Guild Wars 2

In what year did the First Guild War begin?

This might sound like a simple question, but there are actually several discrepancies in the lore that make it difficult to pin an exact date down.

The Guild Wars Wiki Timeline states that “The Third Guild War begin in Tyria” in the year 1013AE, leaving no date for the beginning of the First and Second Guild Wars. This date was never given in the original game so I can only assume that the Wiki was updated based on the information given to us by the Orrian History Scrolls which claimed that “The third Guild War began in 1013 AE in Ascalon and Kryta.”

The Historical Monument of Surmia states that the Second Guild Wars ended in the year 1020AE with Ascalon as the victor. This date is irrelevant to my original question, but I thought that it was necessary to mention that we do have a date for the end of the Second Guild War that can be used to help narrow down an answer.

Now, this is where things get tricky. On page 34 of the original Guild Wars: Prophecies game manual, the timeline states that the “Guild Wars begin” in the year 1013AE. This is further corroborated by the Guild Wars: Nightfall game manual which states on page 28 that “The Guild Wars begin in Ascalon” in the year 1013 AE, and even furthermore in the Guild Wars: Factions manual which states quite clearly on page 24 that “The first Guild Wars begin” in the year 1013 AE.

All three of the listed game manuals can be downloaded right here from the original game’s official website for anyone who wants to check my primary sources.

In my opinion, this would appear to be a discrepancy in the game’s lore where the author of the Orrian History Scrolls made a slight error when writing the document. With so many pieces of text to manage I can certainly understand the difficulty in tracking down every small detail to make sure that there are no errors. If that is the case, then could we please have the document changed in-game so that we can edit the Wiki’s timeline accordingly?

Your main problem is that the Historical Monument of Surmia’s date is not when the Second Guild War ended, but when Surmia was founded, and the monument and city were dedicated to the soldiers who died during the Second Guild War. Meaning that the Second Guild War was over before 1020 AE.

The manual are referring to the Third Guild War, without a doubt. The Factions manual definitely has a typo in it there, because we knew in GW1 by said Historical Monument of Surmia that the second Guild War was over before 1020 AE and that from the History of Tyria in the Prophecies manual that the Guild Wars each lasted for decades (and we knew that the Third Guild War ended in 1070 AE with the events of the Searing, etc.). Furthermore, the History of Tyria also says that the First Guild War began only roughly a century after the Exodus of the Gods – not over a millennia after.

Over the next hundred years, the human kingdoms prospered. Powerful groups grew up within each nation. These were known as guilds. It was these groups, these guilds, that held the real power in Tyria. Though there were kings and organizations that made the laws and regulated the land, it was the guilds that enforced these laws—or didn’t—as they saw fit. As these guilds grew, their influence began to overlap.

As is ever the case with peace, it once again came to an end when the volcano erupted, spitting out the five stones and scattering them across Tyria. The magic they embodied seeped out into the lands around them. Though the Bloodstones, as they are called, have never been reunited, the power that they possess was enough to re-ignite the desire for power in the hearts of men.

The struggle for power commenced, and again war broke out. This time, though, the humans were not united. The guilds of the three most-influential kingdoms on the continent battled each other for supremacy. The kings of Ascalon, Kryta, and Orr were not powerful enough to stop the conflict, for the armies of the guilds were even more powerful than those of their own home nations.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/History_of_Tyria

Peace only lasted about a century after the Exodus, so that’s roughly when the First Guild War began – whether formally or informally is the question.

@Konig, I think that you might be interpreting that article incorrectly and conflating two separate events.

On one hand you have the line: “Things were good for a time. No one race gained dominance over any other, and the world was once again at peace. Over the next hundred years, the human kingdoms prospered. Powerful groups grew up within each nation. These were known as guilds.” I would see this line as a reference to the founding of the guild system which occurred roughly one hundred years after the Exodus. This time period would be seen as a golden age for humanity, a time of peace and prosperity where guilds had time to grow and become powerful. After this, you have your second line: “As is ever the case with peace, it once again came to an end when the volcano erupted, spitting out the five stones and scattering them across Tyria.” This line is followed in the next paragraph by “The struggle for power commenced, and again war broke out.” To me, this would indicate that the Guild Wars began after the volcano erupted at some unknown date and not after the first hundred years after the Exodus.

Secondly, we have an important line from the very article you quoted that you left out: “The Guild Wars raged for decades, fueled by the desire for power and the influence of the Bloodstones.” If the Guild Wars had began one hundred years after the Exodus of the Gods then it would not have raged for “decades” but “centuries” since the first series of conflicts would have broken out over nine hundred years before the present date in Prophecies.

Finally, I find it unlikely that the Guild Wars could have gone on for over nine hundred years. This is merely an inductive argument based on my understanding of military history. If a series of conflicts had gone on for over nine hundred years then it would have been broken up by historians into multiple different wars rather than lump them together under one banner. I would find it more likely that the “decades” of war that Lamount references in his Histories of Tyria refers to the conflict that lasted between 1013-1070AE where the first two wars lasted somewhere between 1013-1020AE and the final war was the longest, stretching all the way out until 1070. This would be corroberated by the fact that the third war was said to be the worst of all three.

EDIT: Actually, I think that there is an even more persuasive piece of evidence that I forgot to include in my original post. Kryta was only founded as a colony of Elona in the year 300AE and became an independent nation in 358. Ascalon itself was a fairly young nation, having only been founded in the year 100BE after the high-plains settlements East of the Shiverpeaks united under King Doric. I find it even more unlikely that Kryta and Ascalon could have been at war in the year 100AE when Kryta hadn’t even come into existence yet until 358.

(You’ll note that I’m not even addressing Mazdak’s claim here since he’s been proven an unreliable source by the writers themselves. “Mazdak being really old and crusty, and rewriting history in his own mind.”)

There was no other event in the history of continental Tyria which ceased peace for all three human nations – Ascalon had the charr and Kryta had the centaurs (though the latter only became an issue post 300 AE), but no other major conflicts occurred.

The Guild Wars did indeed began after the volcano erupted, however, it seems to me that was the event that ended the “golden age for humanity”, effective beginning the Guild Wars.

I did not leave that other line out, btw, as I refer to it myself (“the History of Tyria in the Prophecies manual that the Guild Wars each lasted for decades”) – I merely did not include it in the quote. I interpret that to meaning (as I indicated) that each individual Guild War raged for decades. This fits, since the last one would have lasted less than 60 years, and if we have 900 years in which all three occur, then each one lasting for more than 10 years but less than 200 fits as well.

I’m not saying the three Guild Wars happened for 900 years in total, but that they all happened over the course of 100 AE to 1070 AE, with the last one being from 1013 to 1070 AE. Wars lasting for decades is not that uncommon, despite common belief. In medieval and older ages, battles could easily last months. And in fiction, this tends to become more common since it serves to extrapolate the seriousness of the situation (the Kurzick/Luxon war has been ongoing for over 1500 years by GW1’s timeframe).

I want to stress, that it is far more likely to believe that the three wars happened over the course of 900 years for decades (between 10 and 190 years) each, than to believe that *two separate wars occurred in the seven years from 1013 to 1020 AE, and (more importantly) that people would consider those two wars separate not only from each other but from the third war that lasted until 1070 AE. Wars that share the same name tend to be decades apart, like the World Wars or the three Punic Wars, not a year or less from each other.

Also, the Third Guild War is said to be worse because Orrians joined in and death tolls were greatly higher in the same timespan, not because it was longer.

@Konig, I think that there is still one major piece of evidence that makes it even more unlikely that Kryta and Ascalon could have been at war with each other in the year 100AE, though admittedly I forgot to include it in my original post and only edited it in after yours. To quote myself:

“Kryta was only founded as a colony of Elona in the year 300AE and became an independent nation in 358. Ascalon itself was a fairly young nation, having only been founded in the year 100BE after the high-plains settlements East of the Shiverpeaks united under King Doric. I find it even more unlikely that Kryta and Ascalon could have been at war in the year 100AE when Kryta hadn’t even come into existence yet until 358.”

As the name implies, a “Guild War” would require guilds to exist, but if the nation of Kryta was not in existence yet then it would be impossible for there to be Krytan guilds until the year 358AE when the nation gained independence. Before then, the coast was settled by Elona and therefore any guilds (if the guild system was even in place back then) would have been operating under the legal jurisdiction of Elona.

So far, I haven’t found any evidence to suggest that Elona and Ascalon were ever embroiled in a major conflict so I could only assume that Kryta’s feud with Ascalon only began long after the nation gained its independence. It wouldn’t be hard to believe since the Shiverpeaks separated their nations and any wars between them would be plain foolish, especially for a young nation such as Kryta which had no reason to invade Ascalon over the mountains when they had plenty of land West of the Shiverpeaks to expand into.

Kryta was established first by Mazdak during King Doric’s reign – before the Exodus. It was “re-established” by Elona, spread further north, in 300 AE. We get this from the sylvari PS and Sea of Sorrows novel (and an interview). We learn that Mazdak, a son of King Doric, established Kryta in rebellion against Doric and that the nation was established during war times with Orr (hence why some of the earliest ports were protected by naturally high cliffs, such as Port Stalwart).

This has been known, more or less, since Prophecies as well – because King Doric is repeatedly stated to be the king of the three Tyrian kingdoms. That being Orr, Ascalon, and Kryta (which seems to have been founded in that order, at 205 BE, 100 BE, and an unknown point between 100 and 1 BE). Elona was never under King Doric’s reign.

I think you know that Mazdak’s account is inherently biased. It’s even listed as a recognized lore discrepancy on the GW2 Wiki:

Mazdak (during Dead of Winter) states that “When the human race was as young as [the Sylvari race], I conquered these lands and named them Kryta!” This conflicts with gw1:Timeline, which states “205 BE: Humans appear on the Tyrian continent.” and “786 BE: Humans appear in Cantha for the first time”.
The issue was recognized and addressed by Angel McCoy. Due to technical challenges of changing this being too expensive at this stage, the discrepancy is being chalked up to “Mazdak being really old and crusty, and rewriting history in his own mind”.

Mazdak’s statement that humans were as old as sylvari are now is false, not the fact that he was the founder of Kryta.

We have outright statement by developers stating that Kryta was founded by a ‘prince of Orr’ in hostility with Orr – the interview being linked to in Mazdak’s GW2 wiki article – and in Sea of Sorrows Macca says that it was founded by Doric’s son during wartime.

You’re taking a comment about one line (“When the human race was as young as [the Sylvari race]”), and using it to denounce entirely separate lore (“I conquered these lands and named them Kryta!”). And that falseness that exists is about human race being 25 years old, rather than their actual 500 years (or “less than 200 years on continental Tyria”).

I think we might be getting a little off-topic from the original post, but that’s my own fault so I don’t mind continuing on this tangent.

Assuming that you’re referring to the asura named Macha from the novel, I brought up the book on my Kindle app and did a quick word search to see if I could find exactly which line you were talking about. I could find no mention of King Doric at all or any reference to Lion’s Arch being founded by his son. What I did find was this quote on pages 92-93 saying:

With a bored noise, Macha yawned. “What the human’s not telling you, Centurion, is that the nations of Orr and Kryta were at war when Lion’s Arch was built. That’s why they put it behind the natural fortifications of those stone escarpments.

Soesbee, Ree. Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows (pp. 92-93). Pocket Books. Kindle Edition.

Using the word search function on my e-book, I could find no use of the name “Doric” throughout the book at all, so is it possible that you’re remembering something from a different source that corroborates this alleged fact?

Based on the evidence that I’ve collected, I think it’s safe to assume that Lion’s Arch was indeed founded during a time period where Kryta and Orr were at war. However, whether Mazdak is Doric’s son is something that I’ve seen no source on. He has been called a “royal son of Orr” by the ghost of Captain Bragen in the sylvari personal story quest Dead of Winter. In this same quest he is also said to be the founder of Kryta.

This may sound like an awful lot of hair-splitting, but I think that it’s important for us to split hairs if we are to establish an honest timeline of events.

Was Mazdak actually Doric’s son, or the son of another king of Orr? He is certainly recognized by one of his captains as a “royal son” so unless Bragen’s dialogue is to be called into question as well (which I see no reason for, giving him the benefit of the doubt), we can at least be sure that Mazdak was a member of the Orrian royal family. This still doesn’t tell us his parentage though so unless I’m mistaken, we don’t actually know when Mazdak settled Kryta. All we really know is that he was a prince of Orr, so the son of an Orrian king somewhere down the line.

This would expand the range of dates that could be ascribed to Kryta’s founding significantly since we’re no longer looking at a direct son of King Doric himself but rather a son of some unnamed Orrian king.

Except that you’ve forgotten that King Doric is repeatedly called the king of the three human Tyrian nations. That being Orr, Ascalon, and Kryta – as he was not ever king of Elona. So Kryta had to be founded before 1 BE, which is the year when King Doric died.

And from that, knowing that Kryta was founded by Mazdak, who was a “prince of Orr”, it’s clear to discern that Mazdak was Doric’s son (or if you want to truly stretch things, grandson or nephew is potentially possible).

The only instance I can find of Doric being described that way is Bloodline of Kryta, which clumsily compacts the entire royal lineage into three lines. The Orrian History Scrolls referenced above say “His kingdom encompassed the lands we now know as Orr, Ascalon and Kryta.” The Quiz Terminal explicitly says “King Doric’s kingdom encompassed land that would later become what nations?” The Prophecies Manuscripts call him “leader of the united human tribes.”

The argument that Mazdak was Doric’s son, as I recall, was pieced together based on that line about the age of the sylvari. If that’s been thrown out, there’s nothing preventing us from moving him to 358 A.E., the date that every timeline ANet’s ever published gives for Kryta becoming an independent nation.

The line from Mazdak wasn’t “thrown out” but rather it was realized that there was an error but due to technical issues they cannot fix that error (like they did with Riannoc’s death statement during The Newly Awakened in Season 2). To quote: * Mazdak’s brag — unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to fix this. It’s voiced and more importantly, it’s in a cinematic which makes it impossible to change. We’ll just have to chalk this one up to Mazdak being really old and crusty, and rewriting history in his own mind. Sorry. The technical challenges of changing this are too expensive at this stage.

There is also the description from Lion’s Arch which tells us that the city was once the city of King Doric’s palace. And as Athrenn quoted from Sea of Sorrows: “the nations of Orr and Kryta were at war when Lion’s Arch was built.”

So let’s put all the facts together:

• Mazdak founded Kryta. – Source: Dead of Winter
• Kryta was founded by a prince of Orr. – Source: GuildMag interview
• Orr and Kryta were at war when Lion’s Arch was built. – Source: Sea of Sorrows
• Lion’s Arch held King Doric’s palace. – Source: Guild Wars 1 Lion’s Arch description
• Doric ruled over territories of the now-called Kryta. – Source: Orrian History Scrolls/Quiz Terminal

I do believe there were several lines that stated Doric ruled “three human nations”, and he never ruled Elona, thus settling this. But the above five points (really, just the third and fourth) settle it as well.

Lion’s Arch was founded when Kryta and Orr were at war, but during Doric’s lifetime it had been under Orrian command as it held his palace. This means that the war was won by Orr, before 1 BE. Since Mazdak was the founder of Kryta, a prince of Orr, and the king of Orr was Doric this means that Mazdak was most likely Doric’s son (though a possibility of nephew, cousin, brother, or grandson is also plausible but unlikely – depends primarily on how Orrians handled titles of royal relatives – if it’s like Ascalon, such alternatives would be dukes more often than princes).

That’s still relying on two points- the description of Lion’s Arch in GW1, and Macha in Sea of Sorrows- plus Bloodline of Kryta if you’re feeling generous, against the timelines, the Orrian History Scrolls (Mazdak’s boast was also that he named Kryta, so there would be no need for ‘now known’ if Mazdak had done so while Doric was alive), and the sources that claim Doric’s capital was in Rin (most recently these books in the Durmand Priory, but also parts of GW1).

Now, I obviously can’t say which of us has the right side of this discrepancy, but there is a discrepancy. It’s not as cut-and-dry as you’re painting it.

I would agree with Aaron that there does seem to be a discrepancy here, and the old Wiki page for King Doric still claims that:

During his lifetime, King Doric oversaw the expansion of humanity into Ascalon and the beginnings of Kryta, though the latter did not become an official settlement until 300 AE. He had a summer estate in Lion’s Arch.

Since we’re debating the veracity of some of these statements I wouldn’t take the Wiki’s claim at face value but I would still like to see the primary sources which the author must have based their claims on.

According to the author of this Wiki article, Doric began expanding into Kryta during his lifetime and had a summer estate in what would late become known as Lion’s Arch. However, they seem to believe that Kryta was not an “official settlement” (what does that even mean…?) until the year 300AE.

Does anyone know where in the lore this Wiki author is basing their claims on? I’d like to review the primary source of the claim that A.) Lion’s Arch was the site of Doric’s summer estate, and B.) Doric oversaw the expansion into Kryta, yet never “officially” colonized it.

@Aaron: They’re not as contradicting as you make it out to be, however. We know that Elona later colonized Kryta, and if we look at the timeline, that’s the actual wording from the books:

Kryta established as a colony of Elona.

“Established as a colony” is not equal to “founded”. This basically just means that Kryta existed as a nation – likely a colony of Ascalon – but in 300 AE it became a colony of Elona.

And royalty can have multiple palaces, and we know that the capital had moved around before (such as going from Drascir to Rin). I’d like to point out that your sources prove that Rin was not the capital for Doric – merely that King Doric had seen to the founding of Rin. Nothing says, iirc, that Drascir was the first capital. But I doubt Lion’s Arch was ever a capital for King Doric (nor does anything ever says such).

@Ahtrenn: that line was written by the fanbase and is always subject to potential errors. Furthermore, the GW1Wiki has a rule of not including lore derived from GW2 – which would include Sea of Sorrows. Back then, though we had lines about Doric ruling in Krytan lands (like Lion’s Arch), we had no statement about it being founded by a prince of Orr.

Also, that wiki editor is me. I admit it was long ago enough I do not recall the “summer estate” part – that may be a typo on my end from back then. But the line about overseeing the expansion but never colonizing it was before GW2’s release, when all we knew was that it was “established as a colony of Elona in 300AE”. We’ve learned more since then, but GWWiki policy is to keep such new lore out of the GWWiki and keep it to GW2Wiki.

The second book I linked: “King Doric constructed Stormcaller on Horn Hill north of Rin, his capital city, in the year 0 AE.” But as you point out, that’s not the main point.

The definition of ‘establish’ is to found, institute, build, or bring into being on a firm or stable basis. I would find it very bizarre if “Kryta established as a colony of Elona” was meant to read as ‘Kryta was a pre-existing kingdom, but became a colony of Elona’. Wouldn’t some variation on ‘Kryta becomes a colony of Elona’ be what you’d expect to see?

Personally, my attempt to solve the discrepancy would be this: Doric’s palace existed on the site of Lion’s Arch before the city was built. It was only three hundred years later, when Orr was at war with the Elonan colony, that the city named Lion’s Arch was founded (lions being a creature native only, as far as we know, to Elona.) The prince of Orr, Mazdak, then goes on to conquer Kryta, before going rogue and breaking off to be his own kingdom.

This still runs into trouble with the claim that Mazdak named Kryta, but it at least concentrates the errors into a single quest that we already know had been less-than-extensively thought out, and it results in the fewest oddities across the board.

I see what you’re saying, Aaron, and I think that it does have some merit.

The site that later became Lion’s Arch could have been the same location that Doric picked for his palace/summer estate/what-have-you at some point before the year of his death. A few hundred years later, Elona tries to expand across the sea and colonizes the site of Doric’s original settlement, claiming it as their own and naming it Lion’s Arch. News of Elona’s expansion into “Orrian” land reaches the city of Arah and the King of Orr launches a naval assault to reclaim it. This assault is led by the King’s own son, Mazdak who leads the war between Orr and “Kryta”, which was at this point a loosely held colony of Elona. The Elonian colonists bow down to Mazdak, accepting him as their new king.

Or for a condensed version of events:
1) Doric settles the southern coast of Kryta before his death
2) Elona tries to colonize Doric’s original settlements
3) Orr launches a fleet to reclaim lost land from Elona led by Mazdak
4) Orr is victorious and the Elonian colonists accept Mazdak as their king

What do you think, would this theory hold water and account for most of the established facts?

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I would find it very bizarre if “Kryta established as a colony of Elona” was meant to read as ‘Kryta was a pre-existing kingdom, but became a colony of Elona’. Wouldn’t some variation on ‘Kryta becomes a colony of Elona’ be what you’d expect to see?

Rather than “pre-existing kingdom”, I’m saying it was a pre-existing colony.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Personally, my attempt to solve the discrepancy would be this: Doric’s palace existed on the site of Lion’s Arch before the city was built.

This makes little sense. Why would Doric build a palace in what is literally bordering centaur territory at the time, and dozens (if not hundreds, depending on the scale of the Tyrian subcontinent) miles away from either Arah or Rin?

I’d also like to present The Centaur War which states: The first documented human-centaur battles occurred in 300 A.E. when human settlements began spreading from the fertile Krytan valley into the Shiverpeaks.

In the year 300 AE, human settlements began spreading from Kryta into centaur territory. This implies that before 300 AE, humans had already settled in the Krytan valley(s).

Also, you guys are taking the “discrediting” of Mazdak’s line far out of proportion, I would say. Nowhere does Angel McCoy’s line indicate that Mazdak is from 398 (or 300) AE. And it is a much bigger leap of “rewriting history in his own mind” to go from 25 years old to 500 years old, as opposed to going from 25 to less than 200 (possibly even less than 100) for the “age of humanity” at the time Mazdak was alive if we’re talking from the perspective of humans on continental Tyria (as opposed to humans on the world, which Mazdak may or may not have been aware of or caring for).

Besides there’s Captain Bragen’s line: This is the crypt of Mazdak, royal son of Orr, who came to these shores so that humans may raise a new nation: Kryta.

“May raise a new nation” seems very, very different from “liberating a colony”.

I’m just going to side-step the whole Mazdak/Kryta’s founding discussion for one moment to bring up another quote that I missed when I was reading through the manuscripts the other day. It does seem to elucidate the original writing team’s perspective of the Guild Wars more than any other document.

Taken from pages 38-40 from the Prophecies game manual:

The Orrians were a peaceful people, hoping only to do their duty toward their gods and content to be rewarded in either this life or the next. When the guilds began feuding, Orr as a nation tried to stay out of the conflict. This was not the sort of struggle that entire kingdoms got involved in. But when the strife overflowed into armed conflict, and guilds from the other human nations began fighting in the streets of Arah, Orr rose to defend itself and the city of the gods. Soon after Orr mobilized its armies, Kryta and Ascalon did as well, and what had started as a dispute between localized groups became an all-out war. The Guild Wars raged for nearly fifty years. ((Highlighted for emphasis)) During that time, none of the three human empires [were] able to assert dominance over either of the other two.

[…]

At first, Orr was saved from much of the fighting. The guilds with allegiances to Ascalon and Kryta withdrew, heading back to defend their homes. Orr regrouped, granted a moment to prepare simply because they were farther south.

This does appear to be in line with what most of the Orrian History Scrolls tells us:

Records state that public opinion began to go against their leaders, believing the guilds to be stronger than their local governments. The nation of Orr, however, believed itself favored of the gods. The Orrians stayed neutral in the face of the larger war. But Ascalon and Kryta brought their war to the nation. Orr rose to defend itself, escalating the conflict and resulting in casualties that eclipsed those of the previous two Guild Wars combined.

Taking all of this into account, I would still have to say that the original concept of the Guild Wars, at least at the time of GW1’s writing was only intended to be a conflict that lasted approximately half a century.

Approximate timeline of events:
1.) Abaddon’s Mouth erupts; humans discover the shards and conflict begin between guilds “fueled by the desire for power and the influence of the Bloodstones” according to Lamount’s History of Tyria. I would argue that the first recorded signs of conflict begin in 1013AE.
2.) Before the year 1020AE, the Second Guild War has already ended with Ascalon believed to be victorious according to the Historical Monument of Surmia.
3.) There is a brief respite from the conflict until the guilds grew so bold that fighting broke out in the city of Arah. The Kingdom of Orr entered the war officially at this point and the whole nature of the conflict escalated from a “dispute between localized groups” into an “all-out war.” It was only at this point that all three nations of Orr, Ascalon, and Kryta officially entered the Guild Wars and the third series of conflicts began.

Now, I’m willing to acknowledge that the story is constantly evolving and subject to being rewritten by the writers of Guild Wars 2. However, I think it should at least be acknowledged that at the time of Guild Wars 1’s writing, the wars do seem to have been scheduled to begin as a whole in the year 1013AE according to all three manuscripts and last for approximately half a century. To me, it doesn’t sound like a conflict that spanned across centuries with hundreds of years in between.

It’s still very unfathomable for seven years to contain two wars against the same groups with the same name attributed to them, however. Nowhere would you ever consider such to be the situation – most would either not consider one of the two a war at all, given how short it’d be, or the two would be considered the same war with a short respite inbetween. And with a 50-year long war occurring immediately after the two less than cumulative seven year wars, most historians would label all three as merely the same war.

It should be noted that the three Guild Wars did not necessarily span across centuries with hundreds of years in between. Merely that the time frame for them to have possibly occurred has a maximum of 900 years.

It seems more likely that there was a slight miscommunication or rewriting of lore when Prophecies was still in development, and the manuals were not fixed with this. This wouldn’t be the first time, as we have a case of Confessor Dorian being called Schessler in an early short story (there being no timeframe for a separate Confessor to have existed), but Schessler is still referenced in Prophecies. The Prophecies manual has a lot of things that did not make it into the game – for example, reference to the Forest of True Sight (which seems to have been renamed Talmark Wilderness). This makes sense, after all, since game manuals have to be written up before the final day of working on the game for printing/publication reasons.

(Lost my post, recap instead)

To my knowledge, the Charr offensive all took place in 1070 AE. The Charr used the Searing to beat Ascalon, invaded Orr which lead to the Cataclysm, and started to attack Kryta before being repelled by the White Mantle. That’s quite a lot of territory for them to move through in just a year!

With that in mind, it seems like a war could occur rather quickly. It seems that 2 wars in 7 years could have occurred. For instance, 2 years of conflict, a year of respite, then 4 more years for the “second” war. Then, the decades long third war begins. It is also stated that they sometimes refer to the Third Guild War as THE Guild War, which seems to go along with Konig’s point that many would consider such a time period to all be a single conflict.

@Konig, you’re absolutely right about the Schessler thing. Not only that, but Saul’s original last name was Botolf in the same story you’re referring to. My guess would be that Schessler sounded too much like a kitten German name and they wanted to distance themselves from real world comparisons between the White Mantle and kitten Germany. I don’t know if Saul’s name change from Botolf to D’Alessio is canon but I always thought it would be neat if he did give himself a new name to go along with his transformation, sort of like how some historical individuals were given “holy names” after becoming a king or a saint.

As for your and Hyrule’s argument that the war they were referring to was actually the third war? Hmm…. I might have been able to buy it if the error was isolated within one game manual, but I would find it really strange if the writing team didn’t catch it for three manuals in a row.

Prophecies:
“1013AE: Guild Wars begin.”

Factions:
“1013AE: The first Guild Wars begin.”

Nightfall:
“1013AE: The Guild Wars begin in Ascalon.”

If it were an isolated incident I might chalk it up to a coincidence/writing error, but three times in a row? I’d have to call that a pattern of some sort. It really does look like 1013AE was originally meant to be the start of the wars as a whole as far as the original game writers were concerned.

Of course, I don’t suppose there’s much else we can say about the matter until we get a dev response. We have sources within the lore that disagree with each other so one of them is obviously a writing error, but it’s really up to them which way they want the narrative to go.

The only one of those three that really seems like an error is the Factions one. And I would say that an error is possible if no one caught it – they probably used the same text and merely added the new info when making the following manuals. Since players didn’t catch it (not ever being given dates in general), it could easily end up being unseen by the writers as well if they did not have further proofreading – and why proofread something that was already proofread and published a year prior?

Besides that, the most recent is often the one you want to go with. It’s clear that’s the way they’re going as well.

Well, I would actually have to agree with something that you said two years ago:

Old, established lore are the pillars of a continuing story. A poor writer does retroactive continuities. A good writer works in a way to explain why old ‘facts’ became ‘lies’ and uses that to boost the story. A great writer puts in what they want while not destroying the established pillars of the story.

I don’t think that they actually intended to shift the date of the pivotal beginning of the Guild Wars so dramatically when they inserted that line of the Orrian History Scrolls into the game, but it would be very nice of them if they did take the time to address this discrepancy because it does rewrite the narrative significantly and changes the course of history.