Guild Wars 2

Option 1) Save the City Well
Option 2) Save Quinn

Uhm, okay? WTF is the Seraph and Thackery doing? Why can’t he save the city well while I save Quinn?

His apathy is the death of innocents, not my vendetta to save Quinn.

Yeah I wondered about that too. One extra person isn’t going to make much of a difference in fighting off the bandits at the well, so why can’t you tell Thackery and the Seraph to do it while you go and save your friend?

I could understand it if you needed the Seraph to come with you to save it but as far as I understand it (I chose the other option) you go in alone and Thackery just meets up with you later to see how you got on.

The Seraph are very busy people and don’t have time to go running around everywhere just because there’s a terrible threat. They were probably tired too, and hot. All that armor must be hot in the afternoon sun. A good nap in the shade would fix that up…

From memory of when I did that, there ARE Seraph defending the well, but without your assistance they get overwhelmed. One person can and in this case does when they’re a hero and the typical Seraph soldier isn’t, and it’s part of the setting that the Seraph simply don’t have the resources they need to do everything they’re called on to do until level 50 or so (when you’ve outlevelled the dungeons and zones where you typically find the Seraph). At the level where you’re doing the well storyline, though, there are centaurs and bandits spread through most of Queensdale (in other words, the farmlands that the city relies on to survive) – the Seraph is stretched pretty close to breaking point, and a poisoned well may well be a fair tradeoff compared to having the farmlands Divinity’s Reach relies on destroyed entirely.

This part of the story is pretty bad, but… heh, just brace yourself for what’s coming next.

It’s the fantasy syndrome. Your character is worth a squad of Seraph, you’re just that good, and thus can make a difference in any fight.

The part with Kellach, however… Sigh.

“We can’t allow him to just make his way into Divinity’s Reach, because he will destroy everything in his path.”

But you still fight him in the throne room. What the hell?

How did he freely enter the city and made his way into the throne room and why is the city, that just got ravaged by an under horde, looks none worse for wear? What… why… what the hell?

The “artifact” that he has. Never mentioned. It also wasn’t destroyed, so the undead horde must have been still there in the city. Dumb.

A couple of guards protecting the queen in the throne room. Seems like a wise idea, right? No. It doesn’t.

“At the level where you’re doing the well storyline, though, there are centaurs and bandits spread through most of Queensdale (in other words, the farmlands that the city relies on to survive) – the Seraph is stretched pretty close to breaking point, and a poisoned well may well be a fair tradeoff compared to having the farmlands Divinity’s Reach relies on destroyed entirely.”

Except there are many guards inside the city, just like… patrolling. They can’t stop ONE bandit gang? Even when they know they’re coming? What about the ministry guard? The Shining Blade? The orders? It’s the heart of the human civilization, why can’t you have at least a batallion of guards there? Divinity’s Reach is dripping opulence. Lots of traders, kiosks full of food and other goods, children laughing… it doesn’t look desperate or that the city is at it’s breaking point at all. Hell, Altdorf in WAR still had guards in it, and their sutuation was worse.

There are a few things you’re missing in your analysis here:

First, the presentation of the city is essentially a representative sample, not necessarily a snapshot of the city at the time of that personal step. It’s possible that at the time, some of the guards have been depleted for use with crises elsewhere, it just can’t be shown in the persistant areas because usually the city is guarded to that level.

There’s quite a bit of evidence that whatever personal story you choose, the other storylines are still happening (just to other characters). The pack of bandits intending to poison the well isn’t the only one out there – at about that time, you’ve also got the bandit plots from the Commoner and Noble storylines, and centaurs still not so far from the gates of the city (the city may not be on the brink of starvation, but that’s because the farms to the west of Shaemoor are still fairly intact – if they got trashed by centaurs, the situation in Divinity’s Reach would likely worsen rapidly – if not immediately, then later when winter rolled around and preserved food stores began running low). Additionally, keep in mind that the reason Two-Blade Pete gives to his band for the poisoning is to take advantage of the resulting chaos to go on a looting spree – if too much of the regular city guard was diverted to defend the well, they (or some other opportunistic criminals) might just skip the poisoning and take advantage of the lack of guards to go straight to the looting, or failing that simply adapt at the last minute and switch to some other water source that isn’t so well guarded. Bottom line is that it’s not just “ONE bandit gang” – it’s that one bandit gang on top of all the other proverbial fires we’ve been told that the Seraph are stretched thin trying to put out. (Not to mention that it’s a pretty well organised and equipped gang.)

Regarding other orders pitching in to help… keep in mind that the human metaplot is that there are various factions working, independantly or in concert, to make the queen look bad with the ultimate aim of pulling her out of power. The Ministry Guard is largely if not entirely under Caudecus’ thumb and there are hints that Two-Blade Pete is actually being backed by the Ministry – it’s not in Caudecus’ interests to stop the poisoning, and the absence of the Ministry Guard can’t even be called a suspicious one – they can easily respond if asked that they simply didn’t regard it as their jurisdiction. The Shining Blade is the smallest of Kryta’s military orders, and essentially behaves as the Order of Whispers to the Seraph’s Vigil – they’d rather spend their efforts identifying and preventing future threats rather than expend their limited resources doing the Seraph’s job for them. When it comes to the multiracial orders… it’s probably simply beneath their notice. The poisoning of the well is bad but not crippling – at the level where they probably feel justified in feeling that Kryta can take care of itself.

Now Kellach… there are certainly holes there. I vaguely remember one of the storylines mentioning that he came in through the sewers, with the implication that he was allowed to do so to prevent the scenario you describe – the throne room could have been chosen as the point for the showdown because that was one place where they knew Kellach would stand and fight, while trying to confront him elsewhere might just lead him to take another route that would cause more damage. One thing to keep in mind is that Kellach is still loyal to Kryta, albeit with that loyalty twisted by draconic corruption – he thinks the supposed ability of royal blood to cleanse draconic corruption will save Kryta, and once he realised the undead were following him, he’d likely have taken a path that minimised the collateral damage. A bigger plot hole IMO is right at the start of that arc – we’re told kids are being sent into the mere to gather fuel, but the nearest human settlements require long treks through dangerous territory to reach the swamp.

I saved Quinn. Seraph took care of the well. Some poison got in but nothing lethal. All’s well that ends well.

As for the reason why Kellach has risen following him everywhere, in the Charr storyline we find out an Asura has some necromancy necklaces that she’s handing out to everyone, which seem to attract Orrians. There was an option of two places to find one of them (both might be in the shiverpeaks, the one I did was with a norn)

Seras.5702:

I saved Quinn. Seraph took care of the well. Some poison got in but nothing lethal. All’s well that ends well.

Actually, choosing to save Quinn some people died because they drank from the well. When you walk around the place some townsfolk talk about it.
Honestly, this was a hard one to pick before I deleted my character. I literally stopped here because I hated the Street Rat story till this part lol.
I liked Quinn he was just a misguided soul and got in with a bad crowd, choosing to save others he finally sticks up to em and ratted them out but he dies but did it to save others. :’)

I was a Thief, so…. totally saved Quinn. Didn’t really matter to Armaud that some people got poisoned (he was a lot angrier back then.) I’m glad I did, too, I keep getting burned on these “do you save one person or a village” decisions. They make it sound like saving the one person is being selfish and the village will die, but that’s bunk. I almost deleted my second Mesmer because I decided to save Astorea or whatever instead of helping the guy with his wife, and it turned out that the village would have been fine, and the guy would have still been alive. kitten

I happily let Quinn die, he was irritating me anyway…

To be honest, I get the impression that a lot of stuff was left unfinished or was pieced together from a variety of scrapped plot-lines that were initially meant to get more attention than they actually did outside of the personal story.

Arena Net have already admitted that they find the charr personal story to be the strongest and it shows. There’s some good stuff in the human personal story but it tends to be mismatched and not elaborated upon enough.

Haha Yeah, I’ve played through street rat many times on alts and I’ve let quinn die everytime. He is just so annoying and even though I’ve wanted to do different things when replaying I can’t bring myself to let quinn live.

@Golgathoth: There’s actually a hint in that one – the meeting between him and his wife is before the assault, so if you succeed you’ll have cut the head off the assault before it begins. The reason Caithe doesn’t like it is because taking that option is basically walking directly into the middle of the army and giving the wife the opportunity to set up the perfect trap – fighting off the assault from a defensive position would be safer.

I’ve done street rat and noble, and both wacky sidekicks were obnoxious in my book.

Klawlyt.6507:

I’ve done street rat and noble, and both wacky sidekicks were obnoxious in my book.

For street rat, Quinn was just idiotic, despite living on the street for ages he has no street smarts. He obviously deserved to die.

For Lord Faren he was just plain aggravating. Every time he opened his mouth i musted the volume because anything that comes out of his mouth is just liquid poo.

You should try middle class, but it’s a bit cliche.