Guild Wars 2

The great collapse in divinity’s reach is guarded by shining blade soldiers. The gossiping citizens there also explain they where removed by the shining blade when the the first cracks appeared.

This made me wonder. The shining blade are the personal guard of the royal family. The guarding and removal of citizen should be more a matter for the seraph or maybe the ministry guards, but not the shining blade (or tell me when I’m wrong and why). The only reason I could think of is that the great collapse was caused by enemy’s of the royal family like e.g. the white mantle.

I don’t think that the Mantle would target the Canthan district over Salma or the Commons. Or the palace.

Of course, we have no idea what or who was in that district. Maybe there was some artifact the Mantle wanted that they believe was there.

I agree with you @mercury. Something is up with that. This is one of the cool things about GW2. There are many directions stories could go. Maybe one of these days we will delve into the great collapse. It may have a tie in with a future Cantha edition. Who knows?

The Shining Blade extend their role to more than just being the royal family bodyguards. They’re more or less like secret service so it isn’t strange that they want to take care of something as big as the great collapse.

The Great Collapse is full of mysteries and contradictions presented by those guards.

For example, the guards say that 1) they had several weeks notice for the evacuations and that such was done in orderly manner, 2) the Shining Blade were aided by the Seraph in evacuating, and 3) there were no casualties.

However, the citizens nearby say that 1) it was a sudden thing, happening in the middle of the night, and 2) only make mention of the Shining Blade – no one mentions the Seraph being involved. Not only this, but for the street rat humans, you can talk to Riot Alice during the third story step in the first arc where she says 3) her father died in the collapse (this being covered up is why she specifically is an anarchist working with bandits/street gangs).

Then add in the surroundings of the city:

1. A Gossiping Citizen near the Great Collapse makes mention of hearing sounds from the depths. There’s a few other mentions of the city of other weird noises from underground, placing blame on the rumors of the drakes giving an implication that said rumors are true (the “drakes in the sewers” is clearly a nod to alligators in the NYC sewers urban legend, but still, noises are heard…).
2. There’s a lot of bandit activity in the city – including a death near the Plaza of Grenth, which contains the Grenth’s Spokes, which is the city’s pump system. As some may know, there’s indication that 1) the bandits are a united force that 2) work for the White Mantle and corrupt Ministers, both knowingly and not.

This all has led me to believe that the Great Collapse was caused by an underground bandit attack that the Shining Blade, interested in White Mantle activities, learned about and acted against in the middle of the night.

In-game story : It was just a great collapse due to bad design or leaking underground water..

Real world story : We don’t want stinking chinese looking characters in our game! ~ Arenanet.

P/S: I am chinese. :P

Not ArenaNet, NCSoft.

Not bad design, rushed design over a sinkhole. That’s the “official” story at least. The one that the Shining Blade give. Bad foundation due to a sinkhole.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Then add in the surroundings of the city:

1. A Gossiping Citizen near the Great Collapse makes mention of hearing sounds from the depths. There’s a few other mentions of the city of other weird noises from underground, placing blame on the rumors of the drakes giving an implication that said rumors are true (the “drakes in the sewers” is clearly a nod to alligators in the NYC sewers urban legend, but still, noises are heard…).

I believe there’s a sewer grate that you can interact with that has some information as well. It’s near the Dead End Bar that was recently added. If you face the Dead End Bar it’ll be to your right down the road.

“A strange sound echoes in the darkness below. Could all of those stories about drakes in the sewers be true?”

VitalSuit.1980:

“A strange sound echoes in the darkness below. Could all of those stories about drakes in the sewers be true?”

Don’t mix a joke into a theory crafting :P This one is clearly just a joke.

Gandarel.5091:

VitalSuit.1980:

“A strange sound echoes in the darkness below. Could all of those stories about drakes in the sewers be true?”

Don’t mix a joke into a theory crafting :P This one is clearly just a joke.

It’s only half a joke. It point’s towards there be actually being something going on in the sewers, and makes light of the fact that the citizens of DR think it could be Drakes.

SirDrygan.1823:

In-game story : It was just a great collapse due to bad design or leaking underground water..

Real world story : We don’t want stinking chinese looking characters in our game! ~ Arenanet.

P/S: I am chinese. :P

Off topic but Anet did want Asian characters in their game, and put a lot of time and effort into making the Canthan district. The problem apparently is that Cantha was based on a mash-up of Asian cultures and NCSoft (a Korean company) felt this was offensive to those cultures. As I understand it they asked Anet to pick just one country/culture and base everything Canthan on that, but there wasn’t time for them to actually do this (especially to try and tie it in to Cantha as portrayed in GW1) so all they could do was pull the whole district and everything except occasional characters from the game.

@Danikat,

The reason the Canthan District was removed is because it put an Asian themed area being tower over by European style walls. Canthan theme from Guild Wars was really liked by asain cultures for the most part. Some things weren’t but not in the aspect your saying in your post.

Actually both of you are right. These were the main reasons. But they stated that the guy from NCSoft has likely left the company, so this anti-Cantha thing is out of date.

I am asian (japanese) and i personally would love Canthan district and more details and lore about Cantha… i m super curious about it, i find no offense in a mash up of cultures. there are characters with chinese, korean, japanese names that sound distinctively separate, meaning different asian heritage. That they live in a same place doesn’t make much of a difference imo… its a global society nowadays! theres all sorts of culture living togetherrr and also

i personally hope when we get more info about this…. i hope itll b a big living story or quest or new maps or dungeon even…. that it would turn out to be a much bigger, ominous issue like… something Elder Dragon or dragon champion related or even canthan history related… there’s like the stuff about Jade Wind and plagues and whatnot from Cantha… something that needed to be hidden or destroyed or something alive deep underground that caused the collapse… etc… xD id love something epic like that. and like a boss battle or something! cuz the creature emerges lolol or at least let us explore the underground.

apparently, there’s also catacombs that go deep under Divinity’s Reach, according to the gw2 novel Ghosts of Ascalon. I wanna go into those things!! i have a heart for adventure ^^

takatsu.9416:

I am asian (japanese) and i personally would love Canthan district and more details and lore about Cantha… i m super curious about it, i find no offense in a mash up of cultures. there are characters with chinese, korean, japanese names that sound distinctively separate, meaning different asian heritage.

I agree. I think a mash up of cultures would be wonderful. After all the world of Tyria is not Earth. Why should Cantha reflect any one Earth culture?

I would think that all Asian cultures would embrace the mash up whether or not, they like the other Asian countries. At least they are represented, right?

I am from one of the western cultures, and I do not care in the least that Ascalon/Tyria are mash ups of American/Euro/Australian cultures. Elona was certainly not a strict reference to any one African/Mid Eastern culture.

I think the diversity is nice. And again, it isn’t Earth so a mash up is kind of cool in all cultures on Tyria IMO.

I’ve always assume that the hole was caused by why happened in the beginning of Ghosts of Ascalon.

You mean the trap that was triggered in Blimm’s Tomb? All that did was collapse the false floor in that room, nothing more.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You mean the trap that was triggered in Blimm’s Tomb? All that did was collapse the false floor in that room, nothing more.

I mean the fight with the tomb guardian/golem but that seems like it is the same.

The fight caused the trap due to the trap being stuck by spiderwebs. There were support beams within the pre-designed pit, but there was no unintended wreckage. The pit was always there, the only thing that collapsed was a false floor, so if the Great Collapse was caused by such, it would have happened long ago before the spider webs were made and probably while making the trap itself.

Well, I guess it would be possible, if they knocked a support beam out of place or something. But I don’t recall such happening (but it’s been a long while since I read the book so I may be wrong).

Theres always the sentences by the royal architect and a sylvari visitor standing by a closed wooden gate that leats to some scafoldings which descends a bit down into the hole itself.

The architect talks about new fundations coming along nicely, and that we dont have to worry about a new collapse. Then theres the sylvari who talks about the city having roots of stone, she also talks about finding it odd as she has seen sinkholes before when creatures have tunneled to much in an area. Then goes on saying that she didnt think humans lived underground, finding it curious.

While she may be indeed talking about tunnels as in severs etc, there seems to be a bit more to it. Add to the obvious gate that if bypassed would allow one to descend a good way down the hole.. well.. I hope they expand on the importance of this place. I’ve wanted to get down into that hole since i first saw it during the first bwe events!

talking about the Cantha district and why it never came up, I am a mixed arab and I found it interesting that Zhaitan was closely named or named after Shaitan, the Arabic word for the devil. I also found it interesting that we met a Largos in our personal story, who had an Arabic name and an Arabic accent. Upon further research I found more of them, and I was interested because for once there was some fantasy representation of “me” that was…well, interesting. Not once did I find it offensive; they even made the race basically a race of assassins, which that in itself has Arabic origins. Though it could be problematic, it wasn’t offensive, and so to me I think that the executive at NCSoft was just being cautious. Hopefully we will see that Cantha district.

I’d totally buy into any theories about the Great Collapse being caused by upper-ranking human nobles, by the way.

illictic.6183:

-snip-

Orr uses Arabic influenced names :P

FlamingFoxx.1305:

illictic.6183:

-snip-

Orr uses Arabic influenced names :P

immediately after writing that I realized that too. More reasons to be pleased!!! And more reason to be confused about the decision behind the Cantha district.

I think the thing is that Cantha uses a mixture of Asian cultures, and it’s that mixture that offends/offended folks; on the flip side, Largos and Orr seem to take only from Arabic culture as an influence.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I think the thing is that Cantha uses a mixture of Asian cultures, and it’s that mixture that offends/offended folks; on the flip side, Largos and Orr seem to take only from Arabic culture as an influence.

There are, of course, tons of different Arabic cultures, too! There is a difference between Lebanese and Saudi Arabia cultures, for instance. But they are both considered Arabic. It’s the same with, for example, Korea and China—they are completely different, but they are both considered East Asian.

This may be due to cultural ignorance in the Middle Eastern area of the globe (as that and South American are the geographical regions I have spent the least time looking into foreign cultures), but aren’t a fair portion of the Arabic cultures similar (not the same mind you – but being Islamic, the etomology, and other such things, and not the castes and groups (whatever they may be called)). Whereas Korean and Chinese are much more noticeably different.

Then there’s the whole rivalry between the cultures, where Arabic have/had rivalries in groups and not nations, the East Asian ones were between the nations themselves.

I suppose a closer comparison would be to mesh Sunni Islam with a rival Islam sect, or Catholicism with Protestant – each created rivalries, and some may be insulted to find people who’re either meshing or unable to distinguish the groups. But as I understand it, it all lies in patriotism with the issue over the Canthan district fiasco – which is something I’ll probably never be capable of comprehending properly. I just lack that kind of motivation for such things.

I don’t think the Arabic influence on Orr/Largos would have ever been offensive (to NCSoft that is) because there are no character designs or even architecture that have specific cultural representations. Just names really (right?) NCSoft cut the Cantha district because they didn’t like how the designs specifically emulated the East Asian aesthetic and its people. (Which is a load of bullkitten as me and a trillion other GW players have been saying. Give us Cantha and everything else you’ve got! None of the culturally inspired designs Anet has made in the past has truly offended players because it was done with impeccable taste and style that transcended any form of mere stereotyping)

Anyway, we’re going off topic here, lol. I don’t doubt that the “real story” behind the collapse was simply the last minute cut of Cantha. But to leave something so ominous in a huge chunk of DR is simply an opportunity for Anet to weave in something dramatic into future plot developments. The ‘real story’ is what it is, but the collapse’s role in the future is totally in the air, and surely something to look forward to. It would be stupid/complete waste to do nothing with it. I bet that Anet was thinking the collapse could become significant in the future, and that’s why they had the Shining Blade be involved, because I bet they want some future plot developments involving that group.

They are probably just being careful. You know how much sensitive people and governments became the past few years We have to remember always that even though GW2 is in a world different from ours, the gods of GW2 are still on planet Earth :p

Anyway, with the recent patches, I noticed there’s a growing number of NPCs that are possibly of Canthan origin. Why they are suddenly in Tyria even though the seas are still being blockaded, is weird. Unless they came via the air, which fits with the sudden appearance of the Ætherblade pirates and the coming next patch Bazaar of the Four Winds and the Zephyr Sanctum.

Shael.4703:

They are probably just being careful. You know how much sensitive people and governments became the past few years We have to remember always that even though GW2 is in a world different from ours, the gods of GW2 are still on planet Earth :p

Anyway, with the recent patches, I noticed there’s a growing number of NPCs that are possibly of Canthan origin. Why they are suddenly in Tyria even though the seas are still being blockaded, is weird. Unless they came via the air, which fits with the sudden appearance of the Ætherblade pirates and the coming next patch Bazaar of the Four Winds and the Zephyr Sanctum.

The NPC’s with Canthan visuals have always been there, they are the descendants of Canthans who migrated to Tyria or sought refuge in Tyria before Cantha was closed off.

You all should asked first if Arenanet is allowed to even bring back Cantha into the game in the first place? If NCsoft still veto Cantha?

The real-world reason for the collapse is that they were not allowed too many Canthan elements because the design of GW1 had offended some of the countries where they drew their ideas from. The collapse was thought up because they didn’t have time to change it and it represents an idea that “fell through”.

SirDrygan.1823:

You all should asked first if Arenanet is allowed to even bring back Cantha into the game in the first place? If NCsoft still veto Cantha?

From what I’ve heard, the NCSoft official who said no Canthan district is no longer part of NCSoft. May be wrong, but that should open things up. Especially if there’s a redesign of Canthan elements.