Guild Wars 2

RAWR.4273:

BrunoBRS.5178:

^ arachnia technically isn’t canon, since anything related to it can only be found through datamining.

But you can find broken statues of her in the realm of tormeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeent.

you can find broken statues of something.

and the whole area looks like a homungus dead spider.

but that’s still speculation and datamining, thus not canon.

Obsidian.1328:

@draxynnic

Nice post, I’m glad you pointed out the inherent flaws in wiki, and all wiki’s for that matter. And I appreciate your scholarly take on lore gathering. My question is, since we know the wiki to be unreliable, what sources, other than playing the actual game, can we look to for legitimate source material?

Lore documents such as the GW1 Manuscripts, the Movement of the World, An Empire Divided, and the Ecology of the Charr – most if not all of these are available on the wiki copied verbatim from the original sources, and those are valid since they’re pristine copies of things that ArenaNet lore people actually wrote. Note that they should still be taken with a grain of salt, however, since they represent what people in the world believe, and said people may be wrong (the Prophecies Manuscripts is especially suspect in this regard, as it’s been proven wrong in a number of places).

There are also a lot of interviews spread across the internet, and the odd lore article (although, unfortunately, one of the ones that gave a lot of information about the war between Abaddon and the original gods has been lost), which do have information directly from.the developers.

Oh hey, you did crosspost it! And to the official forums, not Guru! I’ve weighed in on this quite a bit on this sister topic on Reddit. I’ll throw my contributions in here.

(Link – http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12qx3z/ancient_astronauts_and_the_humans_of_tyria/ )

1 – There’s no evidence, conclusive evidence, that the Six Gods or the others who were in their place at any one time are, in fact, scientifically based. Trying to fit them into science ignores this is a fantasy fiction where magic is real and not science. It might follow rules which could have a science built around it, but it is fundamentally different in tone and nature.

2 – While it is established in one word that humans were “brought” to Tyria by the Old Gods / Six Gods / Human Gods . . . when looking into mythology and legends, the word “brought” is not always synonymous with only one meaning of the word. It could mean ‘brought on a spaceship’, it could mean ‘brought into being’, it could mean ‘tore them from another reality and placed them on Tyria’. The word lacks . . . context enough to be certain what it means, but the only thing which can be stated is simple: “There once was a time when no Humans were on Tyria.” Which isn’t saying they came from space – there was a time when there were no Charr, no Risen, no Sylvari, or no Dwarves.
Also, the planet is named Tyria and there is the Tyria continent. Without further context, it is difficult to pin down which is meant should you use “Tyria” with no qualifier.

3 – Just because humans can ascend to divinity does not mean all divine beings were once human, mortal, or otherwise “not divine”. There may be a method for Kormir becoming the Goddess of Truth after the defeat and (assumed) destruction of Abaddon, however that does not mean Dwayna had to take over from someone else.

4 – The Six Gods could be “ancient astronauts”, but there’s a couple snags. Firstly, there is a tangible afterlife where it is proven people who die have their spirits go. Secondly, it is possible to actively set foot physically on those places without dying, yet those who die are still . . . dead, not merely “moved from one plane of existence to another”. I submit that you cannot simultaneously have the Mists be a “metaphysical” plane which is where dead consciousnesses gather, and be a place physical matter can set foot.

5 – While your ideas are intriguing, there are enough outlying troubles with interpreting things this way. There are the Spirits of the Wild, which also cannot be denied to exist but are not tied to the Human race. There are instances of non-Humans calling upon the Six Gods and getting answers (a Grawl Champion of Balthazar, Kerrsh), and there are instances of Humans receiving contact from Spirits of the Wild (See “Guild Wars: Eye of the North”). There also exists the Great Dwarf, or some force which placed its power into Dwarves and are the reason they either are extinct or slowly becoming so. The Elder Dragons also exist, undeniably so, and definitely pre-date the original Six Gods. All these beings exist and at one point or another affected Tyria . . . not all of them can lay claim to “ancient travelers” possibilities. And yes, I am well aware the Mursaat claimed to be “gods” and had mysterious unknown powers.

For as much as you have here, evidence or no, I could make a countering proposed situation which might fit better the theme of the game and information available. Here it is:

=

The Six Gods are not human, nor were they mortal. They are, along with the Spirits of the Wild (Great and Lesser), a sort of construct originating from the Mists. They did not always exist, but they rose within the latest cycle in the absence of the Elder Dragons. Humans are handpicked by the Six to represent their ideal creation, and have been given many tools and much knowledge so they may flourish. It is very likely an experiment of creation, of guidance.

However, they became aware the awakening of the Elder Dragons was approaching, and began preparing Humankind for that age. Note, they guided Kormir to the position she took so there would be Six Gods once more, not Five-and-a-Prisoner. The Spirits of the Wild put capable hands onto the trail of the Destroyers so they could put down the Great Destroyer. They guided Humanity into developing even grudging allies in other races, though it’s still unclear where the Sylvari figure in. They never took direct action, they only let Humans rise to the occasion (Nightfall and Kormir’s Ascendency, the Flameseeker Prophecies, The Betrayer’s Return, the Great Destroyer) or fall into ruin (The Destruction of Orr, the Searing, the White Mantle, the Pilgramage of Turai Ossa, the Madness of Warmarshall Varesh . . .) but always it was Humanity which either failed or persevered.

Now that the Elder Dragons have awakened the Six Gods dare not intervene directly lest they be destroyed like Owl and its fellows were. Whatever powers they lend may only be through channels already in place or made outside the knowledge of the Elder Dragons. Humanity must stand with whatever allies it can pull together, with the lessons it learned, or the world will once again fall into destruction and chaos under the Elder Dragons’ power.

draxynnic.3719:

Obsidian.1328:

@draxynnic

Nice post, I’m glad you pointed out the inherent flaws in wiki, and all wiki’s for that matter. And I appreciate your scholarly take on lore gathering. My question is, since we know the wiki to be unreliable, what sources, other than playing the actual game, can we look to for legitimate source material?

Lore documents such as the GW1 Manuscripts, the Movement of the World, An Empire Divided, and the Ecology of the Charr – most if not all of these are available on the wiki copied verbatim from the original sources, and those are valid since they’re pristine copies of things that ArenaNet lore people actually wrote. Note that they should still be taken with a grain of salt, however, since they represent what people in the world believe, and said people may be wrong (the Prophecies Manuscripts is especially suspect in this regard, as it’s been proven wrong in a number of places).

There are also a lot of interviews spread across the internet, and the odd lore article (although, unfortunately, one of the ones that gave a lot of information about the war between Abaddon and the original gods has been lost), which do have information directly from.the developers.

Ok, so in the case of the Prophesies Manuscripts you mentioned, you would rather take as fact something written by a later author on an editable format, then something written by the earliest writer on an uneditable format. That makes no sense.

At this point I don’t really care what the subject is, but you’ve got to be kidding yourself if you think that just because ANet hires an author 5 years or so after the fact and something he writes about the first game somehow supercedes lore that was already there?? They didn’t have the same writers when the original game came out. It would be silly to assume anything written by a GW2 author takes precedence over a GW1 author, just like it would be silly to think GW1 lore about Zhaitan or the Sylvari carries more weight than the modern lore. They didn’t know jack squat about the dragons back then because they didn’t care, it wasn’t essential to the game until Eye came out.

Every piece of lore by a writer isn’t automatically canon. You’re talking about a whole team of writers, and almost a decade time-span now since development started on Proph. There’s going to be inconsistencies all over the place. The lore writers probably don’t really care if every little thing adds up, hell some of them aren’t even with the company any more.

But I would certainly take the writing on the sleeve of a game box, or the words on a stone somewhere in the actual game, over an article posted online that is free for basically anyone to edit. If the later lore doesn’t match the stuff in the original game or in the original manuals, then it’s that writer’s fault for not researching enough and his lore should remain suspect.

If you asked a Chinese government official about Tiananmen Square, and he shows you a history book written in the late 90’s that says nothing about it, are you going to believe him? That’s an extreme case, but given the fact that lore from GW1 is one of the few things specifically mentioned by GW2 staff as something they plan to adhere to, it would be prudent to refer to the original lore as more valid than anything written later.

Okay, discussion about “what is canon” pretty much begins with things like this and ends with a problematic thing where everyone puts different bars on “what is canon”. Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle Earth, Magic: The Gathering . . . there is one basic aspect of canon:

“Whatever is actually published in a finished product, by the holder of the property at the time it was created, is canon.”

Anything else is just fans trying to figure out where their favorite novel/novella/artwork/fan film can fit. In the case of a work of fiction (not, mind you, history) canon and truth is a very . . . VERY mutable thing. I implore you to look into the Lore of EverQuest and go mad trying to follow it. There were SO many hands on the Lore in that game . . . better yet, look at Azeroth (Warcraft) lore and try to reconcile it all . . . ALL of it. World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, Warcraft II, Warcraft I . . . none of it REALLY seems to mesh well. So how does the team work with lore if there’s not people who wrote it originally on staff?

It’s simple. Change of staff means the lore can either be written over . . . or anything preceding can be given a sealed status so you MUST reconcile new content with old stuff. You cannot retcon (“retroactive continuity”) some fact to say something else, you must use it as written.

ArenaNet has . . . an interesting record here. On one hand, they’ve done a fair job of weaving things together. The Great Destroyer was foreshadowed in Sorrow’s Furnace, for instance. On the other . . . Abaddon’s influence on the lives of Vizier Khilbron and Shiro Tagachi.

Really, we can argue what material is canon and what isn’t but there are two SAFE assumptions.

- The wiki, which can be edited by almost anyone, is not a viable source as it is possible to write it to say what you want. Anything in there might be considered canon, but it should be independently verified before it is used unquestioningly as fact.
- If it’s in the game, and you can screenshot it, then it was in the game and can be counted on as “canon” unless it is altered in the future. Then THAT is “canon” instead.

This is the most important set of distinctions and exceptions:
- Code which is in the data files may not be considered canon because it remains unimplemented. There is plenty of “junk data” which is not used but left in because it might be used later after tweaking and editing.
- Events which happened in Beta releases aren’t considered either. Otherwise Gwen was a child was a mass murderer flinging fire all over everywhere in Ascalon City.
- If a designer or writer says something, it should be taken with a grain of salt, because . . . and this is important . . . they can always change their mind or discard those ideas later if they decide not to use it. Anything which is not in the actual game hasn’t been locked in and probably shouldn’t be taken too closely. If you want evidence . . . well, look at the producers of Lost and all the stuff they would say with straight faces to fans just to jerk them around. If you want something more recent . . . “Andrew Hussie”.

Kormir was never a human, she was a weasel.

Obsidian.1328:

Nice post, I’m glad you pointed out the inherent flaws in wiki, and all wiki’s for that matter. And I appreciate your scholarly take on lore gathering. My question is, since we know the wiki to be unreliable, what sources, other than playing the actual game, can we look to for legitimate source material?

Just to put my own view on this, there are effectively four kinds of sources:

1. Lore documents – these are, usually, written from a in-universe perspective and most can be found on the official wikis. They hold as much validity as an NPC’s dialogue in game.
2. Word-of-God – that is to say, lore information coming straight from a developer. These are facts until proven otherwise in the future. Reason being is that opinions can change, developers can change, and in turn so too can what’s not yet in the game. Once it’s in the game, then it’s canon – though as Tobias said, until that gets retcon (and in Anet’s case, usually in the form of “false history” so some things will remain truth). But effectively, treat this as “correct until proven wrong”
3. NPCs in game – these are the flimsiest of truths, given the nature of GW2 which is full of subjective truths and almost lacks any kind of objective truths. NPCs can lie, they can be wrong, so the truth is gleaned from multiple characters agreeing with each other. When you have just one statement, it should be treated similar to a developer saying its the case, but with weaker footing.
4. From the wiki – as said, it’s fan-made, so it’s decent as a general informer, but can be wrong too often and thus shouldn’t be taken as cold hard fact unless it’s a verbatim documentation (be it of a lore document or of in-game text). Otherwise, find other sources – the source of the wiki’s claims, if you will. Because of how the wiki’s are structured, they only reference out-of-game information, so if it’s not referenced, it can be found in the game (or is wrong).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Oh hey, you did crosspost it! And to the official forums, not Guru! I’ve weighed in on this quite a bit on this sister topic on Reddit. I’ll throw my contributions in here.

(Link – http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12qx3z/ancient_astronauts_and_the_humans_of_tyria/ )

1 – There’s no evidence, conclusive evidence, that the Six Gods or the others who were in their place at any one time are, in fact, scientifically based. Trying to fit them into science ignores this is a fantasy fiction where magic is real and not science. It might follow rules which could have a science built around it, but it is fundamentally different in tone and nature.

Additionally, in the case of Guild Wars, Clarke’s law of the equivalency of magic and “sufficiently advanced” technology is in fact falsifiable. A dragon such as Zhaitan can consume a magical artifact and gain its power, but cannot do so with a purely technological device. Ergo, there is a distinction between magic and pure technology.

quote=706783;Obsidian.1328:]

Obsidian.1328:

Obsidian.1328:

@draxynnic

Nice post, I’m glad you pointed out the inherent flaws in wiki, and all wiki’s for that matter. And I appreciate your scholarly take on lore gathering. My question is, since we know the wiki to be unreliable, what sources, other than playing the actual game, can we look to for legitimate source material?

Lore documents such as the GW1 Manuscripts, the Movement of the World, An Empire Divided, and the Ecology of the Charr – most if not all of these are available on the wiki copied verbatim from the original sources, and those are valid since they’re pristine copies of things that ArenaNet lore people actually wrote. Note that they should still be taken with a grain of salt, however, since they represent what people in the world believe, and said people may be wrong (the Prophecies Manuscripts is especially suspect in this regard, as it’s been proven wrong in a number of places).

There are also a lot of interviews spread across the internet, and the odd lore article (although, unfortunately, one of the ones that gave a lot of information about the war between Abaddon and the original gods has been lost), which do have information directly from.the developers.

Ok, so in the case of the Prophesies Manuscripts you mentioned, you would rather take as fact something written by a later author on an editable format, then something written by the earliest writer on an uneditable format. That makes no sense.[/quote]Ummm… no, that’s not what I’m saying. The examples where I referred to the wiki there are also things that exist in hardcopy format – I own copies of most of them as such – but since they mostly date to 2007 and earlier, the transcriptions of those articles on the wiki are the most convenient place to refer people to. At least one of those transcriptions also seems to be locked from being edited (I just checked).

In general, though, most of these articles are written from the perspective of someone inside the Guild Wars universe, and thus are subject to being wrong if it turns out the in-universe author was also wrong about something. The Prophecies Manuscripts, for instance, claims a number of things that have turned out to be inconsistent with later sources, such as the Forgotten being brought to Tyria by the gods (when GW2 sources indicate they were present before the gods arrived), Glint being the first living creature created by the gods (actually a champion of Kralkatorrik that was converted) and the gods having created the world. In at least one of these cases (Glint’s origin), Grubb responded to a question in an interview on the topic with, basically, “Glint lied.” (The actual line was something like “Most of what we know about Glint came from Glint, and she had her reasons for saying what she said”.) This does not mean that newer sources are better than older ones (Thruln the Lost’s testimony is equally questionable) – but we do need to keep an open mind that any source presented as an in-universe document or testimony is fallible and subject to being overturned should sufficient evidence be found.

The truth is that we can be pretty certain that ArenaNet didn’t have the dragon storyline in mind when they wrote the lore from Prophecies. Some of what’s being presented now as things that in-universe authors got wrong are probably actual retcons (in fact, even the Movement of the World has a couple such retcons). However, when discussing game lore, we really have two options – either accept the retcons or stick our heads in the proverbial sand and declare everything from Eye of the North onwards to be out of continuity. I don’t consider the latter to be a productive option.