Guild Wars 2

We all saw the Mursaat in the HoT trailer, so the obvious question for those of us lucky enough to have killed them in the first GW. Well, we all know we could not have done that if not for armor infusion. And since GW2 has infusions for Fractals, will we even see that dynamic, or will it be scrapped?

What say you?

the thing about Mursaat is that they weren’t visible through armor infusion – they were visible through ascendancy giving us the gift of true sight, so no there won’t be that dynamic.

On top of that, Mursaat can choose to be visible or invisible at their whim. We’re seeing them because they want to be seen.

Ahhh, the Unseen Ones. I get it. Thanks for the info

I didn’t see any mursaat in the trailer. I saw some unknown beings.

I’m with narwhal, in that I’m really not sold that these ‘Exalted’ are mursaat, but for argument’s sake… there were two parts to being able to kill mursaat. Yeah, Harnel’s right in that it required Ascension to see them when they didn’t want to be, but at that point they were still essentially knocking us out in one or two hits. Armor infusion was just as necessary to beating them, and if mursaat do come back I’d need to see both advantages accounted for before I would buy that we could kill them. The infusion we have could be a sufficient (if unexciting) way of filling that role, but I’d stress that we’d need to have it available from other game types first. Making someone run through Fractals several times before being able to participate in some HoT content would be… rightfully controversial.

It’s 250 years in the future.

You don’t need an ancient Seer to infuse your armor with the spectral essence of an Eidolon, nor an ancient ritual of Ascension to inherit the gift of truesight as per the even more ancient prophecy.

All you need is cash dude! There are merchants around who you purchase that stuff from now! Get out of the past yo!

I’m just waiting on the Ascended/Infusion ATM machines to appear, there’s got to be an Asuran working on that somewhere…

Obsidian.1328:

It’s 250 years in the future.

You don’t need an ancient Seer to infuse your armor with the spectral essence of an Eidolon, nor an ancient ritual of Ascension to inherit the gift of truesight as per the even more ancient prophecy.

All you need is cash dude! There are merchants around who you purchase that stuff from now! Get out of the past yo!

I’m just waiting on the Ascended/Infusion ATM machines to appear, there’s got to be an Asuran working on that somewhere…

Deus ex asura.

Obsidian.1328:

It’s 250 years in the future.

You don’t need an ancient Seer to infuse your armor with the spectral essence of an Eidolon, nor an ancient ritual of Ascension to inherit the gift of truesight as per the even more ancient prophecy.

All you need is cash dude! There are merchants around who you purchase that stuff from now! Get out of the past yo!

I’m just waiting on the Ascended/Infusion ATM machines to appear, there’s got to be an Asuran working on that somewhere…

Are we still on this rant where something isn’t lore if it doesn’t fit the mood? Move on.

If these were Mursaat. Not saying they were. Then they were making themselves visible for some reason.

I am still doubtful they’re mursaat.

They live in a place called “the Forgotten City”. Since it’s inhabited, it isn’t forgotten in the sense of no one knows about it. So it’s likely a forgotten city in the sense that it’s a city once owned/inhabited by Forgotten.

These ‘Exalted Ones’ are just GW2’s version of Enchanted armor that never got a proper name. That’s my theory, at least.

Wouldn’t the dragons be a large enough threat for them to reconsider their hidden ways?
Self-preservation is powerful motivator.

Plus the symbol on the door that Rytlock pushes open IS Mursaat.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Wouldn’t the dragons be a large enough threat for them to reconsider their hidden ways?
Self-preservation is powerful motivator.

I’m… skeptical, since the dragon threat is what caused their hidden ways. During the last dragonrise they bailed on the world and they’ve essentially been in hiding ever since.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Wouldn’t the dragons be a large enough threat for them to reconsider their hidden ways?
Self-preservation is powerful motivator.

Last time the dragons woke up, the mursaat betrayed the other races, nearly wiped out the Seers, and then fled the world thus creating the beginning of their hidden ways.

Their “hidden ways” kept them alive. If anything, self-preservation would dictate they repeat history.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Plus the symbol on the door that Rytlock pushes open IS Mursaat.

Technically, the emblem people are thinking it is (we don’t get an exactly great view iirc), is of White Mantle origin as far as we players know.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

These ‘Exalted Ones’ are just GW2’s version of Enchanted armor that never got a proper name. That’s my theory, at least.

What on earth makes you think that they are Enchanted? O.o

Quite a few things. I brought it up once before but with the Masteries description I have an additional piece of support. And with yesterday’s Guild Hall stream, I feel I have yet another piece of support. Take it for what you will.

• As mentioned above, they live in the Forgotten City; but such a name is only such when it is abandoned, as otherwise it isn’t Forgotten. Given that it isn’t abandoned, then it’s a descriptor name – in this case, likely being a city of the Forgotten.
• The Gilded Hollow guild hall has, to me at least, a very Hall of Heroes/Hall of Ascension appearance – it might just be the whole gold structures thing, but the floor tile designs and the gilded walls and pillars seem like a GW2 take on those GW1 structures to me. GW1 vets will know that the Hall of Ascension was heavily tied to the Forgotten, as was the cave in which other golden structures were found in Season 2, which seems to share the appearance of the Gilded Hollow and Forgotten City.
• People relate these to the mursaat foremost for their armor’s appearance – the Enchanted armor mimicked the mursaat’s clothing a lot, especially noticeable in the mask (defining feature for the Exalted Ones->mursaat physical relation). But where mursaat were flesh and blood, both the Enchanted armor and by appearance the Exalted Ones, are not.
• The thing that sold me, personally, was the Rock Dogs – odd thing, right? Well, in GW1 we had Stonewolves who were led by Lissah the Packleader. One thing to note about their pack alpha is the appearance – it’s an Obsidian Wolf by model, which is a bunch of floating shards in a wolf shape. Fast forward to GW2: we have no stonewolf, but instead have rock dogs which like stonewolves look very fleshy. One of their pack alphas is Sourfang – which utilize the War Beast model. As one can see, War Beasts (and Sourfang) are floating shards in the shape of wolf, but with gold glow between. This gold glow is the same as what we see with the Exalted Ones between its ‘armor’.

This leads me to think that these Exalted Ones are just GW2’s re-imagination of the Enchanted Armors. Remnants of the Forgotten’s sentinels.

I’m still confused. Can you explain these:

If the Enchanted are just servants/constructs of the forgotten, how can they be exalted?

In the 1st HoT trailer we see that these ruins aren’t actually golden/gilded, the exalted thing casted some spell and turned it gold.

The Hall of Ascension/Hall of Heroes isn’t just golden/gilded. There was a lot of blue and grey as well as green.

The Enchanted don’t levitate or glow.

Enchanted weren’t spellcasters.

Tendril things coming out the back.

Is there an ingame source that says the Enchanted mimicked the mursaat? I haven’t been able to find any. All I’ve found is a wiki page that says there’s a resemblance without citing a source (other than mursaat and enchanted having no relation) so it’s just the editor’s opinion. Then there’s the note about the Tower Golem.
But other than the horn feature they share on their helms (and even those aren’t the same), all three look nothing alike.

“we have some really cool plans for the Mursaat but unfortunately I was told to tell you guys that you’ll have to wait until GW2 to find them” – Linsey Murdock, October 2007
source: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:Linsey_Murdock/Lore1#Asura_and_Mursaat

The official HoT trailer showed three Exalted Ones with obvious colour variation. So surely the gold glow of the Rock Dog should be completely unrelated? Not to mention Rock Dogs have no relation to enchanted/forgotten/mursaat/golden cities.

Mada.5319:

I’m still confused. Can you explain these:

If the Enchanted are just servants/constructs of the forgotten, how can they be exalted?

In the 1st HoT trailer we see that these ruins aren’t actually golden/gilded, the exalted thing casted some spell and turned it gold.

The Hall of Ascension/Hall of Heroes isn’t just golden/gilded. There was a lot of blue and grey as well as green.

The Enchanted don’t levitate or glow.

Enchanted weren’t spellcasters.

Tendril things coming out the back.

Is there an ingame source that says the Enchanted mimicked the mursaat? I haven’t been able to find any. All I’ve found is a wiki page that says there’s a resemblance without citing a source (other than mursaat and enchanted having no relation) so it’s just the editor’s opinion. Then there’s the note about the Tower Golem.
But other than the horn feature they share on their helms (and even those aren’t the same), all three look nothing alike.

“we have some really cool plans for the Mursaat but unfortunately I was told to tell you guys that you’ll have to wait until GW2 to find them” – Linsey Murdock, October 2007
source: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:Linsey_Murdock/Lore1#Asura_and_Mursaat

The official HoT trailer showed three Exalted Ones with obvious colour variation. So surely the gold glow of the Rock Dog should be completely unrelated? Not to mention Rock Dogs have no relation to enchanted/forgotten/mursaat/golden cities.

That quote was eight years ago.

Mada.5319:

-snip-

In order:

• That’s something we’ll have to learn in HoT. Exalted Ones may just be a placeholder name for the sake of spoilers, after all. Whatever the case, it’s likely to be related to how the Exalted Ones are now apparently independent.
• We actually don’t know that’s an Exalted One. The appearance is vastly different – it has a collar while the in-game models don’t; we saw no horns on the black figure, while we did on the Exalted Ones. That thing is more closely resembling a Seer than mursaat/enchanted/exalted. We also don’t know if it was turning it into gold, or activating it somehow to make it glow/light up – the scene is too ambiguous. Even if it were an Exalted, however, who’s to say that the Enchanted couldn’t perform such feats?
• There’s no green; you’re thinking of a more black. But the Gilded Hollows, Sealed Cave ruins, and Forgotten City are more than gold too – they had a gray/black portion, as well as a ‘darker gold’ portion as well. Furthermore, we’re seeing a transition between GW1 and GW2 – look at EVERYTHING else from both games, and they only share the base similarities.
• I explained the glow already. As for levitation: says who? We only saw those in the Crystal Desert, so who’s to say that some that were located elsewhere couldn’t levitate? Harn Coldstone for example levitated when using skills, if I recall correctly.
• See Harn Coldstone. Proof that they could be – granted, Harn isn’t outright called a Forgotten’s enchanted, but it still proves that they could be. And again, transition from GW1 to GW2 – things change. If you’re going to try to argue everything between GW1 and GW2 are the same, then you’ve clearly never played GW1.
• They had spikes coming out the back; again, this would be part of their change. These tendrils are nothing like mursaat’s either anyways. Furthermore, if we’re making what was invisible now glowing, who’s to say this wasn’t simply ‘invisible’ before?
• No. Look at the models. It’s pretty clear as day that they look the same. In lore, they hold no connection (at least they didn’t as of 2007), but their appearance was the same as mursaat’s clothing but more armor-like. Similar situation as the White Mantle and Shadow Army (to the point where the Shadow Army had the bright white White Mantle emblem on them). You seriously cannot look at both the mursaat model and the enchanted armor and not say there’s no similarity. And it wasn’t one person’s opinion – the lore forum on GWO forums (before it got wiped) were widespread with connection theories because of this similarity.
• Which was in 2007, and could have been changed, not yet coming, or referring to the War in Kryta stuff.
• The color variation was minor and only in two groups, furthermore to me it looked more like the ‘armor’ portions rather than the ‘glow’ portions. But this is a case of multiple models whereas the War Beasts all use a single model, so you cannot claim outright lack of relation there.

Is this thing fullproof? No.

But it holds as much weight as claiming the Exalted Ones are mursaat.

• Mursaat were fleshy, not ethereal/glowing/energy/whatever that is.
• Mursaat wings were black, and did not drape down.
• Mursaat structures were a dark red/purple color. Not gold.
• Mursaat didn’t shoot golden beams.
• Mursaat were mostly wiped out.
• If mursaat live in a place, they wouldn’t call it a Forgotten City, unless it didn’t belong to them.

Half of these (first, second, fourth, fifth) you can claim to be a change between aesthetics of the games, but that’s the same argument to defend the changes on my stance. So in the end, they hold the same weight. The only real similarity between the mursaat and Exalted Ones are the golden armor/clothing, floatingness, and back-tendrils (which is a general similarity), and the general shape of their clothing (which also relates to the Enchanted).

So as I see it, both are equally likely. But what pushes down the mursaat likelihood for me is the fact that the Exalted Ones are allies. So unless this is just some faction that didn’t agree with the rest of their race, or some such like that, it would make 0 sense for mursaat to be allies. Why? Mursaat are selfish kittens, all of their GW1 and especially GW2 lore points to this. They’ve caused genocide just to save their own behinds. Twice. They’ve left the world to rot at the hands of the Elder Dragons, just so that they wouldn’t have to fight for their survival (even though they had the most effective means of combating dragon minions).

So who’s to say they wouldn’t do that again? Better question is: why wouldn’t they?

Couldn’t they draw an alliance with the ‘lesser’ races to quell the threat of the dragons, then turn on us?
The enemy of enemy is my friend logic…

That rather depends entirely on why they were part of the original implied alliance, and why they betrayed the jotun, dwarves, Forgotten, and Seers.

But it’d still be hard to press a good argument for friendship now, especially given the history between mursaat and humans, and given the history of the mursaat in general, known to the Priory.