Guild Wars 2

We have teleportation. Instantaneous teleportation that is perfectly safe and harmless. But we can’t make a zepplin that can travel to Cantha? I just…it kind of takes away from the world for me. Come on Asura fairy rainbow magic technology, WORK!

Two ENTIRELY different technologies at work. It would be like saying “We can fly from LA to Tokyo, so why can’t we make a bridge connecting them?” Airships and Gates use completely different systems in order to work.

Plus, as stated, we’d need to establish an Asura Gate in Cantha – the only one known to be there was tied to a gate that was destroyed. Asura would have to find a way to get to it to even learn its calibration frequency, assuming it was even still intact and in working condition after 247 years (and assuming modern gates CAN work with ancient ones)! More likely, they need to build a new gate, which still requires them to go there and do it.

Any technology made from unobtanium that the creators are smart enough to not specify otherwise has the range of plot, travels at the speed of plot, has the firepower of plot, is as expensive as plot and generally conveniently fits the needs of plot in every possible way.

Wall-breaking, but true. Still, it is NOT unrealistic to assume a ship like that would not make it. It is, as you say, a heavy ship, and it is a dreadfully long distance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/47/Tyria.jpg

(Cantha is the small continent in bottom center. Istan is the crescent-ish island north of it aways, with greater Elona nearby, and Tyria (continent) northwest of Elona – both part of the same supercontinent.)

Another map, correct in all respects except it puts Cantha a bit TOO far south compared to the map found in GW2 (first URL):
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/a/a2/Tyria_world_fan_map_%28freestyle%29.jpg

And to be fair, the fan map doesn’t have Cantha THAT far off. Shift it a bit east and maybe a smidgen north, and it’d match fine.

In any event, it’s quite a ways.

@Konig: Whoops, that’s my bad with the pride, in german it’s “Stolz von Tyria” (=Pride of Tyria) and I never actually bothered to look up if the name is different in english. xP

Gaudrath.6725:

All true. But the sturdiness of the Pride is clearly demonstrated in the fight with Zhaitan. It can stay in the air even when big chunks of it are missing. So yes, maybe it does use toddlers as fuel. But it sure is sturdy enough to weather a storm or a dozen, if it can survive a direct hit from a flying mountain.

Zhaitan is much smaller than a mountain. A tiny moutain is a thousand meters across at the base. The danger of a crosswind = cross sectional area/mass. I remember driving across the midwest during a windstorm and seeing tractor trailers lying on their sides more than 20 meters from the sides of the road. The largest bull elephant, or even something several times the size of a bull elephant, could not do that if it charged into them, but it probably could if it charged into a Miata which would have no trouble with a windstorm. The size that makes a large airship more sturdy to attack would make it more vulnerable to crosswinds and turbulence (if we used Real Life physics, anyway).

I think they are just not that interested to send a big expedition to cantha atm. Perhaps they have a small diplomatic team over but transport there will not be available to the PCs as they have no official business there.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

@Konig: Whoops, that’s my bad with the pride, in german it’s “Stolz von Tyria” (=Pride of Tyria) and I never actually bothered to look up if the name is different in english. xP

Yes, it’s his fault! Your fault BuddhaKeks, you hear me!? :p

Gaudrath.6725:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

@Konig: Whoops, that’s my bad with the pride, in german it’s “Stolz von Tyria” (=Pride of Tyria) and I never actually bothered to look up if the name is different in english. xP

Yes, it’s his fault! Your fault BuddhaKeks, you hear me!? :p

Yes, my fault alone! :<

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Plus, as stated, we’d need to establish an Asura Gate in Cantha – the only one known to be there was tied to a gate that was destroyed.

Debatable topic. The Eye of the North intro quests are very canonocity-questionable for the Elona and Cantha quests.

If all three quests were canon, it would put Ogden, Vekk, and those dwarves underneath Lion’s Arch, Kamadan, and Kaineng City all at the same time as well as having all three areas look 60% the same – or alternatively, have those three cities connected via underground passages that are all very very short. The former is chronologically impossible, and the latter is geographically impossible.

It’s likely that the Elona and Cantha quests are to be treated like the quest in Factions to take players to Tyria, or quests in Nightfall to take players to Tyria and Cantha. They’re not canon – they break the timeframe, claiming threats that are no longer an issue to be continued threats, in order to allow players to go back to older content to experience those no-longer-an-issue-timeline-wise threats.

JohnLShannonhouse.1820:

Zhaitan is much smaller than a mountain.

I wouldn’t be so sure. The dungeon actually skews size proportions for Zhaitan. Zhaitan’s larger – about twice so – than the Glory of Tyria, which itself is about three times larger than the standard airships. However, due to the size of the Glory of Tyria, Zhaitan doesn’t look so big in comparison.

You probably would be saying he’s the size of a mountain if we were fighting him on foot or even on one of those smaller airships (which he’d be able to just flyswat out of the air with ease).

It’s hard to tell size on these types of things, especially when it comes to things that big. I watched Zhaitan flying around, and again it’s hard to tell with everything going on, but it almost seemed like the dragon champions flying around him were about the size of the smaller offshoot heads on his face. I understand I could have misinterpreted this, but it gives some more perspective on the size of the dragon.

I guess that the ones producing hydrogen/helium are the humans. The Charr have shown no signs of chemical industry characteristic of the 2nd Industrial Revolution (which would explain their lack of high-powered explosives). That or they are glorified Hot air balloon.

Legion.4198:

I guess that the ones producing hydrogen/helium are the humans. The Charr have shown no signs of chemical industry characteristic of the 2nd Industrial Revolution (which would explain their lack of high-powered explosives). That or they are glorified Hot air balloon.

Have the humans shown this?

(I really don’t know)

Money.
Initiative.
It sucks there atm.
And there are humans there, and they just whine and mess everything up.

Jaqalope.6175:

Money.
Initiative.
It sucks there atm.
And there are humans there, and they just whine and mess everything up.

Humans have already saved the world 3 times and killed a real god, and a whole slew of false ones if you count the Mursaat and the Titans (modern charr really should thank humanity for that). Everyone else is still playing catchup.

Dustfinger.9510:

Legion.4198:

I guess that the ones producing hydrogen/helium are the humans. The Charr have shown no signs of chemical industry characteristic of the 2nd Industrial Revolution (which would explain their lack of high-powered explosives). That or they are glorified Hot air balloon.

Have the humans shown this?

(I really don’t know)

I havent really seen any sign of it. We do know that the charr had prototype airship designs. Human influence may have been in other areas like navigation. Its never reallly specified.

Human’s forte is in two areas: resilience and magical artifacts.

If one looks closely, human history has always had standard objects imbued with magics. They made sigils, various magical weapons, magical stone bombardment. Yeah, asura are the magic experts. But they can only tie magic to crystals – anything magical they make is tied to arcane crystals. Humans, though, can tie magic to stone, metal, crystal, or anything.

They also make stuff that can withstand a lot of stress and damage.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Human’s forte is in two areas: resilience and magical artifacts.

If one looks closely, human history has always had standard objects imbued with magics. They made sigils, various magical weapons, magical stone bombardment. Yeah, asura are the magic experts. But they can only tie magic to crystals – anything magical they make is tied to arcane crystals. Humans, though, can tie magic to stone, metal, crystal, or anything.

They also make stuff that can withstand a lot of stress and damage.

Now that you mention it, humans also had the magical knowledge to make magical gateways to transport between locations too. Kind of wish Kryta had an academy of magic now. Needless to say, magical devices were far more common in the past for humans than we see these days. Old ascalonian fortifications used those lighting devices as defensive turrets too. Lost knowledge or has it just fallen out of style I wonder?

Still doesnt tell us much about the human contribution to airship design. Perhaps it wasn’t anything particularly specialised. human’s do have competent engineers after all. They just dont build on the same scale and with the same goals as the other races.

My money is on lost knowledge. Between the Cataclysm, the Searing, the Foefire, the Krytan and Ascalonian guilds deliberately targeting each other’s academies, and the fighting in Kryta, I’d bet a lot of knowledge formerly held by the human kingdoms of Tyria was lost. In fact, there are hearts in Ascalon where Priory members specifically state that their motives include relearning magical knowledge that was lost in the process of Ascalon’s fall.

On human technology in the airships – I’ve thought for a while that the human contribution may have come from adapting the technology of windmills and seafaring vessels to airships.

I’ve always figured that the human’s main hand in the Pact technology was bringing in the means to tie asuran magic – which they seemingly can only tie to power crystals – to charr technology. You seldom – if ever – see asuran arcane power crystals in the Pact and their structures and equipment, after all.

Lack of reason to given the unknown, though likely detrimental outcome of flying what are essentially warships to a xenophobic nation that has eschewed external contact for over two centuries, and the fact that all of the races have conflicts they’re still dealing with on the home front.

My related question, though, is that now that Zhaitan’s gone, the Risen are being mopped up, and the other Elder Dragons aren’t on the open offensive at least for the moment, why not take some Pact forces/technologies that are now no longer tied up in Orr and offer to help out at home? I’m sure there would be political complications if, say, the Pact just used the Cauldron of Searing against the centaurs, Flame Legion, etc, but I would think a few airships cleared to float around the contested areas, and the open knowledge that said ships were used to help defeat an Elder Dragon, might give the opposing forces in the area an opportunity to reconsider their purposes in life. Shrug

On the asura gate thing; anyone recall how the device Logan used in his, er, run… worked? It seemed to be a kind of one-shot thing he threw out over the sand; the thing I don’t remember is whether the other end had to be an existing asura gate or not.

If not, there’s a possibility you could use a similar trick to reach Cantha. Might not be the most practical method, of course; it doesn’t help that you probably don’t know where you’ll end up.

^I haven’t read the story in a while, but I think it’s more likely what Logan did was some sort of Mesmer magic
Since Queen Jennah is a mesmer, her ‘pull’ over him might be so strong that it can teleport him, such as the in-game portal skill

It was a device made by Snaff – a portable (size-changing) asura gate. But, iiirc, it still required an asura gate end – there was one just south of Ebonhawke that they went to, both when Destiny’s Edge began looking for Glint, and when Logan went to help Jennah.

Actually, it didn’t. You drop it on the ground, it expands into a full-sized gate, and you step through and appear on the other side. When it deactivates, the miniaturized version appears on the far side with you.

However, Snaff mentions that he can only tune them to “known places”; the one they use is tuned to south of Ebonhawke, “out of arrow range”. Logan uses it to save Jennah, and winds up with it in the end as far as I know. It’s possible that was the only one Snaff ever made, and only he might have known how to retune it to other places.

I always assumed that that portable Asura gate was the lore behind the waypoint system. It would certainly fit both the ingame discription of the system and the mode of transportation.

It returns in the asura blog post stories, explaining how the krewe leader escaped from Skrittsburg without the rest.

Though I thought there had to be another gate. Maybe it was just the lore behind the waypoint system – wouldn’t surprise me if those things are less than five years old. Would explain why no NPCs use them (they just set them up in Orr).

Sirius.4510:

If not, there’s a possibility you could use a similar trick to reach Cantha. Might not be the most practical method, of course; it doesn’t help that you probably don’t know where you’ll end up.

I hope not. The Asura have become nothing but plot devices generators suited to handwave everything because we don’t know the power necessities, range and limits of their tech. They are for all purposes the “Lethal Joke Race”. At this point everything strange in Guild Wars 2 can be solved by saying “An Asura did it”.