Guild Wars 2

So while everyone is speculating and participating in the threats that the dredge and Flame Legion are making, me and my guildies noticed something interesting regarding the mail sent to players to inform of the update’s new content.

While norn and charr characters get mail from Eir and Rytlock respectively, requesting aid because it’s too much for them to handle, the other three races get mail from their respective DE member about how they’re busy with something else and thus can’t aid their guild members and friends with the refugee problem.

Caithe

I can’t go myself-Nightmare Court trouble-so I’m sending you instead.

Zojja

An individual who claims some preposterous connection with a former colleague of mine recently contacted me, and while his claims concerning that connection are dismissable, he does bring up a good point

Logan Thackeray

I’d help, but I have the queen’s business to attend to.

Jokes about what Logan means by his girlfriend’s business aside, this is interesting to me.

Each of these three races’ racial enemies (Nightmare Court, Inquest, and Bandits) are known to be in an alliance referred to as the Sinister Triad in Brisban Wildlands – “queen’s business” may easily refer to threats to Kryta (like the bandits or, more likely due to the lack-of-mentioning, White Mantle). Zojja’s “former colleague” is also interesting; something of concern means its a threat, and there’s few threats to the asura that Zojja cares more about than the Inquest (make that “next to no threats other than ED and Inquest that she cares about” actually).

It’s most interesting that only one of these threats is blatantly named, and thinking on it – it makes a bit of sense. Zojja’s not only prideful, but the Inquest took a heavy blow with Crucible of Eternity, so she may not like to admit the Inquest may be recovering faster than she predicted. And as mentioned, the White Mantle are a bit of a hush-hush topic that’s backing the Bandits, so Logan may be ordered to make no mention of them, thus it’s just “business” – though the same can be said for investigating matters of Ministry corruption (given Krytan laws seen in Noble and Dead Sister storylines, any open proclamation against the Minister(s) must be met with heavy evidence and guilty conviction else all evidence used is to be void for any further investigation and trials (this never made sense to me) and the accuser gets sentenced, even if they’re a Seraph captain).

This makes me think that the “Sinister Triad” is stirring up trouble in the west, and may be the next story focus after Flame and Frost (beginning in, I presume, May).

Others’ thoughts?

Zojja’s wording- “some preposterous connection” rather than “a preposterous connection” or “some preposterous tale”- seems to me to indicate that she’s dismissing out of hand not the connection this mysterious other proposed, but rather the possibility of any connection existing. Coupled with the “former” nature of this colleague, and I think it extremely likely that said colleague is either missing or dead. Zojja’s social circle being what it is, practically nonexistent, the only one I can think of who meets that criteria is Snaff (or, if she’s using the term very loosely, Kudu.) But what I find interesting is that the way the letter is phrased, the “good point” seems to involve the refugee situation, not whatever she’s busy with. My guess is that this person is going to be a future character in the Flame and Frost storyline, not related to the Sinister Triad.

Also, something that struck me about the letters as a whole: for the most part, it very much has the tone of a status update, along the lines of “I’m bringing this to your attention and that’ll be the end of our collaboration on the matter”- especially in Zojja’s case, who gives specifics on her preoccupation and even says “Don’t bother reporting back.” The others all can’t help for x reason, but Caithe and Caithe alone ends with “I’ll see you soon.” I’d bet that rather or not the Sinister Triad is involved, the next arc will involve her Nightmare Court problem.

Very interesting. Caithe’s and Logan’s sound to me like they could just be standard dismissals (‘not my race’s territory, I’m busy with our stuff’), but Zojja’s is rather specific. I’ll be interested to see what comes of it. Certainly I wouldn’t put it past ArenaNet to seed hints of the update cycle that will follow Flame and Frost, and mentioning things now as background issues (like Zojja meeting with someone) fits the ‘living story’ idea well.

My immediate feeling upon reading your post was that Zojja must be referring to someone who knew Snaff (and gods forbid anyone might have been closer to him than she was, right?) – but now I’m not so sure. Even as an asura, I’m not sure “colleague” is the word she’d use for Snaff. At a stretch it could be that the steam creatures are pegged for involvement later in the year, and are in fact related to the asura personal story they appear in… but that’s speculating too far to mean anything.

@Aaron: I can’t really see Zojja referring to either Snaff or Kudu as a “colleague” – Snaff was her mentor, not a colleague, and Kudu’s… well, if she’s really stretching the term he’d be a colleague for her but that just seems unlikely given her personality.

Thalador did just give the possibility of the colleague being Dessa though, which is an interesting thought given the nature behind her (that she seemingly hasn’t been around for 23 years).

Regarding the degree of evidence required for the Ministry – that’s probably something the Ministry has put through the legal system sometime when they had the power to do so. Possibly when there was some bill that the monarch really wanted to push through the Ministry, if not something Caudecus himself put through when he had the regency.

That’s a side issue, though. As we discussed, though, I have a suspicion that they might all be coming together – by now it’s probably become common knowledge that the Pact brought down Zhaitan as well as striking heavy blows against the Flame Legion and Inquest. Those factions who can reasonably expect that they might be deemed as more immediate targets than, say, Jormag or Kralkatorrik may be figuring that they’d better start working together themselves if they don’t want to become the next object lesson of what a “unified Tyria” can do.

So a couple days ago, this which I noticed today, was posted. A line in there got me thinking about something.

“Aside from the Living Story main characters, we’ll also be surprising you with interesting villains, one of whom will become your personal nemesis. Again, no spoilers allowed, so I can’t tell you more than that, but you’ll recognize this sassy character when you see…um, him/her/it. <grin>”

A personal nemesis villain for GW2? This has a lot of potential, and my first thought – albeit jokingly – was that it’d be…. wait, spoilers to the Infinity Ball storyline!

Others’ thoughts?

All I know is I really like the idea of a Nemesis in GW2, it’ll definitely give the game a flair that it is missing at the moment. Although I do like the story of killing a massive beast that’s a threat to the whole world, it doesn’t hold much in the way of political intrigue or creating memorable enemies (from the sense of like a Palawa Joko, or manipulative Lich Lord).

While the future evil you does make things interesting, I would honestly like them to either avoid that, or to use it to explain the way in which “Possible Futures” work in Tyria a little bit better, because thinking about a multiverse in Tyria makes my brain hurt.

I think that’s a brilliant theory. After all, that very article does cite a concern for temporal paradoxes .

I think you’re focusing on Zojja and the future version of yourself a bit too much. I mean, the blog post mentions a villain that you will recognise and the future self would only be known to players who have completed that storyline. Also, I think that the Nightmare Court trouble Caithe is referring to is about Faolain. Caithe has always been cagey about her and it makes sense that she wouldn’t outright state that she was having issues with Faolain.

Anyway that’s just my two cents.

Another possibility could be old Lazarus. He has a habit of getting away, a possible connection to the Dark Triad, and has grudges with humanity and asura at the very least. Norn and charr are strange targets, but that may be because it’s a diversion, or because Lazarus has expanded his sights to all of the races that are friendly to humans and asura.

I disagree Riptide. A future version of yourself would be recognizable to anyone because it would look and sound just like your character. No need to do that storyline – doing it is just an extra bonus to understanding the story.

A doppelganger would mean either the Living Story culminates within an instanced encounter or the game would have to generate a different skin, profession mechanic for every person participating in a dynamic event.

The letters from Destinies Edge are meant to explain why we will not see Destinies Edge participate in the Living Story because them participating would create a time paradox. The Living Story does not occur after our characters Storyline. You can only find a dead Zhaitain within 2 time/space events Arah storymode and the Fort Trinity instance that spawns afterwards.

editted for grammar

I don’t see why the living story wouldn’t eventually culminate in instances – I mean, if they’re going to have dungeons or go with their paralleling of the personal story in a more direct manner (like the latest article seems to imply, to me at least), they’d have to.

Technically, the living story does occur after Zhaitan’s defeat. In phase 2 of Flame and Frost, we got Consortium talking about setting up refugee housing in Southsun Cove. Southsun Cove wasn’t known to the populous nor was it accessible until the karka attack – and we’ve been told by Matthew Medina that the karka attack occurs after Zhaitan’s defeat.

Absolutely, the Living Story could culminate or include instances but I would not count on an antagonist that requires one.

Your point about when Southsun Cove exists demonstrates what I understood the blog post to be about. Namely that it is very easy to write time paradoxes into a persistent mmo.

edit: I wanted to add a change to my language. I do not think that the Living Story will ever culminate, but will simply continue to evolve.

If at any point, the villain is killed or captured, or there’s some kind of conclusion to it (which, imo, there must be – as a neverending story is a story that gets boring over time) – the villain would have to be in instances. Otherwise you’d have him alive in some areas and dead in others – and that’s one of the explicitly stated paradoxes Anet wants to avoid (per the news post I linked above).

Its the herald.

Always watching, guiding us. We are his seeds of purpose sown into his field of plots. Maybe we grew too fast, outlived the plans he set for us.