Guild Wars 2

Now i guess I’m not the only one who felt a little tinge of regret at the design of the WvW and sPvP areas, which, despite being in the Mists, don’t look anything at all like the Mists in GW1.

In GW1, all the Mist areas had an otherworldly vibe to them. Most of them did not look like anywhere else in the game. In Gw2, the WvW and sPvP Mist areas looked like every other part of the game. Now, I know that the Mists are made up of different planes, and i kind of get the feeling that the GW2 Mist areas are meant to be fragments or memories, perhaps, of real Tyria locations and events. For example, the Battle of Khylo, which may be a recreation of the actual Battle of Khylo during the Guild Wars. Same too with the Legacy of the Foefire. Still, they lack the otherworldlyness of the Mists we know.

And now, the Mad King’s Realm brings back the otherworldly look of the Mists, and I am very pleased with that. The empty voids, the floating “islands” and such are very evocative of the Realm of Torment. I hope to see more areas of the Mists like this in the future!

Well, when you think about it, much of what we saw in the mists were corrupted fragments or the realms of gods. I mean Fissure of Woe was built to Balthazar’s liking, the Underworld to Grenth (since he changed it a bit after Dhuum was enchanted), the Realm of Torment was literally a prison for a god who went insane and warped the place to his vision, and the Hall of Heroes which was a location for the greatest of heroes. I have a feeling that places like these will eventually be released back into the game eventually, but at the moment what we are seeing are merely memories of Tyria. It may be that the other areas are impossible to get to without the permission of the gods that rule over them, or without ascension (which was required for Hall of Heroes).

Narcemus.1348:

Well, when you think about it, much of what we saw in the mists were corrupted fragments or the realms of gods. I mean Fissure of Woe was built to Balthazar’s liking, the Underworld to Grenth (since he changed it a bit after Dhuum was enchanted), the Realm of Torment was literally a prison for a god who went insane and warped the place to his vision, and the Hall of Heroes which was a location for the greatest of heroes. I have a feeling that places like these will eventually be released back into the game eventually, but at the moment what we are seeing are merely memories of Tyria. It may be that the other areas are impossible to get to without the permission of the gods that rule over them, or without ascension (which was required for Hall of Heroes).

By the release of Factions ascension was no longer needed to reach the Hall of Heros.

Some could claim that becoming Closer to the Stars was a similar scenario to the rites of Ascension, seeing as both situations gave the character abilities with sight (in Factions the ability to see spirits, in Prophecies the ability to see the Mursaat). Now one could argue that the situation at Gandara could have inadvertently given the character this ability, or perhaps the trauma of watching the demons being pulled from the Realm of Torment gave the player character the ability to enter the Hall of Heroes, we don’t know. Perhaps it is the fact that the gods showed favor to those characters because of their strength of will when dealing with that situation. At the very least it can be said that the individual has to show a strength of character much greater than that of normal individuals in order to gain access to the Hall of Heroes.

Even though we technically battle in the mists for Wv3, for example, Tyrians are the ones who presumably built these keeps & castles to defend their world from invaders. Why wouldn’t they look like other Tyrian architecture? Even in sPvP, we are merely placed into arenas built by Tyrians to test the mettle of teams of combatants in the Mists. I wouldn’t assume these structures were already there. When we go to the mists for the pvp lobby, it has that otherworldly look you are referencing, but they send us to arenas that were built to represent significant moments in Tyrian history just to add some flavor to the skirmishes.

The arenas in the Zaishen isles in GW1 were presumably constructed the same way if they were all to exist on the islands themselves, we weren’t ported to areas of Tyria that already appeared that way. One would assume that even though we lost contact with the Zaishen Order during the awakening of Zhaitan, combatants from around Tyria remembered how we held tournaments previously and decided to build new arenas in the same fashion, even though they actually exist in the mists.

As for the old PvP areas like the Hall of Heroes in the Rift, the only known location to access it outside of the Zaishen Isles lore-wise was the Tomb of Primeval Kings, which is in an area not included in the current GW2 zones. It may be possible that there are still adventurers in that area fighting in the Hall of Heroes, but it lies pretty much at ground zero for where Kralkatorrik landed at the end of the Dragonbrand, and more than likely collapsed the entrance when he did so. I expect we’ll see some industrious asura krewes or Priory teams digging it up in a future expansion as we go after another ED.

Well there is 1 other entrance to the hall of heroes, Drascir, in northern ascalon. Further north than we can physically go.