Guild Wars 2

I posted this some time ago on Reddit, and even got some official answers. It’s a series of questions about the Living World, that I feel should have been answered somehow.

I think they help show where some of the weakness of the story so far, and I hope they help improve the future content. Reposting it again now season 1 is over, feel free to add yours too, and let’s hope we get some answers.

Original Reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1usdvw/unanswered_ls_questions/cel8hpa

These are questions I feel should have been already answered during the living world. Things like Caithe’s secret and the identity of Mr. E are obvious later reveals. I’m probably forgetting something, but I think this covers pretty much all the holes:

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Southsun Cove and the Consortium (3 releases)

• What did Canach’s expedition exactly do to enrage the karka?
• When did the karka arrive to Southsun Cove? (Should be after Zhaitan’s death)
• What was the expedition searching? Just safe territory that was no man’s land during the risen presence on the Sea of Sorrows? Or they were after the karka for some sinister reason?
• How did Fractals of the Mist come to happen? Can’t be a coincidence.
• Why are Southsun Cove materials related to FotM? Gameplay mechanics, or something more?
• Why did Canach corrupt and enrage the karka to screw up the Consortium? Even if he has kind of a weird moral, taking a torch and burning the contracts himself is faster, easier and kills no innocents. We know he was there in Molten Weapons Facility (hate how they didn’t include him with a hood or something, even in the fractal would have been a good reference), so he does care about innocents and the refugees. Is this because the karka had a role in the Consortium’s plan?
• Had Canach any additional reasons to go fight the Molten Alliance? Again, in the grand scheme of things, can’t be a coincidence.
• How and why did Canach join the Consortium? Was he employed by his skills on chemistry? Was his later corruption of the local fauna related to the skills the Consortium wanted out of him in the first place?
• Who are the leaders of the Consortium? For an organization operating in the middle of Lion’s Arch, and at a pretty decent size, the Captain’s Council surely wouldn’t leave this unanswered.
• Where, when and how came the Consortium to be?
• Why does the Consortium want Canach dead so badly after the initial incident? Does Canach know things he’d better take to the grave?
• Where is Canach now? Some not-ingame prison in Lion’s Arch?
• What’s the origin behind the sclerite weapons? They look like twisted, evil and dark pieces of karka. Who created them, and with what purpose?
• PS: I wish the Ancient Karka battle was included as a boss fractal.

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Molten Alliance

• The Moletariate dredge and the Flame Legion charr aren’t hive minds, no race or big faction is (except maybe deeply corrupted sects). This means, did everyone join to form the Molten Alliance, or just some splinter factions? Maybe just the guys in the region, now that both factions are weak after losing their leadership? (In Sorrow’s Embrace and Citadel of Flame we do a lot of damage to their chain of command)
• In line with the previous question, the bases of the Molten Alliance were present only across the conflict region, or further, too? (Conflict region = Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau)
• Does the alliance between the Moletariate and the Inquest have any effect on the Molten Alliance, or as the questions above ask, they are separate alliances between particular factions inside the Moletariate?
• Who are the leaders of the Molten Alliance, in both the dredge and the charr side?
• The notes of the Order of Whispers agent (Who we never get to meet, wasted opportunity) mention horrors underground. What horrors? His tone and wording made it sound like terrible monsters or terrible dark rituals. They say it’s worse than dredge or charr, too. Maybe the Moletariate destroyer-enslavement project went further with the help of the Flame Legion? (Remember they were involved with destroyers 250 years ago) Maybe new monsters? Maybe new creations by Scarlet?
• We never get to see how the dredge got the magic from the shamans. It’s mentioned in the OoW agent’s notes, but in the dungeon we don’t see anything like a lab, station or magic circle where that could have happened. Will this be elaborated on in the future?
• PS: I wish they had updated some bases, like Moledavia in Diessa Plateau and Moleberia in Wayfarer Foothills with Molten Alliance troops, to show progress. The only things left by the Molten Alliance are minor hints and two refugee camps that are empty now. They did this way much more better with the Toxic Alliance (No matter they screwed up by not making the centaurs part of it).

Aetherblade pirates

• When was the organization formed? What’s the involvement of the Inquest? Did the entire Inquest support the pirates, or just a faction inside it? In the other cases, motivations for the alliances are pretty clear, but in this one there isn’t any. Yeah, pirates money and plunder (And Mai Trin a seat in the council), but what for the Inquest? What do they get in exchange?
• Hologram technology. Where did it come from? It’s too much of a coincidence for it to appear just in time for Scarlet to steal it and use it as a weapon, when the Aetherblades already have better technology. Whoever created the technology (probably an asura) didn’t notice it could be used as a weapon later? Okay, it could indeed be a coincidence, the Inquest could know about the project and the attack on Lion’s Arch could have been timed on purpose so they could steal the technology. I still find ridiculous that the creator didn’t see the danger, or that we didn’t get some mention at Inquest stealing the access codes or whatever.
• The airships. What’s the Pact’s words on it? And the other races? Only the Pact has access to them, humans and charr probably want a piece of it for their own interests, but were “denied”, and now some pesky pirates have them. And then Lion’s Arch gets a good bundle of them, too. Free airships for everyone! How did this come to happen? How did the Aetherblades get the schematics to build them? I guess someone infiltrated the Pact and stole them, but it’s a pity it wasn’t elaborated on.
• Looks like Mai Trin was the leader, wasn’t she? She directed many airships, so she was kind of a big fish. Who’s the leader now? Scarlet commands them now directly?

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Zephyr Sanctum

• There was a pair of human thieves, trying to sell something dangerous, mentioning someone from the Vigil was getting dangerously close, too. What happened with this plot? Did they steal something from the Pact? From the Zephyrites?
• Who created the sanctuary/town where the Zephyrites landed? The architecture is identical to the Zephyr Sanctum, and it’s full of religious references to the Aspects with paintings. Does anyone live here while the Zephyrites are in the air? Do some Zephyrites stay here? The Bazaar of the Four Winds seems to be a separate entity from the Zephyr Sanctum, maybe the Zephyrites hosted it in a town they built specially for the bazaar event?
• What are the repercussions of the trade agreement between Lion’s Arch and the Zephyrites? It had no impact at all in the game, wish there was some kind of Zephyrite shop in LA now.
• How did ships travel the Straits of Devastation to the location of the bazaar? The strait is not navigable. Game mechanics? (Wish they had updated one of the Pact bridges to make it a rough drawbridge instead)
• PS: I feel like scrapping the speech from the winner was an awful decision. Cutthroat Politics felt so abruptly ended, with no winning ceremony, no speech and no talk between Kiel and Evon.

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Watchknights and Twisted Watchwork creatures

• What’s the origin of the Watchknights? Who created them? What was their point to begin with? And in this case, unlike the holograms, there’s no excuse for the total failure in security they were. Was Jennah deceived, and the creator secretly put access codes for Scarlet there? I thought we had learned the lesson with Uzolan?
• What’s happened with the Watchknight project now? Totally scrapped (no pun intended) due to security risks? Or will it be adapted to weaponry with stricter AI limitations?
• How did humanoid watchknights turn into so many different forms of creatures? Doesn’t look like this was part of their mesmer abilities at all. Again, Scarlet knew more about them?
• Where were Kasmeer and Marjory during the Watchwork incidents? Looking at datamined information seems they were scrapped out of the release, but still, there must be some kind of explanation of where they were. Maybe in a case out of town?
• PS: Wish Scarlet had been introduced as the new royal engineer or something, a good and nice girl, and then we discover she’s nuts and has control of all watchwork knights. Just this “boom hello I take control tee hee” is lame and cheap.

Scarlet and the Steam creatures

• Do we have to presume the asura Personal Story where you’re supposed to “be the creator of them” is some kind of “comic relief” or a twisted memory/dream from the Mists?
• What’s the origin of the steam creatures? Who created them? Was it Scarlet? The Inquest?
• What’s their role in Lornar’s Pass? Any reason why they would be there?
• What’s their role in Thaumanova Reactor? They appeared after the explosion, and don’t seem to have been there before it.
• The steam creatures appear with Scarlet’s forces in the invasions. Are they allies, or side-effect summoned creatures? If they aren’t under Scarlet’s control, what’s the explanation behind the Steamriders on Twilight Arbor?
• What’s the relationship between the Aetherblades and the steam creatures? We know the Aetherblades use steam creature technology, specially the portals.

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Toxic Alliance

• In this case, we know “for sure” that it’s formed by splinter factions. The NPCs say it’s just a part of the Nightmare Court, and though all krait across Tyria seemed to support the Kessex faction, not all of them became toxic, suggesting they weren’t part of the alliance. We can presume the krait witch at the lake is the leader of the Kessex krait (or new “ascended half-prophets” created by Scarlet, ruling until the hybrid/prophet is ready), but who was the leader of the Nightmare Court faction? Was Faolain involved in any way?
• What was the role of the bandits and their centaur allies in this conflict? Beyond acting as the tower wasn’t there (big error, the centaurs should have been included in the plot in some way, as more-crazied or as join together for a moment), did they had some pact of no-aggression? The bandits have alliances with the Nightmare Court to the west, at Brisban Wildlands, and are very active on helping the centaurs at Kessex Hills, specially around the conflict zone around Viathan Lake.
• Where do the obelisk shards come from? How did Scarlet get them?
• Had the Aetherblade presence in Twilight Arbor anything to do with the forming of this alliance? Did the Nightmare Court get anything in exchange for giving the Aetherblades factory-ground?

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General criticism

• Wish we had met more named enemies, and not just generic enemies with no name or background. This happened in pretty much all releases, except Aetherblades where we had Mai Trin and two lieutenants of hers. I miss villains with faces and motivations, this game has a problem with storytelling, and memorable characters are one of its biggest holes.
• I hope the fancy cat competition makes it to the game some day, as a flashback or whatever. The datamined content is really hilarious.

Original reply to some of the questions by Matthew Medina: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1usdvw/unanswered_ls_questions/cem52d7

Q: What did Canach’s expedition exactly do to enrage the karka? A: They were simply there at the wrong place at the wrong time. The karka are territorial at all times, but when they actually have a colony led by an Ancient, they’re even more aggressively so, which is why the Consortium landing on Southsun Cove when they did set off the response from the karka colony there. With the Ancient gone, the colony has broken up and the karka that remain on Southsun are largely disorganized. This information was conveyed, perhaps poorly, during the Lost Shores weekend event.

Q: When did the karka arrive to Southsun Cove? A: This is unknown. What we have said during the Lost Shores weekend was that Southsun, prior to the deal the Consortium struck to develop the territory, was pretty much unexplored and mired for years in various land deals and red tape.

Q: What was the expedition searching? Just safe territory that was no man’s land during the risen presence on the Sea of Sorrows? Or they were after the karka for some sinister reason? A: They weren’t really searching for anything, the Consortium was literally looking to build a resort there to make money for the company and compete with Lion’s Arch for trade and tourism.

Q: Why did Canach corrupt and enrage the karka to screw up the Consortium? Even if he has kind of a weird moral, taking a torch and burning the contracts himself is faster, easier and kills no innocents. We know he was there in Molten Weapons Facility (hate how they didn’t include him with a hood or something, even in the fractal would have been a good reference), so he does care about innocents and the refugees. Is this because the karka had a role in the Consortium’s plan? A: Canach is…complicated. We’ll be returning to him in due time, but for now, all I will say is that Canach’s intentions don’t often lead to the results he wants.

Q: How and why did Canach join the Consortium? Was he employed by his skills on chemistry? Was his later corruption of the local fauna related to the skills the Consortium wanted out of him in the first place? A: Canach’s expertise on matters like botany and alchemy were certainly boons to him being selected by the Consortium for their plans. As to why Canach would seek such a position, I’ll again have to defer that question since we’ll be returning to Canach again.

Q: Who are the leaders of the Consortium? For an organization operating in the middle of Lion’s Arch, and at a pretty decent size, the Captain’s Council surely wouldn’t leave this unanswered. A: Good question, and one I can’t answer other than to simply say the Consortium is a private company. Very private. What the Captain’s Council knows or does not know about the Consortium is Captain’s Council business. ;-)

Q: In line with the previous question, the bases of the Molten Alliance were present only across the conflict region, or further, too? (Conflict region = Wayfarer Foothills and Diessa Plateau) A: The molten weapon facilities were limited to the areas you saw during the Flame and Frost content. They didn’t extend further, largely thanks to the many heroes of Tyria. :-)

Q: Who are the leaders of the Molten Alliance, in both the dredge and the charr side? A: There weren’t any “leaders” per se of the Molten Alliance from the flame legion or dredge. The various Berserker and Firestorm champions of the Molten Alliance were created by Scarlet to give each side someone to rally behind, but she was calling the shots and pulling their strings.

Q: The notes of the Order of Whispers agent (Who we never get to meet, wasted opportunity) mention horrors underground. What horrors? His tone and wording made it sound like terrible monsters or terrible dark rituals. They say it’s worse than dredge or charr, too. Maybe the Moletariate destroyer-enslavement project went further with the help of the Flame Legion? (Remember they were involved with destroyers 250 years ago) Maybe new monsters? Maybe new creations by Scarlet? A: Sadly this is probably just down to poor communication on our part. This was meant to be a reference to the various pairings of flame and dredge throughout the release, and specifically an attempt on our part to foreshadow the Berserkers and Firestorms. We don’t meet the Order of Whispers agent because they’re ninja like that.

Q: There was a pair of human thieves, trying to sell something dangerous, mentioning someone from the Vigil was getting dangerously close, too. What happened with this plot? Did they steal something from the Pact? From the Zephyrites? A: These two characters were really just added by one of our writers to give the area some flavor, but maybe we can prompt him to explore these two some more one day. :-)

Q: Who created the sanctuary/town where the Zephyrites landed? The architecture is identical to the Zephyr Sanctum, and it’s full of religious references to the Aspects with paintings. Does anyone live here while the Zephyrites are in the air? Do some Zephyrites stay here? The Bazaar of the Four Winds seems to be a separate entity from the Zephyr Sanctum, maybe the Zephyrites hosted it in a town they built specially for the bazaar event? A: The Bazaar and the Zephyr Sanctum are separate entities, and it’s entirely possible that we could return to the Labyrinthine Cliffs someday without the Zephyrites being there. It’s clear however that the Zephyrites use that area to trade a lot, which is why the areas share so many similarities in their visual appearance. Some Zephyrites have remained on land, and some Tyrians have given up their life on the ground and joined the Zephyrites. There’s definitely some element of symbiosis between the two areas, and yes people live here with or without the Zephyr Sanctum being docked.

Q: What are the repercussions of the trade agreement between Lion’s Arch and the Zephyrites? It had no impact at all in the game, wish there was some kind of Zephyrite shop in LA now. A: Well it helped get Ellen Kiel elected to the Captain’s Council. :-) But I hear what you’re saying, and yes this is one of those areas where many of us on the team wish that we had been able to visually represent the trade agreement in Lion’s Arch somehow. I simply have to chalk this one up as a missed opportunity for us, as we transitioned off of one release and onto another.

PS: I feel like scrapping the speech from the winner was an awful decision. Cutthroat Politics felt so abruptly ended, with no winning ceremony, no speech and no talk between Kiel and Evon. A: Yes, this was really unfortunate. It always pains us when we author content and then it gets left on the development room floor. I take full responsibility for this, because this was on my plate to implement and coordinate with the next team’s release (that content would have to be hooked up in their release stream), but something else of higher priority always ended up landing on my plate, and before I knew it, it was time to ship.

It was pretty awesome to get some of them answered, but I still feel the rest need answers, too. Let’s hope they’re answered some day, here, in a blog story or ingame. Feel free to add more unanswered questions to the thread, or to improve existing ones.

Nice. You have a lot of good questions there.

Excellent questions and would like to see more answers to them. It would round out the history more as well.

Lonami.2987:

• Hologram technology. Where did it come from? It’s too much of a coincidence for it to appear just in time for Scarlet to steal it and use it as a weapon, when the Aetherblades already have better technology. Whoever created the technology (probably an asura) didn’t notice it could be used as a weapon later?

Yesterday I played the Personal Story again with one of my twinks, and I met an Asura named Ellie who proudly presented her hologram technology that creates a holographic image of herself and mimics every of her moves. She uses this technology to safely go into combat without getting hurt.

Yes. Back during Dragon Bash, it was even stated that the hologram technology used to display the holographic Shatterer was leased from an Asura, most likely Ellie. Scarlet likely just appropriated the technology and later improved on it.

I can answer or speculate a few of these.

Canach’s location right now… is in Vigil Keep. He’s in a cell to the far west portion of the keep (near where the Vigil weapon and armor sellers are). He’s even got a bit of new dialogue. Not sure “when” that question is in relation to though (might have been before he showed up in LA during the Edge of the Mists update) so that might not be a relevant answer you’re looking for.

I don’t think the watchknights did turn into all the different watchwork creatures. I think the only ones that were directly manipulated are the Nightmares, as they’re the only ones that really bare any resemblance to the original watchknights in the way that they have the faces and other parts. The others were probably just created from scratch in the same style. Though I suppose its possible that Scarlet was able to break a watchknight and reconfigure its parts into a completely different form, since the twisted minions themselves are able to do that with the scrap piles of the fallen. And Nightmares themselves can seemingly “create” Twisted Horrors out of thin air (or spare parts contained within their own bodies?).

As far as the bandits and centaurs not interfering with the Toxic Alliance… my guess is that for the centaurs, they were using the Alliance as an opportunity to try and push back the humans. Aside from the spores throughout the entire zone (which the centaurs may or may not have even realized were dangerous given how slowly the effects seem to occur as long as you aren’t close to a large spore stalk), the Alliance wasn’t threatening the centaurs at all. There were no centaurs being captured nor attacked (as far as we know), while the humans were under siege. So the humans are at a disadvantage, and the centaurs use that time to continue to push their usual attacks. For the bandits, either a truce with the Alliance or perhaps like the centaurs, they were taking advantage of the situation. People getting driven out of their homes by the Alliance means easy targets for bandit raids.

I’d imagine Mai Trin is still in control of the Aetherblades. They probably had a second-in-command or something during the time when she was imprisoned, and at this point she’s free again anyway so she likely resumed command once she escaped. It does raise another question of why Mai wanted to go into the Mists, though. Unless it was just the most convenient way to escape Lion’s Arch (which might be, considering the gates are right there next to the prison).

The bandits and centaurs DID fight any Toxic Alliance members they happened to encounter though, so they certainly weren’t friends. They probably just realised they were outmatched and laid low while the Orders/PCs took them on.