Guild Wars 2

Long-time player of Guild Wars 1 and 2 posting for perhaps the first time here.

There is some truly great stuff happening for the game as mentioned in Anatoli Ingram’s Hidden Arcana article today – particularly the idea of Revenants conversing with their legends, and so on. With all the wonderful immersive elements coming in Heart of Thorns, the following missed opportunity sticks out even more sharply:

“There’s no profession-specific story content planned for the expansion, but a brand-new revenant starting on their journey will not have had to visit the Mists or undergo any more of an advanced process to access revenant powers than they would for the other core professions… "

Now, there’s already an article wondering how on earth Anet is going to fit new Revenants into the world of Tyria, and I’m reasonably confident someone will come up with a response to that part of the question. (Please. Dear gods please.)

But, no new profession-specific story at all? Who cares that this hasn’t happened before; Heart of Thorns with the introduction of Elite Specializations is a perfect opportunity. Are you telling me that, rather than studying with Trahearne or Marjory, my necromancer is going to wake up on, say, September 30th, grab a few hero points or something, sit down with a mug of coffee and “discover” the Reaper? Are you telling me that my mesmer, reading his morning newspaper, is going to read a nice article about the mysteries of space-time and suddenly harness chronomancy on a whim? Or maybe my guardian, lacking a mentor in Tyria, will do some research on dark souls’ Dragonslayer Ornstein and, now having a role model, lumber off to fight Mordremoth?

Does anyone else see a major lore problem and lost opportunity here?

Lots of people have. The issue is the developers most likely didnt have the time to create entire new personal storylines to accomodate the new classes. theyve been working kitten developing HoT and the story of modremoth.

But how do you develop the new classes and disrupting lore? Its a conundrum.

I understand that, but how many story steps would be really necessary? For necromancer, it could be as simple as:

-Unlock open world dialogue with trahearne, gives mission in Story Journal
-Activate mission in story journal – “go kill Grenth Statue in Verdant Brink”
-go to the statue, complete brief combat instance*
-Return to trahearne, more open world dialogue, Reaper unlocked

Even that would be better than the morning-coffee situation.

Yea it is. in terms of no storyline for the Rev anyway. It didn’t have to be anything huge (although anything would require effort to develop), but something to recognize a player becoming this new thing called a revenant. Maybe a cutscene of how. Idk. Something

They would be welcome, but if they are finally missing, at least there will be a gap that player can fill with their imagination. O.ò

Two things:

A while ago, it was said that there were some regrets related to the personal story. One of these was that the professions weren’t more important/well introduced/explained in the story and that they hope to fix this with the revenant and specializations. I believe it was even said that unlocking elite specializations will be more story tied than unlocking skills, traits, etc. Something a bit on par to mastery unlocks.

The second was that so many people ended up playing the same personal story splits, so they want to avoid having additional story splits that restrict you from other storylines – instead as explained in this news post they’re making the choices more immediately impacting while making said instances replayable (like Season 2), thus while there’s no story split there’s many ways to go through each story step.

We already know that race will influence the story – with sylvari having the biggest change in the plot as they feel Mordremoth’s influence more directly – so I don’t see why professions and specializations won’t have a bigger influence. It’s just that if there is such, there won’t be a full storyline dedicated just to a profession/specialization like there was to having chosen the dead sister biography option.

How did your Mesmer learn his/her Mesmer skills? This was not shown either, and I’m assuming you filled in the blanks… do the same here.

Sylvain Ice.5827:

Now, there’s already an article wondering how on earth Anet is going to fit new Revenants into the world of Tyria, and I’m reasonably confident someone will come up with a response to that part of the question. (Please. Dear gods please.)

When the cleansing failed and Rytlock fell, he entered into The Mists. The Mists is an area that that exists outside of the world, connecting everything together – the future and the past. When Rytlock vanished from the world, he could have wandered for years, when in reality, it could have only been a few minutes. When he managed to escape, he caused a time distortion. From our perspective, he appears back in the world, but in the distortion, he came from the past. Rytlock was always a Revenant.

Considering what The Mists is, I really wouldn’t be surprised.

Sylvain Ice.5827:

Are you telling me that, rather than studying with Trahearne or Marjory, my necromancer is going to wake up on, say, September 30th, grab a few hero points or something, sit down with a mug of coffee and “discover” the Reaper?

I doubt they’d just throw it in. I suspect you’ll have to play through the content to actually unlock it. Instead of having individual stories, I’d expect to see a single generic one featuring them all, or at least an NPC in the world that you would have to train it from.

RabidCoqui.1983:

How did your Mesmer learn his/her Mesmer skills?

Mesmer school growing up.

Healix.5819:

Sylvain Ice.5827:

Now, there’s already an article wondering how on earth Anet is going to fit new Revenants into the world of Tyria, and I’m reasonably confident someone will come up with a response to that part of the question. (Please. Dear gods please.)

When the cleansing failed and Rytlock fell, he entered into The Mists. The Mists is an area that that exists outside of the world, connecting everything together – the future and the past. When Rytlock vanished from the world, he could have wandered for years, when in reality, it could have only been a few minutes. When he managed to escape, he caused a time distortion. From our perspective, he appears back in the world, but in the distortion, he came from the past. Rytlock was always a Revenant.

Considering what The Mists is, I really wouldn’t be surprised.

I suspect this equation will be the only explanation we will get and a more explicit explanation won’t be forthcoming.