Starting with Season 2, players will be able to replay content with the Living World Journal.

Following last week's teaser for the Living World Season 2, ArenaNet is today announcing a new feature coming to Guild Wars 2 with launch of Season 2 on July 1st. The Living World Journal will be a way for players to go back and experience the story that comes out every two weeks. Along with this new system is a lot of changes to how Living World will work.

Living World will no longer be a standalone entity, but an extension of the Personal Story system that was launched with the game. Once players reach level 80, they will be able to switch between the Personal and Living Story through the Journal tab of the Hero's Panel. Players who are not level 80, will not have access to the Living World story in any capacity.

Through the Journal tab of the Hero's Panel, players will be able to go back and replay old content (including what appears to launching a Personal Story mission straight from the Hero's panel!). So if you were not level 80 when a Living World content came out, you will still be able to go back and play it once you are level 80. Unfortunately, as the Personal Story and Living World Season 1 were not designed with this new system in mind, neither of these will support the option to replay them. ArenaNet, however, hopes that it will be able to add Season 1 as a replayable addition to the journal in the future.

Not all content will immediately appear in the Journal for everyone to replay. Each patch's story must first be added to the Journal. How does it get added to the Journal? Just log in on any character (even if they are not yet level 80) during the two-week time frame of that patch. With just logging in you will have access to go back and replay that story whenever you desire.

So why do you need to be level 80 to experience the Living World going forward? The idea is that the Living World will be a continuation of the current story. This will mean that NPCs will act as if the players has already played through the Personal Story and Living World Season 1. This, however, does not mean that you need to have completed the Personal Story at all. You just need to be level 80 to access it.

Rewards are also getting a major change than what players saw in Season 1. Meta-achievements are gone, for good. Instead, players will be rewarded for reaching the end of each story patch. After doing this, a set of achievements open up that ArenaNet is saying will be much more challenging that what was seen in Season 1. These achievements will also give rewards, and with the Journal all of these rewards will be available permanently.

That was all about story content, but what about open-world content? Everything that changes in the open-world is going to be a permanent change going forward, and therefore all of the rewards will be available permanently as well. No rewards will be temporary ever again. (Not including holidays which will remain in their seasonal form.)

We mentioned that each 'episode' will be unlocked for free and permanent use of the player as long as they logged in at least once during the two-week period that the content was live. If you didn't log into Guild Wars 2 during that time, then the content is locked. How do unlock an episode after the two-week period has passed? 200 gems.

Matt "Mattsta" Adams

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