Guild Wars 2

I will make the arrangement of these queries simple. They may come off as slightly abrasive, but I assure you it’s more curiosity than anything else, and wish to offend no one in the process of this attempt to rationalize some things about the setting.

1. Technology in Tyria; The charr, the asura and to some funny degree the sylvari all have means of advancing the general lifestyle of the average farmer by several decades through the application of their most basic technologies. The setting demonstrates that even complex asura technology can be easily tinkered with by other races with due trial and error. It also makes pretty clear trade between races and mutual sharing of technological knowledge is ongoing. Why is this not reflected at all? Why do farmers continue to live in mud huts strapped with two doors? Why does the average house and setup in Kryta (this including Lion’s Arch) feel and behave like Ye Olde Times when technology is quite clearly accessible? Any logical government would have first and foremost invested in the development of their technological advances through trade soon as the opportunity rose, and while the charr’s truce is barely a new thing, the asura -have- been around for the past 250 years. Despite continuated claims, the setting disproves their technology not being adaptable to other races over and over. Did the Council of Lion’s Arch and The Queen(s) of Kryta simply go “You know, I think I prefer starving peasants.” and left it there?

2. … Stemming from a logical government train of thought; Exactly when did the Queen wake up and go; “Gentlemen! You know this area where we used to host large amounts of civilians? And you know how we have even more refugees and farmers getting murdered outside our city walls by centaurs which we have not yet taken care of at all? Well. I suggest we build a huge arena full of magical mesmer robots and life endagering artillery. None of the aforementioned will be used for the protection of our people, but instead for amusement of tourists. Once per year. This will take a whole district of our city.”

3. … And how has everyone in Divinity’s Reach gone “That’s a wonderful idea!”? Have the canthan not felt an itty bitty offended over the fact that their houses were turned into an arena and they were essentially kicked out to elsewhere?

4. Scarlet (and co.) spent months upon months building giant airships and a whole army. She did so in a time lapse of less than a year (applicable by the main storyline’s time passage.); While the man power can be scrapped off as “Well she’s a creepy woman”, where did she get the materials to do this? She built an airship almost as big as Tyria’s capital center, and absolutely no one noticed the amounts of materials and man power necessary to make this happen. No one. A city’s worth of metal disappeared and no one had any logs on the subject. Lovely Mordremoth being behind the whole Scarlet situation smoothens out most of her plot, but the time+resources deal of her whole initiative still mistifies me.

5. … Which makes one ponder; Exactly what does the Order of Whispers do these days? For the most informed, oldest and widespread organization in Tyria, they never seem to be able to know ahead of… anything, really. They didn’t notice a single one of Scarlet’s plans. Or anyone’s. Not even the basic gists. Even with the Pact’s initiative… I would say that is a bit too blatant that it was left up to complete randoms to figure out everything.

6. … Raising up the subject of the Pact. An elder dragon, one of history’s biggest threats since ancient times, was obliterated in less than a year, with a makeshift army of people that had never cooperated before, led by a randomer from a newborn race, with equipment scrapped and made functional in the aforementioned lapse of time. Is there any explanation as to how wasn’t this whole project a major trainwreck, or in this particular case is it just a mere matter of Zhaitan having a very bad headache that day?

7. Now this is a bit of an extra, but why does no one in Tyria ever mention the possibility of using the lore-adapted portals to the Mists for more, well, necessary processes than mauling each other?

As mentioned before, these are just things I ponder when I see the storyline in motion. It’s hardly meant to be any sort of offensive post, but mostly a plea for a bit of rationalization for bits of it that escape my coherence grasp.

1. The simple answer is “paranoia, egotism, and general selfishness”. The asura do not share. And when they do share, they share for profit only with constant hands on what services they’re given (they never sell products, they sell services). The charr, on the other hand, have been selling their products. The issue is that everything they develop is for militant reasons. They don’t make things that’ll make your day to day life better. They do not make cosy houses. So what do the other races want of theirs? Usually just the more practical militant stuff like the printing press. And even then, the charr don’t sell everything (let alone their means of manufacturing) because they want to stay on top of that spectrum.

And then there’s the notion of cultural identity. If you’re a leader, you aren’t going to sell your people’s culture and identity for a few quality of life items. If you could even get those – which in Tyria, you can’t, because of aforementioned reasons.

So it wasn’t the Captain’s Council or the Krytan Ministry/Monarch’s decision alone, but the seller’s decision to not sell because their paranoia and rivalry overcomes their desire for money, money, money.

2. In short, Jennah didn’t.

Firstly, you have to realize that despite being the monarch and queen, Jennah isn’t the de facto leader of humanity. Caudecus and those loyal to him (or themselves and not the queen) in the Ministry and elsewhere tries to hinder her at practically every turn. So she can’t just go “you know what? I want to put all the nation’s money into the military so we can end this war with the centaurs once and for all” like Usoku did in Cantha, because if she tried such Caudecus would use that to defame her in one form or another.

Secondly, given the size of the sinkhole, it wouldn’t be feasible to turn the Great Collapse into a living space. Not how it once was, at least. A fundraiser is actually not that bad of an idea. The issue is more mechanical side – in that the developers want the area open only annually.

Thirdly, the original purpose of the Watchknights was to protect the city walls from centaurs and bandits – to effectively reduce the strain on the Seraph. The issue is that Scarlet came in and hijacked them all. Ever since, as explained by Lord Faren in the Crown Pavilion right now during the Festival of the Four Winds, they’ve been put back to the manufacturing table and being reworked so that they cannot be hijacked – magically or mechanically.

Lastly, it should be noted that while the Centaur War is back and forth, it’s pretty much all in Harathi Hinterlands by the time of the jubilee. The zones are stuck in time when not affected by the Living World (and then, only what’s affected by the Living World is moved up in time). While there are hints in Tower of Nightmares that the centaurs may still be an issue in Kessex, that’s the only hint – and it’s only minor. So there’s no longer such a huge issue of “even more refugees and farmers getting murdered outside our city walls by centaurs which we have not yet taken care of at all” – if any issue much at all. That issue was such 6 months prior, and what issue there remains, the Watchknights were meant to help cover. But again: Scarlet.

3. They got put elsewhere. And it isn’t like all houses got removed. That outer ring of Divinity’s Reach (which players cannot access) had their houses rebuilt completely.

And the Pavilion probably produced a kitten-ton of jobs for the unemployed refugees too. But I doubt that “everyone in Divinity’s Reach” thinks it’s a wonderful idea. It’s just that ArenaNet didn’t bother/have the time/resources to show this.

And the whole existence of a Canthan district seems to have been more or less retconned out (though it isn’t really a retcon since it was never part of canon lore in the first place), as except for one very, very obscure mention (which could be an oversight), people called it the Arts district, not Canthan district (and that one obscure mention only mentions a “Canthan area near the arena” (only the Plaza of Balthazar having an arena before the Pavilion). Marjory, whom is of Canthan descent, is a commoner in the Eastern Commons.

4. There’s actually hints in A Study in Scarlet that she’s been working on it since she stepped into the machine, much longer than the year. Furthermore, most of her materials seem to have come from her alliances – the Molten Alliance mined out her metal, the Toxic Alliance got her wood. The pirates stole goods for anything else. Her contacts in the Inquest likely helped.

Either way, I doubt her story’s over given the biconics’ mention of going after the voice in her head. So we may learn about her pre-Season 1 antics in Season 2 while going after the entity (which I’ll stress is not yet proven to be Mordremoth, even if that’s Occam’s Razor’s spotlight holder)

5. They actually did notice the Molten Alliance’s plans, and had an inside agent giving dead drops which we collected. But yeah, the Orders were underplayed. And the out-of-game response for why this is would be that the Orders had been so pre-occupied with the Elder Dragon threat that they just didn’t notice these other things.

6. I think you don’t give the Pact enough credit. Zhaitan was caught unprepared and there were weeks, perhaps months, spent to weaken him. And a lot of the victory actually is in thanks to the Inquest, as when Zojja raided the Crucible of Eternity she took their (or rather, Kudu’s) research on the Elder Dragons which gave her the ability to make anti-Elder Dragon weaponry. There’s also been the whole months/years/decades work spent by individual groups to find weakenesses in the Elder Dragons and their minions who were brought together for the Pact (not just the Orders, but that lab near where Tequatl spawns, Wyld Hunt Valiants, various krewes, etc. were all brought together). Honestly, it’s more a matter of a hundred different groups of varying sizes coming together to work against a single enemy – the sad thing is that half of that was downplayed via random NPC dialogues throughout the world, or the obscure object naming or dialogue that few people would really get a chance to see.

And Trahearne wasn’t a randomer either. He was Tyria’s foremost knowledgeable scholar on the Risen and Orrians, since he spent all 23 years of his life on the topic and was one of the two people to go to Orr, see Zhaitan himself, and live (the other being Caithe).

7. As it seems to be, the Mist War seems to be a case of “everyone thinks the other side is evil and will not talk or try negotiations.” And the entire point of the Mist War – other than defending our own Tyria, is to procure resources. This is, however, not really brought up in lore and only known via an interview with Anet during China’s release.

All fair points in their own way!

1. That’s an acceptable way of looking at it – charr technology begin secluded and hardly widespread is nothing one would think strange given they are hardly the willing type. However they do accept, work and allow asuran technicians into the Iron Legion experimental processes so it’s hard to imagine things like processing machinery – among other basic tools which we have seen clearly part of the legions. – would be beyond acquisition. Specially if we take into account the multicultural pool that Lion’s Arch is. While everyone being freaky egomaniacs is the basic gist of the racial setting in Tyria, it’s hard to wrap one’s head around the idea that no one would, eventually, adapt, re-use or apply knowledge and technology. Except bandits and crazed separatists trying to murder the queen and hypnotize a town, who seemed to have no trouble in doing so, godsbless.

2. This would be the practical issue that comes to mind; Would the populance actually agree to a “fundraiser” using the very idea that literally (literally-literally) exploded on their faces last time? Certainly Faren’s “Yep, fixed ’em.” is reassuring, but I can’t imagine it would be something most of the people would automatically cheer on for, or something that would go smoothly and without due revolts. All things considered last time they were assured they would be just fine as well. Though to be fair towards the developers, actually reflecting political drama in a widespread setting would be too much of a focus. An NPC or two finding the whole setup rather ridiculous -would- have been appreciated, however. The Queen has gone in quite a wild ride of happenings after all.
A fair point towards the centaurs (albeit the refugees I was refering to were mostly Lion’s Arch), though I do am confused as to how the map development works in-setting most of the time since, well. Key things happen, but can’t be altered all the time due to new players and whatnot…

3. Actually you can still chat it up with Tengu about Cantha and choose your character’s origin to be canthan in the Personal Storyline! Though maybe they simply forgot to remove that. Wonder if I killed someone in management for noting this, then. Nah.

4. It’s mostly what I would gather, although even in such time lapses and means it seems like an awfully big project to go unnoticed. But I suppose if dredge can make giant mines to unstoppable degrees, why not. Granted the whole “Oh it was in Twilight Arbor all this time you just didn’t notice.” bit…. eeeeehhh.

5. I really just wish the Orders would live it up a bit more to what the lore boasts about them. Like the Priory. In the end the Priory is this super awesome place full of geniuses and cool adventures, yet what you get to see and experience is a bunch of snotty people barking at you about historical facts and experiments. Asura 0.5, now in Order form.

6. That’s also acceptable; Even though, let’s be fair here. They built a whole fortress worth of milita -while- having to prune back the orrians and wildlife. Several fortresses while making a tactical advance, acquiring recon, and everything else is quite a lot of things to take care of in a year alone. You are right, the people invested in the Pact are certainly more than just a scattered section of the Orders, and of course Trahearne has done many, many things, slaying the old Master of Whispers and whatnot among them. Still, the time schedule does strike me a bit makeshift – but as you said, it may simply be a matter of the usual Personal Story miscommunication. 70% “You are so awesome, please stab things.” and 30%, hidden, actual information on the side.

7. I guess it’s going to be an annoying surprise if any dragons want to take into account the medium to hop around. Heh. Dimensional travel. Just what we’d need to make things even easier to understand.

These won’t be in a specific order.

Okay, the order of whispers doesn’t share a LOT of the kitten they find out. So to a public viewpoint they might not have figured out the plans, while in reality they had discovered parts of it and were working in their way to counter them.

The canthan district may have been retconed (it’s not clear at all though_… but canthans have not. Or Canthans living in DR. You can find a canthan priest/scholar in Rurikton near the Kormir plaza thing, telling about the last known emperor. You can find one who talks about the rice cakes from her grandmother :P. However, it makes sense tfor there to be propotionally fewer Canthan descended people in Kryta then say, Ascalonian or maybe even Elonian.

Scarlet’s public stuff took place over a year/year+. However she has been around for a while. The aetherblade path was NEW though. It’s described as a recent treaty with the nightmare court, and you literally encounter them clearing out plants and beasts in parts of the area… not something an established base(of a year or more) would be dealing with.

As for tech, we see rather impressive watering systems in place in some of the larger farms already.

Anmida.4058:

All fair points in their own way! -snip-

1. It’s also said that they’re keeping a very close eye on those asura technicians, and how much they see, which is actually my main basis for the charr not giving things out willy-nilly.

Lion’s Arch is probably the primary – if not sole beyond Orders – means of charr or asura tech being traded. And this would be via low-time merchants, nothing government orchestrated. Your mentioned “eventually adapt, re-use or apply knowledge and technology” is exactly what we see beginning to happen – in the form of the Orders and the Pact, primarily.

Most people don’t trust the other races – and with good reason, given that humanity and charr have been at war for a millenia, the sylvari are really too new to know charr much, norn are too independent, and everyone’s rather untrusting of the constantly-failing-and-being-innovated asura technology.

2. I like to think that the LA fundraising is a testing tool: one to ensure that the Watchknights are good for use outside of an arena where they’re going to be bashed and hacked by adventurers who know the risks. If you recall, there were a lot of nobles on the little niches along the sides of the Great Collapse – now, I don’t think there are any. Only Faren and one other noble are seen in the entire Pavilion, rather than the dozens there were previously. It’s subtle but there.

About LA refugees – that’s not much of the queen’s job to give them a place, and she’s doing more than any other government in hosting a fund-raising event so that they can be given places to live.

3. I wasn’t saying that they removed Cantha from the lore, but that the Canthan district may not exist in the lore anymore – that Canthan refugees were so few in number that a district just for them wasn’t worth the effort, and they’re displaced amongst the six (now five) districts.

Cantha obviously still exists in lore, as do those of Canthan descent humans, as Marjory herself is of Canthan heritage (as I noted above), as are most tengu we seem to meet, and it is beyond heavily hinted that Cantha was where the Zephyrites last visited.

4. Erm, what was in Twilight Arbor? A brand new (not a “it was there all this time and you never notice it” thing) airport which was unrelated to the Breachmaker (your “city-sized airship” which isn’t really that big, more of half-city-sized) but was for building an Aetherblade airship fleet.

I think the activities of the alliances is exactly why such a big project wasn’t unnoticed. What went unnoticed was what Scarlet Briar was gathering from those alliances (we knew what the alliances were gathering and producing, just not what amongst those things Scarlet got too).

5. It’s hard to do that, because often times you’re excluding anyone who isn’t part of that particular order. And other times – like the Order of Whispers’ subtlety, well… how are players to know they’re there, other than them saying to players “hey, I’m of the Whispers.”

4.) Scarlet has been confirmed hiding in the mists. With all informations we get in-game, there is a mist mentioned which pretty much fits a lot. I call it Steam Tyria. It’s from infinity ball storyline which gives some informations.

Whenever it was created, however it was created:

• the NPC coming from that dimension calls it Tyria and wants to take over our Tyria
• the NPC doesn’t have a name, except “the grand high souvereign of Tyria”
• the NPClooks alike your PC and has the same acompany

I think that shows that we can expect a carbon copy of Tyria at a certain point of time (includingyour own birth in the other dimension).

This dimension has something special, that is only known to be there. Steam creatures. The grand high souvereign of Tyria says that he created those creatures to take over Tyria (doesn’t automatically involve the invention but that’s another topic). The moment where Scarlet started her invasions, there where some portals that spawned steam creatures while no connection was shown, except the steam technology that was used to create clockwork creatures. (The steam technology is also used within the watchknights, but that is also a separate topic.)

Another moment where this connection got some feed was the Marionette. This giant doll hung from 5 chains that came from an overdimensional portal (not the breachmaker) and was coincidental in Lornar’s Pass. It’s the only map with many steam creatures creating portals to get even more creatures there.

The last hint towards this dimension is the gate that is still standing in Gendarran Fields. Also created by Scarlet and very obvious steam technology.

She used a Tyria that we didn’t/cannot access at the moment and there she can take material sized like a smaller city without anybody noticing. A separate Tyria that has an unknown amount of manpower/material/stuffs.

On the first point, as Konig has eluded to, the integration of the cultures is still new. e.g.: Dev interview has stated that only the most adventurous of individuals will even be found in other racial cities. The nations are still a coalition of friendly yet individual city-states. It’s not all one big happy family of “united states”.

On the Infinity Ball storyline and steam creatures:

The Tyria in question is actually further ahead in the timeline than ours. The future asura knows what time period the PC is in from remembering playing around with the Infinity Ball in their own past, and comments about the steam creatures that the technology to build them hasn’t been invented yet.

Since the steam creature invasion of Lornar’s Pass (presumably from the same alternate future Tyria), however, a number of factions have reverse-engineered them, specifically including Scarlet and Kryta. The security vulnerability in the Watchknights, in fact, comes because Krytan inventors reverse-engineered steam creatures to make them – unfortunately for Kryta, Scarlet had also reverse-engineered the steam creatures and had developed a greater understanding of how they worked, including how to put in her own commands.

We never got confirmation of where the invasion into Lornar’s came from, and given thatthe portals there got changed to match Scarlet’s portals it seems unsurprising if the Priory is wrong about Scarlet reverse engineering the Steam creatures and their technology. Especially when we take into consideration the new lore about the Infinity Ball sovereign coming from a memory of the future within the Mists (by description, sounding to be no different than what we experience in A Light in the Darkness).

The infinity ball was designed to show a possible future, but nothing says that it is future and it didn’t work like expected. You pick it up, but you want to develop something else from it. Your pc assumes a parallel dimension. A not developed technology doesn’t automatically say it’s past here. It’s the second racial story and you’ve messed around with Zojja before. And even if it is future (I have no hint about it) , it invades Lornar’s Pass. Scarlet had access to all recordings of the collegues/inventions/stuffs. Showing that there is a dimension that Scarlet probably used, because the not invented steam creatures where coming along with some of her attacks.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/25iqrv/i_attended_the_gw2_china_beta_festival_heres_some/

As said before, The Mists hold “memory” of both past and future. These “memories” include possibilities, or “potential energy” of what CAN happen in the future. An example of this would be the Infinity Ball in the Asura Personal Story. The alternate version of the player character that invades isn’t actually from an alternate reality/world, but from a potential future that exists within The Mists.

It sounds to me that the future accessed by the infinity ball was non-existing except for what was to come through that portal, which is just a “memory of the future”. Basically, from how I understand it, the infinity ball went and made a “possibility” into “reality” but only in that one isolated location.

There really is no evidence to point to Lornar’s Pass invasion being caused by the Grand High Sovereign, and less reason to believe such given this new lore. Furthermore, this new lore pretty much debunks the theory that Scarlet traveled to this possible future since it doesn’t actually exist – not as a place one can go to, just as a “thought” of the Mists for what can occur (and is avoided by seeing that “memory of a possible future”). It seems to me that the description I quoted is also perfectly matching for A Light in the Darkness with the exception that rather than something/someone bringing things from that memory, someone (Pale Tree) brings people to that memory.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

… from a potential future that exists within The Mists. …

Just like said. Unclear how and when it’s started (my bet 1312 a.E. further investigation needed), it’s real and it looks like it could be accessed in both directions.

And if all is mists, how would we know that we are in a real world and not just another memory of the past or the future? How would a sylvari destroy things if he isn’t real? How do steam creatures kill if they are not real? How do they ensure that their possible future isn’t destroyed caused by their own actions? To many open ends here, but sure is steam creatures are real enough to kill.

What about:
She wanted to construct systems as complex as the ones she saw in nature, to build machines as sublime as the living things she saw each and every day.
The steam creatures look like they tried to imitate parts of the “nature” which are windriders, aatxe and ?. Her horrors were reinforced aatxe, the mender more like wasps/mosquitos, reaver like windriders and nightmares like ?. There is a lot covering stuff between steam creatures/dimension and Scarlet.

The alternate version of the player character that invades isn’t actually from an alternate reality/world, but from a potential future that exists within The Mists.

See the bold. It is not an alternate reality or world. At best it would be no more than a Fractal-esque thing, but given the wording, it seems to be more intangble, more abstract, like a thought or a dream or a vision. Something that can be, but currently isn’t. The Infinity Ball gave a medium so that the “can be” became “is” – and only, as far as we can tell, for those which went came out of the portal.

As to how to know Tyria is a world and not just a potential future. Well, simple. Firstly, we have developer confirmation. Secondly, it is a world and not just a fragment of a world (e.g., a Fractal). Thirdly, we can leave the world (inhabitants of the Fractals don’t seem capable of this – see Dessa during Fractured! where she tries to leave but she herself seems to “reset”). Sylvari are real, if it is physical. Same with Steam Creatures – it started out as a mere “thought” of the Mists (I use the term “thought” loosely and only so because of the terminology of the questioner’s reposting of the responses) but became real when it entered Tyria through the Infinity Ball (in that example); or it was part of a Fractal, this tiny little island of existence that would not hold what your theory requires it to hold. How do they ensure their possible future isn’t destroyed? Technically, only by acting to guide their future to occur (but the Infinity Ball storyline actually shows that tells that the potential future won’t occur because the Grand High Sovereign showed himself).

To your final point: that actually feels like an argument for Scarlet being the origins, not some alternate dimension that has been proven to not exist. Also: wind riders, minotaurs, and ogres. And her Twisted marionettes didn’t include any minotaur-like force, but hylek-like, wasp-like, and a combination of 2 or more Watchknights made the Nightmare (it’s literally two+ combined to make the spine and limbs twice as long and twice as numerous).

You might be surprised at the proportion of people on earth that don’t have access to electricity (25%), running water (26%), sanitation (e.g. sewers) (39%), or a telephone (25%).

Nationalism, socialism, and protectionism have ensured that first world countries have eliminated this sort of thing within their borders, but these concepts don’t exist in Tyria (that I’ve seen), so the poor rub shoulders with the rich.

People in Tyria, if they behave like humans through most of history, owe their allegiance to an order, a college, or a legion, or a crown, and not to their fellow humans (or Asura or whatever).

It’s a profoundly different outlook on the world. Just as most of the human race happily ignores the poorest parts of the world (ironically while wringing their hands about inequality at home), people in history would happily overlook the plight of people who weren’t of their class, religion, caste etc.

Interestingly enough, a friend of mine recently visited one of the Pacific Islands that was something like 140ish out of 180ish nations when it came to average living standards, and she was commenting that, as bad as things might look there to Western eyes, it was actually quite comforting how well off people actually were that close to the bottom of the list… (Still pretty bad from a first-world perspective, sure, but they had the necessities and access to basic tertiary education, albeit with few luxuries).

Anyway, it’s interesting to see confirmation that the Infinity Ball is accessing what is effectively a fractal rather than an alternate Tyria. With that in mind, though, I’d be inclined to say that there is a real space somewhere in the Mists from which the steam creatures and Grand High Sovereign emerged. The Mists are a substance of creation that copies pretty much any concept that they come into contact with, after all – the ‘memory of the future’ created by the Infinity Ball would likely have caused the Mists to coalesce into a realm based on that memory.

Thus, with Lornar’s Pass being a region where it seems that the walls between the worlds are thin, it could be that the Infinity Ball realm managed to ‘break through’ there, resulting in the invasion. Alternatively, Scarlet appears to have had a base in the Mists for a while – if, coincidentally, it was the Infinity Ball realm that she happened to find, she could have taken that over, figured out how to control the steam creatures, and the steam creature invasion of Lornar’s Pass could have been her very first ‘test run’.