Guild Wars 2

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

1. It’s been how long since the defeat of Zhaitan and Risen are still everywhere? You would think the developers would have replaced ’em with other enemies by now if Zhaitan is truly no more.

You don’t honestly believe that when everything that was available from the initial release is still available, do you?

They’d have to remove or redo dozens of hearts, hundreds of events, and perhaps thousands of NPC dialogues.

That’s not going to happen. No time soon. Honestly, why they want all their initial release stuff kept but their living story only retaining a good 20% (and I dare say, that’s rather generous of a number to attribute!) of the content is beyond me.

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

2. Even though the developers stated that he is dead in terms of canon, again, the Risen are still all over the place. And the developers technically contradicted themselves when they also stated that “nothing is off the table” in terms of future content which leads to….

Technically, that’s no contradiction.

Also, it was said he was defeated, not dead. Good difference.

Also, Risen being present doesn’t mean much, given how it is explicitly stated that the Risen were still around, but would slowly be eradicated by the Pact.

We haven’t been to the entirety off Orr. So I can imagine if they ever add a new zone in south-west Orr, it might look slightly more “cleansed.”

Konig Des Todes.2086:

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

1. It’s been how long since the defeat of Zhaitan and Risen are still everywhere? You would think the developers would have replaced ’em with other enemies by now if Zhaitan is truly no more.

You don’t honestly believe that when everything that was available from the initial release is still available, do you?

They’d have to remove or redo dozens of hearts, hundreds of events, and perhaps thousands of NPC dialogues.

That’s not going to happen. No time soon. Honestly, why they want all their initial release stuff kept but their living story only retaining a good 20% (and I dare say, that’s rather generous of a number to attribute!) of the content is beyond me.

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

2. Even though the developers stated that he is dead in terms of canon, again, the Risen are still all over the place. And the developers technically contradicted themselves when they also stated that “nothing is off the table” in terms of future content which leads to….

Technically, that’s no contradiction.

Also, it was said he was defeated, not dead. Good difference.

Also, Risen being present doesn’t mean much, given how it is explicitly stated that the Risen were still around, but would slowly be eradicated by the Pact.

Weeeell, such work would be necessary to truly create a “living world,” wouldn’t it? But I like the clarification between “dead” and “defeated” for the masses to realize. However, all I can assume is that it’s still around for the glaringly-obvious reasons. ANet holds their “living world” concept on the highest pedestal and yet, they’re apparently not willing to tie up these loose ends for some odd reason. That tells me that they’re either a bunch of people who can’t back up the talk or they’re intentionally leaving the loose ends as they are for the stated reasons. Er, Zhaitan not being dead and is only recovering from its defeat for the time being.

I just want to point out it wasn’t cannons that killed him it was the fall. We shot off his wings then destroyed the mountain he was on. It is absolutely true larger they are harder they fall. More mass you have greater G force you feel at impact. The Impact probably liquefied him.

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

Weeeell, such work would be necessary to truly create a “living world,” wouldn’t it?

That’s the core of the oxymoron that is GW2, isn’t it now?

ArenaNet doesn’t have a “living story” they have a mixture of an evolving and a stasis story. The core release being the stasis, everything since being the evolving.

Sort of the same kind of issue that the personal story is – you make decisions, but those decisions don’t affect anything in the long run. Similarly, the “living world” changes, but the original story is still there. And to truly make the game a living world, they’re going to need to start removing/reducing/changing the open world’s core story.

But they’re not going to do that. Not for some time, I’m sure. Maybe in 2014. Maybe. But my hopes aren’t up.

And this is part of the main reason why I hate the temporary content. By ArenaNet’s “living story” ploy, the original content shouldn’t be available anymore. So why the hell are they limiting players of the newer content but keeping the older content unchanged (and not even improving it at that!).

Ah, but excuse my rant. That’s not lore.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

TwoWaysyaWowT.3160:

Weeeell, such work would be necessary to truly create a “living world,” wouldn’t it?

That’s the core of the oxymoron that is GW2, isn’t it now?

ArenaNet doesn’t have a “living story” they have a mixture of an evolving and a stasis story. The core release being the stasis, everything since being the evolving.

Sort of the same kind of issue that the personal story is – you make decisions, but those decisions don’t affect anything in the long run. Similarly, the “living world” changes, but the original story is still there. And to truly make the game a living world, they’re going to need to start removing/reducing/changing the open world’s core story.

But they’re not going to do that. Not for some time, I’m sure. Maybe in 2014. Maybe. But my hopes aren’t up.

And this is part of the main reason why I hate the temporary content. By ArenaNet’s “living story” ploy, the original content shouldn’t be available anymore. So why the hell are they limiting players of the newer content but keeping the older content unchanged (and not even improving it at that!).

Ah, but excuse my rant. That’s not lore.

We’ll just have to wait and see. But if you ask me, one can quickly run out of ideas for content if they keep up this two-week pace so sooner or later, revisitation is going to have to occur and I hope such revisitation turns out to be for the better with fresh ideas and not just a complete “re-run.”

I feel this is relevant:

http://www.guildmag.com/magazine/issue9/interview.htm

GuildMag (Thalador): Thank you. It concerns a lot of people that we never see Zhaitan’s corpse crushed under the debris of his last stand – that gigantic tower – and there’s also the incredible benefits that the studying of an Elder Dragon’s carcass could yield. And yet the Pact made no such expeditions yet. What might be the reasons behind that?

ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : The idea is that we have many stories that we can tell, that we are going forward with, and while I don’t know if we’ve got anything in the docket right now – I’m not going to speak for anybody as far as process – the idea is that we do have a big dragon carcass somewhere out there.

ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : Or potentially – when you go out there into the repeatable of Arah, when you go into that after thing where you’re… you’re dealing with his spirit.

ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : You’re dealing with the… well, no, you’re dealing with the fragments of the past as well. Basically that story of the elder races – I think that has a more prominent feel than the immediate “quick, let’s go loot the body”.

ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : Yeah, it’s not a quick let’s go loot the body but while you’re in there, some of the justification is that while you’re in there you’re doing research, you’re looking into that, you’re dealing with some of the after effects of his spirit.

It seems heavily implied that they intend to let us see Zhaitan’s corpse in some future content.

Well, that would seem to be the case but until such is actually implemented, things can always change. Especially since Grubb and Soesbee don’t seem to be so sure of anything about the subject in my opinion. “The idea is…” “Or potentially…” Yep, I’ll just stick with the good ol’ “seeing is believing.”

How I interpret their words:

Zhaitan is dead. For certain. The constant mention of “his spirit” kind of shows this. But what they’re not certain of is whether or not we’ll get to see his corpse.

However, I wouldn’t use their lack of definitive to really be held to merit. They always talk like that.

Let’s also not forget that spirits can return to their bodies, as per a certain Charr quest if I recall…

In that case, they weren’t dead however. Merely misplaced. Their bodies were simply unconscious.

Or it may be what the situation behind resurrection in GW1 was. Though resurrection magic seems to have gone caput in the past 250 years. And in either case, you’re needing someone to resurrect/revive the “dead” person.

Considering how many people run Arah, maybe we don’t see a corpse because you people keep taking small chunks of it to go buy weapons and armour.

Kidding aside, I’m constantly seeing people forget that we shot down a severely hungry and weak Elder Dragon. Whatever Eyes of Zhaitan he had left were not able to move around sufficiently to see what the Pact was trying to do. We destroyed the Mouth of Zhaitan, effectively starving him by making sure he would never ever eat magical artifacts ever again.

Though… much as I want to defend the personal story, Anet likes to leave out juicy details in a lot of things I take interest in, or make us have to dig for it. While it’s not bad to scrounge for lore, leaving out important details like “Zhaitan is hungry and blind and weak and this is the best chance we have to shoot him out of the sky with a BIG SCARY LASER” was a big mistake. And that (I would believe) is why people are so disappointed by his defeat.

Well… that, and I felt like he never really was the threat Anet wanted him to be. Everyone shooting him down with flak just didn’t seem as cool as it should have been. It needed more unending tide of Risen on the deck, while firing the cannons.

Keyce.8137:

Considering how many people run Arah, maybe we don’t see a corpse because you people keep taking small chunks of it to go buy weapons and armour.

Kidding aside, I’m constantly seeing people forget that we shot down a severely hungry and weak Elder Dragon. Whatever Eyes of Zhaitan he had left were not able to move around sufficiently to see what the Pact was trying to do. We destroyed the Mouth of Zhaitan, effectively starving him by making sure he would never ever eat magical artifacts ever again.

Though… much as I want to defend the personal story, Anet likes to leave out juicy details in a lot of things I take interest in, or make us have to dig for it. While it’s not bad to scrounge for lore, leaving out important details like “Zhaitan is hungry and blind and weak and this is the best chance we have to shoot him out of the sky with a BIG SCARY LASER” was a big mistake. And that (I would believe) is why people are so disappointed by his defeat.

Well… that, and I felt like he never really was the threat Anet wanted him to be. Everyone shooting him down with flak just didn’t seem as cool as it should have been. It needed more unending tide of Risen on the deck, while firing the cannons.

But that’s exactly what I’ve been getting at: When you have a team of developers at the helm of a game and they’ve already stated “nothing is off the table” in terms of what could happen in the future, it’s practically a given that we’ll see Zhaitan return in some way or another. That’s the beauty of keeping the cash cow going, you know. Heck, let’s say that they do finally get around to giving us the body that we’re looking for. And? All they have to do is wave the magic wand that is their own game design and if they so choose, we’ll be going another round with it.

It’s just a matter of if they want to go ahead and give some real conclusion to that event by bringing him back and giving us the finale that we really want or if they’d rather let him take a back seat for a bit while maybe another dragon gets its time in the spotlight. All I do know is that it’s about time for some “major” content instead of another round of Dragon Bash or some seasonal gimmick.

I used to just assume that Zhaitan was dead after Arah story – fully and completely dead.

Yet, for some reason, TwowaysyaWowT, I now feel compelled to believe that he’s just defeated.

Assuming his body is still in Arah somewhere, Elder Dragons still feed off of magic, and the fact we never spread its atoms throughout the stars, I think it could return. Though it cannot ingest artifacts as it once could (thanks to us killing its Mouth), I suspect that, given time and perhaps a lot of injections of pure magic, Zhaitan could possibly recover and terrorize the world anew.

But it’s just a thought. One with potential to be awesome, but a thought nonetheless.

For now, I’ll just think over how I feel about the Personal Story from the formation of the Pact onwards, and how it could be improved upon, now or later. And… figure out where to put those thoughts. They want to be written!

I enjoyed doing story missions like in vanilla GW2 (yes I just called pre-Southsun that), even if uninteresting sidekicks were dying all over the place.

Heck, I still do my Personal Story on alts even though I’ve probably done that same story path like five times already.

Keyce.8137:

Yet, for some reason, TwowaysyaWowT, I now feel compelled to believe that he’s just defeated.

Sorry, I can’t help but have the image of Kralkatorrik or Jormag coming over and pressing F to start reviving their comrade :P I know this isn’t the case, but when you use the term defeated that’s what pops up in my mind.

Nah, it won’t be Kralky and Jorm. It’ll be some risen priestess of Dwayna using Rebirth. :P

There are several elder dragons asleep? Where do you get this information? From what we’ve seen there is only possibly 1 more elder dragon asleep that we know of. There is theory that there could be more that the elder races were unaware of, but no definite proof of this, heck there really isn’t anything even pointing to more than 6 elder dragons.

I won’t deny that we can’t be sure exactly what will come of Zhaitan and his corpse until it appears in game and we get some more definite proof of this, but thus far everything points to the fact that this is the first time that the races have been able to succeed against the elder dragons. I mean the giganticus lupicus failed (if they were even sapient enough to fight back) and so did the last group of races. I can’t deny that the last group of races may have succeeded had it not been for the betrayal of the mursaat and genocide of the seers, but still they failed. Thus no matter what, this is a turning point in the history of the Elder Dragons.

@Exoferatu: No where does it say or hint that the Elder Dragons have regenerative traits. There is no reason to believe that the death of an Elder Dragon would alter their minions in any way – certainly no more than a champion’s death (all that does is disorganize the minions – which is what is said to have happened to the Risen).

Furthermore, no where does it say that there are several Elder Dragons sleeping still – at most, there is one that we know of. But nothing says the jungle dragon is hibernating and not simply just unknown. Similarly, there is no evidence to imply that an Elder Dragon was defeated into slumber in the past.

And Primordus hasn’t reached the surface due to the stone dwarves fighting his forces. The Great Destroyer’s purpose, by the way, was to eliminate all life on the surface. The Elder Dragons are indeed territorial, but they’re also constantly expanding their territory.

To our knowledge, continental Tyria had the sole source of magic on the planet during the later parts of the last Elder Dragon rise. The Elder Dragons would naturally be drawn to that location, which would explain why so many are centralized here.

And Primordus isn’t so much as “preoccupied annihilating the dwarves” so much as they’re preventing him from breaching the surface which is something he does want to do, given how the destroyers are breaching the surface in pocketed areas.