Guild Wars 2

Hello all, I’ve realized recently that we might have an even harder time in HoT when we first start out besides just dealing with Mordy.

In the very nice cut-scene we saw at the end of S2 we witnessed the pact fly over the Maguuma Jungle. We heard Trahearne yell “Fire!” and a barrage of cannon fire rains down on the forest. From what I can tell Mordy wasn’t the only one with presence in those trees. Other species like the Itzel may have been hit with our fire and may be upset with us for wrongfully attacking them.

This makes sense because of the Mastery system. In some cases with the lore mastery we can’t even trade with the races until we can communicate with them, but some masteries say once we gain their trust we gain access to their secret areas for rewards. This is exciting because we’ll really have to interact with the new races to get anywhere with them because we didn’t get off to the right start which can create an even deeper and rich story for us when we enter the jungle!

This might be a reason they give for the lack of trust, but it might not also. Using history as an indicator, tribal cultures are, often out of necessity, very closed-off from and untrusting of other tribes/cultures. I’m sure that the pact ships crashing into their forest didn’t help the cause, so there may be something there.

I imagine there might be a mixed bag of reactions from the different tribes and NPCs, or at least I hope this is the case. I think it makes each interaction more interesting.

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

DocZed.6973:

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

That is how warfare works though.
You have a general target. You hit general target with bombs.
Just look at some pictures how London and Berlin looked by the end of WWII.

Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

lordkrall.7241:

DocZed.6973:

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

That is how warfare works though.
You have a general target. You hit general target with bombs.
Just look at some pictures how London and Berlin looked by the end of WWII.

Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nope. Trahearne’s attack was nonsense, just like the non-defense of the Pact base in the Silverwastes was nonsense. I’ve already written about it on these forums, not going to go through it all again. Look it up if you feel inclined to disagree.

“Fire!” was all about making a dramatic cutscene. That’s it, and that’s all.

How was it nonsense?

They don’t know exactly where Mordremoth is. They know the general area where it is assumed to be. Thus they do a large-scale attack on said general area to weaken the enemy forces before the ground-assault.

More or less exactly how bombing-runs works in real-life wars.

Tachenon.5270:

lordkrall.7241:

DocZed.6973:

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

That is how warfare works though.
You have a general target. You hit general target with bombs.
Just look at some pictures how London and Berlin looked by the end of WWII.

Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nope. Trahearne’s attack was nonsense, just like the non-defense of the Pact base in the Silverwastes was nonsense. I’ve already written about it on these forums, not going to go through it all again. Look it up if you feel inclined to disagree.

“Fire!” was all about making a dramatic cutscene. That’s it, and that’s all.

!?

Bro do you even war?

If you have an idea that an enemy controls a large general area,The SAFEST thing you can do is weaken that force as much as possible before you start a ground campaign.
This is what the pact attempted to do.
What I think may have happened is that a sylvari with the whispers went deeper into the jungle, got corrupted and gave false intel as to how deep the jungle was.
With what we know now. Carpet bombing would do minimal damage to the forces below, but much more to the ones residing in the top. and mid-sections
( also everyone realize trahearne is not the only thinker for the pact, as we have the vigil, and whispers who give intel and strategies on warfare).

Heh. Would you have committed the entirety of your forces to that one big dramatic all out attack?

Tachenon.5270:

Heh. Would you have committed the entirety of your forces to that one big dramatic all out attack?

Generals have done it in the past in the real world, so.. they always look like fools, but they have done it.

Tachenon.5270:

Heh. Would you have committed the entirety of your forces to that one big dramatic all out attack?

Statements by Trahearne in the story made it clear that they felt they had a narrow window of time where Mord would be weaker, but it was clear that he was gaining strength quickly. This was an all or nothing attempt to get to him before he could fully prepare himself.

I’d say it was a calculated risk, possibly based off of bad information, but an understandable one. If the choice had been up to me, I might have made the same call.

Tachenon.5270:

Heh. Would you have committed the entirety of your forces to that one big dramatic all out attack?

That’s basically what we did at Orr, One big giant push.
We took the fort with one big giant push,
Rushed orr with the entirety of the fleet.
And fought Zhaitan with the entirety of the air and ground armada

It’s why the pact was still recovering afterwards

Building Ships
AND
Asking for help in filling in the ranks for the battle with mordremoth.

The military strategy isn’t a good one no. And most general’s would play it safe UNLESS
intel provided proved otherwise and you believe you can overtake the enemy and set up a strong base of operations.

The folly is that they tried to fight a dragon that
A. Just woke up
B. Has no real intel built up ( unlike Zhaitan which trahearne studied for years)

And the priory has no real records of the dragons either.
So no one even knows bubbles real name ( but thats a discussion for later)

The whole scene was war tactical reckless nonsense

the pact airships had all the clear advantage on their side.
They had the huge firepower to basically erase the whole forest from Tyria, if they would want to do so and what does this dumb Trahearn? do with their huge field advantage

They sink all of the air ships down so that Mordremoth easily could make with its huge vines a lethal counterattack, where the reaction speed of those vines is much faster, thn any of the air ships is able to react quickly enough from such a hug and fast approaching deathly vine that can easily destroy any of the ships with 1 strike if they hit them at the right point.

If you want to bombard a place, where the enemy has the clear field advantage on the ground and you want to massively weaken the enemy defense, before you go to the ground lettign your troopers do the rest is by bombarding the foe SAFELY from a high enough distance, where none of the enemy defenses is able to REACH YOU or you use stealth bombers to bombard a target safely, before its able to recognize you that you were there!!

in regard of a war scenario, the shene was nothing but big nonsense, dramatically maybe and just only required to set up the right “mood” for the upcoming HoT scenario and thats all what counts for such a trailer – to set up the right mood for the upcoming story and for that it was simpyl required for the pact fleet to forcefully fail and make them look like total amateurs so that mordy has had an easy play with us to destroy in short time all of the pact army basically and most likely also some of the more iconic npcs also to, because it woudl be just ridiculous if Trahearne, Eir, Zojja and Logan would have all “magically” survived that huge fall from the destroyed Glory of Tyria in the midst of enemy territory full of countless mordrem and by mordremoth brainwashed Sylvari.

I think some of those characters just simply have to die sooner or later, or our characters basically will always stand behind the shadows of Destiny’s Edge as the games most iconic characters.
It would also make the whole story tellign of the game darker, more mature and fitting to the story, that even “heroes” can and will die in the world of Tyria, if they go so extremely recklessly against the elder dragons like that by making such huge mistakes that simply need also to lead to fatal consequences like that.

Orpheal.8263:

They sink all of the air ships down so that Mordremoth easily could make with its huge vines a lethal counterattack

I don’t think anyone expected Mordy to have the capacity of launching aerial attacks. By all account up until now we’ve primarily only see ground forces with the exception of the Shadow and a variant of Terragriff.

lordkrall.7241:

DocZed.6973:

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

That is how warfare works though.
You have a general target. You hit general target with bombs.
Just look at some pictures how London and Berlin looked by the end of WWII.

Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

London & Hiroshima/Nagasaki were not “general targets”. They were large targets. The purpose was to cause damage over a large area. & even when you do that that you don’t want to bomb in a “general” area or you may end up bombing the same place many times which is a waste. In fact, bombing London required lots of precision since they wanted to do damage over a large area with many individual bombs. Nuking an area requires you to target the center of that area. In either case there is nothing general about it. When you’re targeting a thing you hit the thing . Especially when the primary Pact anti-dragon weapon is poisoned magic. shooing the ground with it is a pointless waste. & while it’s true you can often “soften” an enemy with shell fire, it’s not “general”. You do the best you can to accurately target something. Even if it’s like on Normandy when some of the shelling was literally to create trenches. But if you make them in the wrong place they’re useless.

Anyone worth his weight in charge of bombing a target will have someone fly over and checking to make sure there is a target, then making sure the target was hit afterward. It’s an extremely dangerous job. But especially in a jungle area, you don’t randomly fire at trees.

The short answer is: it’s just a game. But don’t act like it’s just how warfare is.

This is what Trahearne tried to be, but failed miserably.

Well the writers had to kill of the pact somehow, check out this thread and the pictures the guy made explaining why it was good it died: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Dancing-With-Dragons-Improving-Iconic-Foes/first

DarksunG.9537:

lordkrall.7241:

DocZed.6973:

I face-palmed when Trahearne just started barraging an otherwise silent forest.
Like, did he even see anything vital to hit or is he just suspicious of all trees now?

That is how warfare works though.
You have a general target. You hit general target with bombs.
Just look at some pictures how London and Berlin looked by the end of WWII.

Not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

London & Hiroshima/Nagasaki were not “general targets”. They were large targets. The purpose was to cause damage over a large area. & even when you do that that you don’t want to bomb in a “general” area or you may end up bombing the same place many times which is a waste. In fact, bombing London required lots of precision since they wanted to do damage over a large area with many individual bombs. Nuking an area requires you to target the center of that area. In either case there is nothing general about it. When you’re targeting a thing you hit the thing . Especially when the primary Pact anti-dragon weapon is poisoned magic. shooing the ground with it is a pointless waste. & while it’s true you can often “soften” an enemy with shell fire, it’s not “general”. You do the best you can to accurately target something. Even if it’s like on Normandy when some of the shelling was literally to create trenches. But if you make them in the wrong place they’re useless.

Anyone worth his weight in charge of bombing a target will have someone fly over and checking to make sure there is a target, then making sure the target was hit afterward. It’s an extremely dangerous job. But especially in a jungle area, you don’t randomly fire at trees.

The short answer is: it’s just a game. But don’t act like it’s just how warfare is.

You’ve heard of carpet bombing I presume? Well, think of the Pact’s attack against Mordremoth, who is still waking up and presumed to have no air defenses as carpet bombing on larger scale. You know the Allies did quite a lot of carpet bombing in WW2, unfortunately we seemed to have forgotten about by the time ‘Nam rolled around, and again during the Iraq and Afghan wars, though really what we needed for those were the Neutron bombs that Clinton destroyed(but that’s not a subject for these forums).

Anyways, it was a calculated risk, one that 99.9% of the time works, and carpet bombing has it’s place in warfare, especially when you’re unsure of the targets exact location, but you know the grid/area in which it’s located and that all around are non-essential objects related to the enemy. They become collateral damage but it’s the hope that the carpet bombing takes out the main target, or weakens it so much that it becomes a relative pushover for the ground troops.

/smh at some posters who insist at comparing real life war with an mmorpg. You can’t be serious…….and if you are……..uh, it is JUST a game……(the mmorpg). ….set in a fantasy land and a fantasy time……..the key word there is “fantasy”.

Good grief.

Zaklex.6308:

You’ve heard of carpet bombing I presume?

Carpet Bombing isn’t attacking a “general area”. it’s bombing all of a designated area. That requires planning & specificity. You don’t just go into a grid square & shoot anywhere in it, you have to cover the whole area. & specifically in WWII it wasn’t really done to hit an enemy target. It was done against civilian population to force surrender.

It’s just a game. it’s not like real warfare. Please stop trying to say it is.

Really? For those posters who insist that since we are playing a fantasy game, that it cannot borrow from real life? Devs are also students of history, culture, tactics etc and the way content and encounters cannot be fully removed from real life, past and present.
As players we get a sense of realism because we do look at the game thru the lens of real world knowledge. That being the case, we learn about the game world rules as they are presented. But sometimes they need to take shortcuts, even with their own established rules. And we as players will decide if they get a pass or not.
As far as the locals of the jungle are concerned, it really depends in how they want to being about the story/lore. We are outsiders, that may be enough for us to get the initial cold shoulder. As far as I know, friendly fire doesn’t exist for the most part in the game which makes sense. One exception I know of is the trolly whisky, inflicting burning on your party members in Arah.

As far as Treahearne is concerned, his decision to commit the pact to the final encounter seemed foolhardy, maybe rushed compared our research for zhaitan, but i assume the story had to bring us there. There’s no tension if we have a large force that can roll thru and defeat everything. Mordy’s attack on the forward base and subsequent destruction of the pact fleet puts tyria and us, the player character on the back foot, and we gotta go back to what we do best. Challenge and unite a new force to defeat Mordy.

As far as the airships are concerned. They really are more akin to naval ships. Treahearn thought he had air superiority or even supremacy, but greatly miscalculated. It could gave been a strategic play by mordy. Feign weakness. Provoke an attack. And witness the power of a fully operational Mordy. Those vines must have been moving at hundred/s of feet per second. The fleet couldn’t stand firepower of that magnitude.

CureForLiving.5360:

Orpheal.8263:

They sink all of the air ships down so that Mordremoth easily could make with its huge vines a lethal counterattack

I don’t think anyone expected Mordy to have the capacity of launching aerial attacks. By all account up until now we’ve primarily only see ground forces with the exception of the Shadow and a variant of Terragriff.

We have experienced already before the assualt, what a MASSIVE RANGE these vines have.
Heck, Mordremoth can reach with them from the Maguuma Jungle as far as to Kryta and beyond just from the underground!!

Anyone with just a brain in its head would know that by far and put 1+1 together, that if Mordy has with its vines such a reach, that he will easily be able to have that reach also at its home territory and that he WILL use them to attack us, if we just provoke a battle at his front door.

It was just an idiotic command of Trahearne to let all of the ships sinnk so extremely low, they were at the moment where they fired just basically a several hundreds of metres above the ground, just look at the season 2 finale trailer around 35 seconds, where a moment is where you clearly see the height of the ships… its roughly maybe 200 to 250m above the ground maximum…

A safe bombarding is done, knowing what a huge range those vines have , from at least a distance of triple as much distance, because that would have given the pact flee enough reaction time to see the counter attack coming and get the ships away before the vines can hit them or do cast some magicals protective fire shields to block the fines off with the help of elementalists on boards.

At Second 43 you see them sinking even much more down, roughly being above the trees of the jungle at that point, its just ridiculously reckless , that scene just screams out loud “Hit us Mordy, here we are!”)

If you believe, that Mordremoth showed up so far only ground forces, I really must asked you, if you really have played all of Season 2’s Living Story Episodes, of if you have skipped/missed those, where we clearly learn and see about it, what a huge range those vines have, or did you maybe sleep at those episodes???

If anything of that is it, I’m sorry, that I’ve to burst that bubble of illusion then for you, because its clear, that we have get to known what range mordremoth already has with its powers, despite being fully awoken yet.
What Trahearne did there was simply said recklessly underestimating Mordremoth and making tactical suicidal decisions at the wrong time, where it would have been best to set on air superiority from far enough range first, before getting too near to the jungle with the ships.
All the cannons and bobms just would have hit hard the jungle also same as much, if they woudl have been fired off and launched off from a much higher distance.

However, like said before, the whole trailer isn#t about war tactical correctness, the whole intension of that trailer was it from the begin on to force the story into a situation of desperate weakness and sudden surprise to give for the upcoming expansion the right mood to it and to give us players later a fitting reason, for why we basically have to start from new, findign new allys that will help us, finding new ways of power and ressources that might help us to win against Modremoth in a territory, where we are at that moment at a constant disadvantage.

HoT wouldn’t be basically the same setting at all, if the pact fleet wouldn’t have been annihilated completely at that point of the story and it would be starting by beign alot more boring.
The destruction of the pact opens up alot more potential for upcoming player progression clearly

However, besides all that, the presentation of the destruction of the pact could have been more epic and not be presented so obviously forced by making Trahearne do such total amateurish decisions that lead to everyones fail.

If the pact fleet would have had an awesome battle, where they actually also fight a bit back, defeat something here and there, before they got overwhelmed by reinforcements that Mordremoth kept back, the whole trailer would have been a ton times better and more reasonable to me.

“Military installations Number Two?”
“Yes sir, well potential military installations. Alright … trees.”
“And we interrogated a gazzel!”

Orpheal.8263:

~Snip~

We have experienced already before the assault, what a MASSIVE RANGE these vines have.
Heck, Mordremoth can reach with them from the Maguuma Jungle as far as to Kryta and beyond just from the underground!!

~Snip~

It was just an idiotic command of Trahearne to let all of the ships sinnk so extremely low, they were at the moment where they fired just basically a several hundreds of metres above the ground, just look at the season 2 finale trailer around 35 seconds, where a moment is where you clearly see the height of the ships… its roughly maybe 200 to 250m above the ground maximum…

A safe bombarding is done, knowing what a huge range those vines have , from at least a distance of triple as much distance, because that would have given the pact flee enough reaction time to see the counter attack coming and get the ships away before the vines can hit them or do cast some magicals protective fire shields to block the fines off with the help of elementalists on boards.

At Second 43 you see them sinking even much more down, roughly being above the trees of the jungle at that point, its just ridiculously reckless , that scene just screams out loud “Hit us Mordy, here we are!”)

If you believe, that Mordremoth showed up so far only ground forces, I really must asked you, if you really have played all of Season 2’s Living Story Episodes, of if you have skipped/missed those, where we clearly learn and see about it, what a huge range those vines have, or did you maybe sleep at those episodes???

If anything of that is it, I’m sorry, that I’ve to burst that bubble of illusion then for you, because its clear, that we have get to known what range mordremoth already has with its powers, despite being fully awoken yet.
What Trahearne did there was simply said recklessly underestimating Mordremoth and making tactical suicidal decisions at the wrong time, where it would have been best to set on air superiority from far enough range first, before getting too near to the jungle with the ships.
All the cannons and bobms just would have hit hard the jungle also same as much, if they woudl have been fired off and launched off from a much higher distance.

However, like said before, the whole trailer isn#t about war tactical correctness, the whole intension of that trailer was it from the begin on to force the story into a situation of desperate weakness and sudden surprise to give for the upcoming expansion the right mood to it and to give us players later a fitting reason, for why we basically have to start from new, findign new allys that will help us, finding new ways of power and ressources that might help us to win against Modremoth in a territory, where we are at that moment at a constant disadvantage.

HoT wouldn’t be basically the same setting at all, if the pact fleet wouldn’t have been annihilated completely at that point of the story and it would be starting by beign alot more boring.
The destruction of the pact opens up alot more potential for upcoming player progression clearly

~Snip~

I’m going to point out a few mistakes in your post here: first, the vines that we’ve seen from Mordremoth so far are travelling underground and then just popping up from the surface and attacking: 1. Waypoints, 2. Forts…not once did we see the vines shoot up 100’s if not 1000’s of feet into the air to even grab onto let alone attack anything.

Second, as for your determination of the height from the jungle floor, you’re forgetting something, that isn’t the jungle floor just below them. We now know that the jungle is composed of 3 biomes, canopy, floor and underground. I’m guessing from what I’ve seen is that the top of the canopy is itself at least a 1000 ft(approximately 300 meters) above the floor(ground), if not higher. Based on that premise(if you haven’t seen the Beta portion of the map, then you wouldn’t know this) with the pact ships 200 – 500 meters above the canopy(top of the jungle) we’re looking at anywhere from 500 – 800(1000) meters above the floor/ground. You can also tell the ground is a lot farther down just by watching how far the vines have to travel upwards into the air to hit some of the pact ships, which are all at different levels. In order for the bombing to be even remotely effective you need to be at least in range of your ordinance otherwise your bombs will explode in air and not even reach the target(in case you haven’t noticed most of the equipment we use has a restriction on the distance it can be used, including “artillery” in game).

The above is if you even want to apply some real world basis for the attack, which can also be summed as just how it was written by the writers and left at that.

baconcupcaxe.4208:

Really? For those posters who insist that since we are playing a fantasy game, that it cannot borrow from real life? Devs are also students of history, culture, tactics etc and the way content and encounters cannot be fully removed from real life, past and present.
As players we get a sense of realism because we do look at the game thru the lens of real world knowledge. That being the case, we learn about the game world rules as they are presented. But sometimes they need to take shortcuts, even with their own established rules. And we as players will decide if they get a pass or not..

You might want to refrain from using the word “we” so liberally, and just speak for yourself, rather than making the assumption that other players believe as you do.

In the cinematic some Pact ships are quite a bit higher than others. Also in that very same cinematic we see that the vines haven’t actually reached/attacked all of the Pact airships as several airships appear intact in the background during the attack.

What really brought the Pact down wasn’t just Mordremoth using vines to attack but him also simultaneously mass turning sylvari into his minions and having them sabotage the fleet from within. In the cinematic we see one crazed sylvari damaging an airship’s engine with a flaming barrel, and a group of sylvari attacking Destiny’s Edge from behind. We can theorize that the Pact, despite suffering some losses in the initial assault, would’ve likely managed to pull back quite a few airships and attempted another attack strategy from a safer distance, but the turning sylvari didn’t really give them much of a choice but to focus on fighting for their lives thanks to this sudden betrayal, which sealed the fate of the fleet.

It was quite a clever strategy on Mordremoth’s part: let the Pact think they have the advantage and lure them in close range, then retaliate in a massive fashion with the vines while also revealing the trump card at the height of the chaos: turning many of the sylvari against their allies at that crucial moment when the Pact’s attention was drawn to the vines and away from the other danger among them.

What makes all of this quite sad and intriguing, however, is why the Pale Tree chose to never tell Trahearne about the sylvari’s origin. Had Trahearne known, perhaps he could’ve kept the sylvari Pact members at a distance, thus avoiding this tragedy. I can understand Caithe keeping it a secret from him due to her reasons, but to the Pale Tree Trahearne is the first of her Firstborn, the chosen one who purified Orr and led the campaign against one Elder Dragon already. Surely he deserves to know the truth at least in the present day when he’s grown as a character and proven himself worthy as opposed to what he was like in the past? I do hope Heart of Thorns will elaborate on this and give us a decent enough explanation but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

I’d have to go back and redo the stories, but I thought we used the information Scarlet gathered to trace Modremoth to that specific area? Not to mention, the Pact would have to attack a massive area, because Elder Dragons are freaking HUGE.

Zaklex.6308:

Second, as for your determination of the height from the jungle floor, you’re forgetting something, that isn’t the jungle floor just below them. We now know that the jungle is composed of 3 biomes, canopy, floor and underground. I’m guessing from what I’ve seen is that the top of the canopy is itself at least a 1000 ft(approximately 300 meters) above the floor(ground), if not higher. Based on that premise(if you haven’t seen the Beta portion of the map, then you wouldn’t know this) with the pact ships 200 – 500 meters above the canopy(top of the jungle) we’re looking at anywhere from 500 – 800(1000) meters above the floor/ground. You can also tell the ground is a lot farther down just by watching how far the vines have to travel upwards into the air to hit some of the pact ships, which are all at different levels. In order for the bombing to be even remotely effective you need to be at least in range of your ordinance otherwise your bombs will explode in air and not even reach the target

This…
Like I said.
If someone gave treaherne false intel, then they were doomed to fail in the first place.

Kossage.9072:

What makes all of this quite sad and intriguing, however, is why the Pale Tree chose to never tell Trahearne about the sylvari’s origin. Had Trahearne known, perhaps he could’ve kept the sylvari Pact members at a distance, thus avoiding this tragedy. I can understand Caithe keeping it a secret from him due to her reasons, but to the Pale Tree Trahearne is the first of her Firstborn, the chosen one who purified Orr and led the campaign against one Elder Dragon already. Surely he deserves to know the truth at least in the present day when he’s grown as a character and proven himself worthy as opposed to what he was like in the past? I do hope Heart of Thorns will elaborate on this and give us a decent enough explanation but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

I also wondered this, If Trahearne would have known this, then he might have left the sylvari behind. On the other hand, what if he knew this, and that is the reason he wanted to attack so soon.
Knowing that the enemy could turn every sylvari against the world now that the pale tree was significantly weakened.
He rushed to end mordremoth before he woke up, and caused chaos around the world.

This could explain why he was in such a rush to kill the dragon.

Could you imagine the chaos around Tyria, Sylvari are in just about every corner of the world, in high places even amoung the orders. Mordremoth could, if fully aware, cripple nations from the inside.