Guild Wars 2

So i was walking around Divinity’s Reach today and i noticed someone called a “Divinity guide [tour]”. They basically walk you around a small area and give a bit of lore/story to some of the structures and surrounding area.

I had no idea these existed and i’m having trouble finding the locations (if any) of tour guides in other cities.
I only found this wiki article http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Divinity_Guide about Divinity’s Reach tour guides.
I think this is a really cool part of the game which hasn’t really been advertised much, i didn’t even know about it till today and i’ve been playing since launch. If anyone has any info on similar things like this or locations of other guides that’d much appreciated!

I think DR is the only place with such NPCs. There are NPCs that tell the history of places throughout the other major settlements (mainly the main cities mind you), but none that give a tour with voiced speeches.

I think that system was meant to help show the original presented point of what humanity brings to the table of the five races: knowledge of the past. Sadly, as Drax so elegantly pointed out here – such does not exist strongly in the game.

Wow I haven’t read that post of Drax before, but now I think it should be printed, framed and sent to Anets lore team so they can hang on their office wall.

I guess it’s never to late to start a “public Service” guild for anyone bored enough to stand around towns and walk people around :p

I actually liked the way it was done in the Citadel – My first char was a charr and I looked around the citadel for a bit when I forst got there.
I remember my surprise when I found the remains of some horn, thinking “could that be…?” and had a closer look at it, finally found the plaquette explaining it was indeed the horn from the nolani academy mission

Gave me some sense of nostalgia, I really like the way the major cities are designed.

It would be awesome to have more guided tours, or even just npcs to talk to in general about the lore of the area or creatures we are killing.

Glad they decided to leave the DR tours in and at least in some form in the other cities as well.

MatthewMedina.5419:

The initial plan was to have these tours (or some appropriate alternative) in all the major cities. The Divinity’s Reach tour was created by Kim Kirsch, who was the content designer for DR, and I ran out of time to implement this with the other cities which I was responsible for during the first iteration. Before I moved off of cities onto some of the event maps, I managed to sneak in the “runners” in Hoelbrak and Black Citadel who would take you to places of interest, but they only had generic lines for getting players to follow them. Then, when we got closer to shipping the game and I had the chance to come back to the cities, it was decided that it really made the most sense to have this tour be an exclusive feature of DR as a very human thing to do, and we tried to tell the other race’s lore with other means (the norn spirit shrines, the Citadel military statues and plaques, the mentor/student circles in the Grove and the colleges in Rata Sum).

Thanks for the history lesson. It would be nice if the Crown Pavilion got/will get one… maybe add one to the Ascalon Settlement, Claypool, Shaemoor, Beetletun, Garrenhoff, and… well, I would say “and Fort Salma” but.. Just to spread it to being a more human thing?

Eh? Eh?!?

Squee.7829:

I guess it’s never to late to start a “public Service” guild for anyone bored enough to stand around towns and walk people around :p

I know some RP’ers who do meet-and-greets to give a brief lore of places/groups from an IC-knowledge point of view.

I’d rather not see that, to be honest.

If you haven’t, read Drax’s post that I linked earlier in this thread. He makes an important point and very well so. But the summarize it: humanity has nothing going for them in GW2. Every accomplishment they make is either because of another race, or superceded by another race. What they were said to have going for them during development – knowledge of history – has been redacted by so much of what they know being false (see: Arah explorable, Seer and Forgotten paths primarily; or the post by Angel McCoy “here”: ) – either by the historians intention or not. The point in the end was to reduce the human-centricness of GW1, but in all honesty it went to far and now we have a sylvari-centricness in GW2, with humans at the very bottom by a mile difference to charr, asura, and sylvari.

These tour guides give humans part of that sense of knowing their history and heritage that the other races don’t show. The other major cities do have a number of NPCs that give a history of the place or the race, but they’re not nearly as showing off the good work. The only way to improve the tours was to make them occur constantly – without player triggering – so that they become more obvious.

This is why in my post above, I only listed the bigger human settlements, because it feels like a good way to give something that humans have going for them, that the other races cannot do the same or better at.

If tour guides were added to other races’ capitals, the only thing I ask is that they’re human historians and scholars so as to show that humanity even has the history of the lands of other races – and even the history of those races, whether or not the other races have them too. There is a need to cease the dropping of human standing in GW2, as we’ve seen them with very little going for them.

I would love to see this added. You could even make it run by humans in each city if it’s a “very human thing”. There might be some funny disputes over the finer points between the guide and a local NPC, even. You could even make small updates to it after major living story events… like “and this is the place where Scarlet Briar attempted to murder Queen Jennah” or tie them in to pre-existing vistas so the tourist players can get a special view with their history.

It was a really stand out moment finding the tour guide in my home instance in DR. I’m just a fan in general of giving the cities more special activities like this <3 thanks, writers.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I’d rather not see that, to be honest.

…

These tour guides give humans part of that sense of knowing their history and heritage that the other races don’t show. The other major cities do have a number of NPCs that give a history of the place or the race, but they’re not nearly as showing off the good work. The only way to improve the tours was to make them occur constantly – without player triggering – so that they become more obvious.

This is why in my post above, I only listed the bigger human settlements, because it feels like a good way to give something that humans have going for them, that the other races cannot do the same or better at.

If tour guides were added to other races’ capitals, the only thing I ask is that they’re human historians and scholars so as to show that humanity even has the history of the lands of other races – and even the history of those races, whether or not the other races have them too. There is a need to cease the dropping of human standing in GW2, as we’ve seen them with very little going for them.

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

I think that’d be a great way to flesh out the details of the city and communicate the little-known bits of lore to people while also adding additional activity and bustle to them. It seems like a nice solution.

BobbyStein.2315:

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

Could present it as a teacher holding a field trip and talking about the area. Or in Rata Sum, just part of a class being held. But I would like this too, when you enter a place like Rata Sum, it’s pretty easy to be like, “why is there this giant structure floating in mid-air?”

BobbyStein.2315:

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

Just make sure to give the human race some love, as of now they don’t really have anything to offer to combat the dragon threat. What happened to people like Lord Odran who opened portals to the Mists because he felt like exploring them? What about all those guys and girls that had magic spells named after them (and I am not talking about ritualist’s ashes) like Teinai? Humans are probably the race most likely to produce incredibly powerful mages, please show that ingame. Majory and Kasmeer are too limited by the fact that they are allies and those are traditionally useless, except for the occasional more powerful spell. Still not that impressive.

BobbyStein.2315:

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

Depends on how it’s done. For a prime example, I’d look to the mother and her cub touring the Black Citadel, or the small fahrar class that talk about Smodur losing his eye. These are cases of teaching young one’s about the glory of the charr. We see on the line of statues (forgot the name of it… Memorial Quadrant?) we have a charr who, with dialogue tree boxes, explains that she’s on punishment duty and her punishment is to tell passer-byes the story of Kalla Scorchrazor (and if you refuse, she threatens to call the Adamant Guard on you for restricting her ability to perform her duties, which is a nice charr-like touch).

With norn, it could be a Skaald around a fire telling stories – or even one of the mysterious and very elusive “skaald competitions” that involve telling stories until all others run out… or pass out from too much ale.

With sylvari, well, we have plenty of mentors and saplings that talk about the tenants voice acted already, why not some such situations talking about the place’s history? Or we could have travelers stopping through and asking questions to one of the wardens, as we have the opposite happening (travelers stopping through and being asked questions) in the ambient dialogue.

These things can work with the other races if you change the situation easily. But the humanity’s degradement remains unchanged then, and it doesn’t solve as many issues as it could. While getting more lore out there is great, and I am not against it, I feel that the lack of importance of humanity and GW1 lore is just as great of an issue. Yes, you pull out names like Nicholas Sandford in a side-lined book found in Dry Top. You pull out GW1 names like Shaemoor and Beetletun and Dry Top. But where’s their relation to GW1? The Restoration Camp has a centaur named Eghren which is a name of a centaur in GW1 who followed Ventari, but they say “no we are not tied to Ventari” – which from my perspective is mirroring exactly how GW2 treats GW1 lore. There’s an obvious tie to GW1 via the names and locations, but look into the GW2 lore and you’re given “we are not tied to GW1 lore” despite that. Bloodstones, even jotun, krait, and the Forgotten are all similar such cases – there’s an obvious connection to GW1 lore, via name, but there is no shared lore (the Bloodstones are not made by the Six; the jotun are not spellcasters; the krait do not transform; the Forgotten were not brought by the Six).

Just as humanity is being downgraded in importance – and even if they become a highlight, it is because they took another races’ achievements and remodeled them (Watchknights, for example, were taken and modified off of Scarlet’s achievements), or they get superseded by other races (such as Cathedral of Silence PS step… and meta). Just as humanity is being downgraded in importance, so is GW1 lore in all. We don’t see ANY repercussions from Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, or even Winds of Change, Hearts of the North, and barely any such from War in Kryta either. And the latter three were built to bridge into GW2. Yet off the top of my head, what can I mention being a repercussion seen in GW2? Gwen has a last name and descendants. Seraph exist. Shining Blade are royal guards. White Mantle are… hidden. Repercussions of Thorn taunting Joko? Nada. Repercussions of Lazarus? Nada. Repercussions of calling forth the druids in Bloodstone Fen bonus? Nada. Repercussions of Rotscale? Nada. You get the system?

We get some acknowledgement, but only in name and pretty titles. Thus, the game feels separate.

Just three huge issues of the storytelling of GW2 (human degradement, lack of lore highlight, lack of GW1 lore). At this point, we might as well had started GW2 off in a fourth continent – one with little human involvement. Would have given plenty of freedom over what to write in such a situation, then.

I went off on a tangent, and I’d love to go into more detail on this – perhaps I will in a new thread later on, to avoid diverging this one – but I have to go for now.

BobbyStein.2315:

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

For the Norns, it could be some guys boasting about the Legends of the past who made this place famous (for instance, two or more Norns arguing in the Great Hall about Asgeir and what he did). After all, the legends are at the core of the Norn culture, and it would be great to see it reflected, with this over-exageration which often seems a part of the norns.

I think what I really miss is reward concerning the lore. No material reward though, but a log or a journal where your character writes down everything he gets to know about other races. It would be fun to try to complete this log.

BobbyStein.2315:

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

The easiest are norn, which can talk about legendary achievements tied to a person which is preferably norn. Places where big battles were held will have some persons to talk about and pass the story sideways. If I got the culture right, it could also be fallible as long as it is fantastic: “He built the fortification so fast, that the enemy didn’t even realize that he built it in their back” or “This was a forrest once until Horben decided to cut it down with his broken sword” up to “He stung his sword into the valley and it started to bleed water until it reached the level of the scar. That is what the skaald sung about this sea.” The skaalds can simply show some unintended coincidences (a famous norn sneezed while Jormag rose and he doesn’t know why he rose, so his first explanation and those of all other norn around would be that the sneeze woke the dragon).
I like to note that I miss some skaalds around in the open world, maybe some norn will sit down at nighttime at the next campfire and tell their most favorite skaald (which doesn’t neccessarily need to be tied to the location where they are, but more to the norn telling).

Sylvari are also kind of easy. Either they tell what they know from the dream about a location and with the different knowledge the sylvari gain from the dream it could be one sylvari telling another one. Or use their curiosity. Let them accompany any voyage and while they are passing through a POI they can ask they fellow travellers about this and that. Maybe annoy them just more with more questions about the details. “Why is the wall slant?” – “Because the ground dropped.” – “Why isn’t it fixed?” – “Nobody lives there anymore.”- “And why is there nobody living?” – “Don’t you see the wall is slant.” – “But …” – “Listen, this was once the … (and so on)” I hear this as a conversation between sylvari and a very patient asura, but it could be nearly any other race. A norn could easily switch to the joy of telling a skaald which maybe inspires his approach on being legendary. A human could try to tell the whole time, but is always interrupted by new questions. A charr can simply try to tell of things he likes to push the dialogue in a direction he likes or react with the usualy emotional personal experiences of the charr to negate or emphasize with the location.

Asura can introduce their apprentice to a location where they do their next studies or tie it to a great invention/accident. Maybe even some mystery on why this places is special is unknown, but things like this or that are working there. Parts of historical events can be missed out with them, because their prior interest is technology and barely history. Other races or the Durmand Priory can cover those stories either with a historian searching for more informations or a confirmation of a certain (but at all unimportant) information at that location. Hylek are in most areas were the asura are around and their spiritual guards may know something about locations too.

Charr have mostly emotional ties in regards to the war against humans. So they can tell about many places from this perspective. The iron legion shows pride with their inventions, blood legion with their captured goods/pacified areas and ash legion with informations what got destroyed there. Two charr can even start a competition about a small detail of a story that happened there.

The human aren’t a problem too. Simple travel groups like families where the parents warn their children about certain threats up to human children wich even use their learned knowledge to warn others (which can lead to funny dialogues with adults of any race). Guards arguing about the place they should guard (is it even neccessary?), the admirer of a place or something that happened there (please be careful with this place) or simply a cook who stores his ingredients in a ruin and wants a more dry room inside it (even the rats in this room mummified while I have to dry my hand after I use one doorhandle in the basement).

Mercenaries have seen much and are maybe ready to tell you a story of this or that place. In this case it might be tied to a task they did/denied there. Maybe they even charge some silver (1-10) for their informations.

… continued …

Wandering storywriter which earn their money with telling stories for food and wine. On their route they stop at one or another pub/inn/hotel/brewery and the innkeeper gives him some food if he entertain the location with one of his stories or the player can donate food/drink/coins. Those people can represent the smaller stories of GW1 & 2 which are mostly about one person and his track limited to one happening. He uses the stories to earn money, so he tells only one story per payment and maybe it’s even just a step in the bigger story (for example he tells how the player fought the mouth of Zhaitan, but not the whole battle against the dragon, because this will cost some payments extra). To finalize those travellers, it might be fun if they get drawn into events and to pay you for your help, they tell you one story for free.

For the bigger stories of the guild wars universe there would be a mobile theater match. They can tell stories from the past with common theater equipment (no magic involved) and artistic accuracy (it needs to entertain the people, truth is secondary requirement). For an easier maintenance on developer side there might be some maps where the theater has some fixed positions. The stories can rotate and are presented once an hour or once every two hours (and new one can get created if there is desire/room to do so). The common viewer is a bunch of random NPCs which go to their places short before the presentation starts. The cashier can announce the start of the next presentation in the last 5 minutes to get attention from the next random PC. Some flyer can get hung out in the major cities/next smaller cities telling the actual position and the stories which are in the actual program. It moves with the updates. Two weeks to built their camp on the “new” position, four weeks to perform at location, two weeks to pack together. The theater doesn’t really need to change during their travel, but their viewer should change based on the maps. Maybe there is the old human grandmother whose grand-grand-father fought in one of the stories, the asura who wants to achieve a less complex view onto a research and tries it with distraction through the simplyfied view on history of the humans, the charr who just wants to know what lies there are told, the norn who doesn’t want to be in a shadow of another legend, the sylvari sapling who is just curious.

Well, that’s a lot. Maybe not even worth the effort, but maybe a nice idea is among it.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I’d rather not see that, to be honest.

…

These tour guides give humans part of that sense of knowing their history and heritage that the other races don’t show. The other major cities do have a number of NPCs that give a history of the place or the race, but they’re not nearly as showing off the good work. The only way to improve the tours was to make them occur constantly – without player triggering – so that they become more obvious.

This is why in my post above, I only listed the bigger human settlements, because it feels like a good way to give something that humans have going for them, that the other races cannot do the same or better at.

If tour guides were added to other races’ capitals, the only thing I ask is that they’re human historians and scholars so as to show that humanity even has the history of the lands of other races – and even the history of those races, whether or not the other races have them too. There is a need to cease the dropping of human standing in GW2, as we’ve seen them with very little going for them.

If they weren’t presented as tours for other racial cities but instead shown with characters walking and talking about their surroundings (perhaps independent of player participation) it could get the information across while also differentiating the feel of the different races. Thoughts?

I’d love to see that. Black Citadel could be a couple Adamantine Guards on patrol commenting on the city, or a fahrar being given a history/cultural lesson. Hoelbrak might be a Priory scholar trying to record some of the oral history and legends of the Norn, and is going around asking the residence questions about their culture and history (which they are all more than happy to go on about at length, especially where it concerns them or their ancestors) The Grove… I dunno, maybe a couple of sylvari that will point you where some of the Firstborn are giving leasons to saplings? Can’t think of a good “Walking around, incidentally showing off the local culture/history” idea for there.

And for Rata Sum… A tour golem, built and/or programmed by someone who obviously had some fun with the golem is suppose to say (or at least, was using it to blow off some steam, probably over the fact they was pulled from their own research in order to make a tour golem for the bookahs who come to Rata Sum)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The only way to improve the tours was to make them occur constantly – without player triggering – so that they become more obvious.

Still a bit obfuscated. I’d say give it a unique icon on the map / minimap in order to identify that this is something different / to take note of. Even if it does occur without player intervention, if it’s a walking tour being able to know where the tour is at present is still useful.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I think what I really miss is reward concerning the lore. No material reward though, but a log or a journal where your character writes down everything he gets to know about other races. It would be fun to try to complete this log.

I’m really hung on the world obfuscated today… but anyway yes one of the biggest problems at present in GW2 is that a lot of lore is… not as visible as it could be. Sure if you actually go around hunting for it you’ll find some, but a journal (and also a bestiary) would go a long way in making lore more accessible and visible to the average player.

Foefaller.1082:

I’d love to see that. Black Citadel could be a couple Adamantine Guards on patrol commenting on the city, or a fahrar being given a history/cultural lesson.

We don’t see enough Charr cubs so +1

there is a charr leading a norn and sylvary around pointing them a few interesting spots but i’m not sure it qualifies. if i recall correctly it spawns near the asura gate and ends near the durmand priory.

While I can see why humans would be most inclined to support ‘tourism’ I personally find it hard to see humans tour guiding in the black citadel…

So while humans do make a likely candidate, it would make most sense if they were say ‘Durmond Priory’ humans. This though would give these tours a Priory flavour, aka. the focus would be very historic, and from an objective view.

On the other hand, if you were to make these more ‘racial’ flavoured, it makes sense to then look at the races and figure out what ‘their’ motive would be to guide their own race through their city…
1. Humans, would likely have a strong focus on ‘tourism’, an historic, cultural, ‘art’ angle would make the most sense, as we (being humans) would relate these tours to the ones we see in our own cities. Seeing humans still live rather dispersed, the tours serve as a way to keep the human spirit up and bond humans culturally.
-> They wouldn’t mind taking visitors along as they would assume their interest is like theirs, a form of tourism.

2. Sylvari, guiding Sylvari around the Grove would serve a very distinct purpose, mainly to show new born their home. It would be more of an informational tour…
-> Still though, seeing how Sylvari are so interested to learn new things, I would not be amazed if they were to grant visitors the right to join these new born on their tour, as a friendly service and opportunity to teach other races about the Sylvari.

3. The Asura, would be inclined to have 3 tours, obviously each tour would focus on their respected college. Not so much that they won’t show other colleges, but their comments on them would differ a lot from those made about their own college. Likely these tours set the bar for new entries into a college. Focus would be on discoveries and the people making them.
-> They would allow other races along to mostly boast about how great their respected college is…

4. Norn, the Norn lead fairly secluded lives, they tend to be homesteaders or hunters. Having tours in their city would serve the purpose of preserving the shared history, so that if Norn were to visit their ‘capital’ they could be informed of what happened elsewhere. The focus would be mostly on Heroes and Heroic tales.
-> They wouldn’t mind taking visitors along, because somewhat like the asura, they love to boast about their great feats.

5. Charr, (like already mentioned, apparently), the Charr would most likely use guides as part of the Fahrar system, Charr do not strike me as ‘tourist inclined’, nor do they particularly focus on Hero warship (not that there aren’t important Charr, but its not really a cultural focus, aka. it’s not the Charr that is important, it’s what they did for the Charr). There are more things to point at why Charr Tours wouldn’t technically be meant for grown Charr. Yet, as part of the Fahrar they make perfect sense, the underlying knowledge of the Charr would be considered a valuable learning experience to cement the racial interest/culture into a society that is mostly Warband focussed. It would be a good way to introduce Cubs to the respected divisions in the society so that these cubs understand the choices they can make and the focus/consequences they come with.
-> Charr society seems to be open enough to allow visitors in their capital, but seeing how Charr society has this rather closed ‘warband’>‘legion’>‘race’ organisation, as well having a rather ego-boast undertone. They would see visitors being as ‘valuable’ to Charr society as ‘Cubs’. “You are of another race, and you are interested in the charr? you start at the bottom like the rest of us.”

Tbh. and also likely the reason why I typed it all out, the racial approach seems much more interesting than using a mere ‘human’ or ‘priory’ approach. Most noticeably because the tours stay within their racial confines, which makes perfect sense in a Racial Capital.

Having a few other races come along with these tours, which would run continuously or within like short timeframes, gives ‘you’ the writers opportunities to have them ask questions along the road, in order to answer certain interracial discrepancies. Taking say 2 to 3 individuals from another race along would make each tour feel less like a copy of the others (were you to take all the races along), yet still give interesting insight in the races asking the questions as well as the answers provided. So a real nice instrument to cement the racial background and to provide lore, to any player that is new to the GW universe, as well as those veterans that would like to see what the races themselves focus on, deepening of the races…

There is indeed Medina, and I used such as an example in response to Bobby’s comment about changing the style of telling the lore. Though I’ve forgotten how wide-spread the fahrar tour is.

Thing is, we already have what Bobby asked for (changing how it’s told but still giving a “lore exposition dump” situation akin to the tour guides) in each of the cities, in different forms – it’s just that in exception of one or two cases, they’re stationary and in all cases not triggered by players. So it would just be a matter of extending how much is done, rather than finding new ways to implement the tour guides.

What’s so great about the tour guides isn’t that it’s a tour guide, but that it’s a lore exposition dump – and obviously so – which is lacking in the grand scale of the game. Regardless of form, more lore expositions are desireable, especially more obvious ones.

MatthewMedina.5419:

I totally forgot, but this thread reminded me – There actually is a series of scenes depicting a fahrar being given lessons about some basics of charr history and culture. I believe it starts outside the Command Core, meanders over to the Stormcaller monument, and then goes up through the three levels to Smodur’s office. It’s been a while since I worked on it, but that was definitely also designed to capture the “tour the city” feel.

As long as there’s something obvious about “This is a series of events that is going to show you lore of this location!”, you sold me on the idea that different races would do things differently. I imagine some old Norn sitting around a camp fire telling stories about Hoelbrak that might be just a little larger than life. Maybe an area called the storytellers circle.

I imagine Asura would have some sort of national archives database, or maybe a school class going on with a teacher lecturing on the history of Rata Sum.

While I love the idea of all the racial homes getting historians and tours, how about a great huge “no” on the idea of Humans Must Be The Most Important And Know Everything.

Your average sylvari could tell you the entire history of the sylvari – all, oh, 27-ish years of it, you don’t need special historians. Find a Firstborn and hey, they’ve lived the whole thing.

The charr aren’t going to let human tour guides give visitors to the Black Citadel a human perspective on their city and people.

The Asura wouldn’t believe humans could do their history and brilliance justice,

The norn skaalds are basically made for telling the oral history of their people.

Humans are simply not the best choice for telling any of the other race’s history. Let the other races speak for themselves, telling their history in their own perspective. It would be absolutely galling to me if this were done but humans were used for it just to make sure they’re ~important~.

Humans are welcome to tell their own history, but their voices are not the ones that matter on the other races’ histories, and they shouldn’t be.

qarinus.3869:

While I love the idea of all the racial homes getting historians and tours, how about a great huge “no” on the idea of Humans Must Be The Most Important And Know Everything.

The sad thing is, this is what humans were meant to be portrayed as – the most knowledgeable on the world’s history.

But what we get is, in fact, closer to “everything they had ever known, was wrong.” At least in presentation.

Humans have nothing going towards them that isn’t superceded or caused by another race, so what should they have if not history on the world? Everywhere the other races can go now, humans had ruled for centuries if not longer. Why shouldn’t they know the history of the place?

Sure, a sylvari could tell you the past 25 years of the Grove, or even the past 250 years, but why should they know of events predating that? Humanity should, however, as the Grove was built atop a destroyed human village. A human village we know nothing about beyond “it was Ronan’s home.” What was the village’s name? When was it founded? Why was it so far away from Kryta proper? Should sylvari know these things? Only if Ronan or another human mentioned it around the growing Pale Tree, but what’re the chances of a man wishing to forget his past talking about it? Pretty slim.

But a human historian with access to Krytan records would know the name. They’d know the founding date. They’d know its purpose (fishing? farming? hunting?) and why it was placed where it was. A sylvari wouldn’t know this unless they got it from human records.

But where are all these mentions of human records? Not just for this mysterious village but for any other village. What’s the history of Claypool? Of Beetletun and Shaemoor? Of Nebo Terrace? What’s the history of the Orrian villages (we only hear of one – Bayt Fallahin )? What’s the history behind Oldgate or the Decimus Stones? Who knows. Surely a human would, and not a charr or asura or sylvari!

Yes, that sounds like a fabulous idea, put historians in the Grove to tell us all about human history in the area… when, er, what’s important about the Grove, and what we should be learning about there, is the current actual inhabitants.

You view humans as the most important race in the game, clearly. I do not. I wouldn’t mind learning about that history, but a “racial city tour guide” should focus on that race, not the way humans related to the area that race lives in.

>You view humans as the most important race in the game, clearly.

lol…
Maybe the most thrown under the bus…

Qarinus, it’s clear you don’t get what I’m saying at all.

We ALREADY HAVE sylvari talking about the Grove’s history as a sylvari city. Asking to bring in that is just repitition. And it isn’t that I view humans as the most important but that they are presented as the least important. Humans have nothing going for them and should have at least one thing. Global history was said by ANet to be that one thing, but we see the opposite of that in the game.

If you’re not going to read my posts then just say so, since it’s obvious that I wasn’t talking about humans being the best, just the best in that particular field in accordance to what ANet said during development but that this wasn’t shown in-game.

It’s similar to the norn who don’t really have much going for them. The main difference is that GW1 lore on the norn isn’t being retconned or forgotten at every turn.

So you say that the other races shouldn’t get a compressed history lesson because humans have nothing else going for them?
Sonds pretty pointless to me.
The player experience shouldn’t be crippled because one race has to have an unique selling point.

On a side note: Humans still got the biggest and most detailed capital city.

I never said the other races shouldn’t get a compressed history lesson. In fact, I rather stated that they already have that – it’s just not all spoken dialogue.

I fail to see how this would be “crippling” player experience for more content to be put out there. And humanity doesn’t even have any selling point, while the other playable races have their unique selling point.

I would argue that the Black Citadel is larger, and equally if not more detailed. But humans still get the short end of the stick in the whole of the game.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The sad thing is, this is what humans were meant to be portrayed as – the most knowledgeable on the world’s history.

But what we get is, in fact, closer to “everything they had ever known, was wrong.” At least in presentation.

A point I’d like to bring up…
To be fair, you have to admit that even the humans didn’t seem to really know -everything- back in GW1.
It sure seemed like it, and in a game that is, really, completely from their point of view, it’s easy to think that way.
But certain things seem to cast shadows of doubt on that assertion…

Easy example off the top of my head…
Common thought is that the Six Gods brought humans to Tyria. However, it is also mentioned that humans could have already been here in Cantha, a place where they had their own customs and even the names of the gods were different.
So which is it?

Point I’m trying to make is that human knowledge of history might not have been as comprehensive as we were led to believe.

Also, about their current situation… 250+ years of disaster, war, and tough losses have pushed humanity in Kryta to near extinction. In that sort of situation, knowledge gets lost.
As a historical equivalent, think of the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. It took Europe a long time to get anywhere close to what ancient Romans had accomplished and they basically had to relearn everything.

Humanity is at that point in the game, now.

Anyway, that’s just my take on it.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

It’s not that humans are supposed to have unparallelled omniscient knowledge, is that the precious context they have being former inhabitants of most of known Tyria and the registers from it is under utilized.

The asura can’t compare to such knowledge of the land and the species before since they lived underground, and charr were neither as spread out (in regards to the current game map) or possessed the kind of academical culture of humans (their historical understanding mostly militaristic) to justify them filling the role of humans as having the largest understanding of surface Tyria throughout history. Norn knowledge of the land is mostly relegated to history on the northern shiverpeaks, now Jormag domain and the sylvari are too young.

The existence of the Priory and Whispers as greatly powerful organizations, two human founded orders dedicated to knowledge suggests that the tragedies of centuries past didn’t really take enough of a toll on human records to justify the current treatment of humans as unable to provide historical context.

The current role of humans in the game is essentially generic with tiny bits of flavor here and there and doesn’t exploit the advantage of gw1 human lore.

I think you might be over-estimating how much the Priory might know. If they did, why would they be working so hard to gather more in former human kingdoms like Ascalon and Orr? And why is the Priory mantra something along the lines of ‘So much has been forgotten’?
I can’t say much about the Whispers and what they do and don’t know, but to me, their organization is such that, even if one part of them does know, another might very well not. And they seem rather uninterested in sharing that knowledge if they do know it.

As for ‘exploiting the advantage of gw1 human lore’…
The survivors of those great calamities didn’t have time to grab their history books and records… The Seering of Ascalon, the destruction of Orr, the Foefire… None of these disasters were things that people saw coming.
Ergo, knowledge is unfortunately lost.

This is what I’m trying to say. How can humans exploit the advantage of GW1 lore, if they don’t know it anymore?

I’m not going to argue what was and was not said during development, because that’s about as fruitful as talking about the Manifesto… Things are subject to change, simple as that.

Now, what I am /not/ arguing here is the desire to see humans step up a bit and be less under-represented in the world and the story… I’m merely giving possible and plausible reasons (as I see it) why they aren’t at this point in Tyrian history.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

qarinus.3869:

While I love the idea of all the racial homes getting historians and tours, how about a great huge “no” on the idea of Humans Must Be The Most Important And Know Everything.

The sad thing is, this is what humans were meant to be portrayed as – the most knowledgeable on the world’s history.

But what we get is, in fact, closer to “everything they had ever known, was wrong.” At least in presentation.

Humans have nothing going towards them that isn’t superceded or caused by another race, so what should they have if not history on the world? Everywhere the other races can go now, humans had ruled for centuries if not longer. Why shouldn’t they know the history of the place?

Sure, a sylvari could tell you the past 25 years of the Grove, or even the past 250 years, but why should they know of events predating that? Humanity should, however, as the Grove was built atop a destroyed human village. A human village we know nothing about beyond “it was Ronan’s home.” What was the village’s name? When was it founded? Why was it so far away from Kryta proper? Should sylvari know these things? Only if Ronan or another human mentioned it around the growing Pale Tree, but what’re the chances of a man wishing to forget his past talking about it? Pretty slim.

But a human historian with access to Krytan records would know the name. They’d know the founding date. They’d know its purpose (fishing? farming? hunting?) and why it was placed where it was. A sylvari wouldn’t know this unless they got it from human records.

But where are all these mentions of human records? Not just for this mysterious village but for any other village. What’s the history of Claypool? Of Beetletun and Shaemoor? Of Nebo Terrace? What’s the history of the Orrian villages (we only hear of one – Bayt Fallahin )? What’s the history behind Oldgate or the Decimus Stones? Who knows. Surely a human would, and not a charr or asura or sylvari!

The priory is race-agnostic. I don’t see why they wouldn’t share information they have about things like the history of human lands. It seems likely that any Sylvari who took it upon themselves to be a historian would go learn about the history of their location before the Pale Tree existed. Just because they weren’t there personally doesn’t mean they can’t learn about it.

I’d love to see humans be the ones with the knowledge, since they were the most wide-spread of the races before the events of GW2, but it turns out we were just making stuff up. That’s pretty unfortunate. But at least we still have the “underdog” story going for us. We lost more than any other race in the past 250 years, but still have the greatest city. It was mentioned that the Black Citadel might be bigger, but it doesn’t look like a place I’d want to actually live in. It’s all practical, cold, and structured whereas Divinity’s Reach, despite the constant surrounding dangers (bandits, centaurs, and zombies) is a city where people don’t even seem to notice anything is wrong with their world half of the time. We don’t have the Charr’s military, but we still hold our own against all fronts. We don’t have the Asura’s technology, but we live comfortably and even lavishly in the constant festival that is Divinity’s Reach and the outlying farms. Anet can really play on the “Humans are tenacious and supremely adaptable” angle if they wanted to. There’s a lot of potential in our current “humans are useless” situation. Even in real life history people tend to really excel when our backs are against the wall (Even if it’s our own fault we were against that wall in the first place.)