Guild Wars 2

Is there merit in creating alliances between such horrible factions? Could they learn a measure of trust this way? Or at the very least, learn the benefit of cooperation? Could Scarlett be said to be unifying Tyeria in her own fashion?

It would be rather sad if the various alliances just disintegrated after Scarlett left.
A major annoyance I had with cartoon and comic book villains was: that once a plan failed, for any reason, they discarded it as worthless and never tried to improve it or reuse parts of it in any fashion.

It would be interesting if they tried other alliances in the future. The dredge are former slaves who have no qualms about enslaving other races, I could see them making an alliance with the Kraite. Especially since the two groups occupy totally different spheres. They have common enemies and won’t squabble to much over territory when dividing up the spoils. There could be alliances of political or ideological alignments, not just elemental ones.

Since the alliances are obviously more powerful than the original factions, I really think they would recognize the stupidity of back-peddling to a weaker position. It would be interesting if this spawned other separatist type factions. Lol do you try to help the original flame legion try to break up the molten alliance? How do you do so without them knowing? How do you feel about aiding an enemy for any reason?

I don’t want Scarlett to be the only lynch-pin holding these groups together. Scarlett may have tricked, persuaded, or coerced these factions into alliance, but it would just be beyond stupid for them to decide to go their separate ways once more. I do not want the cop-out that being evil makes them stupid. Nor do I want the other cop-out that cooperation is just to alien a concept for these groups. They are groups after all, they do know how to cooperate.

I am actually disappointed that the alliances didn’t merge with each other.

Thoughts?

I agree with your thought process completely.

However, I am just sick of X/Y alliance 2 week arc
W/Z alliance 2 week arc
etc
etc
etc

Sure I would find it cool if they touched back on them in like a YEAR but seriously. Just give the combo alliances a rest for a bit pretty please.

Well no, I was actually wanting the new factions to carve out their own territories, much like the toxic alliance in gendarrian fields. Even if the tower is destroyed, they could hang around the area, since they have pretty much err….“terraformed?” it to suit their toxic needs.

I mean sylvari are constantly fighting off nightmare court who try to take over sylvari holdings. The flame legion is constantly poluting a couple of lakes, and players are constantly preventing this or cleaning up tar and killing tar elementals. The toxic alliance should constantly be attacking players and npcs who try to inoculate gendarian fields. That group should be a permanent, if diminished, fixture within that area.

Perhaps some of the moletariate should have fiery areas, and the npcs should be concerned about their “corrupted,” brethren. Much like Norns with the Sons of Svanir. The splinter group tolerated by the original group, The norns and the sons both live in Hoelbrak after all…

The only relevant alliances in the Guild Wars universe are the Luxons and Kurzicks.

#Turtlenaughtpower

Alliances that have substance and meaning are the only alliances I’ll ever subscribe to and care for. Personally, I’ve missed most of the LS with finishing my degree and since I’m back I have no idea what’s going on. However, I have read summaries and can safely say… nothing has occurred that even remotely makes me feel a sense of awe or amazement at the awesomeness of the Guild Wars 2 universe. So much depth from the first game/books/lore…… and we get these random, off the wall LS scenarios…. So, I couldn’t care if the alliances vanished into thin air. I’ll just pretend they never happened and hopefully they come out with something that adds actual depth to Tyria.

I hope you meant vicious instead because now I’m thinking of Inquest/Tar Elementals joining up and calling themselves “The Motor Oil Alliance”.
Alliances that last are built on the idea of each side benefiting from something the other has and the promise not to destroy each other in the process.

Flame Legion and Dredge, even though they were fringe elements worked in some small way. One had tech but no magic, the other magical but little to no technology.
Yes it was inevitable that one would plan to conquer the other, that’s what you get with most villains.

Even the Aetherblade/Pinquest had some usefulness together. Pirates like money and could be easily used as hired guns for mad scientists with no ethics.
That would probably last longer compared to the earlier alliance described.

The one I still have hang ups with is anyone working with the Krait.
The Lore, I know silly me for reading that, suggested that if the Krait are a factor then you are either lunch or a sacrifice to their god.

Now I could see the Krait coming up to power on their own and striking out while the Court did their own thing in the wake of it. The key there is the Court would be dancing around the Krait while still doing whatever they were planning.

I do like the idea that maybe elements in the Flame Legion would hunt down Molten.
Then again I love internal conflicts in storylines and multiple story threads going on, so I am a bit biased.

For 2014 I want to see things happen without Scarlet’s interference. Let the Hylek of different colors ally to kill off Krait or trample on Skritt for a while, for example.
The main thing is don’t let things like this require the outside “help” of some outsider salad. Brisbain already has an evil trinity of Bandit/Inquest/Court, why couldn’t they have expanded on that?!

I predict that the alliances will simply fall apart, and be discarded shortly after this arc is over (like the OP fears). I’d love to be proven wrong though. But so far the writing has been rather shallow. No offense to the writing team, but I think its fair criticism.

It would be interesting if these alliances actually had a sort of follow up story, and perhaps switched sides after being abandoned by Scarlet.

Personally, I hope that they by and large fall apart. I hope Kessex is restored. I pretty much want anything and everything Scarlet related to be gone.

THEN, some time down the road, you can have someone start digging around. Have someone (and they don’t have to be a villain to start with) start trying to uncover parts of what Scarlet created. Salvage a crashed Aetherblade ship in the mountains. Dig up a weapons cache from the Molten Alliance. Uncover one of the obelisk shards Scarlet claimed to have, along with some research notes about it. (Do please leave the toxic plant stuff out of it, it seems too random and untargetable with how it spreads.)

They start to use what they’ve uncovered, making a force that’s all their own. Maybe recruit a few dissatisfied dredge and flame legion to help remake the molten stuff, and some charr and asura to help with the airship. They rebuild some of the watchwork knights, fixing the flaws that Scarlet exploited and arming them with their new weapons. They make their presence known, and even if their intentions are good, they get a bad reaction from people, sparking a conflict that grows out of control.

Bang. New “villain” faction with more potential to it than the current ones, because there’s greater chance for moral conflict as they don’t have to be evil. Lots of the old stuff returning, without the Scarlet problems.

Yeah that’s my fear as well Mad Queen Malafide.
Most of these worked for her “because they liked to live”.
She ruled by fear and “because story willed it”, when she dies chances are they won’t hold up much longer.

The one good thing I could see is maybe some smaller groups from the previous alliances work together on their own after the fallout.

Then we could have small guilds working or fighting each other and the players.
Sort of like a war of guilds, a Guild Wars if you permit.