Guild Wars 2

this link
http://asuralations.tumblr.com/post/59109156928/asura-colleges-culture-and-meta
raises valid questions, that stand in relation to the living story and must be discussed if not brought to A-Nets atttention.
( this link is not written by me but i fully agree with its content and the problems the topic has caused)

here is the text if you don´t want to go on tumblr (for some reason):

[b]The more I think about the college situation, I realize why it bothers me so much.

It was the asura’s thing. Every race has their thing, that one element that’s unique to them and no one else. Every sylvari is born under a certain time/has their dream, the norn have their spirits/legend, the charr have their unique warband/fahrar system, and the humans have their class stratification (and the whole history of GW1 with the white mantle). For the asura, it was the colleges and their personal invention. And now we don’t have one of those. What’s the thing that’s unique to the race in a cultural/racial sense that the others don’t have and can’t achieve?

Why not just give out the asura racial skills to everyone else? It’s nothing that’s inherent to them, you just have to be smart, and anyone can be smart and attend the colleges. I guess I always saw the colleges as more Hogwarts than Harvard. I know the asura are kind of the “joke” race, but with this information they really DO start to feel like a joke. More of an excuse to have cool stuff in the game than as an actual culture with something unique to them.

I think I’m extra sore about this because I feel like the asura just haven’t been getting any love lately. They’re put in the living story when something needs to be analyzed or wacky scientific shenanigans but there’s really no need for that now. Why not just get a human/sylvari/norn/charr who’s gone to the colleges to fill the role that Vorpp or Dessa or Levvi have?

This also brings up the problem of what happens when you build a race on the premise that they’re all hyper intelligent. That’s not something that’s really unique or special. Anyone from any race can be a genius, and maybe that’s why a lot of people don’t see non-asura getting into the colleges as a big deal. But the way the race has been constructed by Anet, its a HUGE deal.

Everything that we see about asura in the game revolves around their intelligence and the colleges. It’s the second line you hear an asura character say in the creation intro: “I am asura. I personify genius.” Well, anyone from any race can do that, and now that Anet has confirmed it, it feels like a really silly line.

Right now asura are the only race in the game that you can substitute any race for in both their personal story and racial skills and it works. A charr could be the Snaff Savant, a human can create the Infinity Ball. There’s nothing racially specific about summoning a golem, and the other skills fit with the mesmer or engineer professions. The only thing that bars this from happening are in game mechanics. It does open up the story and background possibilities for others, but it feels like asura lost something in the process.

From an in game standpoint, everything that I’ve seen gave me the impression that the Council would bar non-asura from the colleges for purely selfish reasons. After all, they were willing to keep vital information on the Elder Dragons to themselves to get a leg up on the rest of Tyria. It seems odd they’d be willing to share asuran knowledge to outsiders at all (for extra clarification, I think its entirely plausible that any of the other races are intelligent enough to get into the colleges; its just the Council’s selfish whims is what would keep them out. Thinking on this more, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Council devised some version of Jim Crow tests for other races to prove that they simply weren’t smart enough to attend in the guise of fairness)

I still love the asura from an aesthetic pov, but I really wish they had more development from a cultural standpoint. I want to see more asura get outside the genius box and show that they’re more than the role Anet has given to them in the game. I want to see an asura fashonista. I want to see an asura who’s a master chef. Right now all the emphasis is on asura intelligence and nothing else, so when that’s shown to be in jeopardy, it throws a wrench in the works. I hope Anet just gives them something that lets them stand a part from the other races.

And to be extra clear, I have no problem with lore changing or not being what I thought it was. In this instance it feels like it changed for the worse, with nothing to balance it out. I’m not angry at Anet or demanding they change it. I can accept that this is the way it is now, but I can still be bothered by it. [/b]

I agree it’s ridiculous that Scarlet supposedly attended all the colleges, or any for that matter, but I think the post kills itself when it starts wandering into racial skills and comparing them to other classes and then devolving into an Asura pity post. I don’t see this gross retcon negatively impacting the Asura lore as much as game lore and story quality overall. It’s just a very dumb thing they did and I’m just going to try and forget it ever happened, or just go straight into denial. Scarlet did not attend a college, period. Bad writing is bad, ignore it.

I’m human, so I don’t care about those snooty rats and their colleges. I have more important issues, like centaurs and this crazy salad thug putting bombs in my city.

On a more serious note, patience. In time, we’ll learn more about why/how. Hopefully. Seems like ANet just throws these stories out, and then tries to connect them. It’s like writing a book without knowing the ending yourself.

I totally understand where the writer is coming from. I found it very strange that they allowed a outsider into their colleges. Just from what we knew about the colleges it didn’t seem likely. And just to make a character out of no where seem to outclass the Asura’s that pride themselves on intelligence is strange too. I would think the Asura wouldn’t dare accept another race if they were smarter then them. :x But I am no expert on Asura lore.

But at the same time they needed some way to quickly identify to the player that hey this lady is super smart, and knows a lot about the sciences, etc. And that was one way to do it. Since the player is very aware of the colleges.

Only thing I can take from it is that I have the choice to believe that Scarlet’s “story” isn’t entirely canon or whatever. Though yes Aetherblades seem to be here to stay for the time being and she is still alive, so we will see her again.

I also find Scarlet able to attend asuran college very strang, it always occur to me those are racial specific thing, now it just reduce to something anyone can attend as long as he/she has enough money and IQ.

It will make far more sense if Scarlet is a priory scholar gone mad, since that’s the only multi-racial academy in Tyria, and where a sylvari most likely get expose to other race’s ideology.

But then again, if inquest is behind all this and the one pulling the strings, Scarlet may be one of their many defected experiments. Although that will be quite strange as well, why would they let her in charge of an army just so she can waste resource for the lolz.

Calm down will you?
We know almost nothing about her.

(1) There are a lot of theories involving her coming from the future, which would explain a lot. Maybe in the coming years the dragons will be defeated and the world will be restored to peace, the races will start sharing their cultures with each other because they’ve experienced hell together.

But because something else happend Scarlet was born as a biproduct of peace.

(2) Maybe an asura has created a machine to make it look like other people.

(3) It could also be some kind of evil mesmer creating illusions.

Either way, no need to cry a river because a character we know nothing about has appeared with knowledge of an asura

That college thing ruined what was a nice character. But you are going so far overboard.

Accept an Asura in the event flat out tells you she is some super-awesome hyper-intelligent Sylvari that attended all 3 colleges and everyone knows about. If she was from the future nobody would know about her. If it’s an Asura disguised as a Sylvari that just doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t change the fact that everyone thought she was a Sylvari and still somehow let her into the colleges, ditto on number 3.

About the only explanation I will “accept” is that the Asura guy was flat out wrong or lying to the player. In fact I’m pretty much dead set on that regardless of what the lore monkeys try and tell me from this point on.

Maybe they saw potential in her and accepted in their schools as an exception, for all we know they might have some kind of super hard exam to enter that usually only Asura are smart enough to complete and was the first time a non Asura managed to pass it, maybe she showed up every day in rata sum for years until the admision board grew tired of hearing “later, tater” every day and allowed her in. Maybe accepting some sylvari in the colleges (providing they are smart enough) was part of the peace offering when they returned Malomedies (first sylvari to get into contact with asura, inquest captured him and experimented on him, when the rest of the asura realized he was a sentient being they took him from the inquest and returned him to the grove with a peace offering, no details on what it was).

After all, we do have a small precedent, Flummox, the original builder of Mr Sparkles (Zojja’s golem) had a sylvari assistant, Sareb, to the point that he let her name the Golem (which he regreted later) and when he sold the remains to Zojja (after it exploded), gave Sareb part of the money which later she used to help fund Evon in the creation of the black lion store.

We’ll see if it’s explained in the following chapters.

I’m more curious why the Asuras did not spy, steal, and sabotage Scarlet. It’s so un-Asura-like.

And while I was writting my previous post, a new short story was posted talking about Scarlet’s backstory including her entrance to the colleges:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/short-story-what-scarlet-saw/?utm_source=client

Kudu experimented on Malomedies one of the firstborns who then brought mathematics to the sylvari. Scarlet is an experimentation. The mastermind imo isLazuras the Dire.