Guild Wars 2

I was in the lore forum and due to a song posted there I came with an idea for a living world series. I wanted to elaborate more here.
This is the original plan:

But first…

Legal Disclaimer
I hereby declare my agreement that all the content ideas posted by me in this topic are freely usable by ArenaNet™ in any type of content like(but not limited to) patch releases, books and short stories.

I give up my copy rights about this ideas to ArenaNet™.

You know how legal disclaimers have a lot of useless information within. Things like please don’t use this ideas to create nuclear bombs or to commit terrorist acts. Well, I think this one is no exception.

I Just wanted to fill this space with meaningless words to make it dull and boring. But since I’m getting out of ideas I will sing a song: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow.

Now seriously… who’s the sick dude that uses a fantasy game plot to create a nuke?

Summary

Chapter 1: The Hoelbrak gathering.
The gathering begins and you can feel the mood in Hoelbrak. Songs, fires, drunken men all around the city.

• Honor Bear in barfights. (pvp activity)
• Honor Wolf by aiding the orphans. (item collecting)
• Honor Raven by learning about the lore of the Norn. (reading and taking tests)
• Honor Snow Leopard by exploring Hoelbrack (exploration, jumping puzzles, vistas, etc.)
• Boasting Contest at the Great lodge.

Chapter 2: The chipped tooth.
A great hero raises from each spirit lodge. All claim to have chipped the tooth.
But no one knows who’s telling the truth. The sons of Svanir are not happy.

• Finding out who’s the hero(investigation activity)
  The "hero" was an Asura that knew that a dented tooth of Jormag was all the Norn needed to go face the dragon. He's a whisper's agent. He dented the tooth with alchemy and very powerful tools. The truth cannot be told.
• Securing the north. (dynamic events change in Frostgorge Sound)

Chapter 3: Bear friends.

• Regaining balance. (a new path is added to Honor of the Waves in which you clear it from Jormag’s influence and Svanir’s presence)
• A new activity location is put where the claw of Jormag is and only when he’s not up.(a balance game. Thin paths with wind and other hazards that can make you lose balance) You help building better defenses against him with that activity. It is cooperative rather than competitive.

Chapter 4: The ice beyond.

• A new zone is opened north of Frostgorge Sound as friendly as Straits of Devastation, but with Jormag minions.
• The claw of jormag retreats from Frostgorge Sound to this new zone.
• You can spot Jormag flying from time to time to the north of this new zone (hinting the opening of a new zone in which you will face Jormag).

Chapter 1: The Hoelbrak Gathering.

The spirits are on the move. Bear, Wolf, Raven and even Snow Leopard have had enough of Jormag and his minions. They’ve gotten news about the defeat of Zhaitan and they’re calling all heroes to Hoelbrak where they’ll strengthen them, preparing all heroes for the upcoming march to the north.

This chapter is meant to get people used and prepared to the idea of attacking Jormag to the north. It has a festival theme and is full of activities meant to motivate and orientate and prepare people.

Honor Bear
The pvp fighting is the central theme here. Bear is strength and fury. You smash your enemies in barehand fights (similar to Kilroy’s dungeon back in gw1) you earn achievement points based on battles won and you can boast in battle to earn extra points, meaning you cannot hit or defend while boasting, but it raises your morale.
This is not an hp fight it is a morale fight.

Honor Wolf
The theme here is the pack and the hunt. So this activity will send you all over the world hunting for a specific prey that is needed for the wolf lodge. To aid the orphans of the north. Wolf spirit would guide you to the prey. This is a group boss activity for 5 – 10 players. You will be queued to a party that will go out in the hunt of the pray you need. The hunt itself is instanced and can be joined cross server.

Honor Raven
The theme here is knowledge and wits. The priests of Raven had gathered too and they want the mind of the heroes to be prepared for the upcoming challenge. Unlike the questions an asura would make, this is not scientific stuff. It’s all about history, lore and riddles (it would demand a great amount of random riddles and questions to be displayed so you could not cheat it so easily). Raven spirit would guide you to the sources of lore(specific npc’s around the world.)

Honor Snow Leopard
The theme here is exploration. You need to climb and/or explore specific spots guided by Snow Leopard spirit.

Boasting Activity
Through all the previous activities you gain aside from achievement points, boasting points. You have a boasting score and you can use it in a boasting duel (similar to the brew duel) with other people. The winner makes progress in the boasting achievement which is the meta achievement. You can only win a boasting contest with the same player once a day.

The spirit honoring activities are built so you can win points doing a little of every activity or focusing in one or two. The important thing here is your boasting score, so you can win boasting contests.

Chapter 2: The Chipped Tooth.

This patch would be much like the one with which the aetherblades were revealed.
But the main event would be that one morning the tooth of Jormag appeared chipped.

Hoelbrak is in chaos, in a good way. Everyone is wondering who’s the hero and what will happen now. Destiny’s edge pay the tooth a visit and Eir regrets not having chipped the tooth herself.

An investigation begins. You need to gather clues guided by all the 4 spirits.
You need to beat information out of a very stubborn eye witness(he was half drunk when he saw the event anyway).

Raven will help you figure out the meaning of the information you’ve just gathered by guiding you to the right npc’s all over the world. A potent agent can be made to reproduce the damage made to the tooth. This leads you to a hunt around some maps guided by wolf in order to gather some reagents.

The rarest of the reagents are provided by snow Leopard’s Guidance. The spirit will lead you through jumping puzzles, vistas and enemy mazes (if the enemies follow you to the end of the maze, you fail. You cannot kill them either. You need to manipulate them to fight each other and stall them using the terrain).

Finally you’re ready to try your explosive agent on the tooth when you get interrupted by a Norn that leads you to a solitary corner outside the lodge. There’s only but an Asura there. He explains the whole story.

He deviced the formula by an order of whisper’s customer. The whole point was to create the false idea that there’s a hero out there. The pact wanted the Norn to go full-hardy on this because they knew the other races would follow them and it was they only way to unite them in battle. They’ve planted 4 false heroes, one in every lodge, that will claim to have chipped the tooth.

They didn’t want just one hero. That would only gather a portion of the population. The Norn are willing to believe in a hero that chipped the tooth anyway. So they will have a hero for each kind of personality within the Norn.

You march to the northern part of Frostgorge Sound with the Norn and the pact and you open a path to the north near Drakkar WP. The spawn of Jormag start coming through there. Drakkar is seen flying north of it.

There are 3 new outposts that can be taken by the pact or by the dragonspawn, depending on player’s activity.

Chapter 3: Bear friends.

The time to get the fight forward has come. But the heroes need to get rid of the most immediate menaces. These are the Claw of Jormag and the sons of Svanir inside the Kodan cities.

Honor of the Waves’ new path
A new path opens in Honor of the Waves. The story of this path takes place after the defeat of the butcher, the plunderer and the zealot. The remaining sons of Svanir are performing a ritual to corrupt the Voice of Koda and destabilize the kodan society.

Several icebrood have broken into the inner city and they’re securing the place while the sons of Svanir perform the ritual. You need to go through endless ice creatures with the help of asuran alchemy (do you remember the little guy who dented the tooth?). This path is 50% regular fight and 50% terrain mechanics (destructible bridges, bombs, falling icicles, etc.).

The parts of the dungeon are focused on the spirits that guide you rather than the enemies you face. Bear and wolf guide your regular fight part. Raven and Snow leopard guide the terrain usage part. The spirits never fight, they just tell you what to do, buff you a little and trigger some events inside the dungeon.

When you finally disrupt the ritual, the inner city is free of Jormag presence, but at the price of the Voice and the Claw of Koda.

Open world activity
The spirits want both kodan society to be stabilized again and the claw of Jormag gone from Frostgorge Sound.

The spirit device a ritual in order to summon Koda herself. For this patch duration, heroes will have access to it. It is a test of balance that will help the kodan raise a new Voice and Claw of Koda and that will create a very hostile terrain for the Claw of Jormag.

This test consists on a jumping puzzle that will keep growing the more people completes it. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to complete. It’ll have chests on 33%, 66% and 100% of the full length of it.

If the puzzle is fully built when the claw of Jormag strikes. The event will go straight to phase 2. A powerful wind will put the claw to the ground and shatter its wings. Resetting the puzzle by destroying it.

Chapter 4: The ice beyond.

A new zone is opened north of Frostgorge Sound. Let’s call it Drakkar’s Glacier.
It has 4 paths to make war against the icebrood. Like Straits of devastation. Each path is guided by a different spirit.

Bear pushes you to go kill creatures by yourself and take posts by raw force and pure damage.

Wolf guides you along with other heroes (group events that only start when enough people has signed in and are in range of wolf spirit) to attack as a pack and destroy the icebrood as one.

Raven shows you how to trick the icebrood into traps and use the terrain and their own blood-lust in your advantage.

Snow Leopard leads you to circumvent battle and shows you the back door of Drakkar’s Lair. It involves jumping puzzles and commando like sneaking through enemies.

Once every spirit has arrived to the lair a boss event is triggered. Drakkar rises from within the ice, breaking the glacier, to fight you and he has the help of a wounded-wingless claw of Jormag. The fight has 3 phases:

• Knock out the Claw.
  The claw wants to defend Drakkar’s lair with all its remaining strength. But it’s been wounded and is very weak in comparison with its former self.

• Fight the minions.
  Once the Claw is down. Thousands of minions come out from the ice within the cave. They were fused with the walls. All 4 spirits guide this phase. Heroes need to use the terrain, to hold places with numbers, to fight some elites with deadly strength and to sneak into the cave and make collapse parts of it to prevent more icebrood to come out.

• Fight Drakkar.
  When most of the Icebrood are gone. Drakkar rises, very angry. The ground shatters and everyone caught in the the blast is launched hundreds of yards away (to die by falling damage). The closest you’ll get to fly in GW2.

A big hole remains where Drakkar once was. You cannot hurt him normally in this last phase (not in any way that is meaningful).

The main objective is to put explosive charges over Drakkar’s body. The battle ends if enough charges are planted over its body. The pact will detonate them.

There will be 3 tasks to do:

• One group needs to keep it rooted to the ground by reforcing some Deldrimor steel shackles.
• The second group will attach explosive charges to its body.
• The third group will inflict pain climbing on its back and attacking some soft spots.

There will be 2 consequences:

• Drakkar will attack the people who’s placing the charges and the shackles if enough pain isn’t inflicted. Otherwise it will attack the people on the back, but very inefficiently.

• Drakkar will take off shaking all charges and players from its back(yup, you better find the closest way point and run back) if the shackles aren’t strong enough. You’ll have a small chance to grab a shackle on your way down if you manage to direct your fall to one of its claws. If you were on the wings or the tail when it takes off, this won’t be possible for you.

When the time is up, a huge wave of icebrood will flow from the ice crater it made and the spirits will retire to the beginning of the zone to plan a new attack.

If players manage to defeat it on time, it will roar and dig a hole into the ice through which it will escape. Aside from the chest players will have access for a while to a surplus of minerals from the cave it just dug.

The icebrood will eventually flood from the cave and will make the spirits retreat. This will reset the event. Players can extend the duration of the cave access by doing some dynamic events but after a given number of time extensions, the spirits will retreat no matter what the players do.

You can spot Jormag flying from time to time to the north of this new zone (hinting the opening of a new zone in which you will face Jormag).

This sums all up. I’ll be waiting for your comments.

Not a single comment…
Don’t you like this idea?
Don’t you have an idea of your own?
Wouldn’t you change anything?

I really like the idea mate. Norn areas are currently the least explored ones and a story like this can really bring a lot of activity in norn areas. Besides I am bored with the same old plots generating from Lions Arch. This will be a move in furthering the story lines of races of Tyria. And I really dont know why Anet is looking to introduce new story lines with that play house Sylvari (forgot the name), Molten alliance and Aeitherblades.

They all seem to me like side plots and nothing really happening to the more pressing threat that was the dragons about which this whole game was advertised with. A step in this direction from developers will really be appreciated. thank you for this wonderful post, really enjoyed reading it and keep up the good work.

Thanks for the encouragement ^^
I made some order and added a feature to Drakkar’s fight.

I wish they do something like this. It’d be so epic…

returning the bumping favour