Shining Blade Questions!
Well, I’ve never had a problem telling the two apart – even if a lot of the armour pieces are similar, the different colours make them stand out. To be honest, I think that’s a case of the Ministry Guard deliberately copying the Shining Blade as much as they thought they could get away with (consider their crests – the Shining Blade has a sword with a halo, the Ministry Guard has a hammer with a different style of halo…)
It is ironic, though, that there certainly are armours that were intended to be unique Shining Blade armours that have lost that connection. The Falconer’s set you’ve observed – the Masquerade set of light armour is another where the concept was originally labelled as ‘Shining Blade armour’.
Regarding ranks – if there are other distinctions, we haven’t been informed of what they are.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
I’m aware that we haven’t been informed what they are, that’s why I wrote this thread haha. I actually sent an email to Anet and they told me to write a thread about all this so they could check it.
I’m not sure why there should be more than two formal ranks. The Shining Blade are the Queen’s bodyguards and agents. They don’t have a wide enough scope of purpose to require an extensive hierarchy to support it, and additional ranks would just put more layers between what’s going on and the person who’s supposed to be in charge. If Anise is able to keep track of everything that’s happening (something we’ve seen no reason to doubt) then three ranks should be more than sufficient- Master Exemplar to direct everything and attend to the Queen’s personal safety, Exemplars to carry out operations that need to be kept secret (and, if Sea of Sorrows is an indication, to protect other members of the royal house/the monarch when they leave the city), and rank and file agents to fill out the royal guard and carry out less sensitive work (things like assassinating centaur leaders).
They’re probably looking to avoid a repeat of the Scarlet’s birthdate controversy.
But yes, as far as I know, Exemplar and Master Exemplar are the only ranks we know of for them, unless we go back to GW1 (and even then I’m not sure off the top of my head if they had a formal rank structure). Assuming Exemplar isn’t a common rank for all Shining Blade, it’s possible that they are a small enough organisation that only three levels are needed as Aaron hypothesises – the overall leader and a rank for specialists and unit leaders.
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
Sadly, we haven’t been able to see that much storyline about Shining Blade and the White Mantle!!!
Overall I just LOVE them both, I’ve decided to create and copy Shining Blade and White Mantle’s NPCs armors [Those armors that are released to us atleast.]
There’s a concept armor art created by Anet that are named ’’Shining Blade'’ to the artwork. Check it down below!
SADLY, they’ve changed so much of this armor! I’ve tried to create the same to one of my characters, but it’s really hard. I personally love the artwork of this armor, it does look alot better comparing to the released ingame one...
The female one is complete, I’ll make the male one aswell as soon I am leveling him up and I am also going to level up White Mantle’s characters, based on the NPCs in the Aurora Glade.
Thanks for telling me that the Falconer’s set is based on Shining Blade!
Looks like I gained all the armor sets of Shining and White!
(edited by Alga.6498)
The back of the Masquerade shoulders, does resemble the White Mantle emblem. Here’s a screen shot I took to look at.
Ministry Guard, though they seem to have lucked out and got the pvp pants that we can no longer get.
Ministry Guard, though they seem to have lucked out and got the pvp pants that we can no longer get.
Oh! I didn’t noticed that! :O
Here’s my Ministry armor.