Guild Wars 2

From pondering and thinking this over, and taking time to ask what others think about this I think that the elder dragon is still alive, he is the undead elder dragon after all.
After the end of the quest when we fight Zhaitan and give him a little firework show while he stands there just intimidatingly staring at us, it showed the cutscene of him falling through the sky, not actually showing him getting blasted into an oblivion or turning to dust or any other actual proof of his actual death. So what do you think about the situation? over all I think he might come back later on during the future expansions quite possibly.

or he just went back to sleep like he did last time he was defeated and will wake up again in another few thousand years.

The Arah explorable mode dungeon has tokens called Shard of Zhaitan with the quotation “A small piece of Zhaitan, forever dead.”

Also, I doubt that they’d really leave the area without checking the body. That’s too amateur for the Pact’s professionals.

On a side note, apparently Zhaitan’s attacks in the final phase of the Story mode are bugged which is why his fighting but is somewhat underwhelming. Id be greatly suprised if after all that no one checked to make sure he was dead.

Well, Konig, he is the Elder Dragon of death; it could just be he’s always been ‘dead’, so to speak.
I actually do hope that Zhaitan isn’t dead; him being killed by a bunch of yahoos with lazer cannons seems… well, anticlimactic. We were questioning whether they even -could- be killed, much less taken down by a single airship.

So, if I were ANet? Just have it so that Zhaitan has gone back to bed and leave it at that. Can’t kill ED’s, just like you can’t kill earthquakes; you can just silence them for a little bit.

Except that nothing really states that the Elder Dragons were defeated last time. The Tome or Rubicon only mentions the defeat of a Great Destroyer, and jotun history only mentions five surviving races against six Elder Dragons. I don’t think it’s mentioned anywhere that they were actually defeated. Even the lore on Glint states that she hid them from the Elder Dragons, making her lines in Edge of Destiny – that they went to sleep due to the lack of “food” – to be most accurate thus far.

Thing is, Elder Dragon’s utilize elements of nature, but they aren’t those elements themselves. Zhaitan utilizes undead, and looking at his body he is undead too. However, undead can die just as well as living – they’re just “studier” (until they become rotten).

Also, Zhaitan’s not the Elder Dragon of death – just the Elder Dragon of Undeath. And the personal story makes it pretty clear he is dead and won’t be a threat anymore.

I’m not exactly sure how one would defeat an Elder Dragon if not using powerful technology. Think of it. Mundane weaponry wouldn’t scratch them; they feed on magic so bringing something like, say, the Scepter of Orr, to them would just give them a chance to feed off of those powerful magical weapons thus leaving you weaponless and them stronger. And the storyline seems to indicate that they have a harder time corrupting technology than anything else – the lack of any kind of corrupted golem, for instance, or the effectiveness of various kinds of Pact-enhanced weaponry shows this.

So an airship with a mechalazer sounds like the most logical weapon to defeat Zhaitan. The issue with his death is just that he doesn’t give much fight – which based on Lutinz’s post, is a bug. I sure hope so, personally, since I found the Mouth of Zhaitan fight far tougher. Perhaps having to deal damage to Zhaitan while he’s flying like with his champions would be better than fighting a horde of risen…?

Just on a note Zhai Zhai was never really alive… you know, the whole undead thing, so all we are doing by collecting his shards is probably just a way of giving him a chance to come back and bite the Pacts arses for being a panzy bunch that like turret sections.

You know, I really don’t get the argument behind the claim that Zhaitan is undead. Yes, he’s the Elder Dragon of undeath, but does that mean that Kralkatorrik is crystal? Concept art of him, or that piece of him in GW1, certainly doesn’t look that way. Primordus in GW1 certainly doesn’t look to be made solely of fire.

They have powers over that aspect of “nature” they’re attributed to, and in the case of Kralkatorrik at least, can turn into it (he turns into a sandstorm); but that doesn’t really mean they are the aspect at all times.

Mechos.5640:

Well, Konig, he is the Elder Dragon of death; it could just be he’s always been ‘dead’, so to speak.
I actually do hope that Zhaitan isn’t dead; him being killed by a bunch of yahoos with lazer cannons seems… well, anticlimactic. We were questioning whether they even -could- be killed, much less taken down by a single airship.

So, if I were ANet? Just have it so that Zhaitan has gone back to bed and leave it at that. Can’t kill ED’s, just like you can’t kill earthquakes; you can just silence them for a little bit.

We take down everything with ease. 2 gods, Abbadon has been killed, Dhuum has been defeated. The most powerful things in Tyria aren’t gods or Elder Dragons, its us. Sad sad stuff.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Arah explorable mode dungeon has tokens called Shard of Zhaitan with the quotation “A small piece of Zhaitan, forever dead.”

It seems more to me like it’s simply stating that the shard itself is dead. As in, the thousands of Shards of Zhaitan that are currently stored in peoples’ banks aren’t going to come to life and reform Zhaitan right in the middle of Lion’s Arch.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

You know, I really don’t get the argument behind the claim that Zhaitan is undead. Yes, he’s the Elder Dragon of undeath, but does that mean that Kralkatorrik is crystal? Concept art of him, or that piece of him in GW1, certainly doesn’t look that way. Primordus in GW1 certainly doesn’t look to be made solely of fire.

I don’t know, Zhaitan looks pretty undead when you see him in Arah Story. (Excuse my low graphics settings)

These things said, I don’t think Zhaitan is alive. It would feel pretty cheap if ANet is planning to say "All the races of Tyria have come together with the most advanced technology in history to fight the Elder Dragons... and you still can’t kill them."

Nihilus.3015:

We take down everything with ease. 2 gods, Abbadon has been killed, Dhuum has been defeated. The most powerful things in Tyria aren’t gods or Elder Dragons, its us. Sad sad stuff.

To be fair, Dhuum was just barely breaking free from his prison when he was forced back by the players. I doubt he was nearly as powerful then as he was before Grenth overthrew him.

And I think even Grenth were unable to kill Dhuum. So that means there are truly immortal beings. If even gods felt threatened by Elder Dragons maybe just maybe Zhaitan return in some form. Just mention of him being reborn in next millennium would be enough for me.

My first thoughts after fighting Zhaitan was that until someone dredges up his body I don’t belive he is dead.

Then I got to thinking about Zhaitan and what he is made out of, we have all seen him in game or in trailers now and know that he is made up of other dragons. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to assume he survives in some form and could once we have moved on to the other dragons starts to consume them after they have been deffeated.

So after fighting all of the elder dragons big Z comes back, but with parts of all of the other dragons patchworked onto himself. It may seem a little cliche, but wouldn’t mind some sort of superdragon at the end or I could just be thinking too much into this.

he is dead.the next expansion is going to be in elona and palawa joko is going to revive him as his new mount

Him dying like that sucks, simple as that.

ArenaNet promised patch content, dungeons included. I could see Zhaitan return in a future patch before the next expansion.

Basically, after the fight at Arah, we would travel down, inside his lair. Quoting myself:

Lonami.2987:

• Another undead dungeon, level 80, an underground lair in the depths of Orr. After Arah, Zhaitan would have fled here, to recover from his wounds. We would descend into his lair and finish him for good. The dungeon would be scary with all kind of abominations and monsters. Each hall before reaching the lair would focus around some negative feeling, like fear or hatred, and Zhaitan would try to psychologically manipulate us. Descending into his lair could be a metaphorical descent into some kind of hell or purgatory. Zhaitan’s lair should be more than just a cave, with underground temples, bridges over bottomless pits and tall halls, where dragons could fit perfectly.

That would give us a good ending, in my opinion. The plot would be simple: The Pact guys experimenting on his body to completely destroy it would have stopped answering to the phone, and we would go investigate what happened with them, to find the Elder Dragon of Undeath lived up to his name, and crawled away back to his underground lair, possibly planning to sink Orr and go to sleep again.

I kind of have to agree. The fight against Zhaitan was kind of anti-climactic, even if, visually, it was gorgeous. “PRESS THIS KEY OVER AND OVER TO KILL A PRIMORDIAL FORCE OF NATURE!!” Yeah, no, that’s not epic. Especially considering Zhaitan should have been able to shoot that airship out of the sky with a well-aimed sneeze. To see him sit there on a tower and take volley after volley of canon-fire was depressing.

I’m hoping he actually is Undead, and we fight him on a more personal basis later after he’s had time to lick his wounds. The closest we get now to a proper Dragon fight are the Shatter and Tequatl the sunless.

@IsaacSin: THere’s a big difference between looking undead and being undead.

@Cicero: He’s on that tower because he got crippled. Most of his wings got destroyed, so he couldn’t fly. Though I agree that it was a bit lackluster, him having to cling onto the tower made sense.

I’m a big fan of the “revived-when-examining-Zhaitan’s-corpse” scenario, for the following reasons:

• The fight scene, bugged or not, was really anticlimactic. I’m aware of the reasons for using high tech to defeat the dragon (it’s something people probably didn’t have last time), but STILL.
• The fight itself didn’t really fit with the dynamic nature of Guild Wars 2. Let me put it to you this way: in the final phase of the fight, you stand around, pushing one button; the rest of Guild Wars 2 is about running around and pushing every button you can!

As to those who suggest you couldn’t really fight a force of nature within the bounds of the Guild Wars 2 engine, I have eight words for you: multiphase instanced event with persistent progress until reset

Assume, as Lonami suggested above, that the adventurers descend into the depths of Arah, where Zhaitan retreated. Assume that people trying to see if he’s really dead have accidentally revived him. You are now trapped in an underground cavern with a very angry undead dragon the size of a small continent. What do you do?

Well, the good news is that since he’s fallen underground, he’s partially buried, putting a crimp in his style: he can’t hit you as hard as he wants to, he can’t fly around and pick you off. He’s also badly wounded from cannon fire, so he has lots of damaged points in his rotting armor.

You start off in a huge cavern, approaching a partially-buried Zhaitan. He lunges for you; you dodge. The ensuing fight involves predicting his attacks and dodging them, maybe fighting independent pieces of him that attack you. You do enough damage to some exposed bit and he roars, thrashes around, and retreats.

Next phase is a corridor chase. Zhaitan is retreating, pulling himself back down a corridor. You need to dodge rock from the ceiling and broken bits of him that attack you, whilst keeping up with him. The goal is to attack him when he pauses to collapse the corridor; if you fail even once, you wipe. Succeed, and he continues to withdraw.

Other elements will include platform jumping (whilst dodging Zhaitan’s attacks and minions and delivering damage) and even an underwater section.

All of them would test coordination, reflexes, and adaptability. Ideally, you’d be able to stop and resume between phases based on what you’d unlocked as a player — a group of players would be limited by the player who has the fewest phases unlocked, but a group who has done it before would be able to resume near the end (if they had to stop for a breather). This would make the event nice and long and satisfying, but manageable.

(Also, it would allow you time to farm for repair bills between phases).

This seems to happen EVERY SINGLE TIME the PC(s) in an MMO kill a “Big Bad.” I think it stems from some idea that the PCs in an MMO are only a little more powerful than the vendors and non-combatants and a LOT weaker than pretty much any NPC/monster that is in any way important in the lore.

given that all his body parts are made up of dragons (or, were in early concept art), I wouldn’t mind the idea of rather than him being alive, there are body parts of his still roaming about spreading corruption, albeit less effectively.

I do have to agree that the Zhaitan fight -was- a little anti-climatic. Granted this is a fantasy game, just try to put it in perspective. Zhaitan was nailed by a cannon with a beam that was roughly what- half the size of his body? I think it’s understandable that he just clung to the tower for dear life in a daze of kitten You shoot a person with a bullet no bigger than their thumb nail and it does how much damage? I’m sure in most cases they won’t be all “Raaawr! Super mega attack nao!” after it but hey, cocaine is one hell of a drug.

I dunno. I think it’s just a little bit realistic for this scenario that he gets rofl’d the way he does after taking a hit THAT big.

As Konig said in another thread there are important things to keep in mind as to WHY Zhaitan was as weak as he was:

1) Starved (killed one of two Mouth of Zhaitan)
2) Partially blinded (killed a few Eyes of Zhaitan)
3) Had his largest minion “processing plants” (so to speak) ruined (Ossuary of the Unquiet Dead/that bone ship option)
4) Had the five greatest power sources taken from him (temple meta events)
5) And had the corruption of the land removed (Source of Orr)

He had been severely weakened repeatedly for days, if not weeks, before we took to the sky to fight him.

“’e’s not dead, ’e’s resting!”

Sorry, couldn’t resist the reference.

Chessrook.8643:

“’e’s not dead, ’e’s resting!”

Sorry, couldn’t resist the reference.

No apologies needed. It is a well-played and applicable reference indeed.

IsaacSin.1374:

It seems more to me like it’s simply stating that the shard itself is dead. As in, the thousands of Shards of Zhaitan that are currently stored in peoples’ banks aren’t going to come to life and reform Zhaitan right in the middle of Lion’s Arch.

Somehow Zhaitan coming back to life in the middle of LA is an appealing concept…

So great idea but also so impossible :P

Zhaitan was supposed to be made from dead dragon parts, so I’m not terribly sure if it is the real Zhaitan you fight considering what you do fight was never alive in the first place or if we even fight the real Elder Dragon or just a shell. if there are more than 4 expansion for this game that come out, I’m sure that Zhaitan will be the next, the fight for him seems to me like it is very misleading as what the Elder Dragon actually may be.

I am thinking that Zhaitan is a small dragon that manipulates the parts from risen dragons to form the body that you had fought. No one stated that the Risen Elder Dragon has to be as big as what you fight.

Source on that “made from dead dragon parts”? He has the appearance of being made from multiple dragons – as per the making of GW2 book that was the idea. But no where, as far as I know, has it ever been stated that it’s dead dragons.

Also, yes, Elder Dragons are repeatedly stated to be huge creatures. If you played GW1 and had Eye of the North, then you may recall the creature frozen under Drakkar Lake. This was originally to be Jormag, but it was altered and made into a champion because he wasn’t “big enough” to be an Elder Dragon in the developers’ eyes. All Elder Dragons are repeatedly said to be the size of mountains. Kralkatorrik, while hibernating, is even mistaken for a small mountain range.

It used to be on the wiki for a while but has since been removed, ill see if i can find one of the interviews that had it.

http://www.arena.net/blog/inside-the-collectors-edition-making-of-gw2-book

The last picture on this page talks about Zhaitan being made up of other massive dragon parts. While this is the idea for the concept art, it was still the concept that the art that was modeled for Zhaitan.

Konig Des Todes.2086

@IsaacSin: THere’s a big difference between looking undead and being undead.

I was just using the same strategy as your examples of Kralkatorrik and Primordus, as below.

King Des Todes.2086

Does that mean that Kralkatorrik is crystal? Concept art of him, or that piece of him in GW1, certainly doesn’t look that way. Primordus in GW1 certainly doesn’t look to be made solely of fire.

Kaona.9105

http://www.arena.net/blog/inside-the-collectors-edition-making-of-gw2-book
The last picture on this page talks about Zhaitan being made up of other massive dragon parts. While this is the idea for the concept art, it was still the concept that the art that was modeled for Zhaitan.

Kaona, you just restated Konig’s last post. He cited the making of GW2 book, but pointed out that the book doesn’t state they’re dead dragons. Which, indeed, the image in your link doesn’t.

You you expect him to be made from living dragon parts?. I for one don’t really expect to see Primordus walk up to Zhiatan and say “Here take my arm, ooh by the way don’t lose it.”.

Unless Arena decides to go reconfirm if the concept for the art is not the concept for the dragon and art, we may never have a clear picture.

How come you’re convinced those parts are taken from somewhere else? We know nothing of their actual origins, only that they are the oldest known beings. For all we know, Zhaitan could have hatched out of a fist sized egg with all those extra heads, wings and limbs.

DISCLAIMER: I do not believe that the Elder Dragons were born from fist sized eggs.