drms werent "as bad" cuz the release schedule.. they where born to keep us replaying story for loot instead of just ignoring it in 30mins, but the loot was so bad and ppl refuses to relive the story that they got canceled in the same chapter. Before EoD i replayed all and noticed that the story is way more cohesive if you play all off them in one go, but feels endless indeed..
As for context: before ibs anet claim that there wont be doing more exps, so they kicked hard with grothmar (google or wiki the magazine they made!!), bjora and drizzlewood.. then in full anet fashion, they bet on the opposite idea, throw all away by memeing primordus saga, throwing random bits of progress in mostly reused locations while they work on cantha and thats the reputation the entire project got. At least EoD worth it.
Icebrood saga started quite good, in my opinion. We got Grothmar Valley, we got the nice horror stuff but then they ran out of time with the new expansion to work on. it was weird without the voice lines. Had much fun replaying with the voice acting back in (chievos were nice too lol)
Yeah it was interesting to hop into and experience, but I could definitely see the flaws in how it was developed. It definitely felt like it was made during peak pandemic times, not to mention how EoD was apparently greenlit while they were working on IBS. It just seems like a bad combination at the time
Yeah, IBS is really good imo until the end. I don’t HATE the end…but I am disappointed by it.
It’s been awesome to watch you play through and enjoy GW2 (I’ve caught every video)! I think it would be really cool to have a video at the end of this journey where you express your overall thoughts on GW2 as a FF14 vet, and what you like about each and how they complement each other.
I hope you stick around to continue playing GW2!
Thank you! Yeah Champions is a bit of a shame but I can't hold it against the devs because it's not like the situation was the best during that time.
Speaking of continuing to play GW2, that topic is going to be part of that news I reference at the end of this video. Gonna be talking about my plans for the future of the series in the next video. Obviously End of Dragons by this point lol
Who remembers that this part 9:02 "I trusted you" was the only voice line when they released it. (That time when pandemic happened and they could not record voices)🙋♀
I was informed of that while I was recording. I’m glad they were able to add voice overs in later at least.
Yeah, it is the end that's mostly what throws people off so much. That and Braham being Braham. I really liked the prologue map, but aside from that I never spent any more time in IBS than has been necessary. Aside from EotN and strikes.
I'm glad you managed to get through it feeling alright, but yeah, that end is truly anticlimactic and disappointing. Especially for some of the gw1 veterans, who've been awaiting for Primordus for like 15 years.
Drizzlewood is likely the zone I'll be visiting most out of all 3. Just being in that event heavy area was quite fun. That said, Bjorn Marches had the best vibe. So well done.
Yeah Dragonstorm needed more buildup in my opinion. Likely all of Champions needs a redo
Honestly, despite the lackluster end of DRM‘s I loved IBS. There were so many banger moments ( I am ashamed I BORE YOU! I should’ve bled you out and spared us all!!) and the horror of Bjora Marches was really cool.
The whole writing team got drafted into writing EOD at the end, that’s why the ball got droped so hard on Champions unfortunately
I definitely enjoyed Episodes 1-4. They all felt really good and compelling. Seeing what Champions is now and hearing what it was on launch is a bit of a shock in comparison. Not the good shock either lol
It has potential but it would need to be remade to really do that. Something I would not be against personally lol
Oh yes absolutely. I think the community consensus is to rework the DRMS by dropping the long pre-events so they work more like soloable fractals, and halve the numbers you need to do for the story. It's kind of like Game of Thrones, where the end is so bad, that everyone forgot that the first for seasons/episodes were good.
Also a lot of gw1 players were disappointed that we didn't get to fight primordus and jormag ourselves, because those were the two dragons already present in gw1 (and kept as last alive for that reason by the story team), it's a shame they got hit with budget cuts and had to move on to eod so fast. Half of the drms, and a longer Dragonstorm more lilke the Kralkatorik fight and IBS would've been great, especially considering it was free to play back then. I think that's something a lot of people forget. And tbh I do replay a lot of IBS stuff still cause it is still relevant content and has good turnover, whereas I only ever touched PoF content again if I needed to for a legy. @@MegaMadVladMMO
@@ginster458 I'd even go farther to say overhaul the whole episode itself. Keeping the story beats is fine but making it into something with buildup, character development, twists and turns would be better than possibly hearing people talk during the DRMS.
The idea I had for Dragonstorm in my head was better than what it is right now lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO if i remember correctly around the time of champions, a writer and another dev got fired for saying something disrespectful to the community or something.
@@vreemdgeval Well if that happened that's definitely a big no-no
Icebroodsaga is great until you reach the last chapter, then you just want to claw your eyes out and cry because those chapters within the chapters was just made to deley us so that Arena Net could make a expansion. It is well known that this was not suppose to be the ending of the Icebroodsaga it was suppose to go on further. The very last chapter where they kill of two dragons in one go and doing so to Primordus the dragon we all waited for to have some interactions since he was just a dragon with no feelings, no talking just very ready to destroy the world. He showed up with Jormag and 20 min later he was dead. I sat for a long time looking at the screen thinking how can this be the end. And yeah covid did not help us either since we had no voicelines through the Drizzlewood chapter at first. It was added later and i replayed it which made it a ton better.
I loved the Rylands story arc though and how that ended was even better. I wish Bangar would not have been written off in the same way Zoja been for so long, until recently. Bangar was a favorite. On a good note End of Dragons story is fantastic, the areas are fantastic it over all felt really god to play through EoD.
For me personally, I would be absolutely fine if ArenaNet ever wanted to remake Champions to make it fit better and have it be a better product. It's not very likely to happen at all of course but the "what if" always feels good lol
Yeah I enjoyed Ryland's character arc as well. He was such a wild card up to the very end. Sometimes you need a good wild card to make everything go off the rails in a good way.
I personally waited for the voice acting to come out before I played 😄Imo it's one of the most important parts of the game.
I pretty much agree with everything you said about this season, some fun maps and events but story fell off a bit near the end.
Now the next expansion is another beast, can't wait again to see you progress. (I also need to catch up with the newest expansion myself so you don't pass me, been slacking 😆)
Yeah a lot of the voice acting after the base game is really good. I saw some awkward spots in the base game cutscenes lol
lol You've got time for sure
I took a break from GW2 at the start of season 4 and came back just in time to get the final champions update when I catched up with the story. So my experience was pretty much like yours. I think the most disappointment stems from people having to go through the wait between the content releases, which weren't exactly that big, especially during the "Champions" episodes.
By the way, the "Visions of the past" contained some reactivated season 1 content additionally, which was their first step towards reinstalling the whole season 1. Consequently it was moved away from that living world episode. But I had some more stuff to do at that time, even though it kind of felt like being out of place.
The remaining let down for those coming late to this season is the pure amount of very similar dragon response missions. At that time, they were already working on End of Dragons and had to cut down on development resources for these episodes + it was during the pandemic. So they also didn't add new maps but used old ones as instances. And to be honest, in principle I like the idea of repeatable open story missions and don't mind using existing zones as maps for these missions. It just didn't work out well, had serious (and exploitable) bugs and was released in a manner that immediately turned this content into a chore.
Yeah I think I was hearing that it took about 6 months or something for all of Champions to come out. Not a very ideal content release for a single episode. I feel for the team during that time.
I'm certainly glad that I was able to play through LWS1 when it was brought back into the game. Definitely a tough piece of content for sure though lol
While Champions was a disappointment in how it was executed, I am still looking forward to EoD. Been hearing good things about that expansion
It was interesting to see your take on this since you came at it from the complete opposite direction I did. I played it as it came out. I did the grinding for the achievements. I'm a big lore person. I played GW: Eye of the North, which set up the story of Jormag and Primordus. I watched the announcement of what they told us IBS would be then had to slowly watch that crumble one release at a time. I had such high hopes for it, which were admittedly my own fault. I wanted a siege devourer mount! Instead I watched my guild abandon the game one by one until I ended up grinding the DRMs solo.
I'm glad you had a better experience with IBS than I did. I will say doing the DRMs straight through with another person was way more fun than doing them solo as they slowly came out. You did leave out Creepy Bear though!
I left out creepy bear because I never finished their story lol Still need to take out that bone dragon thing
@@MegaMadVladMMO Yep! When the amulet starts twitching grab your silver sword and have your Aard sign ready!
@@orangebunny3 I understood that reference
note if you're a a Norn who is a follower of raven there are a couple of different voice lines
That's one thing I do appreciate about GW2, depending on your race and choices of backstory, some dialogue is different
As a Braham fan I was so on board for IBS when it began, as I mistakenly thought it would be the story that finally gave him time to properly shine and maybe even finally learn about his father Borje! When the pandemic hit and the DRMs started rolling out I was distraught, as I'm not huge on content you have to grind ad nauseum. So much wasted potential thanks to NCsoft chopping the dev team during a goddamn lockdown...
For GW2 being a fairly good money maker for NCsoft, you'd think they would put more funding into ArenaNet. But yeah, you can absolutely feel the effects of a pained development process in IBS
I’m going back through the Icebrood Saga now to complete the “Return to” achievements, which reward you with a Legendary amulet. I remember playing it the first time and liking the beginning chapters, but after the announcement of the End of Dragons expansion, it quickly became obvious that the developers were cutting corners on the second half of the Icebrood Saga story and the final fight between Primordus and Jormag was a huge disappointment. Killing off two Elder Dragons in such a rushed manner after 15 years of build up was almost criminal for the fans. It could have been handled so many different ways that would have been more acceptable to the community.
Loving the narration!!!
Yeah, IBS it's not a bad season, and have good content too...the big nonoes for players have been:
- the Dragon Response Missions (same mission, different location, as you clearly stated 😆)...it would have been better to have less missions but way different, like strike missions
- the story leading up to the final battle...not because of the end, but because there's basically NOTHING on Primordus development, even thought it was the first dragon teased in GW1, and the story seems to jump to the conclusion leaving out important developments on the allied side too...
I love that now, in-between new expansions the old content is getting updates, but I doubt they will ever get back to add to the old story itself unfortunately...
Thank you!
Yeah the Dragon Response Missions were cool for the first 2, but after doing 10 in a row it really shows just how strapped the devs were at the time. Feels like they had a skeleton crew working on it.
Primordus was like "Sup?" and then dead, no buildup whatsoever. Jormag had buildup but it also felt like they skipped some crucial parts to just killing them off too.
8:30 - My biggest complaint about the Icebrood Saga (other than the fact that the Charr had stolen the Norn themed spotlight) was THIS moment right here. This moment was a textbook example of character assassination directed towards Smodur and what he represented Pre-Icebrood Saga. You probably don't know much about him, but this is NOT something he would have done. The Smodur that I had known and experienced (from playing as a Charr, from content still missing from Season 1, and experiencing in-game dialog) was not someone who would backstab Cinder. Smodur was both just and cunning, and he had to be to claim his current seat as an Imperator. He was tactful enough to handle a split conflict between both the Flame Legion splinter groups and the continuous threat of the Ascalonian ghosts at the same time for a prolonged period. He was diplomatic enough to mediate, not only between the three active Legions (Iron, Ash, Blood - before Flame rejoined), but also held a meeting with the Humans in order to discuss the Ebonhawke Treaty, and didn't outright reject the Flame Legion rejoining the Charr during the events of the Icebrood Saga when Bengar invited them. During the Charr's personal story (Iron Legion specifically), he allowed the player to choose which faction he helped with his invention and gave you free reign and control on how it would be used and developed. During the original Season 1 Story (currently missing from recent events), he was constantly discussing the threats of the Molten Alliance and lead the Defense Quorum (defensive emergency military meeting) on how to handle them - one of which you were invited to despite not being a Charr if you weren't one (pretty sure this part us currently missing from the Live Season 1 story). Smodur was one of the first Charr (albeit reluctantly) willing to fight with other races on a unified front against Mordemoth once it was shown how threatening he actually was, something Bengar would have never done. He was strict enough to strip Rytlock of his rank when he repeatedly ignored and refused to follow orders, but he didn't outright murder nuke him and actually reinstated his rank after his task (which was simply "Report Back and tell us what happened" btw) was finished. Smodur even supplied troops during the fight with Kralkatorrik, with much of the inventions used during the fight had been developed by Iron legion. Smodur was also the first ranking Charr (not counting Rytlock) who didn't completely distrust Aurene during the first chapter of Icebrood Saga. During the events of No Quarter, they threw all of this away and made him a murder hobo with no tactical sense, strategy, or mercy. He did several things that he would have never done based on the character they built him as prior, and overall it felt like character assassination. Maybe, MAYBE, you could explain it away as Jormag's Whispers but there was no sign of this being a thing during the whole chapter. And the worst part? THEY KILLED HIM BEFORE HE COULD EXPLAIN HIMSELF. Like, bullet-to-the-head offed him during the VERY NEXT chapter. Why? Smodur was the most progressive Charr in the game and valued peace, discussion, and unity above everything else. Turning him into a murder hobo war criminal feels disingenuous at best and outright deceitful and manipulative at worst.
TL:DR - Smodur killing Cinder made absolutely no sense and was something he would have never done. It was completely out of character for him to do and we were given no reason or explanation on why he did this other than move the plot forward and then being gaslighted by being told "he was always like that". Bullshit, #NotMySmodur
Sorry for my word vomit, but re-experiencing this moment in your video reminded me why I absolutely hated Icebrood Saga as a story.
(Edit) had to edit to clarify, Smodur did not strip Rytlock, he only stripped him of his military rank.
The only thing I liked from that moment was the fact I could make that joke off it lol
For the most part, Icebrood Saga painting Smodur was a war criminal is how I, a new player, saw him. When I started my Charr character after Icebrood, seeing Smodur send them a letter, the way it was written was much nicer overall from how he is in Icebrood. Seeing that base game letter after Icebrood, I kind of figured ArenaNet didn’t know what to do with his character at that time. I figured his character in Icebrood was how he was written most of the game.
After seeing 2 people now saying that Smodur wasn’t written the same, I can see why that would make people angry for sure
@@MegaMadVladMMO Smodur is definitely a lot less of a war criminal than Icebrood Saga made him out to be. Unfortunately, because Icebrood Saga is his biggest appearance in the game, this ends up how a lot of people viewed him overall as a character. And his death means there isn't chance for him to grow any deeper anymore.
Don't get me wrong, the story for Icebrood Saga was great. But they really did Smodur dirty.
(Edit) Was Great until the last chapters. I wish they had done more with the Boneskinner chapter.
From what I read somewhere (sorry can't find the source), the Icbrood Saga should had two more maps that were supposed to replace the dragon response mission with better pacing, more characters, and metas. One more visions of the past map telling how Brahm became the champion of Primordas. Sadly the pandemic, many devs working on the Icebrood saga shifter to End of Dragons, and NC soft firing about 170 employees from Anet sealed the deal. Anet had to make some changes to complete it.
Here's to hoping they look at Icebrood Saga again at some point to touch it up a bit in the future. Not expecting it, but I can hope.
Shame about those layed off if that's the case.
The thing a lot of people misunderstand about Ryland is that they think that if his Warband was still around he would never have joined Jormag. This is incorrect as the dialogue between the two is focused on him always wanting power and opportunity. He would have thrown his Warband under the bus to get the power that Joirmag gave him.
I had my expectations about Ryland based on how a lot of stories go and it threw me through a loop with how they actually played it out lol
In a good way too!
@@MegaMadVladMMO Yeah, I was also surprised when ANet went through with it as usual when narratives toy with characters embracing a Fascistic ideology only to pussy out in the last moment and redeem them rather than just killing them straight-up
Agree, IBS is okay, and then takes a strong nosedive in chapter 5.
Icerbrood is good at the beginning, but the Covid hit us all...
Ep 5 was sub par and kinda tainted my view of IBS overall, but I'll still always come back to Drizzlewood. Partially because the rewards are insane compared to basically any other map in the game, but it's also a beautiful and fun zone.
The sheer amount of events in Drizzlewood makes it really rewarding. Not to mention it’s one right after the other in fast succession so there’s always something to do. It’s really great lol
Loved how you get higher and higher up the further north you go so griffinriding back south is fun too lol
@@MegaMadVladMMO Yeah for sure, and also the Charr commendation collection achievements load you up with expensive crafting materials. If you ever get around to working on crafting some legendary items those are vital!
60% of IBS was great. I feel it was let down by the Dragon Response Missions(little variety and poor rewards) and being too quick in the story at the end. Really needed another zone focusing on Primordius and the Asura where we also make a plan to get the dragons to fight. Probably easier to get Primordius to go after Jormag than the other way round...
Episodes 1-4 were good to great stuff. Episode 5 is definitely where it trailed off. I would not be mad if they ever wanted to redo episode 5 lol
My first time doing Champions made me feel genuinely pissed off about the later-half of IBS, I basically went to Aurene, got interrupted by a member of the pact, go to a DRM, back to Aurene, rinse and repeat until fuckin Dragonstorm
I wanted actual story, not being forced into content I don't want to do, DEAD CONTENT I don't want to do, I've already had to deal with Warframe's bullshit, so why did I HAVE to do Dragon Response Missions?
Yeah Champions was just a bunch of repeat quests with a different look. It was fine for the first 1 or 2 times but after doing 10, it was pretty bad.
I understand the circumstances weren’t ideal to develop it so I’m a bit more lenient on it because of that. My hopes are they someday redo it in a better way
People say that Ice Brood Saga is bad, however to be true, only Champions is really bad, beside it everything else is really good. All the maps are fun and the Dragonstorm is a nice event. If Champions were better no one was saying any of that.
Okay but what is the armour set you're using in the thumbnail?
Just an outfit I put together because I love transmog in MMOs lol Gotta look better than average.
Shoulders-Barbaric Pauldrons
Chest-Draconic Coat
Gloves-Tempered Scale Gauntlets
Leggings-Carapace Tassets
Boots-Tempered Scale Greaves
Well, it´s not ALL of the Icebrood-Saga that was horrible, but specific parts of it, even if you accounted for the fact of its release with often entirely missing voicelines (something that in the history of GW2 has NEVER happened before. but as the reason was covid, you cannot totally blame ANet for it). And the releases in so short episodes don´t really fit well with the repetetiveness in the end.
It starts actually pretty good. Grothmar Valley was a very nice prologue and a change of pace. The events are fun, and as you would expect from a prologue-episode, a lot of setup, and stuff being done a bit different. The concert and Metal Legion are peak entertainment, and Braham getting wasted is just hilarious.
The story around Bjora Marches is also pretty decent. Corrupted spirits of the wild, Almorra's fate, Jormag's minions, everything fits into place. Although, the betrayal of Bangar was absolutely no suprise (especially if you´ve seen trailer before, it was actualyl a good plot imo.
Drizzlewood-coast (at least south, but north too u guess) is a fun map. At least for a player like me that likes maps that can be repetetively farmed for profit without any cap, and being a WvW-main it made my heart bump seeing actual siege-battles in PvE (ofc not even close to WvW, yet still a fun experience imo)
After Ryland became Champion of Jormag, THAT's the part where IBS gets really messy, and THIS is exactly the part the majority of playerbase disliked the most. "Champions" (that should be the part with the dragon response missions iirc, ~12:07 in the video) is basically the whole reason of why people were upset about IBS. Hey, a DRM? okay. and another one. and another one. and another one.
And after all that repetetiveness, we get to Dragonstorm. The encounter/instance itself is GREAT, but the END and conclusion is.... mediocre at best. Punching the champions, hitting the dragons a few times (without even using our own abilities, but a Special action key), and they blast each other off. To this day, i have yet to understand: how did the manage to get the dragons meet up exactly there? how did they even manage to get them fighting each other? let alone, KILL each other? as i said, it´s a great encounter, but the END is just stupid.
You basically sum it up perfectly in the end. Unfortunately, ANet will NEVER remake that part of the game. They have NEVER touched already released content after SEason 1 and its re-release.
Yeah, starting GW2, I kept hearing IBS is bad. Just before hitting it is when I saw people saying it was only the ending that was bad.
Add in the pandemic times, as well as ANet restructuring and EoD being greenlit, you can’t really place blame at any 1 point. It was just a bad storm all at once for IBS.
All in all, my favorite parts are the fun of Drizzlewood, and the dark and mysterious themes of Bjora lol
Jormag and Primordus, from what Taimi explains right before Path of Fire, are polar opposites that clash whenever they have the chance, so having the two together wasn't hard, if you lure Primordus you will innevitably lure Jormag. Overall Icebrood Saga was very meh near the end because of pandemic constraints and trying to make the most with limited resources, remember Dragon Response Missions were meant to be recurring content at the time.
An ending confrontation like that between 2 Elder Dragons should've been much bigger in scope. It needed to be a spectacle, something that would bring people to want to do Dragonstorm not just for the rewards, but also to experience it again. It should've at least been on the same level as Dragon's Stand.
But I'm not going to point fingers at the devs either. I know it was made under less than ideal circumstances. Would love if they redid Champions but not expecting something like that at all. Probably a miracle Dragonstorm exists as it does now tbh
just to name why Icebrood saga was bad:
Changing Smodurs personality to just another blood legion charr while he was originally a tactician and much more open minded including the peace negotians with the humans.
If you play as a charr you find your chosen warband buddy in the camp and they will tell you that all the other ones you recruited are basically gone now because they lack leading them or they got convinced to serve Ryland.
The killing of Cynder is nothing Smodur would have done without completely changing his character. We talk about a charr that investigated his enemys closely before trial them. Again Smodurs reaction was just a bad joke.
I can't blame you for the lack of understanding the charr point of view on this in the end you play a stupid bookah of a human that is no where near familiar with the Charr but Icebrood saga overall was basically eliminating all big Charr personalitys and threw them under the bus.
Grothmar Valley was basically the best about icebrood saga afterwards they completely messed up the whole race.
Stuff like the repeating missions at the end of icebrood saga were just more salt in the wound of how bad it was.
Also you basically missed how the voice of Jormag was just a damage sponge that people were often unable to beat in time for different reasons like hiding in the wall while the timer runs out because he was smarter than the developers.
Did I mentioned they basically also fucked up Almorras personality to fit in this situation?
Not to mention how boring Brahams self finding trips are and we got multiple ones by now. The mastery system is also the worst of all episodes and often doesn't make sense.
So we got unfair fights, bad story telling including getting rid of all loveable and strong characters on the side of the Charr race, bad missions, bad story ending, bad masterys, bad map exploration, issues during the release progress because of the corona virus situation and lack of voiced cutscenes therefore, not to mention a meta boss so hard to beat that not even experienced meta players get him down easely during lack of time and the hiding in the wall issue and of course you also needed the mastery system to defeat him.......
This is basically in a nutshell why so much players hate Icebrood saga despite having such a great opening map.
^ Glad to see another Smodur fan.
I liked the new zones that came with icebrood saga.
I'm not a fan of the IBS story overall, but it was passable.
The ending was a disappointment they just quickly kiss each other to death.
Yeah Dragonstorm wasn’t a big and grand as I expected it to be. Was hoping for it to be better than it is, something more akin to Dragons Stand in HoT
ice brood saga personal wasn't bad but after drizzle wood the chapter just died off the story felt rushed and uninteresting crossed with there dragon missions and achievements that are just do the same thing over 100 times it was a 5/10 at most.
It was mostly Episode 5 that flopped. The rest with the starting mystery in Bjorn and the active war zone of Drizzlewood were great.
I actually like this one, but it's not my favorite.
It had some really good moments in it for sure. Just felt lackluster to me at the end. Regardless, it did add to the story
The final Jormag/Primordus battle was far too short - I expected something more epic. The repeated missions did get old.
I would love if they redid Episode 5 entirely. The fight between both dragons was definitely too short. It should’ve been more grand in scope
I thought the dragon response missions were the worst part of IBS. Dragon storm is fun. Everything else was enjoyable.
Yeah 1 or 2 Dragon Response Missions is fine, but after 10 of them basically in a row it wasn’t very interesting. They could’ve worked if there was far more variety or even more cinematic in nature
@@MegaMadVladMMO Agreed
Yep. For me, it was a solid "meh". Luckily that was the worst story gw2 has to offer imo.
Enjoy the next zone! Challenge-wise, it's somewhere between PoF solo roaming ease and HoT's 'HELP MEEEEE'.
I've heard good things about End of Dragons so I'm looking forward to seeing what it brings to the table
Covid19 happens
i DIDN'T CARE MUCH FOR ICEBROOD SAGA.