Talk:Lion's Arch (original)

From Guild Wars 2 Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Documenting the original Lion's Arch[edit]

The original Lion's Arch is still present ingame, through some Personal Story instances, and I would like to document it properly. My ideal approach would be this:

  • New historical "original" articles for the zone, areas, landmarks, and points of interests.
  • The original version would include all the information before Lion's Arch was rebuilt on June 23, 2015. Everything after that point would be part of the modern version.
  • The articles would prioritize description of the original state (2012). Information on the later versions (battle, aftermath, rebuilding) would be included below the original.

This would be the full list of articles. Note that dialogue subpages would be recycled in case they exist.

Historic NPC locations would be updated to link to the original versions instead of the modern ones. NPCs who appeared in both the original and the modern version would be updated as well. Most of the information and screenshots can be salvaged from the history, it's not hard work but it would require quite a bit of cleaning, specially because of the old templates. It's quite the endeavor so it would be nice to have external feedback.--Lon-ami (talk) 22:26, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I just don't think Lion's Arch is interesting enough to warrant special treatment beyond any of the other locations which have evolved over time, and this is going to set an annoying precedent. --5.65.74.38 23:39, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
There are no precedents that come any close to the transformation Lion's Arch underwent after it was rebuilt, so that shouldn't be a problem. I started documenting other transformed locations as well, but there just isn't enough content for those pages to warrant their own existence.
The locations of Lion's Arch have different NPCs, different dialogues, and some are no longer on their original position in the map. It can still be visited during some story instances, so it's not completely gone. There isn't anything like it in the whole game.
Also, of the 29 new articles we need, 11 can be adapted directly from historic dialogue pages. Of those 27, only 3 are mostly "intact" compared to their modern version, and of those 5, only 1 has no NPC changes.
The wiki is full of orphaned historic pages, and this project would give them a common point of reference.--Lon-ami (talk) 12:29, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
Too much clicking, not worth it. 174.225.137.232 16:06, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is the best way of doing historical documentation. Our biggest stated issue is that people have to click too much to get to information; that would completely and definitely be the case here. I think it would be best to add as trivia or notes section of the existing pages where people are much more likely to see it and not creating these extra pages. If there's really that much content, adding it as a subpage for an existing article(of which I believe already exist in some cases) would be a much better idea and consistent with how things are done already. - Doodleplex 00:11, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think I explained myself too well. Imagine you want to reach Deverol Island:
  • From Deverol Gardens (modern counterpart) → 1 click.
  • From [[Lion's Arch (original)]] → 1 click.
  • From any area, landmark, or point of interest in the original Lion's Arch → 1 click.
  • From modern Lion's Arch → 2 clicks.
  • From any area, landmark, or point of interest in the modern Lion's Arch → 2 clicks.
The last two can be taken from 2 clicks down to 1 if we combine Template:Lion's Arch nav and Template:Lion's Arch (original) nav into a single template (divided in two rows).
Looks pretty good to me.--Lon-ami (talk) 00:30, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
Here's an example: [[Farshore Ward (original)]]. The idea is to follow that model for the remaining articles. Screenshots of the different versions would be included at the bottom, and be labeled like this:
Opinions?--Lon-ami (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
I'd rather do something like this and have all of the historical stuff be on a sub page of the area. Put all of the historical and festival stuff in one place so it's not spread out over too many pages. Could split festivals and historical into two pages if there's too much, but overally, this would be nice, neat, tidy and honestly, much more reader friendly. - Doodleplex 01:04, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Well, that's the idea actually, except no subpage. Having them be their own article makes navigation easier, and also let us link to them directly from the instances using those locations. Remember that we're not just documenting Lion's Arch as it was before 2015-06-23, we're documenting the independent map instance used for the Personal Story.
Anyway, there's a few locations that are almost identical in both versions, so I'm going to remove those references and link directly to the modern counterparts. I also merged {{Lion's Arch nav}} with Lion's Arch (original) nav, which should make navigation even easier.--Lon-ami (talk) 13:02, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Also, feels kinda pointless to have duplicate poi/landmark pages when there's so little information, historical stuff can be included in the same article, no need for new pages. The final result is 11 new pages, all for areas, 10 of them based on previous dialogue pages.
Next step, cleaning those pages, and checking the ones which didn't get historical duplicates to restore the historical information, specially NPCs and dialogue.--Lon-ami (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
Hold up, I think you looked at my sandbox page too quickly and didn’t read it fully: It’s to combine -all- the historical content and festival of Lion’s Arch areas under one sub page. One. Not 4 or 5. It’s more reader friendly to have all the information in one place, as a Sub page, of which a lot of areas have already. I’ve asked other people to comment here, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting with the edits until then please? - Doodleplex 14:04, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm done for now, so no problem there. Also, I never planned to have multiple duplicates per release, where did you get that idea from? I mean, quoting myself: "The original version would include all the information before Lion's Arch was rebuilt on June 23, 2015. Everything after that point would be part of the modern version." I already created all the pages I needed (11 original areas), I don't need any new pages.--Lon-ami (talk) 14:15, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't like all of these "original pages" at all. The sub page seems to make more sense. Can the wiki stop making them please? Thanks. - Shafto
I like Doodle´s proposal, since it would lower the pages needed (LA, festivals in DR) but it still would retain all the historical info. I also see the point of the user above me, if the pages for area, PoI, share a name, I think just adding Historical header on the current one should not be a problem instead of creating xx other pages. ~Sime 18:21, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
I like what you did at [[Lion's Arch (Halloween)]], since you cover the whole zone in just one page, but I'm not sure that would work that well with [[Lion's Arch (original)]], since the amount of dialogue and NPCs is far larger. Also, giving original areas their own pages is useful in order to connect the Personal Story instances with the original version.
Reminder that the primary goal of this project is documenting the zone used in [[Lion's Arch (original)#Instances|those Personal Story instances]]. It just happens to be convenient to cover the historical parts as well, since the layout of the whole zone (area boundaries and landmark locations) changed drastically once the city was rebuilt.
I keep reading conflicting comments, like "creating too many pages" or "duplicating points of interests". I seriously have zero idea where you're getting that from, the idea has always been to duplicate only when strictly necessary. The modern and the original version share 13 areas and 15 points of interests (same names), after analyzing them one by one, I duplicated 11/13 areas and 0/15 original points of interest; and there's no plans to create any more pages.
Duplicates (labelled "original") represent the zone in the original 2012 state (the instance-only zone the Personal Story uses), and include all the information between release and the 2015 rebuilt version. That means all the information regarding The Lost Shores, Escape from Lion's Arch, Battle for Lion's Arch, Battle for Lion's Arch: Aftermath, and any other pre-2015 Living World updates will go into the original zone. If anyone believes I'm going to make a different duplicate for each release, sorry to disappoint, but that was never the plan.
Pages that don't deserve duplication will just include everything in the normal page. For example: Tokk's Mill and Canal Ward. No point at having a dialogue subpage with just a few lines, when those can be included in the main article.
As for the screenshots, the plan is to restore them when they exist, and include them in a gallery at the bottom of each page.--Lon-ami (talk) 16:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Talk:Lion%27s_Arch_(original)&oldid=2339500"