Guild Wars 2

This is bugging me, and I don’t want to be offensive to people, but I still want to ask.

It seems like a major thrust of the lore discussions on the official forums is focused on how the common theory or, in many cases, Arenanets written elements are wrong. Is this common, or is there a general reason for this?

Windsagio.1340:

It seems like a major thrust of the lore discussions on the official forums is focused on how the common theory or, in many cases, Arenanets written elements are wrong.

“Common theory” does not necessarily mean well supported theory, or theory without holes. If the argument against the common theory is well sourced and not speculative, I see no problem with questioning it, and in fact hope this is done.

As for Arena Net’s written elements, I’m not sure what you’re referring to, so do you have an example. Please, paraphrase without calling out individuals.

Is this common, or is there a general reason for this?

It’s very common and human nature to try and convince others to your point of view. Some sociologists believe this to be a form of social status climbing (or lowering). By convincing others you are right, you elevate yourself in status among your peers while simultaneously lowering the status of those in the “wrong”.

I think the reason is that we care a lot for the GW lore. We want it to be spot-free. Or in other cases: we all have our own theories and stories we want to see come true within the game.

I think a consequence of caring a lot, is that you’ll develop very clear opinions on how things would/could/should have been. That can unfortunately often be a source of negativity.

It’s sad to see that you get this general impression of “us” (I guess I would be one of those you’re referring to). I assure you: I love the GW universe and I love the lore, that’s why I post “negative” posts. I don’t think of them as negative though (and I try to keep them positive even when I’m posting about an inconsistency or something wrong) – so don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking we hate the game Because we most certainly don’t – quite the opposite!

It’s not really about negativity, it’s about specifically the response to a few big subjects:

1) The Sylvari/Minion thing. It’s to the degree of saying that ArenaNet writers are wrong or lying.

2) The Mursaat thing, which is to the degree that objections to model changes lead to countersuggestions that require larger model changes (eg seers and forgotten).

Maybe it’s the spotless thing, where as a community people have a very strong picture of the lore as it should be according to the lore community, and so there’s strong conflicts when people not in the lore community see what seem to be ‘obvious’ answers (as with both hte Sylvari and the putatitve Mursaat)

It’s a case of people being very invested with their interpretations, having spent a lot of time and brainpower working on them. This isn’t a bad thing . . . the inflexibility is, however.

Simply put: Just because a theory is popular doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look at the holes, regardless of how well supported it is otherwise. By examining the holes we may either find that they’re not actually the holes we think they are, or that they are actually a sucking black hole that causes the entire thing to collapse and cause us to look elsewhere.

Conversely, just because a theory goes against the popular one doesn’t mean it’s not worth examining.

As far as the two theories you’ve mentioned go, Wind… I believe the problem there is that we found ourselves in a position where we were repeating the same points very regularly, on plot threads ANet can and has gone years without going back to. Put simply, everyone who’s been around for a while became entrenched (a longer while than I’ve been, for the mursaat, but from what I’ve heard the circumstances may have been similar.) I don’t feel any of us want to feel ANet’s wrong, it’s just that it got to the point where we lost sight of what was ANet and what was us.

As for generally seeing people contest popular theories, I think it boils down to a matter of methodology. To oversimplify, you have the group to whom theory crafting is “wouldn’t it be exciting if…”, who tend to get the force of the hype train behind them, and those who treat theory crafting as a way to try to predict the most likely future course of the plot, who tend to be a lot harder to beat down in an argument. If you squint at it hard enough, it’s a case of unstoppable force vs. immovable object.

That’s not a bad analysis. In my case, there’s also an element that I am quite willing to argue both sides of a case if I think both sides have valid points that have not been raised. This means I have a natural tendency to end up on the underdog side, since the popular side has usually already had people making all the good points and plenty of not so good arguments as well.

(This has resulted in times when I’ve been accused of being biased towards the opposition by both sides of an argument, albeit at different times. It says something about how emotions can rise in such debates that such are the wages of assuming a moderate position.)

Mind you, I’m not inclined to resist when the evidence does become conclusive – however, I do think a lot of people have the tendency to jump the gun on declaring it so.

Windsagio.1340:

It’s not really about negativity, it’s about specifically the response to a few big subjects:

1) The Sylvari/Minion thing. It’s to the degree of saying that ArenaNet writers are wrong or lying.

Sylvari as minions of Mordremoth is an old theory that was intended by ArenaNet to be impossible to prove. It was the truth the whole time, but Ree Soesbee wrote the sylvari lore in-game to ensure that players thinking the truth could only guess. It was impossible to prove. On top of this many well informed, well sourced and consistently excellent lore fans wrote convincing counter arguments that provoked excellent questions which are still unanswered today. Many of these fans not only argued against the theory, but they also didn’t want it to be true – believing alternative theories were superior storytelling.

What you seeing is a fallout from 2+ years of some of the most dedicated lore fans arguing against the never-ending sylvari minion theory. Supporters of the theory were never able to convincingly put it across (by design) and critics were consistent. This is not the norm in the lore forum. This particular reveal just happens to be one of the biggest, long term contended theories in the game and the confirmation is still relatively new.

Combined with general discontent with how some of the lore and story directions have been handled since the Living World began, some people are less than excited.

Windsagio.1340:

2) The Mursaat thing, which is to the degree that objections to model changes lead to countersuggestions that require larger model changes (eg seers and forgotten).

I’m not too sure what you’re talking about here. Faithfulness to the GW1 vision is very important to a lot of lore fans, so radically altering one of the most iconic races of the game would be unsurprisingly controversial. I haven’t seen too much discussion of opinions on the model changes, rather lots of skepticism and caution about jumping to conclusions when it comes to deciding the figures are mursaat. The reality is, it’s unknown, they could be something else. Many people in the community dislike it when discussions treat speculation and assumptions as fact. That was a big issue with the sylvari minion theory (Colin even said in an interview that Ree revised sylvari in-game lore to ensure she didn’t give too much away). Whether a theory turns out to be true or not isn’t as important as whether or not the community is able to discuss it without treating assumptions and speculation as facts. That might be some of what you’re seeing.

Windsagio.1340:

Maybe it’s the spotless thing, where as a community people have a very strong picture of the lore as it should be according to the lore community, and so there’s strong conflicts when people not in the lore community see what seem to be ‘obvious’ answers (as with both hte Sylvari and the putatitve Mursaat)

I think you misunderstand. The “lore community” has discussed the sylvari as minions theory literally dozens of times over the years. The discussions date back to before the GW2 forums existed and people discussed GW2 over on GW2Guru, the primary fansite at the time. People “outside the lore community” are not reaching these conclusions any faster than the people who frequently post here, I think the standard for discussion here is likely a little higher (or some people try to hold it to a higher standard), asking for better sources and cross-checking theories with other well informed players who have a wide breadth of Tyrian lore knowledge. It’s something you won’t see unless you’ve been here consistently, most of us don’t outright discuss some things which are “obvious” because we’ve discussed them in the past.

I don’t think there is an issue of the lore community being unable to see things because they are too occupied with how they want things to be, the first example you gave is actually something that has been discussed to death here. Trust me, we all saw it and discussed it. It was seen long ago, it was unconfirmable until now and the strongest supporting evidence was introduced with Living World.

Things which are “obvious” are often incorrect. Have a poke around the archives, I think you’ll find many of the discussions that hit sites like reddit or tumblr today, those discussions were had here days, weeks, months or even years before, somewhere in here.

Shiren, I end up reading your post as "Anet hides their intent and many years of dedicated POV pushers (to use a wiki term) had a strong impact on the communities perception of the issues in question, to the point of having a strong codex of fanon.{

Windsagio.1340:

1) The Sylvari/Minion thing. It’s to the degree of saying that ArenaNet writers are wrong or lying.

I wouldn’t doubt that I’m amongst those you think are claiming Anet writers are wrong/lying. But – be it me or what I’ve seen of others – it’s not that we’re saying Anet’s “wrong” or “lying” (at best, the only claims of lying would be about the whole “this was always the plan” they began saying, to which my personal response is “of course they’d say this, whether or not its true”). Rather, folks are stating that there are contradictions or things that don’t make sense.

This also holds true for the mursaat discussions – the changes appear contradictory or, for lack of a better short term, illogical to us.

Then there’s those who simply argue what they want as what it should be.

Windsagio.1340:

Shiren, I end up reading your post as "Anet hides their intent and many years of dedicated POV pushers (to use a wiki term) had a strong impact on the communities perception of the issues in question, to the point of having a strong codex of fanon.

That’s not what Shiren was saying. Basically, in regards to the sylvari case, there’s a LOT of conflicts and questions left with this “grand reveal” which lead those who look at lore on the whole to go wondering “how can this be?” despite the fact this was planned from the get go.

Basically, ArenaNet intentionally set up a huge two-year long red herring, and though they revealed the truth behind the red herring, they have not (yet) established how it is what it is, and not the red herring.

Those who you seem to think are calling Anet wrong or liars merely point out that it’s not yet established how it isn’t the red herring, pointing to why everything points to the red herring.

In terms of literature structure, they effectively went too far to establish that red herring – and took too long to reveal it, in some views – that the truth just doesn’t make as much sense as the red herring does, thus creating inconsistencies and a nonsensical situation, despite it having been guessed by many.

Shiren summarized it nicely IMO.

I don’t consider myself part of a community, but similarly to other frequenters I do put high value in critical thinking when it comes to lore and theories.

Aside from there being different types of how people go about lore, there’s also a line to draw about the experience and standard of people.

As example, I’ve seen people who jumped on the Scarlet-hate bandwagon calling her a mary sue, yet at the same time proposed ideas like evil twin and whatnot for her that were /just as bad/. A whole lot of people are like this and actually that’s okay.
They’re readers, not writers. Consumers, not creators. They just don’t have the experience.
If you were to ask a random person who never roleplayed much before to make a rp character, you’re very likely to encounter this.
They don’t see how fallacious their own creation is until they’re forced to apply logic to them. If they never create fiction themselves, they’re even more likely to only see issues on a superficial level. And the the thing is, the same thinking goes for all writing.
As a result, this kind of people most likely has a lower standard to meet.
They’re easier to please. Easier to hype too. And no, having a low standard isn’t a bad thing by itself.

It just becomes a bad thing when it becomes the goal line for the writers …and clashes with the second group.

On the other hand we have people with a high standard. People who either occupy themselves a lot with writing or just happen to be very critical people. They know that good writing relies on how logic is applied to it. They’re more likely to see fallacies.
Since they see and thus care more about the details, they’re harder to please when they’re the readers. That might make them cynical in the eyes of other people even though they might love the series in question with passion.
A high standard by itself is also not a bad thing. But it also can get bad. Writers may lose their original vision of their work by starting to pander to please and that usually backfires.

Though usually any creator, be it artist, writer, designer, musician should seek to improve and thus aim for the high standard. So, the conflict here is people with a high standard hope that whatever they’re invested in aims to develop towards their standard. When it appears that a much lower standard is what is aimed for…well, yeah.

And here the last factor IMO, which… yanno I blame for most of this debacle and even for why there’s disagreement in the group of more critical people about these theories.
Long story short, it’s the lore delivery. In this case, the lore is so ridiculously widespread and scattered and poorly presented in game that it adds another layer to the problem of experience of story and world-building and theorycrafting.

With the sylvari/minion theory, yes the hints to the lore were there. Problem, although there were potential ‘obvious’ hints that could be interpreted as many things and minions being one of them, there were even more hints that could be taken as evidence /against/ it. Like Malyck as example. People most likely weren’t so opposed to the theory cuz of mere personal taste alone, but because it was fallacious in their eyes.
There was absolutely nothing ingame that could be taken as strong evidence for it until Mawdrey maybe, while there were more points to disprove it.

Furthermore, we could have the very same kind of argument about 6 gods = 6 dragons and although there’s the obvious connection to draw, when you analyze it there’s holes. On the other hand, Anet could show up and suddenly provide the pieces in lore needed to make it work and all of a sudden the conclusion is true (although the theory isn’t sound.)

Sooo from my viewpoint, the dilemma around the sylvari/minion theory boils down to a Fallacy Fallacy. (A really weird and skewered kind of fallacy fallacy tho)
…which is a /really/ weird and rare thing to come across when discussing fiction. <_>

Well, clearly it’s my fault for caring about the lore regarding the sylvari too much. I’ll take this as a lesson to stop caring.

Mawdrey, as previously discussed, doesn’t really prove anything. In the process of creating Mawdrey, no less then twelve magical reagents from all over Tyria have gone into it. We can rule out the Destroyer Stone as having had a cleansing influence, but when we put together the rest, it’s entirely possible that we’ve reproduced something similar to the Forgotten ritual on it.

Better evidence came from the apparent vulnerability of sylvari to being influenced, which first started appearing with Scarlet towards the end of Season 1 and Aerin towards the start of Season 2. However, while a lot of people crowed “Sylvari minions confirmed!” at the time, this was highly circumstantial. It was just as easily explained by Mordremoth’s affinity with plants meaning that it was more skilled at corrupting plants and less skilled at corrupting mammals than the other dragons. And a lot of the logical reasoning for the theory being originally proposed was debunked in various ways – good at the time, but overturned by later evidence (a lot of people claim the overturning evidence doesn’t count for various reasons, but frankly, that was grasping at straws). In the end, it proved to be correct, but the theory had already become regarded by far too many as gospel truth based on the wrong evidence before the right evidence had even started to appear.

The other bit which I didn’t get to, which is probably actually a better example is the “X, which there are many many clear examples where the authorial intent is that they’re villains are actually good guys or even heroic”.

There’s a lot which we’re seeing with the Mursaat right now, but there’s also a concurrent thread doing the same thing with Scarlet.

I’m tempted to call Draco In Leather Trousers, but it’s a little more complex than that.

What I would say is that they’re antiheroic at best, and at worst they’re people whose plans may have resulted in some greater good but were primarily intended to benefit themselves.

The mursaat has some basis from the apparent mursaat being presented as allies in the trailer… however, first, an ally doesn’t need to be someone who you wouldn’t be openly or covertly fighting if you didn’t have a more important common enemy (see: Stalin in WW2 and the following Cold War). Second, it’s quite likely that none of the mursaat we see are those that partook in the events in GW1. It’s possible for the race as a whole to be more layered while those we were familiar with were still villains.

Both were far too callous about innocent life to ever be considered good guys regardless of their ultimate aims though, IMO. Scarlet, for instance, depopulated one of Tyria’s major cities – if she cared about good of Tyria, with her apparent skills at diplomacy and skullduggery she could have found another way to do it. Such as setting up the Tyrian equivalent of a shell company looking to explore for a magical resource

The anti-villain thing really isn’t tied much with the other aspects we’ve discussed, but… as for why I feel it’s happening? Deep or relatable villains are kind of the hip thing in this day and age. I know I certainly tend to like them better. The easiest way to build those into a black-and-white story where you interact more often via shooting than monologues is to add extenuating circumstances (e.g. the mursaat were doing what was necessary to survive/preserve the world) or good intentions (e.g. Scarlet was trying to make Mordremoth die) to a villain who still has a lot of unanswered questions that could fit them, like either of these examples. We even see a little the other way around, starting with a hero and wanting something to tarnish them a bit- you might be familiar with the posts that want Kryta to be more hawkish, or took Canach’s side even before we were written to persecute him.

Windsagio.1340:

1) The Sylvari/Minion thing. It’s to the degree of saying that ArenaNet writers are wrong or lying.

The answer is complicated, but basically has more to do with psychology than ANet or its writers.

Windsagio.1340:

where as a community people have a very strong picture of the lore as it should be according to the lore community

Well this is certainly part of the complicated answer.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s a case of people being very invested with their interpretations, having spent a lot of time and brainpower working on them. This isn’t a bad thing . . . the inflexibility is, however.

And this builds onto the complexity of the answer. But for the most part it’s this. This is the sort of thing you’ll encounter a lot in life, people who have a set of believes which when question results in cognitive dissonance. To copy past from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance), when people are confronted with contradiction information they will:
*Change behavior or cognition (“I will not eat any more of this doughnut”)
*Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition (“I’m allowed to cheat every once in a while”)
*Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions (“I’ll spend 30 extra minutes at the gym to work this off”)
*Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs (“This doughnut is not high fat”)

We see a lot of the last point.

CureForLiving.5360:

We see a lot of the last point.

From both sides, I must point out.

We hold ANet to a very high standard. This is a story some of us have invested a couple years in, other a dozen years in. We want to see where it goes and we want it to make sense the entire way. If something doesn’t make sense, my first assumption is that maybe I missed something. If I didn’t, then what I want is for it to be explained or fixed. The idea of a “lore bug” is something I am okay with as long as they are willing to fix the “bug.”

A common complaint I hear from GW1 players is that GW2 perverts a lot of the concepts of GW1. But regardless of the amount of gameplay changes, I believe the story should remain consistent. Not just because I believe GW1 players deserve to see their story all the way through, but also because I believe ANet is capable of it.

The bigger the story gets, the more they have to keep track of and the easier it is to make mistakes. We all realize this. We just think ANet is able to handle it.