Guild Wars 2

Was having a discussion about it the other day. Some people really insisted stuff like World vs World was canon. The Mist War is something real for them, no matter it’s something that makes zero sense with the established world.

Personally, I believe the only canonical Mists are the Underworld and the other realms of the Six Gods. PvP and WvW maps aren’t canon.

Opinions?

Im my opinion, I feel like The Mists is the foundation for anything, therefore it holds the outcomes of anything, and everything, even things that never happened, past present and future.

I believe the official lore is that sPvP is the mists allowing us to see battles that have/will take place at some point. For example, Khylo was a fortress in Ascalon, when the humans still owned Ascalon, meaning the “Battle of Khylo” has already taken place, but thats the only spvp map im aware of that has any noticeable lore, besides Legacy of The Foefire, which is obviously just a small bit of the battle between the humans and charr for Ascalon.

As for WvW, I think the WvW “Mists Wars” are canon, while not canon, hence the nature of the mists, it holds the outcomes of all things, even those that will never occur, the WvW Mist Wars being one of these things. Like, in my opinion, I feel like the Mist Wars are their own isolated existence, separate from Tyria’s, hence why we never see any named NPCs in there. Like, for all we know, the NPCs inside WvW may not even be aware of their own existence, and their only purpose and desire is to battle.

FoTM is based around Dessa discovering these premonitions the mists holds/has fabricated, and is analyzing them to collect data for her research, and the player’s role in FoTM is that Dessa has requested the player to enter the “Fractals” and make them safe enough for her research team to explore. I think this has to be 100% canon.

EoTM? God knows, I guess its canon, beacuse Kiel sends us in there to go after Mai and The Aetherblades. In theory it probably has the most stable lore of any of the mist realms in GW2. But on a side note, its name contradicts its own existence, beacuse I suppose the mists has no physical limitations or dimensions, therefore how can it have an “Edge”?

I suppose the mists can be anything that anyone wants it to be, beacuse there is no concrete lore on it, or how it works, except for the fact we know its there.

Everything of the Mists is cannon.

The issue is where you split mechanics from lore. Most of WvW and sPvP are poorly explained in lore because it’s made to be a “go in and fight people.” Anet gives lore for it, but they don’t give much. And from this you have the mechanics of not-dying and how each server is basically the same.

Lore-wise, we don’t know what the enemies in World versus World are. Just that Tyrians consider them evil and ruthless. In lore, people don’t always come back from the Mist War.

The land of World Versus World is basically a huge Fractal. A Fractal by definition is a land of reality within the Mists – a “chunk of reality” to use Jeff Grubbs words on what forms in the Mists, which copies off of other things. The three borderlands are the copies of the same place(s); while Eternal Battleground and Edge of the Mists are something else. The sPvP maps (and Fractals of the Mists maps) are the same – copies of historical, present, or future locations.

Fractals are known to “reset” periodically – this is why Dessa needs the ones she studies to be restabilized; said stabilization is the act of killing hostile creatures in the fractals. One can thus explain how PvP/WvW maps reset to be the same thing.

There’s a good bit of lore behind each map, sans the original WvW maps. Though even then you can pick out some interesting aesthetics.

So yeah, Mist is cannon, it does exist, the Mist war is going on. There is some lore but ANet never really went about giving us a complex explanation of the why’s and hows. Narrative wise, it would be interesting to have a few story threads actually about the Mist wars, presently the Mist wars has little to no impact on Tyria as a whole, at least a couple of NPCs talking about the threat that the Mist wars poses, or a couple of dynamic events where Mist warriors pour out of a portal and we need to beat them back would be nice.

It’s canon, did you do this week’s living story? Pretty much confirms it without a doubt, some characters from Lion’s arch escape into the mysts through the WvW portals and you get to interact with Braham and Taimi in the new WvW map.

All of it is canon, why wouldn’t it be?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Everything of the Mists is cannon.

The issue is where you split mechanics from lore. Most of WvW and sPvP are poorly explained in lore because it’s made to be a “go in and fight people.” Anet gives lore for it, but they don’t give much. And from this you have the mechanics of not-dying and how each server is basically the same.

Lore-wise, we don’t know what the enemies in World versus World are. Just that Tyrians consider them evil and ruthless. In lore, people don’t always come back from the Mist War.

The land of World Versus World is basically a huge Fractal. A Fractal by definition is a land of reality within the Mists – a “chunk of reality” to use Jeff Grubbs words on what forms in the Mists, which copies off of other things. The three borderlands are the copies of the same place(s); while Eternal Battleground and Edge of the Mists are something else. The sPvP maps (and Fractals of the Mists maps) are the same – copies of historical, present, or future locations.

Fractals are known to “reset” periodically – this is why Dessa needs the ones she studies to be restabilized; said stabilization is the act of killing hostile creatures in the fractals. One can thus explain how PvP/WvW maps reset to be the same thing.

There’s a good bit of lore behind each map, sans the original WvW maps. Though even then you can pick out some interesting aesthetics.

Good response. So the stuff in the Mists is canon, as Mists-material, but then the way we interact with the place isn’t canon. For all we know the Mist War could be some kind of echo from an old war, repeated together with many mixed elements.

In the end it’s like a dream, it happening is canon, but it’s not “real”. I’m still confused as how to explain player interaction with the Mists, and specially lore-character interaction with the place. Is stuff from the Mists real?

But it is real.

It just isn’t in Tyria.

The Mists is a combination of many things; the building blocks of reality, the afterlives, holder of pocket dimensions, a thing that connects all times and all places together. The Mists is all of that, and it is certainly real in the GWverse. No dream or the like. What happen in the Mists, truly does happen.

The thing I was saying about “not canon” is the mechanics. ArenaNet goes out of their way to ensure mechanics and lore don’t clash, sometimes ridiculously so, but there are many times – primarily in PvP formats (including WvW) – where the mechanics and the lore don’t match up. In these cases, what’s created by these mechanics is not canon lore.

The Mist War is real, and by all indication it is NOT an “echo from an old war” but a very modern war – otherwise it wouldn’t be called the Mist War (but rather whatever war it’s duplicating), and it wouldn’t be a threat to Tyria (as duplicated pocket dimensions or whatever you wish to call them are isolated to themselves, seemingly unable to leave if you’re from there – see Dessa during Fractured!).