Guild Wars 2

Do we know any of the limitations of portals, for example what is the difference from Portal to the Edge of the Mists, Steam Creature portal, Asura Gate, Underworld Portals, Molten portals, and etc..

1) First what is required to create a portal, does it require more energy to transport more people, or longer distances or is it all cost similar amounts of energy?

2) Do any portals use energy types other than magic?

3) How well can equipment move through portals? (I don’t believe I have ever seen anything but creatures and the things attached to them come through portals.)

4) Could these types of portals be used to access the rift in the mists, and is the rift possible what scarlet believes that she saw as the eternal alchemy?

I doubt a bookah such as you would understand the technical complexities of the asuran gate technology.

very funny…but looking at the asura gates you would assume magitech/ magically powered devices, but I would guess that Steam portals on the other hand are more likely powered either through steam as in steam creatures and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/0/03/Steam_Portal.jpg it looks to be putting off steam, or possibly electricity.

1). Asuran gate technology requires some kind of device- traditionally a full gate on both sides, but more recent developments have made it possible to travel with just some sort of small device on the users end. I don’t think we know too much about other portals… we do see the process to create an underworld portal only requires a magical ritual, but that portal was also only one-way. Steam portals seemed to require massive constructions to generate, but not always (although it could be argued that the construction is just on the other side), and Scarlet’s also don’t appear to experience that limitation. Molten portals, to the best of my knowledge, also just require magic rituals. I don’t think we know anything about the creation of the frost portals Jormag’s minions use.

2. It is possible that steam portals might not use magic, but we really don’t know.

3. I don’t think there’s anything saying that equipment has any difficulty. Your observation, while correct, must be balanced against the fact that Tyria has very little in the way of self-propelled machinery. We do know that golems and wagons appear to have no difficulty with asura gates.

4. In theory, I would guess that the more generic mists portals might be repurposed to such an end, but we haven’t seen such yet. The others seem to only link between places in Tyria, between Tyria and wherever the steam creatures come from, or between the Underworld and Tyria (while the Underworld is part of the Mists, keep in mind that the portals are almost always opened from the other side, and moving between two places in the Mists might require different tools than moving from the Mists to Tyria).

1) Depends on the portal you’re talking about. All we know for certainty though is how portals to the Mists work, though even that’s not 100% absolute certainty. Oh, and how mesmer portals work.

2) Fully unknown, afaik.

3) In Edge of Destiny, the group brings a full cart of inactive golems through the asura gate. In Lion’s Arch (pre-destruction), there was the charr merchant with a bunch of rifles – though we never see the rifles – mechanics is fun like that. So I would argue, normal circumstances no problem. After all, in Edge of Destiny (again), the asura gate in Ebonhawke is stated to be for supplies from Kryta primarily.

4) On the first part, any portal into the Mists leads into the Rift in some way, so the lore goes (this is why some such as myself believe the realms of the gods is within the Rift); standard portals to the Mists are made in two fashions – firstly, being made from the Mists, as it is already a place that can access all times and places; the exact mechanics of this is unknown, just that it’s a naturally possible thing within the Mists (this is also the case for where Avatars brought players into the Underworld, Fissure of Woe, and Domain of Anguish I believe). Secondly, via effectively tearing the fabric of reality where the veil between Tyria and the Mists is thin – this happens, as far as we know, in places of many deaths (such as how Lord Odran made portals, or Priestess Rhie in the human personal story) or constant use of the first form (such as Godslost Swamp and Reaper’s Gate).

Scarlet has broken whatever limitations they were on asura portals so it’s likely that new villains will break the current limitations whenever they need to as well. I wouldn’t expect a full explanation of how the airships can pass through Scarlet’s portals into specific locations and then teleport pirates to the ground, or any reason why that fantastic technology isn’t used elsewhere or any reason why nobody can reverse engineer it. Our allies will be stuck with the same old portals or else things would be too easy.

Stooperdale.3560:

Scarlet has broken whatever limitations they were on asura portals so it’s likely that new villains will break the current limitations whenever they need to as well. I wouldn’t expect a full explanation of how the airships can pass through Scarlet’s portals into specific locations and then teleport pirates to the ground, or any reason why that fantastic technology isn’t used elsewhere or any reason why nobody can reverse engineer it. Our allies will be stuck with the same old portals or else things would be too easy.

Except Scarlet isn’t using asura portals- we are told that she has reversed engineered steam creature technology, and we don’t know what if any limitations existed on those portals. The Aetherblade ship-to-ground teleportation just seems to be advanced air magic, a mechanized version of Lightning Flash.

As far as reverse engineering goes, Vorpp already has. Remember Clockwork Chaos? We got into the Funhouse by doing exactly what you complain hasn’t been done. I do agree that widespread implementation would be unlikely on the grounds of it making future plots too easy to resolve.

alright I got a few more questions to add again (thank you for all the answers btw)

1) Why can some portals be attacked and damaged/destroyed when anything that could hit them should just move through them (except asura gates and steam portals perhaps)? Would this be a way to fight enemies, Open a portal use ranged troops inside to attack then close it before the enemy reaches you and open the portal elsewhere to keep attacking them while being unreachable? could this same strategy be used with a wall on the other side of the portal with Arrowslits or something similar.

2) can portals be used through solid objects (ex. could scarlet just teleport down inside lions arch rather than drilling, assuming whatever she is digging for is in a cavern or other such open space.)?

3) What happens when a portal “malfunctions”? are there any cases of people coming only half way through?

4) Captain shud has said that she owns most of the asura gates in lions arch, so who owns the ones in rata sum (possibly the arcane council) so, do we have any information on this?

1) I’m going to call mechanics on this. In GW1, we had to kill those maintaining portals (or stand in a capture-the-altar style way). As for the strategy you mention – you mean firing through the portal? If so, I suggest doing the event in Bloodtide for getting into the city. (If you don’t get a chance – there are fireballs shot through the portals, similar to the ones shot by the Firestorm and dredge Shamans).

2) Uh… yeah? All asura gates were underground thus going through “solid objects”. And if portals can lead across dimensions, I doubt a solid wall would stop them.

3) I am tempted to say yes there is such a case, but I cannot recall where it’s mentioned – though I believe it is in relevance to asura technology.

4) Arcane Council does. I don’t think it’s any individual, but they pretty much own all major asura gate stuff. Gate Hub Plaza gates seems to be the sole exception here.

1. All of the portals that can be attacked, to my knowledge, are one-way. So our attacks, rather than passing through, instead destabilize the portal. Technically your arrow idea would be sound, but the difficulty inherent in opening any kind of portal puts a severe limit on the practicality. Rather than used on the battlefield I imagine it’d only be worthwhile to assassinate high-value targets, and even then it’d be better to send a swarm of expendable soldiers through to be sure of the kill.

2. Physical barriers wouldn’t be much of an issue. The question would be rather you could place the portal within the acceptable margin for error- in other words, how accurately they can be placed, which is unknown in almost all cases mentioned so far in this thread. For the Scarlet example, though, I’d definitely say no- around the drill bit you can see blueish energy spiraling up, which suggests that it doubles as an extractor.

3. While that possibility is mentioned a couple times in game, I don’t think there’s actually any reported cases of it happening. We do see several accounts of asuran portals taking travelers to an unintended destination- a human ending up in the Black Citadel instead of Divinity’s Reach, or a couple asura coming out in front of Thaumanova, to list the two I can think of off the top of my head- but the victims of these sorts of mishaps seem none the worse for wear. As for the magic portals, none of them are used by friendly factions, so we don’t know if they malfunction, let alone what might happen.

4. They’re most likely owned by the Arcane Council or considered public property. Given how essential the gates are to traversing Rata Sum, however, I suspect that those don’t entail fees for the average citizen, and so would not likely be the profit-turning goldmines that Captain Shud’s are.

they are fonctionning like the stargate ones in my opinion.