Guild Wars 2

Psientist.6437:

Avariz.8241:

Psientist.6437:

I am torn.

One one hand, I think Sylvaris as dragon minions is equivalent to Sylvaris as race of Mary Sues. The writers were able to keep the truth or logic of their true nature hidden by making the mechanics of their true nature unique. I don’t consider that good writing, I consider that three card monte.

On the other hand; a player controlled race that turns out to be unwittingly and in some cases, intentionally, working for the enemy could prove to be a very dynamic environment for story telling. I just hope the writers have a handle on how dark this environment could get.

In Guildwars 2 beta, all players were corrupted by Krakaltoric, and players as themselves were fighting against other players who had the misfortune to have been corrupted by Krakaltoric. In the end Krakaltoric won as all players turned evil. This happened in all servers in NA and EU.

Pardon my confusion, but which of my comments are you referring to? And are you offering events and mechanics that occurred during beta as canon?

Sorry to have cause you confusion. In the beta there was a special opening event where players’ characters were corrupted by an Elder Dragon and fought each other. This is like the situation now, where players rolling sylvari could be unwitting agents of Mordremoth. Back then in the beta event all player characters got corrupted by Krakaltoric and became evil crystal minions.

I don’t get why people are complaining about how the lore is focused on the Dragons right now, if, for a long time, the Dragons are growing and constantly representing a real threat to life in Tyria, even more and more every time they act.
They are awakening, they’re corrupting everything, and they are ready to wipe out everyone, so, what? Why the story wouldn’t be focused on something like that? The lore is being focused on Dragons because they are the biggest influence in the world of Tyria, and everybody needs to fight them back or they will kill everything and the game is over.

And it’s not like some things were added to the lore by the influence of the Dragons (Vigil, the Pact, Orr rising, Sylvari coming from somewhere concrete, the alliance between Humans and Charrs becoming stronger, and a lot of other things), right?

im shocked to see that so few people figured out about the Sylvari …. the clues was in GW1 ( eye of the north ) and it was also written on the wiki for years …simple deduction.

Just read the story of Ronan , member of the Shining Blade.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ronan
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ronan
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Movement_of_the_World#Sylvari

(grumble ok I said that’s it for me today in the other thread but I guess here I am still)

Tobias, I think we’re talking a little past each other. lD;; (Except for the Inquest, I totally agree, hehe)

Example: With Southsun, the LS episode itself wasn’t focused on dragons. Yeah. But the direct cause of this story happening can be traced back to dragons. You’re right, it could be about climate change. It’d be irrelevant to the southsun story itself… which is part of my point yanno. It didn’t need to be caused by dragons. And nothing wrong with them causing it, because it makes sense.

But when too many side-stories plus the main story link to the dragons (also in retrospect), the story as whole becomes kinda shallow. It takes color away from Tyria and its various issues.

The base-game was mostly fine with its balance between major dragon-issues and totally dragon-unrelated side issues like flame legion, bandits, the foefire, renegades, dredge, the centaur war, the tension between the 3 high legions, kryta’s dilemma, etc.

Only problem as whole was that the atmosphere was too lighthearted and the threat of the major issues felt way too distant or almost nonexistent.

I’m not complaining that things were affected by the dragon at all. Because it’d be kinda senseless to complain about the dragons doing their jobs as eldritch abominations altering life on Tyria. Also heck even those not-dragon issues I listed are affected in one way or another by the dragons more or less distantly. But dragons aren’t the reason why these threats are happening. And it’s okay and even a must that a lot is caused by dragons. But there’s still a need for balance.

I’m …idk whining? hoping that not? dreading? word? that the writers might take all these side plots and lore and problems that while in a dragon ravaged world, aren’t caused by dragons and make them about dragons for the sake of making them about/linking them to dragons and thus creating an imbalance that basically ends up being ‘dragons are behind everything’.

It feels like Anet still has to find a balance of making a threat/major plot imminent without making it too distant like the PS/Base game or making it too forced and in your face by taking away from the rest of Tyria and suddenly relating everything they can think of to the plot of the current threat.

I hope I expressed myself better now.

That’s awesome! Thank you for the reply Angel.

The sylvari being dragon minions was my favourite fan theory before it was confirmed. I can’t wait to see how this unfolds in Heart of Thorns!

I though everyone knew already.

It was kind of obvious that they were either made by a dragon directly like Destroyers, or already corrupted from original plant-like creatures, but with free will thanks to the Pale Tree undergoing a purification process like Glint.

I still want to know exactly which one is it. What if Malyck did not come from a Dragon Minion tree, but from an original uncorrupted tree?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Piece of advice to the writers. Not everything needs to revolve around the dragons. Your world begins to look very two dimensional when almost every single piece of lore we have in game in some ways ties back to the elder dragons (The Mursaat, The Seers, The Dwarves, Scarlet, The Gods…). We get that they are the big bad and are super important, but too much of one thing gets very old. You’re also tampering with lore that a lot of people love and making it seem rather trivial because you know what ‘dragons did it’.

Unfortunately, there’s a very large, loud contingent of players who kitten and moan any time something non-kill-the-dragons comes up in the story. They want their plot spoon-fed and perfectly linear, with no distractions. Most of them are wondering why we aren’t on our 3rd dragon already.

I think ANet should close the thread right now.

It is getting way off topic

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Living Story season 1 was supposed to be happening parallel somewhere to the Personal Story. The timeline is pretty much unknown for exactly when stuff happened, thanks to shenanigans trying to keep them separate.

Not quite, the Lost Shores is pretty much the starting point of the Living Story (even if it’s technically not a part of it) and Matthew Medina (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/No-Risen-Karkas/first#post1156321) confirmed that the event was set entirely after Zhaitan’s defeat. I even have a vague memory of some confirmation that the first Halloween is also after Zhaitan’s death, not sure on that one though.

draxynnic.3719:

A distinction has to be drawn here between something being an important part of the world which is naturally going to have effects on everything, and everything coming down to one thing.

Take Prophecies, for instance. Abaddon’s influence is (retroactively) felt through the entire campaign. However, there are still other stories being told. The charr would still have been fighting Ascalon without the aid of the Searing Cauldrons, and it’s quite likely they could have at least reclaimed much of the land north of the Wall without Abaddon’s help. The dwarf civil war appears unconnected to Abaddon. The mursaat were responding to a threat they saw that was linked to Abaddon, but they had their own agenda in responding to it, and their methods put them in conflict with the players. And we didn’t even know who Abaddon was, let alone his involvement, until a year and a half later.

In the case of recent GW2 releases, though… I think it is reasonable to say that the dragons have been taking over the story. Pretty much everything lately has been either working against Mordremoth, or dealing with something that is hindering efforts to work against Mordremoth.

Still… we’ll see what happens at and after PAX South.

Ronin.7381:

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if those who were most outspoken against the Sylvari-Minion theory happened to blame Anet for falling under the influence of those who supported the theory. There were plenty of questions since Day 1, hell even during beta as information was slowly unearthed. The similarities in the Sylvari anatomy and that of Mordremoth were too… seemingly… intertwined.

As a person who liked the theory and supported it, though I still had questions myself, I would like to think this was planned since the beginning but details were so sparse that drawing connections then were like picking nails from a haystack.

Angel’s said that this was something that was planned from the start. While some may be willing to accuse ArenaNet of lying to hide the source of their ideas, I’m not inclined to go down that path.

What really annoyed me there was that so many of the theory’s supporters were treating it as if it was confirmed fact, when the evidence for it didn’t bear up very well under scrutiny. I remember when the theory of sylvari being dragon minions first came up, and the evidence supporting that has progressively been debunked as we learned new things. It has turned out to be correct (although not in the form it was originally presented) but more out of coincidence than anything else.

It’d be kinda like if someone had said the Moon must be colder than the Sun because the Moon is white and white things (like snow) are cold, and the Sun is yellow and that yellow things (like fire) are hot. While the Moon is indeed cooler than the Sun, the argument is fallacious, particularly when it can be demonstrated that something white can often be hotter than something yellow.

Most of the evidence that I would actually consider credible didn’t appear until after the start of 2014, by which point most of the theories supporters were not coming into it because of those hints, but because of the arguments made back in 2012 that were logical at the time but had since been debunked.

This explains it far more eloquently than I am capable of doing. Thanks.

Avariz.8241:

Psientist.6437:

I am torn.

One one hand, I think Sylvaris as dragon minions is equivalent to Sylvaris as race of Mary Sues. The writers were able to keep the truth or logic of their true nature hidden by making the mechanics of their true nature unique. I don’t consider that good writing, I consider that three card monte.

On the other hand; a player controlled race that turns out to be unwittingly and in some cases, intentionally, working for the enemy could prove to be a very dynamic environment for story telling. I just hope the writers have a handle on how dark this environment could get.

In Guildwars 2 beta, all players were corrupted by Krakaltoric, and players as themselves were fighting against other players who had the misfortune to have been corrupted by Krakaltoric. In the end Krakaltoric won as all players turned evil. This happened in all servers in NA and EU.

Are you sure? there weren’t any players that lived thanks to the level 80 npcs? I mean, I don’t have any proof that someone lived, but dang level 80 eir and garm, or was it zojja that was all mighty.

Farming Flats.5370:

im shocked to see that so few people figured out about the Sylvari …. the clues was in GW1 ( eye of the north ) and it was also written on the wiki for years …simple deduction.

Just read the story of Ronan , member of the Shining Blade.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ronan
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ronan
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Movement_of_the_World#Sylvari

That doesn’t really sway anything either way.

MithranArkanere.8957:

I though everyone knew already.

It was kind of obvious that they were either made by a dragon directly like Destroyers, or already corrupted from original plant-like creatures, but with free will thanks to the Pale Tree undergoing a purification process like Glint.

I still want to know exactly which one is it. What if Malyck did not come from a Dragon Minion tree, but from an original uncorrupted tree?

except there is/was substantial evidence that would say otherwise, which is why I think sylvari being dragon minions is just plain ludicrous.

ElysianEternity.6215:

(grumble ok I said that’s it for me today in the other thread but I guess here I am still)

Tobias, I think we’re talking a little past each other. lD;; (Except for the Inquest, I totally agree, hehe)

Example: With Southsun, the LS episode itself wasn’t focused on dragons. Yeah. But the direct cause of this story happening can be traced back to dragons. You’re right, it could be about climate change. It’d be irrelevant to the southsun story itself… which is part of my point yanno. It didn’t need to be caused by dragons. And nothing wrong with them causing it, because it makes sense.

But when too many side-stories plus the main story link to the dragons (also in retrospect), the story as whole becomes kinda shallow. It takes color away from Tyria and its various issues.

Does it? I disagree.

To start, assume you’re going to write a story in which something causes major changes to the world . . . such as the dragons awakening and leaving their marks on it. (The Brand, the flooding of Kryta, Mount Maelstrom, the frozen northern Shiverpeaks.) It’s irresponsible to not keep in mind what those changes actually do to the world. Changes which are large in scope like those things listed above have many many effects on the world, some of which are immediate and some of which are not.

Everything might trace back to those changes, but that’s because big changes demand you think about what those changes do in their entirety.

I don’t find it shallow to have changes like the ones to Tyria the dragons caused have lasting or unintentional effects . . . I find it deeper to find they had some writers thinking on “so what all happens if we have Primordius’ minions warming up parts of the Shiverpeaks?” and come up with those changes.

I mean, it’s better than looking at Ravnica and going “hoooowwwwwwwwww?!” . . .

The base-game was mostly fine with its balance between major dragon-issues and totally dragon-unrelated side issues like flame legion, bandits, the foefire, renegades, dredge, the centaur war, the tension between the 3 high legions, kryta’s dilemma, etc.

Only problem as whole was that the atmosphere was too lighthearted and the threat of the major issues felt way too distant or almost nonexistent.

And there were some people who felt the game was not delivering on its promise of “Tyria vs the Dragons” with all that side-issues going around.

I’m not complaining that things were affected by the dragon at all. Because it’d be kinda senseless to complain about the dragons doing their jobs as eldritch abominations altering life on Tyria. Also heck even those not-dragon issues I listed are affected in one way or another by the dragons more or less distantly. But dragons aren’t the reason why these threats are happening. And it’s okay and even a must that a lot is caused by dragons. But there’s still a need for balance.

The problem is, as I noted, if you’re willing to step back and look at a big picture – almost everything in modern Tyria really can drawn back to the effects of a dragon somehow. Probably the only two things which aren’t are the matter of the charr in Ascalon and the Mist War.

(I was going to say the centaur wars in Kryta but that’s also affected by a dragon due to southern Kryta getting ravaged over by the tsunami from Orr rising. Krytans were displaced and thus moved into centaur lands, causing the wars.)

I’m …idk whining? hoping that not? dreading? word? that the writers might take all these side plots and lore and problems that while in a dragon ravaged world, aren’t caused by dragons and make them about dragons for the sake of making them about/linking them to dragons and thus creating an imbalance that basically ends up being ‘dragons are behind everything’.

As above, the only thing not connected to dragons is the “charr/human over Ascalon” material. No, that one’s connected to Abaddon

I can understand the trepidation (that’s the word you’re looking for, and if you’re not natively speaking english then you probably never saw it before). I didn’t like MTG’s severe massive retcon back in the day where suddenly Phyrexia and its enemy Urza wound up basically being the thing from which all events flowed in every expansion short of ‘Arabian Nights’.

But at the same time, with this story I’m looking at? I think it’s even worse to discount the dragons as not being important, or at least something to worry less about. These things need to be dealt with due to being a large part of why the world is in trouble. It’s kind of like writing a story set in the 1940s and not mentioning the war at all.

Actually, the northern borders of Kryta are pretty much what they were in GW1. They may even have contracted somewhat (there were non-explorable regions of Kryta to the north of the GW1 explorable regions). The tsunami did not push humans into what had been centaur lands pre-tsunami.

Instead, it was expansion of Kryta in periods well before GW1 that displaced the centaurs. What the dragons have affected there is that Jormag pushed the Modniir out of the Far Shiverpeaks (giving them a drive to attack Kryta) while the Great Tsunami weakened Kryta so it is probably more vulnerable to attack than it would have been otherwise.

To be honest, I think this is a good example of striking the balance. Centaur-human conflict would still exist with or without the dragons, as GW1 showed. However, the dragons have had an effect on that conflict. Similar observations can be made on many of the other conflicts of the world

However, it would be unsatisfying if, from the moment of finishing map completion of Kryta on, the only time the centaurs ever get mentioned is in relation to something more directly related to the dragons – either dragon minions attacking centaurs (as happened to the bandits of Fort Vandal) or Kryta wanting to do something against the dragons but being prevented due to a distraction by the centaurs (as happened with Ministry plotting in S2E4 – that particular plot was only relevant because it got in the way of fighting dragons. If the date of the hearing had been anything other than the day of the summit, we would never have heard of it).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

draxynnic.3719:

In the case of recent GW2 releases, though… I think it is reasonable to say that the dragons have been taking over the story. Pretty much everything lately has been either working against Mordremoth, or dealing with something that is hindering efforts to work against Mordremoth.

Still… we’ll see what happens at and after PAX South.

Looking at how much story there is actually going on? I’m sorry, it doesn’t compare. The story amount of the chapters seems real small compared to the rest of the offerings, especially from “Echoes of the Past” through “Seeds of Truth”. It seems like it’s all about this but I’m basically seeing it as a set of linked primary quests to compare it to GW1 mechanics.

. . . they’re about the same length, and none of the instances are as long as missions were so far. So just looking at it, what we have is like the slice in Kryra (first time through) in Prophecies – everything seems to be all about the Shining Blade vs White Mantle, and with the undead presence making things ugly.

Meh. At least it’s competently done and more in tune than the first two thirds of LS1 with how the story is flowing around characters rather than seeming to bubble up through the content.

That’s a fair observation to make. TBH, I suspect the problem might be more to do with their pacing rather than their plotting. The story is moving so slowly that when the story appears to be focused on non-dragon stuff it feels like the dragons have been forgotten, and when it is focused on the dragons, it feels like everything is focused on the dragons.

The Scarlet reveal gave them the worst of both worlds in that respect, as it felt like the dragons were being sidelined before the Scarlet-dragon connection started being hinted, and then afterwards it retroactively turned out that most of Season 1 traced back to dragon after all and then all of Season 2 was also about the dragon.

Which is why I made that final reference to Heart of Thorns – if we are looking at an expansion or genuinely expansion-like content, that might give them the opportunity to find a balance.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

As above, the only thing not connected to dragons is the “charr/human over Ascalon” material. No, that one’s connected to Abaddon

I wouldn’t put it past the devs to reveal that the reason Abaddon fought against the other gods over the bloodstones had something to do with the Elder Dragons being able to feed off magic. I might even enjoy it.

Not that I’m saying this is a theory or anything.

draxynnic.3719:

However, it would be unsatisfying if, from the moment of finishing map completion of Kryta on, the only time the centaurs ever get mentioned is in relation to something more directly related to the dragons – either dragon minions attacking centaurs (as happened to the bandits of Fort Vandal) or Kryta wanting to do something against the dragons but being prevented due to a distraction by the centaurs (as happened with Ministry plotting in S2E4 – that particular plot was only relevant because it got in the way of fighting dragons. If the date of the hearing had been anything other than the day of the summit, we would never have heard of it).

As for the bandits, I can’t really roll my eyes too much – they completely were a non-entity in the personal story after two chapters at most. The fact they’re basically involved in just getting pushed out tells me they at least had thought about it and didn’t plow under the bandits entirely.

The ministry plot about centaur problems? It’s an excuse to not get involved, and you know it deep down. If it wasn’t the centaurs it would have been the bandits. Or it would have been cleaning up the Tower ruins from Kessex. Or it would have been sending direct aid to Lion’s Arch, or building a new city, or something other than fighting dragons.

That’s how the ministry works, you know. Distract with “that problem isn’t important, here’s our pet project which we totally aren’t profiting from which would be better to focus on”.

That’s a fair observation to make. TBH, I suspect the problem might be more to do with their pacing rather than their plotting. The story is moving so slowly that when the story appears to be focused on non-dragon stuff it feels like the dragons have been forgotten, and when it is focused on the dragons, it feels like everything is focused on the dragons.

The pacing has always been a big issue I’ve had with all the story in GW2. It’s just uneven at times and now it’s kind of slow because it feels like Silverwastes took a lot of the development “real estate” over the story instances.

Which is why I made that final reference to Heart of Thorns – if we are looking at an expansion or genuinely expansion-like content, that might give them the opportunity to find a balance.

I’ll almost put money it’s not an expansion (and people will still argue it’s not going to be “expansion like” unless it’s a big lump of content released at once and devoured in a week). And further as a side-bed, if it is LS3 then it’ll run into the same pacing issues as this season – starting off stronger and then falling slower and slower as it reaches the end.

There was no ministry plot about centaur problems (unless you go back to Caudecus sabotaging Kryta’s defences against the centaurs to make Jennah look bad, and that Palpatine gambit was in the PS). The ministry plot was getting someone to accuse Jennah of having conspired with Scarlet. Which was aimed at, again, making Jennah look bad.

The point I was making is that we tend to only hear about such things if and only if it is somehow related to the dragons. We basically have no idea how the war with the centaurs has been going since the Ulgoth was slain, except that it is still happening.

Regarding pacing and expansion content:

I’m pretty sure that HoT is something bigger than “here’s Living Story episode 3”.

There have been members of ArenaNet’s writing team that have been conspicuously absent from the Living Story. Additionally, not too long ago, I analysed what ArenaNet has been putting out post-release compared to the amount of work it would have taken to make what was available on release. For the first year or so, they actually held up fairly well – it’s just felt like less because a lot of it was temporary content or replacing existing content rather than making the game larger, but in terms of resources used, they actually did a lot in 2013. However, at some stage early in 2014 the pace started substantially dropping off, which has become especially noticeable in Season 2. Now, some of the difference could be due to putting more effort into polishing (and S2 does feel more polished than S1) but I suspect that at least half of ArenaNet’s capacity has been working on HoT rather than S2.

draxynnic.3719:

There was no ministry plot about centaur problems (unless you go back to Caudecus sabotaging Kryta’s defences against the centaurs to make Jennah look bad, and that Palpatine gambit was in the PS). The ministry plot was getting someone to accuse Jennah of having conspired with Scarlet. Which was aimed at, again, making Jennah look bad.

Of course I go back to that, but it’s less plots to cause problems and plots to use those problems as excuses to do their own thing.

The point I was making is that we tend to only hear about such things if and only if it is somehow related to the dragons. We basically have no idea how the war with the centaurs has been going since the Ulgoth was slain, except that it is still happening.

Yeah, the writing is pretty . . . lean . . . on excess details, which would give a broader sense of scope. Really wish they would put some time fixing that even if they have some people dashing out small conversations and adding them with otherwise unrelated patches.

Regarding pacing and expansion content:

I’m pretty sure that HoT is something bigger than “here’s Living Story episode 3”.

I’m . . . not so certain. All analysis to the contrary, and all the “we’ve got something coming” going on? I’m not so sure.

It could be an expansion and LS1&2 was to bridge between the release and expansion, and LS 3&4 are for happening during the expansion as the plot part while the expansion is the “nuts and bolts” to it. I could see that possibly.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

draxynnic.3719:

There was no ministry plot about centaur problems (unless you go back to Caudecus sabotaging Kryta’s defences against the centaurs to make Jennah look bad, and that Palpatine gambit was in the PS). The ministry plot was getting someone to accuse Jennah of having conspired with Scarlet. Which was aimed at, again, making Jennah look bad.

Of course I go back to that, but it’s less plots to cause problems and plots to use those problems as excuses to do their own thing.

Incorrect. They’re not just trying to divert attention, Caudecus’ ultimate aim is having Jennah removed from power so he can make all the decisions himself. Which could be a case of “once I’m in charge I can start all the corrupt nepotistic money-wasting projects I like!” – but either way, Caudecus is not simply looking to distract the government into serving his interests in the short term, he’s actively looking to bring it down and replace it with his own.

Regarding expansion talk… I doubt ArenaNet booked the central hall of PAX just to say that they’re starting season 3, however awesome they think it might be. I’m not necessarily expecting a classical expansion either – for instance, it’s possible that what they’ll have is something like an expansion which adds new features above and beyond any past feature update but the story will continue being delivered through a LS-like regime. However, I do suspect S2 might have fallen into a role similar to GW:Beyond – namely, keeping something ticking along while the bigger project was being developed.

draxynnic.3719:

but either way, Caudecus is not simply looking to distract the government into serving his interests in the short term, he’s actively looking to bring it down and replace it with his own.

That’s Caudecus, but I don’t think he’s the only corrupt thing in the Ministry.

True, but the plot accusing Jennah of conspiring with Scarlet is another case of “we know Caudecus was behind it, we just don’t have enough proof to charge him with something, particularly since he controls the courts”.

draxynnic.3719:

True, but the plot accusing Jennah of conspiring with Scarlet is another case of “we know Caudecus was behind it, we just don’t have enough proof to charge him with something, particularly since he controls the courts”.

. . . well we only know it because we “know” it. It’ll wind up being true despite lack of actual evidence much like this issue with the Pale Tree wound up being true. But while we’re getting off topic, I’ll throw this out there.

There’s more evidence than there was with the Pale Tree thing – the minister spreading the rumour was found out to have been having backroom conversations with Caudecus, and denying a close association with Caudecus is one of the first lies we catch her out on. Now, it may be a red herring, but that’s definitely what we’re supposed to think at the moment.

There are structural issues at a gameplay level that make having a non-Dragon focus, and especially with regard to the race specific stuff that we’re exposed to in the early PS, very difficult. Content needs to make sense for all five playable races as the primary protagonists.

Charr have no compelling reason to care about the political machinations of the Krytan court, and Norn aren’t likely to care about the Inquest. Humans aren’t likely to care about the Norn’s Raven or Snow Leopard being in trouble, and Asura aren’t likely to care about anything that’s not part of their research. If there isn’t a Dragon involved at some level, there’s not a ton of reason why a character of an otherwise uninvolved race would be involved in the first place. And the PS follows this path too; as we move out of the early starter zones and away from race specific narrative the focus becomes increasingly Dragon driven.

I don’t see a practical way out of that except by the introduction of additional race specific story missions, and I kind of doubt that it’s practical to do that as a matter of development resources, as it requires five times the content.

Not that we can’t get content involving those racial specific things mind; we’ve gotten plenty of that in both LS seasons. But due to the structure of being an MMO with multiple playable races it pretty much has to be filtered through the lens of Dragon threats (or some other World Threatening Big Bad, which I can’t see happening while there are still Dragons to slay, but it’ll be interesting to see what Palawa Joko’s been up to once his turn comes around – and you can also do gold rush kind of scenarios where a new exciting discovery leads to everyone wanting to explore some place that’s just opened up, like, idk, Cantha, but again, that’d feel weird when there’s at least 3 Dragons actively trying to kill you in your own backyard)

Edit: The one exception to this would be if we got new dungeons. Dungeon stories allow for effective side stories, much as the current set does, and while you can do this in standard story missions, it’s a lot harder because the stories will by necessity be an aside to the primary arc. For the LS in particular, that breaks flow really bad.

I do have to say, now that i’m getting over my initial disappointment, looking at the previous sylvari concept art, or sidhe hart thing, and the fact that they’re plant people I am looking forward to seeing where this goes, and it does have a lot of potential to be very fun.
sorry to the people who are sick of sylvari though

lordkrall.7241:

Funny how people seems to have an issue with everything (which is not even the case) being about the Dragons and yet the same people usually praise how good Guild Wars 1 was. Despite everything (and that was basically actually everything) was about Abaddon.

It’s funny because if you don’t pay attention you won’t know that everything is about Abaddon.

Every expansion felt isolated. The only time I actually noticed was when my sister told me and then I went to read the wiki.

lordkrall.7241:

Funny how people seems to have an issue with everything (which is not even the case) being about the Dragons and yet the same people usually praise how good Guild Wars 1 was. Despite everything (and that was basically actually everything) was about Abaddon.

That’s because everything wasn’t about Abaddon…until Nightfall. They retroactively made him responsible for both Shiro and the Searing.

Obsidian.1328:

lordkrall.7241:

Funny how people seems to have an issue with everything (which is not even the case) being about the Dragons and yet the same people usually praise how good Guild Wars 1 was. Despite everything (and that was basically actually everything) was about Abaddon.

That’s because everything wasn’t about Abaddon…until Nightfall. They retroactively made him responsible for both Shiro and the Searing.

It wasn’t quite as retroactive as you think. Prophecies actually had a lot of nods towards Nightfall. We encountered Turai Ossa and heard of his pilgrimage, there was a mission called “Elona Reach”, we fought back the titans at “Abaddon’s Mouth”. Sure the entire story may not have been plotted out from the beginning, but they clearly had some idea of what they were doing. And it is no different to any other MMO, expansions reveal new things that may or may not have been initially planned, or may have been planned at a later stage. It doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly gone back and retroactively changed the lore, because they never actually altered anything about Prophecies. The stories clearly link into one another, whether it was initially devised that way or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t lessen prophecies or nightfall’s story if the links were figured out after Prophecies had already been released (and there is no way they hadn’t considering Nightfall was released so soon after Prophecies).

we should just totes do what they did in factions.
lets petrify the forest and turn the sea to jade, that way we can kill two monstrous bird-dragons at once

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . what happened here is a case of “we got what we asked for”. We asked for more focus on the dragons we were supposed to be fighting after LS1 wrapped. Maybe even a bit before when people were highly bored with “Scarlet did it”. Guess whaaaaaaat? Now we got Mordremoth going out and being active.

It’s more about whether the big bad in the background sucks or not. Adabbon was a cool, mysterious manipulative force bent on revenge using subtlety with a personal history. He was probably the only retcon in all of GW that worked correctly. Scarlet was arguably the most annoying writers-pet character in all of Guild Wars. There was no reason for her to have an annoying personality, stupid dialog & be so stupidly & impossibly overpowered. She would have been much more interesting as a mature, manipulative plan-maker in the background doing small things to cause forces to fight one another & accidentally cause the events instead of spouting stupid token “oh she’s crazy!” one-liners & try be cool & sassy. The Dragons.. well.. they are just boring.. better than Scarlet by far since they aren’t irritating but they are boring. I’d prefer they be more of a Cthulian force with mystery & horror, but they are kinda generic “it’s all the cycle” no-personality forces.

The Sylvari may have been written to be minions all along, but as the lore forum had found years ago there are holes all over it. All I know is I am supremely sick of hearing about Sylvari & now we have a whole kitten ed expansion about them. I can’t think of 1 single thing they could have done to ruin an expansion other than that.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Obsidian.1328:

lordkrall.7241:

Funny how people seems to have an issue with everything (which is not even the case) being about the Dragons and yet the same people usually praise how good Guild Wars 1 was. Despite everything (and that was basically actually everything) was about Abaddon.

That’s because everything wasn’t about Abaddon…until Nightfall. They retroactively made him responsible for both Shiro and the Searing.

It wasn’t quite as retroactive as you think. Prophecies actually had a lot of nods towards Nightfall. We encountered Turai Ossa and heard of his pilgrimage, there was a mission called “Elona Reach”, we fought back the titans at “Abaddon’s Mouth”. Sure the entire story may not have been plotted out from the beginning, but they clearly had some idea of what they were doing. And it is no different to any other MMO, expansions reveal new things that may or may not have been initially planned, or may have been planned at a later stage. It doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly gone back and retroactively changed the lore, because they never actually altered anything about Prophecies. The stories clearly link into one another, whether it was initially devised that way or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t lessen prophecies or nightfall’s story if the links were figured out after Prophecies had already been released (and there is no way they hadn’t considering Nightfall was released so soon after Prophecies).

If I recall correctly ArenaNet devs have straight up said there was no coherent plan until Nightfall. Nightfall’s story was written by Jeff Grubb who wasn’t with the company until then, and I believe he was also responsible for fleshing out the world into something coherent and with a developed history. Prophecies and Factions were making stuff up as they went along. So no, those references to Turai Ossa and Elona weren’t put in with any knowledge or intention of where things were headed, Nightfall instead took those references and built itself from them.

But you’re right that it doesn’t diminish either story.

Eolirin.1830:

If I recall correctly ArenaNet devs have straight up said there was no coherent plan until Nightfall. Nightfall’s story was written by Jeff Grubb who wasn’t with the company until then, and I believe he was also responsible for fleshing out the world into something coherent and with a developed history.

yup. Which makes me wonder why he didn’t do the story for GW2. including the LS, which is just… not good.

It was a bit of both. They had an idea that something was ultimately behind the events of Prophecies and Nightfall, but didn’t flesh out exactly what it was until Nightfall started development. So they were able to make it work without retconning anything but a piece from an unreliable narrator – and that retcon was, in fact, made part of the plot.

DarksunG.9537:

Eolirin.1830:

If I recall correctly ArenaNet devs have straight up said there was no coherent plan until Nightfall. Nightfall’s story was written by Jeff Grubb who wasn’t with the company until then, and I believe he was also responsible for fleshing out the world into something coherent and with a developed history.

yup. Which makes me wonder why he didn’t do the story for GW2. including the LS, which is just… not good.

His job for GW2 is world building. He’s intimately involved in the dragons, the history of the races, which factions exist, where the overall arc of the world is headed, etc.

I’d argue that story has had some significant issues in every GW release, Nightfall being no exception, and that season 2 of LS is actually the closest they’ve gotten to something solid, albeit in too short a form.

Game writing, never mind for MMOs, tends to be fairly awful by the metric of more traditional mediums though, I can count the number of games that I’d consider to be well written on one hand, and they’re almost all adventure games or visual novels; holding an MMO to any sort of literary standard is just asking for trouble. When you compare GW2 to it’s peers, it holds up pretty well.

DarksunG.9537:

It’s more about whether the big bad in the background sucks or not. Adabbon was a cool, mysterious manipulative force bent on revenge using subtlety with a personal history. He was probably the only retcon in all of GW that worked correctly.

From replies in this very thread, that is highly debatable whether it worked correctly or not. It’s also a matter of subjective taste “if the big bad sucks/is cool or not”. What I think works is probably not on the same level as everyone else on what they think works.

Scarlet was arguably the most annoying writers-pet character in all of Guild Wars. There was no reason for her to have an annoying personality, stupid dialog & be so stupidly & impossibly overpowered. She would have been much more interesting as a mature, manipulative plan-maker in the background doing small things to cause forces to fight one another & accidentally cause the events instead of spouting stupid token “oh she’s crazy!” one-liners & try be cool & sassy.

This is possible, but she did grow better over time from introduction at the Twisted Watchwork Invasion until later. The problem is, in my opinion, people couldn’t get past the introduction and they’d already cemented their opinion on her by the time that one two-week release ended.

The Dragons.. well.. they are just boring.. better than Scarlet by far since they aren’t irritating but they are boring. I’d prefer they be more of a Cthulian force with mystery & horror, but they are kinda generic “it’s all the cycle” no-personality forces.

Cthulian force of mystery and horror? I have to ask, do you actually read Lovecraft’s stories? Not the rest of the Mythos which is written by other authors who have their own take on it (and August Derelith’s semi-subversion). Those forces from beyond, or from ancient time? They are all a cycle themselves. It’s said so right in “Call of Cthulu” itself, and is a major part of the Mythos – they can only act when ‘the stars are right’. It’s the only reason humanity isn’t destroyed by these uncaring, unknowable beings of immense power.

I’d say the difference between the Elder Dragons and the Great Old Ones is the dragons can be killed. (Though evidence is suggesting it’s not a good idea.)

The Sylvari may have been written to be minions all along, but as the lore forum had found years ago there are holes all over it. All I know is I am supremely sick of hearing about Sylvari & now we have a whole kitten ed expansion about them. I can’t think of 1 single thing they could have done to ruin an expansion other than that.

I can think of several things which could be done to ruin an expansion.

- Dragons are the biggest bad boys in the game and some of the most memorable bosses to queue and camp . . . let’s make an expansion with a continent where the whole western half has a dozen or more just wandering around.

- Let’s go to the Moon and find out that empire we barely knew anything about via lore survived (sorta) by going there first and colonizing it. Oh, and there’s this goddess there who is trying to drive everyone nuts for intruding on her turf.

- Let’s go kill gods in their home planes! Then we can just reset time when it’s all over with so the goal is technically left incomplete and players can run it again and again without messing up the lore.

- Dungeons! Screw anything else, this is all dungeons run as repetitive randomized missions.

- Time travel! The idea so nice we did it twice! Only you can’t change the past, just relive it.

One thing though; everyone’s already saying Sylvari are dragon minions, but so far there’s two statements we’ve seen. One is Angel McCoy stating the Sylvari’s origins were in since long before launch, and the only statement in game is Wynne’s comment to Caithe “We are meant to serve the jungle dragon”.

Isn’kitten bit of stretch to say that just because they’re meant to serve the dragon equates the Sylvari race to be dragon minions?

I’d say there’s a semantic difference and that there are aspects here that differentiates them from other dragon minions like the Icebrood, Risen and Destroyers. I think this development is cool; I look forward to seeing how the story develops further! Caithe obviously has a mission with this egg to save her race; will it usurp Mordremoth and give the Sylvari a good-natured master?

I would say that the cutscene at the end of E8 shows rather clearly where the Sylvari belong.
It is very unlikely that Mordremoth could take over hundreds (or possibly thousands) of entities within seconds unless there were a connection already established between them.

Also; what other factors play a role in protecting the Sylvari from the influence of Mordremoth than the Pale Tree. Is it the work of her or the Dream of Dreams; of which the Pale Tree is only a custodian and even unaware of its exact nature and origins – so might there be yet another entity behind the scene here battling for control of the Sylvari?

lordkrall – yes, they share a connection through the Dream of Dreams prior to awakening where experiences of Sylvari are pooled. And the Pale Tree apparently has some connection to all her Sylvari children; but they have the capacity of individual behaviour and thought – one must assume seeing as they’re a playable race.
Now that the Pale Tree is weakened, and the Sylvari are closer than ever to Mordremoth – as the Pact launches its assault – maybe that connection from the Pale Tree to her children is exploited by Mordremoth to mass influence those present?

draxynnic.3719:

It was a bit of both. They had an idea that something was ultimately behind the events of Prophecies and Nightfall, but didn’t flesh out exactly what it was until Nightfall started development. So they were able to make it work without retconning anything but a piece from an unreliable narrator – and that retcon was, in fact, made part of the plot.

They did not.

Prophecies and Factions were written not just as stand-alone campaigns, but stand-alone stories. I know this for a fact. Any “Abaddon linking” of the three stories began entirely with Nightfall. Although I would agree that it was done well.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Prophecies actually had a lot of nods towards Nightfall. We encountered Turai Ossa and heard of his pilgrimage, there was a mission called “Elona Reach”, we fought back the titans at “Abaddon’s Mouth”.

They weren’t “nods towards Nightfall”. They were all plot threads that Jeff used to explain his Nightfall story. The name “Abaddon”(like Ossa and Elona) was just a place name Jess used, in this case, to describe a mission/location. Jeff, as any good writer would do, expanded on that minuscule plot name and made it into something spectacular.

It would be the same thing as someone coming up with a history behind the name “Komalie”. Perhaps making it into an ancient magical personage of some sort(like Odran) who was responsible for creating that gate. Or whatever.

Creating a backstory for a pre-existing name doesn’t mean it was always there, it just means it’s there now.

A few questions. First who are the lead writers on this Heart of Thorns project? Is it the same people who have been handling the story since post GW2 launch (as in Bobby Stein and Angel Leigh McCoy)? Also is Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee working on this project or something completely different still?

Personally, I love this twist. It shows that Glint isn’t the only exception to a “good” champion and gives hope that the Elder Dragons can actually be defeated. GW2 is about the Elder Dragons. Stories that don’t revolve around them aren’t worthy of the Living Story. The whole point of the Living Story is a gradual progression to killing the Elder Dragons.

Hey Angel, thanks for the straight answer!

It’s been a long time since we had any facts to play with! Friends have wondered since the beginning if the Sylvari weren’t dragon minions and then longer if Anet would ever dare to go there.

Avariz.8241:

Psientist.6437:

Avariz.8241:

Psientist.6437:

I am torn.

One one hand, I think Sylvaris as dragon minions is equivalent to Sylvaris as race of Mary Sues. The writers were able to keep the truth or logic of their true nature hidden by making the mechanics of their true nature unique. I don’t consider that good writing, I consider that three card monte.

On the other hand; a player controlled race that turns out to be unwittingly and in some cases, intentionally, working for the enemy could prove to be a very dynamic environment for story telling. I just hope the writers have a handle on how dark this environment could get.

In Guildwars 2 beta, all players were corrupted by Krakaltoric, and players as themselves were fighting against other players who had the misfortune to have been corrupted by Krakaltoric. In the end Krakaltoric won as all players turned evil. This happened in all servers in NA and EU.

Pardon my confusion, but which of my comments are you referring to? And are you offering events and mechanics that occurred during beta as canon?

Sorry to have cause you confusion. In the beta there was a special opening event where players’ characters were corrupted by an Elder Dragon and fought each other. This is like the situation now, where players rolling sylvari could be unwitting agents of Mordremoth. Back then in the beta event all player characters got corrupted by Krakaltoric and became evil crystal minions.

Sorry to burst your bubble there, but not all players got turned into Crystal minions, I know for a fact that on one of the NA servers at least half of the players remained as their normal characters when the server shut down…as a matter of fact I didn’t get turned into a dragon minion until just a moment before that Beta ended.

Obsidian.1328:

draxynnic.3719:

It was a bit of both. They had an idea that something was ultimately behind the events of Prophecies and Nightfall, but didn’t flesh out exactly what it was until Nightfall started development. So they were able to make it work without retconning anything but a piece from an unreliable narrator – and that retcon was, in fact, made part of the plot.

They did not.

Prophecies and Factions were written not just as stand-alone campaigns, but stand-alone stories. I know this for a fact. Any “Abaddon linking” of the three stories began entirely with Nightfall. Although I would agree that it was done well.

The campaigns were planned in trilogies. Prophecies and Factions were standalone parts of a trilogy that were intended to be (and were) brought together in a third piece. The fourth campaign was intended to be the start of a new story – which then grew into GW2.

According to Colin on the recent Point of Interest it was Ree Soesbee herself that planned for the sylvari to be directly related to Mordremoth.

A writer is like our lifeblood. It trickles through our veins and pulses at every moment of inspiration. It makes our hearts pound ever forward to the next beat. Those of us who take close notice of every stroke of the pen are more critical and harbingers of the darkness in our souls. We feed upon despair and misery, yet yearn for light ever more. Writers are lightbringers, vigils and ingenious. They demonstrate constantly that us as players, as observers and as critics, that we are entwined and involved in their stories. They drive us to an inevitable state where our destinies will be revealed…or at least that of our character and the living world in Tyria.

I for one am hyped, enthralled and currently reading one after another the novels while I wait for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.

P.S.: Currently at ‘’We were not there when all this happened, but we know it because of the Dream of Dreams. While we were quickening within the golden fruit of the Pale Tree, the tree spoke to us of the world outside. She taught us, if you will, of the waking world.’’

P.P.S: Now I’m no longer sleepy even if I have a D&D tabletop game in less than 7 hours and still need to sleep. Crud ^^