Guild Wars 2

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Far in the distance of the labyrinth, hovers the castle of the mad king himself.

Notice how the clocktower is actually a part of the castle itself, including the bridge and the tower that gives us access to it.

Hovering above the Clocktower entrance, are the floating pieces of debris on which we fought the Mad King last year during Ascent to Madness. The Clocktower is actually quite detailed in this mini vista. It includes all the cogs and other details that float around it. Also, not visible in the screenshot, but the giant twisted moon is behind the castle.

Funny how of all people, the Mad Queen and Daniel Frozenwind should stumble on to it.

The Tyrian Explorer’s Guild owes me a medal!

That’s interesting. Last year, the clocktower was isolated and spinning around the Ascent to Madness.

I was actually wondering where Castle Thorn was from during his reign (I find it doubtful that the castle in Lion’s Arch was dubbed “Castle Thorn” so I’ve been thinking it was the Shattered Keep where we find Wynn’s ghost from the day of Ozzy’s death).

I wonder if that’s the original Castle Thorn – pulled into the Mad Realm ala Temple of the Six Gods style – or just a duplicate/something new.

I’d love to go there. _

A location from where you saw it would be nice. :P

Edit: I found it – SW corner of the labyrinth. Interesting. Also interesting it’s in the opposite direction of the map’s placement of the tower and Ascent to Madness.

I see a domed building on Castle Thorn, I may be wrong but doesn’t the Shattered Keep have a collapsed domed structure to?

There’s several on that castle (nothing says it’s Castle Thorn, btw – Castle Thorn was the castle from when Ozzy lived), but I think the Shattered Keep only has 1 large one. Unless about 80% of the structure disappeared in Tyria, they’d be different.

Interesting, It was just a thought!

The castle has several structures on ground level, identical to the tower that you spawn in while waiting to enter the Clocktower. Most towers are damaged of course. But it is not unlikely that perhaps Thorn pulled his own castle into the Mad Realm itself, or that he merely created a twisted copy of it.

Of course, there are strong similarities between this floating castle, and the floating islands we see in Fractals. So it could simply be a memory from the past that Thorn dragged from the Mists into his domain.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Edit: I found it – SW corner of the labyrinth. Interesting. Also interesting it’s in the opposite direction of the map’s placement of the tower and Ascent to Madness.

The map is weird as it is. I don’t think we can trust the map to show the actual locations of these places in relation to each other. The labyrinth is clearly on a separate island, deep beneath the castle. And Thorn simply projects a giant version of himself in the labyrinth. A map would not be able to properly show all these areas that are stacked on top of each other.The fact that the clocktower is actually attached to the whole castle is pretty surprising.

Technically speaking…

The Mad Realm is not “Thorn’s domain” per se. He managed to rule over all those who got sent there, adding them to his Lunatic Court.

And the Mad Realm is part of the Underworld – aka part of the Mists.

Only problem is the clocktower is surrounded by water. And there was nothing surrounding it last year when I was looking around. You say me getting outside the area and swimming around was not intended? Maybe but they still didn’t put anything under the clocktower in the section we were able to see.

Though Konig is correct, the mad realm is a section of the underworld that mad king thorn just sort of took over, but Grenth still rules over it.

position on the map should be taken with a grain of salt, these big maps have to actually be put somewhere in the world, but sometimes they cant fit where they actually are within the lore of the world.

The water thing is mechanical; I fell through the green stuff once and hit that water too – every individual map has its own level of water. The Mad Realm – even though one can see all maps (or most maps) from any other, are in fact six or seven different maps entirely.

The clocktower jumping puzzle itself is divided into 3 separate maps – because at the time they didn’t have mobile platforms players can stand on programmed (they programmed this for SAB world 2’s release though). The tower’s three maps was the waiting room – in which it was the gears and other debris moving; the puzzle itself, in which it was the clocktower itself that moved; and the belfry which for all we know doesn’t have those debris outside. Heck, the world map for the clocktower is different when in the tower itself compared to when out of it (likely the puzzle itself isn’t part of the Mad Realm area at all).

In Ascent to Madness last year, you could see the clocktower rotating around the place (and spinning itself as well – e.g., moving like how Earth does around the Sun), but there was no castle. It was just two isolated buildings.

They effectively made the tower 5 times, mechanically speaking. Twice as far distanced decorations.

As for the position on the map… they’re within the PvP Mists, in an unused corner in the wide area of the unused Mists map (just press M then click the level up button in the bottom right corner, and you’ll find the Mad Realm is in the lower left corner of the Mists’ PvP/WvW combined map – very very small at that).

Actually the clocktower was all in the same map, just separated into segments, the waiting room, the actual puzzle, and the reward room.

You could find them all looking around below it. The water below the map was a joke, as all games do that pretty much, but they still didn’t put anything below the clocktower in the portion we were supposed to be able to see.

That’s more or less what I meant about the map thing (otherwise there’d be more loading screens)

It’s not all one thing, but multiple pieces that mimic each other.

I think it would have been a bit much t o put the entire castle there fore the clocktower’s jumping bit, given they would then have to rotate the entire castle.

It’s possible that while the clocktower is a part of the Mad King’s Castle, when players enter the Clocktower it is lifted into the air, free from the castle. I think the Mad King would be able to do that inside the Mad Realm, since his influence is very strong.

Also, the water is simply a game mechanic. It is not meant to actually be underneath the Clocktower from a lore point of view, but every map in Guild Wars simply has water underneath it by default. Players were never meant to survive the green goo, and swim around underneath the Clocktower. For lore purposes, we should ignore it is there.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Only problem is the clocktower is surrounded by water. And there was nothing surrounding it last year when I was looking around. You say me getting outside the area and swimming around was not intended?

Given that it is the mists and that Thorn has acquired a certain amount of power over the realm (the aforementioned projections) this itself could also just be a projection – which would explain the water/acid level issue. The real castle could be somewhere else (if he has one at all in the underworld).

Either way the mists is horribly inconsistent with water levels, leading me to believe that we shouldn’t worry about it too much (there might be some explanation for it that we are unaware of).

*Grabs experimental teleportation rifle.

During the Halloween Live stream I asked the team if they could tell us more about the Clocktower and the Mad King’s castle. Interestingly enough, the question was immediately dodged. They want to keep it a secret. Very interesting…

Also, we may meet some of the Mad Queens (plural) in future Halloween content. That should be interesting.

Interesting. We’ve only met Zola before through GW1. I wonder what the other 7 have to say…

Some other things they addressed in the stream, is the reason why the Mad King had been away for so long. As the team explained, the Lunatic Court doesn’t really know what its doing. Their answer to any ritual that doesn’t work, is simply doubling the quantity and trying again, until it blows up in their faces. And blow up it did. The reason the Mad King was sealed away in the Mad Realm, according to the team, is because of a failed attempt to set him free. And the Mad King probably isn’t too happy about that.

They also explained that these failed attempts might eventually have dire consequences. The team seemed to want to take away people’s concerns that a lot of these story lines ultimately do not lead anywhere.

They also explained that the Mad King has always been mad, which is something we already knew. The Mad King has always enjoyed playing harmful pranks on other people, even when he was young. And contrary to his son, he really does care about his subjects (in a demented way), even if he plays deadly pranks on them.

They also answered the question why the Mad King has a pumpkin on his head. The answer to that is of course: “I can’t hear you I have a pumpkin on my head”. At some point they considered giving him a lemon instead of a pumpkin, but this made his mood too sour. :P

Lol, I wonder if they will ever pick up on that line that was stated ways back that the rituals that they were doing were drawing the interests of “someone else”. I sure as heck hope they weren’t talking about Dhuum’s appearance in the UW, and that they were talking about a different threat.

I think they were talking about Baron Wycker or the one the Mad Baron follows: Eddie, the Painlord.

Here’s a close up

I had always hoped that the “someone else” was a planned physical introduction of Menzies, but it never panned out…

on the livestream the devs said they hoped to do some stuff on his wives, one even said that it’d have been pretty awesome if he took over winters day, then another said valentine’s day would be better.. after all, after being married 8 times, who understands the ways of women better than oswald thorn?

Getefix.9150:

on the livestream the devs said they hoped to do some stuff on his wives, one even said that it’d have been pretty awesome if he took over winters day, then another said valentine’s day would be better.. after all, after being married 8 times, who understands the ways of women better than oswald thorn?

“If your wife get’s boring, chop her head off” – Oswald Thorn

seems about right.

well.. how many women have you married huh? its their fault for being boring :P

Given the fact that it’s the ‘Mad Realm’, I’d say it’s very possible the clocktower is both part of the castle and separated at the same time.

Anything making sense in there wouldn’t make much sense, if you know what I mean.