Guild Wars 2

So – has nobody noticed that the bloodstone lore has been completely re-written between GW1 and GW2?

During GW1 the lore established that the bloodstones were created by the human gods to contain magic.
Apparently in GW2 the lore tells us they’re made by the seers.

I’m curious how people feel about retconning things so hard. I for one dislike it.

Well, it wasn’t necessarily retconned, but we realized how biased lore was to make it human-centric. Now that the Priory got multiracial, things were bound to be rewritten because they were simply wrong.
The story of Ascalon follows: as a human in GW1, Charr are the invador against which we have to defend, while in fact the Charr were there first, and the humans are the actual conquerors.
Kinda like in the western world, most people think that the US is the primary responsible for the resolution of the WWII, while in fact it was the Russians that played the biggest part.

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

it wasn’t retconned? it was exactly that.
If you’re going to make a new story – don’t center it on the old lore. The lore wasn’t biased – it was human-centric because it was the lore of a game where you could only play as humans.

That doesn’t make it biased or wrong. You have no proof that it was “biased”. It was the lore.

Why change old lore? Why not make new lore? Or create tie-ins with old lore without changing it.
I find it difficult caring about the story and becoming invested when I realize that this current lore might just as well get disregarded and re-written into whatever suits them in the future.

Why bother establishing a universe for a franchise when you’re just going to change it all up to suit whatever your whims are anyway?

How exactly were things “wrong”? Where is the evidence for it?

The story of Ascalon is well known to me – and I am well aware Humans pushed the Charr from Ascalon – what you might not be aware of is that the Charr pushed southward towards what is now Ascalon and fought the Forgotten for dominion over the area in the Blazeridge Mountains.
If anything – Ascalon belonged to neither humans nor Charr. Upon defeating the Forgotten they took the lands – which were later taken by the Humans.

They were certainly not there first and have about as much claim to the lands as any other conqueror has.

Maybe read up on your lore a bit better. Charr-lover.

The Charr were once a primitive people, filled with rage and a primal drive to dominate and control. They fought everything that threatened them – even one another – only surviving this brutal period by evolving into a strict hierarchical society. Disparate, fierce, and independent warbands unified under a single leader, the Khan-Ur, for the good of the race, and a golden age of Charr dominance began.

No longer clamoring over the same territories, the unified Charr spread throughout the northern reaches of their homeland, and down into the lands east of the Shiverpeak Mountains. The Charr subjugated or destroyed any and all who dared defy them within their territories; they were masters of all they surveyed.

With dominance, however, came the inevitable problems. Internal strife, reckless power-mongering, and brutal feuds threatened to tear apart this otherwise secure empire. Only the strong personality of the Khan-Ur kept this ferocious and, yes, still-primitive race unified.

Other than internal conflicts, the only real threat to the Charr at this time was the Forgotten, who dwelled within the Crystal Desert far to the south. But, through judicious use of the mountains dividing their lands from those of the Forgotten, the Charr continued to maintain undisputed control over the northern lands. And, as the Forgotten pulled back, called to duty by some other power, they ceased to threaten the Charr.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Ecology_of_the_Charr

This is official – established lore.

Now after reading that – look at :
https://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/9b/Tyria_poster_map.jpg

See that big place that says “Charr homelands?” That’s where your Charr are from. That’s way north of what we call Ascalon today.

So yeah – the conquerors got conquered – Boo hoo for the charr.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

I know – the reason I didn’t bring that up is that said retcon is SO bad and so blatantly against GW2 lore ( which apparently they care about more than GW1 lore) that I’m half-hoping it’s a ruse, a lie, fabricated evidence.

Still – if it turns out that they are simply going to go with this as being the actual truth – I’m honestly going to drop all interest in this game’s lore or story. It’s a shame too – because I always felt this franchise had some of the most fun, unique and interesting lore around.

I’m more upset with the lack of resolution of plot holes and unanswered questions left behind by HoT. I’ll be more than happy to get worked up over the possible retconning once we get some actual, in-depth stuff on the Pale Tree, Zojja, Logan, the Nightmare Court, and if Treesus is gonna have an actual memorial like Eir got. :x

TheOrlyFactor.8341:

I’m more upset with the lack of resolution of plot holes and unanswered questions left behind by HoT. I’ll be more than happy to get worked up over the possible retconning once we get some actual, in-depth stuff on the Pale Tree, Zojja, Logan, the Nightmare Court, and if Treesus is gonna have an actual memorial like Eir got. :x

Yes that too, the fact all these important plot lines are completely dropped and unresolved drives me crazy.

The Pale Tree, Zojja and logan almost died and were in critical condition last we saw them. That’s kinda important to follow up on (this happened several times in the PS as well). I really don’t get what’s wrong with these writers. I would love to spend a day at Anet’s writing department and see what kind of weird things transpire there.

@Harper My point was just to make you understand that the Humans don’t have a better claim to Ascalon than the Charr who pushed the Grawl and Forgotten off their land, but whatever.
Technically speaking, the Human Gods are responsible for the splitting of the original Bloodstone into 5 pieces, so one could argue that they are still the creators of the modern Bloodstones, but not the original one.

I’m surprised that this discussion is happening now, so long after the creation of Guild Wars 2. I mean all of this information about the Seers and the Elder Dragons changed Guild Wars’ Lore years ago. Why is this piece of information suddenly such a huge problem?

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

TheOrlyFactor.8341:

I’m more upset with the lack of resolution of plot holes and unanswered questions left behind by HoT. I’ll be more than happy to get worked up over the possible retconning once we get some actual, in-depth stuff on the Pale Tree, Zojja, Logan, the Nightmare Court, and if Treesus is gonna have an actual memorial like Eir got. :x

Yes that too, the fact all these important plot lines are completely dropped and unresolved drives me crazy.

The Pale Tree, Zojja and logan almost died and were in critical condition last we saw them. That’s kinda important to follow up on (this happened several times in the PS as well). I really don’t get what’s wrong with these writers. I would love to spend a day at Anet’s writing department and see what kind of weird things transpire there.

I doubt it’s the same team that did GW1’s lore.

Story quality has really really decreased – and I was okay with it – but changing very strongly established things like this means that we can’t really take any lore or story seriously anymore since they might decide to change it again tomorrow.
Who’s to say they wont’ give us another dragon. Because why not.

Really sad.

Djahlat.9610:

@Harper My point was just to make you understand that the Humans don’t have a better claim to Ascalon than the Charr who pushed the Grawl and Forgotten off their land, but whatever.
Technically speaking, the Human Gods are responsible for the splitting of the original Bloodstone into 5 pieces, so one could argue that they are still the creators of the modern Bloodstones, but not the original one.

My point is that the old lore isn’t wrong just because it isn’t multiracial. The old game is not invalidated because it had one playable race instead of five.

By that logic all GW2 lore should become invalid the moment GW3 launches and it also has Skritt and Quaggans as playable – because they didn’t get their say in the racially biased GW2 that only had 5 races.

Regardless of the amount of races you play as – lore is lore.

The thing is they were the creators of said bloodstones. And then the splitters. Ths is retconning and you’re just trying to justify it. Why?

Narcemus.1348:

I’m surprised that this discussion is happening now, so long after the creation of Guild Wars 2. I mean all of this information about the Seers and the Elder Dragons changed Guild Wars’ Lore years ago. Why is this piece of information suddenly such a huge problem?

1. Because I’ve recently seen it pop up again as a major thing in the current events thing.
2. Because the Mursaat thing just happened.
3. Because I’m sick and tired of having good, well-established lore trampled by a team of writers that is simply making a mess of things.

Harper.4173:

Djahlat.9610:

@Harper My point was just to make you understand that the Humans don’t have a better claim to Ascalon than the Charr who pushed the Grawl and Forgotten off their land, but whatever.
Technically speaking, the Human Gods are responsible for the splitting of the original Bloodstone into 5 pieces, so one could argue that they are still the creators of the modern Bloodstones, but not the original one.

My point is that the old lore isn’t wrong just because it isn’t multiracial. The old game is not invalidated because it had one playable race instead of five.

By that logic all GW2 lore should become invalid the moment GW3 launches and it also has Skritt and Quaggans as playable – because they didn’t get their say in the racially biased GW2 that only had 5 races.

Regardless of the amount of races you play as – lore is lore.

The thing is they were the creators of said bloodstones. And then the splitters. Ths is retconning and you’re just trying to justify it. Why?

Dude, the lore writers of GW1 had absolutely no idea such things as Elder Dragons, Ley Lines, and 4 other main races would pop up until GW:EN, I think you’re being a bit unfair here.
It was impossible to keep old lore relevant in a new world, and i think they did their best to alter as little as they could of the lore while keeping the substance unchanged.
Life’s too short to be sour about ethnocentric bias :/

So honor the old lore by leaving it the way it was and construct new narratives that USE the old lore without changing it.

I’m not blaming the lore writers of GW1 – they did a good job. It’s the lore writers of GW2 that are making a muck of everything.

I’m not even sure ethnocentric is something real – but that’s not why I’m upset.
I’m upset that by retconning things you’re basically saying nothing is really relevant and that getting invested in the lore, the story and the world of Tyria is stupid. Because it will be changed in the future on a whim.

Also how am I biased ethnocentrically?

My two cents? Yes, it was a retcon. No, I’m not upset.

Well, I’m a bit upset that you started a post just to ask people to be upset.

The thing about the bloodstone retcon- it was, A.) a fairly well-thought-out change with a plausible in-universe explanation, B.) entirely necessary for their new plot and the way they wanted to expand the world (imagine how well any of our current main plot threads would run if they were bound to magic not existing before 1 BE), and C.) revealed to us more than four years ago. Even if I was upset back then, I’m not going to nurse a grudge about a video game’s background lore for *four years*.

The simple fact is, a retcon isn’t automatically a bad thing. Very, very easy to do wrong, but not inherently bad. In this case, I consider it an acceptable loss in exchange for the storytelling, and worldbuilding, it has allowed. That’s not ‘changing on a whim’. ArenaNet has never retconned on a whim. They’ve made mistakes, but that’s an entirely different can of worms, and not what you’re suggesting here.

If you’re upset about the mursaat thing, fair enough. I’m not, but I understand why you might be. Your other two points read to me as ‘I saw this as an opportune moment to stir up some forum toxicity’, and that does get under my skin.

I see no problem with the supposed Mursaat “retcon”.

All it gave is more info on the timeline of events, which brought a bit more development to the race, instead of portraying them as flat out evil.

You know, Black and White thinking. GW2 tries to go away from there as much as possible. Even Scarlet, misguided as she was, actually had some rediming qualities (even if they weren’t much).

I don’t get it actually.
All it says, that the Mursaat fought in the war and weren’t happy with the idea of putting their faith into the next cycle, going against the other races at that time and in their eyes “abandoning them”.
Sounds like the things we allready heard before, so i don’t really see that much change to the overall lore, just to the flavour of it.

Same goes to the bloodstones. GW1 was based on a human viewpoint and the gods were the biggest things out there. If they claimed they made them, then the humans followed.
They don’t even have to claim to be the creator, just that they used them to do their stuff after they arrived.
Humans, guilible as they are, just fill in the gaps.

I think most of these retcons aren’t as problematic as some make it out.

However if they come out and completly change the things that happened and we were clearly able to see happening (like a group human heroes killing the lich changed into Skritt), then I call bullkitten, because we were there…

In storywriting, there are two types of retroactive continuities:

Turning a believed-truth (read: second-hand information) to be a cover up, lie, or subjective truth, and turning an objective truth into a different objective truth.

The Bloodstone lore, like the lore on Abaddon versus there being only five gods, or Glint’s true origins, is the former – taking lore and turning it into a subjective truth. These are nothing to get upset about – sometimes better ideas come, and these require changing the lore a bit. If they’re done well, then there’s no reason to be upset.

Other things that I, personally, have been upset about (such as the lore around Scarlet) is when the writers change an obviously objective truth and inserting a new obviously objective truth (like the fact that we were explicitly told the Secondborn were born 6-7 years after the Firstborn, but then Scarlet came and Secondborn were born 2 years after). Now, sometimes – like said Secondborn example – the change makes sense. I mean, in that case, could we really believe the twelve Firstborn existed in the world for 5+ years without being known (the first contact between sylvari and another race happened after the Secondborn were born).

The mursaat tablets are another objective truth being retconned – but not so much in the “mursaat were misunderstood good guys” as there’s obviously going to be some bias therefore the tablets aren’t 100% accurate off the bat, but rather the retcon comes in the claims about what the other races are doing. Or rather, I should say, it is either a retcon or a blatant lie from the mursaat that was very poorly telegraphed by ArenaNet.

One of said retcon/bad-writing-lies was the actions of the dwarves, as we know they did not go into hiding until all races did, and we know that they fought Primordus and Jormag – despite the mursaat claiming they fought none.

I don’t see them making the Mursaat into ‘Misunderstood Good Guys". Instead, they’re simply being updated to be, like the Dredge, Ettins, Charr, Humans, Harpies, Ogres, Krait Tengu, Hylek, Norn, Grawl, Dwarves, and Absolutely Every Other Race In The Game If You Haven’t Caught On By Now as “People with a self-interest in their own survival, with little regard for the lives of races they consider lesser”

The Mursaat cared about Human lives about as much as Charr care about the Skritt, Grawl, and Ogres in Plains of Ashford, or humans cared for any race in the original Guild Wars, or… well, the whole game’s full of members of every race (Especially human, Charr, Norn, and Asura) screwing over, recklessly messing with (often under the guise of ‘study’), carelessly offing, shamelessly manipulating, and otherwise completely disregarding any respect for the lives of members of other races. Humans just so happen to throw a hissy fit and shout “EVIL!” to any race that stands up to that sort of abuse, or turns around and inflicts the same abuse on them.

Sartharina, a “people with a self-interest in their own survival with little regard for the lives of races they consider lesser” is what they were since Prophecies. They were self-preservers who were willing to commit genocide, slaughter thousands, and leave worlds to die to survive.

With Rising Flames, there’s now the presentation of “they were the ones betrayed and didn’t leave the other races, the other races left them” instead of “they were the betrayers who left the other races to die”.

Your entire post is exactly what mursaat were depicted as, not are.

But your last sentence makes no sense. Mursaat were not the abused, but the abusers, and that’s why they’re called ‘evil’. Because they openly slaughtered thousands of innocents and committed genocide as the solution for their lives being on the line (something that none of the other races do – even charr and krait, the two ‘most evil’ races, do not move to genocide when threatened – charr moved for parley, while krait try to take means of survival the only way they know how, with force, but not to the extreme of wiping another race (after all, how can they rule the dead?)).

To the best of my recollection, the Six Gods only took the Bloodstone to Arah. I’ve replaye the game and read all the ingame books/scriptures etc several times, but I don’t recall ever hearing the gods MADE the bloodstone. AFAIK, they only took it to Arah, after which abaddon undid the seal, and then the other gods had to sacrifice a king on it to seal it again, and then threw it in the mouth of abaddon, and abaddon himself into the desert making the sulfurous wastes where he fell.

The gods making the Bloodstone is all from GW1. And that was the only origin story for the Bloodstone. Nothing ever related the Bloodstone to the Seers.

This is the original lore on the Bloodstone, before Abaddon was added into the lore even.

When Nightfall came, they changed it from: “the gods gave magic and when the races turned to bloodshed retracted their gift by creating the Bloodstone which was then shattered”

To: “Abaddon gave magic too freely and the other five gods retracted it by creating the Bloodstone which was then shattered.”

Then with GW2 changed it to “Abaddon gave magic from the Bloodstone made in ancient times by the Seers too freely and the other five gods retracted it back into the Bloodstone and empowered the Bloodstone with magic from Zhaitan and shattered the Bloodstone.”

Then with Season 1&2 changed it to: “over centuries, the six gods gave magic from the Bloodstone made in ancient times by the Seers, with Abaddon giving last and too freely, and the other five gods retracted it back into the Bloodstone and empowered the Bloodstone with magic from Zhaitan and shattered the Bloodstone.”

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

It was found at a Mursaat Fortress after the Mursaat returned and helped create the White Mantle. I don’t see it as retconning when it’s possible that it’s propaganda, or written by a Mursaat years after their higher-ups changed history to their liking. Remember, only the victors/survivors of war write history.

Here’s the problem with that argument:

New lore tends to be more accurate than old lore when ArenaNet writes. Only exception is when the new lore has some sort of indicator that it’s not accurate. And these have no such thing.

It’s still a pretty sad deal.
I wish we had the GW1 lore/theme/atmosphere in this story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Here’s the problem with that argument:

New lore tends to be more accurate than old lore when ArenaNet writes. Only exception is when the new lore has some sort of indicator that it’s not accurate. And these have no such thing.

Mostly there are little mistakes, though, but they tend to be fixed at some point if they are spotted.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

X. The Forgotten allied with Glint and ignored the now to focus on the future. We mursaat… we returned and built a base among the Fire Islands, as strong as ever. The world will one day be ours.

Yep. Totally misunderstood good guys…. >.>

They’re still a villainous race. Anet just tried to give them more reasosn on why a whole race might want to kill/enslave/rule everything. In there mind, they were the one’s betrayed. This is just their extended self-preservation/revenge scheme now.

Erukk.1408:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

X. The Forgotten allied with Glint and ignored the now to focus on the future. We mursaat… we returned and built a base among the Fire Islands, as strong as ever. The world will one day be ours.

Yep. Totally misunderstood good guys…. >.>

They’re still a villainous race. Anet just tried to give them more reasosn on why a whole race might want to kill/enslave/rule everything. In there mind, they were the one’s betrayed. This is just their extended self-preservation/revenge scheme now.

Yet strangely enough they take their revenge on young races that were not even involved in the Dragon rise… seeing as after their return the only ancient race they attacked was the dwarves…

And they didn’t even attack the dwarves out of revenge. They did it because the dwarves were hiding/assisting the Chosen who were foretold to wipe out the mursaat race.

They weren’t taking revenge on the new races. They were just using the new races for their own ends. That’s a kitten move, definitely. But not revenge. That’s like saying the African slave trade was an “act of revenge”. No, it was an act of one group being evil to another for their own selfish ends.

The point of that is, that while we may have some sympathetic context for why the Mursaat betrayed the other races (context written by the betrayer, I might add) we do not have anything saying they were just "misunderstood ". They’re still evil. We just see how they’re trying to justify it.

Erukk.1408:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

They also seemingly retconned much of the Mursaat lore with those tablets in Ember’s Bay. Basically the Mursaat are the missunderstood good guys all of a sudden.

X. The Forgotten allied with Glint and ignored the now to focus on the future. We mursaat… we returned and built a base among the Fire Islands, as strong as ever. The world will one day be ours.

Yep. Totally misunderstood good guys…. >.>

Funny how you only use that tiny sentence out of context support your argument. If you read the other tablets it clearly shows they were trying to save Tyria with the other races, but the other races supposedly betrayed/abandoned them and only after that, they said that the world will be theirs.

We will never forgive the other elder races for deserting us.

We soothed ourselves with the knowledge that, upon the other races’ annihilations the world would be ours.

And the tablets never even state that they (the Mursaat) would be the ones to conquer the world. They just assumed that the other races would get killed by the dragons, and all they had to do was stay in hiding and wait it out.

You get the lore prospective from diff parts of a world and ofc like actual history its biased towards something diff for every race what the devs are doing is showing that story can be diff depending on who’s telling it. Same thing with the bloodstone human believed that their gods were the kitten m…ers that could create something that powerful but now that various races made reserch on the subject it came to light that thing were in fact less human centric. Same applies to the mursaat changes in lore since their prospective of how things went thats not anet devs changng the lore thats getting a diff point of view on it

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Funny how you only use that tiny sentence out of context support your argument. If you read the other tablets it clearly shows they were trying to save Tyria with the other races, but the other races supposedly betrayed/abandoned them and only after that, they said that the world will be theirs.

I’m thinking GW1 supports my argument as well. You know those major events that happened right after those tablets supposedly got carved. Where they manipulated an entire nation and sacrificed thousands of people for their own needs? Those events add a lot of context to the Mursaat situation.

Past good intention are all well and good, but it’s only current intentions that matter in the end of day. The Mursaat might have been a good race once upon a time, but they sure in the hell weren’t during GW1. Lazarus might be trying to turn over a new leaf now, but we simply can’t trust him because some tablets laying on the ground paint out a sob story thousands of years old.

Lazarus was a part of the events that happened in Kryta. There is no refuting that point. His ancestors might have had a harsh deal, he might have had a harsh deal, but doesn’t give him leeway when it comes to organizing the deaths of thousands for your own gain. He has a lot of ground to cover to becoming even remotely trustworthy or “a good guy”.

And here’s the thing. What the Mursaat see as a betrayal isn’t really a betrayal, it was a difference of opinion. I mean, the other races didn’t promise to come and fail to show up. They refused to join outright, and the Mursaat went through with it anyways and failed. That’s not a betrayal, it was making a bad choice.

Narcemus.1348:

And here’s the thing. What the Mursaat see as a betrayal isn’t really a betrayal, it was a difference of opinion. I mean, the other races didn’t promise to come and fail to show up. They refused to join outright, and the Mursaat went through with it anyways and failed. That’s not a betrayal, it was making a bad choice.

yea, you go telling that to a race with a superiority complex. Good luck, you can borrow my aegis.. oh and bring some AR, cause the air is gonna burn with agony when you’re done speaking

The Mursaat tablets don’t really have anything that incontrovertibly contradicts old information. They omit information, but that’s really to be expected.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Sartharina, a “people with a self-interest in their own survival with little regard for the lives of races they consider lesser” is what they were since Prophecies. They were self-preservers who were willing to commit genocide, slaughter thousands, and leave worlds to die to survive.

With Rising Flames, there’s now the presentation of “they were the ones betrayed and didn’t leave the other races, the other races left them” instead of “they were the betrayers who left the other races to die”.

Your entire post is exactly what mursaat were depicted as, not are.

But your last sentence makes no sense. Mursaat were not the abused, but the abusers, and that’s why they’re called ‘evil’. Because they openly slaughtered thousands of innocents and committed genocide as the solution for their lives being on the line (something that none of the other races do – even charr and krait, the two ‘most evil’ races, do not move to genocide when threatened – charr moved for parley, while krait try to take means of survival the only way they know how, with force, but not to the extreme of wiping another race (after all, how can they rule the dead?)).

Charr and humans not moving to Genocide when they feel threatened? They resort to genocide even when NOT threatened! Or did you miss the countless wars over Ascalon, all the numerous quests (Events and hearts in-game) that amount to “Hylek/Skritt/Ogres/Grawl/Tengu/Harpies are being a petty annoyance, or undertaking endevours beyond their comprehension. Go murder them all, burn their homes to the ground, and destroy their art”, and other cases of the Five races using the ‘sympathetic’ (and some “unsympathetic”) ones only as far as their own goals mattered?

And I’m not sure of what "Genocides’ the Mursaat were planning. Mass Murder? Sure. But the only extinction they planned was for the Titans, sort of like how the new 5 are planning the extinction of Elder Dragons. Total Domination? Like what they Humans did until their gods ran away?

I do specifically remember the Charr trying to kill all of humanity. Not even just Ascalon. They tried to kill EVERY human.

Squee.7829:

I do specifically remember the Charr trying to kill all of humanity. Not even just Ascalon. They tried to kill EVERY human.

And for no good reason too. Orr and Kryta had nothing to do with the Ascalon conflict.

Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to. Without the titans (aka Abaddon’s forces) telling them to, they probably wouldn’t have – but at the same time they wouldn’t have had the Searing Cauldrons either.

Their willingness to heed the titans could also, potentially, have to do with how humans started out on Tyria. It sounds like the charr getting driven back and the tribes uniting behind Doric happened around the same time, so at, or within a couple generations of, the humiliating defeat that was still driving them crazy a thousand years later, the humans in Kryta and Orr were part of the kingdom that inflicted it. The Orrians and Krytans of GW1’s time were as much the descendants of their oldest foes as the Ascalonians, and presumably were given a full share of the original hatred- the charr just hadn’t been able to act out against them until after the Searing.

I stopped caring about GW1 lore when they released Nightfall and destroyed every great piece of lore in Prophecies and Factions with how badly they retconned all that stuff.

In my eyes the Mursaat were less evil than the Charr are. As far as I know they didn’t want to conquer the world and wipe out all the other races like the Char wanted. The Mursaat were only using the white mantle who in their defence saved Kryta from annihilation while the old king/queen fled leaving the rest of the people to die when the Charr were approaching.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to.

Though, to be fair, the same excuse could be used for the humans as well. Balthazar, being the human supremacist that he is, basically encouraged humans to impose their dominance over the other races.

“No longer clamoring over the same territories, the unified Charr spread throughout the northern reaches of their homeland, and down into the lands east of the Shiverpeak Mountains. The Charr subjugated or destroyed any and all who dared defy them within their territories; they were masters of all they surveyed.”

The above paragraph and perhaps a few others from the Ecology of the Charr certainly don’t paint the Charr as a “fair is fair” kind of race. I.e., they probably would not have stopped at Ascalon. Titans or no. Orr would have just been the next place to conquer. Because they’re Charr and they want it.

Prior to the rise of the elder dragons, it seems EVERY race believed they were the only one that truly matters, with the rest being useful tools for establishing their manifest destiny of dominion over the world at best, threats to it at worst, and otherwise just trash mobs to be killed for loot & XP outside of those other extremes. It seems the Elder Dragons are the only force that made them decide otherwise. (The top four in “Our race shall rule the world!” being Charr, Asura, Humans, and Mursaat)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to. Without the titans (aka Abaddon’s forces) telling them to, they probably wouldn’t have – but at the same time they wouldn’t have had the Searing Cauldrons either.

Oh come now Konig, you know that’s not true. The Titans gave them the power to invade humanity, not the purpose. The Charr had a thousand-year score to settle with humanity ever since they took over the area that would become Ascalon. They sought out the Titans because humanity apparently had the Six on their side and they wanted their own advantage. They also didn’t distinguish between human kingdoms, so a beef with Ascalons was a beef with all of humanity.

Djahlat.9610:

Well, it wasn’t necessarily retconned, but we realized how biased lore was to make it human-centric. Now that the Priory got multiracial, things were bound to be rewritten because they were simply wrong.
The story of Ascalon follows: as a human in GW1, Charr are the invador against which we have to defend, while in fact the Charr were there first, and the humans are the actual conquerors.
Kinda like in the western world, most people think that the US is the primary responsible for the resolution of the WWII, while in fact it was the Russians that played the biggest part.

That’s not true either. The only way it could be is if the author specifically intended his in-game writings to be viewed as human-centric. And that’s simply not the case, there is zero evidence to support that premise. The lore of GW1, that we see in the game, is intended to be the actual lore of Tyria…not the historical perspective of humans living there.

The author who wrote all of Prophecies and most of Factions left ArenaNet shortly thereafter, and for Nightfall a whole new writing team led by Grubb and Soesbee took over the reigns. They are the ones who created the claim of human-centric historical bias in Tyria, using simple gaps and plot-holes in the basic story to prop up this claim.

Harper.4173:

It’s still a pretty sad deal.
I wish we had the GW1 lore/theme/atmosphere in this story.

Where were you 4 years ago? You struck on an important point there: theme/atmosphere. Like I mentioned above, you have to understand that the authorship of Guild Wars lore changed hands after Factions. There are many indications of this in the story itself, too exhaustive to list here, but suffice to say the new authors had their own ideas on what Tyria should be like. And ANet devs gave them a green light to do so.

Take the gods for instance. It’s no coincidence that they were effectively removed from the story(or world) at the end of Nightfall. The new writers already had plans to introduce new playable races into the game, and having the gods appearing to drastically favor humanity presented a problem to this. The gods were the top dogs of Tyria up until that point; they literally were the creators and keepers of all things magical related. To remedy this situation, they simply came up with a scenario that would 1) remove them from their influence in the world(end of Nightfall) and 2) create a valid historical premise in which they actually are not the apex beings of Tyria by severely downplaying their role in magic.

I could write for days about the drastic, unfortunate, and downright sad changes that the GW2 writing team brought to the Tyrian narrative…but I’m sure no one here wants me to start up again. ;-) Suffice to say while I intimately empathize with your opinion, there is really nothing that can be done about it at this point. GW2 lore is here to stay, whether we like it or not.

Obsidian.1328:

Oh come now Konig, you know that’s not true. The Titans gave them the power to invade humanity, not the purpose. The Charr had a thousand-year score to settle with humanity ever since they took over the area that would become Ascalon. They sought out the Titans because humanity apparently had the Six on their side and they wanted their own advantage. They also didn’t distinguish between human kingdoms, so a beef with Ascalons was a beef with all of humanity.

They did seek out the titans because humans had the Six, but the rest isn’t at all true. Until the Searing, the charr never showed any intention of crossing the Shiverpeaks – whether it was to fight Krytans or norn or dwarves (and they fought with all three races at some point in time).

For all we know, they didn’t know Kryta and Orr existed until the titans came around.

Obsidian.1328:

Take the gods for instance. It’s no coincidence that they were effectively removed from the story(or world) at the end of Nightfall. The new writers already had plans to introduce new playable races into the game, and having the gods appearing to drastically favor humanity presented a problem to this. The gods were the top dogs of Tyria up until that point; they literally were the creators and keepers of all things magical related. To remedy this situation, they simply came up with a scenario that would 1) remove them from their influence in the world(end of Nightfall) and 2) create a valid historical premise in which they actually are not the apex beings of Tyria by severely downplaying their role in magic.

I do believe this is complete nonsense you’re spewing. After Nightfall, there was initially plans for a 4th expansion/setting (however you want to term the different chapters of the original Guild Wars games), but it was later scrapped when it learned that the player base wasn’t excited about just new professions and skills. I don’t remember how quickly Eye of the North came out after Nightfall, and I don’t know when exactly they decided to scrap the game and build a new engine, but the gods were not completely written out then just because of the sequel game. It may have progressed to that, but that was never the original plan.

Obsidian.1328:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to. Without the titans (aka Abaddon’s forces) telling them to, they probably wouldn’t have – but at the same time they wouldn’t have had the Searing Cauldrons either.

Oh come now Konig, you know that’s not true. The Titans gave them the power to invade humanity, not the purpose. The Charr had a thousand-year score to settle with humanity ever since they took over the area that would become Ascalon. They sought out the Titans because humanity apparently had the Six on their side and they wanted their own advantage. They also didn’t distinguish between human kingdoms, so a beef with Ascalons was a beef with all of humanity.

Djahlat.9610:

Well, it wasn’t necessarily retconned, but we realized how biased lore was to make it human-centric. Now that the Priory got multiracial, things were bound to be rewritten because they were simply wrong.
The story of Ascalon follows: as a human in GW1, Charr are the invador against which we have to defend, while in fact the Charr were there first, and the humans are the actual conquerors.
Kinda like in the western world, most people think that the US is the primary responsible for the resolution of the WWII, while in fact it was the Russians that played the biggest part.

That’s not true either. The only way it could be is if the author specifically intended his in-game writings to be viewed as human-centric. And that’s simply not the case, there is zero evidence to support that premise. The lore of GW1, that we see in the game, is intended to be the actual lore of Tyria…not the historical perspective of humans living there.

The author who wrote all of Prophecies and most of Factions left ArenaNet shortly thereafter, and for Nightfall a whole new writing team led by Grubb and Soesbee took over the reigns. They are the ones who created the claim of human-centric historical bias in Tyria, using simple gaps and plot-holes in the basic story to prop up this claim.

Harper.4173:

It’s still a pretty sad deal.
I wish we had the GW1 lore/theme/atmosphere in this story.

Where were you 4 years ago? You struck on an important point there: theme/atmosphere. Like I mentioned above, you have to understand that the authorship of Guild Wars lore changed hands after Factions. There are many indications of this in the story itself, too exhaustive to list here, but suffice to say the new authors had their own ideas on what Tyria should be like. And ANet devs gave them a green light to do so.

Take the gods for instance. It’s no coincidence that they were effectively removed from the story(or world) at the end of Nightfall. The new writers already had plans to introduce new playable races into the game, and having the gods appearing to drastically favor humanity presented a problem to this. The gods were the top dogs of Tyria up until that point; they literally were the creators and keepers of all things magical related. To remedy this situation, they simply came up with a scenario that would 1) remove them from their influence in the world(end of Nightfall) and 2) create a valid historical premise in which they actually are not the apex beings of Tyria by severely downplaying their role in magic.

I could write for days about the drastic, unfortunate, and downright sad changes that the GW2 writing team brought to the Tyrian narrative…but I’m sure no one here wants me to start up again. ;-) Suffice to say while I intimately empathize with your opinion, there is really nothing that can be done about it at this point. GW2 lore is here to stay, whether we like it or not.

That is sad to hear. I didn’t know that the story authors had changed BUT I did feel a huge shift in the way the lore felt and was handled.
There’s even a bigger shift between GW1 and GW2.
Even Nightfall and EOTN had better atmosphere and a better feel to them. I actually felt like a hero in EOTN – in GW2 I’m just there.

Rognik.2579:

I do believe this is complete nonsense you’re spewing. After Nightfall, there was initially plans for a 4th expansion/setting (however you want to term the different chapters of the original Guild Wars games), but it was later scrapped when it learned that the player base wasn’t excited about just new professions and skills. I don’t remember how quickly Eye of the North came out after Nightfall, and I don’t know when exactly they decided to scrap the game and build a new engine, but the gods were not completely written out then just because of the sequel game. It may have progressed to that, but that was never the original plan.

“…what began as a brainstorm about Campaign 4 evolved into the blueprint for a completely new game. We kept changing the scope of what we were doing, until it became Guild Wars 2” ~Eric Flannum, PC Gamer, 2007

Utopia(the fourth campaign) was scheduled for release in early 2007. EotN was released in mid-2007, with a lot of the design elements from Utopia simply rolled into it. And since Utopia “evolved” into GW2, and EotN inherited much of Utopia, it follows that EotN was the prelude and intro to GW2.

As such, since things like the Eternal Alchemy, the Pale Tree, and the Elder Dragons themselves(which are all a part of EotN) are diametrically opposed to having “gods” as the masters of magic in Tyria, then it also follows that the decision to downgrade the Six was a fundamental part of any post-Nightfall narrative scenario.

I agree that the ending to Nightfall was not written for the explicit purposes of the new dragon-leyline-alchemy-etc GW2 narrative. On the contrary, I don’t think that was all that fleshed out yet. What I do think though, is that writers like Grubb knew that human-favored gods(whether real or perceived) was a major obstacle to a multi-playable race world. And getting rid of the Six, as the keepers of magic in Tyria, allowed ANet to more easily establish the other races on a level that would give them parity to humans.

Obsidian.1328:

And since Utopia “evolved” into GW2, and EotN inherited much of Utopia, it follows that EotN was the prelude and intro to GW2.

As such, since things like the Eternal Alchemy, the Pale Tree, and the Elder Dragons themselves(which are all a part of EotN) are diametrically opposed to having “gods” as the masters of magic in Tyria, then it also follows that the decision to downgrade the Six was a fundamental part of any post-Nightfall narrative scenario.

Herein lies the fallacy. Utopia was not initially planned to have multiple playable races, and even if it involved interacting with another race, that didn’t mean the gods were going to be downgraded. Once EotN was released, though, the gods were definitely getting shoved into the closet. All I’m saying is that your cause and effect assumptions were off.