Guild Wars 2

Exploration always take place after Story.

You friggin’ obliterate Zhaitan in Arah Story, how can there still be Risen left to fight for Exploration mode? Or are we to believe Zhatain’s death did not matter the slightest?

Zhaitan’s death is immensely important— he was their creator, their overall commander, and the driving force behind the attempted invasion of the rest of Tyria. Without him they will almost certainly die out, cleared by Pact forces and more.

The Risen don’t just fall down like Star Wars Battle Droids when the mind behind them is destroyed (which is a very overused trope, and one I’m glad GW2 didn’t go in for). There’s no reason to believe they’d just fall down, or lose all their aggression immediately.

I believe it was stated by someone in Orr that many Risen are stuck in a kind of mock re-enactment of their past lives, too. They have a severely-limited, almost mindless existence without Zhaitan, I imagine.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

The Risen don’t just fall down like Star Wars Battle Droids when the mind behind them is destroyed (which is a very overused trope, and one I’m glad GW2 didn’t go in for). There’s no reason to believe they’d just fall down, or lose all their aggression immediately.

O rly? My understanding from playing the story is the opposite: that Zhaitan is the mind behind the actions of these mindless Risen, except the ones he grants a limited form of autonomy, i.e his Eyes and Mouths.

There are four tiers to autonomy we can see in the risen as laid out by the story:

- The Eyes/Mouths/Toenails of Zhatian have moderate autonomy and can think forthemselves a the level of a person but are still bound to Zhaitan’s will.

- The combatant risen, those with the tools necessary to combat effectively, have almost no autonomy except that which allows them to fight in Zhaitan’s name against Zhaitan’s enemies without his conscious command, and organize allies into the fray. Risen despoiler/corruptor/giants etc.

- The non-combat humanoid risen, villagers and the like, still fight for Zhaitan but aren’t bent toward his goals typically, they have what might be considered less than zero autonomy and are basically meat puppets. When not actively craving human flesh their minds kind of go into autopilot, going through familiar motions that have been hardwired throughout their previous lives.

- Wild risen, clams/chickens/grubs and the like, which are essentially machines and perform the same repetitive tasks until they wear out.

It’s actually stated by Trahearn (everyone’s favorite) that the risen population will slowly be wiped off the face of Tyria, as well as his corruption. This is basically a lore excuse to still have zombies in the game even after a person has already killed Zhaitan and goes back to Orr.

Basically killing Zhaitan means there will be no new Risen and the ones left lose their focus but they’re still around and need to be wiped out gradually.

Personally I think it’s more realistic that way than if they all suddenly fell-down. It also fits with the GW lore about necromancy – in the first game if you killed a Necro their minions stayed but they went ‘wild’ and would attack anyone instead of just their masters enemies.

The main issue here is that some of the bosses are still very clearly doing what would appear to be Zhaitan’s bidding, like the Risen High Priests(esses) of The Six. I dunno, that just seems to undermine the whole image of Zhaitan’s importance.

Would be like if you actually did kill Jormag yet the Sons of Svanir were still going strong.

And the pact are also struggling to establish a forward base in the Straits of Devastation well after you get to Caen Shadowfain. It’s kind of a lot to ask that the entire gameworld change every time you advance.

They’re undead, just tell yourself they’re too stupid to know the guy they’re talking to is dead. Same for the Svanir, except in my case that would be easier to believe. :P

Oglaf.1074:

O rly? My understanding from playing the story is the opposite: that Zhaitan is the mind behind the actions of these mindless Risen, except the ones he grants a limited form of autonomy, i.e his Eyes and Mouths.

Precisely. Except for his still-living champions – like the High Priests/Priestesses and possibly the Giganticus Lupicus, the risen are now just mindless drones, no longer intent on invasion.

But they don’t just drop dead. They still “live” – if you watched the cinematic in the personal story instance after doing the Arah dungeon, Trahearne says there are still risen, but they’re no longer being made at the same rate and will be hunted down to the last.

Arc.5862:

There are four tiers to autonomy we can see in the risen as laid out by the story:

- The Eyes/Mouths/Toenails of Zhatian have moderate autonomy and can think forthemselves a the level of a person but are still bound to Zhaitan’s will.

- The combatant risen, those with the tools necessary to combat effectively, have almost no autonomy except that which allows them to fight in Zhaitan’s name against Zhaitan’s enemies without his conscious command, and organize allies into the fray. Risen despoiler/corruptor/giants etc.

- The non-combat humanoid risen, villagers and the like, still fight for Zhaitan but aren’t bent toward his goals typically, they have what might be considered less than zero autonomy and are basically meat puppets. When not actively craving human flesh their minds kind of go into autopilot, going through familiar motions that have been hardwired throughout their previous lives.

- Wild risen, clams/chickens/grubs and the like, which are essentially machines and perform the same repetitive tasks until they wear out.

I kind of disagree with this explanation. In a general sense, I’d say there’s 3 forms of corruption – the lowest being your run of the mill mindless zerging dragon minion (your third and fourth) and are simply the corrupted bodies; the middle where the souls are entrapped but they’re not a very powerful or important minion (like the various princes and other named figures with personalities fought in the personal story); and the most advanced being dragon champions – Eyes/Mouths of Zhaitan, Tequatl and Blightghast etc. which lead the armies.

The second tier are often called lieutenants, and the highest are called champions.

Danikat.8537:

Basically killing Zhaitan means there will be no new Risen and the ones left lose their focus but they’re still around and need to be wiped out gradually.

Personally I think it’s more realistic that way than if they all suddenly fell-down. It also fits with the GW lore about necromancy – in the first game if you killed a Necro their minions stayed but they went ‘wild’ and would attack anyone instead of just their masters enemies.

Not just about necromancy, but this is how all dragon minions fought – when you kill a dragon champion, the nearby minions lose their mind and become a mindless zerg.

Of course, there is still a chance at new risen being made via the champions, and they themselves still have their own sapience, but with the origin (Zhaitan) being gone, its just waiting for entropy to kick in.

Entropy? If the Risen have been waiting in Orr all a long (which is why they are made out of coral and stuff because Orr was under water for a loooong time) we might have to wait forever for them to fall apart.

I think the ‘Entropy’ he’s talking about is the eventual cleansing of the area by the pact war machine turning the undead to pulp.

So will orr always stay infested with risen? How will they come up with a explanation that say, in a years time when players have been killing risen in orr, there are still as many risen in there that they started with?

Indeed – ‘attrition’ might have been a better term.

Personally, I’d also regard there as being four tiers, although I’d put the tiers as being slightly different:

Tier 1: Champions – dragons, Eyes, Mouths, and the like.

Tier 2: Lieutenants – the various princes, high priests, and other named Risen. These also seem to be capable of leading other Risen, but are lower in rank than the first tier.

Tier 3: Intelligent minions. These are minions that are are granted enough power to be sapient, but not enough to be one of the overall leaders. These can act as units of elite troops or as sergeants for the lower tier (the odd example seen in Claw Island, for instance), and are what we start seeing at about the same point the Pact starts saying “Zhaitan is giving them tactics!” Continuing with using Zhaitan’s army as examples, this tier likely includes the Risen corsairs and the non-unique spellcasters normally found in Orr but seen on occasion elsewhere – risen krait hypnoss, preservers, putrifiers, and the like.

Tier 4: Automatons. These are the Risen that mindlessly do whatever they did in life unless they see a non-minion or are given an order. This category includes thralls, brutes, abominations, “civilian” Orrian undead like farmers and villagers, and animals.

So the short answer is that Zhaitan’s death doesn’t mean that the higher tier minions lose their autonomy, however it likely does mean that higher tier minions can no longer be created. This means that sooner or later the remaining leaders of the Risen will be finished off, and then the remaining automatons can be mopped up at the Pact’s leisure

Oglaf.1074:

Entropy? If the Risen have been waiting in Orr all a long (which is why they are made out of coral and stuff because Orr was under water for a loooong time) we might have to wait forever for them to fall apart.

Narcemus.1348:

I think the ‘Entropy’ he’s talking about is the eventual cleansing of the area by the pact war machine turning the undead to pulp.

Indeed. By entropy I mean the eventual death and lack of creation of new risen. They might be able to make more of themselves, but with their source (Zhaitan) gone, they have a limited supply of corrupted magic – with Trahearne actively reducing said corrupted magic, and the Pact slowly killing off risen, its only a matter of time before the risen are gone for good.

But they won’t just up and disappear themselves, nor can – I presume – they spread anymore, at least at a threatening rate, seeing how champions can only make undead by drawing from their dragons’ power (which, again, is no longer being made thus a finite supply).

Sithaco.4673:

So will orr always stay infested with risen? How will they come up with a explanation that say, in a years time when players have been killing risen in orr, there are still as many risen in there that they started with?

Why do Flame Legion in Plains of Ashford praise Baelfire despite his death? Or in GW1, why were there still mursaat in the Shiverpeak Mountains after they were wiped out?

When you go to lower level areas (or in this case, longer lasting level 80 areas), you’re effectively going back in time – the events of lvl 1-15 areas take place before those of lvl 15-25 areas, which in turn take place before higher level areas and so on and so forth.

Given that there will always be new players, they can’t just up and remove all risen from Orr.

Simple and honest answer is: it doesn’t make sense, and this is the main reason epic personal storylines will never work in an MMO… you just have to keep on making stuff up to cover all the inconsistencies that keep cropping up.

Gaudrath.6725:

Simple and honest answer is: it doesn’t make sense, and this is the main reason epic personal storylines will never work in an MMO… you just have to keep on making stuff up to cover all the inconsistencies that keep cropping up.

I don’t see any inconsistency, I really don’t. I never expected all the Risen to just fall down like the aliens at the end of The Avengers.

They have lost their commander, their creator, and their only source of initiative. They’ll be cleared out by Pact forces, or even just fall apart by rotting. But there was never any reason to think they’d immediately all fall down.

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?
And how come risen still attack full force, their fury still completely unabated by Zhaitan’s defeat?

I could go on like that for quite some time. Developers should just drop the “heroic personal story” in the context of an MMO… didn’t work in SWTOR, doesn’t work here. To be clear, I am all for personal story, just make it more of a character development thing than some “you are the guy who made it all happen” epic.

Gaudrath.6725:

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?

Oh, come on, now. This isn’t a contradiction or a problem with the format of storytelling— it’s just refusing to overlook something that’s no real issue. I don’t think the MMO genre should forsake grand plotlines because some people can’t disassociate reality from fiction.

Gaudrath.6725:

And how come risen still attack full force, their fury still completely unabated by Zhaitan’s defeat?

Quite simply, they don’t.

This is one of those “suspend disbelief” situations.

my personal story runs paralel to the open world and only counts as lore when i’m in a personal instance.

It doesn’t bother me. I dont think that the first person to kill zaitan should be the only person who gets too. This is the compromise we make.

Gaudrath.6725:

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?

Simple. You, if you play it, me, if I play it. In lore there is just some nameless hero. It only gets tricky, if the events are mentioned later. Some games counter this by giving the hero a gender-unspecific title like the Elder Scrolls series often does. Through this the PC can be addressed without ever mentioning the name. Other games like GW1 make up NPCs who could have done the PC’s deeds instead (Devona and the gang). GW2 mixes those 2 things up, giving us a title like commander, while making us an anonymus part of the Pact, with several NPC groups who could have done the individual tasks.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Gaudrath.6725:

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?

Oh, come on, now. This isn’t a contradiction or a problem with the format of storytelling— it’s just refusing to overlook something that’s no real issue. I don’t think the MMO genre should forsake grand plotlines because some people can’t disassociate reality from fiction.

So you are saying that glaring contradictions arising from having a storyline where a major world nemesis is killed and yet also requiring that same nemesis to be there for a multitude of players is no real issue?

I call it bad storytelling. There is a number of ways to reconcile such issues. For example, make it so that players do not actually kill Zhaitan, only beat him back and prevent his forces from overrunning the bulwarks set up against the risen advance. This is heroic enough and more importantly, repeatable.

But if you require so much suspension of disbelief from the player that they have to just selectively ignore parts of the world, then your storytelling just isn’t very good.

Or your imagination is terrible, lol.

Sure, we can imagine whatever we want, so I’ll imagine the story isn’t so bad and that Zhaitan was just a bit bruised, but not killed and Trahearne got high on them undead fumes. Carry on, loot awaits!

Hey you know, there is nothing that is making you play this. You can take your terrible attitude and point it at WoW or some other game that would be great. The rest of us here have played MMO’s for a while and we find the story great, and we don’t have little temper tantrums because Gary and Bob are commanders of the Pact and/or killed Zhaitan.

But seriously dude, it’s called RPing (which are two of the words in MMO{RP}G). You take the information you need and create your own story from it. Each of my characters from GW2 exist outside of each other, so each time I play a different characters it is as if each of the previous ones didn’t exist within Tyria. This is vastly different from the way in which I RP’d my multiple characters in GW1, in which they were all members of a prominent trading family that met up on multiple levels of the campaign and lived/died together fighting evil (even though, mind you, none of these multiple characters were in the same missions together, I decided that they were in my head, and made it that way.)

Great Gaudrath, you’ve done it, you made Narcemus tell us about his invisible friends! I hope you are happy now!

Sry couldn’t resist. :P

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

Ascalonian Catacombs is a good example:

You have one main type of enemy during Story, and during Exploration you have another type of enemy moving in and taking advantage of you killing the strong guys of the first enemy type.

As does a lot of dungeons. For some reason Arah doesn’t, despite it making the most sense for Arah to be doing so!

Gaudrath.6725:

So you are saying that glaring contradictions arising from having a storyline where a major world nemesis is killed and yet also requiring that same nemesis to be there for a multitude of players is no real issue?

That’s right. It’s no real issue. It doesn’t have to be any greater issue than arises when two people read the same novel and agree, “hey, this doesn’t make sense if both of us take it completely at face value! Perhaps we should both assume we’re reading a STORY, rather than only accepting that which can be taken solely on our behalf!”

They’re NOT glaring contradictions. They’re elements unavoidable to the genre of storytelling. Moan and create problems if you want, but that doesn’t insubstantiate the genre.

Gaudrath.6725:

So you are saying that glaring contradictions arising from having a storyline where a major world nemesis is killed and yet also requiring that same nemesis to be there for a multitude of players is no real issue?

That’s not a contradiction.

A contradiction is when one thing says one thing, and a second thing says something else about the same subject.

Nothing says Zhaitan was killed by person A, and then another thing says Zhaitan was killed by person B. It’s always “Zhaitan was killed by the Pact, the attack was led by the Commander.” Who is the commander? Its never said. Because there’s one commander, but thousands of players. We’re all the commander, and we’re all not. You’ll never see a name spoken in any western RPG (single player or multiplayer) because we name our own characters, you’ll only see text. Thing is, it’ll always be the same for you and when its spoken or brought up in a general sense, it’ll be that “nameless hero” or just the title of said hero who did things.

This isn’t a contradiction, since its not contradicting anything previously stated. Its just its keeping things generic.

Similarly, in the story, Zhaitan isn’t killed a million times by a million players, he’s killed once and only once.

So stop saying its a contradiction when its not. And this aspect of the story is no different than any other RPG where you name your own character.

Oglaf.1074:

Ascalonian Catacombs is a good example:

You have one main type of enemy during Story, and during Exploration you have another type of enemy moving in and taking advantage of you killing the strong guys of the first enemy type.

As does a lot of dungeons. For some reason Arah doesn’t, despite it making the most sense for Arah to be doing so!

Actually, no Arah doesn’t make the most sense. Why? Because the Risen don’t just drop dead. So there are still hundreds if not thousands of Risen in Arah – and there is an enemy that comes in taking advantage of the old enemies’ death – the Inquest, during mursaat storyline.

interesting discussion so far… nobody asked, but here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. Regarding the Risen: it would make no sense for them to just drop (really) dead the second Zhaitan was killed. their continued existence after (whatever “after” means for you) he is gone, is perfectly acceptable lore-wise.

2. Regarding the identity of the Commander: yes, it IS in fact a contradiction if one takes things at face value, one that could actually be avoided. when I play the personal quests (either as protagonist or as guest) and major events, I look at it this way:

there is only one timeline. things start when you are born (for sylvari) or “gratuate” (for the rest), you run around helping folk, uncovering secrets, exploring, while also tagging along the kids from Destiny’s Edge. finally, your merry band of do-gooders goes to smack Zhaitan to oblivion… and you go back to the world to clean up the remaining mess (unless you head for some WvW fun in the Mists).

so, who is the Commander? well, everyone and nobody. all PCs are of equal rank within the Pact, with whoever is better suited taking point (being protagonist) at each moment. Personal Storylines run parallel and there is nothing to say that the PCs didn’t bring some friends along for them.

Gaudrath.6725:

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

So then, you believe that for MMORPG’s to ever make any sense, your character is a worthless unknown that can never make any title or rank, because if he did that would be contradicting any other person gaining the same title. The world will never, ever change and your actions are pointless, because things have to repeat. And finally the big bad guys never die, or if they do it’s one final event like Lost Shores, and players later on in the game never get to relive this beauty because that would be lore breaking. There could also never be any named epic or legendary weapons either, because then who would really own The Bifrost if 400 players really did. So in other words nothing truly epic can ever, ever happen in an MMORPG, and you can never be important, so why don’t you just go out there and continue being the worthless slug you’ve always been! I’m sorry but your statements just say to me that you just hate MMORPG’s in general.

Hey, let’s just then set aside the problems with personal storyline (and yes, it could be said that players are ALL commanders in the Pact), but there are problems in the open world too.

Namely, the Zhaitan’s Champion, Tequatl the Sunless. Like the Claw and the Shatterer, the story revolving around them is cleverly designed to hint that there is more than one, and as long as the Elder Dragon behind them is alive, we may kill a few but more will always come.
It is pretty firmly established that the Elder Dragons are the primary and only source of these beasts. Kill Jormag and it makes no sense to see any more Claws coming about. So how come you can kill Zhaitan and still regularly face off against his liutenants?

Killing an Elder Dragon was a mistake. Not only because of the continuity problems it creates in the world, but also because it shatters the ominous dread, the often hinted at apocalyptic feel you can witness throughout the world. The hopeless but valiant struggle. It actually creates a nice buildup.

But when you kill an enemy like that, you effectively remove all sense of impending doom from other enemies of that type. You achieve the climax of the story, the glorious final battle, and yet you are left with FIVE other enemies of the same type to defeat!

Only now you know that they can be defeated (rather easily in fact) and the valiant struggle becomes a mopping-up action. The story deflates from now on, in a too-long, overstretched wind-down.

I sincerely hope they have a real Elder Dragon still tucked in somewhere beneath Orr.

Narcemus.1348:

Gaudrath.6725:

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

So then, you believe that for MMORPG’s to ever make any sense, your character is a worthless unknown that can never make any title or rank, because if he did that would be contradicting any other person gaining the same title. The world will never, ever change and your actions are pointless, because things have to repeat. And finally the big bad guys never die, or if they do it’s one final event like Lost Shores, and players later on in the game never get to relive this beauty because that would be lore breaking. There could also never be any named epic or legendary weapons either, because then who would really own The Bifrost if 400 players really did. So in other words nothing truly epic can ever, ever happen in an MMORPG, and you can never be important, so why don’t you just go out there and continue being the worthless slug you’ve always been! I’m sorry but your statements just say to me that you just hate MMORPG’s in general.

Not at all. I have no problem with a little suspension of disbelief, after all, I am playing a game.

But there is a big difference between cleverly constructed lore that allows for players to feel unique and special and a poorly constructed one which requires players to ignore parts of their own experience.

To feel heroic, a player needs to achieve. These achievements can be of a single-player type, where the player if often the main protagonist of the story and is pivotal to the developments of the same.

But in a MMO, the player cannot and should not be the main character of the story. The player is, instead, at first relegated to the position of a faceless grunt, for a very simple reason – because at first they’re just that, another face in the crowd.

Then you allow the player to slowly rise in stature and power as their character progresses, but you never quite make them pivotal to the story structure. You do not try to force or fake their character’s importance, instead leaving them to gain that in a purely social environment.
In a single player game, where there are no other players to contradict that, you can crown the player king. In an MMO, if you do that, there can be only one (something the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online proposes to do).

In short, little things can and should be left to be handled by suspension of disbelief. Big things, like the ending of a major world threat, shouldn’t. There is no ifs or buts there, it is just not done. You don’t tell your audience the butler did it in the first paragraph when making a crime novel, you don’t kill off a major world threat in the first 60 hours of an MMO.

See I have to absolutely disagree with you. I mean I cannot tell you all that my characters have done for Tyria in the past and present, and it kills me every time that Devona, Mhenlo and the likes get all the credit for what I did. I knwo it’s a necessary because of the millions of millions of people who have killed liches, envoys, gods, and dragons champions in Tyria, but it breaks my heart every time that my character gets no credit for all that he has done, and now you expect me to play a game where my character is just a grunt in the pact forces fighting a dragon that will never die in a world that is never changing. I say why don’t I just stop playing MMORPG’s and go to work, to my job where I’m just a grunt doing pointless work day in and day out. I honestly don’t see the difference between what you are saying MMORPG’s should be and boring regular everyday life.

Narcemus.1348:

See I have to absolutely disagree with you. I mean I cannot tell you all that my characters have done for Tyria in the past and present, and it kills me every time that Devona, Mhenlo and the likes get all the credit for what I did. I knwo it’s a necessary because of the millions of millions of people who have killed liches, envoys, gods, and dragons champions in Tyria, but it breaks my heart every time that my character gets no credit for all that he has done, and now you expect me to play a game where my character is just a grunt in the pact forces fighting a dragon that will never die in a world that is never changing. I say why don’t I just stop playing MMORPG’s and go to work, to my job where I’m just a grunt doing pointless work day in and day out. I honestly don’t see the difference between what you are saying MMORPG’s should be and boring regular everyday life.

Sounds to me like you could do with a single player RPG. After all, it’s not like you can actually share what your characters did IC because other people did the same thing and the way the story is constructed, you would be contradicting each other. So we end up with everyone just keeping their “achievements” to themselves.

This more than anything illustrates why personal storyline shouldn’t be exclusive, because you end up with this disjointed, awkward situation where each and every character has achieved incredible deeds, but they can’t talk about it to others because contradictory shenanigans would occur immediately.

There are plenty of ways to make the player feel heroic without going overboard with it. The lure of multiplayer games is other players. After all, that’s what cool gear and titles are all about – so that you can show to others what you have achieved. But the important thing is that these achievement shouldn’t be guaranteed for every player, or they lose their charm.

To name just one example of how a player can be made to feel heroic and important:

-make ingame factions have ranks, with rank exclusive gear, weapons and titles, NPC reactions (they salute the highest ranking players, for example) and so on. All players start as mere unimportant grunts, and slowly rise through ranks, through gameplay. Make special quests available only to players which have achieved a certain rank, which they have to earn through gameplay instead of being awarded titles just because story demands it.

I guarantee you that heroics which the player has actually done through effort and gameplay feel way more heroic than NPCs setting things up for you through a linear storyline.

No, you see I like both RPG’s and MMORPG’s and I have absolutely no problem with the game as it is. So I don’t need to change the style of game that I’m playing. What I do not agree with is what you seem to believe the game would have to be. In the end the only real way in which the game you are describing would feel heroic is if you were a full time gamer. No one who played 1-2 hours a day would get any important titles, any salutes, they would be grunts forever, because of the players out there who would spend whole weeks fighting other players for titles of worth. Your style of MMO just took 90% of the population of a MMO and placed it in the worthless grunt pile so 10% can feel heroic and elite. I mean we have a world with thousands of players per server. Now if you took your idea and players had to try and work their way into titles of importance I could only see a few instances, either you could look for titles of importance within the Pact, Vigil, Order of Whispers, or the Durmand Priory. Now in a game like this where the players can’t be the big decision makers (because of storyline) the leader of each one is delegated to a NPC (Trahearn, Almorra, etc…) so you have the second in command slot for each one being the highest player attainable goal. Well I can’t honestly see there being more than (we’re going max here) 50 ranks per group. This is talking ranks from Second-In-Command to a Sergeant of sorts (barely above a plain soldier). So, if you look overall there’s a possibility of maybe 200 titles…….. Well there are how many people per server? And I am counting per server, because obviously people on different servers could hold the same title as someone on another server, since they aren’t interacting at all. So per server, well I’m going to just go off of the release day notes saying that there were 2 million people playing the game, and… 51 servers, leaving 39,215 people per server (assuming equal distribution and no increased sales since the release, which we know is not true). So 200 people out of 39,215 get to be high ranking elitist pricks while the other 39,000 people run around killing small things and getting nothing for it because we couldn’t even think about killing anything big because it would break the lore…

Gaudrath.6725:

So how come you can kill Zhaitan and still regularly face off against his liutenants?

Because the events of lower level areas happen before the events of higher level areas.

That’s why there’s no Pact fighting Tequatl or The Shatterer – because it didn’t exist yet in those levels, even if you did the storyline for them. Though they’re told through different means, the open world’s story and the personal storyline go hand-in-hand. They occur simultaneously based on the level of the content. When you go to lower level content, you are effectively traveling back in time, though this is purely mechanical and thus not a contradiction in story – just like how Prophecies takes place 3 years before Nightfall, and 6 before Eye of the North, but you can go to and fro with no issue, even play the content that happens later on in the timeline before the earlier timeline-wise content.

Gaudrath.6725:

Not only because of the continuity problems it creates in the world, but also because it shatters the ominous dread, the often hinted at apocalyptic feel you can witness throughout the world. The hopeless but valiant struggle. It actually creates a nice buildup.

There’s no continuity problems in the world – why? Because content in the open world based after Zhaitan’s death, of which there’s only three at the moment, does not include things that would require Zhaitan living – e.g., Southsun Cove, Halloween stuff, and Wintersday stuff. These things take place after Zhaitan’s death just as Arah explorable does, and there’s no risen to be found or heard of.

As to the “impending doom” – you kind of have to get rid of it eventually otherwise it just gets boring or moral breaking. Plus there’s a very important line from a tengu: that the Elder Dragons have not yet begun to make their move. In other words, “worse is yet to come” – though this is before Claw Island, it’s pretty easy to imagine that wasn’t yet the worse to come concept.

Besides, Zhaitan was easy to starve – nothing says that Jormag and the others will be so easy to starve out and wade into their territory. After all, Zhaitan could only corrupt the dead – Jormag and Kralkatorrik can easily corrupt the living. So they pose a different kind of threat altogether.

Gaudrath, you’ve said you have no problem with suspending your disbelief, and yet when you bring up these ‘issues’, they only become problems if you take everything purely at face value.

Would you prefer that characters who had defeated Zhaitan couldn’t go back to fight his Lieutenant? This is something inherent to the multiplayer game, dude. More than one person can play, and yet they have access to the same content. For it to work, yes, you have to suspend your disbelief slightly, which is exactly what you’re refusing to do. It’s not a contradiction, it’s a mechanic, and it works fine and allowed ANet to do a lot of stuff they couldn’t otherwise.

Say, for example, that I read a book. Then, when I’m finished, I go back and re-read my favourite chapter. Gasp! Does this mean that these events happened twice?! I read them twice, and mechanics have to be taken at face value! The events must have happened twice! No. It doesn’t work like that.

So wait… you guys seriously are ok with “time travelling” theory as an explanation? I mean… I’m sorry but that is so ridiculous I can’t even respond to it with anything that makes sense.

I’ll just say, Neilos, MMO story is not a book. Mixing apples and nuclear rockets here.

Personally, I would have preferred if the war against Elder Dragons, at least the Zhaitan part/personal storyline, was better crafted. However, I won’t lose any sleep over it – I enjoy the game, and I think overall it is very well made, world, backstory and all.

I entered this topic to throw in my opinion about why killing Zhaitan doesn’t make sense, but when people are willing to totally rip apart the continuity of the game world by offering time travel as an explanation, there is little point in continuing this discussion.

I don’t think you’re getting what I meant. I was just using that as a metaphore.

It’s literally 100% mechanics and not actual lore than dragon champions are still attacking Sparkfly Fen after Zhaitan’s death. Like Neilos said, its like going back to a previous chapter in a book – the difference is that you’re not going back with pages, but in areas and plot placement.

What I meant by the notion of “time travel” was that killing Zhaitan takes place after the Tequatl fight – always. No matter what. Even if you your own character kills Zhaitan first, or you kill Tequatl and then Zhaitan and then 5 more Tequatls. The Tequatl fight(s) happened first.

Same thing with going to Prophecies from Nightfall in GW1 – all things you do in Prophecies content happened 3 years before the events of Nightfall, even if you go through Nightfall first. No matter what. Or to give an example within a single GW1 campaign – Rurik’s death in the Shiverpeaks happened before his reanimation, no matter what, even if you do Hell’s Precipice before doing The Frost Gate.

It’s going back a chapter in a book or rewinding a video tape (ugh, am I old to use that as a reference?) And you know what, that isn’t a lore breaking thing. I honestly do not understand why you see it that way. If I watch a move and rewind to a favorite scene, or skip ahead it doesn’t change the overall story, just the way that I perceive it. GW2 is the exact same way.

The big difference guys, is that a book is a static narrative. It has a clearly defined plot development and of course that means there is no inconsistency if you just go back and read a previous chapter again. You, as the reader, are not participating or influencing the plot of a book or a movie in any shape or form by watching it.

But games are a completely different storytelling medium. The player has a direct say in how the story goes (unless we’re talking about those old-school movie/game hybrids which were extremely linear and rigid). The less linear the game, more influence the player has.

So if you have a very linear, single-player game, reloading an older save doesn’t influence the consistency of the player’s experience. That is literally “going back in time”.

But say you have an MMO, and even the most “linear” MMO is much more open and free than many single player games. You have this huge open world, where players are let loose to play the game and interact with the story. You HAVE to take that into account when creating the storyline, because the player is directly interacting with it.

This is important because player experience, unlike reader or movie watcher experience, is not passive, but active. Player actions have consequences in an interactive story. Ignoring those actions shatters the consistency of the player’s experience, something you don’t want to do (for example, what Bioware did in Mass Effect 3 ending).

MMOs add to this by their very nature of being non-linear as far as character storyline and progression in the context of gameplay are concerned. In MMOs, the narrative is always unbroken (reloading a save essentially breaks the narrative and resets it to an earlier point in a story). In an MMO, you cannot save your game. Your character cannot hop between various chapters of their experience like they can in a single player game. Your gameplay narrative remains unbroken – any gameplay mechanics that break that narrative is a sign the developer hasn’t grasped the concept of open-world MMO gameplay.

Second, continuity of the open world is paramount to maintaining this unbroken gameplay narrative, which is again very important in the social aspect of the game. In an MMO, it is not all about you, but you in a “living” world, a world which goes on even after you log off. That’s a major draw of MMOs. And that alone demands consistency of game narrative.

So no, it is not like a book or a movie. Not even close. And if you want to see what happens when someone wants to make an MMO play like a movie, take a look at SWTOR. Total flop. Would be a great single player game, but whoever made design decisions for that game completely ignored the medium they were delivering the story in.

I think the issue is that you’re starting to confuse means of story_telling_ with means of story experiencing. And you also seem to be thinking of GW2 as any other MMO. Most MMOs typically have a very sandbox layout, with only a beginning and an end – everything else is just “the middle” (and even then, sometimes they don’t have that end or a beginning) – that is to say, both the storytelling and the story experiencing is non-linear, a sandbox. GW2 is different – it’s a mix of linear storytelling and both linear and sandbox story experience.

The experience, outside the personal story, is very much sandbox in GW2 – with the personal story being linear. But the story itself – the lore itself, the order of events – is very much linear.

And in this sense, while you may experience killing Zhaitan before Tequatl, Tequatl dies before Zhaitan.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The experience, outside the personal story, is very much sandbox in GW2 – with the personal story being linear. But the story itself – the lore itself, the order of events – is very much linear.

And in this sense, while you may experience killing Zhaitan before Tequatl, Tequatl dies before Zhaitan.

^ This. Essentially, the order of major events does not change, and the storyline is linear. Experiencing the same thing twice does not mean it happens twice, as with a book or a film.

Travelling around the world, meeting minor NPCs and doing jumping puzzles— this can happen in any order you like (unless it’s a primary quest or has direct implications for the storyline).

So, no, GW2 is not entirely nonlinear. It provides you with many varied ways of experiencing its world, but still tells a major, linear story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I think the issue is that you’re starting to confuse means of story_telling_ with means of story experiencing. And you also seem to be thinking of GW2 as any other MMO. Most MMOs typically have a very sandbox layout, with only a beginning and an end – everything else is just “the middle” (and even then, sometimes they don’t have that end or a beginning) – that is to say, both the storytelling and the story experiencing is non-linear, a sandbox. GW2 is different – it’s a mix of linear storytelling and both linear and sandbox story experience.

The experience, outside the personal story, is very much sandbox in GW2 – with the personal story being linear. But the story itself – the lore itself, the order of events – is very much linear.

And in this sense, while you may experience killing Zhaitan before Tequatl, Tequatl dies before Zhaitan.

Only problem is that Tequatl isn’t part of the personal storyline. Blightghast is. That’s what I’m talking about. You fight Blightghast only once, and once he is dead, he stays dead.
Tequatl on the other hand, isn’t, you can even defeat Zhaitan without ever fighting against Tequatl. And then questions arise, the same ones that the OP is asking, and the only really viable answer is: “they messed it up.”

Or you can say that time travel is common in Tyria (no lore supports that) and that after killing Zhaitan I can travel back in time to fight his champion, only if you go down that route I can trow a whole heap of paradoxes your way and you realize that the time travel theory creates more problems than it solves.

You’re not listening.

Personal storyline and zone events happen simultaneously. Whether or not you participate in them (be it alternative storylines or missed events), they all happen at the same time based on level.

And you’re still thinking that my analogy of time travel was literal? It was a metaphor – and analogy. Tequatl’s death predates Zhaitan’s death, regardless of when you do either.

And if you want to get technical, Zhaitan’s death is part of the dungeon storyline, not personal storyline. There’s three storylines in GW1 – personal, world, and dungeon – but all three happen simultaneously.

You know what Gaudrath you are right. This game is TERRIBLE AND IT SUCKS. They told a story in a wrong way and you are a GOD of story telling. *BOWS Teach us oh WISE ONE!

[/sarcasm]

I don’t understand why you are here, honestly. Because by now I know you understand everything that we are saying, and you seem mostly to be just dragging on an argument for no good reason. And honestly this argument will continue until Konig, Neilos, and I all admit that ArenaNet are screw ups, or you just get bored and go back to playing ‘good’ MMO’s like WoW.

Konig wins this one, in my opinion.

Regardless if you kill Sunless after you kill Zhaitan; chronologically Sunless does die first as he is in a 40 or 50 area.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You’re not listening.

Personal storyline and zone events happen simultaneously. Whether or not you participate in them (be it alternative storylines or missed events), they all happen at the same time based on level.

And you’re still thinking that my analogy of time travel was literal? It was a metaphor – and analogy. Tequatl’s death predates Zhaitan’s death, regardless of when you do either.

And if you want to get technical, Zhaitan’s death is part of the dungeon storyline, not personal storyline. There’s three storylines in GW1 – personal, world, and dungeon – but all three happen simultaneously.

I am listening, but your arguments just do not make sense. Tequatl can be killed repeatedly. Ingame this is explained by the fact that he is, like the Claw of Jormag and the Shatterer, not a unique enemy, but in fact a type of enemy, a liutenant. We can kill them, but a new one will arise to take their place, as long as the Elder Dragon behind them is alive.
Now, explain to me, if I kill Tequatl, then kill Zhaitan, then keep on killing Tequatl about 20 more times, which one of those times predates and which one succeeds the death of Zhaitan? If you say that all of them predate the death of Zhaitan, then your analogy of time travel just got literal. If you say that some of them succeed the death of Zhaitan, the original question of “but we just killed the reason these things exist” pops up.

Either way, you end up with a paradox. Because you cannot mix the two types of narrative in a single game, have major overlapping elements and still expect the result to be seamless and logical. However, I have written a number of extensive posts on the subject already and am in danger of spinning in circles, so I will leave it at that.

Plus, it seems people like Narcemus are getting upset, what with being unable to grasp the concept of someone both enjoying the game and being able to be critical of certain aspects of it.

Gaudrath.6725:

Either way, you end up with a paradox. Because you cannot mix the two types of narrative in a single game, have major overlapping elements and still expect the result to be seamless and logical. However, I have written a number of extensive posts on the subject already and am in danger of spinning in circles, so I will leave it at that.

But that’s exactly what they did, like it or not. Moan about time travel if you want, but the zones do follow a chronological order. Which is why I raised the question of how Arah exploration makes any sense in the first place.