Guild Wars 2

“The Game is Primary Source”
This just isn’t true, unfortunately. As has been explained, there isn’t a single NPC that cannot be redacted from telling truth to telling lies or being misinformed of the truth. This began with Ghosts of Ascalon, to player knowledge, and has continued ever sense. To quote Jeff Grubb:

We (the designers and writers) know what happened as far as the raw facts of the matter, and we keep an updated lore database in case any one of us steps in front of a bus. Matt [Forbeck] strained those facts through the racial viewpoints of both human and charr, based upon what information they would have (i.e., as survivors) and their own prejudices. The end result creates more of a feeling of real world, and for the inhabitants of the world there are different flavors of truth, depending on who you are and what you are doing.

This is just the most available to me of multiple interviews in which Jeff states the same at the end. Effectively: NPCs are only privy to the knowledge they’ve learned. That knowledge can be right, it can be wrong.

I could go through a long list of NPCs that have been proven wrong, but I’ll keep it short with obvious examples instead:

• ‘They say that ours was the first, but that the gods created other worlds after the Exodus.’
• ‘Yes. She was the first of all creatures on Tyria, created by the gods to be the caretaker, but it became clear that she needed help. That is when they summoned the creatures known now only as the Forgotten.’ (‘She’ refers to Glint)
• ‘The gods threatened to take magic from us. They were afraid we would use it against them. Our confusion was great, and the jotun kings began to fight among themselves.’

This basis also extends to in-universe external sources, such as the things that individuals in the short stories and novels say, as well as the written documents such as An Empire Divided. This has been known for quite some time. Because of this, the rule of thumb about the credibility of sources has had the following hierarchy of most credible to least:

1. What players see first hand in games, and what narrations describe in stories.
2. Word of God
3. What NPCs have experienced and told their first hand accounts to players (thus, second hand accounts for players)
4. What NPCs have heard and told their second+ hand accounts to players (thus third+ hand accounts for players)

This created 2 absolute types of sources, and 2 dubious types of sources. However, with Bobby’s comment, it now has become 1 absolute type of source, which gives exceedingly little details, and 3 dubious types of sources, and in the following order:

1. What players see first hand in games, and what narrations describe in stories.
2. What NPCs have experienced and told their first hand accounts to players (thus, second hand accounts for players)
3. What NPCs have heard and told their second+ hand accounts to players (thus third+ hand accounts for players)
4. Word of God

Most of the lore in the game now is fully ‘malleable’, because we can never be fully certain if an NPC is lying or misinformed, and because we can never be certain when a fact previously told to us by the developers has been altered.

While these facts aren’t changed yet, what Bobby Stein said is basically “they aren’t changed to players’ knowledge”.

This in itself is not that huge of a deal, but it makes our certainty of lore beyond low.

“Scarlet’s birthdate is a minor piece of lore.”
Yes. It is. But you’d be missing the point if this is all you see for the complaints.

By changing Scarlet’s birthday the way it has been, you’re changing the birthdate of Secondborn everywhere. This also means that any player roleplaying a Secondborn now has to revise his/her character. This of itself is not a big thing, but then you hit “Angel McCoy’s very recent comment about their approach for the player characters”:

Initially, when we created the original body of the game, we were especially careful to never break immersion by using PC dialogue lines that you might feel didn’t fit your PC. We’ve relaxed this with Living World content and it has proven a more positive experience for many, I hope. Our original thought was that you would add the personality to the words when you heard them in your head. We still know you will do that, but we’re now more comfortable with having your PC say things that commit to an idea or a knowledge or a thought that you the player might not have had. Our goal is to increase immersion and make you feel more like it’s your PC’s story.

This feels like outright contradiction.

With one hand, you offer more self-customization of your PC’s personality by devoiding the story of it. With the other hand, you mess around with the canon lore that alters player-made stories for their PC.

But this is still just the tip of the iceberg of this issue. You see, when you retcon something there are three questions that must be asked:

1. What was changed?
2. Why was it changed?
3. How was it changed?

As pointed out above, the ‘how’ has, until now, always been via storytelling; the why has always been to improve the story. The what is really irrelevant – whether it is a big piece of lore or a small piece of lore, the why and the how determines how players will react to it, because whether it is the first or the last in their minds it opens up a door for lower quality if they remain quiet (at least for some players, and in this case, it seems to primarily be the older players).

Now tell me: what are the answers to the questions in this situation?

1. What: The birthdate of the Secondborn. The act of itself has some pros and cons to it, and as said it’s usually irrelevant in the big picture. Moving on.
2. Why: Because… we don’t know. “Because external sources are malleable” is all we’re told. This is the primary source of my frustration now. Not because of the explanation itself (or rather, lack of), but because of what the given explanation entails (that anything spoken by an NPC, or spoken by a dev, is subject to change and we may never even realize it).
3. How: They just did it. No explanation, no stating so until we figured it out by seeing what one would think unrelated, no story given. Nothing. They just did it blatantly, and without remorse.

This is similar to when the calendar got changed as talked about here because the “why” was ‘because we want to link up the two calendars’ and the how was kitten because they didn’t take into account that the Mouvelian calendar begins on the spring equinox (and furthermore, their story explanation was basically “we asura have realized that humans who’ve been studying the sky were wrong about the length of the calendar, even though the 5 days they missed would have put snow in the middle of summer and hot days in the middle of winter in half of their generation; we asura, however, despite not even knowing that the sky and stars existed until 250 years ago, have discovered these 5 days and are right.”) – though I suppose that’s now ‘malleable’ isn’kitten Well, still canon until they say otherwise. The main difference between then and now is that they told us then, but not now. And it is the fact that they didn’t tell us that is perhaps the biggest spark. Out of all the lore we’ve gotten out of game – if they didn’t tell us this has changed, what else has they not told us has changed? Are we going to need to sit down with an interview and ask the same questions we asked before again, just to see if the answer has been altered? We shouldn’t, to be honest. We really shouldn’t be.

I hope this clarified why there’s “this much discussion about such a small detail”. To put it in metaphorical terms, however, today’s retcon just a pebble that could start a rockslide.

I really don’t know if it’s worth chiming into this again, but… here goes.

To start off with, first and foremost- I think the devs should not lay down lore unless they mean to keep to it. I find altering the base material that serves as foundation and grounding for their stories to be distasteful and honestly in bad faith. The lore, essentially, serves as the terms by which they ask us to invest in their stories. Altering those terms after the fact feels like it invalidates our investment in and care for those stories. It is certainly not a way to retain interest in them. All that said, I do not fool myself in thinking that I, or any of us, have any say on the matter. Development has always been a solely internal process, and ArenaNet only grows less transparent as time passes. Whether that is a good thing or bad is beyond the scope of this thread; suffice to say that the only role we have in plotting this game’s course is that of the proverbial beggars.

To ArenaNet’s credit, they have, by my eyes, rarely gone back on their lore. Beyond the (still arguably questionable) big changes between the first game and this one, which they did put a deal of effort into reconciling, I’ve only known them to ‘retcon’ once in a blue moon, and it was in fact the scarcity of the changes that caused such a great fuss to be raised over each one. As far as trust in the company goes, at least in the narrow sense of their continuity, I’ve had no real cause to complain, and I do not currently expect that to change.

That brings us to issue at hand, the change to accommodate Scarlet’s birthdate and Bobby Stein’s input on it. Now, to be clear, I think the birthdate is no little thing, and it does have some worrying implications. It also has fallen so far to the side of this argument that it serves only as a distraction, or to obfuscate an untenable position. I, and most of the serious voices here, are only addressing this quote- “Unless we’ve built content around something, it’s usually considered malleable from a design and lore standpoint. Occasionally we decide to go in a different direction months or years after the first ideas are documented or even talked about externally. In some cases that means what one member of staff says in an interview can change when it comes time to building a release. It’s part of our iterative process. In short, go by what’s in the game.”

Now, a few voices here have been taking a “no kitten” stance. They feel that this was always a unstated fact, something so obvious that it never needed to be acknowledged. In short, when in doubt, expect the industry standard. That’s all well and good, but such an argument misses the bigger picture, specifically that GW2 is lacking several industry standards. A codex. Text-dump quests. Lore NPCs. My personal experience with MMOs is limited to this game and RuneScape, but I have more extensive experience with single player RPGs, and every one of them (hell, RuneScape too for that matter) had at least one of those things. Guild Wars 2? Sometimes you can get the equivalent, if you have the patience to collate a dozen or more disparate dialogues, some tied to events that take 10+ minutes to wait out, some hidden in non-repeatable content, shockingly little recorded on the wiki. Sometimes you can’t. On the other hand, our game has this .The industry standard treats out-of-game statements as a rarity, mostly to clarify obscure points, and that is precisely why it does not, and cannot, apply to Guild Wars 2. To us, interviews and lore documents aren’t secondary or tertiary sources- they are our primary sources, more comprehensive and more reliable than the game. That is why many of our community perceive this statement as a threat- we had a coping mechanism to handle an implementation of worldbuilding that leaves much to be desired, and this statement comes across as a threat to pull the rug out from under it.

Continued below.

On the other hand, I feel that there is a certain alarmist quality to the opposition here. Can change in no way implies will change, and certainly not have changed. Coming from the GW1 loyalists, it’s understandable- to them this must feel like another plummet in a long slide towards cynicism, given the major changes to a lore they had invested so much in and built so much on, justified by the explanation “they (and by extension you) just had no idea what they were talking about.” I get the negativity there, and ArenaNet should understand that that’s the price to the community of their decision to alter fixtures like the gods and the bloodstones. To say that there cannot be a point to theorycrafting, though, just seems ridiculous. Theories were already guaranteed to more likely than not be off the mark; it’s the major reason I never got involved in them. This statement hasn’t changed that, and in many cases- most, I would personally hazard- it won’t even make you more likely to be wrong. I stress again- “can” is not “will”. I’m still undecided on whether the people saying “there’s no point to/is no lore” are hysterical or just overstating their case from a surfeit of frustration, but when they’ve re-established a cool head I do doubt they’ll hold to the position.

Now that I’ve reamed out both sides, my own observation is this- ArenaNet seems uncomfortable within their own lore. I still hold that they’ve done relatively little to undermine what they’ve already laid, but I don’t think it’s an accident that nearly the entirety of S1 was introducing and then utilizing new elements instead of building off of the old. Even the dragon we’re set up to fight next is a new one, when there were four pre-existing ones they might have chosen from. I honestly do not know why this is the case, and I will not pretend otherwise- I may speculate, but I would have nothing to back it up. Still, I cannot help but observe that so much of the resistance they’ve run into with us story fanatics would have been averted if they hadn’t felt like they were pulling things out of the blue. It doesn’t matter that all of their new enemies and allies could be linked into Tyria. Those links always felt like justifications, not reasons, and that has not done favors for our collective enthusiasm. It left an especially sour taste because we were left to make those justifications for them, forcing us to take their side and explain how it could make sense because ArenaNet couldn’t work out how to do it through the game. In a way, this timeline discussion is an extension of that issue- several people went to impressive contortions to mesh the new information from Prosperity into the timeline we already knew for Scarlet, and having this date change follow kitten the heels of such effort must feel particularly like being shafted. Now, ArenaNet has gone the extra step of clearing room for themselves to sweep away much of the lore that we feel they are less invested in than us fans.

Since Bobby also asked us to put forward our opinions on the most recent lore implementation, here’s mine: I’m not the sort to say something’s too late, but it is most certainly too little. Yes, having random tidbits about Scarlet’s backstory and the human nobility is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t near far enough, not if you want our take-away to be to stick to what’s in the game. That kicks a crutch out from under us, but it was a crutch propping up your ideas. Now you have to see your way to limiting the power you’ve claimed for yourself, to re-establish our comfort. For that to be viable, you need to make it a priority to get what currently exists out of game into the game- maybe not THE priority, but A priority, enough so that we see measurable progress towards it in most patches. Given the generally narrow focus of every living world patch thus far, that would require quite a bit of change. As far as the books go, I think the idea as a whole is good; I think this patch’s implementation was not. The actual books we got were very scarce on content, and only one of them seemed to be relevant beyond the immediate purview of the S2 story. I really do think you’ve hit a good point with the storytelling, so these books would really be better used for worldbuilding instead. I know you once mentioned that you have hundreds of unimplemented book scripts written out from before launch. It seems to me there will never be a better time to implement them, in whatever form you think your team can manage.

Alright, I see where the other side is coming from now, and I agree that if they’re going to do a change in the lore, they should be under some sort of obligation to explain themselves so that we can understand what’s really going on in the world. I hope that someone explains whether or not we can trust external-game content anymore. I’m sure ANet has realized this plot hole problem and I sincerely hope they come out with an official statement on what can be considered canon and what can’t.

Excellent posts, Konig, Aaron and drax, with great insights into the problems. I see more clearly now why the huge fuss about this seemingly little detail and it’s quite understandable.

Let’s hope and see if Bobby plans to come back to this and clear things up.

So what people are basically saying is that they should never ever in any way or form release any information about lore unless it is 110% sure that it will never change?

I still have a feeling that the date of birth of Scarlet holds importance to the coming story.

lordkrall.7241:

So what people are basically saying is that they should never ever in any way or form release any information about lore unless it is 110% sure that it will never change?

No, I think what we are saying, is that if they are suddenly going to change established lore, we should be given a good reason for it. If Anet themselves release lore articles outside the game, and then outright retcon what they themselves released, how are we as a lore community supposed to make any sense of it all? Can we still trust any out-of-game sources at all?

And as a side note, I know that Konig does not share my sentiments about the Bloodstones, but it really is a big deal to me. You don’t just retcon what’s basically the foundation of GW1 Prophecies and Nightfall, and pretend that all that talk about splitting the schools of magic was just superstition. We fought a God over this for crying out loud. The GW1 manuscripts that shipped with the game should be treated with more respect. I’m not saying it’s a bible, but have some respect for the old lore.:

“Build on what is already there. Don’t break down the foundation.”

And this some what relates to Mordremoth as well. I don’t understand why they chose to introduce yet another Elder Dragon, instead of using the ones that are already there. Maybe there’s a good reason for it. But I’m getting a vibe from the writing team that they don’t like working in the confines of established lore. Maybe I’m reading things that aren’t there, but it really feels like they are constantly trying to break away from the lore and come up with new things. And that’s no crime in itself, but don’t treat the established lore like some red-headed stepchild. Have some love for it.

To be fair, Mordremoth has always been there. In fact, that’s the only way we even know it’s name.

I think it was a nice touch for Dry Top to be considered “Inquest territory” in the story line, as the only early mention of Mordremoth we had came from the Crucible of Eternity.

Also, both Mordy and Bubbles are far easier to work with as they don’t have much of an impact on the zones in which the personal story takes place. As such there’s less chance of conflicting scenario’s.

And the Six know we don’t need more conficts -.-

I never played GW1 and the story of it is barely included in GW2. So I got into this forum to get some answers. My search started with Scarlet’s first lab, but I didn’t get enough answers from the game about a lot questions. It’s really hard to get an impression of the world without a guide or access to the history of it. The priory is securing documents, but the library has barely useful informations. Most places have an NPC talking about it, but useful informations are even rare there. I made 10 world explorations and had to realize, that if I want some clear informations, I have to travel around and look for reappearing patterns. After all it just gave some insights, but the real conclusion I got here (but I didn’t correct wrong posts I made before it).

Season 2 is now offering a continued story, while season 1 was just a shake test for the hidden story which is implemented since beginning. The first arc is telling me that I am on the right track (surely with knowledge gaps and interpretation failures), but I don’t want to crush the party with telling everything I’ve found. I even have doubts to ask some questions here, because I’m afraid to tell too much.

But I want to put up a speculation what ANet is really doing. The world story is set and cannot be altered, except in some “small” details. The seasons on the other hand maybe have a topic, but aren’t written (s2 is drafted and most of it is set). We have our group of adventurers with a probable purpose, but barely a backstory. Scarlet is the narrator, the guide that gives us the reason to visit the places of the world that belong to the story. Between s1 and s2, the story of her was probably drafted and Anet realized that she was very very busy and couldn’t have done all the things that she did. So her lifespan was extended to fit. If there isn’t a mention of a date where Cadeyrn was born it “just” invalidates an old dev statement and affects the world at all barely.

The setup is great and the deliverance improves. Maybe at the end of s2 a lot of people will get their faith in gw back, because it’s two years now and the story is still at the outer crust.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Old, established lore are the pillars of a continuing story. A poor writer does retroactive continuities. A good writer works in a way to explain why old ‘facts’ became ‘lies’ and uses that to boost the story. A great writer puts in what they want while not destroying the established pillars of the story. GW1 throughout its lifespan did the last; GW2 at release did the middle; and the Living Story is the first.

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

Jamais vu.5284:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Old, established lore are the pillars of a continuing story. A poor writer does retroactive continuities. A good writer works in a way to explain why old ‘facts’ became ‘lies’ and uses that to boost the story. A great writer puts in what they want while not destroying the established pillars of the story. GW1 throughout its lifespan did the last; GW2 at release did the middle; and the Living Story is the first.

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

The best we can hope for is that they are reading this and will try to work on this in the future.

@Jamais: At the moment, it does.

Most of the issues you describe can be explained. Kryta I’m inclined to think was always temperate in the northern provinces – previously, most of Kryta’s was on the coasts of the Sea of Sorrows (Lion’s Arch, D’Alessio Seaboard, and Riverside Province (which is now northern Caledon and maybe a bit of Metrica…)). The climate may also have changed a little bit, but mostly it’s that the Krytan population has moved into regions that were backwaters in GW1 and that are a little cooler, and the culture has changed to suit.

Most of those nonclassical races you refer to were canonically defeated or at least substantially reduced in number and influence by the end of Nightfall. If anything, in fact, the importance of races such as the seers, mursaat, and forgotten has been increased. The most glaring thing is, I think, the position of humans and their gods in the world – it makes sense that humans would ascribe the beings they worship a greater influence than they actually have, but I think in their zeal to bring humans down to the level of other races, they’ve overcompensated. The human relationship with the gods, for instance, should have been much more important in Orr than it was – instead, we see the asura and charr doing most of the heavy lifting even when it came to controlling the energies of the temples of the gods themselves.

It’s also somewhat infuriating that, in wanting to show that humans didn’t have all the answers, they’ve rubber-banded straight into asura having all the answers. Yes, they’re the most scientific of all the races – but in a world were gods and magic genuinely exist, the scientists don’t have to always be right, even if they’re magical scientist. And I say this as a holder of multiple hard-science degrees and as someone who wishes people in the real world listened to scientists more.

Keyce.8137:

Elementalists alone (GW2) have three schools of magic from the original Guild Wars: Destruction (technically all four attunements but primarily fire/air), Preservation (water/earth), and Denial (water/air/earth).

Technically speaking, the original four spellcasting classes were divided according to the schools. The schools aren’t laser-focused – they overlap somewhat, so that while all magic-using professions can preserve at some level monks were the best at it, and so on.

There’s some interesting philosophical discussions, in fact, on how in most of these overlapping cases, the primary school attribute is still in play. Going back to Elementalists, they are capable of generating effects that can fit under the preservation or denial umbrellas… but they have to invoke destruction to do so. To generate a shield of earth, an elementalist breaks a rock out of the ground and levitates it into position (this isn’t shown clearly in game, but is a common interpretation). The likes of Thunderclap and Blinding Flash can deny an enemy the ability to act effectively, but this comes as an effect of channeling destructive forces.

As Konig references, though, there’s actually some story explanations for these changes. Basically, the magic that has emerged from the Bloodstones has filtered into the world more generally speaking – in 1AE there was almost no magic in the world apart from that coming from the Bloodstones, while in modern times enough of it has flowed out that ambient magic (which isn’t restricted in schools) can also provide a lot of the heavy lifting. The effects of the bloodstones still linger – which is why we still have the ‘big four’ magic-wielding professions rather than one super-mage – but they’re felt less strongly than they were in GW1.

However, like new generations often do, the current generation of mages prefer to think of themselves as being smarter than their predecessors rather than considering that maybe their predecessors were genuinely working under different rules to those that apply today. Essentially, the statement that came up in an interview that modern mages regard that as some silly superstition that their ancestors held to… could well be another case of an unreliable narrator, and two, three, certainly thirteen centuries ago, it was a much bigger deal.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Since Bobby also asked us to put forward our opinions on the most recent lore implementation, here’s mine: I’m not the sort to say something’s too late, but it is most certainly too little. Yes, having random tidbits about Scarlet’s backstory and the human nobility is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t near far enough, not if you want our take-away to be to stick to what’s in the game. That kicks a crutch out from under us, but it was a crutch propping up your ideas. Now you have to see your way to limiting the power you’ve claimed for yourself, to re-establish our comfort. For that to be viable, you need to make it a priority to get what currently exists out of game into the game- maybe not THE priority, but A priority, enough so that we see measurable progress towards it in most patches. Given the generally narrow focus of every living world patch thus far, that would require quite a bit of change. As far as the books go, I think the idea as a whole is good; I think this patch’s implementation was not. The actual books we got were very scarce on content, and only one of them seemed to be relevant beyond the immediate purview of the S2 story. I really do think you’ve hit a good point with the storytelling, so these books would really be better used for worldbuilding instead. I know you once mentioned that you have hundreds of unimplemented book scripts written out from before launch. It seems to me there will never be a better time to implement them, in whatever form you think your team can manage.

I’m actually inclined to cut them a bit more slack here. What we’ve seen so far is one update out of… well, just how many ARE we expecting for Season 2? Season 1 had, let’s see… Flame and Frost, Southsun, Dragon Bash, the original Bazaar, Queen’s Jubilee, Twilight Assault, Thaumanova fractal, the Marionette, and the invasion of Lion’s Arch, most of which were the equivalent of two fortnightly updates – so we’re talking about roughly 16 or so parts. If we were to compare to Eye of the North, for instance, we’ve probably only just reached the Eye.

There’ll be more to come before it’s all done, and there are some very tantalising hints as to what that’s going to be. We have what’s going on with the Zephyrites, for instance – and the Zephyrites are dating back to the Glint connection. Of course we’re not going to get the full story on that – or, well, anything – until substantially later in the story arc. Meanwhile, we’ve also got the Inquest and White Mantle bandit activity in the area and the potential for those storylines to be developed – what effect will the ‘birds in the bakery’ have on bandit activities, especially given the likelihood that if the bakery isn’t torn down by Mordremoth than the flock will grow larger (possibly including the wardens, Lionguard, and/or the Pact getting involved) before it leaves? This is the point where we get teased about what’s to come – we shouldn’t expect the meatiest part to be in the first few pages. Certainly, I think we’ve had substantially more than we had in the entirety of Flame and Frost. If we pretended that out-of-game sources did not and never existed, then I think it’s fair to say that the ingame delivery has improved (at the very least, we should wait until we get past the prologue before judging…) – it’s just unfortunate that it’s stirred up this controversy.

However, it is an uncomfortable feeling when you start getting the impression that you take a world’s lore more seriously than it’s keepers. That’s just not a stable state to be in, and in the long term there’s only three ways that can work out – become one of those keepers yourself (the least likely option, although some of us would surely jump at the chance), reduce your own investment to match, or give up in disgust.

I’m almost somewhat frightened to get in this discussion, as I’m not that deeply submerged in to the lore around GW and GW2, but I do feel like there are a lot loose ends at the moment which are making the lore (section) unstable. It would be nice if some of the devs could step in this and give some clearance on the more painful points, just that it is somewhat more understandable why some of the lore has changed.

How painful it might be, it seems that there are more and more signs that the second generation of Sylvari dates from around 1304. There could be reasons for this that are not yet known to the (lore) community, but there could be a greater picture. Question is how they could integrate this in all this and what the consequences will be.

Jamais vu.5284:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Old, established lore are the pillars of a continuing story. A poor writer does retroactive continuities. A good writer works in a way to explain why old ‘facts’ became ‘lies’ and uses that to boost the story. A great writer puts in what they want while not destroying the established pillars of the story. GW1 throughout its lifespan did the last; GW2 at release did the middle; and the Living Story is the first.

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

I also think it doesn’t. While the absence of those iconic forces is understandable, as Drax explained, and the history of our favorite elder races do seem to be ramping up to something big (which, I reckon, will be another catastrophic letdown given the current trends), this “Tyria” feels like an entirely different realm. It’s as if what Bahltek hinted at when speaking of parallel dimensions in GW: Nightfall was true to the last letter, and this realm is a nearly (until recently) identical carbon copy of the world we got to know and explore in the first installments. Its history matches that of the Old World — up until around post 1080 AE — with “slight” alterations like the human gods being much weaker and less significant, the bloodstones not functioning the way they were meant to, the general incompetence and sheer intellectual drop of the entire populace (from the vast majority of the races, through the evil factions, to the Orders, and last but not least, the PC), unlikely technological jumps (despite the decreased brain trust of the world — guess they at least listen to hyper-brained savants not predisposed to this genetic handicap) in 250 years, extraordinary cultural deviations (from an African offshoot — them being the descendants of Elonian settlers — Krytans becoming Italian/Spanish living in German estates and cottages, and Canthans having surnames like Delaqua… I was hoping that with Dorne Velazquez and Delaqua they were hinting at a faraway, largely unknown western human culture of whom a few migrated to the east but kept their ancestry a secret), and so on. As for geographical changes, I doubt that the climate of Kryta could’ve changed that much in 250 years, or half of the Shiverpeak Mountains could’ve melted away, dropped several hundred meters and become a swampy, tropical jungle (before any of you say Mt Maelstrom did it: is Japan a tropical jungle around Mt Fuji?).

So no, in my opinion there is no real connection between the two games. It might have seemed that way during development, but by release that link weakened a great deal. However, it was only with the start and going of this Living World that most ties were severed. If names of the gods, people, races, places, etc. were changed, “Guild Wars 2” could become a whole new IP with an uncanny semblance to the Tyria of Guild Wars.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Now that I’ve reamed out both sides, my own observation is this- ArenaNet seems uncomfortable within their own lore. I still hold that they’ve done relatively little to undermine what they’ve already laid, but I don’t think it’s an accident that nearly the entirety of S1 was introducing and then utilizing new elements instead of building off of the old. Even the dragon we’re set up to fight next is a new one, when there were four pre-existing ones they might have chosen from. I cannot help but observe that so much of the resistance they’ve run into with us story fanatics would have been averted if they hadn’t felt like they were pulling things out of the blue. It doesn’t matter that all of their new enemies and allies could be linked into Tyria. Those links always felt like justifications, not reasons, and that has not done favors for our collective enthusiasm. It left an especially sour taste because we were left to make those justifications for them, forcing us to take their side and explain how it could make sense because ArenaNet couldn’t work out how to do it through the game.

I’ve noticed this as well, even when they do pick up on old lore (and I’m talking about GW2 launch lore, not just GW1) they seem to give it a face lift. Glint is an example, I had no problem with her story in EoD – I thought it was a clever way to fit a puzzle piece into the world. I was less comfortable about the Zephyrites, as much as I liked them, the whole Glint plot seems so foreign from GW1 Glint or even EoD Glint. I am really concered about ley lines as an element of this, but I will mention that after…

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Now you have to see your way to limiting the power you’ve claimed for yourself, to re-establish our comfort. For that to be viable, you need to make it a priority to get what currently exists out of game into the game- maybe not THE priority, but A priority, enough so that we see measurable progress towards it in most patches. Given the generally narrow focus of every living world patch thus far, that would require quite a bit of change. As far as the books go, I think the idea as a whole is good; I think this patch’s implementation was not. The actual books we got were very scarce on content, and only one of them seemed to be relevant beyond the immediate purview of the S2 story. I really do think you’ve hit a good point with the storytelling, so these books would really be better used for worldbuilding instead.

I have mixed feelings on the books. On the one hand it’s nice to see more lore in the game and in a Living World the Priory would grow their library (to be fair, most books can’t be read – you can assume it happens we just can’t read them). On the other hand, the simplistic links between the current events of the recent patch, the conveniently placed lore introduced in Scarlet’s Prosperity room and the links between the Priory books and the world, now that I see it all it feels very cynical. It doesn’t feel alive, it feels mechanical. It doesn’t feel like the world (which was established two years ago, more if you count Guild Wars – and it’s an impressive world) has a story being told, it feels like a writer is fabricating lore, stuff that didn’t exist two years ago, wants to tell a story about stuff that doesn’t exist, so they are throwing in a bunch of books, research papers and background/newground (it isn’t background because it’s new to us, we are told it’s not new, but it truly is new) to place the lore in the world. Suddenly the Priory library isn’t a believable study of the world of Tyria that is being expanded by a living order of scholars, it’s an exposition dump with tunnel vision used to introduce “new old lore” for the current story being told.

Ley lines feel like this to me. They are supposed to be this really important part of the world and seem to be one of the core themes of the current story. Did anything in the game even mention them two years ago? Were there reasons to believe they existed two years ago? How about 252 years ago? Maybe the lore will be re-crafted to indicate asuran waypoints are ley line related, but it’s hard to be invested in that plot or see it as a “living” world when the story is built off of something so big that is entirely “new old”. None of that is as exciting as telling a story with established lore that already exists. One of the things I enjoyed about EotN and GW:B is that they picked up on pre-existing plot points. There was a lot of new stuff (especially EotN) but a lot of the conflicts were things I was already invested in and knew about. When you need to introduce so much new lore for the world we’ve been exploring for two years, I’m not in love with that.

Retconning lore as you see fit does not really speak of a successful long-term planning.

@konig Great posts. I agree with everything you said.

@aaron & @drax I don’t believe that GW loyalist are upset over the changes or over new content. As one of those GW loyalists, I am fine with new enemies, changes to culture, race relations, magic, and equipment. All good and completely understandable after that length of time. What I do not care for is that a game I played faithfully for 7 years which spawned this game as a sequel CAN be retconned out. Not that it actually has been entirely, but CAN be at the whim of writers and developers where it doesn’t have to be.

Knowing that all the things I loved about the first game and the things I love about this game can be made irrelevant is beyond disconcerting to me.

As for continuing lore from GW to GW2, would I like to see more old lore in game? Of course! Will I rage quit if I don’t? No.

My point is that there is no need to retcon GW or GW2 history. If you want to make changes to it, fine. Just give players a viable explanation as to why it happened. Just saying that lore is “malleable” is lazy and a slap to people who love the lore of the game.

As was said above, GW has never been a stereotypical MMO. It has differences that set it apart. It’s rich lore and story set it apart from many.

I don’t see where people here are claiming that all lore is thrown out the window now or that they believe that is what has happened. I do believe they are worried that any lore can be unjustifiably discarded at writers and developers whims with no regard or justifiable reason.

I’m unsure as to whether Bobby worded his post poorly or not. Otherwise, he appears to be saying that all short stories they gave us throughout Season 1 (What Scarlet Saw et al) are malleable and subject to change until they appear in-game…which I find a bit odd and pointless, unless of course it’s deliberately delivered in such a way that it’s via a character’s memory, or bias. Hopefully he’ll post again to clarify.

Now, I think some of the changes they’ve made are good, but I also understand why lore fans are upset by the post. The bloodstone change I think made sense, the change to glint’s backstory, etc. It’s not surprising there’s human bias, and when 4 other races actually QUESTION what humans are telling them, it’s believable that they may have actually been wrong or misinformed. I think those changes were handled quite well. I don’t think that paints humans as stupid…they’re proud, it was part of their history, and a large amount of them felt no need to question it. It’s quite possible that some humans did, but were largely outnumbered by those who didn’t want to question their race history.

A change I feel is bad, however, despite how small it was, was the change to the calendar. It felt unnecessary and just a forced “So we can give Tyria the same amount of days as real-life Earth!” excuse, and it didn’t really feel believable. I’m not, of course, targeting that at Angel, as I’m sure a bunch of the lore continuity designers discussed that change and approved it.

JayMack.8295:

The bloodstone change I think made sense, the change to glint’s backstory, etc. It’s not surprising there’s human bias, and when 4 other races actually QUESTION what humans are telling them, it’s believable that they may have actually been wrong or misinformed. I think those changes were handled quite well. I don’t think that paints humans as stupid…they’re proud, it was part of their history, and a large amount of them felt no need to question it. It’s quite possible that some humans did, but were largely outnumbered by those who didn’t want to question their race history.

The problem with the Bloodstones change, is not that the humans were wrong, but that we the players were also wrong, the Mursaat were wrong, The forgotten were wrong, heck even the Gods were wrong, and Glint was wrong. We know why the Gods broke the Bloodstone into pieces… so how does this change even make sense in that context? If the Bloodstone suddenly does not represent all magic in the world, does it only represent magic for humans? If so, what was the point of splitting it? The manuscripts specifically state that the gods split it to put an end to all the wars between the various races. That also includes the Charr, the Tengu and the dwarves, the minotaurs and the imps, and ALL the races in the land.

King Doric specifically traveled to Arah to save his people from extinction. And the Gods then split the schools of magic, to put an end to the wars between the magical races. So did all of this just not happen all of a sudden? Was all of this just made up? Then why is it that everything in GW1 confirms the story to be true?

It just doesn’t make any sense. You can’t retcon the entire history of magic in Tyria, and expect it to still make any sense afterwards. And that is why it is quite possibly the worst retcon they could do.

Thalador.4218:

You’re cherrypicking examples here. The Shiverpeaks are more the equivalent of the Himalayas, and there are only about four degrees lattitude between Mt Everest and the Tropic of Cancer.

To tell the truth, some of the bulk biomes in Prophecies were, to put it bluntly, unbelievable from a climate perspective. Droknar’s Forge was at the foot of a mountain range, but it’s only a few feet above what is either sea level or the banks of a really wide river, at a latitude that’s at least subtropical everywhere else. We can pull stuff out of our proverbial donkeys about how the prevailing winds carry cold air from the surrounding Shiverpeaks, but a simpler answer may well be to say that a god did it. In order to make the region more comfortable for their allies the cold-loving dwarves, the Six (and then Five) gods ensured that they had the climate they enjoyed through their range, yada yada yada. When the gods have left and the dwarves are no more, why not let that piece of climate control slip?

Mind you, I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet didn’t have a climatologist on staff when they drafted the Prophecies map. Cantha and Elona are better, but don’t get me started on Verdant Cascades. I suspect the only reason that’s the same biome as Tarnished Coast is that it was a recycled Utopia map.

Regarding Kryta, on the other hand – the coast of the Sea of Sorrows was (up to the addition of the Southsun island cutting it in two, and I’ll heartily agree that was a blunder) probably warmed by heated waters coming up past the Ring of Fire from the south – kind of like the effect the Gulf Stream has for western Europe. And like the Gulf Stream, this is going to fade as you get further away from it. My suspicion is that northern Kryta has a similar climate to southern France and that general area – warm enough that you can get away with tropical wear if that’s the fashion that’s being set by the more populous, warmer south, but once that territory is all you’ve got, fashions will shift.

jheryn.8390:

@aaron & @drax I don’t believe that GW loyalist are upset over the changes or over new content. As one of those GW loyalists, I am fine with new enemies, changes to culture, race relations, magic, and equipment. All good and completely understandable after that length of time. What I do not care for is that a game I played faithfully for 7 years which spawned this game as a sequel CAN be retconned out. Not that it actually has been entirely, but CAN be at the whim of writers and developers where it doesn’t have to be.

I don’t play this card often, but there are very few people who have been playing as long as I have.

That said, in case you’ve got the wrong impression, I agree with you. I do think that most of the changes are things that can be explained as evolutions rather than retcons – but just because they can be so explained doesn’t mean that ArenaNet couldn’t be doing a much better job of doing so, rather than coming across as sweeping anything they find inconvenient under the rug. I also think that, while bringing the other races up to a similar level of importance humans is laudable, ArenaNet has massively overcompensated.

The key point, though, is that with the well-established unreliable narrator, the occasional revelation that what we thought we knew was wrong is acceptable. Heck, Nightfall was based on such a revelation, and nobody’s complaining about that. However, there’s a difference between presenting a shocking twist and casually treating the whole thing as malleable and tossing another five days in the calender as if people wouldn’t notice the seasons marching around the year within a human lifespan (and, as you may or may not remember, I was the one who did the maths on that, as well as researching historical calendars to demonstrate how quickly our own ancestors realised when they had the calendar off by less than a day). Sometimes a bit of work in the foundations can lead to a stronger house overall, but you can’t build a house on quicksand.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

JayMack.8295:

The bloodstone change I think made sense, the change to glint’s backstory, etc. It’s not surprising there’s human bias, and when 4 other races actually QUESTION what humans are telling them, it’s believable that they may have actually been wrong or misinformed. I think those changes were handled quite well. I don’t think that paints humans as stupid…they’re proud, it was part of their history, and a large amount of them felt no need to question it. It’s quite possible that some humans did, but were largely outnumbered by those who didn’t want to question their race history.

The problem with the Bloodstones change, is not that the humans were wrong, but that we the players were also wrong, the Mursaat were wrong, The forgotten were wrong, heck even the Gods were wrong, and Glint was wrong. We know why the Gods broke the Bloodstone into pieces… so how does this change even make sense in that context? If the Bloodstone suddenly does not represent all magic in the world, does it only represent magic for humans? If so, what was the point of splitting it? The manuscripts specifically state that the gods split it to put an end to all the wars between the various races. That also includes the Charr, the Tengu and the dwarves, the minotaurs and the imps, and ALL the races in the land.

King Doric specifically traveled to Arah to save his people from extinction. And the Gods then split the schools of magic, to put an end to the wars between the magical races. So did all of this just not happen all of a sudden? Was all of this just made up? Then why is it that everything in GW1 confirms the story to be true?

It just doesn’t make any sense. You can’t retcon the entire history of magic in Tyria, and expect it to still make any sense afterwards. And that is why it is quite possibly the worst retcon they could do.

My feeling is: Because in GW1, it WAS true.

However, the Bloodstone(s) served as a magical receptacle. When the Seers made it, it soaked it up. When the gods altered it, it started releasing it.

The thing is… once the energy was released, where did it go? From what we see in-game, at least some of that energy has been leaking back into the natural magic currents of the world. When the Bloodstones still contained all the magic in the world, they set strict limits on what could be done with magic, but over time, it became possible to overstep the original bounds set by the Bloodstones more and more.

We already saw this in GW1, to an extent – Dervishes, for instance, clearly use magic, but can you point at them and say that it’s Preservation? Destruction? Aggression? It has characteristics of all three. However, the magic used by a dervish was weaker than that of a monk or elementalist or necromancer – because those primary spellcasters were drawing on the primary sources of the bloodstones they had access to more power, but the dervish was drawing more from ambient magic that had become unbound from the bloodstones thus had less raw power, but more versatility. Nowadays, the limits have slackened further – that we still have the four spellcasting classes rather than one superclass still shows that the bloodstones are having an effect, but now they’re using more of an equal mix between bloodstone magic (which continues to give each of the four schools its unique character) and ambient magic (granting greater versatility than using bloodstone magic alone).

Where does the asura claim that the limitations of the bloodstones come from? A mix of the tendency of the younger generation to assume their elders were idiots (the asura from three centuries ago restricted themselves to the same schools as those superstitious humans? Those ignoramuses were clearly lacking in true understanding of magic!) and the general asura superiority complex thinking that other races are morons.

There’s the explanation – one that doesn’t retcon the history of magic, but just shows that the behaviour of magic has been changing over time. This might even be deliberate on the part of the gods – they separated the bloodstones to bring things under control now, but they expected that in the future humans and other races would be mature enough to be trusted with undifferentiated magic again. Instead of being given all the power at once like Abaddon did, though, it’s been gradually increasing… and then, of course, the dragons started waking up.

The problem is, this explanation is entirely consistent with what ArenaNet has been saying… but when you read what they actually said rather than reading between the lines and connecting the dots, if this was their actual intent they’ve done a poor job of expressing it.

draxynnic.3719:

jheryn.8390:

@aaron & @drax I don’t believe that GW loyalist are upset over the changes or over new content. As one of those GW loyalists, I am fine with new enemies, changes to culture, race relations, magic, and equipment. All good and completely understandable after that length of time. What I do not care for is that a game I played faithfully for 7 years which spawned this game as a sequel CAN be retconned out. Not that it actually has been entirely, but CAN be at the whim of writers and developers where it doesn’t have to be.

I don’t play this card often, but there are very few people who have been playing as long as I have.

That said, in case you’ve got the wrong impression, I agree with you. I do think that most of the changes are things that can be explained as evolutions rather than retcons – but just because they can be so explained doesn’t mean that ArenaNet couldn’t be doing a much better job of doing so, rather than coming across as sweeping anything they find inconvenient under the rug. I also think that, while bringing the other races up to a similar level of importance humans is laudable, ArenaNet has massively overcompensated.

I 100% agree with what you said above. I apologize if it seemed like I was contradicting you or what you had to say. That was not my intent. I merely wished to expand on what you had to say. That was my sole purpose for including you in my reply. Again, sorry if it sounded otherwise.

I agree that ArenaNet has grossly overcompensated in some areas and I believe they have fell completely flat in others. Baseline what I was attempting to address is that I can live with changes as long as they are explained and fit in well with current and old lore. I have great problems with just changing lore to suit laziness in story writing and continuity. Especially when those changes are basically “We changed things. Live with it. We don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

But WHY do you think they made this change? And why do you think they aren’t giving us a reason?
Doesn’t it point towards them making it because it is more or less required for the upcoming story?

I find it extremely unlikely that they would change it just because they could.

RedStar.4218:

kimeekat, you forgot that from Scarlet’s Short Story, we are told she was greeted by Mender Serimon right as she was born.

So it cannot be your first idea.

But I’m extremely eager to see the plot reasons for such a tweak. I have a feeling it’s going to be funny.

kimeekat.2548:

… The latter two make no sense to me since … that would also mean Mender Serimon would be firstborn, as he greeted her upon awakening according to a blog post which I guess could just be thrown out the window now so who really knows…

I still think it’s possible but I honestly only care for the wiki’s sake (the preciousss), hehe.

ETA: I honestly don’t think they’ll have to explain themselves in game at all if they just decide the secondborn were born earlier. As far as I can see there really isn’t anything in game with solid dates for the 2nds or stating that Cadeyrn was even the first secondborn (though in that case they’d obvs be choosing to ignore the Dream and Nightmare story).

In light of those newly revealed ideas what is status of Short Stories? They were introduced as additional information to LS1, purely canonical in time of their release.
One question, was that mentioned in-game when Firstborn emerged? Maybe they just move timeline few years back?

sAdam.5876:

One question, was that mentioned in-game when Firstborn emerged? Maybe they just move timeline few years back?

According to some NPCs, they’ve been around for twenty-five years (?1300 AE). But, honestly, I’m not the most reliable when it comes to Sylvari.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eistoir → Our character say this : Even the Firstborn are only twenty-five.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grough_Heartless → Ha. “Sylvari.” Fancy name for a talking weed. Did you know they’ve only been around for twenty-five years? They just appeared, poof. That’s suspicious.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Battle_of_Claw_Island → Trahearne: I have studied Orrian creatures for twenty-five years, but I rarely engage in combat with them. It’s terrifying.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kasmeer_Meade/dialogue → I guess I thought they were all goofy, childlike beings. I mean, their race is only twenty-five years old, right?

Jamais vu.5284:

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

In a general sense, yes, Guild Wars 2 has a real lore connection to Guild Wars 1.

But this connection is as strong as, say, Quake 2 and Quake 4 for those who’ve played those games. For those who haven’t:

Quake 2 is based on an alien homeworld in retaliation to them attacking us first, the planet being called Stroggos and the enemy being a cybernetic race called Strogg; Stroggos had a variety of landscapes from volcanic to jungle to arid. Quake 4 is based shortly after Quake 2 – same planet, same enemy – except that despite traveling large terrains, you only ever see a blasted arid landscape. Some manual facts were ignored, as well as a full expansion of Quake 2 which ended with “Congratulations you ended the Strogg threat.” (which could mean Quake 4 is based before said expansion); said manual fact forgotten is that the Makron (Strogg leader) is just the strongest of several warlords, and in Quake 4 it is taken with supreme surprise that a new Makron came into being (Quake 2 ending with the death of the Makron, and this fact fueling the plot of Quake 4).

In short: Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are set in the same universe, but are stories that aren’t really tied together, and has seen some alterations for narrative purposes. Because the stories are not tied together, GW1 fans are disappointed because there’s not a lot of call backs to GW1, and those that are are typically call backs designed to fuel the new story. This never bothered me… until Season 1. Because to me, Season 1 is yet another completely different story in the same universe, and at the end just suddenly ends up being the same story as the second of three stories.

Honestly, I never see why folks expected a return of Titans or Margonites. I loved the Titans but… they’re a threat which has come and gone. The place of their creation – the Foundry of Failed Creations – has been taken over. The Margonites explicitly stated in Nightfall to be wiped out or imprisoned. Same goes for the Forgotten – wiped out or left the world.

Even if GW2 was about the same exact plot… we would not see more of them, I am certain.

The downgrading of the gods, however, is something downright silly. But doesn’t dislocate the two games into being two different lore universes. IMO.

Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324:

sAdam.5876:

One question, was that mentioned in-game when Firstborn emerged? Maybe they just move timeline few years back?

According to some NPCs, they’ve been around for twenty-five years (?1300 AE). But, honestly, I’m not the most reliable when it comes to Sylvari.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eistoir -> Our character say this : Even the Firstborn are only twenty-five.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grough_Heartless -> Ha. “Sylvari.” Fancy name for a talking weed. Did you know they’ve only been around for twenty-five years? They just appeared, poof. That’s suspicious.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Battle_of_Claw_Island -> Trahearne: I have studied Orrian creatures for twenty-five years, but I rarely engage in combat with them. It’s terrifying.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kasmeer_Meade/dialogue -> I guess I thought they were all goofy, childlike beings. I mean, their race is only twenty-five years old, right?

ArenaNet LOVES to round their numbers. It’s like saying that Zhaitan awoke exactly 100 years ago, or that Mad King Thorn and the Six Gods stopped interacting exactly 250 years ago, or that the Foefire happened exactly 250 years ago. ArenaNet rounds. Almost all the time.

Take for example that last quote from Kasmeer. That was said at the end of 1326 AE. The others are said in 1325 AE (or however ArenaNet wants to treat open world comments). They couldn’t have been born in both 1300 and 1301 AE.

lordkrall.7241:

But WHY do you think they made this change? And why do you think they aren’t giving us a reason?
Doesn’t it point towards them making it because it is more or less required for the upcoming story?

I find it extremely unlikely that they would change it just because they could.

The more worrisome thing for me is that if they are changing the lore and there is a tie-in later on, they botched the first part(however minor) and that could have been handled better. I don’t mind retcons if there is some cool twist that comes out of it, but the response from Mr. Stein here was curt to say the least. I am actually more interested in how the community(that cares about lore) reacts to all this stuff down the road than the actual lore now because it’s hard to care about something that might be different in multiple ways down the road.

But what else could he actually say, if they want to keep the coming story a secret and that is the reason for the change?
“We changed this, live with it” would probably have created an even worse reaction than this. So what should he have said?

lordkrall.7241:

But what else could he actually say, if they want to keep the coming story a secret and that is the reason for the change?
“We changed this, live with it” would probably have created an even worse reaction than this. So what should he have said?

He simply should of said nothing that would of caused this much of a kitten-storm…Just a simple sentence saying “All will be explained in game, stay tuned for more.”. For what he has done now is he has brought his entire teams work into question will this fit with the lore what we have now or will they re-write the lore to suit.

That is also why no one from that team has commented since, they are properly asking the PR team how do we sort this mess out….

Angel McCoy.1832:

Lore is not malleable except under extreme circumstances. We are actually quite dedicated to the lore of GW1 and 2. However, situations do arise where we inadvertently or purposefully adjust lore.

I suppose you could find some comfort in how obsessive people in this thread are about the lore…

I played GW1 from it’s origins, and have been in GW2 (minus a few months trying to die last year) since beta began. I have the novels, have read all in-game resources, have 100% world explore, so I think I know GW2 lore pretty well.

I don’t mean to be rude, but most people in this thread are being incredibly nit-picky. I have seen some variance in lore over time. It exists. But I (and others in my social circle) do not find it extremely jarring in most cases. If anything, I think the GW2 lore is better then GW1’s.

Now, that said, I do think GW2 has ignored GW1 lore that was both intriguing and important.

The dragons should have been more than loot pinatas. I’m grateful you’ve returned the focus to a dragon, but am a bit annoyed you added a dragon rather than explore one of the extant ones. The Norn and Charr have been ignored as cultures since release.

I realize you can’t do everything at once, and I’m patient. I enjoyed the latter parts of S1, and think S2 started well.

But why, why, why create all sorts of new lore when great big chunks of old lore languish?

You have an interesting and deep universe to draw from. Build on it, adding richness and depth, rather than creating new lore.

I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else yet but Rox was coughing. Scarlet’s Rattle?

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

Stooperdale.3560:

I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else yet but Rox was coughing. Scarlet’s Rattle?

She was sneezing. From the years of dust build-up in Scarlet’s sealed room.

Thanks for coming in here and responding too, Angel. I know that emotions in here have been running high and it must have been a bit intimidating to face the wrath of the lore-hounds.

As far as the Secondborn arrival date is concerned, while I do still think it would have been better to have worked around the original date given in the interview, I acknowledge your points, and admit that in the larger scheme of things, having the Secondborn show up a few years earlier shouldn’t make much difference to the lore.

Erukk.1408:

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

I think the wiki has errors and when it contradicts in-game sources, the game wins.

In theory, the wiki is fan-maintained — while I suspect that ANet employees work on the wiki, it is a side project and secondary to the actual game.

@jheryn: Coolio. Wouldn’t be the first time something’s been misinterpreted on this board, and it probably won’t be the last…

@Angel: Thanks. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that’s pretty much more what we were looking for. I do have one request, though:

Angel McCoy.1832:

In the case of the “days per year,” that was a response to our new Living World cadence and the upcoming journal (which I couldn’t mention at the time). We felt it was important to align the real year with the in-game year. If we adamantly stuck to the old in-game calendar, then we’d be cumulatively off by 5 days every year. Before long, we’d be doing Wintersday in January. Which makes no sense whatsoever (and would completely kitten our development schedule! Hehe.). Plus, we wanted the new year to turn over on the same day as the real new year. I gave a loreful explanation for the change at the time.

To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced – the connection between the Tyrian calender and the Terran calendar always seemed a bit artificial (given that the ingame day is 2 hours from the player’s viewpoint, and by now I’m sure that every security force on the continent is putting itself on high alert every second Tuesday because that’s always when new crises seem to happen). But putting that to one side…

Could we get a more satisfying explanation for the longer year than some asura ‘finding’ five new days? As has been noted previously, it would have been noticed if the calender had been five days short for over a thousand years – the Gregorian calendar came about because the difference between 365.25 days and 365.2425 days between 325AD and 1582 AD had become obvious.

Maybe the gods liked a 360 day year for whatever reason and were overriding the natural weather to generate such a year. Maybe some effect of the awakening of the dragons increased Tyria’s angular momentum (thereby shortening the day) or pushed Tyria further out in its orbit (thereby lengthening the year) or altered the rate at which elemental energies ebbed and flowed across Tyria to create the seasons (if the seasons are actually due to some reason that is independent of orbital mechanics). Just… please, give us something a little more believable than people not realising that the calendar was wrong by five whole days for more than a thousand years.

Thank you so much Angel for response.
About calendar I must admit I don’t see a point of change. In GW1, Tyrian holidays were aligning with our and nobody had any problem with that. If team feel need to be in sync with real world time, Tyrian year should have 365*(number of ingame days per real day), but that would be ridiculous.
In my head-cannon 5 bonus days are caused by Elder Dragon from space that woke up on Sun :P
About Sylvari birthdate, it would be nice to have that information. How much time passed between First and Secondborn emergence is not pivotal plot-point so I don’t think it should be shrouded in secrets.

Erukk.1408:

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

The canon is not based on the player-generated wiki.

sAdam.5876:

About Sylvari birthdate, it would be nice to have that information. How much time passed between First and Secondborn emergence is not pivotal plot-point so I don’t think it should be shrouded in secrets.

Are you sure?

draxynnic.3719:

@jheryn: Coolio. Wouldn’t be the first time something’s been misinterpreted on this board, and it probably won’t be the last…

@Angel: Thanks. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that’s pretty much more what we were looking for. I do have one request, though:

Angel McCoy.1832:

In the case of the “days per year,” that was a response to our new Living World cadence and the upcoming journal (which I couldn’t mention at the time). We felt it was important to align the real year with the in-game year. If we adamantly stuck to the old in-game calendar, then we’d be cumulatively off by 5 days every year. Before long, we’d be doing Wintersday in January. Which makes no sense whatsoever (and would completely kitten our development schedule! Hehe.). Plus, we wanted the new year to turn over on the same day as the real new year. I gave a loreful explanation for the change at the time.

To be honest, I’m not entirely convinced – the connection between the Tyrian calender and the Terran calendar always seemed a bit artificial (given that the ingame day is 2 hours from the player’s viewpoint, and by now I’m sure that every security force on the continent is putting itself on high alert every second Tuesday because that’s always when new crises seem to happen.

Yeah it doesn’t really work and requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and… imagination (gasp!) to follow Living Story to two week schedules and consider that Tyria’s true time-line.

At the end of the EotM release we had A Study in Scarlet which seems to indicate an imminent attack on Lion’s Arch. Many players knew that 13 days prior to the attack because they did the instance at that time. Thirteen days is a lot of time to prepare or warn, so you have to imagine that the EotM release takes place over a period of two weeks and ends shortly before the Lion’s Arch invasion, which is awkward to say nothing else.

Then consider that the Festival of the Four Winds went for six(?) weeks and after the update, the Zephyrite ship has flown from Labyrinthine Cliffs all the way to Dry Top and managed to crash. On top of that, Aerin went from typical Dreamer sylvari to the crazy terrorist we see in Maguuma. The calendar may be matched up but the release schedule and time line of the story still requires just as much suspension of disbelief as it did without a synced calendar.

Finally there are other consequences beyond the pacing of the events of Living Story that become impacted. Almost two years in-game have passed since we did anything with the Pact (or our Orders) – I no longer feel like a Pact or Order member, I can’t believe that I just took a two year leave of absence or that my character joining either of those organisations mattered much when I’ve spent so much time not working with them. Without syncing the time lines, you could pretend the Living Story takes place over a matter of months, but now the time line of the entire world has moved forward almost two years (yet most of the world is very static, unless it fell into the narrow sites of the Living Story, nothing has changed). For almost two years we didn’t hear anything at all from most of the characters from the Personal Story. We have to pretend they are doing new things when we see them doing the same things they did two years ago (or don’t see them at all).\

Seasonal events (that happen to match up with real world events) just seemed like a suspension of disbelief thing for me. Guild Wars Nightfall launched on the 26th of October. Kamadan was decorated for Halloween five days later. Night had fallen, the Sunspears were at war and we were facing the threat of a forgotten god. But the Mad King was also appearing in Kamadan to tell jokes in a new (and old) part of the world. Obviously Elona’s time line didn’t sync up so that Halloween actually takes place during the events of Nightfall. This year I don’t think there was a single Dragon Bash reference – not even NPCs saying “let’s not throw a party, my house is still a mess from Scarlet gate crashing the last one”. The more believable reason for Dragon Bash not occurring is that it didn’t fit with the release schedule (seeing as you can’t reuse assets).

It seems like waypoints (we used to have map travel) and the timeline were unnecessary lore explanations for things that were better (imo) left to suspension of disbelief. The messy consequences of making them lore creates more suspension of disbelief problems than it solves, especially when you need to introduce new lore to support them. I don’t think we benefit from lore explanations from some things, we just shifted suspension of disbelief from one thing to another, or in some cases created a need for it when there was none before.

Sytherek.7689:

I think the wiki has errors and when it contradicts in-game sources, the game wins.

Well… It contradicts an in-game source now. But from what I got out of what Angel said, that is only because the devs’ Big Book of Lore was missing that part of info from that prerelease interview, and the wiki didn’t have the citation needed to prove it was actually canon and not fan speculation.

So I was just wondering if they are keeping the new Scarlet/Sylvari timeline, since they already maybe built around it, or if they are going to correct the accidently goof made canon.

I think the only in-game source for Scarlet’s new birthday, and the new Sylvari timeline, is the new book in the Priory. It would be pretty easy to just patch in a “Second Edition” of the book that fixed that “misprinting”. They could even go meta and blame it on citation problems. Though, depending on if they were printed in bulk or on order, those RIP Scarlet shirts might be s.o.l.

lordkrall.7241:

sAdam.5876:

About Sylvari birthdate, it would be nice to have that information. How much time passed between First and Secondborn emergence is not pivotal plot-point so I don’t think it should be shrouded in secrets.

Are you sure?

Ooooooo now we are taking

I’ve been waiting for a new red post here, to be the final determiner whether or not I stay or leave.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Lore is not malleable except under extreme circumstances. We are actually quite dedicated to the lore of GW1 and 2. However, situations do arise where we inadvertently or purposefully adjust lore.

And how hard was it to say this instead?

Bobby could have simply said “we felt it was necessary to change this because it makes more sense in the long scale of things.” Or given your latter comment about it not being in the internal wiki, say something akin to what you said there: “the external wiki wasn’t referenced and that line wasn’t in our internal wiki, so we presumed that GW2W was incorrect and made a new date that made sense given our current view of the story.”

Well, I suppose there is a reason Bobby isn’t PR. I know I wouldn’t make a good PR.

Angel McCoy.1832:

In the case of the “days per year,” that was a response to our new Living World cadence and the upcoming journal (which I couldn’t mention at the time). We felt it was important to align the real year with the in-game year. If we adamantly stuck to the old in-game calendar, then we’d be cumulatively off by 5 days every year. Before long, we’d be doing Wintersday in January. Which makes no sense whatsoever (and would completely kitten our development schedule! Hehe.). Plus, we wanted the new year to turn over on the same day as the real new year. I gave a loreful explanation for the change at the time.

Now this I completely cannot agree with in any way, shape, or form. And there’s really two points – which I’ve been making since the get go.

1. Why do Tyria and Earth need to align day-to-day exactly? GW1 had less than a month pass in 6 Earth months (between Prophecies and Factions), and even 3 years pass in 8 months (Factions to Nightfall) or 10 months (Nightfall to Eye of the North) and even 1 year pass in 3 years (Eye of the North to Beyond). Calendar syncing is just outright unnecessary. You don’t give dates in the journal either – you just give the year. So you can say that we’re going through 1 Tyrian year when we go through 1 Earth year without saying ‘they sync up exactly the same’. Especially since the latter – what you did – opens up a different can-o-wurms.
2. That can-o-wurms being that, if you actually looked at your calendar’s lore before changing it, you’d have noticed that the year starts at the Spring Equinox. For us, that’s March 20th (on average), not January 1st. Furthermore, Wintersday is the Tyrian New Years, so having Wintersday in December while the calendars ‘sync up’ now makes no sense. We now have cases where players sync up the calendars using January 1st as Season of the Zephyr 01 – which as you might guess, would put the holiday of the Autumn Lunatic (Mad King’s Day aka Halloween) in Winter…. yeah.

And furthermore, if the calendars are truly synced up, this gives the sense that kitten hits the fan in Tyria every 14 days. Which makes you think why the good guys don’t go on high alert every 14 days, and makes you think why the bad guys don’t decide to attack on the 15th day just to throw everyone off.

Honestly, your explanation here is lacking. You give years, not days, so there was no need to argue that the calendars sync up perfectly, when even if you just add 5 days… they don’t. We’re experiencing winter months after they should be.

In all honesty, there is no need to sync the calendars, at all. It is entirely superfluous to claim such, since you don’t go dating the journal as “32 Season of the Zephyr 1327 AE”. Heck, not even just “Season of the Zephyr 1327 AE.” You can quite literally say that Escape from Lion’s Arch and Battle for Lion’s Arch happen over the coarse of two days and get away with it perfectly, because in all honesty… the NPCs made it sound like it was just two days in the first place! You can say two adjacent updates happen three months apart from each other and we wouldn’t find it odd in the least (well, depending on the story dialogue).

Angel McCoy.1832:

Furthermore, there was no reference to the 7-8 year space between the firstborn and the secondborn in our story wiki. Its origin is the one interview that was posted a year before we launched the game. We check the external wiki regularly, but we know better than to assume it’s always correct, and there was no link or citation to the original article on that wiki, so I defaulted to the information that’s in our internal story wiki. Koenig, you posted that line to the wiki back in 2011, and thank you for that, but I had no way of confirming that it was actual canon. In my records, it wasn’t.

I can honestly live with this explanation. I wish it was used right off the bat. I wish I knew if this was the truth, but now I am honestly thinking it – like all your forum post explanations (which are even more important than put-on-the-spot interviews) that explain plotholes in Season 1 – are mere cover-ups for your own retcon in hopes of winning those disheartened back. A mere excuse, because even though it’s perfectly reasonable, it also feels perfectly scapegoatish.

In the future, if you find something on the wiki that you’re not sure was actually said elsewhere and just didn’t get referenced, why not make a non-red account and ask the playerbase? Or better yet, just shoot me a PM. I could have told you instantly that it was from multiple (it was at least 2, btw, not just 1) interviews/posts by Ree and even provide links. And I can keep secrets well enough to not say anything (hell, I’ve had NDAs, I wouldn’t mind signing another to be some sort of volunteer external lorefactchecker).

Angel McCoy.1832:

One or two discrepancies in the lore does not mean we do not take it very seriously.

Yes… “one or two” >.>

Excluding the two (calendar and Secondborn birthdate) brought up, as well as the whole confusion on Scarlet Briar’s timeline (which has 4 points of discrepancies in of itself!):

• How could Orr, a magically advanced civilization, fall in less than 12 hours to the rather magically (and technologically) primitive charr?
• What’s up with Dagnar suddenly having a powerful sword (Sanguinary Blade)?
• Why is Orr’s navy still docked in Arah despite being at war and having had days of forewarning that the charr were coming?
• How could “all knowledge of Abaddon” be erased, but a temple of him obviously left in the open just a couple miles (tops) from the Orrian shore?
• Steam creatures’ origins (explanation below)
• His dialogue with Watchman Erik and Laurie is a copy of his dialog at the end of the Guild Wars Prophecies mission The Great Northern Wall with the player character. – what happened to the existence of the GW1 PC?

And that’s just what I can remember off-hand.

Angel McCoy.1832:

Bobby did not mean the books were not canon. He meant interviews. When someone is doing an interview, it can be a stressful thing. It’s easy to misspeak or create lore that doesn’t get into the actual canon because it changes during development (if the interview occurs prior to the finalization of the canon) or it could simply go undocumented in the official story wiki here at ArenaNet. We make every effort to say only truth in our interviews, but the reality is that interviews are simply not as reliable as what you see in the game.

It was less the novels (and short stories) that I was worried about, and more like all the forum posts done out of your own time, and the documents put in various magazines, guides, or other things – from the GW1 manuals, to the Art of Guild Wars (the sole source of certain GW1 facts – did you know that the undead hounds from GW1 were not actual undead, but constructs like bone minions?), An Empire Divided, most importantly of these the blog posts, and other such things. Things that are pre-thought and not put-on-the-spot information. Because saying “if it isn’t in the game, it is malleable” even if you take it to extend to the novels and both games, takes out a lot of lore – especially the background lore.

So, you staying or leaving?

Angel McCoy.1832:

The steam creatures are a primo example of that. They were in the game when we launched, which was 1325 A.E. There’s no actual lore that says when they first appeared (but it was definitely prior to that). In the Asura personal story, we see them coming through a portal from a POSSIBLE future. Nothing we’ve done with Scarlet contradicts any of that.

But as the Steam creatures already existed in our Tyria at the point of the possible future being seen (1325 AE), that would mean it wasn’t a possible future but a possible future of an alternate dimension in which Ceara did not create steam creatures. That, or the Grand High Sovereign aka future self #24601, was a bloody liar in calling them his inventions that haven’t even been invented yet.

Sounds like a discrepancy.

I remain unconvinced, but a bit more hopeful, about the holdings on lore. Whether or not I’ll continue to post on the forum… I haven’t decided.

lordkrall.7241:

Erukk.1408:

So, I guess the question now is the new timeline for the Sylvari and Scarlet canon? Or was that a goof because the wiki didn’t have the citation needed on the subject?

The canon is not based on the player-generated wiki.

Why are you even posting here? The player generated wiki is based on ArenaNet sources. As a Angel mentions…

Angel McCoy.1832:

We check the external wiki regularly, but we know better than to assume it’s always correct, and there was no link or citation to the original article on that wiki, so I defaulted to the information that’s in our internal story wiki. Koenig, you posted that line to the wiki back in 2011, and thank you for that, but I had no way of confirming that it was actual canon. In my records, it wasn’t.

The wiki has a lot of bad information in it and the quality of articles depends on the quality of authors, but it also has a lot of accurate information (sourced and unsourced). Angel’s comment suggests that had the source for the Secondborn’s timeline been included in that article, the Living Story may not have contradicted that.

Honestly, that’s a dangerous line to tow though. The wiki already struggles to attract accurate and comprehensive editors in large enough numbers to properly document the game without requiring them to heavily source everything they document. If anything that’s not sourced becomes unreliable and changeable (assuming it’s not documented in the internal wiki – which in this case was less reliable than the external wiki) then the value of the wiki is undermined (as it is when editors post incorrect or speculatory information).

I am curious about ArenaNet’s lore checking process. If Angel reads the line on the external wiki about the Secondborn’s age and can’t find a source on the wiki or back it up with the internal wiki, wouldn’t it make sense to question in good faith where that information on the wiki came from? Wouldn’t you check with Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee (she was the source, did she forget or was she not asked?) to see if they can corroborate the wiki’s version of events assuming Angel read them (rather than assuming the wiki was just incorrect)? I find it concerning that Angel was aware the external wiki had mention of the Secondborn’s timeline but discarded it because it wasn’t sourced.

Maybe it’s time to hire someone like Konig to have these discussions internally so things like this don’t happen when it’s too late. Whatever happend to Jeff and Ree? I assumed they were world building an unannounced expansion, but by stepping into Maguuma (which smells like Living Story, not core Guild Wars) it feels like that may not be the case. Do they still work at ArenaNet?