Guild Wars 2

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

The only constant in Nature is change. Change is inevitable, it is unstoppable, it cannot be slowed – like time itself, since time is a facet of nature. But of course that is not allowed in humanity’s future in Tyria.

You realize there’s going to be change, yes? One of the introduced recurring groups (The Zephyrites) is entirely human, something which has not happened to other races.

And, as noted, Cantha is more than likely interested in pure human control over the lands. So probably not the end of humanity there unless Bubbles likes Canthan food. (Can’t understand why, I found myself hungry again even off the meals of a renowned Imperial Chef. Even the Celestials got hungry again every four hours and they got a five course meal instead of a sampler. )

all the races bring something different to the table. In order for the humans to adapt to have every benefit against every challenge, the other races would also get it because change is nature. It would essentialy be a homogenization of all the races where there isn’t even any meaningful lore diffrences.

All races are doomed to maintain the flavor they came into this game with.

edit: all representative nations of the playable races are doomed…….* would be more correct

edit 2: The existence of engineer class for humanity is proof that the humans are adapting, along with all the other playable races. But krytan society won’t be adapting in any major way any faster then the other races during the life of GW2

Dust

Eehhhh….

I agree with your take on “flavor,” although I’m not sure about your take on engineers. Engineers(and techy stuff like that) are in the game simply because players like guns and things that blow up. The lore was written to support that, not the other way around.

@Foxx: Oh yes, I wasn’t arguing that Charr don’t ever name places, because they obviously do. I just meant that the Charr don’t seem to have a concept of a Charr “nation”, a state to which they all belong. (This might be because they view themselves as being part of a Legion, rather than as a state.)

Obsidian.1328:

Dust

Eehhhh….

I agree with your take on “flavor,” although I’m not sure about your take on engineers. Engineers(and techy stuff like that) are in the game simply because players like guns and things that blow up. The lore was written to support that, not the other way around.

I agree with this. But the engineers lore is that the other races have adopted it from the charr because they saw how effective has been for the charr.

“The Iron Legion is the start of all of this, and the Engineer profession has spread to the other races from there. The People of Tyria have seen it in combat over the past few years and have seen the effectiveness of an engineer. And so you are going to see Engineers of all races although it is a little bit more common to see a Charr Engineer than anybody else.”

http://www.wartower.de/artikel/artikel.php?id=562

Obsidian.1328:

CETheLucid.3964:

Obsidian.1328:

You realize they literally just changed that a few months ago right?

Nah, that’s been established in the game since launch.

Rytlock Brimstone goes into the short version of it in the AC dungeon. That’s just a case of the print catching up to the reality.

Uhh…no? Rytlock’s speech was simply, “this land used to be ours, then Humans came and built Ascalon on top of it.” Everyone already knew that since GW1 Proph, that was nothing new. What is new is the contention Ascalon is their homeland. There’s a giant area on the map northeast of Ascalon in GW1 that says in big, bright letters “Charr Homelands.”

And now we know that particular area is the Blood Legion’s homeland. Not the charr’s homeland as a whole.

Iron Legion’s homeland was always what used to be the human kingdom of Ascalon.

Ash Legion’s homeland borders the Crystal Desert to the extreme south of Ascalon somewhere around Ebonhawke in the Fields of Ruin.

Who knows if the Flame Legion even has a homeland anymore? Where you see the Flame Legion’s main base of operations is in Fireheart Rise.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their homeland though.

I will chime in and say that when I discovered the confirmation on the charr page it was because I was looking for something I had seen a while ago. I recently rediscovered what it was I had seen when I rerolled a charr character. In the opening cinematic of charr they say “we reclaimed our homeland of Ascalon”. The word ‘ancestral’ on the charr page was just bonus :P

edit: At 0:30 seconds

CETheLucid.3964:

Obsidian.1328:

CETheLucid.3964:

Obsidian.1328:

You realize they literally just changed that a few months ago right?

Nah, that’s been established in the game since launch.

Rytlock Brimstone goes into the short version of it in the AC dungeon. That’s just a case of the print catching up to the reality.

Uhh…no? Rytlock’s speech was simply, “this land used to be ours, then Humans came and built Ascalon on top of it.” Everyone already knew that since GW1 Proph, that was nothing new. What is new is the contention Ascalon is their homeland. There’s a giant area on the map northeast of Ascalon in GW1 that says in big, bright letters “Charr Homelands.”

And now we know that particular area is the Blood Legion’s homeland. Not the charr’s homeland as a whole.

Iron Legion’s homeland was always what used to be the human kingdom of Ascalon.

Ash Legion’s homeland borders the Crystal Desert to the extreme south of Ascalon somewhere around Ebonhawke in the Fields of Ruin.

Who knows if the Flame Legion even has a homeland anymore? Where you see the Flame Legion’s main base of operations is in Fireheart Rise.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their homeland though.

Eh, all the different Legions were given an area to be called their “homeland” with GW2, it wasn’t a historical thing. The very separation of the Charr into Legions came about because of GW2 development. But that’s a tired argument on my part though.

Dust

Yeah, that was icing on the cake. :P

The basis for the legions has always been there since GW1. Look at the presence of Ash walkers in prophecies.

Regardless, the legions were introduced in eye of the north. To say that it was due to gw2 development is an overshot because at that point in time they were in the very early stages of development. Eye of the north is still Gw1 and it’s getting annoying watching people try to discount it’s lore just because Gw2 was announced at the same time.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The basis for the legions has always been there since GW1. Look at the presence of Ash walkers in prophecies.

Erm…no. The “ash” part of Charr Ash Walkers was meant to infer it was a necro. Just like Charr Wardens were rangers, Charr Chaots were mezmers, and Charr Shamans were monks. The “Ash Legion” is a GW2 construct, perhaps they merely borrowed the terminology, I don’t know.

Regardless, the legions were introduced in eye of the north. To say that it was due to gw2 development is an overshot because at that point in time they were in the very early stages of development. Eye of the north is still Gw1 and it’s getting annoying watching people try to discount it’s lore just because Gw2 was announced at the same time.

It’s not an overshot though, Aside from the gameplay mechanics, EotN is essentially an intro to GW2. It’s sole purpose is to bridge the gap between the two games and to get players on the same page as the devs in terms of lore and story. It has very little in common with the 3 stand-alone campaigns aside from the gameplay.

Except that is is directly extending on the lore from Prophecies.
Your argument seems to be that because the lore wasn’t in place during Prophecies it is therefore somehow less valid and only created to make GW2 work, but it’s a game, you can’t really expect them to have had the lore perfectly planned out – and since you aren’t part of the development team you can’t really have a clue on how long they had planned some of those things.

I brought up Ash walkers because you can draw a pretty easy relation to the Ash legion – how you draw a erlationship between the word Ash and Necromancers eludes me? Yes they were necromancers and the title denoted that, but there isn’t an obvious relationship between the word Ash and necromancy as a profession – they don’t have an awful lot to do with one another.

And yes EoTN was used and created partially as a bridge to GW2 – but that doesn’t invalidate it’s lore. A lot of EoTN’s ideas and lore were carried over from the development of Utopia, which certainly had nothing to do with GW2.

And I also don’t get why being a bridge to GW2 somehow means it’s lore less credible than the prophecies lore? You can try and say that they were stretching things to make it fit with what they wanted for GW2, but the reality is that they didn’t change any of the existing lore. All they did was expand on what we already knew, they gave us motives and reasons behind why things had happened. It’s not really any different to getting to the end of a movie or novel and having it go back and explain why something happened or how something happened.

Foxx

Ash meaning things that are dead and gone? Sounds pretty necro-ish to me. Here’s a chart of all the Charr mobs you come across, every one of their adjectives describes the profession in some way. Charr Mender = mo/para, Charr Shadow = rit/sin. Not to mention there’s also Ash Caller, Ash Storm, Ashen Claw, Ashen Lord, and Ash Thief…all necros. The “Ash” stood for necro dude.

The artistry got carried over from Utopia, not much else. Didn’t want to waste all those stellar drawings from Dociu or Kotaku(sp?) I guess.

They stretched a lot of it to be sure, but I won’t get into that here. Even I’m tired of it.

No. Because the charr were there first, fought to reclaim it, and promptly dropped the hatred. In the intro to the charr tutorial (Iron legion, maybe all of them) they go “They have paid for it in blood” Note, they give no kittens about the rest of humanity. Infact, they were only kittened off at Ebonhawke, the last Ascalonian settlement.

However, now there is the peace treaty, and in that region the charr are freely letting humans set up camps and such outside of Ebonhawke. The war would have no point.

The lore was not set up on “Blood and gore and killing each other!” Let’s look at the history of the races.

Norn: Leave them alone, they leave you alone. Hell, they got along with Charr in GW1 with a simple rule “You attack us, we’ll kittening kick your kitten .”
Charr: Lead by FLAME LEGION in GW1. Went to war against humans and tried to wipe them out. Flame legion got kicked out for their false gods and other actions, and now Iron is ‘basically’ the leader of the charr legions.
Humans: Conflict with the flame legion led charr, otherwise okay with all other races. Only ascalonions give a kitten about the old conflict. Two nobles/ministers in DR talk about it and the one goes “The searing is ancient history, get over it.” Besides the handful of zealous Ascalon descendants, humanity doesn’t care. And again, Charr are letting them settle outside of Ebonhawke.
Asura: Didn’t really care about the other races.
Sylvari: Brand new.

Since the flame legion is gone, and even in EOTN we saw THEY were the reason of the aggression, why would humanity want a war with the other three legions at the same time we got dragon minions attacking the borders? Frankly, humanity doesn’t have the manpower or strength to ‘retake’ Ascalon, much less HOLD it against the ghosts and charr legions. And of course, the violent ogre tribes, and the branded.

Obsidian.1328:

Eh, all the different Legions were given an area to be called their “homeland” with GW2, it wasn’t a historical thing. The very separation of the Charr into Legions came about because of GW2 development. But that’s a tired argument on my part though.

Canon is as canon does. It’s established as such and so it is. I could understand where you’d be coming from if it was some outrageous stretch, but it really isn’t.

There are legions and essentially all of Ascalon was originally charr land.

The humans came in, pushed the charr out in spectacular fashion, and built up a kingdom for themselves.

Years later, the charr drove out the humans at great personal cost and reclaimed the land for themselves again.

It was charr land before the humans claimed it from them via war, and via war the charr won it back again.

Kalavier.1097:

Because the charr were there first, fought to reclaim it, and promptly dropped the hatred. In the intro to the charr tutorial (Iron legion, maybe all of them) they go “They have paid for it in blood” Note, they give no kittens about the rest of humanity. Infact, they were only kittened off at Ebonhawke, the last Ascalonian settlement.

However, now there is the peace treaty, and in that region the charr are freely letting humans set up camps and such outside of Ebonhawke. The war would have no point.

To go a step further, the charr have no qualms with humans who recognize their authority. Only the ghostly ones and the bat kitten crazy ones.

If you can respect you’re in charr land, the top brass has no problem with humans in Ascalon.

That says nothing for the old culture (both people have those within that can’t stand one and other)…

But officially, all races are encouraged to come to Ascalon and the Black Citadel to spend their money.

Have a good time, etc. You see all types in the Black Citadel, adventurers, weary travelers, etc.

Many multiracial organizations such as the orders have operations within Ascalon and the Black Citadel and they are allowed without exclusion.

The treaty with the Ebonhawke humans granted them that swath of land and the charr have honored their word, even going so far as to help the humans with the ogres and other threats in the area.

It would just be supremely stupid for humanity to go LOL STOOPID CHARR GIB BCK ASCALON and decide to shatter that peace and built up trust over a lost cause.

When in fact for all that’s been done, we have solace in that we won a place in Ascalon that the charr are willing to recognize.

The queen would never be so foolish.

CETheLucid.3964:

The queen would never be so foolish.

While I agree with this, I would also say I don’t know if any following rulers wouldn’t. I could also see some of the ministry members deciding to stir up trouble for political or personal gain . . .

. . . and, it should be noted, not all Ascalonians recognize the Krytan throne as the reigning authority. “Jennah is not our Queen! Our king fights on even in death.”

CETheLucid.3964:

To go a step further, the charr have no qualms with humans who recognize their authority. Only the ghostly ones and the bat kitten crazy ones.

If you can respect you’re in charr land, the top brass has no problem with humans in Ascalon.

That says nothing for the old culture (both people have those within that can’t stand one and other)…

But officially, all races are encouraged to come to Ascalon and the Black Citadel to spend their money.

Have a good time, etc. You see all types in the Black Citadel, adventurers, weary travelers, etc.

Many multiracial organizations such as the orders have operations within Ascalon and the Black Citadel and they are allowed without exclusion.

The treaty with the Ebonhawke humans granted them that swath of land and the charr have honored their word, even going so far as to help the humans with the ogres and other threats in the area.

It would just be supremely stupid for humanity to go LOL STOOPID CHARR GIB BCK ASCALON and decide to shatter that peace and built up trust over a lost cause.

When in fact for all that’s been done, we have solace in that we won a place in Ascalon that the charr are willing to recognize.

The queen would never be so foolish.

There is a situation with two humans near the North gate of the Black Citadel. I don’t know if there is anything before the part I’ve seen, but it’s two humans and an Adamant guard. The humans were surprised a Charr came to their rescue and he basically went “Inside this city, EVERYBODY follows the rules. No matter the race.” And you can IIRC, find a fair number of humans, Norn, Sylvari, and maybe an Asura or two within their one ‘bar’ area. True, it’s mostly populated by the gladium Charr (IIRC again) but still, it’s an area with a fair number of non-Charr with no violence.

The Priory has a decently large camp in the one region besides the ruined temple (where the Shatterer fight is, South of the fight along the dragonbrand) and there are actually very few Charr within the camp (Priory charr). In the one section Ebon Vanguard and Charr are working together against the ogres (the heart is you helping them work together). The most racial conflict is the old grudges of Charr vs Ebon Vanguard, but even that is quickly simmering down. Otherwise, there really isn’t any major “faction” wars. It’s why I laughed when somebody was saying the best thing in WoW was sneaking into the enemy capitals and killing NPCs/players, and GW2 should have that!

I quickly pointed out at best you’d have Charr vs Ebonhawke and that’s it. Cause the Charr really have no gripe with anybody bar those who attack them.

Hell, Jennah technically IS the one person in all of Tyria who can break the foefire. She just has to get Rurik’s blade (I’m unsure if Alberns blade would work, forgive spelling) and travel to the heart of the Foefire and I think do some ritual. But it would banish the ghosts, forever.

The ‘people’ of Ascalon in Kryta (Ascalon settlement, some in DR) are insanely stubborn and clinging to ancient beliefs and hatreds. As the one minister says to the other (Who I think is kinda against the peace treaty) “The searing is ancient history, get over it.” Humans in general don’t have the manpower. In the people of Ascalon Settlement (who can’t afford to make trouble with their centaur neighbors already attacking them) tried something, they’d be wiped out.

Hell, as you say (quoted guy), they let them settle that swath of land (though it has it’s threats, they are working together). My iron legion charr Engineer In-character is the exact same way. She’s perfectly fine with the idea of humans settling around Ebonhawke. So long as they don’t cause trouble and don’t attack the legions, what’s the deal?

Any leadership proposing a reconquista of Ascalon in the near or intermediate future is completely out to lunch and humanity would be better off putting them down ASAP. It’s clear the Charr have military ascendancy and our latest weapons, the watchworks, have security issues to say the least. At the very least, the Charr need to be severely weakened from fighting Kralka and the Pact (which is now Tyria’s supreme military force) needs to break apart on its own.

I’d love to reclaim Ascalon (and I never even played GW1) but it’s pretty clear the devs don’t like humans much.

CETheLucid.3964:

Canon is as canon does. It’s established as such and so it is.

That’s an irresponsible stance to take.

By that rationale the George Clooney Batman movies, in all their rampant silliness and shallowness, are canon simply because they came after the Keaton Batman. They both have basically the same characters and setting, but are vastly different in style and tone. It’s even the same company, Warner Bros., just like ANet is. But you’d have to be either ignorant, or have severely bad taste, to claim Clooney’s Batman is the one that best reflects the caped crusader.

Granted that Keaton’s Batman was not original, and based off the comics series. But in the case of Tyria, Guild Wars 1 should be considered a primary source, in fact the primary source. Everything done to add on to that story should be genuine to its core narrative, or else it doesn’t deserve to be called a valid addition. Treating it the way ANet does, which is to say treating it like a giant nomenclature grab-bag, is just plain wrong.

Bringing up a comic franchise as an example for talking about canon is about the worst thing you can do.
Comic book franchises and the movies and tv series that accompany them are rampant with retellings and retcons.

Arenanet haven’t retconned anything. The only thing they’ve ever done is pointed out that knowledge from an indirect source cannot be taken as fact. But that was obvious even from within GW1 – just look at anything Glint tells you…

Well I could find loads of redux’s that are general considered failures if you want. The medium doesn’t really matter all that much, art is art.

What did Glint tell me?

Ruruuiye.8912:

I’d love to reclaim Ascalon (and I never even played GW1) but it’s pretty clear the devs don’t like humans much.

Not really. It’s more like a realistic viewpoint. Charr gained strength from including the females back to the ranks. Humanity has taken many major blows. Kryta is semi-secure, but they hardly have the forces to warrant ANOTHER big war with the Charr or any other race then they already are fighting.

Obsidian.1328:

I completely fail to see how GW2 disregards GW1 at all. Or how it retcons “Entire sections of the lore”.

Obsidian.1328:

Well I could find loads of redux’s that are general considered failures if you want. The medium doesn’t really matter all that much, art is art.

What does this have to do with the topic of lore in the game? So far they’ve kept the required retroactive continuity fixes to a minimum developing the current Tyria. There are precious few yet which truly break things in terms of the previous accounted story.

And most of those are minor details at best. I am having trouble coming up with more than one (“Glint was a dragon champion”) which reshaped how I could look back at the events of Guild Wars 1.

What did Glint tell me?

You’ll need to be more specific about when. At the first meeting, when speaking to her vision, or later?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Well I could find loads of redux’s that are general considered failures if you want. The medium doesn’t really matter all that much, art is art.

What does this have to do with the topic of lore in the game? So far they’ve kept the required retroactive continuity fixes to a minimum developing the current Tyria. There are precious few yet which truly break things in terms of the previous accounted story.

And most of those are minor details at best. I am having trouble coming up with more than one (“Glint was a dragon champion”) which reshaped how I could look back at the events of Guild Wars 1.

What did Glint tell me?

You’ll need to be more specific about when. At the first meeting, when speaking to her vision, or later?

Hell, the “Glint was a dragon champion” Matched her showing in GW1 perfectly. Or does everybody forget that her lair was completely and utterly covered in crystals, filled with crystal beings (the crystal spiders), and even her appearance was crystalline? And they went and pointed out she purposefully betrayed/went against Kralk and worked to help the humans, to the point in Edge of Destiny that she KNEW she would die if Kralk wasn’t killed then, and maybe EVEN if he was.

Magic seems to be one that’s brought up, but that’s 250 years of change to the world and how people approach things. I honestly can’t think of any TRUE retcons to GW1 or pointless changes to the lore GW2 has done. Now I might not know everything about the lore for both ends but I love the GW lore and feel like I’d notice something drastic changing.

Heck, GW2 goes to even having one or two PVP maps referenced in the PVE world as ruins while exploring. Some things which COULD be taken as retcons or false can at the same time be viewed as misinformation or lack of the true sources by the characters in question (I think Sorrow’s Embrace has this about the Iron Forgeman) As we personally know what happened while they obviously do not.

What about the Iron Forgeman?

Kalavier.1097:

Not really. It’s more like a realistic viewpoint. Charr gained strength from including the females back to the ranks. Humanity has taken many major blows. Kryta is semi-secure, but they hardly have the forces to warrant ANOTHER big war with the Charr or any other race then they already are fighting.

That’s absolutely not what indicates dev bias to me. What does indicate it to me is that the devs openly said that Charr and Asura have the best story development, which is entirely borne out by what I’ve seen of it (basically all of it; I piggyback onto all my pals’ personal stories). The Sylvari meanwhile have a racial mission to take on the dragons and are essentially GW2’s mary sues, immune to corruption and one of their gloomy goth top twelve is swiftly appointed overall commander of the world’s preeminent military force despite lacking any military experience whatsoever (that’s okay because the Dream provides Sylvari with all the knowledge they need).

Meanwhile, the Humans and Norn are left out to dry. Everything the humans have done in the past has gone wrong. Ascalonians by and large are now cast as the villains (or at least ignorant obstacles). Humans nuked their own civilizations twice in a row and have the worst voice acting and dialogue of any of the races. Their entire personal storyline has nothing but how their system fails at every turn. Their capital is under siege at all times by an inferior race of barbarians (the only comparable situation is the Asurans handing all their admin duties over to Inquest and that’s at least played for laughs) and their only recent technological contribution of note was turned on them by another mary sue Sylvari.

There’s actually a perfectly rational reason for this: humans or human-likes tend to be preferred in MMO’s with racial choices and this goes even further in GW2 because GW1 had already established humanity as the dominant race so everything had to be undone to accomodate new races. The story quality and overall ascendance of the side races has to be emphasized or few players would accept them. As it is, Anet has found they’ve only partially succeeded.

The view that the chain of events leading to GW2 as plausible isn’t wrong but it’s only one of many plausible futures. Only a few of those lead to multiple playable races.

Charr have to have the best story development. Why? They were basically furry orcs in GW1 pre-EOTN. There wasn’t anything to them, they appeared savage yet cunning and just an overwhelming force to beat down the human kingdoms because they got lucky.

So we’re going from paper-thin to something more fleshed out. Of course they have strong development.

Asura, I don’t agree with having any development at all. They were silly, stupid, insular geniuses before. They still are but their penchant for screwing things up now is global.

. . . I mean they made Scarlet. Case closed.

Actually I think Asura have gone backwards. They were something pretty special in GW1, they’ve become a lot more standardised in GW2.

I find the Asurans are mostly played for laughs. In all honesty, it usually works; they’re funny and make terrific foils for just about every other race. Unlike the Sylvari, their flaws are as obvious to us as they themselves are blind to it. The random conversations they have are some of the best around. Compared to them, just about every human you see is a broomhandle with a smilie face taped on.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

What about the Iron Forgeman?

IIRC, they refer to him as either Dredge made or Inquest made. Which may be true that one faction or the other REBUILT it, the Iron Forgeman’s legacy is being built by the stone summit. Still, it’s something you can chalk up to “They don’t know any better.”

Ruruuiye.8912:

Sylvari are not Mary Sues. Infact, I’ve never seen them as such. They can’t be corrupted, not a very ‘sue’ trait considering instead they just die horribly. Traeherne holds a lot of respect from the orders. Sure, we don’t know exactly why perhaps, but he’s elevated to the position because each group trusts him and it forms an equality. Note that he often goes to the Commander (player) for advice, or the order officers he has with him. He doesn’t just suddenly become a military genius. Yes, could’ve been done better but he’s hardly as kittenome paint him. He never takes credit for the player actions, he asks advice for the areas he is not that great in (Holy kitten, a leader asking for advice, KILL HIM!)

Ascalanions are portrayed as proud, if not stubborn. However Ebonhawke is a large portion of the Ascalon nation survivors and they accept the peace treaty. Their system (humanity) IS frail. Especially compared to WHAT IT ONCE WAS. Once it was not a single nation under threat, it was 3 proud nations, each holding their own and living decently. Then Ascalon got hit by the searing, Orr sunk, and Kryta went under siege by undead and the king left(proph, then the White Mantle business). Elona was, again, a proud trio of nations. Now Vabbi is desolate (IIRC), and Kourna and Istan are under Joko’s thumb. Cantha was a nation that was recovering from a nasty period (factions timeline and GW beyond winds of change), and a pro-human emperor came to power and kicked everybody else out.

So yeah, forgive them for properly showing the last “Known intact” human nation (compared to at least 7, 9 if you include Kurzick and Luxon as separate nations) as being weakened and frail compared to it’s former glory. Humans nuked their nations twice in a row? Do explain unless you mean Orr (Abbaddon influenced) and FoeFire (crazy king, was crazy in GW1… hence the whole “leaving Ascalon bit”) The Capital is not under siege at all times. In the start of the personal story, and never again. The nearby village of beetletun has trouble with a smallish group of Centaurs, but otherwise it’s areas away from DR. Centaurs are not “Way inferior” Infact, they are more dangerous now then in GW1 as they Tyria tribes are united under a single warchief. Also you know, siege engineers don’t typically fit into “Way inferior barbarians”

Scarlet is smart, but I don’t see her as a Mary Sue. That’s a different debate though. Humanity, IIRC, helped make the airships. I’ll check but I recall that it was "Charr, Asura, and human tech. Yeah, humanity helped get the airships flying. Totally meaning their “ONLY” recent tech advance was the watchknights. right!

The original prototypes were of charr design, but with the formation of the Pact and the offensive in Orr, other races, particularly the humans and asura, were able to contribute their own ingenuity, and the airships became somewhat emblematic of the Pact and the struggle against the Elder Dragons.

I think just having humanity stay on the high ground would be a foolish “AU” and unrealistic. There are plenty of threats that’d weaken that area. Joko, centaurs, Zhaitan’s Rise, extremists in Cantha… Even if Kryta wasn’t threatened by Centaurs, it’d be a shadow of the former glory of humanity in Tyria.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Charr have to have the best story development. Why? They were basically furry orcs in GW1 pre-EOTN. There wasn’t anything to them, they appeared savage yet cunning and just an overwhelming force to beat down the human kingdoms because they got lucky.

So we’re going from paper-thin to something more fleshed out. Of course they have strong development.

A very good point. We learned a bit about the Norn and Asura in EOTN. Charr we just barely started scratching the surface. So of course a race that formerly held the “Kill every one in sight because they’ll want to kill you and dance on your burnt body” will have a very strong development compared to humans who we’ve dealt with before majorly, and Norn or Asura who we learned a bit of because we worked closely with them.

No. My humans would actively fight against the human empire—they’d join the charr. By breaking the treaty, the Queen would be endangering all of Tyria. The races would unite against her. Also, my human characters never had a strong loyalty to Kryta or a strong hatred for Charr.

Wynne is a descendent of the Kurzicks—an ethnic group from Cantha. She has no ascalonian blood or heritage. She grew up in a small community in Caledon Forest until the Nightmare Court attacked. She was rescued by Pale Tree sylvari, and lived out her teenage years in the Grove. Only recently, as she’s reached adulthood, has she left Caledon and seen Kryta. It’s essentially a foreign land to her, and many human viewpoints and biases are also foreign.
Her sense of morality is strong, while her feelings of “racial sympathy” are fairly weak. From a moral standpoint, she would see a human attack on the charr as wrong, and would therefore work against it.

My other human, Nergal Junior, is actually somewhat bitter against the human nobility. He is the son of a disgraced nobleman. When he was a child, his undeveloped necromancer powers led to the death of another boy. Ultimately, his actions caused his father to be banished from the nobility and they were forced to flee to Lion’s Arch and live in poverty.
Nergal Junior is still young, immature, and angry—but he has a strong sense of justice. As he sees it, his people already threw him out. Although he is desperate to redeem himself, and be seen as a hero—he has no hatred for charr and couldn’t go out to slaughter another people—so he would also fight against his race.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

What did Glint tell me?

You’ll need to be more specific about when. At the first meeting, when speaking to her vision, or later?

Ehh…you brought it up, I didn’t know where you were going with it. So you tell me.

Kalavier.1097:

I completely fail to see how GW2 disregards GW1 at all. Or how it retcons “Entire sections of the lore”.

Well, it certainly “disregards” quite a bit of it. But it did not “retcon entire sections of the lore”. Those two are very different things. I’ll use Tobias’ words: you’ll have to be more specific.

Weindrasi.3805:

Wynne is a descendent of the Kurzicks—an ethnic group from Cantha. She has no ascalonian blood or heritage.

Like my noble character. Kurzick noble family which migrated to Kryta from Cantha sometime around/before the purging of non-humans, has Noble status due to wealth and their influence they’ve gained over time.

Frankly their views on Charr are neutral. Hell, they were semi-neutral to Luxons (besides in cases of luxons directly attacking them), so they’d treat elements of Charr culture like that. “We’ll tolerate you and all, but once you attack us we’ll smack you down. You only, your neighbors don’t really have any part in this.” :P But Jennah completely breaking character and attacking the Charr (after so strongly working for the peace treaty) would cause backlash from the family at least. Maybe even the ancestor who still wanders around at times.

That’s really just the kicker on this. The percent of total humans wanting to continue the war/‘retake’ Ascalon are small compared to the rest of the nation. I think even if ministers wanted to do the opposite of Jennah just to spite her, they’d be unable to get the votes for a war.

Obsidian.1328:

Kalavier.1097:

I completely fail to see how GW2 disregards GW1 at all. Or how it retcons “Entire sections of the lore”.

Well, it certainly “disregards” quite a bit of it. But it did not “retcon entire sections of the lore”. Those two are very different things. I’ll use Tobias’ words: you’ll have to be more specific.

I’ve heard of people kittening about the GW2 changing the lore/ignoring parts of it, or completely changing elements.

I’ve never heard any real in depth explaining of it, but from my experience I’ve seen… none of it. At least none that CANNOT be labeled as a “Well, these individual people don’t know any better but we do because we have an outside view of the events.” The main one I heard about dealt with magic, yet ignored that 250ish years is a long time with plenty of chances for change.

That’s why I said it, I see it mentioned but never explained.

Obsidian.1328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

What did Glint tell me?

You’ll need to be more specific about when. At the first meeting, when speaking to her vision, or later?

Ehh…you brought it up, I didn’t know where you were going with it. So you tell me.

Er, no . . . no I didn’t. That was FlamingFoxx.

Kalavier.1097:

Well, it certainly “disregards” quite a bit of it. But it did not “retcon entire sections of the lore”. Those two are very different things. I’ll use Tobias’ words: you’ll have to be more specific.

I’ve heard of people kittening about the GW2 changing the lore/ignoring parts of it, or completely changing elements.

I’ve never heard any real in depth explaining of it, but from my experience I’ve seen… none of it. At least none that CANNOT be labeled as a “Well, these individual people don’t know any better but we do because we have an outside view of the events.” The main one I heard about dealt with magic, yet ignored that 250ish years is a long time with plenty of chances for change.

That’s why I said it, I see it mentioned but never explained.

Magic is probably cited with the least amount of specifics, mostly because they broke up the idea of each class having clearly defined types of magic. Which was the point, so it is said, of the Bloodstones having been scattered . . . but then, we do pull the card of “just because it was said to be true in myth doesn’t make it objectively true” again.

Also cited is how the history and lore went from decidedly human-centric to allow other races to step forward at the expense of humanity. (Though humanity was really getting its teeth kicked in on the Tyrian continent even back in Prophecies.)

Most other things I can recall are minor details edited so it’s not an issue, or what could be oversights on minor details of things not existing where it should. Or, finally, threads which looked important in the first game but after 250 years, didn’t appear to become significant.

Well, the whole “Lore going from human centered” Could just as easily be explained as “Now we are looking at heroes from all races, not just humanity”…

Kalavier.1097:

Well, the whole “Lore going from human centered” Could just as easily be explained as “Now we are looking at heroes from all races, not just humanity”…

Well, yes, but it still ticks people off. It ticks them off more when someone goes “no we haven’t forgotten about it” but won’t talk about any plans with it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

What did Glint tell me?

You’ll need to be more specific about when. At the first meeting, when speaking to her vision, or later?

Ehh…you brought it up, I didn’t know where you were going with it. So you tell me.

Er, no . . . no I didn’t. That was FlamingFoxx.

Oh lol…I sorry. My mistake.

Foxx you there?

Kalavier.1097:

Well, the whole “Lore going from human centered” Could just as easily be explained as “Now we are looking at heroes from all races, not just humanity”…

Personally, I think that reasoning is one of the biggest cop-outs I’ve seen in a long time. It literally gives ANet a free hand to take the lore in any direction they please. Quite frankly, I’m surprised so many players bought that line so readily.

Do you really think, when they wrote Proph, Factions, and NF that they all had in the back of their minds:
I wonder how all those future GW writers are going to explain that all of this human bias we are writing is bogus…should be interesting, huh?

If it wasn’t meant to be bull kitten, then it isn’t.

Obsidian.1328:

Kalavier.1097:

Well, the whole “Lore going from human centered” Could just as easily be explained as “Now we are looking at heroes from all races, not just humanity”…

Personally, I think that reasoning is one of the biggest cop-outs I’ve seen in a long time.

Really? Really? . . .

I’ve seen worse just thinking of my time keeping track of Forgotten Realms every time a D&D edition changed majorly and they had to produce some reasons why. The Spellplague seems extraordinarily crazy from what I’ve seen.

More astonishing is every time I come across players who think any company owes control of its lore to people who don’t actually own the IP.

It literally gives ANet a free hand to take the lore in any direction they please. Quite frankly, I’m surprised so many players bought that line so readily.

It’s their lore. It’s always theirs to take in whatever direction they want. Players “buying” the line has to do with caring enough to want to continue thinking about the lore or just throwing off any concern for it and just focusing on the game systems and details.

Because if you don’t buy into the fact they can do whatever they want with the lore with only cursory explanations, you start sounding like ANet’s writers need permission to alter their own material. They don’t need permission. They don’t need to come to the forums and go “so we’re thinking about this happening in the next story, does that work for you all?”.

Do you really think, when they wrote Proph, Factions, and NF that they all had in the back of their minds:
I wonder how all those future GW writers are going to explain that all of this human bias we are writing is bogus…should be interesting, huh?

Yes.

I think the writers had the thought in their heads “gee I wonder how future writing is going to use this”. Because they kind of had to be thinking that way if they planned to keep expansions and content coming. And even if this wasn’t an active desire on their part, it was probably there in a subconscious fashion anyway.

Now, I’m not going down this topic again here. The bottom line is simple: we the players do not have the right to dictate lore continuity to the people who own the game. Any more than readers of novels have the right to do the same to an author, or viewers of a television show have the right to do it to the writing team of the show. We can ask, we can throw entertaining ideas at the wall and see if they stick, and we can speculate until the servers shut down about why the landscape changed in a way which shouldn’t be realistically possible with no particular cause attached to it.

And since I’ve already said pretty much all I can on the topic as raised way back at the front of it? I’m going to bow out Yes. I’d let my human character fight to reclaim Ascalon if it was an option. I’d let my charr character fight to defend it, if needed. It would probably be a lot of fun, but it wouldn’t be done by the writers because of necessary changes which would have to be made numbering far too many hours of work by the designers and developers who have to figure out how to make it work in the engine.

Calling GW1 lore “human biased” (IMO) isn’t really true. No more then saying “Star Trek lore is federation biased!”

We see it from the viewpoint of the humans, obviously their concerns, beliefs, and governments will take a forward place before others. Especially when the other four governments aren’t even around until EOTN or after. Example. if story A really has race A being the primary force/big shot of the region, and Story B introduces race B who has just come into the area and is equally strong or stronger, of course it’s going to look like story A is ‘biased’. Reality being the other guys simply were not there.

When I say that, I don’t mean “Oh, they can suddenly have humans dancing across rainbows and playing with unicorns!” I mean, In the first story we mainly saw the HUMANs. This time we are seeing other races. It’s expanding the lore. It’s allowing us to see more of the world, more of the other cultures. Seriously, in GW1 you didn’t really learn much about the Dwarves, Centaurs, Tengu, etc. Learned a little, but it was focused on the humans. The heroes were focused on getting to their next goal. GW2 lets us see those other cultures (EOTN really was the start) and showing how they are just as widespread as humanity is, just as capable as humans are (If not better in certain areas).

Why is it a cop-out to accept the lore expanding? The story being purely humans would be very dull. Human centered lore and everything even with how humans have been weakened (which is reasonable, not outrageous about them not being as awesome. Think Gondor in it’s glory days vs lord of the rings trilogy days) would just appear stupid. Magic has changed, how it’s applied, how it’s used. Saying that magic comes from the human gods makes you go “Wait, how? Charr used monk skills in GW1. A lot of other sentient races used magic. How was it truly limited by the human gods?” The practices change. Beliefs change. Knowledge grows.

I’m sorry for accepting new viewpoints into the lore (They almost always interest me) and not believing the first game made the lore “human biased” besides from the viewpoint of the heroes of the first game, dealing with HUMAN problems, where now it’s world problem with other kingdoms just as involved.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Personally, I think that reasoning is one of the biggest cop-outs I’ve seen in a long time.

Really? Really? . . .

I’ve seen worse just thinking of my time keeping track of Forgotten Realms every time a D&D edition changed majorly and they had to produce some reasons why. The Spellplague seems extraordinarily crazy from what I’ve seen.

More astonishing is every time I come across players who think any company owes control of its lore to people who don’t actually own the IP.

Uhh…yes really. Who cares about Forgotten realms? This is about Tyria. Besides, I’m not arguing about the degree of change, but rather the nature of the change.

Why do you think this is about me? They owe it to the story itself, and indirectly to those who wrote that story. I’m merely calling them out on it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s their lore. It’s always theirs to take in whatever direction they want. They don’t need permission.

Legally it is yes.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Do you really think, when they wrote Proph, Factions, and NF that they all had in the back of their minds:
I wonder how all those future GW writers are going to explain that all of this human bias we are writing is bogus…should be interesting, huh?

Yes.

Wow.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

…we the players do not have the right to dictate lore continuity to the people who own the game.

Never said that. /sigh

Kalavier.1097:

Calling GW1 lore “human biased” (IMO) isn’t really true. No more then saying “Star Trek lore is federation biased!”

You’re right on that, I would say “human point-of-view” is more accurate. I should have used that phrase instead.

When I say that, I don’t mean “Oh, they can suddenly have humans dancing across rainbows and playing with unicorns!” I mean, In the first story we mainly saw the HUMANs. This time we are seeing other races. It’s expanding the lore. It’s allowing us to see more of the world, more of the other cultures. Seriously, in GW1 you didn’t really learn much about the Dwarves, Centaurs, Tengu, etc. Learned a little, but it was focused on the humans. The heroes were focused on getting to their next goal. GW2 lets us see those other cultures (EOTN really was the start) and showing how they are just as widespread as humanity is, just as capable as humans are (If not better in certain areas).

Are you implying I’m pro-human? That’s not what I’m saying at all. Every playable race should have the potential capabilities humans did in Tyria, as long as it stays true to the core narrative.

Why is it a cop-out to accept the lore expanding? The story being purely humans would be very dull. Human centered lore and everything even with how humans have been weakened (which is reasonable, not outrageous about them not being as awesome. Think Gondor in it’s glory days vs lord of the rings trilogy days) would just appear stupid. Magic has changed, how it’s applied, how it’s used. Saying that magic comes from the human gods makes you go “Wait, how? Charr used monk skills in GW1. A lot of other sentient races used magic. How was it truly limited by the human gods?” The practices change. Beliefs change. Knowledge grows.

The Rings trilogy is perfectly acceptable as portraying humans on the decline. It completely fits in to the entirety of the story…all the way back to Feanor and the Silmarils.

For instance, take the old version in which the gods created magic and sealed it in the Bloodstones instead of the current lore that innate Tyrian magic was sealed by the Seers in the Bloodstones:

According to the old GW1 history, every semi-sentient race and up was given magic by them, not just to humans. It makes sense both as a gameplay mechanic, and as an explanation as to why it’s there in the first place. Why couldn’t human gods give magic to everyone? Just because the Charr hated humans with a passion doesn’t mean they were denied magic from the gods. There seems to be this idea(somewhat inflamed by GW2) that the human gods only concerned themselves with humans. They all used magic equally. In this sense, the gods, as purveyors of magic, were the gods of all races, not just humans.

Why did this have to change? The gods certainly didn’t intervene when the Charr were using their magic trying to wipe out human Tyria, there’s no reason to think they would intervene in the future either. Magic was everyone’s gift…at least that’s how it was portrayed. When ANet was creating the new playable races, they took a long look at magic and decided it wouldn’t be prudent to have human gods responsible for Tyrian magic. It would look like human favoritism to players of other races. So they simply rewrote the history of magic, putting its origins in the hands of neutral entities: the Seers and Tyria itself.

It was a simple marketing decision designed to placate a wider audience. They could have kept the old history intact by simply taking the time to do so though. Maybe the gods only looked human to humans, and looked like Charr to Charr or looked like Tengu to Tengu. Or maybe, as foreigners to Tyria, they knew they shouldn’t favor only humans because that’s why they had to flee their last world. Or maybe Tyrian soil allowed them to use magic like Superman uses his powers with our Sun. There could have been any number of ways to play that out while staying true to the GW1 narrative.

But they didn’t do that for two reasons. One I just mentioned, and the other is most likely a desire by the GW2 devs to introduce their own personal creativity and ideas into this game. Norn Spirits of the Wild, Sylvari Dream, Asuran Eternal Alchemy, etc. These are all constructs of new GW2 devs. They saw the insubstantial nature of GW1 human history, were given the opportunity to remake this aspect of the narrative in ways they wanted to, and they ran with it.

That’s my real issue. The used the holes in the lore not to fill in with ideas congruent to what had been already laid down, but to fill it in with their own outside ideas and then cleverly splice them together so that it would all add up.

Does that make more sense?

I just thought of one possible route they could have done that follows along my line of reasoning, but it would have had to have been implemented in Nightfall. And this is just an off-the-cuff example. Remember Scorch Emberspire? Had they known GW2 was a future project back then, this guy would have been a decent possibility for a way to both keep the gods around, and introduce new playable races.

Have him, instead of Kormir, be the one to take Abaddon’s power. Granted it would have required some reworking of the Nightfall narrative, and his character would have had to have been a lot more fleshed out. But if a Charr could become a god, then any race could. And therefore, the gods wouldn’t be thought of as this “human-centric” dynamic. But rather, merely the one’s who happen to have control over the various aspects of Tyrian magic at that time. That they just hold the power of godhood, and not that it is intrinsic to humanity but rather to Tyria.

The old lore still holds up, and there’s no human favoritism to godhood.

Win-win.

It would have required Nightfall to be a completely different game. Charr had no place in Elona, there was no reason for them to and it would never have made sense given that we KNOW from Prophecies and Factions lore that humans moved up through Tyria.

Not to mention it is entirely possible that there is a direct relationship between humanity and the human gods.

I didn’t mean he would take Kormir’s place in the story from the beginning, you met him in DoA or something. Anyway, that wasn’t the point.

Well yeah, we vaguely know that they brought humanity to Tyria…other than that not much. We don’t even know if they all are, or were, human(minus Kormir).

Obsidian.1328:

Never said that. /sigh

I didn’t say you did, most of that was not directly at you as a response after the point preceding that. I’m just bowing out about now. I’ve said everything I could, and I’d rather just leave this topic discussion and get back to brushing up my campaign notes elsewhere.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Obsidian.1328:

Never said that. /sigh

I didn’t say you did, most of that was not directly at you as a response after the point preceding that. I’m just bowing out about now. I’ve said everything I could, and I’d rather just leave this topic discussion and get back to brushing up my campaign notes elsewhere.

Fair enough.

I would!!
But then, let Ebonhawke be like in the loading concept picture!
Big & Useable. Road to Vabbi!

I would like to see updated Watchknights being re-introduced into GW2 serving as the new armoured division(s) of the human military as the most visual expression of Queen Jennah’s authority over all of Kryta.

I would like to see Watchknights guarding the gates of Divinity’s Reach, Lion’s Arch and Ebonhawke alongside Seraph/Ebon Vanguard(Ebonhawke) troops.

I would also like to see some Seraphs patrols in Lion’s Arch and in fact I want to see the Lionguard replaced outside of Lion’s Arch with Seraph units in Kryta and the Shiverpeaks.

In Ascalon no change is required since human army units are already Ebon Vanguard – human Ascalon’s equivalent to the Seraphs/Lionguard. May I also suggest that they are refered to differently depending on which army they serve.

In Ascalon they be called: Ebon Watchguards the armoured division of the Ebonhawke – military. And in Kryta: Seraph Watchknights. All versions of the Watchknights are to be manufactured in Divinity’s Reach. With magically shielded and heavily patrolled (Seraph and Shining Blade) and guarded(Shining Blade) R&D Labs also exclusively in that city as well.

These armoured units will ensure that humanity as a whole finally commands real and actual respect – as a major military power.