Guild Wars 2

Sytherek.7689:

Erukk.1408:

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

I think the wiki has errors and when it contradicts in-game sources, the game wins.

In theory, the wiki is fan-maintained — while I suspect that ANet employees work on the wiki, it is a side project and secondary to the actual game.

lordkrall.7241:

Erukk.1408:

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

The canon is not based on the player-generated wiki.

Geez you two, Erukk might have been referring to the discrepancy between external wiki (ours which lacked the link to the interview Ree gave as citation and which Konig provided now) and the internal story-wiki (Anet’s) Angel mentioned in her reply.

So either Ree simply forgot to document it on Anet’s internal wiki and the other devs didn’t know and decided and put a completely different date (which would be merely miscommuncation among them) or the secondborn date was changed a long time ago internally but we were never updated on it. (which is kinda miscommunication between the devs and us)
_

Anyways.
Angel, as you said some of us are very passionate about the lore.
That makes the lore-lovers both your greatest enemies and your best friends. :P

In this special case I’d say, it’d be good form to inform us at least why the age of the secondborn was changed or what the real lore is now.

Tho for general inconsistencies between our wiki and yours as lore develops with the LS, IMO the best idea to keep them from happening would be… bring back race blogs. You can easily work that into the living world, although on its own it might be a bit of work. You see from our POV, the only 100% reliable lore is ‘Word of God’ and if interviews are not the best way to inform us due to reasons like stress, etc, we need another way or else the lore gets rather foggy for players.

As mentioned before, other games have a codex of some sort when everyone ingame could be an ‘unreliable narrator’. We don’t really beside the old blog posts and interviews now.
Therefore I think it’s better to release lore in blog-posts if it doesn’t fit into the game due to technical limitations or because it’s things no character ingame would be able to know. (see: Human Gods)

As example, the new blog post about the Sylvari could be “2 years later: The Sylvari”
“-insert changes about their culture during the eventful 2 years here-
-insert changes about their interaction with other cultures and role in fight against zhaitan here-
-insert TA’s story here-
-insert toxic alliance here-
-insert scarlet here-
-blahblah misc. about them you couldn’t put last blog maybe or didn’t decide on before-
-insert trivia section here about how they’ve evolved from your perspective? well, your thoughts as devs-”

Rinse and repeat for the other races.
That’s not as stressful as interviews and therefore not as prone to errors, yet keeps us informed about things. It’s also on the GW2 site which means it’s not scattered across the internet which is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than hunting for interviews.
Of course it probably poses other challenges only the writers know, but until you have found a way to put everything that needs to be ingame, ingame, I think that could be a possible solution. (Emphasis on could be, it’s just an idea after all)

Lets just connect all the issues. The reason there was a mix-up in the recorded dates of the sylvari generations is the adapting of the calendar to the new asuran way. A mistake.
The reason there was a need for the calendar change is that the shift in magic (Bloodstones, dragon awakenings, great cataclysmic events) have somehow effected the planet’s rotation, that also effected the climates of certain areas.

Basicly it comes down to “Maaaagggiiiicc!!” with just enough sense to make it believable.

lakdav.3694:

Lets just connect all the issues. The reason there was a mix-up in the recorded dates of the sylvari generations is the adapting of the calendar to the new asuran way. A mistake.
The reason there was a need for the calendar change is that the shift in magic (Bloodstones, dragon awakenings, great cataclysmic events) have somehow effected the planet’s rotation, that also effected the climates of certain areas.

Basicly it comes down to “Maaaagggiiiicc!!” with just enough sense to make it believable.

Thing is, your explanation “because Magic” makes more sense than official “for 250+ years scholars from all civilizations didn’t caught up with error in calendar”.

Look at the planetarium above the Divinity’s Reach royal palace plaza. Its clear that they dont have an idea about correct planetary movements.

EDIT: And the point of my ‘explanation’ is that the change was gradual, and the 5 full days addition to a year was not because people were stupid for thousands of years not realizing the existence of that 5 days, but because that 5 days didnt exist before. The “MAGIC!” part only comes in to explain how the magical effects of the world possibly came to create 5 more days in a year.

StinVec.3621:

Thank you for your posts, Konig Des Todes (your two latest and all others prior)!
I tried to put my frustration and utter disgust at his response into the appropriate words, but I could not.
However, your posts managed it magnificently!
Thank you for your past dedication to the lore and your engaging and intriguing discussions. I’ve truly enjoyed reading your words and thank you for frequently giving me quite a lot to think about.

agreed.

JMadFour.9730:

RedStar.4218:

So if the game is priority, why the hell waste everyone’s time with interviews and short stories and books ?
What’s next Abaddon making a come back ?

Expanded Universe(which is short stories, books and interviews) ONLY sets lore when it does not contradict what is ingame.

It expands, adds to, what is in the game. But the Game itself is the prime source. it has to be.

Whenever the game makes a change that contradicts previous Expanded Universe content, the Game should take precedence.

GW1 is Prime Source.
GW2 is Prime Source.

everything else is EXTRA goodness.

my confusion with all the stomping and tantrum throwing, is that this is a MINOR change to be stomping and tantruming about. it is the age of a single character. changing this single character’s age does not invalidate every single piece of lore thre has ever been for Guild Wars. hell, it doesn’t really even invalidate anything at all.

yet you all are treating it as it they just said that the entirety of Guild Wars Prophecies didn’t happen.

I think you guys are making a Shiverpeak Mountain out of a Moledavia Molehill.

“WE” are acting as if prophecies never happened? Really? Boggle.

Prophecies had a ton of “in game” lore re the origins of magic, the bloodstones, the Gods.

All tossed out and the retcon spewed out on an interview on a single french fansite.
And, from my POV, retconned to shoehorn a pretty tired, off the shelf pulp staple into Tyria. Ley Lines. Really? Ley lines… you may as well state “an ancient and powerful wizard did it”.

To say that my confidence in lore continuity plummeted would be an understatement.
Moreso, after seeing trope after trope, cliche after cliche piled onto the LS, I do not think some of the writers have any confidence in doing originality, to the point of retconning original concepts and replacing them with cliche.

Wow I spent a few days off the forum and a wonderful, impassioned (sometimes logical sometimes less so) discussion breaks out about lore consistency.
Well too late to respond to individuals complaints since it’s 3 pages worth and conversation ha seemingly already practically come to some sort of an end.
Still I do think that we seem to need a better, more explicit lore capturing / cataloging system. The wiki is somewhat unreliable, being largely fan maintained and not being able to reflect internal changes made by ANet staff (I once heard you guys have a internal wiki).
I do think implementing an in-game lore mechanic (as I’ve been going on about for a while now… oh say 2 years) could be a useful. Something like the system Mass Effect has, the codex-thing. A fairly straight forward but detailed collection of lore, presented in-game that can be treated as being canon. When need be ANet can make changes, and it can act as a means of more effective lore referencing (so ANet has a reliable mechanism for knowing what has been or has not been provided to the users).

In terms of development time I’m thinking this wouldn’t be too time consuming. A simple new button to the top of the game UI, a book-like UI filled with text. Unlocking content could be based around some of the achievements, or simple be based on what you’re currently experiencing (so you go to a new map and lore is added to the book). It doesn’t have to be cut and dry lore, ANet could also add some ingame stories, mythology and legend ect.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

“WE” are acting as if prophecies never happened? Really? Boggle.

Prophecies had a ton of “in game” lore re the origins of magic, the bloodstones, the Gods.

All tossed out and the retcon spewed out on an interview on a single french fansite.
And, from my POV, retconned to shoehorn a pretty tired, off the shelf pulp staple into Tyria. Ley Lines. Really? Ley lines… you may as well state “an ancient and powerful wizard did it”.

I agree entirely. It is quite frustrating to hear that the writers carelessly discard the original GW Prophecies lore, in favor of cliches. The Gods, the Bloodstones, and the origins of magic, are part of what made GW’s lore so interesting and unique. It’s down right insulting to just retcon it blatantly, and erase it from Tyria. Lets not forget that this is the foundation of the GW1 Prophecies storyline we are talking about. It is behind the motivations of all the major factions in Prophecies, and the root cause of all the events that follow. It would be nice if the writers showed the same love for this story, as we obviously do.

I realize that GW2 is less human focused, and more “world-full-of-generic-fantasy-races” focused. That’s fine. But the Gods did make Tyria, and they did split the schools of magic. And they did bring all magic to Tyria to all the races, and then took it away again. Don’t erase what we literally played through as if it never happened.

Agreed, Malafide.

We had few opportunities in GW1 to witness other races dealing with our “human only” gods. It was a human-centric story.

That being said, the Centaur being slaughtered by Abbadons Margonites in Kourna were not given the option to “not” believe in his existence or power. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Battle_of_Turai%27s_Procession

We did not see more, simply because of the exodus, and generally not co-opting with other races. The gods in GW had to have effected all races. Being, you know, Gods.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

All tossed out and the retcon spewed out on an interview on a single french fansite.
And, from my POV, retconned to shoehorn a pretty tired, off the shelf pulp staple into Tyria. Ley Lines. Really? Ley lines… you may as well state “an ancient and powerful wizard did it”.

To say that my confidence in lore continuity plummeted would be an understatement.
Moreso, after seeing trope after trope, cliche after cliche piled onto the LS, I do not think some of the writers have any confidence in doing originality, to the point of retconning original concepts and replacing them with cliche.

People seem to be forgetting that Arah(exp) came out long before that interview, and it contained a lot more “supposed” retcons to the Gods than that interview did if I remember right.

As for seeing trope after trope, and cliché after cliché, that’s what comes from writing. There is hardly an original idea anymore, and writers can only put their own spin on common story elements. The same can be said for both gw1 and gw2. Both are filled with common tropes, which isn’t really a bad thing, and clichés, which are unavoidable at times. They are enjoyable though, and that’s all that matters in the end.

I write high fantasy. I know how difficult it is to keep an entire world straight in your head. It’s not exactly easy, especially with five different people working on it. Sometimes they miscommunicate. Sometimes they fail to tell each other minor points, and those points fall through the cracks. Sometimes they just forget about it. Kitten happens.

The Secondborn’s age wasn’t told to us in GW1. It wasn’t told to us in the novels, or the short stories. It was given to us in an interview. In interviews, it’s very easy to misspeak or run your mouth on a subject you haven’t really thought much about, creating an accidental bit of lore. That’s probably what happened here, and that’s probably why they forgot about it. It was stupid for Anet to defend it, and that defense was very poorly stated, but mistakes happen and they do their best to fix them. Hell, there’ll probably be a clarification in an upcoming patch now thanks to this thread.

Of all the potential retcons or bad storytelling decisions to lose our kitten over, this is not it. Attacking Scarlet and most of Season 1 was justified. This is just crucifying the devs for an extremely minor continuity error, and I think we all need to calm down a bit.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Agreed, Malafide.

We had few opportunities in GW1 to witness other races dealing with our “human only” gods. It was a human-centric story.

That being said, the Centaur being slaughtered by Abbadons Margonites in Kourna were not given the option to “not” believe in his existence or power. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Battle_of_Turai%27s_Procession

We did not see more, simply because of the exodus, and generally not co-opting with other races. The gods in GW had to have effected all races. Being, you know, Gods.

Also one of the things that had not been retconned, which worked with the old lore but seems a bit out of place after retcon is the whole case of Charr and the Titans. In order for Charr to gain powers that would counter god-given magic of the humans, they had to reach to the Titans – and thus, to Abaddon (so, basically to the very same source). After the retcon, they shouldn’t have needed to do so at all.

DorDor.8617:

Of all the potential retcons or bad storytelling decisions to lose our kitten over, this is not it. Attacking Scarlet and most of Season 1 was justified. This is just crucifying the devs for an extremely minor continuity error, and I think we all need to calm down a bit.

It was not about the lore conflict at all – as you said, it was rather minor compared to it. It was about the dev reaction that suggested Anet would rather invalidate a part of the lore than fix that minor error.

BobbyStein.2315:

And yeah, PR isn’t my job. We’ve got some fine folks who handle that.

Yeah, and where have those “fine folks” been in the past few months? More specifically where have they been to comment on any WvW matters; like the direction WvW is going, if we’re going to see any new WvW content in the near future, or even a simple answer to if the WvW CDI that was promised to be posted a month ago is even going to be posted at all now?

DorDor.8617:

It was stupid for Anet to defend it, and that defense was very poorly stated, but mistakes happen and they do their best to fix them. Hell, there’ll probably be a clarification in an upcoming patch now thanks to this thread.

Of all the potential retcons or bad storytelling decisions to lose our kitten over, this is not it. Attacking Scarlet and most of Season 1 was justified. This is just crucifying the devs for an extremely minor continuity error, and I think we all need to calm down a bit.

It was not stupd for Anet to defend it. They had loyal players (aka paying customers) wondering why they said and did what they did. If my company did not answer questions posed by customers (even the stupid ones) your customer base would dry up very quickly. The questions and concerns in this case were not stupid and not just based on an extremely minor continuity error. The concern stemmed from a statement claiming lore was malleable.

I appreciate Angel and Bobby for explaining what happened. And I certainly don’t think it was ‘stupid’ of them to do so. That is how they are going to get people to “calm down”.

Astralporing.1957:

Also one of the things that had not been retconned, which worked with the old lore but seems a bit out of place after retcon is the whole case of Charr and the Titans. In order for Charr to gain powers that would counter god-given magic of the humans, they had to reach to the Titans – and thus, to Abaddon (so, basically to the very same source). After the retcon, they shouldn’t have needed to do so at all.

Good point, I had not even considered that yet. But you are entirely right.

I think my opposition towards the Steam creature origin has a lot to do with the reasons that I hate how Scarlet is portrayed as a super genius mastermind behind everything and even managing to retcon Asura personal story. Sure, the explanation about possible futures leads to an endless debate, but was it really necessary to rewrite an established part of GW2 lore to add a minor detail like this?

Steam creatures weren’t a retcon though. As Angel pointed out, the steam creatures were at Lornar’s Pass, and in great numbers, since launch. That means they were there at least at the same time as the Asuran PS. It didn’t make much sense timeline wise, but we had nothing else to go on. We had to settle on chaos rifts and them replicating like rabbits to try and explain it.

Just because it was the only explanation at the time didn’t make it the correct one. The steam creatures’ origins got expanded upon, but that doesn’t make it a retcon.

Angel McCoy.1832:

ElysianEternity.6215:

In this special case I’d say, it’d be good form to inform us at least why the age of the secondborn was changed or what the real lore is now.

We did not believe we were changing canon. The official canon is that Scarlet was born in 1304 and it was around that time that the other Secondborn were also being born.

Angel,

Does this mean that the events that are described during Dream and Nightmare are all to have happened in 1304? Is there an official order of ‘birth’ for the secondborn? Previously is was believed that Caderyn was first is this still true?

How fast do sylvari learn? Just how much knowledge could the sylvari masters have consumed in 2 years to in order to teach to scarlet?

Thank you for the clarifiacations by the way.

Angel McCoy.1832:

ElysianEternity.6215:

In this special case I’d say, it’d be good form to inform us at least why the age of the secondborn was changed or what the real lore is now.

We did not believe we were changing canon. The official canon is that Scarlet was born in 1304 and it was around that time that the other Secondborn were also being born.

Nice cryptic answer! LOL. My favorite part “around that time”. Ok, now I am intrigued. That sentence can be read many different ways. Good one. +1 to you Angel.

jheryn.8390:

DorDor.8617:

It was stupid for Anet to defend it, and that defense was very poorly stated, but mistakes happen and they do their best to fix them. Hell, there’ll probably be a clarification in an upcoming patch now thanks to this thread.

Of all the potential retcons or bad storytelling decisions to lose our kitten over, this is not it. Attacking Scarlet and most of Season 1 was justified. This is just crucifying the devs for an extremely minor continuity error, and I think we all need to calm down a bit.

It was not stupd for Anet to defend it. They had loyal players (aka paying customers) wondering why they said and did what they did. If my company did not answer questions posed by customers (even the stupid ones) your customer base would dry up very quickly. The questions and concerns in this case were not stupid and not just based on an extremely minor continuity error. The concern stemmed from a statement claiming lore was malleable.

I appreciate Angel and Bobby for explaining what happened. And I certainly don’t think it was ‘stupid’ of them to do so. That is how they are going to get people to “calm down”.

Fair point; I guess I’m stupid for calling it stupid, then. But I do feel the original defense was poorly stated, and that the reactions from some here were far too severe, which frustrated me greatly. I’ve always loved the Lore thread for being civil while others are toxic, and I really don’t want to see that change.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Angel McCoy.1832:

The steam creatures are a primo example of that. They were in the game when we launched, which was 1325 A.E. There’s no actual lore that says when they first appeared (but it was definitely prior to that). In the Asura personal story, we see them coming through a portal from a POSSIBLE future. Nothing we’ve done with Scarlet contradicts any of that.

But as the Steam creatures already existed in our Tyria at the point of the possible future being seen (1325 AE), that would mean it wasn’t a possible future but a possible future of an alternate dimension in which Ceara did not create steam creatures. That, or the Grand High Sovereign aka future self #24601, was a bloody liar in calling them his inventions that haven’t even been invented yet.

Sounds like a discrepancy.

I remain unconvinced, but a bit more hopeful, about the holdings on lore. Whether or not I’ll continue to post on the forum… I haven’t decided.

He states that he created the Steam Creatures, which is not the same as invent them.

I have everytime another problem with time travel. If he got back to kill himself, then he won’t be able to get back since he is already dead in his possible future (and should die the moment he kills you). If you kill him it’s still possible to go forward, but only if you get some anger on Zojja for unknown reasons and travel back to get killed. Otherwise the shocking moment to avoid that future won’t simply be there, because you won’t decide to travel back in time. Either you travel back (from an unknown date), behave like you got shown and get killed there or you created a paradox which cannot come true in any case rendering the possible future impossible.

Angel McCoy.1832:

We do our best. And you have to remember that we are human and fallible, but our hearts are in the right place. We are not trying to kitten the lore. We are actively expanding upon it and building it into a greater whole.

My job is incident detective. I search for root causes of problems and I haven’t played GW1. The complaints that are mostly listed in this thread and many others on this subforum are explainable (for example gods, bloodstones and magic), but ANet didn’t deliver and the reason for it is probably that it will get delivered through the living world. My problem the whole time is that most incidents that affect the world have happened in GW1 and aren’t really accessible in GW2. The easy accessable history of the world is missing in GW2 and I got even the impression that it is done, because it’s also part of the world story.

Even the actual story has all informations that are needed to look further, but nobody spents really attention and gets along with the conclusion that the PC and NPC make. Kasmeer and Marjory mention a lot of interesting things that are very important, but we still go after the conclusion that a mad sylvari brought the airship down, killed all Zephyrites on the way and wants to kill the MoP. It’s a wrong conclusion and all hints towards the right conclusion are there.

I put the citation of Angel here, because even ANet didn’t really retcon the world story of GW1. They are just not telling why the world has changed.

BobbyStein.2315:

lakdav.3694:

Well they did move away from most of the things they said during development (see the manifesto), it only figures that interview-lore isnt sacred either.

Unless we’ve built content around something, it’s usually considered malleable from a design and lore standpoint. Occasionally we decide to go in a different direction months or years after the first ideas are documented or even talked about externally. In some cases that means what one member of staff says in an interview can change when it comes time to building a release. It’s part of our iterative process.

In short, go by what’s in the game.

Bobby, I think you need to clear this up. People seem to be taking this statement as instead of “Go with the game as top tier canon for the most part.” as “Only the game counts, everything else is worthless.”

Shiren.9532:

Finally there are other consequences beyond the pacing of the events of Living Story that become impacted. Almost two years in-game have passed since we did anything with the Pact (or our Orders) – I no longer feel like a Pact or Order member, I can’t believe that I just took a two year leave of absence or that my character joining either of those organisations mattered much when I’ve spent so much time not working with them.

{snip}

This year I don’t think there was a single Dragon Bash reference – not even NPCs saying “let’s not throw a party, my house is still a mess from Scarlet gate crashing the last one”. The more believable reason for Dragon Bash not occurring is that it didn’t fit with the release schedule (seeing as you can’t reuse assets).

It seems like waypoints (we used to have map travel) and the timeline were unnecessary lore explanations for things that were better (imo) left to suspension of disbelief. The messy consequences of making them lore creates more suspension of disbelief problems than it solves, especially when you need to introduce new lore to support them. I don’t think we benefit from lore explanations from some things, we just shifted suspension of disbelief from one thing to another, or in some cases created a need for it when there was none before.

To the first: I’d disagree there. We’re working with the various orders at various points through season 1, it just may not have been especially obvious all the time. However, that’s a failure in delivery (not showing well enough how involved the orders were – it was there, but not always obvious) not in concept. Pretty much the whole time you’re pursuing goals that are in alignment with those of at least one of the orders even if not always as part of a unit from that order – it’s fairly easy to regard that as working as a free agent for your order (similar to how you operate during the order and racial sympathy stories, where it’s mostly just you and your mentor).

To the second: Another reason for Dragon Bash not occurring is that we didn’t kill a dragon last year. :P I think there were in-world plans to make it annual last year, but given that I don’t think Lion’s Arch has even been properly resettled yet, I can understand them not feeling that it’s the right time for a massive party.

To the third: Agreed. Sometimes, something is just there for the convenience of the players, and that’s OK.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

GW1 had less than a month pass in 6 Earth months (between Prophecies and Factions), and even 3 years pass in 8 months (Factions to Nightfall) or 10 months (Nightfall to Eye of the North) and even 1 year pass in 3 years (Eye of the North to Beyond).

Actually, it was one year between Prophecies and Factions, and then six months between Factions and Nightfall.

Which, I am fully aware, just makes your point that much stronger.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But as the Steam creatures already existed in our Tyria at the point of the possible future being seen (1325 AE), that would mean it wasn’t a possible future but a possible future of an alternate dimension in which Ceara did not create steam creatures. That, or the Grand High Sovereign aka future self #24601, was a bloody liar in calling them his inventions that haven’t even been invented yet.

Sounds like a discrepancy.

It’s splitting hairs, but the Grand High Sovereign calls them his ‘creations’, not his ‘inventions’. It’s possible, for instance, that the GHS took Ceara/Scarlet into his employ, and for whatever reasons she chose not to reveal the exact date of their invention. Or the Infinity Ball wasn’t the only point of divergence with the alternate future fractal created by the Ball – it might be that in that universe, Ceara stayed good while the asura PC went evil.

(The reference to an alternate future fractal, incidentally, also relates to Horst’s point – there is actually no alternate Tyria with a more advanced timeline that was conquered. What the Infinity Ball actually did, according to a clarification that was made at some point anyway, was exploit the tendency of the Mists to create fractals based on possible futures. The GHS is a Mist entity who’s an imperfect reflection of PC, not actually the PC from an alternate Tyria.)

ElysianEternity.6215:

Therefore I think it’s better to release lore in blog-posts if it doesn’t fit into the game due to technical limitations or because it’s things no character ingame would be able to know. (see: Human Gods)

Better yet, some of the things that the characters regard as well-known and so they no longer bother to talk about it.

lakdav.3694:

Look at the planetarium above the Divinity’s Reach royal palace plaza. Its clear that they dont have an idea about correct planetary movements.

You’re assuming planetary movements in Tyria are the same as they are in the real world.

Mind you, real-world astronomers stuck to perfect circles and crystal spheres and Earth-centric worldviews until just a few centuries back, at least in Europe, and they still had the year pinned down to less than one percent of a day before the founding event of the A.D. calendar.

draxynnic.3719:

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lakdav.3694:

Look at the planetarium above the Divinity’s Reach royal palace plaza. Its clear that they dont have an idea about correct planetary movements.

You’re assuming planetary movements in Tyria are the same as they are in the real world.

Mind you, real-world astronomers stuck to perfect circles and crystal spheres and Earth-centric worldviews until just a few centuries back, at least in Europe, and they still had the year pinned down to less than one percent of a day before the founding event of the A.D. calendar.

You are right, hell, appearently we have stars being born in accordance to Elder Dragon risings. Which again goes to show that the fluctuation of magical forces can do weird things in the universe of Tyria seemingly completely unrelated. Who is to say that no magical events effected anything we are debating and blaming on bad writing? It is the point of “magic” to be mystical and unknowable in its potential, even so dragon energies/chaos magic.

Konig hit all the nail’s on the head for me. ANet! Please hire him!

lakdav.3694:

You are right, hell, appearently we have stars being born in accordance to Elder Dragon risings. Which again goes to show that the fluctuation of magical forces can do weird things in the universe of Tyria seemingly completely unrelated. Who is to say that no magical events effected anything we are debating and blaming on bad writing? It is the point of “magic” to be mystical and unknowable in its potential, even so dragon energies/chaos magic.

Just had an interesting thought regarding the stars thing.
Maybe it’s not the dragons waking that triggers a star to be born, and instead is the other way around. Those stars are going to be quite distant, and by the time Tyrians see them being born, it will have actually been born long before. But maybe the newborn starlight finally reaching Tyria triggers the dragons somehow. If that is the case, however, there probably wouldn’t be a new star for Mordremoth, because he was awoken artificially.
Maybe there’s a connection of some sort between the stars and ley lines?…

All of that is, of course, assuming the information regarding stars being born is from a Tyrian point of view, rather than a universal one.

Crixler.2857:

lakdav.3694:

You are right, hell, appearently we have stars being born in accordance to Elder Dragon risings. Which again goes to show that the fluctuation of magical forces can do weird things in the universe of Tyria seemingly completely unrelated. Who is to say that no magical events effected anything we are debating and blaming on bad writing? It is the point of “magic” to be mystical and unknowable in its potential, even so dragon energies/chaos magic.

Just had an interesting thought regarding the stars thing.
Maybe it’s not the dragons waking that triggers a star to be born, and instead is the other way around. Those stars are going to be quite distant, and by the time Tyrians see them being born, it will have actually been born long before. But maybe the newborn starlight finally reaching Tyria triggers the dragons somehow. If that is the case, however, there probably wouldn’t be a new star for Mordremoth, because he was awoken artificially.
Maybe there’s a connection of some sort between the stars and ley lines?…

All of that is, of course, assuming the information regarding stars being born is from a Tyrian point of view, rather than a universal one.

It could also simply be correlation rather than causation. They might coincidentally be on the same 10,000-ish year cycle, or there might be a third factor causing them to mirror the same cycle without actually interacting with each other. Unfortunately, for the time being there’s insufficient data to determine which of the theories is likely.

Shiren.9532:

Honestly, that’s a dangerous line to tow though. The wiki already struggles to attract accurate and comprehensive editors in large enough numbers to properly document the game without requiring them to heavily source everything they document. If anything that’s not sourced becomes unreliable and changeable (assuming it’s not documented in the internal wiki – which in this case was less reliable than the external wiki) then the value of the wiki is undermined (as it is when editors post incorrect or speculatory information).

Nobody has said here that wiki users should be required to heavily source everything that they document. However, removing sources have, in this case, led to (a somewhat minor) disaster, and I don’t see it unreasonable that wiki users be expected to source anything that is not stated in-game, or is otherwise “obscure” or difficult to find—for this exact reason. The beauty of a wiki is that anyone can add anything, but the danger is that…well, anyone could add anything. Wikipedia has a policy page explaining why this sort of thing is necessary.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Tho for general inconsistencies between our wiki and yours as lore develops with the LS, IMO the best idea to keep them from happening would be… bring back race blogs. You can easily work that into the living world, although on its own it might be a bit of work. You see from our POV, the only 100% reliable lore is ‘Word of God’ and if interviews are not the best way to inform us due to reasons like stress, etc, we need another way or else the lore gets rather foggy for players.

CureForLiving.5360:

I do think implementing an in-game lore mechanic (as I’ve been going on about for a while now… oh say 2 years) could be a useful. Something like the system Mass Effect has, the codex-thing. A fairly straight forward but detailed collection of lore, presented in-game that can be treated as being canon. When need be ANet can make changes, and it can act as a means of more effective lore referencing (so ANet has a reliable mechanism for knowing what has been or has not been provided to the users).

I disagree that these would be better solutions than simply building up the wiki more! This thread makes it obvious that there are a lot of people in the community who are very passionate about lore, so the question is: why aren’t they editing the wiki?

Just speaking for myself, my aversion to wiki editing is largely an aversion to the formatting aspect. I can alter or add to plain text just fine, and I have on occasion, but anything more complex, like, say, a footnote, is more than I know how to do… and if truth be told, more than I care to learn. That last bit is probably specific to me, but I think the fact that being able to make substantial contributions requires wading through sidebars and this does constitute something of a barrier to entry.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Crixler.2857:

lakdav.3694:

You are right, hell, appearently we have stars being born in accordance to Elder Dragon risings. Which again goes to show that the fluctuation of magical forces can do weird things in the universe of Tyria seemingly completely unrelated. Who is to say that no magical events effected anything we are debating and blaming on bad writing? It is the point of “magic” to be mystical and unknowable in its potential, even so dragon energies/chaos magic.

Just had an interesting thought regarding the stars thing.
Maybe it’s not the dragons waking that triggers a star to be born, and instead is the other way around. Those stars are going to be quite distant, and by the time Tyrians see them being born, it will have actually been born long before. But maybe the newborn starlight finally reaching Tyria triggers the dragons somehow. If that is the case, however, there probably wouldn’t be a new star for Mordremoth, because he was awoken artificially.
Maybe there’s a connection of some sort between the stars and ley lines?…

All of that is, of course, assuming the information regarding stars being born is from a Tyrian point of view, rather than a universal one.

It could also simply be correlation rather than causation. They might coincidentally be on the same 10,000-ish year cycle, or there might be a third factor causing them to mirror the same cycle without actually interacting with each other. Unfortunately, for the time being there’s insufficient data to determine which of the theories is likely.

The star appearing and the raise of the EDs occur at roughly the same time but the it’s a coincidence. I’m fairly sure there’s lore specifically stating this, but alas my knows as to where one could find this is limited.

Tamias.7059:

I disagree that these would be better solutions than simply building up the wiki more! This thread makes it obvious that there are a lot of people in the community who are very passionate about lore, so the question is: why aren’t they editing the wiki?

We as player only have access to so much lore, unfortunately the issue we saw here was a lore inconsistency. Perfectly understandable (from my perspective at least, there’s a lot of lore so a few mistakes will crop up from time to time) but as a player we have no access to canon info. We can only at best put onto the wiki what we experience in game, and if there are problems in-game we do not have the means or the necessary perspective to know what is and isn’t correct.
As for why people aren’t editing the wiki… well I can only speak for myself… I suck at wiki maintenance. I’d probably end up breaking something

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Just speaking for myself, my aversion to wiki editing is largely an aversion to the formatting aspect. I can alter or add to plain text just fine, and I have on occasion, but anything more complex, like, say, a footnote, is more than I know how to do… and if truth be told, more than I care to learn. That last bit is probably specific to me, but I think the fact that being able to make substantial contributions requires wading through sidebars and this does constitute something of a barrier to entry.

I know that you weren’t after specific advice, but just for future reference (heh) the process is to enclose the thing you want to appear as a reference in between <ref></ref> tags, and then placing <references /> in the place where you want to automatically generate a list of references. So it could work something a bit like this:

== Trivia ==
* Scarlet was born in 1304.<ref>
[https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Interesting-things-in-Scarlet-s-Room-Spoilers/4194939
Guild Wars 2 Forum - Lore & Story - Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]]</ref>

== References ==
<references />

or this:

Niamh helped Cadeyrn to his feet,<ref>Niamh is [[Luminary]] of the Cycle of Noon.</ref> and...

== Footnotes ==
<references />

The wiki’s own guideline on references was actually updated fairly recently, as well. All that said, is there anything that you can think of that the wiki can do to make the entry process easier? Would a sticky in the lore forum with an FAQ similar to this help at all, perhaps oriented toward the sort of edits that lore forum users are likely to make (i.e. referencing)?

In fact, for all reading, if you’re interested Stephane has asked for any ideas as to attracting more editors onto the wiki. So any suggestions, I can bring to him (of course, this being a wiki, it would be very simple also to do so yourselves).

CureForLiving.5360:

We as player only have access to so much lore, unfortunately the issue we saw here was a lore inconsistency. Perfectly understandable (from my perspective at least, there’s a lot of lore so a few mistakes will crop up from time to time) but as a player we have no access to canon info. We can only at best put onto the wiki what we experience in game, and if there are problems in-game we do not have the means or the necessary perspective to know what is and isn’t correct.

I think this is why it is important to have citations. The “perspective” you speak of is interpreting the evidence that we encounter in-game to determine whether, for example, a continuity error has been made or story is being led in a particular direction. But the wiki’s function isn’t to do that—the purpose of the wiki is merely to document the evidence. The interpretation—well, that’s something we do here on the lore forums! But the reason having lots of wiki editors is so important is that evidence cannot be interpreted if it hasn’t been documented anywhere first! This is something that I have spoken about before.

CureForLiving.5360:

As for why people aren’t editing the wiki… well I can only speak for myself… I suck at wiki maintenance. I’d probably end up breaking something

You may be only speaking for yourself, but this is something which I hear incredibly commonly! I’ve heard it said before that it’s almost impossible to break the wiki (but please don’t try!), so feel free to give her a whirl. You may find this page useful.

Tamias.7059:

I disagree that these would be better solutions than
simply building up the wiki more! This thread makes it obvious that there are a lot of people in the community who are very passionate about lore, so the question is: why aren’t they editing the wiki?

People who are passionate about lore tend to be very tech-adverse, in my experience, Slapping together a good gaming PC is pretty easy compare to the eccentricities if wiki editing.

I don’t contribute to any wiki anymore. The political hassles just aren’t worth the time.

draxynnic.3719:

To the first: I’d disagree there. We’re working with the various orders at various points through season 1, it just may not have been especially obvious all the time. However, that’s a failure in delivery (not showing well enough how involved the orders were – it was there, but not always obvious) not in concept. Pretty much the whole time you’re pursuing goals that are in alignment with those of at least one of the orders even if not always as part of a unit from that order – it’s fairly easy to regard that as working as a free agent for your order (similar to how you operate during the order and racial sympathy stories, where it’s mostly just you and your mentor).

To me that’s a failure to communicate my role as an order member (the whole chapter where I join them feels disingenuous now that I essentially act as a free agent). I don’t think incidentally being interested in the same things the order is interested in qualifies. Your interaction is no different from anyone else in Tyria, whether they are in the order, in a different order or in no order at all. A couple branches of dialogue from a random NPC every other release simply doesn’t cut it. It’s your order, it’s supposed to be a big part of your identity in Tyria and how you choose to to fight for the world. I used to get missions from them, I used to report information to them, I used to discuss things with them – work with them, now I get a buff from them in Lion’s Arch (which I pay for) and maybe a conversation branch. I don’t feel like I’m a part of my order’s group, I don’t feel camaraderie or that my actions are part of a greater whole, that I represent my order’s ethos in the world. During the order Personal story options you are always working with another member of the order, you are usually working in a way which reflects your order’s ethos and you begin and end your missions by reporting to your order. None of that happens in Living Story – everything is done through the biconics instead.

It’s just another part of my pre-Living Story identity that has been marginalised to a conversation branch every third release. If I went to my order’s Christmas party I’d feel like the person who quit back in January and only turned up for the free booze (maybe that’s why they charged for the buff).

draxynnic.3719:

To the second: Another reason for Dragon Bash not occurring is that we didn’t kill a dragon last year. :P I think there were in-world plans to make it annual last year, but given that I don’t think Lion’s Arch has even been properly resettled yet, I can understand them not feeling that it’s the right time for a massive party.

I thought the whole point of Dragon Bash wasn’t to celebrate killing Zhaitan (technically he died months before Dragon Bash) but to raise morale in a world dealing with the constant downer of Elder Dragons – that even in difficult times Lion’s Arch can and will celebrate. The spirit of Dragon Bash is arguably more important after Scarlet’s attack. Even if the event wasn’t possible in any way or version, I don’t recall anything in game recognising that the annual time for dragon bash had come and gone. You could argue reasons for why DB didn’t take place (and why no NPCs afaik even said “I don’t feel like/can’t afford to party”) but my point is without syncing the time line’s you wouldn’t have to – you could just pretend the story hadn’t reached that point, or just pretended festivals don’t count for continuity (like they didn’t in GW1).

Angel McCoy.1832:

ElysianEternity.6215:

In this special case I’d say, it’d be good form to inform us at least why the age of the secondborn was changed or what the real lore is now.

We did not believe we were changing canon. The official canon is that Scarlet was born in 1304 and it was around that time that the other Secondborn were also being born.

Thank you for clarifying then. ;P

draxynnic.3719:

ElysianEternity.6215:

Therefore I think it’s better to release lore in blog-posts if it doesn’t fit into the game due to technical limitations or because it’s things no character ingame would be able to know. (see: Human Gods)

Better yet, some of the things that the characters regard as well-known and so they no longer bother to talk about it.

Agreed.

Tamias.7059:

-snip-

Tamias, what I suggested is a substitute for interviews (or an addition to them)! Maintaining the wiki by documenting everything is all good, but what we’re asking for are reliable sources for lore. Basically, can’t put something on the wiki if the source itself isn’t definitely canon or available at all. :P

As for the wiki. I’m neither interested in coding, nor policies, nor debates about what goes on there and what doesn’t, nor do I really have the time – tho for that I can suggest you a small idea as well. Not an absolute solution, but a bandaid.
If there’s so many people away shunning away from editing for similar reasons as me, why not separate the work?
I assume there’s 2 issues here: Editing the wiki itself with formatting and finding the sources and content. (example PS-steps)
For the latter, people like me could help. Post a separate forum-post, update the top post with bulletpoints of where citations or information is needed and all the editors need to do is copy paste and to the formatting we shun so much. Tho anyways, that belongs into a new thread. A noteworthy problem, tho its own. If you make one maybe someone comes up with a better solution. :P

Angel McCoy.1832:

ElysianEternity.6215:

In this special case I’d say, it’d be good form to inform us at least why the age of the secondborn was changed or what the real lore is now.

We did not believe we were changing canon. The official canon is that Scarlet was born in 1304 and it was around that time that the other Secondborn were also being born.

Hello, you guys are doing a great job. keep up the good work.

I’ve noticed a problem and had a possible fix for this in mind that I just haven’t gotten around to implementing. The problem is that the interview sites periodically go down and we lose the information. The possible fix is to create a wiki page verbatim of each interview. Make it uneditable as it is an exact record of what has been said. That way on all the other wiki pages, the source references can just reference those uneditable pages.

The source links on those uneditable pages can still be linked to the origioanle interview site but if that site goes down the information remains in tact and we can still see which site the information was originally on.

So Scarlet is indeed a Secondborn, eh? Well, that’s interesting to know.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

It could also simply be correlation rather than causation. They might coincidentally be on the same 10,000-ish year cycle, or there might be a third factor causing them to mirror the same cycle without actually interacting with each other. Unfortunately, for the time being there’s insufficient data to determine which of the theories is likely.

According to the NPC you bring along with you on the run, the stars are distant enough that events on Tyria should not affect them – so either the dragons are woken by the stars, or it’s simply coincidence.

On the other hand, however, the lore of the celestials from Factions shows that stars can be formed as a result of events on Tyria, through the medium of a powerful being placing a new constellation in the sky to commemorate some person or event. My personal supposition is that the norn NPC in question either was not aware of this tradition or dismissed it as human superstition.

Shiren.9532:

To me that’s a failure to communicate my role as an order member (the whole chapter where I join them feels disingenuous now that I essentially act as a free agent).

Oh, I’d agree, it could have been communicated better.

But it was there if you looked for it. At the start of Flame and Frost, Vigil members receive a letter ordering them to investigate – non-Vigil members got something a little more generic that I don’t currently remember. The Order of Whispers gets involved with dead-drops. I think the Priory also had a role there, although it’s been a while and I don’t recall – they certainly did in Last Stand. To varying levels, the orders have been involved all along. There just wasn’t a lot of specil dialogue put in the distinguish when a character mat have been acting as part of an order and when not.

Besides, while the Vigil is organised more along military lines, Whispers and Priory both strike me as likely to trust higher-level agents (Lightbringers and Magisters respectively) to find their own ways of promoting the order’s goals as long as the command staff don’t need them on a specific assignment.

Regarding Dragon Bash – at the time, ArenaNet was following the policy that whether Zhaitan was dead or not depended on where the character you happened to be playing today had completed that PS step, so it was left kinda vague at the time. Now they’ve abandoned that policy, they could easily say it was celebrating Zhaitan’s death and give that as a reason not to repeat it.

Or, y’know, with LA’s destruction and all, they’re just not ready to have it just now.

Tamias.7059:

I disagree that these would be better solutions than simply building up the wiki more! This thread makes it obvious that there are a lot of people in the community who are very passionate about lore, so the question is: why aren’t they editing the wiki?

I’m going to be blunt here:

A lot of us don’t have faith that the wiki administrators care enough about the lore to be worth our time and effort. To be fair, this is based on past events and this impression may no longer be accurate, but the thing about an image is that it’s a lot harder to clean than it is to get it tarnished in the first place.

For better or worse, Konig is definitely the one of us that has the most time and energy to put into this sort of thing nowadays (I try, but I’ve been reeling from crisis to significant personal event to crisis since before GW2 released). This included trying to keep the wiki up to date as new things are found and keeping a limit on cases of editors putting dubious information on the wiki.

And this second part got him in trouble. I don’t recall who the editor in question was precisely, but there was one that apparently had so much ego invested in his or her interpretation of the lore in a particular page that when Konig tried to separate out the speculation-presented-as-fact from the actual fact, this editor kept reverting it. Push came to shove, the resulting revert-war lead to both parties getting a several-month ban. Now, I’m sure there are complexities in the situation, and Konig isn’t the most diplomatic person at the best of times, but the impression that those of us that heard about this came away with was that the administrators didn’t actually care about who was in the right on the matter – they just wanted to make the problem go away.

Suffice it to say, this hasn’t given the rest of us much confidence that the wiki is worth investing our own time and effort into. In fact, we’ve pretty much written it off as only reliable as a resource for quotes directly out of the game and for the transcriptions of official articles, while reminding anyone who quotes from wiki articles apart from the above of how a wiki isn’t a reliable resource.

And the thing I’m finding really ironic here? If the wiki administrators had been serious about maintaining the integrity of the lore articles such that people could trust the wiki (or at least trust that speculation and other dubious information would be removed or at least marked as such, barring the occasional piece of vandalism that would hopefully be promptly removed) then it’s possible we may not have found ourselves in the situation we have in this thread.

draxynnic.3719:

Suffice it to say, this hasn’t given the rest of us much confidence that the wiki is worth investing our own time and effort into. In fact, we’ve pretty much written it off as only reliable as a resource for quotes directly out of the game and for the transcriptions of official articles, while reminding anyone who quotes from wiki articles apart from the above of how a wiki isn’t a reliable resource.

And the thing I’m finding really ironic here? If the wiki administrators had been serious about maintaining the integrity of the lore articles such that people could trust the wiki (or at least trust that speculation and other dubious information would be removed or at least marked as such, barring the occasional piece of vandalism that would hopefully be promptly removed) then it’s possible we may not have found ourselves in the situation we have in this thread.

I have learned from you, konig and others in many different posts that the wiki is often unreliable. Instead of just letting ANYONE change articles, couldn’t there be a page where contributors would post lore that could be fact checked by wiki managers and approved contributors? Then those same managers and approved contributors could add (or ignore) pages/content?

Other than using the wiki for information, I really know nothing about changing articles there, so I may be talking about something for which I am not qualified.

Sytherek.7689:

People who are passionate about lore tend to be very tech-adverse, in my experience, Slapping together a good gaming PC is pretty easy compare to the eccentricities if wiki editing.

You’d be surprised, I think. The basics are different, but no more difficult than BBCode. More complicated stuff like tables or certain templates can be a pain, but like it says on the page I linked in a previous post, most wiki editors get a feel for the software by making minor edits or corrections here and there, and then become more confident and build up to the bigger stuff when they realise that it isn’t that bad. While I’m open to suggestions, in my experience the best way to learn is by doing, or by seeing how others have done, rather than by reading some guide.

There are also templates for creating new page, which means that you can create pages of certain types with little-to-no knowledge of wiki markup. An example, for NPC pages, can be found here.

Sytherek.7689:

I don’t contribute to any wiki anymore. The political hassles just aren’t worth the time.

This is another complaint I hear quite often, although rarely in any detail. Do you mind being a bit more specific (no need to name names, though)?

ElysianEternity.6215:

I’m neither interested in coding, nor policies, nor debates about what goes on there and what doesn’t, nor do I really have the time – tho for that I can suggest you a small idea as well. Not an absolute solution, but a bandaid.
If there’s so many people away shunning away from editing for similar reasons as me, why not separate the work?
I assume there’s 2 issues here: Editing the wiki itself with formatting and finding the sources and content. (example PS-steps)
For the latter, people like me could help. Post a separate forum-post, update the top post with bulletpoints of where citations or information is needed and all the editors need to do is copy paste and to the formatting we shun so much. Tho anyways, that belongs into a new thread. A noteworthy problem, tho its own. If you make one maybe someone comes up with a better solution. :P

You’re sort of there. Lore-wise, there are two kinds of edits that you make. The first is what I suppose you could call “primary-source” editing, when you simply document content as it appears in-game somewhere on the wiki, consistent with the wiki’s own guidelines on doing do. An example might be documenting the dialogue in a location, event chain, personal story mission, or when interacting with an NPC. There isn’t any kind of referencing involved or needed here, because all the information can be found in-game and is easily verifiable.

The other kind of lore-related edit you’ll make is more difficult. It involves pulling together the primary sources I mentioned above and turning them into an encyclopedic-style article, such as this, or this, or this. These do require references, because, as others have said, how do we know that content that has been added to them is true is they are not referenced? And the wiki currently has a huge problem with this, because certain editors (and I am guilty of this myself at times) will update lore articles without sufficient referencing because they know that they are right and they are allowed to do so because they are established wiki users and trusted not to lie about lore, but then if (for example) ArenaNet want to check the D.O.B. of the Secondborn but it is not on their own internal wiki and the GW2W claim of “six or seven years” after the Firstborn is unreferenced, they cannot. This leads to a lack of transparency and, I believe, contributes to the feeling that people have that they do not know enough to edit the wiki.

In terms of volume, though, the importance of bringing new editors to the wiki is in the first kind of edit, rather than the second. Because there are huge amounts of NPC, event, and ambient dialogues that have been present since release but have gone completely undocumented. There’s a lot of lore that’s out there, but completely undocumented. And how can we tie all the primary sources together with the second kind of edit if that is the case?

draxynnic.3719:

A lot of us don’t have faith that the wiki administrators care enough about the lore to be worth our time and effort. To be fair, this is based on past events and this impression may no longer be accurate, but the thing about an image is that it’s a lot harder to clean than it is to get it tarnished in the first place.

For better or worse, Konig is definitely the one of us that has the most time and energy to put into this sort of thing nowadays (I try, but I’ve been reeling from crisis to significant personal event to crisis since before GW2 released). This included trying to keep the wiki up to date as new things are found and keeping a limit on cases of editors putting dubious information on the wiki.

And this second part got him in trouble. I don’t recall who the editor in question was precisely, but there was one that apparently had so much ego invested in his or her interpretation of the lore in a particular page that when Konig tried to separate out the speculation-presented-as-fact from the actual fact, this editor kept reverting it. Push came to shove, the resulting revert-war lead to both parties getting a several-month ban. Now, I’m sure there are complexities in the situation, and Konig isn’t the most diplomatic person at the best of times, but the impression that those of us that heard about this came away with was that the administrators didn’t actually care about who was in the right on the matter – they just wanted to make the problem go away.

Okay, well, this is a little strange but that editor is me. On the wiki I go by Santax (my GW1 character name, since I’ve been editing since way back in 2007). The incident you’re referring to is this one, and for obvious reasons I don’t really want to comment on it further except to say that the version of events that you have heard is misrepresentative, and to direct you to the discussion on the conflict when it arose again, and its conclusion (1) (2) (3) (4).

And FWIW, although permanently blocked from editing GWW, Konig’s 3-month block has now expired on GW2W and he has chosen to resume active editing.

draxynnic.3719:

Suffice it to say, this hasn’t given the rest of us much confidence that the wiki is worth investing our own time and effort into. In fact, we’ve pretty much written it off as only reliable as a resource for quotes directly out of the game and for the transcriptions of official articles, while reminding anyone who quotes from wiki articles apart from the above of how a wiki isn’t a reliable resource.

And the thing I’m finding really ironic here? If the wiki administrators had been serious about maintaining the integrity of the lore articles such that people could trust the wiki (or at least trust that speculation and other dubious information would be removed or at least marked as such, barring the occasional piece of vandalism that would hopefully be promptly removed) then it’s possible we may not have found ourselves in the situation we have in this thread.

If speculation is the concern, then increased referencing is the obvious solution. Something cannot be said to be speculative if it cites an official source. But I think this forum in particular has a preoccuptation with speculation which can, as we have seen in this thread, cause people to overreact to minor lore-related things. But this is besides the point: in this particular case, it was actually Konig who removed the source that stated when the Secondborn were born, and had he not done so this situation would certainly not have happened. That, I think, is ironic.

jheryn.8390:

I have learned from you, konig and others in many different posts that the wiki is often unreliable. Instead of just letting ANYONE change articles, couldn’t there be a page where contributors would post lore that could be fact checked by wiki managers and approved contributors? Then those same managers and approved contributors could add (or ignore) pages/content?

The trouble with this is that the main problem with wiki is not, as some here would have you believe, one of accuracy, but of number of contributors. There simply aren’t enough active users to keep on top of documenting the game at release along with the biweekly update schedule. So having a two-step process vastly increases the amount of work necessary to get stuff onto the wiki, but does nothing about finding more volunteers to do that work.

For simply documenting what is in the game exactly as it appears in-game, which is actually what the bulk of wiki editing is, there should be no concerns about accuracy or reliability. For writing lore articles, having a firm policy of citing all sources automatically resolves those concerns.

Tamias.7059:

[

I don’t contribute to any wiki anymore. The political hassles just aren’t worth the time.

This is another complaint I hear quite often, although rarely in any detail. Do you mind being a bit more specific (no need to name names, though)?

I’ve worked on Wikipedia, the original Guild Wars (official) wiki, and a few others.

Essentially, the problem was always the same: People with authority, who used that authority to be little dictators. These people care less about format and more about “How dare you!” changes to their precious words.

Technically, I have no problem with format or HTML; I’ve been a high-end computer programmer since the 70s. I have no problem working with others; I’m currently part of a six-man team building a complex software stack for an industry. I’m not saying that to brag, just to point out that I can work with others and handle technology.

My experience with wikis is poor, and with the original Guild Wars 1 (official) wiki even worse. The battles were over trivialities and significance, and often based on opinion, not rules. The point should be to provide accurate & current info, not assuage some poor kitten’s ego.

I’m deep into the lore, though not fanatical. I’d love to contribute to the wiki, especially on corner facts that are important but overlook.

But this is a hobby, not my life. And it ain’t worth the hassle.

Tamias.7059:

Okay, well, this is a little strange but that editor is me. On the wiki I go by Santax (my GW1 character name, since I’ve been editing since way back in 2007). The incident you’re referring to is this one, and for obvious reasons I don’t really want to comment on it further except to say that the version of events that you have heard is misrepresentative, and to direct you to the discussion on the conflict when it arose again, and its conclusion (1) (2) (3) (4).

And FWIW, although permanently blocked from editing GWW, Konig’s 3-month block has now expired on GW2W and he has chosen to resume active editing.

You and I hold different views on how things went down, it seems. And this is to be expected, TBH.

And TBH, I only edit still out of sheer boredom, really. And for a project I’m working on that benefits from fully documented dialogues on the wiki. That bluster with you and the admins honestly killed all my desire to be active on the wiki. If not for the project, I probably wouldn’t even edit out of sheer boredom either. (and you’d note I’m not nearly as active as I once was – nor will I be). And for pretty much the reasons Sytherek said. I know I’m not blameless but the arguments felt overly trivial to me. Hence that last comment of mine on GWW that you linked.

Tamias.7059:

draxynnic.3719:

A lot of us don’t have faith that the wiki administrators care enough about the lore to be worth our time and effort. To be fair, this is based on past events and this impression may no longer be accurate, but the thing about an image is that it’s a lot harder to clean than it is to get it tarnished in the first place.

For better or worse, Konig is definitely the one of us that has the most time and energy to put into this sort of thing nowadays (I try, but I’ve been reeling from crisis to significant personal event to crisis since before GW2 released). This included trying to keep the wiki up to date as new things are found and keeping a limit on cases of editors putting dubious information on the wiki.

And this second part got him in trouble. I don’t recall who the editor in question was precisely, but there was one that apparently had so much ego invested in his or her interpretation of the lore in a particular page that when Konig tried to separate out the speculation-presented-as-fact from the actual fact, this editor kept reverting it. Push came to shove, the resulting revert-war lead to both parties getting a several-month ban. Now, I’m sure there are complexities in the situation, and Konig isn’t the most diplomatic person at the best of times, but the impression that those of us that heard about this came away with was that the administrators didn’t actually care about who was in the right on the matter – they just wanted to make the problem go away.

Okay, well, this is a little strange but that editor is me. On the wiki I go by Santax (my GW1 character name, since I’ve been editing since way back in 2007). The incident you’re referring to is this one, and for obvious reasons I don’t really want to comment on it further except to say that the version of events that you have heard is misrepresentative, and to direct you to the discussion on the conflict when it arose again, and its conclusion (1) (2) (3) (4).

And FWIW, although permanently blocked from editing GWW, Konig’s 3-month block has now expired on GW2W and he has chosen to resume active editing.

draxynnic.3719:

Suffice it to say, this hasn’t given the rest of us much confidence that the wiki is worth investing our own time and effort into. In fact, we’ve pretty much written it off as only reliable as a resource for quotes directly out of the game and for the transcriptions of official articles, while reminding anyone who quotes from wiki articles apart from the above of how a wiki isn’t a reliable resource.

And the thing I’m finding really ironic here? If the wiki administrators had been serious about maintaining the integrity of the lore articles such that people could trust the wiki (or at least trust that speculation and other dubious information would be removed or at least marked as such, barring the occasional piece of vandalism that would hopefully be promptly removed) then it’s possible we may not have found ourselves in the situation we have in this thread.

If speculation is the concern, then increased referencing is the obvious solution. Something cannot be said to be speculative if it cites an official source. But I think this forum in particular has a preoccuptation with speculation which can, as we have seen in this thread, cause people to overreact to minor lore-related things. But this is besides the point: in this particular case, it was actually Konig who removed the source that stated when the Secondborn were born, and had he not done so this situation would certainly not have happened. That, I think, is ironic.

I actually read them all, and I did notice one disturbing thing: This is not first time Konig is “rage quiting”, nor its second time… My point is: what is the point to even take his childish rant (I quit bye) on this thread seriously?

As this thread has now veered off topic, it is now closed.