Guild Wars 2

Dragons define both the setting and the plot for GW2, but they come with a darker twist than most fantasy worlds.

On the continent of Tyria, the known world of GW2, dragons are somewhere between elemental forces of nature and “Things Man is Not Meant to Know”. Imagine if the elder beings of H. P. Lovecraft also had more worldly spheres of influence like fire, ice, death, and so forth. If Cthulhu was also a god of water- that would be something like a Tyrian dragon.

Everything about Tyrian history revolves around the life cycle of the dragons. Every ten thousand years or so they all wake up, consume all the magic (and therefore most life) in the world, and go back to sleep. As they hibernate magic radiates off of them like body heat, life recovers, civilizations rise and unknowingly build temples and reactors and other magic-using things over their bedchambers, and magic fills the world again. When the world is chock full of tasty magic they awake and the cycle begins again.

Naturally we all live in the lucky days where the dragons are starting to wake back up. Their sleepy yawns are enough to warp and corrupt entire regions into their images (icy tundra for the ice dragon, flaming volcanoes for fire, etc), which has led to most of the badness and monsters you’ll fight in the world. As they get more serious about waking up, things get worse. Much worse.

Your personal story will follow the fight against a particular dragon, Zhaitan. The theme is basically that all life must unite to deal with even a single dragon. You’ll explore this theme at every possible level- as you progress you’ll deal with individual heroes from the prior generation who seriously need to settle their differences and work together. You’ll bring together three groups who are all trying to do the right thing to prepare for the fight, but are stomping all over each other while doing it. You’ll even earn the respect of one of the “monster” races that you normally fight and convince them to join you.

All of this will be orchestrated by the Pale Tree- the mother of all Sylvari. Nobody really yet knows who or what she is for sure… I’ll leave you to meet her for yourself, if you haven’t yet.