Guild Wars 2

This, I know, probably to some may appear as hogwash of sorts. But reading through some theorycrafter threads and the like (thank you to all those lore-hoarders, BTW), I wanted to separate my question in its own thread, as I can see this becoming something to talk about.

Now Scarlet doesn’t have much lore behind her, but the experiments and secrecy of her total goals may lead into interrupting progress of Elder Dragon confrontations. I can also see this may be her trying to find a way to gain strength over the dragons and Tyria herself.

What if her experiments brought about a forced intervening of a new race? What if these attacks on Tyria she has done led to making a new race come forth? What would you theorize they would be?

Existing, I would bet Dwarves would be forced to come back in some way, as I can see Scarlet focused on bringing her fight to the dragons, and attempting experiments on them as well, thus becoming a thorn in the side for everyone, and the Dwarves awaken, coming back to the battlefield. Thus throwing the Dragons back into the grand scope of what is at stake in Tyria.

Playable maybe, perhaps even as an in-shop purchase, or “mini-expansion” store add-on.

The Dwarves transformation is as far as we know irreversible. I think it’s quite safe to say they will never become a playable race.

As for Scarlet creating a new race – she already has. She engineered the Toxic hybrid, a fusion between Krait and Sylvari – of course this thing is not going to become a playable race xD, but it gives you a very good indication of what anything she creates is likely to be like.

As for Scarlet’s story arc leading to a new playable race – not likely. Dev’s have already stated that new playable races are further down the line in GW2’s lifetime. New professions have been stated to be more likely I think, and even those aren’t likely to be something we see in the near future.

This is true, I didn’t forget about the interview. Not saying the end of Scarlet’s arc would reign in a new playable race at the start, but allude to them becoming forefront, and eventually helping them establish themselves, and eventually becoming playable. This could be very well work for anything new or old.

And that’s why I brought up Scarlet’s experiments, she created a new enemy race, who is to say the afterthought created something that was not in her scope at the time, perhaps the actions we as heroes took upon ourselves added just what was needed to form this new race that sides with us, and against the dragons?

This is exactly what’s going to happen, but it won’t be Dwarves. It’ll be Tengu.

Scarlet is after Primordus. Destroyers are already attacking the Dominion of Winds. That drill is coming down on Lion’s Arch and all the destroyers are going to come spilling out on the Tengus’ doorstep. The Dominion was fully modeled a year ago and Tengu were almost included as playable at launch. If this isn’t the perfect opportunity to add them then I don’t know what is.

Kalarchis.8635:

This is exactly what’s going to happen, but it won’t be Dwarves. It’ll be Tengu.

Scarlet is after Primordus. Destroyers are already attacking the Dominion of Winds. That drill is coming down on Lion’s Arch and all the destroyers are going to come spilling out on the Tengus’ doorstep. The Dominion was fully modeled a year ago and Tengu were almost included as playable at launch. If this isn’t the perfect opportunity to add them then I don’t know what is.

Do you have a source for the dominion being fully modelled? I know that they had originally planned on the Tengu being playable and had done a considerable amount of work in that direction – but I didn’t think they had specified how much at any point.

I would be seriously surprised if they had almost included Tengu at launch because the process of going back and removing every single Tengu from the other races personal story lines would be no mean feat – not to mention they would have to have been awful lucky if NONE of the voiced NPC’s were Tengu. I have a feeling that Tengu were scrapped a little earlier during development, but if you have quotes that prove otherwise I would love to read them, because honestly I am all for Tengu becoming playable, I think they look awesome.

Well, the victory against Scarlett will need some kind of plot twist. With the community crying for cantha and the canthan district being removed from Divinitys Reach completely, its possible that they come saving Lions Arch in the last second and then from that point on are a playable race.

(Edit for clarity: this was in response to the post by Kalarchis.)

I’m not really sure that’s true… I don’t recall ArenaNet saying they’d filled out the Dominion of Winds, and the decision to reduce the number of playable races to five likely happened prior to GW2’s announcement in mid-2007. It was stated at the time that there were five races planned, and they never changed their tune on that – at least not publicly, so there is still the possibility that they were considering adding additional races during early development then decided not to. Either way I’m pretty sure that decision happened well before release.

If my guess is right, that would mean that almost all, if not all, the tengu-related content in GW2 was built within that context. The fact that their animation and some SFX are copied from charr suggests they were placeholder assets since ArenaNet didn’t have a direction nailed down and didn’t want to waste too much work on them in the meantime… which does suggest future plans in a different way, of course.

I personally don’t really believe the Scarlet saga is heading directly toward a new race though – maybe a step along the way but not the whole thing.

Sirius.4510:

(Edit for clarity: this was in response to the post by Kalarchis.)

I’m not really sure that’s true… I don’t recall ArenaNet saying they’d filled out the Dominion of Winds, and the decision to reduce the number of playable races to five likely happened prior to GW2’s announcement in mid-2007. It was stated at the time that there were five races planned, and they never changed their tune on that – at least not publicly, so there is still the possibility that they were considering adding additional races during early development then decided not to. Either way I’m pretty sure that decision happened well before release.

If my guess is right, that would mean that almost all, if not all, the tengu-related content in GW2 was built within that context. The fact that their animation and some SFX are copied from charr suggests they were placeholder assets since ArenaNet didn’t have a direction nailed down and didn’t want to waste too much work on them in the meantime… which does suggest future plans in a different way, of course.

I personally don’t really believe the Scarlet saga is heading directly toward a new race though – maybe a step along the way but not the whole thing.

To be fair I do recall reading that they had done a lot of work on the Tengu with them being a playable race planned – but due to limitations they scrapped the idea, I think one of the reasons was that their mouths don’t have convincing movements since they’re beaks. But that last bit is possibly just scrambled from being passed through so many people. But there definitely was a dev comment someeewhere.

All I can find at the moment is:
“According to the Making of Guild Wars 2 book, the tengu were a strong candidate for the playable races, with the Dominion of Winds to be their starter city.”
Which would indicate that concept art for the tengu was extensively explored – but content art does not = actual models etc.

Well I can’t find the quote so it may have been from a player and just bunk about the city being modeled. “Almost included at launch” might be stretching it on my part, but according to the Making Of book they “were a strong candidate for the playable races.”

I don’t know how early the decision was made not to include them, but clearly a point was made to give them a full-sized capital city not in an existing zone, and putting it right there by Lion’s where you can see it from two zones was surely intentional. Their models are copied from Charr as well, but when you get right down to it, aren’t all the other just copies of the human model? Placeholder perhaps, but it means that any armor that’s remodeled to work on Charr works on Tengu.

I’m not really expecting them to be playable so soon either (just hoping,) but if the LS is going where I predict it’s the perfect time to start heading in that direction.

Yeah, I have that book – not really sure I can quote it verbatim (might come under fair use but I don’t want to mess around on ANet’s own forum ) but that interpretation is reasonable. Interestingly, we have never seen any tengu-related concept art from the GW2 era. The most recent is still the slightly-too-famous Kekai piece from EotN with the four different phenotypes.

I suspect re-using charr armor on tengu would only make the problems with that adaptation more painfully apparent. The tail ignoring armor looks bad enough already, now imagine if it were several times wider? If we eventually get a real fix to that (and plenty of people have been calling for it), we might be in business though.

Sirius.4510:

Yeah, I have that book – not really sure I can quote it verbatim (might come under fair use but I don’t want to mess around on ANet’s own forum ) but that interpretation is reasonable. Interestingly, we have never seen any tengu-related concept art from the GW2 era. The most recent is still the slightly-too-famous Kekai piece from EotN with the four different phenotypes.

I suspect re-using charr armor on tengu would only make the problems with that adaptation more painfully apparent. The tail ignoring armor looks bad enough already, now imagine if it were several times wider? If we eventually get a real fix to that (and plenty of people have been calling for it), we might be in business though.

Technically you should be able to post a short quote without breaching any legal stuff… You can photo copy 10% of a book before it becomes problematic, so a short quote isn’t really a big deal – think about how littered the internet is with quotes.

The only time a problem should arise is if you start reproducing the content of the book in such a volume that would mean that people had no reason to buy it. Of course I could be wrong in the case of this specific book – but generally speaking quotations are not an issue provided you are not passing the information off as your own or reproducing it in large quantities.

Honestly I wish they would print more of the Art Book. I really want to buy a copy but they’ve been sold out for so long and it doesn’t seem like they’re going to produce more

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The Dwarves transformation is as far as we know irreversible. I think it’s quite safe to say they will never become a playable race.

As for Scarlet creating a new race – she already has. She engineered the Toxic hybrid, a fusion between Krait and Sylvari – of course this thing is not going to become a playable race xD, but it gives you a very good indication of what anything she creates is likely to be like.

As for Scarlet’s story arc leading to a new playable race – not likely. Dev’s have already stated that new playable races are further down the line in GW2’s lifetime. New professions have been stated to be more likely I think, and even those aren’t likely to be something we see in the near future.

The aversion to dwarves returning among some on this forum continues to amuse me. That people are so hostile and unwilling to debate possibilities without resorting to “nope not going to happen insert random proclamation or percentage chance here” is baffling.

Never underestimate the power and relevance of an option with so much grounding and potential in lore.

Paraka.9724:

What if her experiments brought about a forced intervening of a new race?

I would err on the side of “not yet.” Although ANet have let the cat out of the bag somewhat in terms of expansion-level content:

I don’t actually know at this point, well played ANet.

Paraka.9724:

What if these attacks on Tyria she has done led to making a new race come forth? What would you theorize they would be?

There is the theory that the Tengu were removed from the game as a playable race (deadlines or countless other reasons); which makes complete sense as the Dominion of Winds is perfectly located for a starting area. It’s also the most-requested race and I remember ANet saying “they were paying attention to the players’ requests for the next race.”

We had an ENTIRE GW1 Post-game campaign to hype up Tengus as a playable race in Gw2 (Winds of Change)

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Do you have a source for the dominion being fully modelled?

Not sure if it was fully modeled, but a good part was, it is in the illustrated book that comes with the Collector’s Edition of the game.

ThatOddOne.4387:

The aversion to dwarves returning among some on this forum continues to amuse me. That people are so hostile and unwilling to debate possibilities without resorting to “nope not going to happen insert random proclamation or percentage chance here” is baffling.

Never underestimate the power and relevance of an option with so much grounding and potential in lore.

Because it would sort of be lore breaking for them to become playable – and Anet has already made their stance on typical fantasy quite clear and visible in the shift between GW1 and 2. Dwarves are ugly, their women look like their men (beards and all), and we already have a short race. Also the lore potentials of dwarves as playable aren’t that high – we’ve already met dwarves before and whilst there is a lot of stuff we don’t know, it seems from GW1 that the dwarves didn’t know a whole lot either. They had inkling about their past, but a lot of information was lost.

But yeah you can really just put down the assertiveness of my answer to me really hating dwarves. They’re an ugly and done to death fantasy race and I’m personally not a massive fan of dungeons and dragons type fantasy – GW deviates away from that just enough. But seriously, look at western fantasy, it tends to just all be a homogenous blob and we end up with the exact same MMORPG being made over and over again with humans and elves and dwarves and orcs…. Leave Tolkien to Tolkien.

Belzebu.3912:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Do you have a source for the dominion being fully modelled?

Not sure if it was fully modeled, but a good part was, it is in the illustrated book that comes with the Collector’s Edition of the game.

Thanks that’s really helpful to know! Once again I’m left feeling depressed that I never purchased the art book.

zamalek.2154:

There is the theory that the Tengu were removed from the game as a playable race (deadlines or countless other reasons); which makes complete sense as the Dominion of Winds is perfectly located for a starting area. It’s also the most-requested race and I remember ANet saying “they were paying attention to the players’ requests for the next race.”

Now I wasn’t saying races became playable, but a new race overall helping lead the world of Tyria forward. We have races like Skritt, Hylek, Grawl and others that may never be playable, but several come about in key times in your personal story. Who’s to say this wouldn’t be one of those times.

Hell, another option they can pull is the new introduced race helps push some other race (like the Tengu) more into the limelight, and thus becoming playable at a later date.

And for expansions; That’s often the given fare for expansion content, yes. However, going to an old game NCSoft had as an example (City of Heroes); The new archetypes were added in the free updates, you had to unlock them of course. Who’s to say they do not attempt a similar practice with their cash-shop to fill in funds for the potential expansion down the road?

Not saying these are better ideas, just the options are indeed out there if the need arises.

Paraka.9724:

zamalek.2154:

There is the theory that the Tengu were removed from the game as a playable race (deadlines or countless other reasons); which makes complete sense as the Dominion of Winds is perfectly located for a starting area. It’s also the most-requested race and I remember ANet saying “they were paying attention to the players’ requests for the next race.”

Now I wasn’t saying races became playable, but a new race overall helping lead the world of Tyria forward. We have races like Skritt, Hylek, Grawl and others that may never be playable, but several come about in key times in your personal story. Who’s to say this wouldn’t be one of those times.

Hell, another option they can pull is the new introduced race helps push some other race (like the Tengu) more into the limelight, and thus becoming playable at a later date.

And for expansions; That’s often the given fare for expansion content, yes. However, going to an old game NCSoft had as an example (City of Heroes); The new archetypes were added in the free updates, you had to unlock them of course. Who’s to say they do not attempt a similar practice with their cash-shop to fill in funds for the potential expansion down the road?

Not saying these are better ideas, just the options are indeed out there if the need arises.

Arenanet is not NCSoft though. They may be owned by NCSoft but in the end it is Arenanet’s game and you’re more likely to see them follow the setup they had with GW1 than with a game completely external to the entire development team

FlamingFoxx.1305:

As for Scarlet’s story arc leading to a new playable race – not likely. Dev’s have already stated that new playable races are further down the line in GW2’s lifetime. New professions have been stated to be more likely I think, and even those aren’t likely to be something we see in the near future.

Can you source either of these things?

FlamingFoxx.1305:

As for Scarlet creating a new race – she already has. She engineered the Toxic hybrid, a fusion between Krait and Sylvari – of course this thing is not going to become a playable race xD, but it gives you a very good indication of what anything she creates is likely to be like.

I wish ANet had done a little more with the hybrid, it had such an interesting design (for me at least), not even a couple of hybrid trash mobs. Maybe when Scarlet is dead a couple of them can slink away and make a nice home somewhere, so I can kill them in mass.

In regards to Anet having fully made the dominion of winds, I believe WP talks about it in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvUa_KY2Fqo
Forgive me if I have linked the wrong one but my internet is crap right now so I can’t watch it to confirm it. (I know he’s talked about it, just hope this is the right video)

That’s indeed the right video, but the reference he uses is the Making Of art book. I don’t actually have that book (wish I did now,) and the only quote I can find is the one we’ve already listed here, so I can’t confirm anything

Yeah, WP has been wrong about things before, and he’s wrong about this too, unfortunately. He references the book when he claims that, but it doesn’t actually say that the DoW was fully modeled. It only says that the area had been picked out and was pretty much smack in the middle of everything else.

I kind of think we will eventually get Watchwork/Steam Creature player race. It would basically be another human model and could use most of the existing assets.

I also think Dwarves will make a comeback when Primordus shows up. I could see him using corrupted stone Dwarves as soldiers. Maybe the race has to break the enchantment to avoid being controlled? Or Maybe Primordus eats the magic that binds them and they begin reverting back. Having two small sized characters couldn’t hurt for justifying Armor skin time and designs.

I also think the Tengu will become playable with Primordus’s arrival.

However, I think whenever they do this it will open up “Personal Story Chapter 2” working like the GW1, and these races will get to start in the world at that point.

I think I read somewhere they already slightly modeled the DoW but nothing to big ( I could be thinking of something else)

But hey they can just reuse the objects of the Canthan District

Shiren.9532:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

As for Scarlet’s story arc leading to a new playable race – not likely. Dev’s have already stated that new playable races are further down the line in GW2’s lifetime. New professions have been stated to be more likely I think, and even those aren’t likely to be something we see in the near future.

Can you source either of these things?

No because they are buried deep within the forums by now and there is 0 chance of me being able to sift months through the general discussion and suggestions forums to figure out where they are… Sorry, but it was definitely stated. I think the “Upcoming features” page on the official Wiki has a couple of references to back up these points though.

[quote=3576648;Volstag.6371:I also think Dwarves will make a comeback when Primordus shows up. I could see him using corrupted stone Dwarves as soldiers. Maybe the race has to break the enchantment to avoid being controlled? Or Maybe Primordus eats the magic that binds them and they begin reverting back. Having two small sized characters couldn’t hurt for justifying Armor skin time and designs.
[/quote]

Not likely, it should be pretty obvious that one of the major reasons the Dwarves turned to stone was to prevent the possibility OF dragon corruption. They would have been corruptible in their prior flesh and bone state. But once they underwent the rite of the great dwarf they were fundamentally changed, mind and body.

The Dwarves won’t be playable >.>, pretty sure there has also been a dev comment recently which says as much – and no I am not digging through the forums to find it because as with above that’s kind of a needle in a haystack type situation.

Well… after all, Scarlet DID create a whole new race of sentient beings.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just play the 2014 July1 Living Story and wait in the house until Taimi activate the Scarlet Hologram.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

The holo is a diary, where Scarlet tells how she used a mix of technologies to create steam robots to use as explorers through portals into a paralel dimension.

She eventually used the portal herself to “see” the Eternal Alchemy, but by that time the steam robots had already begun to replicate and evlove themselves.

She didn’t gave a crap about it, but for us it means the steam creatures can still visit Tyria again, probably as a threat.

However, the fact that this autonomous machines can reproduce themselves also open the possibility of totally new types of steam creatures, including “comunicative” ones. I can too easily imagine a playable steam race.