Guild Wars 2

Interesting read.

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

I’m slightly disappointed that they weren’t asked more about the Wizards Tower, since we’ve been having such interesting speculations about it. Then again, maybe they would have refused to answer such questions. But I am glad the question about what Jormag does to Norn women is finally answered. I posted that in the older topic.

You forgot Scott McGough! How rude! :P

@Malafide: We didn’t have time to ask all the questions we wanted to, and some were shot down (before the interview) on a “we won’t be able to answer that for xyz reason” basis. (note: I say ‘we’ but sadly I had to skip out on partaking in the interview thanks to work :/)

May I ask which questions were shot down?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You forgot Scott McGough! How rude! :P

I wanted to, but the title would have been too long

@Konig: what do you think of the implication that 10,000 years ago WAS in fact the time that Giganticus Lupicus died out, AND that that era was in fact the last time the Elder Dragons appeared?

Source:

GuildMag (Draxynnic): Back in Guild Wars 1, we had that mention of the last appearance of the Giganticus Lupicus ten thousand years ago. And then the first people to get to the explorable dungeons in Arah were probably rather surprised to find the Giganticus Lupicus corpse sitting there waiting for them. Is there a story behind how one got to be there?

ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : How one got to be there… I think brought from its original resting place by Zhaitans minions for that big arena, central cathedral area as a watchdog, as a guardian. The whole… In many ways, the whole tale of the Elder Dragons begins with that one line – that was the first line of the timeline. During the Cantha project I said ‘what does this mean’ – well, we have some big skulls out in the wilderness and we didn’t know what they were so that’s what they are. But when we started telling the story of the Elder Dragons it just fit in so neatly that well, if they’ve come before, when did they come? Hey, we have the Giganticus Lupicus being wiped out in this era! Oh, okay, THAT must have been the last time the Elder Dragons showed up, and the story evolved from there. It’s one thing we’re very good at moving forwards – we leave a lot of hooks so future designers, future storytellers, ourselves in the future have a lot of potential that we can build off.

GuildMag (Thalador): I was personally wondering that in the Crystal Desert back in Guild Wars 1 we saw lots of skeletons lying around and we considered them to be the skeletons of the Giganticus Lupicus.

ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : Some of them are, yes.

GuildMag (Thalador) : When we see him – the recent specimen in the centre of Arah, he’s sort of a jackal-like, Anubis sort of thing, and yet the skeletons back in Guild Wars 1 were sort of draconic or with large tusks or larger…

GuildMag (Draxynnic) : Sea monsters.

ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : I think the look of the Giganticus Lupicus evolved over time – in the fact that we started off with “okay, here’s the skull, build us a creature that looks like this.” Giganticus Lupicus also – Lupicus has a wolf origin to it, so we were thinking in terms of wolves at the time, and from there we basically got to that jackal-headed, Anubis type of figure. So they basically… I could see the older, larger versions of the Giganticus giganticus would be the huge skulls, because of course, with limitations within the game we could only put the figure so large and still have you be able to fight it in any reasonable sense.

ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : And I think that much like the centaurs, you’re gonna have this ancient creature that has some distinction according to territory, according to how it has evolved. So you can have a couple of different skulls that have similarities but aren’t.

The above almost implies that there may be different races or possibly breeds of Lupicus and that the one in Arah may be a different breed from the ones whose skeletons we see in the Crystal Desert?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

May I ask which questions were shot down?

They were mostly attempts for clarity on confusing events in historical lore. The main goal of the interview from my perspective was to help reduce the number of “bad mysteries” in the game (I divide mysteries into form, the “good mysteries” being those which instigate the audience’s thought into theorizing; the “bad mysteries” being those which make the audience go “wait, that makes no sense!”). One such question of clarifying the “bad mysteries” that made it through was the appearance of the GL from GW1 to GW2.

Errant Venture.9371:

@Konig: what do you think of the implication that 10,000 years ago WAS in fact the time that Giganticus Lupicus died out, AND that that era was in fact the last time the Elder Dragons appeared?

Technically, Jeff never said that that era was in fact the last time the ED appeared, just that when they were making the story of the Elder Dragons initially, that fit into and was – initially – the last rise’s time. I doubt that when they made that development they had the jotun surviving multiple rises (or at least knowing of multiple rises), and the Forgotten, seers, mursaat, and dwarves being from that last rise.

Errant Venture.9371:

The above almost implies that there may be different races or possibly breeds of Lupicus and that the one in Arah may be a different breed from the ones whose skeletons we see in the Crystal Desert?

I caught this as well, and was quite enjoyed that my original theory on the Giganticus Lupicus has been proven partially right (the original theory of mine being that they were a series of races of ancient past, and that the Elder Dragons were also part of these races; the second part has been revived as possible with this statement).

It certainly does clarify the appearance difference and now we have some confirmation that those skulls are, indeed, GL.

wow just read all of that, very interesting indeed, glad to have an answer on the jormag women issue too.

That was quite an intersting read. Good job, guys. Hope to see more of this in the future.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

May I ask which questions were shot down?

Rather than specific questions being shot down, when we put in the request for an interview, we were asked to submit a list of topics. One of the topics we initially asked for was on what the Pact was planning to do after Zhaitan.

The general impression I had was “though shalt not try to wheedle hints of major future story directions out of us”.

One of the things I had in mind while formulating questions is, essentially, along the lines of Konig’s separation of “good mysteries” and “bad mysteries”. “Good mysteries” are things that are actually mysterious in the game world. “Bad” mysteries, in my mind, are the things that would actually be reasonably common knowledge in the world, but which it hasn’t been important to tell us the player. As you may have noticed, most of the questions I formulated (I wrote the Kryta questions, Thalador the fractal and Zhaitan questions) were in terms such as “if we asked so-and-so, what would they say?”

An example of such a ‘bad mystery’ is the status of Garrenhoff, for instance. Our characters should be able to find out by looking at a map of Kryta or just asking around in Garrenhoff, but until now, we as players simply didn’t know.

Can’t say when we’ll get another one, but if people want to submit questions I’ll jot them down. Particularly charr-related – I’ve got my eyes on pinning down a few things related to charr history and geography.

The only things i’m really interested in is regarding the mursaat lost city and if the titans found it or How did the charr first learn or make contact with the titans originally. I’m also deeply interested in what the searing ritual actually is and where those crystals actually come from and what they are made of.

Pavees.7281:

How did the charr first learn or make contact with the titans originally.

We actually already know this, from the Ecology of the Charr and some Realm of Torment GW1 quests. The Burnt warband of the Flame Legion found the titans in Hrangmer, the titans having appeared before them in a “pillar of fire.” This occurred during a time the Flame Legion thought that to fight the humans on even terms, they needed to fight with gods of their own and had sent warbands out looking for things to call gods.

Pavees.7281:

I’m also deeply interested in what the searing ritual actually is and where those crystals actually come from and what they are made of.

Heavy implications point to the Searing Cauldrons having been infused with Kralkatorrik’s magic.

I get the feeling they don’t have a clue yet where they are going. All they say is, yes, good question, or ’we’re laying the groundwork’, or ‘we like to have many plates in the air’.

I like the questions, but really, the answers are as thin as air.

I found this answer interesting, regarding the question about the LS and the lack of story, Ree answers:
‘Is the lore there? Well, because you can’t answer the questions, I guess you can say that no, the lore is not all there so far, but I assure you it will be and you can see where it will be.’

Guess I have to wait another 6 months or so.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It certainly does clarify the appearance difference and now we have some confirmation that those skulls are, indeed, GL.

-And some of them are just random sea monsters. When Anet started decorating the original Crystal Desert in GW1, they probably just looked for ways to make it look interesting, and later added some vague explanation for the bones and skulls. Sometimes it can be hard to justify all the art choices with lore. And we tend to demand an explanation for everything.

GL is clearly one of those things where they figured it would be cool to bring one back as a boss in GW2, since the GW1 lore community had spend such detailed investigations of it. And I thing the lore community deserves credit for their work yet again. It is inspiring to the developers to see how deep the players dive into this sort of stuff.

@snakeboy: Really? I guess you don’t read interviews with Jeff and Ree very often. They never speak in absolutes, for the simple reason that they alluded to in this very interview in fact:

we leave a lot of hooks so future designers, future storytellers, ourselves in the future have a lot of potential that we can build off.

Anet has a tendency to keep themselves open, especially in things not stated in the game or books, so that should they or future employees come up with a different idea that’s liked more, they can go with that. If they answered everything in absolutes, then they’re forced to go down that story path irregardless or people will scream bloody-retcon-murder.

Scott McGough.6897:

My feelings aren’t hurt. But maybe for the next interview post title, go with last names only? “McG” only has three letters, after all. :-)

Say Scott, would it be possible for you to perhaps address some of the questions in the currently hot lore topics?

Such as, how Asura gates work, and what happened to the morph abilities of the krait?

I dare say, it be dangerous for ArenaNet employees to write in this forum. Just one comment and BAM we drag you in!

Scott McGough.6897:

My feelings aren’t hurt. But maybe for the next interview post title, go with last names only? “McG” only has three letters, after all. :-)

First names only may work better – Ree is shorter than Soesbee and Scott shorter than McGough.

Narcemus.1348:

I dare say, it be dangerous for ArenaNet employees to write in this forum. Just one comment and BAM we drag you in!

tosses net on Scott OKAY BOYS! Let’s reel ’im in!

Though in seriousness, it would be nice to have more frequent dev postings, if only to now and then tell us a small hint or something whether we’re on the right track or not or to clarify a confusion about pre-presented lore.

Agreed!

More frequent posting would make it so I have to pull out my net turret a little less often

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Narcemus.1348:

I dare say, it be dangerous for ArenaNet employees to write in this forum. Just one comment and BAM we drag you in!

tosses net on Scott OKAY BOYS! Let’s reel ’im in!

Engineers, power up your magnets! Mesmers, deploy your Temporal Curtains! Guardians, throw your Binding Blades! Necromancers, prepare your Spectral Grasps! Thieves, ready your Scorpion Wires! Annnnnd GO!

draxynnic.3719:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Narcemus.1348:

I dare say, it be dangerous for ArenaNet employees to write in this forum. Just one comment and BAM we drag you in!

tosses net on Scott OKAY BOYS! Let’s reel ’im in!

Engineers, power up your magnets! Mesmers, deploy your Temporal Curtains! Guardians, throw your Binding Blades! Necromancers, prepare your Spectral Grasps! Thieves, ready your Scorpion Wires! Annnnnd GO!

HEY! Don’t neglect Warrios, we have throwing bolas. I can trip him over if he tries to escape

But yeah, we need more dev involvement down here. Lore is the number one reason I play this game.

I was thinking specifically of pulls, not immobolises and other movement-preventing effects. If I tried to list all of them, the target would get away well before I was finished. :P

*Spectral Grasp*