Guild Wars 2

wookiee.4631:

Taimi mentions the Dead End, but there’s nothing there. Do we really have to wait another 2 weeks to have a short wrap-up instance?

Wait, Taimi was around? Where? I was wondering what happened to her as she was missing from DE 2.0 in the last instance.
I also missed Heal-o-Tron. Does anyone know where to find him?
Hard to look for NPCs in a sea of zerglings during a epilepsy-inducing fight. xD

Amethyst Lure.5624:

There is a teleporter thingy that allows it, though… I am unsure if it has a prerequisite or if you just have to find it. (As I’d done some stuff first)

You need to have the spinal back piece. Masterwork will do.
Mind, it requires iron and steel ingots, prices of which went insane since the update. GJ, TP robber barons!

hedix.1986:

wookiee.4631:

Taimi mentions the Dead End, but there’s nothing there. Do we really have to wait another 2 weeks to have a short wrap-up instance?

Wait, Taimi was around? Where? I was wondering what happened to her as she was missing from DE 2.0 in the last instance.
I also missed Heal-o-Tron. Hard to look for NPCs in a sea of zerglings during a epilepsy-inducing fight. xD

Amethyst Lure.5624:

There is a teleporter thingy that allows it, though… I am unsure if it has a prerequisite or if you just have to find it. (As I’d done some stuff first)

You need to have the spinal back piece. Masterwork will do.
Mind, it requires iron and steel ingots, prices of which went insane since the update. GJ, TP robber barons!

Uh wait, you need to have a spinal backpiece? You need this for what please?

Carighan.6758:

Aberrant.6749:

Loot is too good (srsly 6 champ boxes per knight?), story was ok, gameplay is just another mindless zergfest, and bl skins are very plain models with some effects on them.

Interesting, because I thought the fight was anything but a mindless zerg fight. Well the three big knights are, but the Prime Hologram? Scarlet? What about those are mindless fights?

(edit)
Or rather, what would make them not mindless fights in your opinion? Most PvP encounters I have feel less complex than the Prime Hologram. Not that it is complex (though leading it can be :P ), but it’s still a far cry from a simple 2-3-4 shot enemy in WvW or so.

The holo main is just avoid the red stuffs and grab the circles. The split fights stand on the circles. The final part everyone just kills the holos and some happen to make it to the middle and that’s good enough.

If your PvP/WvW fights are that easy, you’re fighting against bad players (not uncommon in hotjoin/WvW though).

aspirine.6852:

I don’t get where the tormented weapons fit in. Of course them being behind the gemstore mechanic doesnt help either. For me it makes no sense to have them thrown in the game with this patch.

It fits in a-net’s wallet pretty well from how popular they seem.

Liked the design of the event and the mechanics of the fight. However the story did end in probably the most plain choice it could have ended with. It’s beating a dead horse but just glad it’s over and maybe now we can move on from Scarlet with only the fight mechanics moving forward with us.

Not going to lie tuned most of it out and was highly annoyed being forced to sit through the cinematic a few times just to get that one achievement.

Aberrant.6749:

The holo main is just avoid the red stuffs and grab the circles. The split fights stand on the circles. The final part everyone just kills the holos and some happen to make it to the middle and that’s good enough.

If your PvP/WvW fights are that easy, you’re fighting against bad players (not uncommon in hotjoin/WvW though).

True, but then I got to wonder, what is your point of comparison?
WoW’s raid fights were hardly more complex than “Don’t stand in this, stand in that” either. The one thing GW2 is still missing is a “Press defensive timer”, but I guess “Press your heal” sort-of replaces it here. So we got that.
Burn phases? Got that, the adds.

I think one problem might rather be that no MMO so far has tried to do genuinely complex PvE right now. Or rather, WoW tried a few times, players immediately screamed it off stage as “gimmick fight”, and it was dropped.

Plus there’s a difference between Complexity and Difficulty.
There’s no PvE more complex than “Don’t stand in the fire” + “Burst now” + “Press Don’t-Die Button”, in various combinations. But the difficulty varies, and this being open-world events it’s rather low ofc. Which is a good balance. It gives people a sense that they’re doing more than AA-ing (because that’s the thing, they’re not doing that), but at the same time you don’t have 100 dedicated players fail because of 50 newcomers.

And no, most PvP is far from that complex even. Largely it relies on initiative. Sure, the good fights are complex, intricate, and ideally see-saw back and forth. Still, 90%+ of my fights are decided by opportunity. I get the jump on a wounded enemy vs they get the jump on a wounded me. Or, the other type, Me + friends jump a sole enemy vs A group jumps me alone.
If your PvP for some reason isn’t 90% that then more power to you, although I find it difficult to believe that.

I didn’t have a Spinal backpiece and I got to Scarlet on my first try. So I doubt that really does anything. There is an achievement for equipping the backpiece, but you don’t need to do it in order to get to Scarlet (unless just having made one counts, I made it but haven’t equipped it yet)

OmaiGodman.2098:

I didn’t have a Spinal backpiece and I got to Scarlet on my first try. So I doubt that really does anything. There is an achievement for equipping the backpiece, but you don’t need to do it in order to get to Scarlet (unless just having made one counts, I made it but haven’t equipped it yet)

It’s merely a second way to get there, my GF tried that this morning. Either you do the combat, get past the Prime Hologram, then do Scarlet. Or you equip a backpack, go into the teleporter, then do Scarlet.

KOPPER.1458:

Secondly, Scarlet offers up a reason. Granted it might not have been a good one, but who knows. We’ll never know because Bro-ham tells her to shut-up. Well guess what Bro-ham? I wanted to know her reason.

Ditto. -_-

You know what might have been more interesting? Jory’s death. Kasmeer is already sheltered enough as it is, that she has a hard time dealing with her fathers death. This might have pushed her over the edge, made her a darker character. Set her on a path of vengeance. Something.

Yes. Normally I’m not an advocate for NPC deaths, but in this case I felt like one was needed to give one or the other of those characters some much needed depth. I preferred Marjory to die simply because prior to meeting her Kasmeer actually seemed like a character with potential.

The Scrib’s Review!
First, I would like to state, this was a considerable step up these last two updates from the dreary awfulness of Tower of Nightmares.

Kasmory. Jory Kas. Kasmurr and Murrjurry. whatever:
I… Look. I wanted to like Kas and Marjory. I really did. I kept trying to tell everyone that they were fun during Tower of Nightmares. I was really, really happy when they seemed to have some honest development during the Lion’s Arch instance during the Marionnete/Triple Threat event thing.

But the instance Delequa Investigation… They.. just hurt. They felt shallow, brainless and uninteresting. By the time we saw more dialogue from them, I wanted them to shut up. They were no longer good. Their building romance lept straight into squiggling squees and pandering pandas.

Instead we see a shallow, vapid romance that blew past in a whirlwind. We got insinuation that Marjory recruited Kas because…she was hot, and I’m left with this lingering feeling that it was just a couple of horny magically potent teens boinking in the background.

Yes, it felt like a video game romance. But when video game romances are currently. “I do things for you now I get sex.”, it just. Ugh. It could be more. It could be good. Instead it was forgettable. The only thing I can say is I’m happy we can have a vapid, empty relationship in a video game not involve the main character talking for a while, doing a favor, and then having someone boink ‘em. It wasn’t Bioware level of bad, but it felt like it was still giving harbor to the same trivialization of same-sex couplings that Bioware does. I just felt sad. I didn’t feel insulted.

Sound:
I liked the voice acting. I thought Kas’ hiccups were kinda cute. I know someone found them offensive. But I at least thought she was nice. Marjory, as usual… didn’t feel good. I don’t like her voice, she’s droning and unpleasant to listen to. Rox actually seemed like she wasn’t sleeping at the mic again and that was good. Braham was good I suppose.
Scarlet… well. I could have liked her. But all I can hear is [laughs] and “later taters” and every other beyond awful quote we’ve been subjected to for half a year. I’m sorry, I love Tara Strong. But I’ve been forced to endure so much Scarlet that I actually feel ill listening to Twilight Sparkle. Anime is hard to watch because of Scarlet. Everything she’s in. Which is everything its…gah. I’ll talk about Scarlet later.

The Finale
I am so glad Scarlet is dead.
Moreover, we got to deal with Scarlet in an indignant anti-climatic way. She didn’t deserve more. I wish finishers looked more like curb stomps because honestly I was kinda sad my friend’s charr (the one who finished her) seemed to need so much effort to finish her. This wasn’t the ending of Kefka in FF6. This wasn’t the ending of Hojo in FF7. This wasn’t the death of Luca Blight from Suikoden 2. It wasn’t the bittersweet finale of Morrowind. It wasn’t even the Icon of Sin/Final Boss thing of DOOM II.

I was just glad it was over. That was the satisfaction. I was happy enough. It was over, and honestly, thank you ANET. She’s gone. I can finally, finally look forward to more then every friend of mine saying, “[laughs] GG ANET [laughs] GG ANET [laughs]” posts every time I try to talk about an odd bug or something.

The Beyond
I’m glad everything wasn’t revealed. I hope you don’t just drop Molten Alliance/Aether/Toxic. The Molten Alliance especially has always felt difficult to believe and…well. Bad. Could we get some good explanation as to a why? I really just don’t get how a female shrub could convince Flame to do anything. Nor…how any of this dredge stuff works after the events of Sorrow’s Embrace. It felt…bad. Really, really bad.

Finally, as people have pointed out. Some major plot points just…never paid off. Aetherpath still feels pointless. Edge of the Mysts feels pointless. The Fractured! Update feels pointless. As many people have stated, putting Scarlet into Fractured! Felt like it honestly hurt the instance.

Honestly, what each of these updates really feels like is that they weren’t actually part of the Living World. They were Content updates with Scarlet slapped on.

this is what I came here to say!

WELL DONE ANET. I didn’t like this whole thing at first, but it really paid off and I am totally satisfied with how things are going so far.

Oh and thank you for not pulling some silly redemption nonsense out of your kittens.

Rox X Braham forevah btw, get on that! :P

WOW! I have never played an mmo like this and I love it. I got into the living story late but I caught myself up over the past few updates and got into it. That ending was superb, it really was. I loved everything about it. The cinematic at the end was amazing as well, we really need more of these. One thing I miss from other games are the great cinematic scenes that come in every so often. They really liven up the story/ending of a scene. I’m super stoked for what is to come. And by god the loot was great. Thank you Anet! Give us more cinematics though! And keep the good loot up.

Kalavier.1097:

Zaxares.5419:

The Molten Alliance will probably fracture, with the Dredge and Flame Legion returning to their perspective factions with their new technology and/or magic. They may be punished for their initial desertion, or perhaps their new techniques will see them welcomed back. (I’m inclined to think that the Flame Legion will be less welcoming, however. They would not look kindly on “heretics” being gifted with their flame magic, or the shamans who gifted it to them.)

The Toxic Alliance is the only group who may possibly follow Mordremoth, or the Nightmare Court faction, anyway. It seems very doubtful that the Krait would see an Elder Dragon as their “prophet”, but any Toxic Krait who returned would likely be seen as apostates and be executed.

It’s actually been stated by Anet on these forums that Molten Alliance charr would be killed on sight bt the other Flame legion if they returned without some sort of AWESOME victory and rep.

Likewise, the same thing was said for the toxic Krait, other Krait would just plain murder them on site.

Didn’t toxic krait appear side by side with other krait communities without incident when they were first introduced?

Also worth nothing, were any of those things communicated in the game?

Also loved the creep factor at the very end

CC Danicia.1394:

So excited with the Kas & Jory story. I’ve had that last scene of them as my desktop background for a while now, ever since I screencapped it on my first play through on Dev servers. swoon

And that battle is awesome!

Are we gonna see a male gay couple next time?
Or is that going to far?

That was a great ending, undoubtedly bringing a lot of suspense for the next season.
Looking forward to the epilogue, although I wonder what Taimi’s reaction to hearing of Scarlet’s death will be.

I would have loved more explanations about what will happen to all of Scarlet’s alliances and stuff that she built, what did she know about Caithe that was so incriminating? I still don’t know who E is or what he wants, if it is a he. Why did Teq got so strong in one LS? What will happen to the bionics and Destiny’s Edge members?
Will the bandits ever finish those bridges and paths to Maguuma Jungle[spoiler] now that Mordy has awakened[/spoiler]?
Will we ever going to explore all of the Tarnished Coast?
So many questions left unanswered, maybe we’ll see in season 2, or the next few patches.
In summation, I wanted an epilogue that cleared up a few things and pointed to another few, not just [spoiler] a dragon [/spoiler].

Still love the concept art cutscenes
Look really well done. Seeing what we saw ingame would of probably looked silly

KOPPER.1458:

You know what might have been more interesting? Jory’s death. Kasmeer is already sheltered enough as it is, that she has a hard time dealing with her fathers death. This might have pushed her over the edge, made her a darker character. Set her on a path of vengeance. Something.

Oh HELL no.
Please not. No more.

After so very very many years of Blizzard doing nothing but this (followed by the char getting corrupted somehow and then being the next raid boss), can we please enjoy that we have a more lighthearted story somewhere?

Why does it need to be “darker”?
I mean, what value does it add? What depth does it add to her character? Are you nothing without your grief, either? Would you need to lose say, your lover, to become a more enjoyable person IRL?

Angel.4581:

Are we gonna see a male gay couple next time?
Or is that going to far?

Hrm, interesting. But who? Logan and Rhytlock? :P

Carighan.6758:

KOPPER.1458:

You know what might have been more interesting? Jory’s death. Kasmeer is already sheltered enough as it is, that she has a hard time dealing with her fathers death. This might have pushed her over the edge, made her a darker character. Set her on a path of vengeance. Something.

Oh HELL no.
Please not. No more.

After so very very many years of Blizzard doing nothing but this (followed by the char getting corrupted somehow and then being the next raid boss), can we please enjoy that we have a more lighthearted story somewhere?

Why does it need to be “darker”?
I mean, what value does it add? What depth does it add to her character? Are you nothing without your grief, either? Would you need to lose say, your lover, to become a more enjoyable person IRL?

Angel.4581:

Are we gonna see a male gay couple next time?
Or is that going to far?

Hrm, interesting. But who? Logan and Rhytlock? :P

I’m probably the only person that wishes Marjory died, and Kasmeer just moves on with her life. <.< I agree though, SUDDEN DARKNESS is overdone and meh. I just wish their romance was anything more than dull and tumblr social justice warrior bait.

@WereScrib:
Weeeell… I dunno. On the one hand, I can see where it’s a dull romance. Especially the parts we see. On the other hand, if I exclude the last two patches where they made it very obvious, I really liked how it wasn’t ever explicitly stated whether they were a couple or not. Which made sense, why would I have my nose in their relationship?

I guess as far as relationships in computer games go, this is among the better ones. The issue is more what that tells you if this is one of the best ones. I mean look at Bioware, sex scenes are still being used as a reward for clicking the right chat lines there. Not exactly much competition when it comes to sensible romances.

Maybe playing The Walking Dead last night has softened my usual stoney heart but I rather enjoyed that and thought it was a touching cut scene. Pats on the back all round Anet.

Having Jory die would have been as clichée as her survival, but for different reasons.
And I don’t think ANet wants a plot point to fall into that clichée of an outed non-heterosexual character to be suddenly killed off like in so many shows.

Can someone explain why Kasmeer was hiccuping? Was she drunk? Lost one of her two braincells?

So who hurt Scarlet so badly? Poor girl was ready to be impaled by a quaggan finisher by the time my ‘hero’ got there…

So rangers are gonna be OP after the CDI! Rox is a ranger and had a skill that brought Jory back from the dead. Awesome! I can see some use of that elite skill in dungeons/fractals. Perhaps they’ll even not be auto-kicked anymore…

Carighan.6758:

@WereScrib:
Weeeell… I dunno. On the one hand, I can see where it’s a dull romance. Especially the parts we see. On the other hand, if I exclude the last two patches where they made it very obvious, I really liked how it wasn’t ever explicitly stated whether they were a couple or not. Which made sense, why would I have my nose in their relationship?

I guess as far as relationships in computer games go, this is among the better ones. The issue is more what that tells you if this is one of the best ones. I mean look at Bioware, sex scenes are still being used as a reward for clicking the right chat lines there. Not exactly much competition when it comes to sensible romances.

Honestly, I will agree. I was really happy that they had a slowly developing romance—but it seemed to have just skipped everything and lept straight into pet names and coohing within a single update (marionnette) it wasn’t…terrible. But it just got more and more annoying. On top of that, I thought their showing in random dialogue since has just been ugh.

It is unfortunate it is one of the better romances in games right now. But that’s just too depressing to think about. The only brave thing I can see is (shock!) The player (SHOCK!!!) Is actually not the center of every single person’s romantic life! Why, honestly, has game storytelling not had anything better then Half Life 2, and why was Half Life 2 not as good as… ~Wing Commander~ storywise. Let alone the honestly good romances in games. Let’s just say Final Fantasy 9 and leave it at that. That game, had ~good~ romance. Even Zidane/Garnet grew into something you could appreciate. But Beatrix/Steiner and Freya’s entire arc? Were honest-to-god tear jerking.

Why can’t half a year of Marjory/Kasmeer be half as appealing as ten minutes of anthropomorphic rats were so many years ago.

Also, honestly. Don’t we have enough lesbians in Guild Wars 2? I mean, the last guild of heroes had one. Why does this one? If we want samesex. Why does it have to be annoyingly cutesy ~girls~. Caithe was at least interesting and had a really creepy, immoral relationship with an even creepier and sicker person. It was the exact opposite of most femslash pairings. It was ~creepy~.

Seriously. Like, honestly. If Braham had (lets say his history was vague and we didn’t know about his galwuv) gone home after this update to kiss his beau. That… ~that~ would have been interesting.

Or Taimi. But then maybe because the Taimi-as-a-lesbian archetype hasn’t been done since El Hazard, I feel it’d be more fun. Also, that’d make her Scarlet Obsession distinctly uncomfortable.

I think that was quite an awesome event

I wonder what the opinions would be if it was a gay relationship not lesbian, double standards at its finest

KyreneZA.8617:

So who hurt Scarlet so badly? Poor girl was ready to be impaled by a quaggan finisher by the time my ‘hero’ got there…

Did you play the event chain? That Aether-Hologram exploded with her right on top of it.

Cardon.4092:

Morfedel.4165:

Cardon.4092:

Interracial friendship, a lesbian couple, a disabled girl that still gets stuff done…

This game is any hardcore right-wingers nightmare.

Whoa, hold on there. Unfair and uncool. Since when are right wingers against disabled people, or interracial relationships? That is so 1960s at least.

Whoa, easy there. There was a reason I used the prefix ‘hardcore’, you know, if you would go by party colors, it would be infrared. Or just the 1960s you mentioned.
It was nothing more but a light jab at the social stance ANet is obviously making which I’m all for.

But yeah, I’m sorry, it was in poor taste, after all we know you can’t discuss
A) Politics
B) Religion
C) The Great Pumpkin

What I’m not sorry for is my stance on the Torment weapon skins :P People who used these with Chaos Gloves, FoW armor and Bandana still need a smack on the head.

Hey, dont you DARE diss the Great Pumpkin, or yer gonna get FLAMED! Flamed like… like… something that’s… really, you know… hot and, uh, on fire!!!

Anyway, fair nuff

Carighan.6758:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I didn’t have a Spinal backpiece and I got to Scarlet on my first try. So I doubt that really does anything. There is an achievement for equipping the backpiece, but you don’t need to do it in order to get to Scarlet (unless just having made one counts, I made it but haven’t equipped it yet)

It’s merely a second way to get there, my GF tried that this morning. Either you do the combat, get past the Prime Hologram, then do Scarlet. Or you equip a backpack, go into the teleporter, then do Scarlet.

Do you miss any part of the story by skipping? Because when you use the teleporter that takes you right to the end, it DOES say you will be missing story elements.

And every time my group went in to fight the hologram, the kitten ed thing became invulnerable for long enough that we failed it, so I haven’t gotten past… and I didn’t want to skip any story.

Morfedel.4165:

Carighan.6758:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I didn’t have a Spinal backpiece and I got to Scarlet on my first try. So I doubt that really does anything. There is an achievement for equipping the backpiece, but you don’t need to do it in order to get to Scarlet (unless just having made one counts, I made it but haven’t equipped it yet)

It’s merely a second way to get there, my GF tried that this morning. Either you do the combat, get past the Prime Hologram, then do Scarlet. Or you equip a backpack, go into the teleporter, then do Scarlet.

Do you miss any part of the story by skipping? Because when you use the teleporter that takes you right to the end, it DOES say you will be missing story elements.

And every time my group went in to fight the hologram, the kitten ed thing became invulnerable for long enough that we failed it, so I haven’t gotten past… and I didn’t want to skip any story.

Long story short, Scarlet controls the thing herself to stop the group, then it explodes and wounds her badly, before she hobbles into the instance.

WereScrib.7154:

Or Taimi. But then maybe because the Taimi-as-a-lesbian archetype hasn’t been done since El Hazard, I feel it’d be more fun. Also, that’d make her Scarlet Obsession distinctly uncomfortable.

Ahahahaha.
El Hazard! kitten ! The old OVA was so amazing, where the ending was all sad until the very last moment. The whole idea was rather terrible, with her waiting ages for the present day.

But you’re right, it’s all… meh. But more on a “gaming”-level. The gaming industry really ought to sit down and do something about it. I won’t judge the writers just on Jory and Kas (as I said, I do actually consider them to be pretty cool, I just would have cut out the obvious parts of their relationship around Marionette and the patch after), and I thought Caithe was really well done. Also btw, not truly a lesbian I suppose, but that’s offtopic I guess.

Ah well. Overall I’m still pretty happy about the way their relationship is being handled.
And I’d rather have the focus on that than on Scarlet, because while she did improve massively the recent patches, by then it was too late to truly make a truly important character out of her (in our minds, at least).
Better to cut – or finish :P – your losses and get it over with.

WereScrib.7154:

Also, honestly. Don’t we have enough lesbians in Guild Wars 2? I mean, the last guild of heroes had one. Why does this one? If we want samesex. Why does it have to be annoyingly cutesy ~girls~. Caithe was at least interesting and had a really creepy, immoral relationship with an even creepier and sicker person. It was the exact opposite of most femslash pairings. It was ~creepy~.

Seriously. Like, honestly. If Braham had (lets say his history was vague and we didn’t know about his galwuv) gone home after this update to kiss his beau. That… ~that~ would have been interesting.

Or Taimi. But then maybe because the Taimi-as-a-lesbian archetype hasn’t been done since El Hazard, I feel it’d be more fun. Also, that’d make her Scarlet Obsession distinctly uncomfortable.

First of all, I agree. I just made a separate post about this, although with some concern that I’ll get attacked, but… what the heck is the deal with now two prominent romances back to back both being, essentially, lesbian? One I was ok with, but now two?

I did find the faolin/caithe thing interesting for precisely what you say, but this second one… I find myself asking the question, “are they trying to appeal to the geek fanboy crowd that also likes watching girl-on-girl action, or is this a social agenda thing?”

As for Taimi, since Taimi is a child, I’d have been very uncomfortable with that.

Traveller.7496:

To be honest, I think personally my biggest problem is Braham – acting as ANet proxy – saying “we don’t want to know more”, as in, “we don’t have all the answers to give you so go away please”. I was like, the hell I don’t! I’ve been waiting for Scarlet to spill the beans for ages, but then Leroy Marjory and Ham-Boy here just go RAAAAARGH and I’m standing there fiddling with my gear. Great.

Really? I’d say Braham was acting as the fanbase proxy. This forum especially was rife with complaining about people claiming they don’t care about Scarlet or what she thinks she’s doing or why she’s doing it and that she should just die and go away now please.

Well, we got what we claimed we wanted.

Also, honestly. Don’t we have enough lesbians in Guild Wars 2? I mean, the last guild of heroes had one. Why does this one? If we want samesex. Why does it have to be annoyingly cutesy ~girls~. Caithe was at least interesting and had a really creepy, immoral relationship with an even creepier and sicker person. It was the exact opposite of most femslash pairings. It was ~creepy~.

Because that’s exactly what we need more of. The Depraved Homosexual Trope or any other signifiers that it’s somehow wrong. /sarcasm

chemiclord.3978:

Traveller.7496:

To be honest, I think personally my biggest problem is Braham – acting as ANet proxy – saying “we don’t want to know more”, as in, “we don’t have all the answers to give you so go away please”. I was like, the hell I don’t! I’ve been waiting for Scarlet to spill the beans for ages, but then Leroy Marjory and Ham-Boy here just go RAAAAARGH and I’m standing there fiddling with my gear. Great.

Really? I’d say Braham was acting as the fanbase proxy. This forum especially was rife with complaining about people claiming they don’t care about Scarlet or what she thinks she’s doing or why she’s doing it and that she should just die and go away now please.

Well, we got what we claimed we wanted.

Speak for yourself please, I would have liked to know her reasons. I hope Anet will somehow give us that information (either another diary, or a hologram that explains her actions that she recorded during a moment of sanity, or anything).

During the past few LS updates I got quite invested in Scarlet’s story. Lots of questions have been asked, some have been answered but a lot remain. I would love to know why she did it and what went through her mind while she did it.

Carighan.6758:

Angel.4581:

Are we gonna see a male gay couple next time?
Or is that going to far?

Hrm, interesting. But who? Logan and Rhytlock? :P

Canach & Trahearne. XD

On the topic of Jory/Kas
I really can’t give a Shaman’s flaming spit about lesbian romances, but I’m glad Jory made it out okay. I say this because Kasmeer has dealt with so much pain in her life in the past that she should get a silver lining once and a while.

Now for Ms. Delaqua I ask that ANet allow us to help her solve the mystery from her introductory story. I want to delve into that a bit and explore the back story now that Scarlet is dealt with.

Rox and Braham
He wanted her to join her warband and she made the decision on her own. It showed that even though Norns are very different in social constructs compared to Charr that at least he listened to her needs. In fact the dialogue they have in the middle of the Lion’s Arch fight shows, to me at least, he is a good friend to her in ways she won’t know just yet.

Ottilia can go kiss a Dolyak for dumping him, poor guy.

The big fight
Holy Six that was a thick soup of confusion and zerging.
Don’t get me wrong! It was fun and I saw plenty of folks looking out for each other.
The problem was that could have been pruned to a 8-10 man dungeon and had a more intimate impact for the player’s experience.

Scarlet
I would comment that I finally feel satisfaction knowing she’s dead, but I’m too busy lining up the Quaggans for the victory parade we’ll have in Divinity’s Reach.
Though I wanted to slap Bro-ham for his ‘Shut Up, Hannibal!’ trope moment, because I really did want to hear at least some inkling as to why this made sense in her head.

Ah well there’s always raiding former bases to get information like that.
She’s dead thank goodness now I can move onto stronger villains and hopefully that Dragon which woke up.
I will say I loved her voice work in this release over her happy giggly Harley moments.

What lies beyond
Here is where all my excitement and enthusiasm is going.
Now we can see the story really get moving!
It won’t have to be a “What’s Scarlet up to this week?” story.
We can have so much going on while we work towards this new Dragon.
Will the alliances stay together? Will they get hunted down by their parent organizations? Will we have new creatures from the tech later in older villain groups?
How will Lion’s Arch rebuild? Will they have an air force that rivals their navy?!

The potential here is kitten near limitless. Think of SKY TRENCHES! A flying Claw Island of sorts! This is where the game really has a chance to get going in a stronger direction.

Fears for the future
I just hope next Season we don’t have just one villain.
I’m tired of that, I understand the focus will probably be the jungle now. That doesn’t excuse the Brand for being quiet or the Shiverpeaks laying low. For this world (and story) to be truly living we should have things popping up in multiple places.

OK, first thing, I am not a hater—been playing since beta, and will likely continue playing. I am getting a bit upset that things for us non elite players, and non hour long boss whuppers that like a bit of strategy and thought in our game have only gotten two brief added episodes since this game came out—the Mad King (except his weird jumping puzzle), and Scarlet. And now Scarlet’s dead? No more open map battles, that were one of the best features ever? Even the fall of LA was pretty interesting and fun, but 2 weeks was not nearly enough time to explore the many possibilities there. Meanwhile, as you can see from this forum, the whuppers got what they wanted, and are already disappointed. Oh and before I get a pile of “why don’t I try the fractals” replies, I have. Jumping puzzles are like keychain puzzles; once you solve them, they have limited repeat enjoyment. We need more dynamic puzzles (you know the kind—those where the solution changes), and much more strategy. Guild Wars 1 was much more about strategy than anything else. Guild Wars 2 is much more about grind than anything else (despite your disclaimers), and therefore much more like GW1’s reviled nemesis, WoW. I would love to see this lovely game move more towards a compromise between strategy and grind.

After so very very many years of Blizzard doing nothing but this (followed by the char getting corrupted somehow and then being the next raid boss), can we please enjoy that we have a more lighthearted story somewhere?

Why does it need to be “darker”?
I mean, what value does it add? What depth does it add to her character? Are you nothing without your grief, either? Would you need to lose say, your lover, to become a more enjoyable person IRL?

I never followed the blizzard story, so have no idea on how they do things. To each their own opinion but there are plenty of “light hearted” stories out there. Their relationship doesn’t make them any more interesting. And it defines them more as characters then their actual back story.

I think this next part comes down to personal opinion. The darker story for one character seems more interesting. Kas is a damaged sheltered character. Jory picks her off the streets cause she’s hot, and takes care of her. Kas loves her for it because she is more or less lost in the world without a protector.

If she lives, they continue to live their happy “the hills are alive with the sound of music” life. If they are separated Kas is now alone in the world and is forced to continue to grow and mature. I feel like the comfort and safely Jory offers her stops a lot of the growth for the character.

Me having a personal loss like “my lover” does actually make me more interesting to the outside world. Personally that doesn’t make my life more interesting, it makes my life Hell. Who wants to endure such a loss? Or a series of losses? However if Character X stays as they are now, 9-5 job, Wife, Kids, Dog, fenced in yard, etc, etc… They continue to live this life for 80 years together how interesting is that?

Perhaps her death wasn’t the right way to go. Some pointed out how cliché that would have been as the kiss was. I kind of agree with that. But the possibilities seem a little more interesting. For a while now it was all about a budding relationship. Well now it’s bloomed. Now what? I am just waiting for them to get a talking dog and call it a day.

Traveller.7496:

C) Selling Tormented weapons on the store just makes me angry that there’s no way to get them besides random. It’s a slap on the face for any GW1 veterans who had them and loved them.

takes a drink

DarksunG.9537:

Why do people have to blindly love this content? Why is it wrong for some people to recognize how bad the story is? Why can’t they point out why it’s bad in the hopes that it doesn’t happen again? I loved the story in GW1. GW2 (especially LS) has been a train wreck.

And why is it that people that didn’t like the story MUST be smarter than everyone else?

GW1 was a clichestorm. But tropes aren’t bad, yo. Lighten up.

MidnightX.6294:

And i still want to know what nasty stuff Caithe did !

I’ve got a feeling a certain Sylvari didn’t get to go home after it was discovered he wasn’t from around here…

Cardon.4092:

Traveller.7496:

C) Selling Tormented weapons on the store just makes me angry that there’s no way to get them besides random. It’s a slap on the face for any GW1 veterans who had them and loved them.

In my book, every single player who used those ugly things in Guild Wars 1 deserved a decent slap across the face for some time. Doubly so in combination with FoW, Bandana and Chaos gloves.

takes another drink

Morfedel.4165:

I find myself asking the question, “are they trying to appeal to the geek fanboy crowd that also likes watching girl-on-girl action, or is this a social agenda thing?”

Because those are the only two possible motivations, right? <rolls eyes>

I can hardly believe you didn’t use 100% sarcasm, OP. This story has nothing that makes a good story. no plottwists, no build up. everything is just there whenever we need it, and Scarlet does exactly what we think she’s gonna do. It’s a bad story, and if you don’t think so, read a book.

Dragonic Elemental.2674:

I can hardly believe you didn’t use 100% sarcasm, OP. This story has nothing that makes a good story. no plottwists, no build up. everything is just there whenever we need it, and Scarlet does exactly what we think she’s gonna do. It’s a bad story, and if you don’t think so, read a book.

Eh. I’ll agree that this isn’t a good story, but a plot twist does not a story make. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but everything doesn’t need a twist. Otherwise why?

The problem is this didn’t have any structure. We had…a bunch of stuff happen, then it was forgotten about or had little impact. Nor did the characters really have any arcs. The only actual “arc”, was… Job-O-Tron.

Who kinda follows a hero’s arc. He’s an everygolem—who is forced from comfort, is pushed aside. Reaches his lowest point, is tempted by darkness, overcomes it and finds redemption, returns triumphant and saves the day.

I’m probably the minority on this,

But the Marjory and Kasmeer scene was over the top to me. Not because they are homosexual versus heterosexual, but because it appeared to become a center spotlight piece to the finale, verus the main conclusion, which was the awakening of the Dragon, Mordremoth.

If I can recall correctly, I don’t remember any strong relationships in the lore of Tyira 250 years prior (GW1 era). I personally thought the Story lines were all fantastic too.

In GW2 there are a few notable relationships that receive attention, but this one has seem to gain the most noriety. Is it due to them being homosexual? I don’t particularly agree, since we have already seen this present with Caithe and Faolin.

The difference between the two is the obscurity between the two relationships. This “Jory” & Kasmeer relationship seems to have more “flirtation” and direct dialog regarding their relationship versus Caithe and Faolin. That’s where it comes off as forced. When I hear Caithe and Faolin dialog regarding each other, it appears much more believeable, and seems to flow. It never bothered me, and had a real connection between a true “love” relationship and how the two seemingly find themselves in a struggle between faction and love.

It’s hard to explain, and maybe I’m just “oldchool” or what some might call a “nonbeliever”.

It could be a seriousness factor on how the relationship was directed to the player, or a maturity level (which has nothing to do with age).

If I could recommend something for future stories though, it would be the inclusion to other story parts. ArenaNet’s stance on trying to provide a “series” of content that flows like a television series; I believe to missing other core factors. Such as a serious “edge” that I strive for. The finale which was supposed to spotlight a real serious threat to the races of Tyria did not come off as such, with many having no clue what it was or where it was located. Most of us who follow the forums or other non official sites new where or what the creature was, but for the average player, he/she was quite clueless on what the cutcene was demonstrating, besides the “Kiss” that has garnished so much attention.

The overall story really lacked suspense and “edge” for me, and it’s something I hope to see improved. And regardless of what some might say, when I played the GW1 campaigns, I felt the suspense and “edge”, with Vizier Khilbron being the Lich (Mindblown), The fight to stop the plague and Shiro (suspense, well executed) The release of Palawa Joko and the fight to stop Nightfall (all great parts of Nightfall). And the character building connection to help Asurans, Norn, and even befriend charr (all great relationship and character building) in Eye of the North. Who would have thought the Destroyers were all part of a bigger threat!? I certainly didn’t at the time.

Thank you for reading.

You’re overreacting. It was predicatable, Scarlet being the epic ‘can do all’ throughout the story, and of course there were mechanics and concepts that shouldn’t have been added in the first place (forced crafting of backpieces).

All in all, this is the letdown I feared it would be, which is a letdown in itself. Anet, and especially it’s writing staff, have gone downhill since GW1.

Darkobra.6439:

THIS was Game of Thrones quality?! Have they not WATCHED IT?!

Honestly for some reason I was expecting one of the characters to be killed off but either way I was glad with the happy ending (well it won’t be happy for them when they face another dragon problem).

Anyway I am dying to know about Rox warband entry. I mean will she tell the truth that it wasn’t her that slay Scarlet but it was the hero or lie about it as she clearly didn’t cut off Tequatl tail (we were all there doing that tail dodge achievement and Rox wasn’t there unless she swim and cut off the tail after we beat Teq)?

Either way I predicting Rox may act “screw you” well defiance toward Rylok requirement to joined his warband but Rylok had already accepted her anyway (I mean there must be many Charr that wanted to join the Stone warband).