Just taking people’s opinions and reasons to believe that a race is close to going extinct.
Here is my personal list.
1) Kodan abandoning their old lands while being chase by minions of Jormag, moving too close to other races and making enemies like the dredge (which I believe to be much stronger of a race than the Kodan) No centralized leadership to unite the remaining tribes. They don’t seem to offer any service that isn’t already better provided by another major race and much of their population seems to have died off or still be fighting in the north (areas of the map we haven’t reached yet)
2) Quaggan physically weak with few skills to use to create things for trade with other races, displaced from their ancient homes by the DSD, hunted by krait. Their primary means of defense is a social taboo. Most of their technology seems to be wood or shell based for weaponry and living spaces.
3) Hylek could either easily die out or could unite and become a fairly powerful nation, after Zhaitan’s minions attacks on bloodtide coast and sparkfly fens that caused many Hylek to join together tribes to fight back the corruption, this alliance could lead to a mighty nation or they could break apart, and as weaker tribes start infighting again and easily be conquered by another race like the krait. They do have great knowledge of herbs for poison making (but probably also remedies and medical uses) which could be a very valuable trading partner.
I get the feeling Kodan reproduce slowly.
The quaggan have quite a few examples that show they are doing horribly. For instance, the personal story for the vigil where you have to protect the eggs or that particular tribe will fail completely. That mission also shows how ridiculous vulnerable the eggs are.
Hylek seem to be doing fairly well. They haven’t been completely displaced like the other two races, and they’re pretty competent at defending themselves.
My vote is the quaggan.
Kodan seem to be stable. They are hardy and nomadic. Furry Norn kind of…
The Quaggan are pretty much useless. They’d probably be best served integrating into neighboring communities for protection since they seem unable to defend themselves.
Hylek are actually crazy numerous. Keep in mind there are large populations of Hylek near Rata Sum and the Pale Tree who haven’t been driven off by Zhaitan’s minions.
I’d say Quaggan are in the worst shape, though their issue isn’t physical weakness but a culturally ingrained victim complex. The Quaggan’s problem isn’t that they cant fight but that they are afraid of fighting cause they are afraid of beserking. The shame of that is so ingrained it overrides their desire to survive and so they look to others to protect them or try and run away.
Physically Quaggan are probably quite strong. Just look at how ripped a beserking Quaggan is. Sure, they have a fat appearance but that is common among sea creatures for warmth. Just look at sea lions.
Kodan seem to be stable. They are hardy and nomadic. Furry Norn kind of…
The Quaggan are pretty much useless. They’d probably be best served integrating into neighboring communities for protection since they seem unable to defend themselves.
Hylek are actually crazy numerous. Keep in mind there are large populations of Hylek near Rata Sum and the Pale Tree who haven’t been driven off by Zhaitan’s minions.
Yeah but seems the Hylek populations near rata sum and Caledon are all separate tribes and in some story mission it shows them battling each other, not to mention the krait that they call their ancient enemies trying to enslave or kill them in the area.
Hylek doing well? Wut. With the exception of a very few evil tribes, most of them are either terrorized by krait (Caledon, Metrica), at the brink of starvation (Kessex), targeted by the Inquest (Mt. Maelstrom) or threatened by Risen (Bloodtide Coast, Sparkfly fen). Also while they lay many eggs, not that many hylek actually make it to adulthood according to their blog. I’d say the number of their young and tribe mentality actually work against them because they can’t support themselves in situations like those.
The Kodan were hit hard but I don’t see them anywhere near extinction.
Quaggan would be near extinct …if not everyone and their mother rushed for their help. Cough, what. :P
Then again, I see the centaurs walking down a long and lonely road towards extinction. At least the ones in Tyria. I think a dev said that they cannot capitulate and that they have nowhere else to go, so it’s a long drawn-out losing battle for them which Outcast Quindova also alludes to.
I think that hyleck are like grawl. Not united and not strong so each tribe is besieged by it’s own problems but the hyleck as a whole are so spread out that they are in no danger of extinction. They just aren’t a power.
Kodan really are like furry norn. Everything said about how kodan may be becoming extinct also applies to the norn.
Quaggan are the dodo. A protected sanctuary is their only hope.
Hylek can’t really form a solid nation. It’s noted in lore the different skintones means different personalities really.
Red and Orange have the most toxins, so they are the most violent and agressive. Yellow flip-flops between the two sides, and Blue and Green are the nice ones (Because of less toxins naturally in body).
Quaggan I doubt are in danger of being extinct, same with Hylek. Sure, some tribes are having trouble but overall they aren’t losing major numbers daily. A few tribes of Quaggan that I recall are actually in sheltered areas without a major cause of trouble.
Kodan I doubt are nearing extinction. There are the ones in Frostgorge, as well as a stable group in Snowden Drifts and Fireheart Rise, both of which are rather large. Likewise, there are probably more of their iceberg ships elsewhere that we haven’t seen yet.
I think the description of Hylek similar to Grawl is true. Each tribe might have a specific danger/threat to them, but overall the race is stable population wise. Quaggan are similar but a little bit more at threat.
I would say that the northern quaggans – of which they lost 3 of their 5 great villages, and of those the villages that remain, there’s only 3 others (one of which suffers greatly in the Personal Story). Furthermore, they cannot survive warm waters – and with how far south they’re getting pushed, they’re entering warm waters – but their eggs cannot survive the ever-chilling waters that Jormag’s corruption is causing. So unless they have a large population unknown elsewhere, the northern quaggans are going to go extinct if Jormag’s not killed within a decade or so. Southern quaggans are fairing much better, even with krait problems and losing their royalty.
Here’s some other possible races risking extinction:
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Here’s some other possible races risking extinction:
- Centaurs. In their lore, the centaurs are literally out of room to live – they’ve been pushed north by humans, and south by Jormag (for Modniir), and for unknown reasons out of the Maguuma Wastes it seems. Their war with humans have become just as much “we need land to survive!” as much as “I hate humanity for kicking us off our lands!” Furthermore, their unifying leader, Ulgoth, is dead story wise (or so I would presume, since we kill him in Harathi Hinterlands).
- Tengu. Yeah, you may not think it at first. But consider: all tengu from throughout the world live within the Dominion of Winds. Unless they live in freakin skyscrapers or dug deep into the earth for living space underground, the entire race lives within that one city. That’d be like saying all humans ever live within Divintiy’s Reach – not even, actually, due to how much water’s within the wall.
- Clearly the dwarves. No indication they can reproduce so they’re sterile with dwindling numbers from war.
Centaurs also had a fairly large population in Elona. That group may still be alive and well (Although probably enslaved/forced to serve Joko).
Tengu… IIRC, Dominion of Winds isn’t stated to be a single city or simply a walled off nation. They have a fairly hefty amount of land within the walled section, though wiki states it’s basically Sanctum Cay (the island) but their walls ingame include a bit more land. Basically, they could be controlling the Island of Sanctum Cay (which is bordered by the Caledon forest and Kessex Hills), as well as the area between Kessex hills and LA (which is where the one gate is located).
Dwarves we really don’t know anything about their current status besides holding off the bulk of Destroyers deep underground (Deep enough even the Dredge haven’t run into them yet).
How long until humans start riding centaur into battle as part of a self-preservation pact?
I would take a centaur mount into battle against the ogres.
Humans have horses and ponies. Why would they need centaurs as mounts? :P
A full body meatshield, of course. :P
Definitely not the hylek. They reproduce like CRAZY. Older lore texts stated that some of the other races even considered it a boon to society to cull hylek numbers when they started getting out of control. Some hylek tribes may be in dire straits, but the race as a whole is fine. It just needs one tribe getting a foothold in a resource-rich area and their population will explode in no time at all.
I think the problem is people perhaps viewing ingame npcs as say.. the actual population.
I highly doubt LA had 1000-2000 NPCs within it before the battle, yet I’ve heard a population number of something like 50k for the city, with 15k escaping.
For all we know, those various villages may have quite a bit of people, but ingame you see 10-15 quaggan in a village (Or Hylek, or anything else really). Those refugee camps probably have a LOT of people in them, yet ingame have a few.
So when we look at it, we also have to think about possibility of gameplay/lore separation.
One day “I could outrun a centaur” will be nothing but an ancient proverb at this rate. /sheds tear
Though since the dwarves were mentioned… what about the Jotun and the Forgotten?
I’ve been wondering about Giants too.
Jotun and Giants really show no signs of being close to extinction. Jotun are fairly widespread on the shiverpeaks, and Giants while being rare don’t really get treated as such. Giants in GW2 are one of those races that ‘thrives’ but just rarely appears :P.
Forgotton we have no idea about, though I’d wager they are thriving(in a sense) since the ones in the Realm of Torment no longer have constant Margonite and demon threat (Since it was reforemd into Kormir’s realm).
Mursaat are the closest you could get, depending on your viewpoint it could be very few were left at end of GW1/GW beyond, or their military/forces outside their home got wiped out. Seers were implied to be very few though.
The Realm of Torment, according to Sea of Sorrows at least, belongs to Grenth. Not Kormir.
Huh. I recall them calling it at end of Nightfall as Kormir’s realm. Perhaps a section became her realm while the rest maintained it’s current status.
The “Redeemed Realm” (aka renamed Realm of Torment) only came from the gw.dat, actually, which is strictly “non-canon until in-game.” In other words, it doesn’t exist in canon – it was planned but scrapped for unknown reasons.
The ogres seem to have numbers right now but it could get bad for them very quickly. They are stuck in a smallish area between the branded and the charr and, unlike the quaggans, they will try to defend their homes instead of migrate.
I don’t think that the ogres are in a tight space. They may be between the Brand and charr but they hold the entire Blazeridge Mountains, and we don’t know how far east they run. Furthermore, unlike other new races to continental Tyria, the ogres are invaders, not refugees. The Brand has actually helped them take land – until they got so far west they hit it.
Didn’t they do a write up on the ogres pre-launch? I can’t seem to find it. The wiki (for whatever that’s worth) says:
“…the ogres have been progressively moving west into Ascalon, taking both charr and human lands to gain more space for their growing herds.”
Wandering slightly OT for this, but seeing the centaur discussion makes me wonder…
…has anyone ever encountered a risen/icebrood/branded centaur?
Wandering slightly OT for this, but seeing the centaur discussion makes me wonder…
…has anyone ever encountered a risen/icebrood/branded centaur?
Nope, because Centaurs are not in the regions where they would be turned into branded, icebrood, or risen. Besides one group in Snowden drifts (which is on the opposite end of the area from where the Claw of Jormag flies and caused the icebrood controlled haven there), they are all within Kryta and away from the coast. No centaur is within Ascalon (at least no tribes).
(edited by Kalavier.1097)
Humans have horses and ponies. Why would they need centaurs as mounts? :P
There are no horses and ponies in Guild Wars aside from a few off mentions AFAIK.
Humans have horses and ponies. Why would they need centaurs as mounts? :P
There are no horses and ponies in Guild Wars aside from a few off mentions AFAIK.
Undead horsemen, celestial horse(Cantha), all those carriages and wagons. A few npcs mention ponies. There is a good chunk implying or pointing at horses :P.
Horses exist in the world, ingame they simply don’t show up.
Humans have horses and ponies. Why would they need centaurs as mounts? :P
There are no horses and ponies in Guild Wars aside from a few off mentions AFAIK.
Gum Drops, the Noble Steed
Also the carnival knight jousting thing. You can find props for it in Skrittsburg, along with a Skritt who is reading the manual/tale and trying to be a knight if I recall right :P.
There is plenty to point toward horses in GW.
On the southern quaggans:
To a large extent, their fate is tied up with that of humans and sylvari. Both races and and all three orders have shown willingnesses to protect and host quaggans in waterways in their sphere of influence, so as long as Kryta and the Pale Tree continue to hold, the quaggans will probably survive as well – not as a major power, but unlikely to go extinct short of a major disaster than affects more than just the quaggan.
Not a huge note, and may be contributing to the thread going off topic, but canonically horses exist within Tyria, and Humans have access to them. There was a dev before release that mentioned something along the lines of “we didn’t put them in because people would be constantly ask why they aren’t mounts.” (I appologise, I can’t remember the exact wording or the speaker)
As for the OP, it’s likely most races will survive on the planet Tyria. All the races seem to be more or less equally at threat from the elder dragons by design. The only race that might be slightly more at threat may be the Kodan; we simply don’t know how many of their ice ships existed before Jormag awoke.
Just expanding on what Kalavier wrote; given the events of Destiny’s Edge, and the war between Zhaitan and Palawa Joko, it’s highly likely there are very few Forgotten left within the world. The areas they were found in GW1 would firmly be under the control of at least one force.
The only other races that pops to mind is the Seer, but since we only ever saw 1 (maybe 2) in GW1, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume they’re extinct.
Wandering slightly OT for this, but seeing the centaur discussion makes me wonder…
…has anyone ever encountered a risen/icebrood/branded centaur?
There aren’t any of those, but in Nightfall, we did encounter Awakened Centaurs (the Awakened being the undead of Joko’s army, as well as those who splintered away from his control during his incarceration).
So undead Centaurs did turn up, at least in GW1.
The Quaggans believe their goddess to be dead, that is an ominous point of view for such plucky creatures.
Easy, dragons!
Their numbers seem to be under a hundred (and thats including revived ones and lizardish dragons in name only).
Easy, dragons!
Their numbers seem to be under a hundred (and thats including revived ones and lizardish dragons in name only).
If you include dragon champions, it could easily be a lot more.
Tequatl, all those dragon champions flying over Orr (normally and in Arah storymode)…
The many claws of Jormag. The host of branded dragons (Shatterer is merely a title, and handed to the next when one dies)…
Yeah.. :P Also we don’t know if other regions have their own elder dragons (or normal dragons).
Dwarves we really don’t know anything about their current status besides holding off the bulk of Destroyers deep underground (Deep enough even the Dredge haven’t run into them yet).
Dwarves were turned to living stone. I imagine that doesn’t make reproduction possible. It’s likely their numbers will dwindle until one day none are left.
That’s certainly what we’ve been told – the Ritual doomed them to extinction because (it is implied that) in their stone phase they can’t breed, and nobody knows how or even if they can be returned to the flesh and blood phase.
I don’t think it’s been mentioned here yet, but I believe the krait are in a very bad place as well, as far as long-term viability goes. They were driven from their homes, presumably at great loss (everything we’ve heard about them tells us they would be the sort to fight to the bitter end, so whatever happened out in the ocean must have been so crushing a loss that it broke their spirits), and while they’ve lashed up new towers and aren’t much bothered by the quaggans and hylek they most often share territory with, they’ve also earned the ire of most of the major races. So far, that wrath has been restrained on accounts of other problems, but if things ever stabilize for the humans, sylvari, or Lion’s Arch, there’s a good possibility that they’ll come down on the krait hard. Further, they’ve lost several deeps to the risen, including the only one large enough to really qualify as a city, and in the places that they do have a clear leader, there’s usually an event to kill them- assuming those events are canon, they must be running low on the lieutenant grade krait that can span the gap between the normal ones and the true leadership which seems to be hiding away somewhere. Eventually those leaders will have to choose between stepping out and leading directly, exposing themselves to the wandering miscreants commonly known as “adventurers”, or maintaining their isolation and risk being rejected when they do feel safe to return, a la Fallout.
But speaking of that leadership… their race’s culture, which is the only thing capable of holding together a cohesive racial identity, now survives only in ruins long since lost to them, and the oral traditions jealously guarded by the ruling caste. If the Oratuss fall, the krait may well fragment, which presumably is part of why they’ve stayed hidden away- but this fiasco with Scarlet has exposed signs of dissent within that very same Oratuss, which makes the situation all the more fragile.
In effect, the krait are banking on the player races not getting their act together. That’s the only thing that can save them right now. I’d say that qualifies as a pretty precarious situation.
EDIT: I realize that the same scattered argument could be used here as has been used for the kodan and the quaggans, but then we could also argue that there’s a thriving race of flesh-and-blood dwarves chilling on another continent. Until we have something to indicate such (like that aside that most of the kodan did go in another direction), it’ll just be unsubstantiated conjecture- not entirely unreasonable, but still nothing but pure guesswork.
(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)
EDIT: I realize that the same scattered argument could be used here as has been used for the kodan and the quaggans, but then we could also argue that there’s a thriving race of flesh-and-blood dwarves chilling on another continent. Until we have something to indicate such (like that aside that most of the kodan did go in another direction), it’ll just be unsubstantiated conjecture- not entirely unreasonable, but still nothing but pure guesswork.
Humans in Tyria are nothing like humans on Earth! Not knowing what the rest of the planet looks like, and having more than several sea faring societies… it drives me nuts. Throughout our entire Earth history, humans have had an urge to explore that is almost psychotically insatiable.
EDIT: I realize that the same scattered argument could be used here as has been used for the kodan and the quaggans, but then we could also argue that there’s a thriving race of flesh-and-blood dwarves chilling on another continent. Until we have something to indicate such (like that aside that most of the kodan did go in another direction), it’ll just be unsubstantiated conjecture- not entirely unreasonable, but still nothing but pure guesswork.
Humans in Tyria are nothing like humans on Earth! Not knowing what the rest of the planet looks like, and having more than several sea faring societies… it drives me nuts. Throughout our entire Earth history, humans have had an urge to explore that is almost psychotically insatiable.
Though to be fair, humans on Earth haven’t spent most of their history sharing borders with non-human civilizations that want to wipe them out. :P
On a serious note, though, the drive for exploration is really nowhere near as strong as some people romanticize it. Recently we’ve been doing it primarily for science, but before that last century or two, exploration of the sort you’re suggesting was done primarily, if not solely, to find new resources or trade routes to exploit for profit. Looking at Tyria’s history, it could well be that there was never a point when such a venture would’ve been considered profitable.
/takes out manual on krait – I mean.
Personally I wouldn’t be too worried about them. Three things:
a) Krait multiply ridiculously, kinda like Hylek. Go to the lair of the blood witch in Kessex and approach one of those ten-thousand spheres on the ground that are guarded by an unnamed environmental effect. Yep, those are all krait eggs.
Of course one can argue that we don’t know how long their weak and helpless larval stage lasts.
b) We really don’t know where the krait are from exactly – and as such, we don’t know if they all headed to Tyria or whether they escaped south, east and west from Bubbles as well. So there could be krait on other continents too, heck even some unexplored ones.
c) Questionable whether they’d all kill the krait or only cull their numbers. Difficult to say because the game is riding on it’s teen-rating like it’s some kind of bible and avoids our characters being morally ambiguous at all costs. And krait just push for that with their evil-evil status.
As example, Caderyn’s story. Killing krait children goes against Ventari’s teachings. So most of the Sylvari wouldn’t do that. Similarly, not everyone would see that as the right thing to do.
Then again we kinda wiped out an entire city that definitely had hatcheries off-screen without anyone raising a single eyebrow and Trahearne even boasting about it. >???
Tho with the possibility of a krait civil war thanks to the toxic alliance which might or might not shatter their faith in their leadership, I’d say everything’s possible, no matter how unlikely. It’s a rather exciting situation, hehe.
(edited by ElysianEternity.6215)
The kodan scattering isn’t speculation, I’d like to note, but specifically mentioned in their blog post. Most fled north, only a few fled south. Those few Sanctuaries account for all kodan we see.
Tpvp players
/thread
;)
Depends on what you consider as a “minor race”. I’d say dwarves are all but mostly extinct. Giants seem to be very small in population. In Guild Wars we knew that the Seers were near extinct and by the end of War in Kryta the Mursaat were basically butchered.
I’m doing my part every day to help the Centaurs along to their extinction point.
I even have guild events in which the person who gathers the most hooves wins a prize.
The only other races that pops to mind is the Seer, but since we only ever saw 1 (maybe 2) in GW1, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume they’re extinct.
We saw anywhere from 1-3/4 of them, depending on whether they were different Seers or just the same guy every time.
We might as well only see one seer, that was in the end dead and used as a study prop for asura (who’s name I omit, they all are called “shortears” for me) and Livia.
Tpvp players
/thread;)
single tear
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.