Guild Wars 2

Something that I noticed and it irks me is that in that map, Bitterfrost Frontier, all quaggans have the calf model, they are basically big babies, no adults to be found anywhere.

So what happened to all the mature and adult quaggans? What are these horrible deformed giant babies?

I have seen in-game adult formed orca/killer whale colored quaggans both in the wild and in the personal story, so don’t tell me those are adults!

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/2/20/Judging_Quaggan.jpg/240px-Judging_Quaggan.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/--g1C6WkMDQ/maxresdefault.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/2883127242a4e6dd98fe8d928442233f/tumblr_inline_oh633856Tm1r60dgm_540.png

My understanding is that these Quaggan have evolved differently from the normal and the orca quaggan due to the intense frostbite they are used to. The poem mentions how frostbite changed their skin colour to the blackened state, I suppose it is possible it stunted their growth as well.

They are def adults, since there is an elder Quaggan in one of the houses underwater.

So they are mutant!

My bad, I should have said “adult models” instead of just adults

Oddly enough all the Quaggan torchbearers are normal adult Quaggans. But they seem wholly unrepresented in the actual Quaggan village.

Ach, i dont ever consider the quaggans to be canon ingame. Anywhere there are quaggans you can ignore them and the story wont change in the slightest. The only times quaggans have influenced the story so far was negatively.

So i just ignore the fact they even exist. So etimes I wonder where the idea comes from. A dev threw away a scribble of a 3 year old girl who didnt know how the world worked, then a spanish cleaning lady found it and accidentally put it on the approved races pile

Amaimon.7823:

A dev threw away a scribble of a 3 year old girl who didnt know how the world worked, then a spanish cleaning lady found it and accidentally put it on the approved races pile

What do you mean? Quaggans are more or less an accurate depiction of a species becoming endangered due to biocenosis shift caused by emergence of a new predator. They’re pretty much a fantasy take on Steller’s sea cow before it went extinct.

Ariurotl.3718:

Amaimon.7823:

A dev threw away a scribble of a 3 year old girl who didnt know how the world worked, then a spanish cleaning lady found it and accidentally put it on the approved races pile

What do you mean? Quaggans are more or less an accurate depiction of a species becoming endangered due to biocenosis shift caused by emergence of a new predator. They’re pretty much a fantasy take on Steller’s sea cow before it went extinct.

the quaggan lacks every sign of evolutionary advantage, and apparantly it’s abaility to go feral is it’s only redeeming trait to survive as a species.. which is offset by the fact that quaggans don’t wanna breed with feral quaggans… which leaves me with the question.. how has this species survived until now.. the walking blobs of bait for nature

Amaimon.7823:

the quaggan lacks every sign of evolutionary advantage, and apparantly it’s abaility to go feral is it’s only redeeming trait to survive as a species.. which is offset by the fact that quaggans don’t wanna breed with feral quaggans… which leaves me with the question.. how has this species survived until now.. the walking blobs of bait for nature

By having no natural predators until the krait arrived. Same as the dodo, the kakapo and a whole bunch of other real species, both extinct and currently surviving only by being protected by humans. Believe it or not, quaggans make perfect sense.

Ariurotl.3718:

Amaimon.7823:

the quaggan lacks every sign of evolutionary advantage, and apparantly it’s abaility to go feral is it’s only redeeming trait to survive as a species.. which is offset by the fact that quaggans don’t wanna breed with feral quaggans… which leaves me with the question.. how has this species survived until now.. the walking blobs of bait for nature

By having no natural predators until the krait arrived. Same as the dodo, the kakapo and a whole bunch of other real species, both extinct and currently surviving only by being protected by humans. Believe it or not, quaggans make perfect sense.

They have predators now so I hope they quickly go extinct.

The Quaggans in Bitterfrost frontier are the kind, selfrighteous, dumb, shallow, childish, blatantly goofy Quaggans most people will imagine by seeing the round manatee design. They are not the humble simpletons yet really interesting Quaggans we found elsewere.

Bitterfrost Quaggans are an HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE cliché, akin to JarJar lack of deep and purpose. Bitterfrost Quaggan are a step back from a good character design. I’m not surprised Anet didn’t use the adult model for them: they are becoming more and more stereothypical, more and more generic round-goody-dumb creature.

Please don’t continue, Anet. Quaggans were ok before this.

There’s actually some adult orca quaggans as ‘disciplies’ of kodan by the braziers, with dark backs and bright bellies.

My guess is whoever set these models of all these adults to the baby orca model liked the model a lot and didn’t consider the lore implications. Like all these times the inquest flooring is used in non-inquest locales.

I made a new thread about this since the continuity errors between bitterfrost and tyria bother me a lot, considering how much quaggans have been fleshed out elsewhere:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Quaggan-Continuity/

If the grawl or dredge had been represented weirdly I dont think it would have been as noticeable since they’re both pretty shallow in stories/open world. We do get one glance at grawl and skritt social structure in the personal story but there are more quaggans to interact with and learn about, it seems like. So its very strange that the race is so weirdly off in bitterfrost.

A cynical part of me thought maybe all of the quaggan in the bitterfrost story look like the killer whale calf to make sure players would recognize the killer whale calf floating in shooshadoo, which was released with the patch. But that would be throwing continuity and a race under the bus for basically nothing so there must be some other reasons. Does anyone know?

eyestrain.3056:

A cynical part of me thought maybe all of the quaggan in the bitterfrost story look like the killer whale calf to make sure players would recognize the killer whale calf floating in shooshadoo, which was released with the patch. But that would be throwing continuity and a race under the bus for basically nothing so there must be some other reasons. Does anyone know?

Well about all being killerwhales:
You wouldnt necessarily expect a person from africa looking the same as one from asia or one from europe, would you?
Not jiust talking about the skin colour or hair colour but also thigs ike average size, eye or lipshape and such. I don’t think there is much more to it than that.
Though i don’t understand them all being oversized babies either rly.

Neve.3145:

eyestrain.3056:

A cynical part of me thought maybe all of the quaggan in the bitterfrost story look like the killer whale calf to make sure players would recognize the killer whale calf floating in shooshadoo, which was released with the patch. But that would be throwing continuity and a race under the bus for basically nothing so there must be some other reasons. Does anyone know?

Well about all being killerwhales:
You wouldnt necessarily expect a person from africa looking the same as one from asia or one from europe, would you?
Not jiust talking about the skin colour or hair colour but also thigs ike average size, eye or lipshape and such. I don’t think there is much more to it than that.
Though i don’t understand them all being oversized babies either rly.

I’m totally on board with varied appearance across geography. There are however already adult models with a dark back/white belly that could have been used to represent “cold water” quaggans (like in frostgorge sound as opposed to the all white “beluga” quaggans in LA). Even if the team didnt have the time or resources to make a new quaggan model with more distinct orca markings, they could have easily used the other cold water adult models (they actually did for some of the guards and flamebearers). So it’s even stranger that the calf models are used for adults in all the prominent story npcs and most of the ambient ones. It doesn’t make sense.

I’m more questioning as why there’s a quaggan who wants to uh… “hit with me”.

Ookamikun.6472:

I’m more questioning as why there’s a quaggan who wants to uh… “hit with me”.

Hey, we have canon examples of multiple races who happily eat members of thinking, speaking races. (eg: norn eat grawl)

If you think it’s just eating that crosses that boundary….

My little asura engie lady, 50 some years old, is on a very passionate relationship with the sylvari mesmer girl my wife made, who emerged from the pale tree 2 years ago.
So is a one gender, multicultural, trans species, trans kingdom romance, with a lot of age difference.

I made a thread about this approximately half a year ago, with images and all.

I, too, miss the cool looking quaggans from the original campaign, as those balloony cutsie-wootsie ones with their annoying voices and childish phrases just make me want to pop them open with a sharp needle.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

(eg: norn eat grawl)

Where is that in-game?

Djinn.9245:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

(eg: norn eat grawl)

Where is that in-game?

Text from the merchant escort in the south of Frostgorge Sound

Travelling Merchant Orthun “Oh look, Horace. Lucky us. Tonight, we feast on grawl!”

Since I noticed that, I’m pretty sure I also ran across another similar comment somewhere in Norn-land, maybe in the capital city in random dialog, but I don’t recall where well enough to find it again.

(…and yes, all we know is that one Norn suggests that they will be eating Grawl, which is different from all Norn doing it, but … don’t ruin my fun.)

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Djinn.9245:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

(eg: norn eat grawl)

Where is that in-game?

Text from the merchant escort in the south of Frostgorge Sound

Travelling Merchant Orthun “Oh look, Horace. Lucky us. Tonight, we feast on grawl!”

Since I noticed that, I’m pretty sure I also ran across another similar comment somewhere in Norn-land, maybe in the capital city in random dialog, but I don’t recall where well enough to find it again.

(…and yes, all we know is that one Norn suggests that they will be eating Grawl, which is different from all Norn doing it, but … don’t ruin my fun.)

That’s terrible. I’m almost sorry I asked lol.