Guild Wars 2

The Quaggan appear to be mammals, but their villages are all underwater, and in discussions of their origins, they usually refer to coming from the deep ocean. Why does this matter?

Well… I don’t see any signs of a blowhole or gills on the Quaggans, so how do they breathe? Since they don’t seem to have any trouble existing on land, it would be implied that they breathe in mammalian fashion. So how do you develop an underwater society when you have to keep swimming up to the surface to catch a breath every so often? We don’t see the Quaggans using aquabreathers when they are underwater. You can imagine that at a major city in the `deep ocean` they keep talking about, you would see a continuous train of swimming Quaggan as somebody would always be going up or coming back from breathing.

And to beat the ANet apologists who won’t just come out and say `that’s a good point, but it doesn’t bother me`, I’ll beat you to the punch: a wizard did it.

Lungs capable of pulling oxygen from the water are not exactly impossible, they are just far less effective than gills.

Also magic.

Yeah basically what Vv W said, magic.
I mean, aquabreathers that allow you to breathe underwater indefinitely are also technically impossible I think, certainly at great depths they would be, but in GW2 you cannot drown/run out of air!

Or use the new explainitall option. Ley lines.

Don’t Quaggans lay eggs? doesn’t that make them not mammals?

Kyrel.8942:

Don’t Quaggans lay eggs? doesn’t that make them not mammals?

Not per se, since here on Earth the platypus is an egg-laying mammal.

Eggman.1405:

Kyrel.8942:

Don’t Quaggans lay eggs? doesn’t that make them not mammals?

Not per se, since here on Earth the platypus is an egg-laying mammal.

Here is some more information on egg laying mammals (Monotremes) if anyone is curious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme

And, of course, there’s the simple possibility that not everything in a different world needs to conform to Earth’s taxonomic classifications.

They might be akin to lungfish, where they can breathe both air and water without difficulty.

Zaxares.5419:

They might be akin to lungfish, where they can breathe both air and water without difficulty.

Sure, but then their gills were left out. Notice also that they don’t have nostrils, either, so they basically have to use their mouths for breathing both above and below water.

Anyway, we can explain this away until we’re blue in the face, but it seems clear (to me anyway) like this is a pretty obvious design oversight.

Or they simply have gills/nostrils with skinflaps making them hard to notice.

Keeping on the design oversights topic – male norn have no nipples.

zwierz.9012:

Keeping on the design oversights topic – male norn have no nipples.

And why do male humans have nipples again? To me, that’s the oversight! :P

Titus.4285:

zwierz.9012:

Keeping on the design oversights topic – male norn have no nipples.

And why do male humans have nipples again? To me, that’s the oversight! :P

Do Human Males even exist? Haven’t seen one in a while. I thought there are only Female Humans.

Btw, OP: Leylines, Magic, Sylvari or Magitech. Pick one or two, you’ll have fine answer.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Eggman.1405:

Kyrel.8942:

Don’t Quaggans lay eggs? doesn’t that make them not mammals?

Not per se, since here on Earth the platypus is an egg-laying mammal.

Here is some more information on egg laying mammals (Monotremes) if anyone is curious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme

There’s always an except to the rule. Remember we humans made up this thing called ‘mammals’ and we made up the rules for what does and doesn’t belong to the category of ‘mammals’. No reason nature has to follow our rules.
So yeah no reason the quaggan couldn’t be mammal like but not exactly fit nicely into the category of mammal.

EDIT:

Titus.4285:

zwierz.9012:

Keeping on the design oversights topic – male norn have no nipples.

And why do male humans have nipples again? To me, that’s the oversight! :P

It’s because human embryonic development is lazy. Up until a certain age males and females develop along the same template.

All Quaggans should have been an oversight. They are too much my little pony.

It could have 2 sets of lungs really. One for breathing normally and one for underwater, all done with the mouth. Its not unheard of. Axolotls have gills and lungs and so do betta’s.

Anet has said in the past that Quaggan appearance is based off of Manatees .

Also, “deep” in this case might refer to “way out to sea and not coastal” rather than “way down below in the depths of the sea.”

For example, if one goes deep into the woods you are traveling horizontally. Not digging down into the ground within the woods.

As others have mentioned, there is nothing to say that the world of Tyria has to conform to the rules of Earth. Otherwise, how would a zombie dragon exist, let alone fly?

Also, perhaps where they originally lived was an underwater cave system with air vents, or maybe they had a means by which to trap air bubbles and collect them for use below the surface (many water dwelling creatures do this on Earth), or maybe, jsut maybe, they had a city floating on the surface of the sea.

Very interesting thread~

If you wanna talk about more design faults you can unequip your aquabreather and still be fine underwater.
Theres even one thats just an helmet.

If you start nip picking this whole thing falls apart so better stick with suspension of disbelief.

Titus.4285:

And why do male humans have nipples again? To me, that’s the oversight! :P

All humans start off physiologically female, it’s only when the testes develop and start making testosterone that development switches from the default female setting to male. Nipples develop before testes, so guys get them too.

did you seriously just necro a 7 month old thread to discuss man-nipples?

They breathe underwater because they are dragon minions.

Magic… *insert MR Bean meme…

BrunoBRS.5178:

did you seriously just necro a 7 month old thread to discuss man-nipples?

Aaahh :P That made me laugh so hard. My apologies for making that post in the first place. It seems I didn’t fully consider the consequences.

There is no oversight! There is only QUAGGAN!

Titus.4285:

BrunoBRS.5178:

did you seriously just necro a 7 month old thread to discuss man-nipples?

Aaahh :P That made me laugh so hard. My apologies for making that post in the first place. It seems I didn’t fully consider the consequences.

i only now read your username.

this whole situation just got a lot funnier.

One thing that people might be forgetting, quaggan are shapechangers. They do have a battle form for those who embraced their more-violent side, which might mean the quaggan could have had a darker side to their history; maybe a time when they were not as peaceful as they are now. Perhaps they can just make gills for themselves whenver they need it.

Come to think of it, Krait supposively have a form of shape shifting as well. And Kodans might just be norn who lost the ability to shapeshift back, Maybe norn did travel from the seas before settling into the mountains. Notice a lot of shapeshifting races seem to involve the sea. Random theories of course, but fun to ponder.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

And Kodans might just be norn who lost the ability to shapeshift back, Maybe norn did travel from the seas before settling into the mountains. Notice a lot of shapeshifting races seem to involve the sea. Random theories of course, but fun to ponder.

actually the kodan believe it’s otherwise, that the norn are kodan that were cast out and can’t permanently retain their “superior bear form”.

BrunoBRS.5178:

TheMagickDoll.7594:

And Kodans might just be norn who lost the ability to shapeshift back, Maybe norn did travel from the seas before settling into the mountains. Notice a lot of shapeshifting races seem to involve the sea. Random theories of course, but fun to ponder.

actually the kodan believe it’s otherwise, that the norn are kodan that were cast out and can’t permanently retain their “superior bear form”.

Interesting! Source?
If that is in game dialog that is pretty kitten cool.

Novuake.2691:

BrunoBRS.5178:

TheMagickDoll.7594:

And Kodans might just be norn who lost the ability to shapeshift back, Maybe norn did travel from the seas before settling into the mountains. Notice a lot of shapeshifting races seem to involve the sea. Random theories of course, but fun to ponder.

actually the kodan believe it’s otherwise, that the norn are kodan that were cast out and can’t permanently retain their “superior bear form”.

Interesting! Source?
If that is in game dialog that is pretty kitten cool.

The kodan do not claim any connection or relationship to the norn race, but some Voices choose to interpret early stories of a lost group of kodan as an explanation of the origin of the norn. If this is true, they argue, then the norn are failed kodan who have forgotten their place as judges and protectors of the balance, and that is why their true “bear” form has been replaced with a fragile, furless state. Because of this pressure from their shaman, the kodan often treat the norn as spiritual failures, possibly even a race moving backwards in the cycle of life, toward primitivism and destruction — and that even as the dwarves before them, if this is true, the norn are a race on the edge of extinction.

From The Wisdom and Power of the Kodan.

I think it’s clear Tyrian waters contain far more oxygen than the seas and rivers on our planet Earth. I like to think the huge amount of magic present in the ambient also have a role in these things.

Quaggans are somewhat ambiguous on their fisonomies, like something in between mammal, amphibious and fish. Maybe they don’t even use lungs to breathe, but absorb oxygen through their skin, like some frogs and salamanders do.

I belive the answer is in the shape of quaggan houses. Most of them are round, so it would be possible to gather small air-spaces in them(you might argue that their houses in the lakes of tyria are filled with water to the brink, to that I say, they might have filled them with water when they escaped the depth to make it easier to move them around, and just didn’t think of it as necessary to fill them with air again since the waters in Kryta and the shiverpeaks are so shallow).

To the mammalpart: I belive Quaggan are closer to reduced amphibians then to mammals, since their babys seem to be better adapted to water then to land(they always looked like well developed toadbabies to me), and there is no cannon fact about a female quaggan beeing able to produce milk I belive.