Guild Wars 2

My main character is a Sylvari. This patch just vilified all Sylvari. Sure, the players themselves are obviously immune to the effects because duh you’re not just going to make everyone’s Sylvari characters suddenly not playable. Obviously the NPCs in the Grove are immune because duh you’re not going to lock out an entire capitol city from the player base. Certain renown heart events and other in-game events involve Sylvari so duh you’re not going to just remove all those events.

What I’m concerned about is the remainder of the game’s story. Even after we destroy Mordremoth (assuming that’s where the story is going) and it somehow frees Sylvari from its influence, Sylvari will be forever tainted and seen as ‘that race’. They already are, considering what that kitten Scarlet did to LA. What’s to stop all Sylvari from just dying once Mordremoth dies (besides obvious plot convenience and the fact that they’re a playable race)?

What about Trahearne? If we assume he is turned, the Pact is now without a marshall. Who is to take his place? The player? I’m Sylvari. In the context of the game’s events, it wouldn’t make sense within the game world.

What about Caithe? Did she turn? We can’t assume she didn’t. Why were only some turned and not all? Why not Canach? Was it just because he was a little further away? What about Faolain? Wooden Potatoes pointed out that the corrupted Sylvari had a red glow about them, but Faolain did not. He also pointed out that Canach did have a red glow, but it’s implied he didn’t turn, but he… and… and why does everything smell like copper? O_o

I’m sure that the writers will have things explained in-game eventually, but I can’t help but feel that the whole thing will just end up being a big serving of deus ex machina. I certainly hope that is not the case. I hope the writers didn’t write themselves into a corner.

Put a spoiler tag in your title.

All we saw was a cutscene, we don’t even know what exactly is going to happen yet, so it’s very premature to even discuss it like this.

Is this where I point out that the Charr effectively commited genocide on the human kingdom of Ascalon, and yet Humans can still work together with them?

Remember when the Pale Tree said that she protected the Dream from the dragon? And when she said the Dream protected the Sylvari from the dragon’s influence? And how both Scarlet and Aerin cut themselves from the Dream?
Every information we have so far points at that the Sylvari that are connected to the Dream being immune to Mordremoth’s control.
This kind of thing should have been said in a cutscene instead of in a skippable dialogue, since it seems that lots of people missed it.

About Faolain, if you look at her in the trailer again, there are some thorny vines growing out of her back. The other Nightmare Sylvari with her also have these thorny vines. I believe they were corrupted and now serve Mordremoth.

The whole thing was done badly. The dragon minion reveal was bad enough, but they didn’t even explain it well. They could’ve shown evidence that the Pale Tree’s seed (and others) were purified by the Forgotten and that Wynne discovered this in the cave or while she was out exploring the Silverwastes.

Instead, she just knows because “my dream said so”. Not like dreams can be misinterpreted or anything. And how is it that no one else ever dreamed of that or of Wynne’s death at all, besides the Pale Tree?

If Mordremoth can take over Sylvari by sheer proximity, why haven’t the Mordrem tried that? Why didn’t the Shadow of the Dragon do that during its attack on the summit? Why didn’t any of the sylvari start to experience symptoms even around the vines?

Supposedly sylvari connected to the Dream are safe, but with the Pale Tree weakened, maybe Mordremoth is just stronger once they get too close…I doubt many of the sylvari in the fleet were Soundless, if any.

More questions, few answers, and messing up the sylvari lore even more…sigh.

The character I play most is a female sylvari so I found this disturbing at first. Then I realized it was a Charr who started all the trash talking. I shrugged coz no one takes those war crazed puzzykats seriously.

QQ

Btw you are the Forsaken not affected one and Sylvanas Windrunner Pale Tree will lead you togeather with your alies towards the victory over the Lich King Elder Dragon.

Don’t worry

Kappa

Okay I don’t get these complaints. Let’s look at this closer.

I remember seeing charr and asuran and human corrupted risen. But Sylvari were immune to Zhaitan’s corruption.

Suddenly we can be corrupted, and now it’s a; big deal.

It’s just our turn.

He is right… It is your turn (reloads)

Its clobbering time!!

1. Faolain is evil, but not corrupted. She is evil in the way that humans are evil, she just believes bad things. She is as reliable an ally against Mordremoth as anyone else at this point. The Nightmare are against the Pale Tree, but would seem to be opposed to any sort of outside influence, so they would have Mordremoth more than any other Sylvari. She may be corrupted, but she isn’t yet.

2. Every race includes “evil” factions. There are the Inquest, the Flame Legion, the Inquest, the White Mantle, and the Nightmare Court already. This is just a new evil faction, the Mordrem Sylvari.

The rest is speculative:
3. Most of the world will not be effected. I don’t see them screwing up all the existing Sylvari NPCs, at least not by directly making them evil. There might be a reaction here or there.

4. The “evil” Sylvari will be either Pact survivors or fresh grown ones from the second tree, and all living in new jungle areas.

5. The next LW storylines will almost certainly involve coming up with some “cure” to Mordrem corruption, similar to Taime’s WP “cure,” to allow Sylvari players and NPCs to ignore him moving forward.

6. The reason most Sylvari have not yet been affected is because Mordremoth’s telepathic influence seems to be short range. He could only seize the ones that came to him. It’s possible that spending a lot of time in the Wastes would allow him some influence, but we haven’t been there that long in game time, and Scarlet was already cracked in the head so it was easier with her.

Because of the revelation that Sylvari are (intended) dragon minions doesn’t make them evil. That would mean that Glint is also evil.

It’s obvious to me that just because you’re a dragon minion, it doesn’t always mean that you’re evil.

Plus I don’t really see this as a faction per say, it’s more that sylvai are either more or less protected by the Pale Tree from Mordremoths influence. You could basically say that aside from a Mother Tree the Sylvari have an Evil Dragon Daddy. =P

Gotta say, that reveal finally made the Sylvari somewhat interesting. At launch they were the worst written of the 5 main races and that’s saying something since Norn and Asura were basically walking stereotypes.
But Sylvari lacked everything that would make them even remotely compelling in my eyes. They were the blandest of the bland, either completely pure white knights, absolute neutrals (the soundless) or horribly evil black knights (though the latter two are unplayable). Pretty much all major Sylvari NPCs had as much character as a wet towel. And in most cases they were simply written to be superior to all the other races, depsite the games emphasis on cooperation. It was a Sylvari who tried to mend the wounds of Destiny’s Edge, it was a Sylvari that formed the Pact, it was a creation of the Pale Tree that was needed to cleanse Orr. Sylvari were said to be the best smiths and the most balanced (the latter was said by a Kodan). It wasn’t helped by the fact that Scarlet was a Villain-Sue par excellence.
The first time I saw a glimpse of light on the writing of this race was the aftermath of the battle for LA, when a Sylvari asked for help, but an Asura Lionguard just yelled at him. Finally conflict! And now it will only get more interesting. This could be the set-up for a really well written story of lingering racism and resentment. I honestly can not see how any one would not want this. So much potential for interesting plots and characters! It’s like the Charr-human conflict only more relevant to the modern times.

Seemed pretty obvious from the start. This was just an answer given to the community regarding a question often debated about since beta. Now we get confirmation and people cry foul play. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m curious as to what entails the rest of the seeds, where is Mallyck and whether or not we’ll see him. Will he even be good? The thing about the Pale Tree’s origin was direct intervention. Did Ronan go back to the cave to take another seed?

Clearly not all sylvari are affected, I believe the Dream isn’t just the Pale Tree but… inception. A thought planted by the Pale Tree and through the years of dreaming, the Sylvari born into it have given it life on their own. Hence we see the players as immune. I think that’s kind of neat. While The Dream doesn’t make one immune, it provides a substantial amount of resistance, thus giving an excuse as to why we wont suddenly go into a rage and lose control over our Sylvari characters.

Canach’s dialog in the trailer for HoT also implies skepticism. “What are you doing? We are not your enemy!” Fear and decent is gripping societies across Tyria after The Risen and Zhaitan’s near complete catastrophic decimation of The Pact. Naturally, minions of the EDs are to be considered with extreme prejudice. Then we have Scarlet who opens a large scale war on Lions Arch, Aerin and the suspicious assault on the Zephyrites. It all just adds up to influencing skepticism. That Sylvari merchant while humble could be tricking you and ready to stab you in the back, all in the name of Mordremoth.

To me, I’m just glad they did something cool with the Sylvari. They were always boring because they were such a pale-blank-slate and now there’s conflict – and not just between the Dreamers and the Nightmare’ers.

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Sure, the players themselves are obviously immune to the effects because duh you’re not just going to make everyone’s Sylvari characters suddenly not playable. Obviously the NPCs in the Grove are immune because duh you’re not going to lock out an entire capitol city from the player base.

Please explain this to the denizens of Lions Arch.

While it’s true the game developers won’t take away our playable characters they could conceivably make it so that Sylvari could no longer be made at character creation. I don’t expect that, but then I didn’t expect them to blow the heck outta LA either.

Ykfox.3825:

Is this where I point out that the Charr effectively commited genocide on the human kingdom of Ascalon, and yet Humans can still work together with them?

Or that the Asura commit the most heinous crimes against sapience imaginable … pretty much whenever they have the opportunity. They don’t even have to be at war or corrupted by an evil force. They just have to be bored, curious, or feeling particularly superior that day.

And in fact, that’s kinda the thing in all of this everyone seems to be missing. The beings of Tyria commit terrible acts constantly, on a grand national scale. The only difference is that the Sylvari actually have an excuse, and many of them are still free and able to fight back.

(Well, ok, the Norn seem to be an exception to all of that. Oddly they don’t seem to have done much of anything terrible on a grand scale, ever. Maybe that comes from having plenty of good beer and no organized government or religion. Weird, never really thought about that until just now.)

Off topic a bit, but this keeps running through my head. NSFW, do a search for “Look who’s evil now” and/or Evil Dead the Musical. (snicker)

It’s possible the Story portion of HoT will include a Sylvari-specific component where PCs can overcome their “evil” nature before joining the remaining races to fight against Mordremoth. Basically, overcoming the evil within themselves before taking on the evil that’s seeking to destroy Tyria.

The other four races could have a parallel story component focusing on learning to trust Sylvari. -shrug-

I just really want to say that I had called this well over 4 months ago, the clues have been there for a very long time, but the events of Dragon’s Reach pt 2 gave the last piece to be able to connect the dots and have plenty enough evidence to say this was true. I merely labeled this as a theory due to lack of confirmation. Now we have it… I play Sylvari, and love it. Unfortunately, I’ve been on hiatus from internet games since this post was made, but it’s good to smell the “I was right” in the air. I could be wrong on some points, but the conclusion was accurate…https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sylvari/THEORY-Origins-of-the-Sylvari-race/first#post4353428

Aye.8392:

Zera Allimatti.2541:

Sure, the players themselves are obviously immune to the effects because duh you’re not just going to make everyone’s Sylvari characters suddenly not playable. Obviously the NPCs in the Grove are immune because duh you’re not going to lock out an entire capitol city from the player base.

Please explain this to the denizens of Lions Arch.

While it’s true the game developers won’t take away our playable characters they could conceivably make it so that Sylvari could no longer be made at character creation. I don’t expect that, but then I didn’t expect them to blow the heck outta LA either.

The circumstances of LA were irrelevant since you had plenty of Native cities to go to instead, that and all they did was move all of the stuff out of LA and into Gandarren – effectively only changing the mechanic-side of things by one-zone over. This is nothing more than an anecdote.

They wont lock a character species nor take control away from the player unless it’s some specific mechanic based on a condition-like effect that suffers a duration.

Every player that is Sylavari (don’t recall how to spell it) is from the dream which the pale tree protected from corruption. All the evil slyavari are from the other tree.

ninja.3407:

Every player that is Sylavari (don’t recall how to spell it) is from the dream which the pale tree protected from corruption. All the evil slyavari are from the other tree.

Slight spoilers ahead:

Narrative Director Leah Hoyer revealed in the Points of Interest episode about the Mordrem Guard that the Mordrem Guard we encounter in Verdant Brink (the first new map in Heart of Thorns) are in fact Pact sylvari who have answered Mordremoth’s call (during and after the Pact Fleet’s crash) and underwent a physical transormation into their “true form” after accepting their destiny as dragon minions. Their purpose is to persuade/force the still non-corrupted sylvari to join the dragon’s army, as well as capture other races and creatures and bring those races, alive or dead, to the Blighting Tree(s) to create more beastly Mordrem.

Although the Mordrem Guard in Verdant Brink are turned Pact sylvari, it’s possible that the Mordrem Guard we encounter in other maps deeper in the jungle might originate from other Tree(s) (as we only meet one of the three confirmed Mordrem Guard Commanders, Legendary Blademaster Diarmid, who was originally a Pact sylvari, in Verdant Brink, so two commanders are still unaccounted for), but we don’t know that for certain yet.

What we do know thanks to Leah Hoyer is that Soundless, Dreamers and Nightmare Courtiers can all fall to the dragon, the Soundless being most susceptible to corruption due to actively trying to distance themselves from the Dream. Mordremoth’s “call” is not a one-time occurrence either; he keeps sending these “calls” every now and then, and even Dreamer/Nightmare sylvari who initially have enough willpower (and the protection of the Dream) to resist the first few calls may succumb to the call later. Mordremoth is basically a hacker constantly trying to find a way past the firewall and keeps targeting weak spots until he finally gets through. With the Pale Tree weakened, he just has to make the sylvari he’s targeting feel weak enough emotionally to finally lure them in, and apparently one of the storylines in Heart of Thorns will show us how this is done.

Also, what excites me is that according to Leah Hoyer the story will dive into the ideological schism between Mordrem Guard and Nightmare Court and how the latter view the former and their supposed destiny as dragon minions.