Guild Wars 2

So ziaten is dead…..(accept not as hes still flying around and such….) … but story wise he is dead. what happens to orr now? is there anything printed to state what happens?

The world itself stays in the current state because he is dead on a per character basis.

Anet might eventually publish some form of lore article stating that the corruption in Orr is receding or some other such thing, but I wouldn’t except them to do that until a large content release and I wouldn’t expect their to be any visual changes. Orr as a zone is designed to be Zhaitans home and the final area relating to the main storyline, as such it kind of has to stay as is for any new players and anyone creating a new character to play through the story again.

I doubt they would add a duplicate Orr with changes because they are very much against splitting the player base more and I imagine ti would be difficult to add dynamic events and things to do on a map that is meant to show the lessening of corruption.

Well I would expect orr to fall back in the ocean (like angel island) without Zaitan’s power cause he kinda caused it rise, but you know that won’t happen so w/e.

Edit: Still waiting for an event in the centre of orr with an undead echidna guarding a giant emerald so I can steal it and sink orr.

they could instance the area, so that players who beat him could see the new changes and those who didnt could still do so….

Caladbolg is (slowly?) removing the corruption of the land, the risen are being killed off in a war of attrition. But we won’t see any changes to existing zones – it’d ruin the experience of new players. Instead, we’ll likely get some areas in southern/eastern Orr and Scavanger’s Causeway that shows this… perhaps. Being closer to Orr, you have an explanation for what’d be causing issues there – Joko’s undead (yay, more undead in Orr!) or alternatively being close to the Unending Ocean, you got the DSD’s minions if it ever comes crashing on Tyria’s shores.

@WonderfulCT: I doubt Orr will fall – Zhaitan rose Orr when he woke up, but nothing really claims he was keeping it up. It’d be like saying that once Jormag dies the Shiverpeak Mountains will somehow mend itself and that inland sea will disappear.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@WonderfulCT: I doubt Orr will fall – Zhaitan rose Orr when he woke up, but nothing really claims he was keeping it up. It’d be like saying that once Jormag dies the Shiverpeak Mountains will somehow mend itself and that inland sea will disappear.

No it’s not.

Actually, it kind of is. Zhaitan hasn’t been underground supporting Orr, so it won’t sink now that he’s dead.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Zhaitan hasn’t been underground supporting Orr, so it won’t sink now that he’s dead.

That has nothing to do with my response nor what I was answering with your post.

Actually…

Well I would expect orr to fall back in the ocean (like angel island) without Zaitan’s power cause he kinda caused it rise, but you know that won’t happen so w/e.

It has everything to do with your response, since I was talking about whether or not Zhaitan’s power was maintaining its rise.

Zhaitan caused Orr to rise when he woke up, and hasn’t been underground since (as far as we know), and all indications point to it being a one-time no-maintenance event.

Ergo, there’s absolutely no reason for Orr to sink back into the water with Zhaitan’s death. Which has been what I was saying from the get go.

Well honestly it is WonderfulCT. Both of those actions were a one time act of destruction/creation. In Zhaitan’s case he raised a continent from the ocean, sure the act of raising it was a magical act, but it is a peninsula. It’s a self supporting land and it would be a really contrived thing for the area to just disappear because the bad guy dying. Kinda like going into the bad guy’s castle and having it collapse after he dies. Orr surviving is actually more work for the characters, it causes them to have to work for a better future still, even with the great danger dead, and it is more realistic.

I mentioned this before in another thread as well. If we’re going to see a “purified Orr” , I think we are going to see it in the areas of Orr not included yet—the area going towards the Scavenger’s Causeway. This way the people who haven’t finished Victory or Death still have their Orr and those who finished it can move on with their story and say, “Hey, I actually did something.”

You are missinterpreting what I am referring to so nevermind it’s not worth going into anyways.

I already said that I know it won’t sink so maybe I already thought of reasons why.

I was referring to the post you made with my response @Konig but like I said nevermind. All I was asking for was how is making water the same as changing the buoyancy of an entire land mass. It’s like saying expecting a rock to sink thats skipping on water is the same as expecting a lake to dissapear in the middle of winter.

Not to mention the fact that raising an entire mass of land did not cause the water levels to drop. It seemingly made them increase which makes a whole lotta sense.

Jormag didn’t make water (and you weren’t asking that – you simply said “No it’s not” to me saying expecting a shattered mountain to mend with Jormag’s death is the same as expecting Orr to sink with Zhaitan’s). Jormag shattered the mountain range and the valleys/canyons/crevices that were created flooded with the arctic sea’s ocean.

As for the water levels – that’s an oddity in its own right. The rising of Orr shouldn’t have altered much. I mean, take how huge the globe of Tyria found from the Chantry of Secrets data mining is – Tyria is roughly an 16th of the world, which makes the whole of Orr about 1/32th… water levels would only rise and lower a couple inches from Orr’s sinking and rising (Old Lion’s Arch’s sinking can only be explained by stuff sliding down, because it was not 15-30 feet lower than everything else around it – maybe 10, but that’s still stretching it).

TBH, the water levels should have been decending over the past 250 years due to both Jormag and Zhaitan – unless the DSD is adding water to the world, or Jormag’s freezing a lot of water up north so that the surface space of the molecules are expanding (water expands when frozen), or there’s some other places in the world which are sinking.

But again, that’s an entirely different situation.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Jormag didn’t make water (and you weren’t asking that – you simply said “No it’s not” to me saying expecting a shattered mountain to mend with Jormag’s death is the same as expecting Orr to sink with Zhaitan’s). Jormag shattered the mountain range and the valleys/canyons/crevices that were created flooded with the arctic sea’s ocean.

You still have not explained how they are the same or how your analogy made sense. Making a land mass float is not the same as w/e you’re saying Jormag did. Thats all I was commenting on with ‘No it’s not" so if you planned to reply to that I was asking how is expecting them both to be repaired the same.

I don’t think Orr is technically floating. It is not a beach ball.

Anyway: nothing will happen to Orr due to each area being chronologically locked. The NPCs in Orr are doomed to live in a timeless limbo and repeat event after event until the end of Guild Wars 2.

Sorta sad when you think about it.

What Oglaf said (and what I, and Narcemus also said already) – Orr isn’t floating (on water or on air). Zhaitan isn’t levitating the land. He just pushed it up.

Could it be that Anet uses a system like the War of Kryta in future developments?

War in Kryta worked the way it did in having new foes in old areas because areas were instanced. GW2 is persistent so that won’t be happening.

Considering that Anet is able to make gathering nodes appear and disappear on a per-player basis, I would not be surprised if they ended up altering the land mass in a similar way for players who have completed the storyline.

Risen will still be firmly entrenched in Orr for a long time to come – though it’s been smashed through by Pact forces, they won’t give up or die so easily. I would not be surprised if there were other areas in Orr where Risen are being manufactured, though the largest of them have probably been destroyed and dismantled by the player-hero.

If Orr is supposed to sink with Zhaitan’s death, then why didn’t it rise back up after Khilbron died when he sunk it in the first place?

But you see, nodes don’t disappear. Their appearance does, showing something as harvestable or harvested, but the pathing and placement is the same for everyone. So unless they have it so that everything is exactly the same but with new textures, then they can’t alter the landmass in a similar way.

Those giant corals will have to remain, or replaced by trees or some such of the exact same shape, placement, and size. Those building ruins can’t be changed unless something new gets put in the same places which are also the same size and shape.

Doing such is not only barely reasonable, but not very realistic that despite it looking different, it’s the exact same – especially with how even with different appearances, you’ll be having the same exact events and spoken dialogue (since those are server based). So even if they do simply change all the textures, there will still be hundreds of risen praising Zhaitan and dozens of Pact soldiers saying how they’re going to bring Zhaitan down and how he’s still a threat. That’s more immersion breaking than those three zones permanently stuck in the timeline before Zhaitan’s defeat.

Yeah. The lesser of two evils, as it were.

I wonder if it would be possible for them to build a duplicate, clean Orr that, when you go to “Orr,” runs a check to see if the character has completed Arah story mode. If you have, it takes you to that version of Orr instead. If you want to go to old Orr, you can take an experimental Asura gate back there to “study the dragon corruption to help fight the other dragons” or whatever.

No, I absolutely do not expect that to actually happen and do not think it’s practical due to the setup of the game, I’m just curious if it’s even a remote possibility with the way the game is made.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But you see, nodes don’t disappear. Their appearance does, showing something as harvestable or harvested, but the pathing and placement is the same for everyone. So unless they have it so that everything is exactly the same but with new textures, then they can’t alter the landmass in a similar way.

Those giant corals will have to remain, or replaced by trees or some such of the exact same shape, placement, and size. Those building ruins can’t be changed unless something new gets put in the same places which are also the same size and shape.

Doing such is not only barely reasonable, but not very realistic that despite it looking different, it’s the exact same – especially with how even with different appearances, you’ll be having the same exact events and spoken dialogue (since those are server based). So even if they do simply change all the textures, there will still be hundreds of risen praising Zhaitan and dozens of Pact soldiers saying how they’re going to bring Zhaitan down and how he’s still a threat. That’s more immersion breaking than those three zones permanently stuck in the timeline before Zhaitan’s defeat.

Good points. Didn’t think about it that way.

One thing I think they ought to keep away from just for the sake of preserving the time-space continuum is directly mentioning the Elder Dragons when we’re at war with them. I can understand “taking X location from Zhaitan’s minions”, but listening to an NPC say “we need to hold this location to prepare for the assault on Zhaitan” stops making sense when he’s dead in lore.

I have no doubts that the Pact and us players will have to deal with the remnants of their minions once the other Elder Dragons are defeated, but it’s going to confuse people if the dialogue isn’t worded, uh… properly.

Egon Vidar.9125:

I wonder if it would be possible for them to build a duplicate, clean Orr that, when you go to “Orr,” runs a check to see if the character has completed Arah story mode. If you have, it takes you to that version of Orr instead. If you want to go to old Orr, you can take an experimental Asura gate back there to “study the dragon corruption to help fight the other dragons” or whatever.

No, I absolutely do not expect that to actually happen and do not think it’s practical due to the setup of the game, I’m just curious if it’s even a remote possibility with the way the game is made.

I’m sure it could be done though with a lot of time and resources spent, however, it won’t be – why? splits the player base. Plus, asura gates aren’t time traveling devices. :I Also, it’d probably be too resource/time consuming to make for the profit of having a second version of Orr.

And if they really wanted a corruption-free Orr, they could have presented such in the Arah dungeon – only a small portion of the explorable version is seen in the story version (the first part).

But technically, those locations are “stuck in time” so to speak, so when you’re playing in Cursed Shore – for example – you’re going through events that occurred before Zhaitan’s death.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But technically, those locations are “stuck in time” so to speak, so when you’re playing in Cursed Shore – for example – you’re going through events that occurred before Zhaitan’s death.

Exactly. If you go replay the newbie areas the NPCs in there have hardly even heard of Zhaitan or any of the other Elder Dragons. The Pact hasn’t even been formed yet!

They know of the Elder Dragons and have heard of them – they’re just not a prominent threat.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Egon Vidar.9125:

I wonder if it would be possible for them to build a duplicate, clean Orr that, when you go to “Orr,” runs a check to see if the character has completed Arah story mode. If you have, it takes you to that version of Orr instead. If you want to go to old Orr, you can take an experimental Asura gate back there to “study the dragon corruption to help fight the other dragons” or whatever.

No, I absolutely do not expect that to actually happen and do not think it’s practical due to the setup of the game, I’m just curious if it’s even a remote possibility with the way the game is made.

I’m sure it could be done though with a lot of time and resources spent, however, it won’t be – why? splits the player base. Plus, asura gates aren’t time traveling devices. :I Also, it’d probably be too resource/time consuming to make for the profit of having a second version of Orr.

And if they really wanted a corruption-free Orr, they could have presented such in the Arah dungeon – only a small portion of the explorable version is seen in the story version (the first part).

I never said asura gates as they are are time travel devices, or even that they should be or that it should be possible for them to be – best (but still awful) thing I could come up with while typing the message in two minutes. But when you’re writing a story like GW2, you can make magic-based technology do just about anything you want with a bit of handwaving and sheer determination. I am most certainly not saying it’s a good idea or good writing, however. It’s the opposite, in fact.

Anyway, Orr itself will never change to any drastic degree. Even adding new NPCs, they can’t change the “story” part of Orr at all for new players. Unfortunate because I’d love to see what a polished up, but still coral-infested Orr would look like, maybe with the ruins cleaned up a bit. Imagine grassy fields with those massive circular structures jutting up from them, vines growing up the sides. Oh well.

I have to agree it would be wonderful to see Orr eventually cleansed in a new expansion (almost as much as I’d love to see improvements on the Great Collapse in Divinity’s), and we will probably see some of it in future explorable zones in Orr, but seeing what exists being cleansed would help bring some change to the world. Perhaps the area still has some undead, but other living creatures are starting to move in and fill the zone, Krait/Quaggan in the water, etc… The only way I could see this happening would be if as you walked into a zone (after defeating Arah) you could choose to visit it during either timeline, kinda like how you choose dungeons. But as Konig said, it would further split up the player base, and it’s only real advantage would be to make the game really promote the idea of your character making a physical impact on the world.