Guild Wars 2

How does Death fit into THIS game’s Lore? As there are too many loopholes from what my research tells me. I try to place the lore of GW1 and GW2 together trying to figure out.

Aside from the mechanical stand point. we know Grenth is the god of darkness, ice, and death. But due to the absence of the Six Gods, resurrection and returning from death are unexplained effects – no one can truly die? or should be permanently dead? or even yet, resurrection from death into the form of undeath like the Orrians?

The devs saying ‘deaths’ is actually a ‘downed’ state resulting in ‘defeated’ which allows a more ‘flexible’ choice of formatting plot (such as ‘you cannot revive someone anymore if they’re dead, namely NPCs) ~ BUT THAT DOES NOT EXPLAIN the “/deaths” macro/control/input which shows your death count upon ‘defeated’.

Another matter is ~ death and resurrecting to a waypoint. How does that work? We know that waypoints are created by the Asura by ‘chance’ across the Ley Lines which flow from the Magic of the Dragons but they do not explain or leave any hints on how that works.

Although I tried to summarise the plethora of research over the net I’ve covered from the top of my head, I surely may have missed some stuff. The /deaths, deaths and ‘resurrection’ and of resurrection does not fit into the world, or doesn’t make sense to me. Should anyone provide key insight into this matter would be awesome (and not say “it’s a game mechanics thing”)

A good game has ‘ok’ mechanics and lore. A great game has a harmonised lore and mechanics that revolve around each other.

Look up the webcomic ‘Crushed: The Doomed Kitty’. Episode 1 explains it well enough

Hmm…

Well, it certainly made more sense in GW1, where you could ressurect at a shrine (that would often have a priest/priestess nearby).

I’ve always found it odd how Asuran transport technology can bring you back to life. There’s probably some nefarious twist to the tale, like they’re actually cloning you every time you waypoint, so they can use your clones and genetic material in some hideous lab experiment…

I prefer to think of it a little like The Secret World. When you WP after death, it is as if your anima has left your body and gone back to a place where it can gather itself up and reform. Leyline hubs (World Roots in TSW) are as good as any a mechanic to reanimate.

Player characters don’t die. If you are defeated, you are near death, but you are not dead. Waypointing is essentially retreating to safety. The /deaths command uses that command because it’s intuitive and easy to understand – it doesn’t mean that the character would actually have died all those times. Death is permanent from story point of view – though dragon corruption can reanimate the dead with their memories.

What happened to the resurrection methods of the first game lorewise was never quite elaborated on.

Tyrian lore doesn’t address player immortality. I wish it did, I love game play and lore resonance. We are left wondering what it is that makes our characters special and it does matter. Why do we continue and other NPC heroes die? Why do NPC deaths result in NPC ghosts?

The devs explanation isn’t terrible if we do weird things with time similar to how single player RPGs handle player death without engaging immortality hax. Essentially when you die you revert back to a saved location, essentially reverting back to an earlier time. In GW2s case you would revert back to the last time you were at a WP. Until then you are defeated.

My personal PC immortality theory/rp: we are rejected or can not enter the mists or where ever ghosts/souls normally go.

I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on /deaths, the devs could simply rename it /defeats.

Tuomir.1830:

Player characters don’t die. If you are defeated, you are near death, but you are not dead. Waypointing is essentially retreating to safety. The /deaths command uses that command because it’s intuitive and easy to understand – it doesn’t mean that the character would actually have died all those times. Death is permanent from story point of view – though dragon corruption can reanimate the dead with their memories.

What happened to the resurrection methods of the first game lorewise was never quite elaborated on.

That explanation doesn’t explain why so many NPCs die. Are they too slow on the WPing?

I am curious why it is necessary to believe your character actually died… you are basically reloading from a very lenient check point system and that is all I really need to know. When you die, you end up in the Mists, the player characters don’t die.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeated
“During the beta stages this status was referred as “death” in several descriptions. This change reflects the fact in lore that resurrections are no longer as easy since the Human Gods pulled back their avatars and ceased direct interaction with Tyria. Because of this, defeated players are never considered to be dead in lore."

Kinda meh but it is official lore.

/deaths command is there because game runs on gw1 engine.

Schurge.5194:

I am curious why it is necessary to believe your character actually died… you are basically reloading from a very lenient check point system and that is all I really need to know. When you die, you end up in the Mists, the player characters don’t die.

A bit about myself – im a recent GW2 player, lore-serious and a light-RP player who seeks to actively immerse oneself into the lore of the game. Currently over the expanse of my time in GW2 350+ hours in ‘no death’ runs, because i reset due the to fact death does NOT fit into the lore of the game – yet to progess past lvl 57. And by abiding theses strict rules, it gives a more deeper meaning to my character)

GuzziHero.2467:

I prefer to think of it a little like The Secret World. When you WP after death, it is as if your anima has left your body and gone back to a place where it can gather itself up and reform. Leyline hubs (World Roots in TSW) are as good as any a mechanic to reanimate.

As alluring the idea is, I wish to stick with the current world of GW2’s lore.

Psientist.6437:

Tyrian lore doesn’t address player immortality. I wish it did, I love game play and lore resonance. We are left wondering what it is that makes our characters special and it does matter. Why do we continue and other NPC heroes die? Why do NPC deaths result in NPC ghosts?

The devs explanation isn’t terrible if we do weird things with time similar to how single player RPGs handle player death without engaging immortality hax. Essentially when you die you revert back to a saved location, essentially reverting back to an earlier time. In GW2s case you would revert back to the last time you were at a WP. Until then you are defeated.

My personal PC immortality theory/rp: we are rejected or can not enter the mists or where ever ghosts/souls normally go.

I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on /deaths, the devs could simply rename it /defeats.

Could be only me, the /deaths count keep me up at night (as we speak). And the difference if they changed to /defeats without a doubt, will heavily change (i think) the rp community (moreover the solo rp’ers). The back-in-time savepoint (a good example is Bioshock <3 series) is a sound way of saying it, but to me, the /deaths conflict with it heavily.

I actually made a character for RP to answer the question, at least how I see it.

When you tag a waypoint for the first time, it attunes to you somewhat. It “remembers” you. Then, when you’re horribly injured, you teleport back to a waypoint that remembers you and emergency systems kick in and try to reassemble you closer to your remembered state. It’s not perfect, though. It’s like gluing together a broken vase, until your “glue” sets, you’re just stuck together and not really fully recovered. Thus, the lingering frailty after recovering in that way.

Now, all of this hinges upon someone’s ability to attune to the energies in waypoints, but nobody says that everyone is as good at it as you are. There are some people that simply have a greater potential for interacting with these special energies in the world around them and reshaping them. Some may suggest that this is why some people seem to be destined to be “heroes” (or “villains”), and others not, even if the amount of effort both put in is the same. Those with a greater ability to reshape the world around themselves have a much easier time using waypoints to save themselves than others, allowing them to almost automatically save themselves at the last minute. Those less able to reshape the energies are more likely to be unable to use the waypoint system in this manner, and are far more likely to wind up dead.

Joan of Arc.1542:

Psientist.6437:

Tyrian lore doesn’t address player immortality. I wish it did, I love game play and lore resonance. We are left wondering what it is that makes our characters special and it does matter. Why do we continue and other NPC heroes die? Why do NPC deaths result in NPC ghosts?

The devs explanation isn’t terrible if we do weird things with time similar to how single player RPGs handle player death without engaging immortality hax. Essentially when you die you revert back to a saved location, essentially reverting back to an earlier time. In GW2s case you would revert back to the last time you were at a WP. Until then you are defeated.

My personal PC immortality theory/rp: we are rejected or can not enter the mists or where ever ghosts/souls normally go.

I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on /deaths, the devs could simply rename it /defeats.

Could be only me, the /deaths count keep me up at night (as we speak). And the difference if they changed to /defeats without a doubt, will heavily change (i think) the rp community (moreover the solo rp’ers). The back-in-time savepoint (a good example is Bioshock <3 series) is a sound way of saying it, but to me, the /deaths conflict with it heavily.

People like you demonstrate why narrative resonance is important. That is a compliment. Now go to sleep.

I get the allure behind no death runs and Roleplayers aren’t the only ones who do them… however is it really all that hard to grasp that your character never died? He / she isn’t defeated and comes back, the story requires that you live. The only death is in the Mists, but in the Mists everyone keeps coming back as it operates like Valhalla.

There must be some sort of OCD element here because I’ve role-played in old school MMOs (no desire to touch those communities every again) and if you died from a mob you just continued where you left off after the corpse run. The only perma-deaths were planned and either involved PvP or a dice roll. Since anyone could kill you anywhere you kind of had to get over dieing, PKKers would try to come gank you while you were RPing, you kill them and everyone acts as if it never happened and continues the story.

Lore wise you aren’t dieing, you are just doing it wrong and have to try it again until you get it right… that’s it.

Trying to make sense of death in an MMORPG. Wow.

It’s like time travel. If you went back and time and we your own parent…

But no, I’ll vote for the nefarious Asura outcome. Somewhere you’re real character is screaming insane gibberish that they’re the real you next to another of you doing just the same while an Asura Psychologist stands by saying, “See here. This one is doing quite well with their situation. Thirty-two days before signs of disparate complexes began to appear. Our last one only lasted fourteen days. Subject Zero went mad at seventy-two days, though I suppose we’ll never know for sure if that was its maximal tolerance since Zarh …” said in the voice of Phlunt.

Alternate dumb explanation that dawned on me during the living story.

“The mists” are basically the netherworld where all the spirits of the dead go, right?

There is literally a door to the netherworld smack dab in the middle of a busy city in the center of Tyria!

A player that dies, just wakes up in the mists and walks out of the kitten Asura gate. We’re ALL Revenenants.

…Okay, lore-wise not really, obviously.

But still, when Rytlock jumped into the mists portal, that was my first reaction.
While Rox’s reaction was “Oh no, how will he return from the mists!?”
Mine was “Uh… I go to the mists on a daily basis. For fun. There’s a door that goes straight there right in town. Common, let’s just hop in there, and you can look for him while I knock out my PvP dalies.”

It’s just a game play mechanic and not one that should be viewed as some kind of canonical plot element.

The game could not work without players reviving like Grenth is your personal BFF. It’s no different than any other game that doesn’t have “perma death” design.

We might as well bust out a chair and start to wax philosophical on our characters’ apparent lack of the basic life necessities like food, water, and sleep among the multitudes of logical inconsistencies.

Why can I rapid fire a flint lock pistol?
Where do my arrows come from?
Why is there not an arrow in my hand when I fire the bow at all?
Where do all these throwing axes come from?
Why does anyone walk anywhere when it costs pennies to teleport across the known world instantly?
Why does my sword never need sharpening?
Why can I breathe under water indefinitely even without a mask?
Why did we wait nearly a year to see what happened to the Maguma expedition?
Why can I run for literal hours with no fatigue but get winded after 2 somersaults?
Why can a 2" tall Asura hit as hard as a 10" tall, 600lbs of muscle, Norn?
Why do enemies suddenly reappear out of thin air after I defeat them?
Why is a brick gold worth far less than a single coin of gold?
Why is a full suit of steel plate mail only marginally more protective than a silk ballgown?
Why is stabbing someone with a knife more damaging than hitting them with a meteor or a massive hammer/sword?

And the ever classic:
Where did this wildlife get all this loot/gold?

Psientist.6437:

Tuomir.1830:

Player characters don’t die. If you are defeated, you are near death, but you are not dead. Waypointing is essentially retreating to safety. The /deaths command uses that command because it’s intuitive and easy to understand – it doesn’t mean that the character would actually have died all those times. Death is permanent from story point of view – though dragon corruption can reanimate the dead with their memories.

What happened to the resurrection methods of the first game lorewise was never quite elaborated on.

That explanation doesn’t explain why so many NPCs die. Are they too slow on the WPing?

Technically, using a waypoint requires you to be under one – the player character’s trek to the nearest waypoint is omitted, but whenever an NPC uses one, they have to be under another. So to answer your question – the player character manages to narrowly escape death by crawling to the nearest waypoint – the NPCs who die, die, and can’t crawl anywhere. Most allied NPCs end up defeated, not dead, once their HP runs out – knocked out, wounded, incapable of fighting or moving, but not dead. One would assume that given enough time, they could crawl to safety, but since the game mechanics omit this part of the waypointing from defeated, we don’t see that happening.

I’ve always assumed that it was Rez Signets from GW1 becoming standard issue gear with a few tweaks: the passive is the ability to revive someone in critical condition, the active is the ability to teleport to a waypoint when in critical danger.

when someone is actually Dead Dead, they can’t be revived, but those who are Only Mostly Dead are able to be revived via signet.

Arioso.8519:

Alternate dumb explanation that dawned on me during the living story.

“The mists” are basically the netherworld where all the spirits of the dead go, right?

There is literally a door to the netherworld smack dab in the middle of a busy city in the center of Tyria!

A player that dies, just wakes up in the mists and walks out of the kitten Asura gate. We’re ALL Revenenants.

…Okay, lore-wise not really, obviously.

But still, when Rytlock jumped into the mists portal, that was my first reaction.
While Rox’s reaction was “Oh no, how will he return from the mists!?”
Mine was “Uh… I go to the mists on a daily basis. For fun. There’s a door that goes straight there right in town. Common, let’s just hop in there, and you can look for him while I knock out my PvP dalies.”

the mists are BIG, almost infinite in fact, looking would be impractical at best.

to teleport using the mists, you need to use a point in the very middle called The Rift, from there you can go anywhere else in the mists, anywhere in any universe in fact, all places are equidistant from The Rift.

when Rytlock got dumped into the mists, he most likely had no easy way of reaching The Rift to get back (he COULD use an asura gate if he stumbled across one, but he’d have no way of knowing when, where, or what universe he’d wind up in), when he became a Revenant, he learned how to access The Rift from anywhere, and used it to teleport himself back to the exact place and time he wanted.

Tuomir.1830:

Psientist.6437:

Tuomir.1830:

Player characters don’t die. If you are defeated, you are near death, but you are not dead. Waypointing is essentially retreating to safety. The /deaths command uses that command because it’s intuitive and easy to understand – it doesn’t mean that the character would actually have died all those times. Death is permanent from story point of view – though dragon corruption can reanimate the dead with their memories.

What happened to the resurrection methods of the first game lorewise was never quite elaborated on.

That explanation doesn’t explain why so many NPCs die. Are they too slow on the WPing?

Technically, using a waypoint requires you to be under one – the player character’s trek to the nearest waypoint is omitted, but whenever an NPC uses one, they have to be under another. So to answer your question – the player character manages to narrowly escape death by crawling to the nearest waypoint – the NPCs who die, die, and can’t crawl anywhere. Most allied NPCs end up defeated, not dead, once their HP runs out – knocked out, wounded, incapable of fighting or moving, but not dead. One would assume that given enough time, they could crawl to safety, but since the game mechanics omit this part of the waypointing from defeated, we don’t see that happening.

Then Tyrians live in a world where enemies never kill anyone or where every battle can be crawled away from. Your rationale works really well for parties. If at least one person is left standing, defeated players/NPCs have the opportunity to crawl away.

Eirdyne.9843:

It’s like time travel. If you went back and time and we your own parent…

But no, I’ll vote for the nefarious Asura outcome. Somewhere you’re real character is screaming insane gibberish that they’re the real you next to another of you doing just the same while an Asura Psychologist stands by saying, “See here. This one is doing quite well with their situation. Thirty-two days before signs of disparate complexes began to appear. Our last one only lasted fourteen days. Subject Zero went mad at seventy-two days, though I suppose we’ll never know for sure if that was its maximal tolerance since Zarh …” said in the voice of Phlunt.

Reverting to a checkpoint makes the whole world travel back in time. They work really well in single player scenarios, like instances, less well in persistent settings. Thankfully, persistent settings are public settings where the defeated as ‘crawling away time’ logic works best.

Deaths at a waypoint is a mechanics thing. Not lore.

grenth is the God of death and cold. Not darkness(although one could speculate)

Un death is necromancy. And necromancy on a once sentient being is a huge no no(looking at you palawa joko)

Death. As of now. Is pretty permanent. Grenth has been gone a looooong time and resurrection hasn’t been done in a long time as well.
The downed state and defeated isn’t lore

Game mechanics aren’t lore.

Also, this would be better answered in the lore forum where people are a wee more knowledgable on those aspects of the game.

Ephemiel.5694:

Trying to make sense of death in an MMORPG. Wow.

No this is Guild Wars 2, go over to their forums

As for the OP, going on what others have said as well, you don’t die. Defeated is to be taken literally, I remember a thread like this a long time ago in which someone posted a quote by a dev. Loosely paraphrasing, defeated sounds cooler and more heroic, also Grenth isn’t really having any of us right now, so your character is in more of a critical condition than dead. Now the main counter to this is /deaths to which it says “You have died X times”. You’re supposed to ignore this. Now as to how a waypoint recovers you is all up for speculation

I may be totally wrong, but the way I understood it, in Guild Wars 1, Dhuum (the god of death before Grenth) did not tolerate resurrection or undeath at any cost; however, when Grenth overthrew him, he allowed certain mortals to return to life if they died; our player characters were part of this special group.

In Guild Wars 2, the way I see it, resurrection is no longer commonplace with the retreat of the gods. So, being “defeated” (I don’t think Anet calling it “defeated” rather than “dead” is an accident) means you’ve been incapacitated, not killed. Waypointing requires some suspension of disbelief; I choose to believe that my character at some point regains consciousness long enough to activate an Asura waypoint, which are usually safe locations; upon arriving there, he can recuperate.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, but that’s how I see it.