Guild Wars 2

Do Charr really hate magic? That would negate Charr Elementalists (the most glaring example). No, to me, it has always been Charr hating the idea of worshiping a god, and the shackles that attitude may impose. Incidentaly in human lore, Gods gave magic to the races; thus, when Charr denied all gods, they turned a little from magic, deciding to go towards a more industrial culture.

As Konig pointed, that doesn’t mean they do not recognize the usefulness of magic.

The problem with the idea of the bloodstones being psychological is that they were split after a number of spellcasters had already learned to use magic as a unified whole. The splitting, however, forced them to specialise – and this applied to spellcasters of all races however knowledgeable they were in magic (including the forgotten and mursaat), implying that it’s not just a mental block you can break through. Even now, mechanically, the specialisation still holds – it’s just that the specialisations have grown broader in scope.

On the topic of the charr – they recognise the value of magic, but they distrust it and its users due to its associations with religion. This is part of the reason why the charr went so heavily into technology – they were looking into alternatives to magic in the hope of being able to limit their reliance on it without giving an advantage to their enemies.

In terms of training young charr to use magic at the fahrar – my impression is that it’s discouraged, informally and possibly formally, but they’re not at the stage where they think they can afford to excise it from the charr military entirely. Thus, cubs that cannot be dissuaded from learning magic, or cubs for whom its clear that they’re not going to be particularly useful to the legions without magic, will be taught in magic. However, as opposed to most races where spellcasters are typically afforded greater respect than spellcasters, among the charr the spellcasters are distrusted and generally need to work harder to prove themselves.

draxynnic.3719:

The problem with the idea of the bloodstones being psychological is that they were split after a number of spellcasters had already learned to use magic as a unified whole. The splitting, however, forced them to specialise – and this applied to spellcasters of all races however knowledgeable they were in magic (including the forgotten and mursaat), implying that it’s not just a mental block you can break through. Even now, mechanically, the specialisation still holds – it’s just that the specialisations have grown broader in scope.

Yeah, in Prophecies it most definitely wasn’t psychological. It says pretty clearly in the manuscripts, that the gods sundered the Bloodstone, thus splitting the schools of magic, and limiting the magic on Tyria.

From the Prophecies manuscripts:

“In less than a century, the serpents who had protected and nurtured Tyria were no longer needed. The balance they had achieved had been undone, and there was no way to bring it back. Seeing that the world had changed, and preferring not to fight a war over control of the continent, the serpents retreated from the world of men. They left the coasts and the jungles. They abandoned their settlements in the highlands and in the mountains. Leaving the newcomers be, the serpents went to live in the only place where we humans did not—or could not: the Crystal Desert. The serpents never returned to the world of men, and slowly, their influence faded. To humans, they were just a part of the past, spoken about only in legends and myths. Eventually their memory all but passed from human consciousness. But they were not gone, only forgotten.

Despite the serpents’ retreat, the gods never halted their work creating the world, and with the benevolence of indulgent parents, they decided to create magic. It was to
be a gift to all the intelligent creatures—meant to ease a life of toil and make survival a less arduous task. When they had finished creating their gift, they presented it to the humans and the Charr, the Tengu and the dwarves, the minotaurs and the imps, and all the races of the land. But the gods had not counted upon one thing—greed. Wars broke out immediately as the magical races fought for dominance. So much destruction was wrought that humans found themselves at the edge of extinction. When all seemed lost, it was King Doric, the leader of the united human tribes himself, who made the long trek to Arah, the city of the gods, on the Orrian peninsula. He gained an audience with the creators and begged them to help, to stop the wars and bring peace to the land once again. The gods heard his pleas, and they intervened. The forging of the world was complete. As their final act, the gods gathered back their gift of magic from all the races and trapped it inside a tall stone. They smashed the stone into five parts—four equal but opposing stones of magic, and one keystone. Without the keystone, the other four couldn’t be reassembled.

Each of the first four stones was the embodiment of a specific school of magic: preservation, destruction, aggression, and denial. Magic would still exist in the world, but the devastating power of all four types together would never again be at the command of one single creature. Those who accepted the gift would have to cooperate if they intended to use it to its fullest."

Rhaegar.1203:

Do Charr really hate magic? That would negate Charr Elementalists (the most glaring example). No, to me, it has always been Charr hating the idea of worshiping a god, and the shackles that attitude may impose. Incidentaly in human lore, Gods gave magic to the races; thus, when Charr denied all gods, they turned a little from magic, deciding to go towards a more industrial culture.

Yes, they do hate magic. But as said, they are also practical and realize that magic has uses.

They hate magic. They don’t trust it. Magic users in charr societies are viewed rather negatively (best seen in the Blood Legion storyline where you go to recruit a Necromancer who’s being recruited by the Flame Legion; his warband ousted him for being a spellcaster when the Flame Legion went to recruit him the first time – they thought he was working with the Flame because he was a spellcaster; even your own warband mate has a chance of showing distrust with him during the recruitment step).

They do indeed also hate gods, but their hatred of magic is tied directly to the Flame Legion’s subjugation whereas their hatred of gods dates back further.

I don’t know if I should still be posting thoughts and questions about magic here, or a new post, but…

So, a random thought struck me earlier today, or yesterday according to the clock, while pondering magitech of the Asura. We know how the humans classify the four schools, but how do the Asura? Do they even have a Preservation Magic? Would a bed-chamber meant to speed up the healing process use Preservation Magic? Or do the Asura even follow our rules? Could an Asura be capable of using whatever school of magic they wish, simply because the idea of a bloodstone would be foreign to them? I mean, what if that’s how it worked. The bloodstones don’t actually limit you, the idea was just put into the heads of the surface dwellers. Power of suggestion style. Or do the Asura even use a school of magic at all? Do they instead “program,” so to speak raw magic

Also, another idea that struck me was, maybe the idea that we’ve thrown off the shackles of the bloodstones wasn’t so much /I/ can use either denial or preservation. But /you/ could use Denial and I could use Preservation, and blend it together by using it together. Hence: Skill Combos. This idea is supported, I feel, by the fact that the bloodstones were once whole. And the schools kind of blend anyways. However, a counter point that a friend raised was that, if this was what they meant, why am I able to combo my Mesmer’s staff combo field and combo finisher to grant myself chaos armor? My opinion is that, if I can combine my spells with yous, then surely my own spells could combine with each other? But I wanted to throw the point here just to hear what you guys thought.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

They hate magic. They don’t trust it. Magic users in charr societies are viewed rather negatively (best seen in the Blood Legion storyline where you go to recruit a Necromancer who’s being recruited by the Flame Legion; his warband ousted him for being a spellcaster when the Flame Legion went to recruit him the first time – they thought he was working with the Flame because he was a spellcaster; even your own warband mate has a chance of showing distrust with him during the recruitment step).

They do indeed also hate gods, but their hatred of magic is tied directly to the Flame Legion’s subjugation whereas their hatred of gods dates back further.

Ehh, I wouldn’t equate their distrust of magic and spell casters with a hatred of magic.

They are distrustful of magic users due to the subjugation from the flame legion. But that doesn’t equate to hatred of magic.

“The Flame Legion is condemned more for their worship of false gods and longtime oppression of the other legions than for the fact they have a preference for fireballs.”

“while they might mock an elementalist for his light armor, they appreciate the mobile artillery support that a timely meteor shower provides.”

http://www.onlinewelten.com/games/guild-wars-2/interviews/jeff-grubb-im-interview-zu-charr-7759/seite-3/

So none of this really screams ‘hatred of magic’ to me. Only distrust, solely due to Flame Legions association with it.

@Loki: Previous interviews have explicitly stated that asura records observed the effects of the gods tampering with the bloodstones. There was a period when magic was more powerful, and then it became limited. They didn’t know, at the time, why this is the case, but the asura certainly are, or were, limited in the same ways as surfacers.

That said, it’s likely that magitech was always able to get around the limitation – if you have an expert in each school on your krewe, and each one makes components utilising the magic they know, then the final product once assembled will naturally be able to make use of the strengths of all four schools (and you can skip any school you don’t need for the desired effect).

On multiclass combinations… the whole point of splitting the bloodstones was to encourage spellcasters to cooperate, so skill combos do not represent a contradiction with bloodstone lore.

@Dustfinger: it kind of goes both ways. It may not be magic itself that they dislike – however, they know that historically magic has often come from gods or beings claiming to be gods and has in the past been in the province of people claiming to be priests, and this makes users of magic suspect. After all, you never know when a magic user has secretly augmented their power by making a pact with a false god.

Certainly, there is some cultural distrust there.

@Loki: The bloodstones’ effect is NOT a cultural psychological effect on humanity. Even in pre-GW2 interviews, such as what drax mentions, this was made clear.

Though with Angel’s interview this is called into question, everything beforehand tells us that everyone was limited to the rules of the Bloodstones (at least in the past) and Abaddon’s gift of magic – hell, even NPCs talking in GW2 claim this.

@Dustfinger: I recall an interview which said they hate magic and distrust magic users – even non-charr magic users like the asura – but utilize them because they realize the usefulness and practicallness of, for example, an asura gate or that portable meteor shower.

draxynnic.3719:

@Dustfinger: it kind of goes both ways. It may not be magic itself that they dislike – however, they know that historically magic has often come from gods or beings claiming to be gods and has in the past been in the province of people claiming to be priests, and this makes users of magic suspect. After all, you never know when a magic user has secretly augmented their power by making a pact with a false god.

Certainly, there is some cultural distrust there.

Absolutely. A-net confirmed that the charr will never accept another magic user in leadership, due to flame legion oppression and deception. So that distrust is there of magic users. I just think that the word “hatred” is too strong a word for how they feel about magic when they are confirmed to be appreciative of any charr who can carry their own weight. Even those who utilize magic.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Dustfinger: I recall an interview which said they hate magic and distrust magic users – even non-charr magic users like the asura – but utilize them because they realize the usefulness and practicallness of, for example, an asura gate or that portable meteor shower.

I’d be interested to see that interview. I’m just wary considering the link I posted and the fact that people tend to remember their own interpretations over flat text. Me especially. I know there’s been a few times that I’ve had to submit to your own links after finding my memory of that same info was off.

I appologise if this has already been said, but I’ve been chewing over an idea to put the Bloodstones retcon in broader context.

Whilst I agree that the whole psychological distinction being within Humans is very on the nose, and has already been expertly rebutted by several people here, could it be possible that the Bloodstones simply do not work the way the whole stone was meant to.

In a more blunt way, what if the Human Gods, in breaking the stone effectively locked magic away into the various schools, but ‘broke’ the overall mechanism of the stones; storing uncorrupted magic.

I know this is very much grasping for an explanation (I do want to point out that I agree with pretty much everything said in this thread) but is an explanation that makes lore sense?

Thanks for tolerating the ramblings.

If I’m understanding you correctly, that’s what we got from Arab – Abaddon tampered with the bloodstone to gift magic to the world, then the other five gods reduced that gift and subsequently shattered the bloodstone so the strongest spells couldn’t be used anymore, even if with less magic.

But that would still mean that folks at that time were limited to the schools, otherwise they’d never stop using unified magic.

I think maybe I didn’t clarify properly. I’ll chalk that up to tiredness.

What I was suggesting is that they make have broke the mechanism that kept the magic sealed in the first place; over time the magic stored in the stone has leaked out at a faster rate then the previous eras (this is assuming it leaked magic at all. I unfortunately haven’t been able to do the Arah explorables as much as I would like.) thus resulting in more magic being around in the modern age (relatively speaking) then we would’ve anticipated given the amount of time between the two games.

Not trying to say people we’re restricted to schools, and still aren’t (to a more limited extent) but could this account for people being able to use more then one school at a time? (for example the Elementalist being able to use both Destruction and Preservation magic depending on the element they’re attuned to.)

As I said above, it’s majorly grasping at straws in an attempt to get much reasonable from the interview. Any way you look at it, the interview really did just dropkick the existing lore out the window and put something less…unique in it’s place. We’ll see what happens from here on out.

First… that’s pretty much the theory I’ve proposed myself. basically, Abaddon’s tampering switched the bloodstone from ‘suck’ to ‘blow’. My additional detail is that while magic coming directly from the bloodstones is restricted by school, the magic being returned to the world has been absorbed and started being reradiated from other sites that attract magic. So, basically, there are three sources of magic in the world – the dragons (which most sane mortals don’t try to tap in to, at least while they’re awake), the Bloodstones which are limited by schools, and the world’s ambient magic. Since the Bloodstones had sucked up all of the ambient magic in the past, when the bloodstones were split they were pretty much the only magic available to nonspellcasters. Now, ambient magic provides an alternative with less limitations (although it still may be less powerful than bloodstone magic).

As an aside, though, there’s still no evidence that says that magic between the schools are being mixed – that Elementalists, say, are using Preservation. The schools always (at least back to GW1) had broader focus than the narrow definitions suggested, they just meant that one spellcaster couldn’t control the entire spectrum of magic. So elementalist healing water may be an aspect of the Destruction school that just happens to have similar effects to those associated with Preservation, not actually a use of Preservation.

(There’s a good explanation somewhere as to why this all makes sense – the brief summary is the old saw about ‘to create, you have to destroy’ (or, even more traditionally, ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs’). Elementalist magic all hinges on transforming something, destroying what was there before in order to make something new (although a few of the arcane spells might dispense with the creation part). So the healing water, for instance, heals – but it requires a transformation of ordinary water into the healing water to have that effect, while Preservation can heal without needing to resort to a physical medium.)

Mularc Templare.5063:

What I was suggesting is that they make have broke the mechanism that kept the magic sealed in the first place; over time the magic stored in the stone has leaked out at a faster rate then the previous eras (this is assuming it leaked magic at all. I unfortunately haven’t been able to do the Arah explorables as much as I would like.) thus resulting in more magic being around in the modern age (relatively speaking) then we would’ve anticipated given the amount of time between the two games.

Precisely. But they didn’t really “break” it, not accidentally at least – as far as we know, it merely contained, never leaking. Abaddon tampered with it to unleash magic – how or in what way is unknown. And afterwards, the other five gods reduced that unleashed magic – again, how or in what way, unknown. And then they shattered it. And at some point, Zhaitan’s magic was used (unknowing that it was Zhaitan, so we’re told) to strengthen the Bloodstone (again, how and in what way, unknown). But ever since, given the Arah explorable information, it seems that the release was never closed off since the Bloodstones have always been in effect. Though there were hints from dat mining that they’ve weakened, which is furthered by the professions of GW2, they were still in effect…

Until this interview.

In other words, using Drax’s short analogy, the seers made a Magic Vacuum and filled it up with all the magic in the world. Centuries/Millenia pass with it stationary (or as far as we’re given to believe, with the whole “no magic”/“magic only at very few hotspots like the Artesian Waters and Elder Dragons” in the world info we’re told). Then Abaddon comes along and reverses the Magic Vacuum at max power. The other five come along, says “no,” and reduces the power but keeps it in reverse before breaking Magic Vacuum into four pieces, each piece being its own nice little vacuum of specific stuff.

One can say they did break it, but we cannot really say they couldn’t or didn’t intend to stop it from releasing magic.

Mularc Templare.5063:

Not trying to say people we’re restricted to schools, and still aren’t (to a more limited extent) but could this account for people being able to use more then one school at a time? (for example the Elementalist being able to use both Destruction and Preservation magic depending on the element they’re attuned to.)

It was never said a person can never use more than one school. Only that they could never use all four. GW1’s dual professions – as I said earlier in this thread – shows us that using two schools is very much possible. It’s been theory for quite some time among myself and others that the GW2 professions had adapted multiple schools whereas GW1 had only used one. Though a counter to this is that we were explicitly told that Elementalists use Destruction magic – with no mention of another school of magic.

Just wanted to say thanks for the replies. I honestly went back to check sources before writing that up and skipped over the line about not using all four schools but not being restricted to one school.

I’m not sure I’d read that theory before about the elementalists’ magic Drax but it makes a whole lot of sense.

If only the interview had been conducted with as thorough a look at the lore we might have avoided some of the glaring issues with it, but we’re stuck with it now until someone comes along and tells us otherwise. Keep up the good work.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The connection between the Mouvelian calendar and our real-world calendar is a practical one. Thanks to your question, we had a big discussion here. The Mouvelian calendar was established way back when Guild Wars was first being created. At that time, we had no idea we’d ever be doing Living World content like we are now. We’ve decided that we’re going to change the Mouvelian calendar to a 365-day year. Here’s the official in-game asuran announcement:

“Friends and fellows. Due to recent (amazing!) reasoning by scholars of the Astronomagical Society, we are pleased to announce that we have added the five hidden days to our calendar year! That’s five extra days we’ve recognized for you to advance your work before the annual review. Gifts and gratitude are unnecessary. We merely acknowledged them officially; we did not create them. May all your projects be almost as successful as ours.” — Mikk

Are you freakin’ kidding me?

“Oh hey, when this was made, we didn’t think we’d be doing this. So lets retcon it! 8D”

Goodbye ArenaNet, hello Blizzard 2.0 who’s lore is written on a piece of toilet paper. >.>

Next thing you know, they’re going to say “no, the Mouvelian calendar doesn’t start at the beginning of spring, it starts in the middle of winter!” Or they’ll go “the Mouvelian calendar didn’t have months in the past, so we decided to give twelve months to it – we named them January, February, March, April, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December.”

First basically retconning out the four schools of magic, and now altering the calendars for no reason? What about the Canthan calendar which has 12 months already of 30 days each? Or the Dynastic Reckoning calendar? Are the years between them now going to be messed up in transitioning, or are those going to get retconned to just to make the living story progress at the same time as reality?

GG Anet, kittening up the lore for non-lore reasons.

What happened to May?

I’m eager to see the new follow-up article. Also, 10 points to Thalador.

I say we go track down these bloodstones and reunite them, to hell with the dragons (for now).

There’s another way to look at this: it was the common belief at the time, but over the course of the decades it has been found to be untrue.

The skill trainer ghost at the Hall of Monuments specifically states that whatever skill he has to teach pale to the powers wielded in the present. It’s very much possible that during Guild Wars 1, humans (our only source of lore) simply weren’t skilled enough to handle multiple forms of magic. Because back then it was so far out of their reach, and being a very religious race, their foremost scholars probably agreed on it being impossible as part of the ‘will of the gods’. As spellcasters grew more skilled, humans may have found out this restriction turned out to be a false one. This could in part be due to the Asura, which as by Livia’s own words ‘have thaught her a lot’.

Think of it this way: if you’d have said to the Wright brothers that one day planes would go faster than the speed of sound they wouldn’t have believed you. And yet it was achieved in less than 200 years, without real-life humanity coming into contact with a much more technologically advanced race (i.e. the Asura).

@Mistro: Easier said then done – we only know where three of them are (or, rather, were in GW1’s time). One is in the heart of a volcano. One is deep in the Maguuma Wastes, and the other is underground with no clear means of reaching it.

The other two could well be underwater, for all we know – and then there’s the question of whether Tyrian magic users would be able to figure out the ritual to reunite them in the first place.

@ThiBash: Two problems with that theory. The first is that spellcasters were able to use all four forms of magic at once before the splitting, then they could not. Second, this effect was observed by other races, including, according to a Grubb interview, the asura.

Before the splitting of the Bloodstones, there were people who could wield all forms of magic at once, and thus clearly knew how to do so. After the splitting, there were not. Presumably, they hadn’t all simply forgotten, so the splitting of the bloodstones must have actually done something fundamental to how magic could be used.

The restrictions of the bloodstones may have weakened since, but they definitely held fast once. To claim otherwise is the folly of a new generation that believes they’re inherently smarter than every generation that came before.

draxynnic.3719:

@ThiBash: Two problems with that theory. The first is that spellcasters were able to use all four forms of magic at once before the splitting, then they could not. Second, this effect was observed by other races, including, according to a Grubb interview, the asura.

Before the splitting of the Bloodstones, there were people who could wield all forms of magic at once, and thus clearly knew how to do so. After the splitting, there were not. Presumably, they hadn’t all simply forgotten, so the splitting of the bloodstones must have actually done something fundamental to how magic could be used.

The restrictions of the bloodstones may have weakened since, but they definitely held fast once. To claim otherwise is the folly of a new generation that believes they’re inherently smarter than every generation that came before.

I see. Then maybe whatever the human gods did with the stone was more than simply shattering it. Maybe the pieces held some enchantments that regulated the way magic flowed and whatever magical energy that powered them is slowly being drained away, thus lessening their control.

EDIT: One thing I’d like to point out though is that the Asura also noticing the effect doesn’t neccesarily mean the bloodstone shattering was responsible for it.

The thing of note isn’t the shattering. It’s the creation and separation of the four schools – which I would like to note, did not necessarily exist prior to 0 BE.

We know they exist, and we know they held effect. This is fact. And we know that the increase and reduction of magic influenced other races – asura being a specific mention.

Here’s a thought, a weird one, but a thought nonetheless. What if the gods, in some way, agreed that Abaddon was right in gifting magic to the world, but decided that he was wrong in the way in which he introduced it to the world. Because of this they separated the bloodstones and enchanted them to slowly ebb the magic back into the world, instead of bursting forth like a busted dam (which seems to have been Abaddon’s approach). Abaddon’s method gave too many people too much power too fast, and they were unable to control their lust for power, which was emboldened by their new strength. The other method allows peoples and races to be introduced to a slowly increasing amount of power which gives time for growth and maturing along the way.

This does answer many questions, and this doesn’t destroy the importance of the bloodstones. The people of GW2 are still far behind the level of magic mentioned in stories of the past (magical slaughters bringing humanity to the brink of extinction), so the bloodstones themselves still seem to have some level of control over who can do what, just not as much power as they had originally, or in GW1. This could even partially explain why players could use multiple professions in the GW1 world, because of the slightly weakening effects of the bloodstones.

Thanks Angel for taking the time to respond to this thread.

Incidentally enough, this does nothing to really answer any of the questions or concerns poised before.

And I even see some conflicts with the lore in this response. I’m about to start a Arah dungeon run atm though so I’ll respond in length later.

Thanks though for replying Angel. We rarely see any devs post in the lore forum at all. So any response, especially such a long one, is much appreciated.

Now that I’m not being pressed for attention elsewhere…

Firstly, I’d like to thank both of you (Angel and Regina) for taking the time to respond to the concerns of the lore forum. I really wish we had a few more dev responses on this forum when confusing things come up (other kinds of lore conflicts). And for the record, I was sure to re-read the interview and Angel’s response before writing this in full. Thalador’s posts (which I also re-read before writing) are a good basis for the problems of the interview since he nicely summarized them and explained why they are problems – even if a bit harshly in some places.

This said, however, as I mentioned before I don’t really see anything in the response that actually addresses the points made in the forum before. To summarize (in less than five posts) the issues, I believe they can be dumbed down to this:

• The interview trivializes Abaddon’s and other gods’ actions as well as the entire purpose of the Bloodstone. This is primarily in how folks use magic and how magic of the past is treated. The interview treats the Four Schools as merely cultural, but as shown in this thread, that’s illogically impossible (as folks had access to all four schools combined, and then were forced to not be able to).
• It contradicts observances made in the game itself as well as the novels – the claim that everyone has magic. We see, in the grand scale of things, rather few magic users; and if everyone used magic, wouldn’t that mean that the entire charr society – which is established in modern times on the distrust of magic users – be entirely distrusting of everyone else?
• It seemingly ignores the secondary profession capabilities of Guild Wars 1, even with 250 years this seems out of place.
• And last but not least – there’s the blatant retcon in the calendar. Something that didn’t even need to be done, and the retcon itself was kitten to the point where it only makes matters more confusing now.

Now, the response it self uses a lot of words to say… just about nothing on these points. The calendar – which is, IMO, the worse offender in the interview – doesn’t even get touched upon at all. Similarly, it doesn’t touch upon the “everyone uses magic” notion either. The mentions about Abaddon and the Bloodstone does help to counter the interview’s trivialization of the matters, but does nothing to explain why the situation is such. But while it does this, it doesn’t touch upon the schools of magic at all or how they truly interact in the lore.

All in all, the response feels more like a “don’t hate me” post (using the words of a guild member, Edus) rather than an explanation for this direction in the lore. You explain it simply as “250 years have passed and it’s no longer human centric, and people can be wrong.” And this is all fine and dandy, but it does nothing to actually alleviate the problem at hand. It’s little different than trying to put a band-aid over a ripped-open ribcage (a gruesome comparison, for sure, but I felt it was a proper comparison to how the response to the interview’s damage to the lore acts).

-continued next post-

Now, to reply directly to parts of the response itself…

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

So, let me explain where some of these lore decisions came from. They and many others are based on the following needs:

1. The fact that GW2 takes place 250 years in the future after GW.

2. The added complications that come with GW2 being non-human-centric. We’re no longer telling a human story, but a multiracial story, and that means only one of five races have the “gods” as part of their world construct. The lore needs to not only make sense for all races, but actually be relevant to them.

3. We want to evolve the lore, not rewrite it, but not just recycle what was already there either. We want to reveal new layers in the onion and expose secrets that even GW players didn’t know.

The first point and the third point is perfectly fine and good. The second point, there’s a bit of a problem.

Yes, it is indeed non-human-centric, however, how you react to this feels more like “humanity was wrong” all the time with a side of “the gods are nothing special” – rather than trivializing the gods and their actions, which seems to be the direction chosen, it should be showing how the other races view and were affected by the acts of the gods. There was an interview a while back, mentioned in this thread, where a dev (I thought it was Ree but drax says it was Jeff) mentioned how the asura reacted to a magical event in the past – that, reasons unknown to them, the amount of magic in the world increased and subsequently decreased – and heavily implied it to be the asura’s reactions to the act of Abaddon gifting magic to the world. That was done properly – it didn’t trivialize the gods’ actions, but showed how another race reacted to the gods’ acts.

After all, these are gods, not just “powerful wizards” – yet it is the later which is how the gods feel like they’re beginning to be treated, especially with the interview that basically says “the bloodstones do nothing” when you read it as a whole. Yet nothing to say “the bloodstones were important, but now they’re not anymore” it was instead treating them as cultural limitations that humanity imposed on themselves. I’m referring to this in particular:

These schools aren’t as important in modern magic as they were even 250 years ago. They have fallen out of style as people have realized that magic doesn’t need these kinds of limiting factors. Only the most ancient magic users, those who based their magical constructs on this dogma, continue to pursue their knowledge in this way. Thus, you’re only likely to find reference to them in the back-most shelves at the Durmand Priory and in jokes made by young people about old people.

This response basically tells us “the four schools were just a mental limitation; a cultural choice on how to treat magic” and never a physical limitation imposed on the world by the gods when they reduced magic.

-continued next post-

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

When you think of the history of Tyria from a non-human standpoint or, broader still, from a pan-racial standpoint, you begin to realize that not everything the people of Tyria believed 250 years ago is actually the whole truth. […] At some point, a Durmand Priory scholar or an asuran researcher questioned whether these historians were right or not. Sometimes they were; sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes, they only knew part of the story. We want to give you more of the story.

This paragraph rather irked me as a response to it. Mainly because… it doesn’t really have anything to do with the interview. At least, not in a way that’s obvious to us. We already know that human historians can be wrong – the History of Tyria shows us this very well. That’s not the problem at all. The problem is that the interview goes and counters not just what we’re told, but what we see. And in some cases of the former (countering “what we’re told”), the alternative presented doesn’t make sense (that the schools of magic were merely a dogma; a cultural limitation – as said in this thread, such would not make sense if people already had access to all four schools at once). It would be a vastly different case if it was just “the schools are no longer as limiting now as they were in the past” rather than “people don’t limit themselves with the schools now like they did in the past” – the way the question on the four schools was answered was basically saying that the schools were never a true factual limitation.

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

> Humans (including Canthan humans) were brought to Tyria (from…no spoilers!). They are not native to Tyria and did not come with much magic of their own. From a human perspective and oral tradition (that can get warped over time), they say the gods were giving them magic, but the reality was that the dragons had gone back to sleep, and the gods felt it was safe to begin returning magic stored in the Bloodstone to Tyria. The gods (not only Abaddon) “unsealed” the Bloodstone and magic flowed back into the world. Humans and other sentient races of the time began using it.

> Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out. King Doric begged the gods to slow the flow of magic back into Tyria and the gods granted his wish by shattering the Bloodstone into pieces and limiting their use. Abaddon was annoyed by this.

A few things to note about this:

• You say this as if the gods did know about the Elder Dragons, and not only that… were around when the Elder Dragons were last awake. However, in-game, we’re told that “They [the Six Gods] pulled the energies of Zhaitan himself, even though they did not know of the sleeping Elder Dragon.” (Source: Randall Greyston) And he’s not the only one who tells us that the Six Gods only arrived on Tyria after the Elder Dragons went to sleep, let alone imply such.
• All lore so far has told us that it was Abaddon who unsealed it, and the other five gods lessened that unsealing. That it was Abaddon alone who gifted magic. Are you trying to say that all the lore – both in and out of universe – saying this is false?
• “Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out.” You mean over the course of a year, wars broke out. Abaddon had gifted magic in 1 BE, and the reduction of magic occurred in Year 0/0 AE. Or is it to be that every historical record, even out-of-universe listings of the timeline – are to be wrong here?

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

For many of us players, it’s only been a couple years since Abaddon’s tantrum, but for Tyrians, it’s been much longer. The gods have been gone. Generations have lived and died. The world’s understanding and control of magic has grown and improved. The understanding of the cosmos (the Eternal Alchemy) has improved. And yet, there’s still so much the people of Tyria don’t know.

While that may be, that doesn’t excuse how something that makes no sense other than there being a physical limitation, and suddenly said physical-ness of the limitation never existed.

Of course, Tyria hasn’t advanced as quickly as we have. They don’t have cars or Internet or Post-It™ notes.

The charr and their Circus Charricus disagree with you about no cars.

Again, I do thank you for taking the time to respond to this… but you don’t really clarify anything in your post about the problems raised in the interview. You used a lot of words to tell us nothing on the matter at hand. There is some interesting tidbits and interpretations to take from your four points of lore facts, but you made no mention of the calendar, of the schools themselves, or people’s interactions with the schools, or of how “everyone” can use magic. And those were the problems at hand.

They ought to hire you Konig like how they hired Angel.

Thanks for the reply, Angel. It feels like we’ve gotten very little new lore in GW2 (and unfortunately, most of it seems to come from interviews rather than the game itself), so it’s nice to at least have some conversation going on the lore forums. I’d like to see it more often.

I only played the original Guild Wars for a few months in preparation for GW2, so I don’t know nearly as much of the lore as the other fine folks that frequent this board, but I do agree that it does feel like a huge letdown with how the old lore (specifically regarding humanity) has been handled. I think it’s important to make things work for a multi-racial PC cast now, but it does seem like the “retconning” for lack of a better word of a lot of the human lore in an attempt to do this has been a bit excessive. Especially because the human lore was genuinely fascinating. It’s kind of a letdown to see just how much of it has been toned down from what it was in the interest of putting the other races on more equal footing. I feel like it’s really cheapened humanity, the Gods (once my favorite part of the lore, but at this point they’ve become pretty unimpressive), and the impact they’ve had on Tyria. It also doesn’t really help that the Eternal Alchemy is apparently the de facto “correct” way of understanding the world all of a sudden.

I guess at this point there really isn’t anything that can be done about this, but I think it’s worth noting. I mean, maybe they’ll throw us a bone and actually do something awesome with the Human Gods sometime down the line. Have the Pact get absolutely decimated by one of the Elder Dragons and when all looks lost, the gods bust in and help save the day in some grand, kitten fashion. Although at the rate things have been going, I’m more expecting a casual “Oh yeah, the risen weren’t lying. Zhaitan really did kill the gods. That sucks, huh?” in some random blurb when they get around to doing a revamp of the Arah dungeon.

First, I’d like to thank both Regina and Angel for responding. To be honest, I was a little nervous when I saw the Arenanet icon on the thread, given some of the things that have been said here.

Having said that, I would make a few comments:

First, this atlas you speak of: What would it take to get it published? Preferably so that it’s available in Australia? Doesn’t matter if it’s two and a half centuries out of date. :P

Second – Konig’s touched on this, but I think the stuff regarding the gods is symptomatic of a larger problem. We all understand that the story is bigger than humanity now, but it often feels like you’ve overcompensated the other way. Consider Orr, for instance – going into the human holy city and the place where the gods first arrived on Tyria is somewhere where humans and human lore would have been expected to take the forefront, but instead they get marginalised by asura, charr, and Trahearne at every turn (okay, except for Historian Vermoth at the Cathedral of Zephyrs). Personally, for me it really crystallised when, on praising Grenth for her success at locating the Source of Orr, a priestess of Grenth is corrected by an asura who claims all the credit for himself… right in front of the Seventh Reaper. While it’s understandable that humans and human lore aren’t going to be at the forefront everywhere like in GW1 – Orr of all places, possibly more so even than Kryta, is a place where humans and human lore should have played a major role – instead it’s a distant fourth.

At the bottom line, humans being as important as they were in GW1 clearly isn’t appropriate when they’re only one race out of five. But there should be an attempt to give them roughly equal spotlight, and at the moment humans and norn feel a bit like the redheaded stepchildren. Now, the Zephyr Sanctum certainly helped there (not so much the recent event, since the end result was basically to make humanity the victim yet again), but I think the implication that what the gods did with the Bloodstones was nothing, and the response to that, is symptomatic of the way humans seem to have been marginalised.

Really, humans and norn both could do with a little more love and attention – but while the norn can at least hope to have their stuff come into the spotlight when (and I do hope that’s a when) we get to move north against Jormag, humans have already gone into the place where they should have been the most important… and proved to be of no importance there.

Third, as I commented earlier in this thread – change the length of the year if you feel it appropriate, but it needs a more satisfying reason than “it was actually that way the whole time and nobody noticed!” It takes less than a decade for a deficit of five days to make a significant difference in when the seasons start. Maybe the gods were holding the seasons to 90 days for their own reasons, but when they stopped meddling after GW1, the seasons and thus the years reverted to their natural pattern. Maybe there was some event – which may have otherwise gone unobserved by Tyrians – that caused the days to become shorter or the years to become longer – something that may become a hook for later stories. Either way, I don’t think changing the year is the real issue, it’s that the reason given for it is so unsatisfying.

Finally, on magic having been available for longer than a year…

I’m going to disagree with Konig on this one. This, actually, covers a LOT of inconsistencies that have been brought up in past discussions. We’ve been told that humans used magic en masse in the invasion of Ascalon in 100BE, and we knew there were other cases of magic being used in that century. The timelines are unfortunate, but we’ve seen other histories prove to be inaccurate before, and that particular part being inaccurate solves a lot of inconsistencies. Apart from human access to magic beforehand… the previous timeline expected us to believe that most races went from having no magic at all to magic being so apocalyptically powerful that Doric decided it needed to be limited within a year… with time left over to make his way to Orr (apparently not without having to fight along the way) and make his case to the gods. Now, I guess it could be a case of the various new mages simply gathering together as much raw power as possible and hurling it at one another as uncontrolled bursts, but it seems much more likely to me that it would have taken quite a bit longer than that to go from “we have no magic at all” to “threatening MAD”.

Which reminds me of a fifth point… which is that the assertion that everyone can use some magic does actually fit what we see. The common Seraph archer, for instance, can still shoot explosive arrows, and while that could be incendiary-tipped arrows, having access to one or two simple spells that can be applied to weapons makes more sense. Warriors in general can leap significant distances in a single bound, in heavy armour – good luck asking even a trained athlete in real life to leap half the effective range of a musket while wearing a full suit of metal armour. I think it is reasonable to say that pretty much everyone has some minor magical powers – but since they’re things that most people can do and aren’t close to the level that trained spellcasters can achieve, they may not even be regarded by most as magic, instead being, essentially, tricks. (I would contend, though, that such magic has probably become more widespread in GW2’s time than GW1’s time).

NOTE: I MAKE REAL LIFE REFERENCES HERE, INCLUDING RELIGION, CULTURE AND THE EVENTS OF THE REAL LIFE WORLD. I DO NOT MEAN TO OFFEND, I AM SIMPLY USING THIS AS AN EXAMPLE TO DESCRIBE OUR WORLD, AND TYRIA, AND TO SHOW HOW PERFECTION, IS ALWAYS, NOT PERFECT.

I have to say Konig’s responses rather bother me. He is automatically dismissing some things.

1. GW1 Lore was told from a human vantage point. All the lore you got, the lore you received, was from them.

2. In GW2 You get lore from the perspectives of MANY races (and not just the ones we play).

This kind of thought process is like saying:

I was raised a Buddhist.

I have now gone out into the world because of some cataclysmic event (I was being raised in a closed community). I was taught about the happenings in the world, current and past, by the teachers in my community.

I am now in the world, and these people around me keep speaking of Gods Wrath raining down on my village because we did not believe. But this isn’t what happened! The world had lost balance, and now, we are being pushed into the world to restore that balance. I know this, because it is what I was taught.

All your guild wars life (up until now) the lore has been given to you via the characters in the stories, or the game. For every character, race, religion, belief…that perspective, that story will be different.

Are the Charr going to believe what the humans believe? NO. Now, you point to contraindications in their own cultures. Tell me that we don’t do that NOW, in real life, when we do things like wage war for peace. When we make weapons we’ve forbidden others from making. When the very things we CLAIM to hate and despise, infiltrate our lives, our cultures. So yes, Charr might be distrustful of magic. I am distrustful of a gun. It can backfire, it can jam, it can hurt me instead of it’s target. If my life is on the line, I will certainly learn to use it, and do so when I need to. Those are the things that CAUSE those oppositions, those inconsistencies.

Every culture in the real world has them, yet so many turn a blind eye because they believe. Do you not think that other cultures, fictional or not, would not be the same? Full of oxymoron’s and inadequacies?

That pointed out take a different view.

Now instead of being immersed in the lore, you are an outsider, like now, reading these invterviews, these forums. What perspective would you say you have?

Who created Tyria? Who are it’s gods? Do you really believe it’s the six gods? Do you believe it was the spirits? ANet created Tyria. They have the ultimate perspective, and you are being invited to join them. It is the perspective of a god. Imagine looking down at the world you know, and seeing all these things that don’t make sense, all these beliefs that are not true. So much conflicting info….and they believe it, because like children with santa claus, they don’t know any better. You however can now see the truth, the chaos for what it is.

These interviews are done from the perspective of a god, who is not only trying to explain the truth, but the LORE that you know. The TRUE back story, and the beliefs of those in the world. OF COURSE they will conflict.

Imagine if there is a god, or goddess, or God, or Allah, or any of the figureheads(cant think of a better word sorry) of any of the beliefs out there, and they are staring down at us, shaking their head, because our world is nothing but a mess of confusion, chaos and contraindications. It’s what makes us interesting. It’s what makes us…us. We can expect no less of a fictional world. If a story is laid out in perfect detail, then you haven’t gotten all sides of the story.

I think drax said most of this better than I could, but I have to disagree with that fifth point. I don’t think we can take everything we see in combat as ’’lore’’. This is still a game, and the combat systems are a prime place for the story to get bent out of shape for the sake of mechanics. On the one hand, in sources outside the game that use the same lore but don’t require the mechanics (the novels, for instance, and all of those short stories pre- and post-launch) we don’t see non-casters manifesting, for instance, those miraculous leaps, or being able to bounce an arrow between multiple targets, or reflecting projectiles by spinning around really fast while holding an axe. On the other hand, if we were to accept that what we see in-game is 100% accurate of the world of Tyria, we’d also have to accept that bow-wielders have a hammerspace depository containing infinite arrows, that it takes a dozen or more hits from a lethal weapon to bring down anything larger than a rabbit, and that all wounds spontaneously close within seconds of the last foe on the field dying. In short, when it comes to combat, a strong dose of skepticism is a good thing.

draxynnic.3719:

Either way, I don’t think changing the year is the real issue, it’s that the reason given for it is so unsatisfying.

For me, it was more in how it was done and why it was done, then the in-universe reason for it.

draxynnic.3719:

Finally, on magic having been available for longer than a year…

I’m going to disagree with Konig on this one. This, actually, covers a LOT of inconsistencies that have been brought up in past discussions. We’ve been told that humans used magic en masse in the invasion of Ascalon in 100BE, and we knew there were other cases of magic being used in that century. The timelines are unfortunate, but we’ve seen other histories prove to be inaccurate before, and that particular part being inaccurate solves a lot of inconsistencies. Apart from human access to magic beforehand… the previous timeline expected us to believe that most races went from having no magic at all to magic being so apocalyptically powerful that Doric decided it needed to be limited within a year… -snip rest-

While thinking on it, if it were a case where each god took a little magic from the Bloodstone at a time and gave it to certain groups (e.g., the scriptures’ events) then it’d work. And that seems to be what you’re implying that clarifies things.

But the way Angel words it, to me, is like the first point (well, third) says “they all worked to releasing magic at the same time” while the second (fourth) says “there were over a hundred years of wars because they released so much magic.” In other words, her wording – to me at least, and this may merely be interpretation – says that the event we all were always told to be 1 BE, was in fact a hundred years earlier; that the world existed with so much magic for hundreds of years.

We have been told on many occasions that magic existed prior to the gift of magic, so that’s not the issue. It was “The gods (not only Abaddon) “unsealed” the Bloodstone and magic flowed back into the world.” which made it sound like a single event, not a release-over-time, or any other form of multiple events.

So yes, magic in general being available for more than a year – this was a known fact already. That’s not where the issue I was making is.

zaxziakohl.5243:

I have to say Konig’s responses rather bother me. He is automatically dismissing some things.

1. GW1 Lore was told from a human vantage point. All the lore you got, the lore you received, was from them.

2. In GW2 You get lore from the perspectives of MANY races (and not just the ones we play).

I’m not dismissing this at all, let alone automatically. I even acknowledge it outright in my posts. I say it happens and that it should. So I’m sorry but you clearly were misunderstanding me, or skipped over parts of my response.

In a case you state – charr belief and distrusting magic. Yes, their belief is different than human belief. It’s hard to say otherwise. I never dismiss or deny this – instead, I use this to explain what I think Anet’s doing wrong, which drax elaborated. They’re not using that difference and disagreement in belief, but rather downplaying the old belief presented in favor of the new belief.

It’s like Guild Wars 1’s story dug a deep hole in the ground. And with Guild Wars 2, they started to dig around that hole to make it wider – but in the process of doing this, they started filling that old hole’s depth. And now they have a mound in the center of their wider hole, that mound being human history and lore.

On charr distrusting magic – my point in that was that it is something they do (and reasonably so!) as well as magic users, but Angel says that everyone can use magic. In other words, taking Angel’s words (“everyone uses magic”) with pre-established lore (“charr distrust magic and magic users”), you come with this logical conclusion: charr distrust everyone, even each other.

zaxziakohl.5243:

These interviews are done from the perspective of a god, who is not only trying to explain the truth, but the LORE that you know. The TRUE back story, and the beliefs of those in the world. OF COURSE they will conflict.

What you’re missing… is that some of this conflict comes from out of universe perspectives just like this interview. In other words, both are “the truth” or “the TRUE back story” as you put it but conflict. Then there are things we see rather than are told, and the sheer logical confusion created from other things that would require a lot more than is even implied to be “wrong” in “human history.”

I think she simply means everyone is capable of learning magic. Even the highest ranking Charr. They just don’t, either because they distrust magic, or because they enjoy feel of a sword or bow in their hand. So, just like any mage could have learned to use a sword but chose magic, any archer could have learned magic instead. But for any number of reasons, personal, cultural, or were forced into it by family, they didn’t choose those alternatives. I could be wrong, though.

Also, I should say thanks, to Regina and Angel both, for taking the time to reply. I’m glad to see some discussion here on the side of the devs, and would love to see even more(though I recognize you’re all very busy). It’s always nice to have the creators participate in the discussion, debates(Who gets Orr, for example.), and the like.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

For me, it was more in how it was done and why it was done, then the in-universe reason for it.

How do you think the world took it when we suddenly found 24 more hours every for years and started having leap day? It probably wasn’t more than an article written by some scientist who wrote it in the best layman’s terms he knew. After that, it was up to the people to either adopt it, or not adopt it. Asura, being asura, and knowing that they are the most intelligent, well of course they are right, and anyone who doesn’t listen isn’t worth telling. No need for anything more than a short sentence/notice. It’s all they need to know. Now would more back-story on the discovery be nice? Hell yes, I’m not saying it wouldn’t…however, unless your in his krewe, don’t expect any major details until it’s in history books or he’s won the Snaff Prize. :P

Quote about Human history being made trivial and being buried by the new history ~snipped for length then accidentally deleted wrong quote lmao

Do you know the history of trepanning? It’s a practice from the middle ages that got the demons out. Cultures that weren’t around Anglo Saxxons (and maybe a few other select cultures) during that era won’t know of it unless they studied it. To them it doesn’t exist, and if told, the existence means nothing, as it didn’t affect them. As for everyone who has it in their history, well only those who find it interesting will know. Why? Because it’s an outdated belief that had little value. Not to say we never learned anything from it, because we did. Trepanning was the drilling of a hole into a persons skull with a hand auger when they had boils or hallucinations, as it was thought to release the demons in the persons head. In many of these cases, the subjects of this “medical” practice, were people who had things like chicken pox, and the flu. In a few rare cases, it did work. But it wasn’t because it let the demons out, it was because it relieved pressure on the brain if there was swelling or edema. Most of the time, they died shortly after due to infection from the trepanning anyway. Looking back on it, though one can see the reason for the belief, it seems unrealistic, pointless, and doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t true. It’s trivial, and our new found knowledge of what is really happening is more important, and for many people it has buried that history altogether. However there are still practices in the world in certain cultures that other parts of the world find…horrible, degrading, inhumane, and devastating, because we are living IN that world. 250 years from now, when someone reads back and sees the things that people used to do, you think they won’t laugh, shake their head, and move on because it doesn’t matter anymore? It doesn’t affect them, it’s trivial.

In that same way, many of the Human beliefs from GW1 have become trivial, and to some extent buried under a layer of new culture. There is a sadness in the way it happens, the way things lose their meaning, their purpose, with time, but it always happens. Being upset that it’s happening in a game, when it happens in the real world, doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a complex world, not everything is going to be kept, remembered, cherished, and loved for all eternity, it will be replaced.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

On charr distrusting magic – snipped again.

To be honest, from what I have seen in game, represented, the charr DO distrust everyone. Charr are constantly betraying each-other, they are always paranoid about what other Charr are plotting….They are one of the most confrontational of the races within their own culture, and much of it IS due to magic.

Would you be trustful if the people betraying you, your family, were doing it on behalf of magic, of the dragons, who give them that magic.

People do this too. We naturally distrust those that have power. People in powerful positions, people in authority. Those people are constantly mistrusted, because they very often abuse it. And power hurts when it’s wielded against you, especially when someone has access to more of it than you.

Magic would be no different! The more magic someone wields, the more damage they can do. In a race where betrayal is so common, and confrontation so frequent, kitten right I’m going to be paranoid and suspicious of everyone around me, because the chance of people abusing that power has gone WAY up.

You have a perfect example of the Vigil Leader and her Son. He wanted power. He betrayed his community, his fahrar and his family to get it. In a world where the stakes are killing your own….wouldn’t it be safer if no one had it? Yet at the same time, if only the bad guys have it, how do you defend yourself?

Loki.9147:

I think she simply means everyone is capable of learning magic.

I think she makes it clear that it’s not simply “able to learn” but “uses.”

It’s not uncommon for a toddler to begin showing signs of magical talent by creating illusions to entertain herself, putting up a crude barrier between itself and something threatening it, or producing water when thirsty. The early manifestation of magical abilities appears to be a survival mechanism.

This seems to indicate that people can use magic without needing to learn it, as it is part of a survival mechanism.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

For me, it was more in how it was done and why it was done, then the in-universe reason for it.

How do you think the world took it when we suddenly found 24 more hours every for years and started having leap day? It probably wasn’t more than an article written by some scientist who wrote it in the best layman’s terms he knew. After that, it was up to the people to either adopt it, or not adopt it. Asura, being asura, and knowing that they are the most intelligent, well of course they are right, and anyone who doesn’t listen isn’t worth telling. No need for anything more than a short sentence/notice. It’s all they need to know. Now would more back-story on the discovery be nice? Hell yes, I’m not saying it wouldn’t…however, unless your in his krewe, don’t expect any major details until it’s in history books or he’s won the Snaff Prize. :P

How the world takes it… is completely irrelevant with the fact that the retcon was done just to sync up the living story updates with out own calendar (the “why it as done”) or the fact that it utterly ignores one very important fact in lore (let alone a different fact inmechanics) which prevents this syncing up – Wintersday, the Tyrian New Year (or rather the Tyrian New Year’s Eve) occurs on the day before the Spring Equinox (which happens late middle-March for us). Meaning that even if the Mouvelian calendar is given five extra days so that it has the same amount of days as ours for LS update syncing… our New Years and their New Years occur at different times of the year, yet we experience them at the same time.

And worse yet, a very fast wiki search shows this.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Quote about Human history being made trivial and being buried by the new history ~snipped for length then accidentally deleted wrong quote lmao

Do you know the history of trepanning? -snip-

In that same way, many of the Human beliefs from GW1 have become trivial, and to some extent buried under a layer of new culture. There is a sadness in the way it happens, the way things lose their meaning, their purpose, with time, but it always happens. Being upset that it’s happening in a game, when it happens in the real world, doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a complex world, not everything is going to be kept, remembered, cherished, and loved for all eternity, it will be replaced.

Okay… That’s not really what I’m talking about… Drax said it far better in his first post. But in essence, it’s not how the NPCs are treating their old history in-game, but how the developers are treating the old lore in regards to the new lore.

And technically… we don’t really see it happening in the NPCs. It’s just that there isn’t even a chance for us to see it – or to see the opposite happening.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

On charr distrusting magic – snipped again.

To be honest, from what I have seen in game, represented, the charr DO distrust everyone. Charr are constantly betraying each-other, they are always paranoid about what other Charr are plotting….They are one of the most confrontational of the races within their own culture, and much of it IS due to magic.

-snip-

I don’t really see this paranoia. The closest to “distrust everyone else” there is… is that the charr are combative by nature – that’s very different from paranoia. They don’t like weakness, so they don’t want to work with weaker races (humans and sylvari to many view) or cowards; they don’t want to change their ways, so they dissent from their High Legions (Renegades) or try to stay to old ways (Flame Legion).

Yes, they are one of the most confrontational races, but it’s not due to distrust – or magic. It’s due to the fact that they’re a combative and militant race by nature (and nurture). But they still trust each other – and their own warband above else (well, in most cases – there are rare exceptions, like the Gladium Father storyline).

After all, these are gods, not just “powerful wizards” – yet it is the later which is how the gods feel like they’re beginning to be treated, especially with the interview that basically says “the bloodstones do nothing” when you read it as a whole. Yet nothing to say “the bloodstones were important, but now they’re not anymore” it was instead treating them as cultural limitations that humanity imposed on themselves. I’m referring to this in particular:

The only difference between a god and a “powerful wizard” is the amount they’re worshiped. The Grawl have plenty of “gods” that are just poorly made statues. There’s nothing inherently untouchable about a character being a “god,” and from what I understand of GW continuity, even human characters have been elevated to godhood in the past. Being a “god” in Tyria just seems to be about immortality, lots of magical power, and some level of dimensional freedom. They are the “gods” of the humans because the humans choose to worship them, just as the Grawl might worship a fancy rock, but from an objective standpoint they are, and always were, merely very powerful beings, using similar magic to the human characters in the game, just dialed to 9000.

At the bottom line, humans being as important as they were in GW1 clearly isn’t appropriate when they’re only one race out of five. But there should be an attempt to give them roughly equal spotlight, and at the moment humans and norn feel a bit like the redheaded stepchildren.

I thought that was meant to be a bit deliberate. The humans of GW2 are meant to be the “race on the decline,” holding a once glorious but now crumbling empire together, like dwarves and elves often are in much of fiction, while the other races are more ascendant.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Reason for calendar change ~snip

So your problem here isn’t that it’s being changed, but that you know why. As long as it makes sense in the lore it doesn’t really matter why.
Mismatched dates: Christmas:
Earlier Christians celebrated Christmas Jan. 6th/7th as a general rule. When they switched to the Julian Calendar, it was celebrated on December 25th. However the actual birth of Christ is speculated to be in September, at the very least between spring and fall. That’s a deviation of several months. Happens IRL too. You don’t like the reason, but that has nothing to do with the game. If you aren’t interested in learning the reasons behind the decisions, why read things from the devs? Skills are based on game practicality just as much as they are the lore. The way events are hosted is based more on practicality than the lore. Lets face it, if Scarlet is going to attack a map, she’s wouldn’t do it on the hour every hour. To make sure all can access the content, some continuity of the story is lost. That’s how it goes. If you don’t want to know the reasons behind it, don’t look for them.

Dev’s ignoring GW1 lore~snip

Have you stopped to listen to the randomNPC convos? There are references to the past and old lore. They are very similar to convo’s people have IRL. The one that comes to mind is a conversation in DR about the 6 gods. Guy asks do you actually believe in them? Girl responding says something to the affect of:Of course, we see things the 6 gods do daily, the blessings they give us etc. Guy then expresses a disbelief about how someone can have faith in something that has never been seen, proven, and obviously hasn’t been around to help. He gives a dismissive snort, then the conversation ends. (I don’t have quotes, this was back at launch, I do not know if this convo was affected by the DR changes. Feel free to look.)

Noting that there ARE conversations like this one in there if you look, then no, the developers have not ignored and dismissed the old GW1 history. It’s 250 years later. The people you encounter in the world currently generally; only have a mild inkling of the meaning behind that history (like the trepanning),they are believers on blind faith, or they don’t believe at all. NONE of those lend themselves to the devs being able to throw in old lore content, if the characters don’t ACTUALLY know anything about it. The best they MIGHT be able to do, is stash a collection of historical Chronicles (done by humans no doubt) at the priory to read. The Chronicles would be biased, and considering the current state of the world, would probably be considered myth, not fact. The closest we ever get to actual old lore is with the dwarves as they are such an old, aged race. However they are so rare, and so far and few in between, that they probably don’t know what you want to know anyway. It’s not really realistic to expect a world with a destructive war-filled past and dragon filled present to have that kind of knowledge, nor believe it if they did. Imagine the CENTURIES of knowledge lost during the dark ages.

Charr paranoia ~snip

This one I think is more of an interpretation difference. I feel that their trust is extremely limited. The most Charr-like example of this I can give, is that I may trust my war-band with my life, but I don’t trust them with my gun or knife. They ARE militant. Your completely right on that. But they are NEVER above believing that someone has betrayed them. To be instantly capable of believing that, is to mean you never fully trusted them to begin with. It means that thought was always in the back of their mind. They could betray me/us. It’s a part of their culture. There is no, OMG no way, they can’t do that, they WOULDN’T do that, I trusted them! It’s a resolute, they betrayed me, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure they don’t do it to anyone else.

This property of the Charr is part of the reason it took me so long to play one. I play MMO’s to relax. The story, and the culture of my characters if very important to me. That lore based immersion, is important to me. It was very hard for me to do that with a Charr and maintain that relaxed feel while playing. They are ever vigilant and always wary of anyone. None of the legions trust each-other. Half the time, members of their own legion have no trust for each-other. There is always a traitor, a spy and it could be you. It’s exhausting. But at the same time I LOVE the complexity that the Charr have. As a culture freshly out of a war, they are changing, rehabilitating and amazingly complex. As you play a Charr, your interpretations and experiences might be very different. No matter what, when we play, the game will be tinted by the glasses of our real lives. I feel personally that there isn’t a clash of the statements considering their fear of magic. To me, as I’ve immersed myself, it makes perfect sense.

So… I just got around to reading the interview (no, I don’t come to the lore forums often enough.) But, i just wanted to say that I tossed this up on the forum 10 months ago.

Klawlyt.6507:

I know magic, and how it relates to Professions, isn’t the most fleshed out area lore-wise in GW2, but I do recall a video or interview prelaunch where Ree danced around the idea that sometimes it just happens. You are so into the idea of defending the weak that you slowly start becoming a guardian. You’re such a good pickpocket that eventually, you learn to just blend so well you’re basically invisible. I think she may have also referred to institutions of learning, like elementalist school or something, but I’ve seen no evidence of this in game. So let’s just say that most of the time, the difference between myself and Farmer Joe is that I was either strong willed enough to develop a capital P Profession, or Grenth decided to bless me (or Raven, or the Eternal Alchemy, or whatever) and gave me some predestined mark to be awesome at stealing.

I think it’s safe to call every profession “magic” to some extent or another, even the more physical ones (engineers have their elixirs, thieves can stealth and shadowstep, warriors can hulk up at the point of near-death). So what if ammo is magic? Not all ammo in Tyria. Farmer Joe still needs to use black powder and a ramrod each time he fires a flintlock, he hasn’t manifested a Profession. My Heroic-brand character however, can pop off 5 shots from his flintlock pistol and never even think about reloading. No one with a bow in this game has a quill, and rangers can rapid fire their bows with the best thief pistols (probably much faster, with barrage). What if that’s because there’s no physical ammo involved? What if my thief, by dint of having a Profession, doesn’t need to worry about these things, and shooting through pistols is just as natural as an elementalist hucking fireballs?

Glancing through the thread again, it didn’t look too popular at the time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Some-thoughts-on-magic-in-Tyria/first#post565929

zaxziakohl.5243:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

For me, it was more in how it was done and why it was done, then the in-universe reason for it.

How do you think the world took it when we suddenly found 24 more hours every for years and started having leap day? It probably wasn’t more than an article written by some scientist who wrote it in the best layman’s terms he knew. After that, it was up to the people to either adopt it, or not adopt it.

Actually, they realised something was up there when they noticed, after a century or two, that the seasons seemed to be changing later and later each year. Once they noticed that, they figured out when the equinoxes were actually happening compared to when they were supposed to happen, figured out just how much the calender was off from that, and made the appropriate corrections.

Now, when you’re talking about six hours a year, it’s understandable that that might take a while to notice. But in this case, we’re talking about five days. That’s enough of an error that, in eighteen years, the time that you would be in autumn when the calendar claimed it was the height of winter. Over the course of a human lifetime, the seasons would literally have migrated all the way around the calendar and returned to their starting positions. The idea that this somehow went on for over a thousand years since the calendar was established and nobody noticed beggars comprehension.

As for the stuff regarding the gods: It may be centuries ago for the characters, but we as players saw the effects of the gods and the bloodstones in Guild Wars 1. It’s not like the person with a religion who took it purely on faith – that might be the case for GW2 human characters, but our GW1 characters interacted with servants of the gods and outright fought one. We, as players, know they existed. Furthermore, races other than humans acknowledge their role, they just choose not to worship them (the asura regard them as “important cogs in the Eternal Alchemy”, the norn see them as Spirits of Action, analogous to their animal spirits, but representing actions and concepts rather than, well, animals).

From reading, it seems that the initial comment indicating that the effect of the bloodstones was ‘purely psychological’ was a bit stronger than they’d intended. The splitting of the bloodstones certainly has limited magic in ways it wasn’t before. Now, either those limitations have weakened, or modern Tyrians have learned ways to work around those limitations. Either is fine (although WHICH it is certainly has major ramifications for the way magic actually works in Tyria).

At the bottom line, though, when it comes to human lore – each of the races are supposed to be equal. At the moment, though, some are definitely more equal than others – most of the attention and world significance is on asura, charr, and sylvari (in roughly that order) with humans and norn lagging far behind. We were told prior to release that one of the things that was important about humanity was their knowledge of the old lore and their connection to the gods – sweeping that under the table and claiming that it’s just not relevant to the current day is basically rendering humans insignificant except as cannon fodder.

I’d like to see the races being equal, not the Trinity of Charr, Asura and Sylvari lording it over Those Superstitious Races Whose Backwards Beliefs Are Irrelevant In This Age Of Enlightenment. This is a fantasy game, so there’s room for things apart from SCIENCE!!! to be relevant, and for the races to be equal, then all of their lore needs to be relevant.

I wish I had the time to really give my extensive opinion on this matter, because I do feel it’s an important subject since it defines what makes each race who they are.

What bothers me the most, is the point being the human “gods” are not as influentual as the past, but as Konig put it; being chopped up as “mere powerful wizards”.

Instead of discrediting the human gods, I would had much preferred to see the races eventually figuring out all of their beliefs are tied together by something much higher and broad than the race central beings/objects/subject the particular race believes in. Much like bringing a level ground to all races and giving all of their beliefs credibility.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Charr paranoia ~snip

This one I think is more of an interpretation difference. I feel that their trust is extremely limited. The most Charr-like example of this I can give, is that I may trust my war-band with my life, but I don’t trust them with my gun or knife. They ARE militant. Your completely right on that. But they are NEVER above believing that someone has betrayed them. To be instantly capable of believing that, is to mean you never fully trusted them to begin with. It means that thought was always in the back of their mind. They could betray me/us. It’s a part of their culture. There is no, OMG no way, they can’t do that, they WOULDN’T do that, I trusted them! It’s a resolute, they betrayed me, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure they don’t do it to anyone else.

This property of the Charr is part of the reason it took me so long to play one. I play MMO’s to relax. The story, and the culture of my characters if very important to me. That lore based immersion, is important to me. It was very hard for me to do that with a Charr and maintain that relaxed feel while playing. They are ever vigilant and always wary of anyone. None of the legions trust each-other. Half the time, members of their own legion have no trust for each-other. There is always a traitor, a spy and it could be you. It’s exhausting. But at the same time I LOVE the complexity that the Charr have. As a culture freshly out of a war, they are changing, rehabilitating and amazingly complex. As you play a Charr, your interpretations and experiences might be very different. No matter what, when we play, the game will be tinted by the glasses of our real lives. I feel personally that there isn’t a clash of the statements considering their fear of magic. To me, as I’ve immersed myself, it makes perfect sense.

I don’t know what game you’ve been playing, but from all I’ve seen, charr society is based on two things: trust in the warband and loyalty to the legion. The charr have the least amount of treachery and backstabbing within from the five races, save for perhaps the norn who don’t have large organizations anyways. They distrust magic users not because they’d have any reason to fear betrayal, but because they associate them with the Flame Legion. To that, it would seem quite strange if every charr would be casting magic as little cubs.

Antara.3189:

Instead of discrediting the human gods, I would had much preferred to see the races eventually figuring out all of their beliefs are tied together by something much higher and broad than the race central beings/objects/subject the particular race believes in. Much like bringing a level ground to all races and giving all of their beliefs credibility.

Personally, I subscribe to the Norn viewpoint: The gods, while not all-powerful, are essentially the personifications of their concept. Balthazar is Competition. Kormir is Knowledge. Dwayna is Compassion. You can associate other concepts with them, and overlay a different personality on top (as happened when Kormir replaced Abaddon), but the core of each god is the central concept that they represent. (Noting that, in this interpretation, Dhuum is still Death, and Grenth is… something else, possibly not technically a god at all in the way the others are.)

Which obviously makes them ‘large and important cogs’ in the Eternal Alchemy – just as important as the concepts they represent – but not omnipotent by any means..

This interpretation, and interpretations like it, has interesting ramifications for Abaddon’s long imprisonment and Kormir’s ascension, and what it means for Tyria. For a thousand years, Knowledge was basically locked away in a hell-dimension, and if that wasn’t bad enough, shackled to a personality more inclined to keep that knowledge secret than spread it to the world. And then Knowledge’s personality was replaced by one more inclined to spreading information than keeping it hidden, and Knowledge was freed into the multiverse once again. Since Kormir’s ascension, it’s clear that Tyria has been experiencing a renaissance – could it be that this is actually no coincidence, and the development of technology and other knowledge is a direct result of Knowledge being once more free in the universe (if not overtly acting as a god) after centuries of stagnation while Abaddon was locked away?

I agree with most of Konig’s interpretation.

Although I’d like to point out that Angel’s response falls very much in-line with what I’ve been trying to say all along.

Namely, that the decision to introduce the 4 new playable races, as well the skill/combat changes, literally forced them to downplay or outright change the human-god dynamic that was present in Tyria, starting back in EotN ofc.

When they start giving out responses like …well, it’s like when you are in grade school and believed certain things that you find out as an adult were just old wive’s tales… you know they clearly don’t care all that much for the older lore.

I also find it interesting that the two writers I’ve long suspected responsible for this “transition,” Ree and Jeff, were the ones who approved her post(Bobby and Scott are newcomers).

Frankly, Angel’s post only reinforces my belief on ANet’s irresponsible handling of old material. I still think the real culprit in all this is a failure to legitimately fuse the new races and new skill mechanics with the old lore.

I could be wrong…but I doubt it. :/

One thing that strikes me as interesting is how “magic” is treated and portrayed in GW2 in the first place.

It used to be a mystical and mysterious force, flowing in and out of the daily lives of Tyrians. Yet now it seems like the writers have tried to quantify and classify it, changing more into a “science” than anything else. I get that they were trying something new, evolving 250 years into the future to a more “enlightened” understanding of the physical would. But I think that was a bad decision.

It’s supposed to be a fantasy-genre game, not a play on real-world Enlightenment principles. Where’s the mystery?

Obsidian.1328:

One thing that strikes me as interesting is how “magic” is treated and portrayed in GW2 in the first place.

It used to be a mystical and mysterious force, flowing in and out of the daily lives of Tyrians. Yet now it seems like the writers have tried to quantify and classify it, changing more into a “science” than anything else. I get that they were trying something new, evolving 250 years into the future to a more “enlightened” understanding of the physical would. But I think that was a bad decision.

It’s supposed to be a fantasy-genre game, not a play on real-world Enlightenment principles. Where’s the mystery?

Well, at least we don’t have midi-chlorians. Yet.

Humans or any other race can become gods by acquiring vast knowledge and power overtime. I figure pre-guild wars era was filled with unchecked magic, humans, and other extinct races due to the elder dragons. Human “gods” were humans who achieved the pinnacle of magic, ascended into their god state. This was something we saw happen with our eyes, we saw Kormir ascend to being a Goddess due to obtaining all of Abaddon’s knowledge and power. She became the sixth god, goddess of truth, knowledge, and secrets.

So I understand that human gods were created through pinnacle of knowledge and power, I guess six people reached that power before the elder dragons awaken. Before the other races could have the chance, this leads to the concept of gods and goddess being placed in Human lore. It is pretty much a state that any race can obtain, just it is now almost impossible thanks to the elder dragons consuming magic and the bloodstones limiting the magic.

I doubt the human’s gods or goddess have diminished in power. They their role has just been more clarified for us to understand they really never really had full control over our fates or destinies, they just been a instrumental role in helping protect humans by giving them knowledge and power, but that knowledge was lost over the span of 250 years, allowing the other races to catch up to humans who were temporarily the strongest race in Tyria. It is pretty much the dawn of equality since every race has accumulated vast knowledge and power that makes them equals in their own way.

There still so much the six main races doesn’t understand, knowledge that they can’t obtain anymore and power that exceeds the amount of magic in the world today. Magic is still a mystery and how the world around them isn’t still clarified. Look at the Asura experiments, they are not absolute and yield unsuspecting results that wasn’t thought to exist before.