Guild Wars 2

Anet decided the game starts in 1325 while we align it with our human earth years. however this creates some discrepancies imo. it feels as if lore does not agree with game mechanics or vice versa. (it never really has for that matter but it becomes a slight issue if recording the game happenings down. prior to the start of the game on timeline we notice there’s more realistic few years of gaps between each recorded event, at least it feels like nothing else has happened that we know of)

Why I believe we are actually beyond 1326AE.. I feel the game and it’s universe has a separate passing of time. Of course you can argue the game mechanics show day and night switches every few hours while the server time rather than some fantasy sundial or whatever system is used as reference for time and game mechanics of course are separate HOWEVER, I see these things right off the bat:

- Human-Charr peace treaty and summits and taking place, separatists and renegade near Ebonhawke etc they are stuck in that manner in game in preparation to ally to fight the dragons

- but we have things in other parts of the game like Queens Jubilee which is like celebrating the peace treaties and whatever cross cultural racial stuff with ambassadors from diff cities

- Lions Arch is attacked and the PACT is newly formed through personal story and establish fort trinity and attack on Zhaitan

- they combine technologies mobilize large amounts of troops, create airships etc

- u see the pact operating in diff areas of the map combating different dragons while it seems like you’ve just founded the PACT with your dear Trahearne and fought the very first Dragon as the pact

- obviously cleansing of Orr in the personal story also never cleansed Orr

These are just a few examples of many many more that are game mechanics because obviously new players still get to progress through the events and so forth.

However to me, the things around the maps represent the simultaneous flow of time, meaning these are actually things that took place over a long time or at least some time already. Things that didn’t all take place in a year and is just there at the same time bc of game mechanics.

To me though the beginning of the game is 1325, I am very convinced we’re looking at Tyria at level 80 endgame that is already years past. It’s not overnight that a treaty can be established and signed nor overnight that the Destiny’s Edge will get back together nor the PACT being established or Orr being cleansed. The starving and weakening of Zhaitan obviously took a long time as well. non stop living stories every two weeks isn’t something that can happen in the real immersed lore time. The game mechanics might look like it’s still 1326 but it is actually representing a long flow of time simultaneously. all we have to do is click a waypoint and button with no need for preparations or realistic efforts

According to Anet’s real lore, their timeline actually has gaps of a few years between significant events recorded etc, pre-game. In the book Sea of Sorrows, we see Cobiah Marriner and Lion’s Arch destroyed from the rising of Zhaitan and Orr, and gathering survivors many things happened, noble life of a pirate, building a new Lion’s Arch, establishing its system and defending against human politics etc with the first battle of Claw Island… these things took place over many years in the book and most of his lifetime. Certainly human-charr peace treaties, founding of a massive coalition like the Pact, the construction of a fortress like Fort Trinity, creating and deploying of airships, helicopters, tanks, and gathering so many troops; starving zhaitan’s minions, they’re not things that happen over night. This is the same for pre-game background lore which is much more realistic. But once in game we have this time flow all compressed, just purely because of game mechanics, and the need to have content to play and so forth. I think if this was all converted to novels instead of game, it would play out a more realistic timeline. Of course, with the pressure of the Dragon threats, production and productivity would be faster, but the Pact and Zhaitan stuff alone would likely take a year or more itself

it’s easier to use our human years as reference But If I had to guess I would believe something like at least 3-5 years already past is more realistic in terms of lore for the endgame level 80. Doesn’t our lore time feel strange? human reference, gameplay and game lore all in conflict

A few counter points that proves that Zhaitan dies in 1325 AE and we are currently in 1326 AE:

• The Great Hunt, the start of the norn personal storyline, occurs in winter according to some dialogue in northern Wayfarer (the ice wurm event chain) where someone states that one of the people there couldn’t make the Great Hunt because of a winter blizzard (the entire point of fighting that Veteran Ice Wurm; it’s a weak replacement for Issormir).
• We know Dougal went into Ascalon City for the Claw of the Khan-Ur in 1324 AE. In Fields of Ruin, and iirc by Dougal, we are told that this was “last year” thus at that point in time, it is still 1325 AE.
• From the personal storyline “Forging the Pact” to the second instance of “The Source of Orr” only “several weeks” have passed according to Occram, who states in said second instance of The Source of Orr that the past several weeks has been an interesting experience for him since joining the Pact. This means the entire invasion of Orr took place less than 3 months (otherwise it’d be “few/several months”) but most likely more than 1 month.
• During Flame and Frost, as of the third update we got scouts in the affected zones. These scouts state that the attacks have been happening for months – it was the third month of Flame and Frost, naturally.
• During Bazaar of the Four Winds, we got a short story – though technically it was a series of journal entries. These entries were stated to taken from the Zephyr Sanctum and, in 1326 AE, reached the Durmand Priory. This means that the Zephyr Sanctum couldn’t have landed no later than 1326 AE.

It’s pretty much all but proven that Zhaitan was downed in 1325 – or at the latest, 1326. There’s also the fact we were told that The Lost Shores is post-Zhaitan, and we know that Dragon Bash had to be post-Pact formation while Flame and Frost (and subsequent Living Story) had to be post-Lost Shores. So we know for a fact that months had passed between Zhaitan’s fall and the Molten Facility’s defeat, let alone between then and the journal having been taken to the Priory in 1326.

The personal story and the open world do follow the same timelines, but they can be experienced by players at different rates and, on top of that, it all more or less takes place before the “Living Story” – even if ArenaNet likes to claim otherwise, it just doesn’t make logical sense. And despite their claim, it is far from a “living world” since anything not touched by the Living Story is effectively unaffected and stuck in time. All of Orr maps are stuck in a time before the cleansing of Orr and the defeat of Zhaitan; as is everything else sans Southsun and Living Story content.

All this said, I’d like to state that I really hate the arbitrary additional 5 days to the calendar. It was perfectly fine being 360 days with no need of syncing up our timeframes. Sadly, that is what the Living Story does.

@Konig, did Anet actually say that the living story didn’t take place after the personal story? I was pretty sure what they WANTED to do with it (this was at least when we were just beginning the personal story AKA flame and frost month 1 was make it so that the living story didn’t give away the personal story and would -appear- to be side to side with the personal story.

AKA: You’re lv 5 and haven’t seen the pact yet, therefore no LS stuff will be pact oriented, not to mention they’re likely to stick away from Zaitan and other such areas (which sucks, i really wanna see some LS stuff in Orr).

I personally like that they’re not trying to ruin the personal story with the living story with spoilers and the like, but I do think they’re trying too hard to do that… They should just come out and say the LS takes place post PS and be done with it, there’s no way it isn’t doing that anyway, as you said.

Like I said, most of the “time references” we have now are actually based on game mechanics. Here’s another point:

According to Anet’s real lore, their timeline actually has gaps of a few years between significant events recorded etc, pre-game. In the book Sea of Sorrows, we see Cobiah Marriner and Lion’s Arch destroyed from the rising of Zhaitan and Orr, and gathering survivors many things happened, noble life of a pirate, building a new Lion’s Arch, establishing its system and defending against human politics etc with the first battle of Claw Island… these things took place over many years in the book and most of his lifetime. Certainly human-charr peace treaties, founding of a massive coalition like the Pact, the construction of a fortress like Fort Trinity, creating and deploying of airships, helicopters, tanks, and gathering so many troops; starving zhaitan’s minions, they’re not things that happen over night. This is the same for pre-game background lore which is much more realistic. But once in game we have this time flow all compressed, just purely because of game mechanics, and the need to have content to play and so forth. I think if this was all converted to novels instead of game, it would play out a more realistic timeline. Of course, with the pressure of the Dragon threats, production and productivity would be faster, but the Pact and Zhaitan stuff alone would likely take a year or more itself

Essentially, what I’m saying is although we operate on the plane of the game now, is that basically the game’s flow of time is in fact unrealistic, for example, according to Anet’s own pre-gw2 lore and whatever time references we have in game, are slightly distorted just for gameplay purposes.

Just wanted to put that out there for thought

Durzlla.6295:

@Konig, did Anet actually say that the living story didn’t take place after the personal story? I was pretty sure what they WANTED to do with it (this was at least when we were just beginning the personal story AKA flame and frost month 1 was make it so that the living story didn’t give away the personal story and would -appear- to be side to side with the personal story.

What they originally said was that they wanted to prevent “paradoxes” – that they didn’t want to make the living story blatantly post-personal story, but they couldn’t go about doing things that would contradict actions in the personal story. That what they wanted forced them to effectively avoid what was touched by the personal story.

This seems to have been lost over time though, and the pre-official-LS announcements was that the Lost Shores was post-Zhaitan.

Durzlla.6295:

I personally like that they’re not trying to ruin the personal story with the living story with spoilers and the like, but I do think they’re trying too hard to do that… They should just come out and say the LS takes place post PS and be done with it, there’s no way it isn’t doing that anyway, as you said.

They pretty much already did this with Tequatl Rising. In fact, since Dragon Bash they basically said “the Pact exists in the LS” even though they never named it until Tequatl Rising.

takatsu.9416:

According to Anet’s real lore, their timeline actually has gaps of a few years between significant events recorded etc, pre-game. In the book Sea of Sorrows, we see Cobiah Marriner and Lion’s Arch destroyed from the rising of Zhaitan and Orr, and gathering survivors many things happened, noble life of a pirate, building a new Lion’s Arch, establishing its system and defending against human politics etc with the first battle of Claw Island… these things took place over many years in the book and most of his lifetime. Certainly human-charr peace treaties, founding of a massive coalition like the Pact, the construction of a fortress like Fort Trinity, creating and deploying of airships, helicopters, tanks, and gathering so many troops; starving zhaitan’s minions, they’re not things that happen over night.

Alright, first off, Cobiah didn’t even begin to think about rebuilding Lion’s Arch for about a decade after its destruction. Secondly, he had to build a city from scratch – all he had was the crews of two ships, one of which wasn’t fully allied with Cobiah, and stolen money. He had to buy all the materials and he had to convince people to start living there. And even then, the next time we see the city in the novel though decades had passed, it was a full fledged – though still growing – city. Similar situation with Claw Island – though it was hindered less of “starting from scratch” and more of politics. There has been constant and multi-year long debates on which direction the city should grow in.

The Pact is different. It was formed with a single objective – build a base of operations and take out Zhaitan – and it was formed by multiple groups that had a lot of resources and backed further by at least five nations of people. Building an organization and a single fort in a few weeks with the support of three large organizations and five nations is a hell of a huge difference compared to building a city from scratch.

Furthermore, just about all of the Pact’s technology came directly from other groups – helicopters, submarines, airships, tanks, the fences and anti-dragon cannons… NONE of it was built from scratch. The Pact simply received armaments and modified them with other races’ tech.

And about the peace talks – it took a year for beginning negotiations to arise. What we see in-game is just the start of talks. Nothing beyond initial peace offerings to start the talks had been done yet – the peace offerings being some land given to humans, and the Claw of the Khan-Ur given to the charr.

We know none of that stuff happened overnight, even if we can experience it all within a few hours. If you’re arguing that the game indicates that then you need to realize that time of gameplay is not the same as the game’s time.

takatsu.9416:

This is the same for pre-game background lore which is much more realistic. But once in game we have this time flow all compressed, just purely because of game mechanics, and the need to have content to play and so forth. I think if this was all converted to novels instead of game, it would play out a more realistic timeline.

You can say that for just about any game out there. Dishonored, for example, can be played within a few hours. In-game though, excluding the months/years/whatever it was in which Corvo was imprisoned, it still takes days if not weeks for the whole course of the game to unfold. But again, it can be played through in less than a day.

This is neither unique to Guild Wars 2 nor is it something that is an issue in any way. If your suspension of disbelief cannot withstand this much then you must find every game with a plot that expands past a few hours to be very unrealistic.