Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know exactly when the living story takes place- before or after Zhaitans defeat. In the instance as a human player Rytlock wasn’t really…. pleased with seeing a human there, but didn’t he make peace with Logan?

Making peace with Rytlock doesn’t necessarily mean he made peace with all humans. The Living story takes place after the defeat of Zhaitan, or at the very, very least, after the defeat of Gaheron and the explorable mode leaders, and the start of the dredge rebellion. I’m pretty sure though that all of the Guild Wars 2 events so far have taken place after Zhaitan’s death though, and in roughly the same order that they took place in.

I guess now that I think about it, I believe it is stated that Lost Shores took place after Zhaitan’s death, and the fact that the consortium is planning on turning Southsun Cove into a refugee home means that Lost Shores has already been completed, which means it is post Zhaitan’s death.

The Living Story is post The Lost Shores (at least part 2 is), and that in turn is post-Zhaitan’s defeat.

Rytlock has a rather rude attitude to all non-charr non-Pact Commander PCs, afaik, not just humans.

I expect that it will be left in its own timeline, so that a new player can complete the personal story and living story in either order with no continuity errors. I think the living story specifically has new characters for this reason.

Anet will certainly avoid paradoxes by using shared NPCs as minimal as possible – according to them at least – however at the moment the full living story takes place after The Lost Shores, which we got developer confirmation saying it takes place after Zhaitan’s defeat.

Konig,

This quote is imo highly important:
‘Writing story in an MMO environment resembles building a giant puzzle. We want to avoid temporal paradoxes, for example. From a player perspective, the Personal Story is unfolding simultaneously with the Living Story, but how can characters be in both places at the same time’
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-story-evolution/

As I read it Angel is allready answering the puzzle (on this specifick topic), it is a side story and it is part of the players story on the moment you play the content. So if you do this after killing Zhaitan then it is after that. But if you just started. Well then it is before.

As much as that may be true, a single event cannot happen at multiple points in time. The Living Story, lorewise, cannot occur at all possible points in time, instead it just has to be something that, to the regular player, would appear possible happening in the early story as well as end-game story. When it comes to the game timeline it most definitely takes place after Lost Shores which took place after Zhaitan’s Death.

“From a player perspective” is the key phrase here. She’s talking about the Living Story and the Personal Story unfolding “simultaneously” simply because the player can go to one and then the other in either order. It’s no different than doing the Arah story dungeon then going back to finish the Temple of the Forgotten God storyline where Zhaitan is still clearly alive and well.

We have outright confirmation from Matthew Medina in this very forum section that The Lost Shores takes place after Zhaitan’s defeat. We see the Consortium and Lionguard talk about Southsun Cove – the Lionguard didn’t know of Southsun Cove until The Lost Shores. Ergo, Flame and Frost takes place after Zhaitan’s defeat.

However, despite the order of events being as they are, players can still experience them in any order – no different than how in GW1, players can go through Nightfall and then Prophecies and Factions (creating a paradox where they first meet Shiro Tagachi and Vizier Khilbron when they’re in the Realm of Torment as spirits, and then meeting them when they’re “alive”).

With all do respect, you know I value you highly here, but I have to disagree. How she is talking in that article and how this puzzle onfaulded after! the lost shores event shows they are placing the new living story on a different position of each players timeline. Just as due to the personalstory choiches some things never happened. Each timeline is independ. Your character might have saved the skrit from the destroyer queen while mine saved the Ogre’s from the branded ogre chief. So the timelines are (in detail) allready different for each player.

As you allready said in another thread, it seems that each map is on a different point in the timeline. Southsun cove is a different map added with the lost shores event and is therefore on a timeline after Zhaitan.

The word from a player perspective is higly important indeed here. As the game started you heared yourself say (in the video) ‘This is MY story’. I strongly feel that that is what they try to do with this living story thing as well.

The problem with the whole, Southsun Cove is higher level thus after Zhaitan is that characters from the living story from locations otherwise still talk about Southsun Cove. Just because you experience things in multiple timelines differently doesn’t change how they are in the world overall. I can do Arah story mode where everyone gets together and takes down Zhaitan, then I can do my lvl 30 story where Destiny’s Edge is still squabbling like a bunch of little kids, this doesn’t mean that for me Destiny’s Edge broke up after Zhaitan’s death and I gotta piece them together again, or that the pact was made before I even joined the Priory (since my storyline will say that I helped in the process of making them after I helped them destroy Zhaitan which makes no sense whatsoever).

sigh

MatthewMedina.5419:

Canonically, yes the Lost Shores weekend and lead-up was set after the events of the Guild Wars 2 personal story and the defeat of Zhaitan, so this is partially what made it possible for the karka to establish a clawhold on Southsun Cove.

As to whether there can be risen karka: while it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility (although pitting dragon corruption vs. karka impenetrable shell would be an experiment I would be interested to watch), the karka are recent arrivals to the surface from their original home deep in the ocean. The ocean is a big enough place that the karka managed to settle on Southsun without encountering many risen, and they avoided Orr for the same reasons they fled their home. The karka are an old, old species so they have encountered Elder Dragons and their minions before…and they’re certainly smart enough to understand the threat they represent.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/No-Risen-Karkas/first#post1156321

We have outright confirmation that The Lost Shores occurs post-Zhaitan.

During The Lost Shores, the Lionguard first learn about karka and Southsun Cove.

During The Gathering Storm, there are both Lionguard and Consortium that talk about Southsun Cove.

It is undeniable fact that The Gathering Storm – and in turn The Razing – occur after The Lost Shores. It is in turn undeniable fact that these two parts of Flame and Frost take place after Zhaitan’s defeat.

What Angel McCoy was talking about was that they have to make the storyline in a specific way so that new players who haven’t gotten through the personal story don’t get spoiled, and that they cannot use NPCs which have something happen to them in the personal story since it has already occurred both in the canon timeline and for players who have gotten far enough. She is NOT talking about how the Living Story will be taking place before the Pact is formed, while the Pact is going after Zhaitan and, all at the same time, after the Pact went after Zhaitan.

In other words: The Consortium couldn’t take refugees to Southsun Cove before the events of The Lost Shores, which is canonically after Zhaitan’s defeat. Regardless of what players experience and the order in which they experience everything has a set place in the canonical timeline. Even the events you don’t do in your personal story on that character still occur – it’s just that you/your character didn’t experience those events (or in the canonical timeline’s order).

In short:
The player’s experience of event order != the canonical order of events. And this is what Angel was talking about having to be careful about.