Guild Wars 2

What good is a wall going to do?

see: airships

Everyone’s so hung up on the need for expansions.

The content is released in the living story.

There’s a huge content update coming out in March.

Why does this need the label of ‘expansion’ to be relevant?

The Tengu may or may not appear. The only ones who can say for certain are ANet devs, and not, say, some random person in the forum. They should certainly be addressed, since there’s no doubt that this will affect them in some way. If only to say that they flee, or hole themselves up behind their wall and Scarlet leaves them alone for whatever reason (cuz she’s not looking to destroy Lion’s Arch and everything around it, I don’t think. She’s looking for something in particular. The Tengu might not be part of her plans).

Whether or not they will be a playable race sooner or later remains to be seen. Looking at the Tengu NPCs, they are a high-texture, high-detailed group, but all their faces are the same. Generally, before a new races is released on a game, you’ll see the devs release improved texturing for the NPCs. Just because this hasn’t happened doesn’t rule out that it WON’T – ’cuz new face textures could come with the release – but it makes it a little more unlikely.

There’s a lot that goes on with releasing a new race. It’s one of the higher-desired aspects, so it will likely have some sort of cost, much like the Cathar on SWTOR had. I think if you paid $10, you unlocked the race to create. Now, I’m not using SWTOR as a paragon model of an MMO (because it almost completely cloned itself from WoW) but it IS POSSIBLE to release a race without a box shelf expansion.

But in all seriousness, the only thing we haven’t gotten in GW2’s first year is a new race. We already have an expansion’s worth of story. The rest of the goodies will come out in March. And I imagine the new race won’t be too far behind.

ChaosKirin.1328:

There’s a huge content update coming out in March.

Just to clarify something…

As I recall, they’ve said that they will give us more details about the upcoming “big” update in March. They have NOT said that the update itself will be in March.

It may still be several months away.

If it comes time to fight the dragons and the tengu just hole and hide, then they are the new mursaat – except their walls won’t hide them like the mursaat’s magic did.

If they see dragon activity, they have to come out and join the fight.

Who knows if they will be playable, but they have to get involved.

ChaosKirin.1328:

But in all seriousness, the only thing we haven’t gotten in GW2’s first year is a new race. We already have an expansion’s worth of story. The rest of the goodies will come out in March. And I imagine the new race won’t be too far behind.

New zones? A whopping two; neither of which were as complete as the zones in the game in release. Hardly the kind of stuff that’s going to delight the explorers among us, huh?

New skills? A whopping one per class and one universal; all of which are healing skills. Hardly the kind of stuff that shakes up the meta, huh?

New playable races? None. But I guess something that’s going to add replay value to the game in the way a new race would isn’t something players want, huh?

New loot? Very little in-game. Of course there’s been tons of new weapons and armor added to the cash shop. Nothing says “end game” like buying the desirable stuff from the cash shop though, huh?

Class balance? Very little; and that we’ve been given has been slow to come. I guess there’s too high a priority on the Living Story and cash shop items to spare resources for something as insignificant as class balance though, huh?

New Content? Well I guess that depends on whether or not we’re talking about permanent or temporary content. There’s been very little of the former and tons of the latter. Nothing says “and expansion’s worth of content” like removing said content as quickly as it’s added to the game, huh?

If the Tengu aren’t remotely mentioned in this update (considering that the DoW is RIGHT next to Lion’s Arch and no doubt survivors will be scurrying off to the nearest city or fortress as their safety zone,) then I’ll start to lose any remaining hope for this game’s future.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I doubt that 200 plus years of isolationism has somehow moderated the views of the majority of Tengu. The vast bulk of them hated humanity and there is nothing remotely hinted that would have changed that.

It’s not really clear that was true except for the Sensali tribe (which may or may not still exist). We never learned the motivations of the Tyrian tribes except that the Caromi were possibly bandits – there was a quest that involved them stealing stuff – and never saw the Elonian tribes. Quetzal would kill trespassers of any race (even skelk, as far as I recall) on sight, but it wasn’t clear why.

Currently the wall guards are apparently mostly Caromi. So, something has clearly changed, even if it’s just that they now have territory to defend.

Sirius.4510:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I doubt that 200 plus years of isolationism has somehow moderated the views of the majority of Tengu. The vast bulk of them hated humanity and there is nothing remotely hinted that would have changed that.

It’s not really clear that was true except for the Sensali tribe (which may or may not still exist). We never learned the motivations of the Tyrian tribes except that the Caromi were possibly bandits – there was a quest that involved them stealing stuff – and never saw the Elonian tribes. Quetzal would kill trespassers of any race (even skelk, as far as I recall) on sight, but it wasn’t clear why.

Currently the wall guards are apparently mostly Caromi. So, something has clearly changed, even if it’s just that they now have territory to defend.

Angchu were the only Tengu that did not have KOS reaction to my Human chars. Regardless of motivation Sensali, Avicara, Coromi, Quetzal, were very aggressive and very hostile, no exceptions. The vast majority of Tengu in GW attacked on sight, and in spite of the apparent ability to communicate I can only think of one hostile Tengu that ever did. So I will stand by my opinion that they were in the main a xenophobic, hostile race, judging from the actions of the huge majority of Tengu in GW. And again, I fail to see how isolation would have tempered this.

roachsrealm.9284:

What good is a wall going to do?

see: airships

Magical force-field of featheryness of course.

True, but the vast majority of everything in GW1 attacked on sight – all the minor races I can think of that came back. It was hard to read much into this or what would happen over the time until GW2 – in some cases (centaurs come to mind) they remain mostly hostile, while in others (hylek) it depends on the tribe. Then of course there are the charr – the situation isn’t the same, obviously, but being in a permanent state of war with humanity probably isn’t more conducive to improving relations than isolationism is.

Basically, it all comes down to what ArenaNet wants to do. Tengu could still be predominantly KOS toward other races, or they could not – but it would require some story gymnastics to explain why they’re bothering to trade with the outside world if they hate it so much.

Side note – if there were tengu in Vabbi we never ran into them (didn’t even know there were any tribes in Elona until GW2), although that is completely beside the point.

There weren’t any Elonian Tengu. It’s only stated that after Winds of Change and Ministry of Purity + New Emperor Usoku in Cantha, all non-humans were kicked off from Cantha, including Tengu. Some of them joined Caromi and sailed to Kryta, some went to Elona.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Yuki_Honestcrest

Well they sure are taking their time to determine “with whom they will fight and with whom they will ally”. Since he’s been telling us this since launch, I would be pretty disappointed if they didn’t do start to show their faces more in the somewhat near future.

The races of Tyria have already come together to take care of one dragon, but I guess that isn’t enough to prove ourselves worthy yet.

It’s pretty much ambiguous what the criteria for deciding who to ally with is – probably intentionally – I don’t know if ArenaNet really knew how long it would take them to play that card, so they decided to avoid stating anything in a way that would force their hand.

I’m probably mixing metaphors horribly there. Excuse me.

Rym.1469:

Some of them joined Caromi and sailed to Kryta, some went to Elona.

I don’t think we know that, but it’s a very reasonable hypothesis. We do know that the Dominion of Winds was built well after the Canthan tribes would have had to leave Cantha.

There’s one thing that bothers me quite a bit.
Players who have played first game tend to connect Tengu with Cantha because of Angchu tribe and their role.
Even in-game GW2 has major inspiration in Canthan/Eastern cultures when it comes to Tengu, both in architecture and music. But we have to remember, not every tribe was Canthan and first founders of DoW were Caromi as far as I remember. And they lived on Kryta.
I wonder, when we finally see the Tengu, will they be kind of the same? Keeping Cantha-like culture with some kinds of Bushido archetypes, samurai and simiar beliefs (Celestials as typical spirits, life after death) would assume that Canthan tribes managed to dominate other tribes when it comes to culture. It seems very likely..

We haven’t seen any better lore according to Krytan/Shiverpeak Tengu, we may see good mixture of cultures etc when it comes to GW2 Tengu.

I think that even if NCsoft and theirs Asian testers don’t like Cantha or Tengu, we will see them. They’re already too deep in game and would generate too much $$ to be forgotten.

The Tengu will swoop in and rescue Ellen Kiel right after she casts Scarlet’s Ring into the Mystic Forge.