Guild Wars 2

Who decides what is and what is not Guild Wars lore? The players or Anet? I’ve seen many posts on these forums telling Anet that certain things are not part of the lore. So if it is the players who decide, who among them get to decide?

Those are probably personal decisions to ignore parts of the lore (the calendar, for example) since there have been multiple ‘iterations’ of what the year and the seasons are like. Of course, Anet gets the final say, since they make the game, but the playerbase can choose what to believe, right or wrong

Obviously it’s ArenaNet.

The complaints from the players is about new lore that seems to contradict old lore – be they the ever-increasing retcons (which just causes players to question what they can and what they shouldn’t believe as canon) or be they things that are just confusing and don’t make sense with pre-established lore (such as the xenophobic krait working with Scarlet and the Nightmare Court). Basically the complaints occur when Anet says one thing, then goes and shows another thing without giving an explanation for why – or when they do give an explanation, the complaints come in about the explanation end up being “the old information was simply misinformed” (which is more or less what happened to all historic lore on the gods and humanity in continental Tyria by now – for the… fourth time I think).

That kind of invalidates some criticism of the lore then. Sure, they can complain that something is lore breaking, but that could be because they simply don’t believe the aspects of the lore that make it work. There’s nothing that can be done about that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Obviously it’s ArenaNet.

The complaints from the players is about new lore that seems to contradict old lore – be they the ever-increasing retcons (which just causes players to question what they can and what they shouldn’t believe as canon) or be they things that are just confusing and don’t make sense with pre-established lore (such as the xenophobic krait working with Scarlet and the Nightmare Court). Basically the complaints occur when Anet says one thing, then goes and shows another thing without giving an explanation for why – or when they do give an explanation, the complaints come in about the explanation end up being “the old information was simply misinformed” (which is more or less what happened to all historic lore on the gods and humanity in continental Tyria by now – for the… fourth time I think).

So it really is a choice of what lore to believe.

I’d say it’s more a case of believing the credibility of lore that’s constantly changing. Make so many edits after it’s publicized and people will get confused on what to believe. It’s not so much a case of Fanon Discontinuity so much as just not simply being sure what canon is anymore.

At least that’s how it’s getting to be for me. And it’s prompting arguments like this one by Draxynnic which can basically be summed down to “because the source(s) got proven wrong so many times, it’s reasonable to believe the rest of it is fully untrustworthy too.”

Think of it more like an audience telling a writer wheter or not they like his/her new book and what exactly they like/dislike about it.

Wheter the writer takes anything out of that is up to him/her.

ThiBash.5634:

Think of it more like an audience telling a writer wheter or not they like his/her new book and what exactly they like/dislike about it.

That is however what is happening here in some cases.
There have been several situations where people have said that the lore-writes were WRONG and didnt know the lore. And THAT is quite silly, since they are after all the ones writing the lore.

There’s nothing silly about being right.

As a matter of fact – and based on what I’ve seen so far – I can honsetly say I could “outlore” some of their writers (or outmatch their lore knowledge), as proven in the Angel McCoy interview thread.

But how can you claim that you are right, when you are not the one in charge of the lore?

Things do change after all.
Back in the history of mankind we knew that the Earth was flat.
We also knew that the sun rotated around the Earth, not the other way around.

Just because some lore is one way at one time doesn’t mean it is stuck like that.
After all most lore we get is from in-game characters, and unless said characters are All-knowing (which they aren’t) they can very much convey incorrect or faulty lore.

Usually, I’d agree with you lordkrall.

Thing is, characters can be absolutely correct in cases of first-hand accounting (unless they’re lying) and most of our historic lore actually comes from the blog posts and the like. Some are written from an in-universe perspective, others are not. Some of the things that Anet has been changing is little different than us in 1000 years from now saying that George Washington was a dictator who insighted a revolution to lead a new country into tyranny, but had a change of heart later in his life.

That’s how much their lore on the gods and humanity’s history changes.

lordkrall.7241:

ThiBash.5634:

Think of it more like an audience telling a writer wheter or not they like his/her new book and what exactly they like/dislike about it.

That is however what is happening here in some cases.
There have been several situations where people have said that the lore-writes were WRONG and didnt know the lore. And THAT is quite silly, since they are after all the ones writing the lore.

That’s like saying I could buy all the rights to Superman, make him green-skinned, horned, and is a violent drunk, then simply claim “that’s not only how it is now, that’s how it always was” since I threw all of the old material into a giant bonfire outside the studio. Insanely extreme example, but you get my point.

These guys now didn’t write the original material. That’s what we mean when we say “this stuff just doesn’t add up”. How hard is that to understand?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Some of the things that Anet has been changing is little different than us in 1000 years from now saying that George Washington was a dictator who insighted a revolution to lead a new country into tyranny, but had a change of heart later in his life.

What in the world are you talking about here. I swear, sometimes I think people think Tyria is a real place. It’s nothing like that example. Washington really existed. Guild Wars is entirely fiction. Its truth is subject to whatever the writers were trying to say at the time it was written. It has nothing to do with in-game character point-of-view…mostly because that point-of-view is whatever the writer wants it to be. If the writers chose to use a real-life cultural phenomenon like “modern inquiry shedding light on the folly of past beliefs” or something, that’s just their way of using a writing method to give credence to the changes they want to make with the story. It happens all the time in literature, especially in sequels and series reprisals.

No two people are alike in how they tell a story or in how they want a story to unfold. It’s simply a different creative writer. Not to mention a different company(with a different agenda) paying the writer. That’s really all it is.

Obsidian… From the perspective of the characters, that (my example earlier) is what happens more or less. To them their history is one thing and is recorded as such (with view being that of the writers’ as it always is), and a thousand years later their records become something else almost entirely.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Obsidian… From the perspective of the characters, that (my example earlier) is what happens more or less. To them their history is one thing and is recorded as such (with view being that of the writers’ as it always is), and a thousand years later their records become something else almost entirely.

I feel like this may be off topic a bit but could you please provide links to the changes in the Human God lore? Because I haven’t seen like any changes on it (other than their belief in them is fading which makes sense).

What didn’t change about human god lore? They did(n’t) create magic. They did(n’t) create the bloodstones. They did(n’t) create the world. That right there brings the gods down from being these much more monolithic beings to something a bit simpler, even if they are still massively powerful.

Narcemus.1348:

What didn’t change about human god lore? They did(n’t) create magic. They did(n’t) create the bloodstones. They did(n’t) create the world. That right there brings the gods down from being these much more monolithic beings to something a bit simpler, even if they are still massively powerful.

Well they never created the world, it always sounded like they just migrated to Tyria with their humans.

In the very first lore of Guild Wars, titled History of Tyria, we were told they made the world and in Prophecies we hear that human legend says it was the first world made. In the lead up to GW2, we learned this isn’t true and that the world existed before the Six Gods, including the Elder Dragons, mursaat, and seers, and that humanity was brought from elsewhere. Go into GW2 and we now have the Forgotten predating the gods on Tyria, when we were originally told they were brought to the world by the Six. Furthermore, they did not make magic nor the Bloodstone, but “found” it and released magic.

Almost everything beyond the whole “they are divine” claims has been changed. Creation to terraforming, making magic to releasing it. Hell, they didn’t even know of the Elder Dragons which they tapped into for power.

I’ll do a 180 and play devil’s advocate for a change.

If you were a dev at ArenaNet @2006-2012, and knowing GW2 was going to be full-on multi-racial, how would you go about providing cultural parity betwixt the humans and everyone else?

How would you insert multiple races into a single-race world(in terms of playable races) with their own deities which, let’s face it, overwhelmingly favor that one race?

In regards to the Gods. GW1 was human centered and humans thus the focus was entirely on a human point of view. The lore we got was human lore, their beliefs etc. etc.

This clearly does not work in GW2 where have a multiracial view. It is like real life history. (These things were ancient history already in GW1 times). No one really knows what exactly happened, history is always written from the view of the victors and all that. I know we have been able to record and find out about historic stuff for a long time and can know things fairly well. But fact is new things may get unearthed.

In Tyria I believe that the humans anno GW1 really did honestly believe in the information we were given on the gods. It even makes sense for some to still believe it to be so, while others take up new information and beliefs.

I would bring up rl religious parallels but dare not, this is not the place.

The only thing bothering me is the alliances. The Flame and Frost one aswell as the Toxic alliance. Apparently in both cases we have had Scarlet pull the strings, with a silver tongue (argueably not shown much in the game). Tricking the fractions into seeing some advantage in it for them. I will still give it the benefit of the doubt and see where it goes.

In the end. Anet decides what the lore is. We may deem their changes good or bad, and honestly it can be confusing where they are going with it all. But all in all it is theirs.

Note, I did not say that the changes they made with the gods was bad. I merely answered the poster’s question about the situation. I think what they did with re-explaining history has added an interesting twist to the lore of the game, in some regards.

DaShi.1368:

Who decides what is and what is not Guild Wars lore? The players or Anet? I’ve seen many posts on these forums telling Anet that certain things are not part of the lore. So if it is the players who decide, who among them get to decide?

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’d say Anet obviously holds the IP rights to the official lore of Tyria – both in GW1 and now GW2 with all its retcons. Fans making or claiming the lore is or should be different are simply making fan-fiction, yes, they may be passionate – and even right in refuting certain new lore pieces – but as for who gets to decide – it’s the people at Anet.

Obsidian.1328:

I’ll do a 180 and play devil’s advocate for a change.

If you were a dev at ArenaNet @2006-2012, and knowing GW2 was going to be full-on multi-racial, how would you go about providing cultural parity betwixt the humans and everyone else?

How would you insert multiple races into a single-race world(in terms of playable races) with their own deities which, let’s face it, overwhelmingly favor that one race?

I’d go the route of Ghosts of Ascalon, Thruln the Lost, and the interviews pre-release.

In other words, I’d emphasize the other races’ view of the Six Gods and how they take the actions the gods did in their culture, rather than diminishing the Six Gods’ actions.

Let’s be honest, the Six Gods not creating magic or the world itself was suspect even in Prophecies, the latter due to the Giganticus Lupicus – their presence would mean that the Six Gods spent over 10,000 years creating the world if the timeline was accurate and there was no reason to believe otherwise. However, there was no need to say that humans were simply brought to the world, nor was there a need to say the Six Gods didn’t create the Bloodstones.

But before I continue, let’s look at how ArenaNet initially showed the other player races’ view of the gods:

• The charr hated them. They accepted them as gods, but not beings to worship – rather as beings to fight and destroy. This still holds true, but has expanded to religion on a whole thanks to the Flame Legion.
• The norn view them as “Spirits of Action” – beings similar and on par to their Spirits of the Wild, as they are not gods but spirits. But unlike the Spirits of the Wild which represent animals and aspects of nature (darkness, mountains, seasons, fire, etc.), the Spirits of Action represent sapient races’ actions and aspects – Life, Death, Knowledge, War, etc. (we never got a good hint at what Melandru and Lyssa would be – Nature seems weird, so I’d say Growth; and Lyssa likely to be Beauty). They do not call the Six Gods by their names – such a thing is a quant human thing, as Jeff says.
• The asura accept the Six Gods, but not as gods. Rather, as simply large pieces of the Eternal Alchemy – just as they are small pieces of it.
• The sylvari are agnostic, unsure whether the Six Gods exist simply because they’re too new to know of the Six Gods’ actions.

In the end, it seems that Anet took the route of the asuran view. It is no longer human-centric but now asuran-centric, as they have yet to be wrong and even Scarlet has seen the Eternal Alchemy and knows-all. With the exception of the charr’s hatred of religion, the other races’ views of the Six Gods have practically all disappeared. Human’s views have altered so much that we even see some humans going “no no, they’re the HUMAN gods, not ‘the gods’” (see the dude outside Arah). In the game, norn never refer to the Six Gods by what they represent, but instead call them by name! And sylvari never make mention of the Six Gods until Orr where they’re suddenly convinced they were gods (see the temples, Arah forgotten path, and the Cathedral of Silence story path if not other story paths too).

-continued in next post-

How I would have gone about it is this:

• Humans remain believing that the Six Gods made the world. Basically, Samuel in Hoelbrak is the atypical still-have-faith human view. The Six Gods made magic, the Bloodstones, the world, their race, and went on to build other worlds. More multi-racial educated humans like those in the Priory would view otherwise. They’d know they didn’t make magic or the world, but would still believe they made the Bloodstones (which would be truth in my version) and they may have gone on to build or rebuild other worlds. The subject of human origins would be debated. Those who have lost faith would follow the route of the sylvari (see below).
• Charr would similarly retain their original viewpoints. They live to eventually kill the Six Gods – partially in revenge for losing Ascalon and their Khan-Ur in the first place (the traditionalists and the renegades), or out of principle of hating all religions. Some may be more open minded later on, but those would be very rare – not everywhere outside the High Legions like it is (more or less).
• Norn too would follow their original view of the Six Gods, seeing them as equals to their Spirits of the Wild, not superiors nor named beings. They would revere them equally to the lesser Spirits of the Wild, but revere more of that indestructible power rather than the vessel. The vessel is merely a facade for the true divinity.
• The asura too would have their old view, but it would not be proven to be more accurate by the reduction of the Six Gods’ actions. They would still be godly, or questionably so.
• The sylvari would be questioning them at every turn. When a human says they made the Bloodstones, a sylvari would ask “are you so sure about that? Do you have proof? What if they just found the Bloodstone? What if they didn’t make humanity but brought them from another world?”

And the important part: no one belief would be more credible than the others. The charr’s depiction of them as villainous invaders from the Mists would have as much credibility as the humans claiming that they came as peace-wanters from the Mists which in turn has as much credibility as the sylvari questioning human belief that the Six Gods may not be all they’re cracked up to be. Basically the “facts” we’re given in Orr and Arah would be the sylvari’s suspicion of “what truly happened.”

And then add in some lesser races’ views and have them mentioned more than once. Have Thruln the Losts’ tale told somewhere else by someone else, so that rather than one piece of story that contradicts 10 others which are the same, you’d have 4 stories that are the same contradicting 7 stories that are the same.

This would spark discussion amongst players – which story is the true version? Are they both false? Why does one group have views one way, while the others have views in another direction? Etc. Etc.

That is how I would do the lore of multi-racial viewpoints. I wouldn’t say “the old view is wrong because time goes on and we learn new things about our past!” (Sure, we do, but we don’t in this huge extent and certainly not in a similar way to us learning one thing in 1st grade and learning something slightly different – and more detailed in high school – our learning new things of ancient times is more on par to the Dead Sea Scrolls; finding lost knowledge that doesn’t outright disprove, but questions old knowledge and otherwise fills in gaps that were unknown to even exist).

There is a big difference between making lore multi-racial centric from uni-racial centric, and turning old lore into something completely new.

Up until the Angel McCoy interview, the ancient lore wasn’t bad. It could have been better though, and her interview dealt mainly on the history of magic rather than the gods themselves. Nonetheless, her explanation for why “the lore has changed” was really silly and the side-effects of the differing lore is equally so if not more so.

Dondarrion.2748:

DaShi.1368:

Who decides what is and what is not Guild Wars lore? The players or Anet? I’ve seen many posts on these forums telling Anet that certain things are not part of the lore. So if it is the players who decide, who among them get to decide?

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’d say Anet obviously holds the IP rights to the official lore of Tyria – both in GW1 and now GW2 with all its retcons. Fans making or claiming the lore is or should be different are simply making fan-fiction, yes, they may be passionate – and even right in refuting certain new lore pieces – but as for who gets to decide – it’s the people at Anet.

Saying that the lore is contradictory or shouldn’t be retconed is not the same as making fan-fiction. It’s just disagreeing with the current direction of the lore. They’re not making fan-fiction until they make their own version of the story – in their head or otherwise. If they simply dislike the direction of the lore, they’re not making anything other than complaints.

Dondarrion.2748:

DaShi.1368:

Who decides what is and what is not Guild Wars lore? The players or Anet? I’ve seen many posts on these forums telling Anet that certain things are not part of the lore. So if it is the players who decide, who among them get to decide?

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’d say Anet obviously holds the IP rights to the official lore of Tyria – both in GW1 and now GW2 with all its retcons. Fans making or claiming the lore is or should be different are simply making fan-fiction, yes, they may be passionate – and even right in refuting certain new lore pieces – but as for who gets to decide – it’s the people at Anet.

I really don’t think anyone would deny that…like, at all. I assumed the poster was simply fishing for another tired lore discussion lol.

I choose to put some trust in Anet lol I just hope they’re communicating in the company and know the big picture have got everything laid out and written down and are organized. Whatever we dont understand cuz we only get a tip of the iceberg, I don’t mind as long as they can say, they know what they’re doing and they got some ideas in place.

But with regards to the human gods, I think their re-explanation makes sense, it’s like the world is flat thing, when people or races or whoever began to discover there’s more outside the box and what they believe was really a myth, then they will record a more accurate historic record. With “so many years” past since gw1, perhaps it will seem like the old history and old beliefs didn’t quite exist and we are sort of in a new universe. But, it can be justified and it could make sense

Off-topic: that people believed that the world was flat in the medieval ages is a debunked myth by now. There were mathematical exercises found, dated to the 12th century (1100ies), which had tried to measure the size of Earth as a globe. Sure, your average peasant and his family didn’t have the slightest idea just what Earth would look like, but the priesthood and the intellectuals trained in the Western universities sure did.

I highly disagree that such “blasphemous” disrespect of the gods and the old lore can be hand-waved away as sensible re-explanation. I’d call it the inability of the writers to integrate old lore with their theme-park and cliché “new” ideas.

There’s a rather huge difference between “the world is not flat, we just found this out” and “the Six Gods didn’t do what we think they did.” The difference is that the former is pure belief that was held together through mythologies, while the second, though religious, was seen and recorded via writing events – and there’s only so many things you can have altered and not realize they’ve been altered.

The “false history” of the Six Gods should be more comparable to our histories of Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, and so forth. If not that then the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls which didn’t really falsify the other gospels but showed as a different view which was lost to history. And at best, it should be comparable to Christianity’s rewriting of non-Christian myths throughout Europe (in their attempt to make their faith “right”). The only way that the new records of the Six would make any sense in such huge degrees despite humanity having first-hand witnessings of their actions would be that Orrians intentionally hid the truth; being the super religious zealots that they were, it wouldn’t be too surprising if they had altered the history to glorify the Six Gods. That the human legends were an intentional falsification done by the religious leaders.

But no, instead we get a simple “we learn new things over time, just like we learn something in grade school and learn we were wrong about it in high school” which is not quite what happens in reality, not unless you go to really kittenty (education wise) schools – you just learn more of the topics, filling in gaps that you may not have known to exist, you don’t learn “everything you thought you knew was wrong” – some things, sure, but not that much.

And on top of it, it’s done in such a way to tell us “the other races don’t interact with it; the asura are completely right; humans are completely wrong.” For a “multi-racial viewpoint” game, they sure as hell aren’t giving multiple races’ view on the subject.

Personally I must say I don’t find the “change of human gods history” to be that severe, seriously. As was mentioned before, over 200 years passed since GW1. Lots has changed in real religion in the last 250 years as well. Saying some things that are normal today could get you hanged back then.
You have to realize that most (almost all) humans never have witnessed a god for themselves, so doubting some lore the grandfathers grandfather wrote down while supposedly being drunken is rather easy. Not to mention that humans are facing extinction (even though we hardly notice that ingame), and no god helps. Losing faith is probably one of the first things then.
Last but not least, with Infos we have now, nothing states Orrians intentionally withheld information either. To the humans back then it may have seemed the gods made he world for them, and they created magic out of nowhere. Or it was simply written more poetic than it actually was. However it does fit rather well. I’m aware that there are probably a few details off, but those are just details. And as i take it there are still some human priests who believe all of the old lore even. So no the asura are not completely right either. It’s just all linked (Spirits, Gods, Eternal Alchemy, etc).

TL;DR – You can’t compare this to learning one thing in school and next grade you hear it was completely different all along unless you count in 250 years of studies of several – vastly different – science institutes in between those 2 grades.

Leonie.7593:

Personally I must say I don’t find the “change of human gods history” to be that severe, seriously. As was mentioned before, over 200 years passed since GW1. Lots has changed in real religion in the last 250 years as well. Saying some things that are normal today could get you hanged back then.
You have to realize that most (almost all) humans never have witnessed a god for themselves, so doubting some lore the grandfathers grandfather wrote down while supposedly being drunken is rather easy. Not to mention that humans are facing extinction (even though we hardly notice that ingame), and no god helps. Losing faith is probably one of the first things then.
Last but not least, with Infos we have now, nothing states Orrians intentionally withheld information either. To the humans back then it may have seemed the gods made he world for them, and they created magic out of nowhere. Or it was simply written more poetic than it actually was. However it does fit rather well. I’m aware that there are probably a few details off, but those are just details. And as i take it there are still some human priests who believe all of the old lore even. So no the asura are not completely right either. It’s just all linked (Spirits, Gods, Eternal Alchemy, etc).

TL;DR – You can’t compare this to learning one thing in school and next grade you hear it was completely different all along unless you count in 250 years of studies of several – vastly different – science institutes in between those 2 grades.

The problem comes from the fact that in GW1 we had a decent amount of interaction with the avatars of the Gods and we were able to enter some of their realms… We could also observe the God’s effect on the world, there was a lot of “history” that we KNEW as fact, rather than simply possibly correct scribbling… So it’s remarkably different to any real world religion and the changes thus do appear pretty severe.

I have to say that I really hate the constant comparisons of the timeframe between GW1 and GW2, and the timeframe between now and the past 250 years. The main reason why I hate it is that the position of cultural and technological development for both the starting points and ending points are completely different. Especially for humans. It’d probably be more accurate to compare it to the Renaissance period and 250 years prior. But even that holds its errors due to the other races’ developments and interactions to humans in GW, compared to other nations and cultures’ development and interactions to Europeans.

As to the whole “not witnessing a god for themselves” bit – seeing Avatars in GW1 was commonplace even for the non-heroic or supremely devout individuals (or so some old interview made it seem). Sure, in modern GW2 there’s no interaction and hasn’t been for 250 years, but compare that to Christianity which had run strong for well over a thousand years post-Jesus before being questioned and even now it still runs strong two thousand years after Jesus. Does humanity losing faith so quickly seem that reasonable to you now? Sure, our past 250 years has seen a decline in belief, but it’s already been over a thousand years since (supposed) “divine” interaction – be it first hand or second-hand. Not so for humans in Tyria. But even then, the fictional belief in the Six Gods is vastly different than the real religions we have, as unlike our real religions, they had undeniable proof of the gods’ existence. With Christianity, we may have a good argument for Jesus of Nazareth to have once existed and that he was a pretty swell guy (pretty hard to say when the evidence of Roman records gets brought in if memory serves me right), but there’s nothing but his disciple’s claims to point him as the son of God – or that God exists. The Six Gods, however, have been seen first hand by people, their avatars seen first hand by people – including the players. Their existence is confirmed fact; it’s whether they care or not anymore (or their continued existence, one can argue) that is questioned – but that’s not how more recent interviews’ showing of lore points it as.

I wouldn’t doubt that questioning the belief to begin. I’d be more surprised if they remained fully stead-fast. But in the course of GW2’s development we started with “humans are still as faithful as ever” to going in game and seeing some questioning to seeing in more recent interviews that it’s actually a vast majority of people who question the existence of the gods. Yeah that makes sense (spoiler alert: sarcasm).

Either way, all of that? Irrelevant to the points I was making or those made in this thread. I don’t know why you brought it up Leonie.

As to Orrians withholding information – I never said that it has been stated. I said that it is the best way for all this information altering to make sense. And it’s not a matter of individuals who believe the old lore but the fact that the old lore is proven false for anyone who isn’t blindly devout and that there is no alternative views of the Six Gods of the other races, despite being told such in interviews. And most importantly, that the Six Gods are being downgraded left and right at the drop of a hat, as the saying goes – or at least it feels that way to me, and I’ve seen nothing to argue otherwise just explanations for why their lore is being turned inside-out.

And your TLDR is exactly my point, as that’s the argument Angel McCoy gave for why so much of GW1’s lore is being changed and labeled as ‘false history.’ Not to mention that your TLDR is not a brief version of your above statements. :P

The unreasonable truth about this post is the fact that players are trying to apply logic and reason to a fantasy world.