Guild Wars 2

First, the new maps appear smaller when measured against the old ones, e.g. Verdant Brink is not as wide on the World Map as Brisban Wildlands. However, the maps feel as though they are much larger than some of their counterparts. Does anyone know if there is any scaling of the maps? Perhaps the maps appear smaller, yet are actually larger in game? This may well just be my mind playing tricks.

Assuming that is not the case, I was looking at that_shaman’s updated Historical Map of Tyria. http://guide.thatshaman.com/
It appears that the new maps do a decent job of lining up with GW1 features. The Shining Blade Camp in the Wilds lines up with a corner of the Raid, Quarrel Falls lines up with the waterfall within the Silverwastes jumping puzzle, Balthazar’s Temple is still found where it was in the Falls, and my overactive imagination was able to match up shapes in the northwest of Bloodstone Fen with the stone formations in the Lost Precipice!

Now, that brings a timeline question the forefront. If the areas do correspond on the map as they should, then the Lost Precipice structures were created after our heroes passed through there in GW1. Even more significant, Tarir itself would have to be constructed after GW1, or else we would have run straight into it on the way to Zinn’s lab (with a waterfall that still seems to be in the same area).

So… were the Exalted formed after the events of GW1?

About Verdant Brink to Brisban – keep in mind that Verdant Brink is one of the smaller maps when it comes to bird’s eye view appearance and has some height to it (the other maps too but they’re also larger on the map), and Brisban is one of the larger maps in the core game.

About that_shaman’s historical maps: he does shift the PoI of GW1 landmarks a bit to line up with GW2’s locations. There’s minor shifting here and there but yeah overall things line up.

About the Exalted. Yes, they came after GW1 by all appearances. I suggest doing the achievement “A Study in Gold” and its subsequent one. There you meet an Exalted who is actually a human we knew from GW1. The blog post says “300 years ago” but now I’m pretty sure it was either an over-exaggerated case of rounding, or a typo for 200 years which wasn’t fixed.

Excellent, thanks for the pointer! I like the idea that heroes from GW1 could be among the Exalted. The info in A Study in Gold is interesting, but seems strangely out of sync with the dates as I understand them.

It suggests that the Exalted are family with the Zephyrites, but the Zephyrites were only formed about 8 years ago. So the words of the Forgotten are less than a decade old, but they say that Exalted are about to go in to stasis. Did they truly take their 2 centuries to do everything, then take a small cat-nap before Heart of Thorns?

The Zephyrites were formed by the Brotherhood of the Dragon, over 200 years ago. I don’t get where you take 8 years ago From… From the short story talking about one of their treks to retrieve Glint’s body and make the Zephyr Sanctum?

The only issue is the Forgotten’s mention of Glint’s death. Which I feel is more of an oversight.

Ah, I do think I took that short story to be the formation of the Zephyrites. You are correct that they existed long before. They only gained their Aspect magic after Glint’s death, including the construction of the Zephyr Sanctum.

West Bloodstone Fen, the Wilds and Sage Lands are the only places in the orignal Maguuma Jungle Region from Guild Wars Prophecies still unexplored though considering there’s a Raid there I would assume that the Wilds and Bloodstone Fen are released alongside the Raid itself. Considering that ArenaNet released Dry Top and Silverwastes before this Expansion I would hope that the other Zone appears before the next Expansion comes up(within Maguuma Wastes of course).

Also: are Alcazia Tangle and Sanctum Kay supposed to be the Tarnished Coast? They made the Maguuma Wastes and Magus Falls into ingame Regions so I would assume that the Tarnished Coast would be a Region alongside Steamspur Mountains(Maguuma Wastes had 1 Zone when it was first released so why can’t Steamspur Mountains be a 1 Zone Region between Mount Maelstrom, Sparkfly Fen and Timberline Falls?).

Mechanically the Tarnished Coast and Steamspur Mountains (well, Sparkfly+Maelstrom) are just one region (Maguuma Jungle). Lore wise, the Tarnished Coast is the coastline of the Maguuma Jungle. Maguuma Wastes, Magus Falls, and Tarnished Coast are all within the Maguuma Jungle geographical region.

Santcum Kay is more of Kryta than Maguuma/Tarnished Coast, though it’s currently the Dominion of Winds.

Magus Falls looks much better than it did in the first Guild Wars(though still not as magical as the late and lamented Mamnoon Lagoon did in that game) where it was a withered jungle extention of Mordremoth who’s hibernating due to being starved of Magic.

Magus Falls in this game looks very similar to Ferngully from the film of the same name(Mamnoon Lagoon on other hand has it’s own seperate look which should be described as a medieval fantasy jungle what with it’s mystical waters and blue grey ground which I still miss seeing).