Guild Wars 2

A great many threads spread all across the forum have people screaming bloody murder over the lore getting broken, kicked, shattered, and has a host of other nasty things happening to it.
There are supposed things Scarlet does that break the lore.
How Scarlet’s very existence breaks the lore.
How they had to retcon established lore for the Living World story.
Finally, how could we forget, the fact they retconned as much as the time and date we’re playing at in universe.

All of these seem unlikely to me, but as always, when in doubt, ask someone who knows more about than you do!

So, where and how has the lore been broken?
Was Scarlet the cause or reason for this?
The word retcon has been thrown around a lot, and I mean, a lot! How many retcons has the GW lore really had, and which ones were they?
Last but not least, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you trust the writing team to handle the lore with the care it deserves?

Yeah really they haven’t retconned a whole lot – and the things they did were small.
The movement of the world was back-tracked on a little, but that’s not retconning since NPC’s can be wrong about things and have been shown to be.

I don’t think the lore is broken – but I do think that a lot of the Scarlet stuff has been very very very poorly written. People don’t like it and it doesn’t always make logical sense given the way narratives usually work – so people look at how badly written it is and how wrong it feels in the context of the GW universe, and for some reason decide that it is therefore breaking everything.

Yeah, not so much retconned or broken by Scarlet – people love to exagerate it a lot – but it really bends the lore to unquestionable points which in most people’s eyes becomes breaking because they often presume things are more set in stone than they are. Which is part of Anet’s issue – they give too little to explain things, people then make presumptions (justifiably so presumptions mind you!) then it turns out that the unknown gets filled in with something different or an individual was simply just wrong.

The worst crimes Scarlet offers was her short story, second to worst is getting the krait to work with her. The former got less offending later on, but initially she was presenting as being a sylvari who studied under the greatest norn blacksmith, under an expert sniper, all three asuran colleges (something no asura has done – and she did within a year each), and under hylek – the last being “just because she could at the time, not because she wanted to or was interested in it.” She was outright presented as borderline Mary Sue, especially since she met attempts to use her as a scapegoat, attempts to kill her, and the loss of her experiment stuff with the same “I don’t care!” reaction. Topped off with “she saw the Eternal Alchemy and learned about all there is!” This later got dumbed down in the colleges and Eternal Alchemy bit, with the former being specialized courses, and the latter via “she didn’t actually see what she thought she saw” later turned into “it was all in her mind… kind of”.

The krait working for her has yet to be clarified. She somehow got obelisk shards, and she somehow threatened the enslaving race of krait whom view themselves superior to all into working for her to get their prophets made… and they complied without question.

The biggest issue with Scarlet is how she’s delivered – and this issue extends throughout the Living World. There have been pieces this improved greatly (Tower of Nightmares stuff, sans the lack of why krait didn’t just gut Scarlet, is perhaps the best example). Second issue is that there is no character development presented. Take how she is when she wakes up, and sans some paranoia over some entity that messed with her mind after she went into Omadd’s device – something unknown until the past month (aka we went a full half year, more or less, not knowing the only thing to develop her) – and compare her to now, and you get practically no difference. Again, the only difference is in her two journals of her talking to herself about the unknown entity. So even her interactions with all others remains unchanged. And the third biggest issue is how everyone likes her – the blacksmith who rarely takes in trainees? Takes her in. The gladium who’s a loner and hates everyone? Teaches her for two years. The asura who are paranoid on a whole? Gives her their secrets. All six groups she takes in as minions? Follows her even after the failure of her promises. Yeah… what?

I hope these preocupations are explained in the next update. It concerns me because there is a HUGE load of questions and mysteries unaswered yet. And if the patch is more or less the same size as this, I’m afraid we might no get much and leave them for the next season.

Or never at all.

Remember that all other stories have left unanswered questions too.

Thirding what was said before, no the lore wasn’t broken only bent to almost spine-breaking degrees with story-telling that relies on too much suspension of disbelief. And the attempts to clear up on that suspension have been incredibly poor, nonexistent or voodoo shark (i. e. attempts at explaining a plothole only raised more questions)

The worst to me was the dev’s attempt at making this season a pseudo-murder mystery. Except instead of ‘who dun it’ we have a fat ‘why’ and except of putting clues together to get the big picture, all the important clues are left out on purpose. THAT was a huge mistake. It’s the penultimate release and the whole story arch relies on the idea that we don’t know why anything is happening. (which unfortunately happens to be why we should be invested and care and follow the story, y’know)

Then Scarlet as character…well, Konig summed it up nicely up there. But if I may add a thing or two, another thing about her is how she ‘dwarves’ all of the enemy groups we face. Flame legion which was the bane of charr and humans for centuries? Her minions.
Dredge, Inquest, Nightmare Court-faction? Her minions. Krait which were pretty much the poster-child for pure evil and founded on the idea that they’re SUPERIOR to all other races and wouldn’t need their help because they could just take whatever they need? Her minions. And to put that in perspective, the Molten Alliance has been described as worse than Destroyers and the ToN has been said to rival the doing of an Elder dragon. So her alliances are worse than whatever we faced before but they still bow to her – some even in /fear/. And now the new release even blatantly advertises that she succeeded where Zhaitan (and if we go back to GW1 even the White Mantle) failed.
So what, she’s on par with Elder dragons now?
But because there’s 0 substance and believable explanations behind her, this attempt to elevate her as threat feels cheap. She’s compared to things that have a stronger foundation and make more sense. And that her factions are better established than her as well yet are given mere minion status worsens the sentiment.

Then we have to consider that Scarlet isn’t open for visible character development – she is a completely static character by nature and only changing ever so slightly over the past few releases which however isn’t development. No character development isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. A character who isn’t likely to change anymore still can make for a good story if you show their development in retrospective. In our case, that would be in the form of the short story, the mentors she visited and the few other characters (Pale tree, Caithe, Canach) who knew her as Ceara.

Problem, Anet screwed up major times and instead of establishing development we were just given “Scarlet is awesome at EVERYTHING”. So the thing that was meant to make her broke her completely and thus she ascended to the unholy halls of suedom.

Meanwhile the little tidbits ingame about her mentors were little more than what we already knew. At this point of the LS it felt like they were rushing to get the short story and more lore stuffed into the game after people complained about that.
That in turn created a weird situation where everyone in Thunderidge suddenly knew about Scarlet and lore-wise a few obscure plotholes (…how the hell does Ela Makkay know that krait are ardent mathematicians if they don’t keep any records? Other than “it’s the priory they know stuff”. Similarly how the hell did the priory suddenly find out about the leyline-intersection under LA now?)

It was basically too late to go back and add more to her by then. So everything from then on seems to be damage control and adding things to smooth the bumps out.

She actually surpassed an Elder Dragon. Zhaitan failed to get past Claw Island, Scarlet flat out destroyed Lion’s Arch (with shaking explanations for her alliances this doesn’t feel like a good story move imo, one sylvari succeeds where an Elder Dragon and its army failed). On top of this, in typical Living Story fashion, she did so because the other characters were stupid – the Captain’s Council did nothing, Evon talked about it for months and he didn’t hire mercenaries to protect his business or flat out move his business to another town, the Lionguard were unprepared. The only protagonists that seem to have a clue at any point in the Living Story are the new iconics – it’s lame to establish new characters at the expense of the rest of Tyria’s intelligence (this goes for Scarlet and her alliances as much as the iconics and the more suitable and established allied forces).

I think the writers had two or three major goals with the Living World.

• Write a villain with the ability to accomplish her goals. This meant all her studies and mentors fell into place, all the hand waving convenience of her alliances fell into place. Ceara was really cool as an inquisitive mind, if a bit overqualified, but Scarlet is just outsmarting everyone. I’m fine with brilliant or specialised characters, but Scarlet is too good at too many things for the time she spent on Tyria.
• Establish the new iconics. This meant having them pop up where they weren’t the most suitable characters and sidelining or minimising the most suitable characters to put them in the spotlight.
• Destroy Lion’s Arch. All the conveniences of Scarlet’s alliances and the less than optimal intelligence of the Captain’s Council when it comes to protecting Lion’s Arch. Is it believable that Scarlet succeeded where an Elder Dragon failed?

I think their road map looks OK. “If someone can get these alliances to join forces they’d have an army and certain technology” as an example. I think the journey and execution don’t believably lead to where we are today.

The difference lies within the execution. Zhaitan didn’t send all of its forces to Lion’s Arch in a single, fast and coordinated assault. It didn’t use toxic substances that would effectively make everyone flee, die or keep everyone else busy trying to save others, on top of all her forces wrecking the place and fighting us off. Nor did he exploit the weaknesses the city had (air attacks).

Had only the alliances turn up and attack, we probably would be fighting them off and taking the city back somewhat easily. But the misma, according to the reports, have killed hundreds of Lionguards and citizens, and slowly killing those who barely survived while making it virtually impossible to fight for long periods of time against the stationed forces there.

The Ship’s Council not making any preparations does seem… stupid and badly explained. “Lol wut? Attack us AGAIN with airships we’ve long known she has, after knowing she found something she wants in here, having clear evidence of her intentions and knowing months ago she intended to infiltrate us to weaken our defenses? You’re talkin’ crazy, darlin.”

I hope there’s some explanation regarding this on the last update, but I’m not getting my hopes up on that.

Shiren.9532:

• Destroy Lion’s Arch. All the conveniences of Scarlet’s alliances and the less than optimal intelligence of the Captain’s Council when it comes to protecting Lion’s Arch. Is it believable that Scarlet succeeded where an Elder Dragon failed?

I think this is a good point, but I suppose they’d argue that Lion’s Arch was prepared to fight off Zhaitan as they saw it as a threat, but didn’t view Scarlet as a credible threat. However, the council’s reaction to Scarlet’s impending attack is a bit ridiculous given that she attacked before and managed a successful council assassination. You’d think they’d have taken the threat a little more seriously considering one of their own died the last time she attempted an attack.

There is bad writing in many games stories with the occasional plot holes like in the ME series which still had an incredible lore and story overall. As for Scarlet’s minions, I don’t think the whole factions joined her; just a few splinter groups she manipulated out of greed and fear. And they all gained something by joining her despite their losses. The combined technologies/magic used by the Molten Alliance soldiers clearly makes them stronger than any Flame Legion or Moletariate soldiers. Plus, those two factions are slowly dying as a result of the players’ actions in the Sorrow’s Embrace and Citadel of Flames dungeons so there are not many reasons for those who decided to follow Scarlet to go back in their respective faction. Their own factions may not even want them back BECAUSE they chose to follow Scarlet. And despite her numerous defeats, Scarlet always won something in return which made her stronger each time she fought us. She disrupted many events across Tyria, creating mayhem and fear wherever she went. She became a force to be reckoned with, more than the Dredge Moletariate and the Flame Legion ever were which may be appealing for any bad guys. Some may argue with me on that point but seriously, the Flame Legion were mostly a Charr problem/enemy and weren’t the boogeyman they used to be in GW1. I’m not saying that the Flame Legion is not dangerous, but their power clearly waned as the years went by. As for the Moletariate, it was bad for the dredge race but not a general threat to Tyria’s safety. But Scarlet IS a threat to anyone in Tyria. As for the Nightmare Court, if Scarlet’s objective turns out to be shattering the Dream (as I think it is), you can bet that some Sylvaris inside the Nightmare Court might want to help her destroy it instead of simply corrupting it. We can’t assume that every courtiers share all of Faolain’s desires/beliefs. So a splinter faction arose within the court to join Scarlet instead. Finally, I always thought Scarlet brought the Kraits onboard by promising them the return of their Gods through the creation of the Toxic Hybrid which the Kraits mistakenly believed to be the reincarnation of their prophet or something like that. If you than add the fact that we, the players, aka Scarlet’s mortal enemies, killed the Toxic Hybrid, the Kraits are bound to be kittened about the other races and might still agree to follow Scarlet, especially if she promised them payback. And she’s delivering it right now…

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Yeah really they haven’t retconned a whole lot – and the things they did were small.
The movement of the world was back-tracked on a little, but that’s not retconning since NPC’s can be wrong about things and have been shown to be.

I don’t think the lore is broken – but I do think that a lot of the Scarlet stuff has been very very very poorly written. People don’t like it and it doesn’t always make logical sense given the way narratives usually work – so people look at how badly written it is and how wrong it feels in the context of the GW universe, and for some reason decide that it is therefore breaking everything.

Small enough not to matter then. I’m glad to hear that.

I already got people don’t like Scarlet, and the problems with the character are clear to me. I’m not so sure she deserves that many instances of “very”, but I agree she is far from what the industry expects of a character these days.

Would you say that Guild Wars usually employs a traditional narrative then? Or has it been on the literature side of the spectrum more often?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Yeah, not so much retconned or broken by Scarlet – people love to exagerate it a lot – but it really bends the lore to unquestionable points which in most people’s eyes becomes breaking because they often presume things are more set in stone than they are. Which is part of Anet’s issue – they give too little to explain things, people then make presumptions (justifiably so presumptions mind you!) then it turns out that the unknown gets filled in with something different or an individual was simply just wrong.

I agree Arenanet’s issue. From what I have seen, a lot of information seems incomplete or lacking. Do you suppose this is a conscious decision made by development, or because of the writing itself?

“Bending the lore”. That’s an interesting way of putting it.

However, people making presumptions about the story and where it is going, then being proven wrong, shouldn’t create this level of backlash. Is it that they feel that whatever proves them wrong isn’t good enough that evokes this level of emotion?
Would you say the way the writers handle people’s expectations and play off them is at fault? Or is it exactly a lack of handling that gives this problem so much room to grow?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The worst crimes Scarlet offers was her short story, second to worst is getting the krait to work with her. The former got less offending later on, but initially she was presenting as being a sylvari who studied under the greatest norn blacksmith, under an expert sniper, all three asuran colleges (something no asura has done – and she did within a year each), and under hylek – the last being “just because she could at the time, not because she wanted to or was interested in it.” She was outright presented as borderline Mary Sue, especially since she met attempts to use her as a scapegoat, attempts to kill her, and the loss of her experiment stuff with the same “I don’t care!” reaction. Topped off with “she saw the Eternal Alchemy and learned about all there is!” This later got dumbed down in the colleges and Eternal Alchemy bit, with the former being specialized courses, and the latter via “she didn’t actually see what she thought she saw” later turned into “it was all in her mind… kind of”.

I wouldn’t say borderline, or Mary Sue, as Scarlet is not a fan character.
I read the short story, then saw it worked into the game later.
There are obvious problems with her characterisation, including everything you’ve listed here.
Do you think her flaws have been dragged into the spotlight more because of the nature of a game being the medium of the story?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The krait working for her has yet to be clarified. She somehow got obelisk shards, and she somehow threatened the enslaving race of krait whom view themselves superior to all into working for her to get their prophets made… and they complied without question.

And even that would be speculation, as we haven’t seen any of these moments in the game. We simply know Scarlet convinced them to work for her with the shards as incentive.

Again, it seems a lack of information is a problem here.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The biggest issue with Scarlet is how she’s delivered – and this issue extends throughout the Living World. There have been pieces this improved greatly (Tower of Nightmares stuff, sans the lack of why krait didn’t just gut Scarlet, is perhaps the best example). Second issue is that there is no character development presented. Take how she is when she wakes up, and sans some paranoia over some entity that messed with her mind after she went into Omadd’s device – something unknown until the past month (aka we went a full half year, more or less, not knowing the only thing to develop her) – and compare her to now, and you get practically no difference. Again, the only difference is in her two journals of her talking to herself about the unknown entity. So even her interactions with all others remains unchanged. And the third biggest issue is how everyone likes her – the blacksmith who rarely takes in trainees? Takes her in. The gladium who’s a loner and hates everyone? Teaches her for two years. The asura who are paranoid on a whole? Gives her their secrets. All six groups she takes in as minions? Follows her even after the failure of her promises. Yeah… what?

Would you argue then, that the villain of a story usually gets more character development?

I wouldn’t say loved. But the other characters’ seemingly effortless acceptance of her is a character flaw beyond doubt.

I think I am beginning to see what has happened here. It’s strange, but definitely something to keep in mind.

Eluveitie.1290:

I hope these preocupations are explained in the next update. It concerns me because there is a HUGE load of questions and mysteries unaswered yet. And if the patch is more or less the same size as this, I’m afraid we might no get much and leave them for the next season.

Then, do you think it is the writers’ duty to answer any and all questions?

Naetell.3815:

Would you say that Guild Wars usually employs a traditional narrative then? Or has it been on the literature side of the spectrum more often?

I would say that they’ve failed in a literary sense. They avoid putting a lot of the lore in text form and they’re limited by how much they can have said out loud by characters – which means that the lore that is delivered tends to be highly watered down and over-simplified. The lore isn’t really compelling to read mostly because there isn’t a lot to read.

When you’re subjected to two characters going “She’s going to attack Lions Arch” when players have been saying this for weeks in advance it’s a bit sad. They’ve failed to make the story about the player character, which would be fine if they were doing a better job of delivering the story through the personal story characters. As it is the characters seem to know very little in comparison to what the players know – which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since we exist in world and should have been able to say something.

I think in part it’s because there is this idea that gamers don’t like reading walls of text and just skip dialogue and story – so in trying to appease those players a little bit they’ve basically ended up with a weak story. They need to focus on strengthening what players have access to and how players have access to it. People who don’t care about story are not going to care about it full stop, so instead of trying to cater to the hardcore, game-hopping audience they should work on making the story compelling for the many players who do actually care about story.

(GW1 was a good mix of the literary and a traditional narrative, they took a lot more care with the writing – although this tends to be due to the fact that traditional quests do allow you to deliver more story – and the player (as well as the accompanying NPC’s) was an integral part of all of the narrative arcs.)

ElysianEternity.6215:

Thirding what was said before, no the lore wasn’t broken only bent to almost spine-breaking degrees with story-telling that relies on too much suspension of disbelief. And the attempts to clear up on that suspension have been incredibly poor, nonexistent or voodoo shark (i. e. attempts at explaining a plothole only raised more questions)

Oh my, more TVTropes terminology.
I think what you mean to say is that Scarlet’s improbable characterisation strains the suspension of disbelief to its extremes, even to the point many people give up on the story.
It seems again, that a lack of information is the cause of what troubles people with this story.

ElysianEternity.6215:

The worst to me was the dev’s attempt at making this season a pseudo-murder mystery. Except instead of ‘who dun it’ we have a fat ‘why’ and except of putting clues together to get the big picture, all the important clues are left out on purpose. THAT was a huge mistake. It’s the penultimate release and the whole story arch relies on the idea that we don’t know why anything is happening. (which unfortunately happens to be why we should be invested and care and follow the story, y’know)

A murder mystery isn’t always about who did it. The why and how of things can be made just as interesting. It is all a matter of writing.

I saw the mystery puzzle part as an extended recap of the information they did give us over the past year, with some new information added in.
I do not think that at that point of the story, they should have done more exposition.

Despite that, the why of things is keeping people invested if you look at other parts of the forum. Rampant speculation is going on everywhere. Revealing everything before the end doesn’t suit every kind of story.
There is, however, a lack of foreshadowing.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Then Scarlet as character…well, Konig summed it up nicely up there. But if I may add a thing or two, another thing about her is how she ‘dwarves’ all of the enemy groups we face. Flame legion which was the bane of charr and humans for centuries? Her minions.
Dredge, Inquest, Nightmare Court-faction? Her minions. Krait which were pretty much the poster-child for pure evil and founded on the idea that they’re SUPERIOR to all other races and wouldn’t need their help because they could just take whatever they need? Her minions. And to put that in perspective, the Molten Alliance has been described as worse than Destroyers and the ToN has been said to rival the doing of an Elder dragon. So her alliances are worse than whatever we faced before but they still bow to her – some even in /fear/. And now the new release even blatantly advertises that she succeeded where Zhaitan (and if we go back to GW1 even the White Mantle) failed.
So what, she’s on par with Elder dragons now?
But because there’s 0 substance and believable explanations behind her, this attempt to elevate her as threat feels cheap. She’s compared to things that have a stronger foundation and make more sense. And that her factions are better established than her as well yet are given mere minion status worsens the sentiment.

I beg to differ. If you look at what we’ve seen ingame, we can tell that Scarlet may call them their minions, but these groups often see themselves as anything but.
The Flame Legion side of the Molten Alliance intend to enslave the dredge as soon as Scarlet’s out of the picture.
The Krait are certain they are superior, and as soon as they have their shards, they’re out.

The Aetherblades, on the other hand, are scared of Scarlet and would do anything she tells them to.

Worse than destroyers, akin to the doing of an Elder dragon…
Were these things the writers themselves said? Or was it said by characters in the game?

If you would recall, before the game was released, people said the Elder dragons had poor foundations in the lore as well.
I would not say zero, but clearly not enough explaining has been done.
As for succeeding where Zhaitan didn’t. Zhaitan didn’t send a massive air force on LA, a city with no air defenses. His minions came by sea, and even then it took the combined might of the three orders to chase those minions out.

See next post.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Then we have to consider that Scarlet isn’t open for visible character development – she is a completely static character by nature and only changing ever so slightly over the past few releases which however isn’t development. No character development isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. A character who isn’t likely to change anymore still can make for a good story if you show their development in retrospective. In our case, that would be in the form of the short story, the mentors she visited and the few other characters (Pale tree, Caithe, Canach) who knew her as Ceara.

Problem, Anet screwed up major times and instead of establishing development we were just given “Scarlet is awesome at EVERYTHING”. So the thing that was meant to make her broke her completely and thus she ascended to the unholy halls of suedom.

Would you argue no good stories can be written with a “Mary Sue” type character in them?

ElysianEternity.6215:

Meanwhile the little tidbits ingame about her mentors were little more than what we already knew. At this point of the LS it felt like they were rushing to get the short story and more lore stuffed into the game after people complained about that.
That in turn created a weird situation where everyone in Thunderidge suddenly knew about Scarlet and lore-wise a few obscure plotholes (…how the hell does Ela Makkay know that krait are ardent mathematicians if they don’t keep any records? Other than “it’s the priory they know stuff”. Similarly how the hell did the priory suddenly find out about the leyline-intersection under LA now?)

It was basically too late to go back and add more to her by then. So everything from then on seems to be damage control and adding things to smooth the bumps out.

So people complained, they recitified that, and now complain more because it wasn’t handled perfectly? Isn’t that asking for too much given the medium and timespan this was done in?
Had you preferred the exposition be done by a GM avatar instead?

SirMoogie.9263:

Shiren.9532:

• Destroy Lion’s Arch. All the conveniences of Scarlet’s alliances and the less than optimal intelligence of the Captain’s Council when it comes to protecting Lion’s Arch. Is it believable that Scarlet succeeded where an Elder Dragon failed?

I think this is a good point, but I suppose they’d argue that Lion’s Arch was prepared to fight off Zhaitan as they saw it as a threat, but didn’t view Scarlet as a credible threat. However, the council’s reaction to Scarlet’s impending attack is a bit ridiculous given that she attacked before and managed a successful council assassination. You’d think they’d have taken the threat a little more seriously considering one of their own died the last time she attempted an attack.

I agree. There are some gaps here that should have been filled in.

Pecto.8914:

There is bad writing in many games stories with the occasional plot holes like in the ME series which still had an incredible lore and story overall.
As for Scarlet’s minions, I don’t think the whole factions joined her; just a few splinter groups she manipulated out of greed and fear. And they all gained something by joining her despite their losses.

I’d hope this much was obvious from the start.
Would you say more people understand this than not, or the other way around?

Pecto.8914:

The combined technologies/magic used by the Molten Alliance soldiers clearly makes them stronger than any Flame Legion or Moletariate soldiers. Plus, those two factions are slowly dying as a result of the players’ actions in the Sorrow’s Embrace and Citadel of Flames dungeons so there are not many reasons for those who decided to follow Scarlet to go back in their respective faction. Their own factions may not even want them back BECAUSE they chose to follow Scarlet.

This is quite likely.

Pecto.8914:

And despite her numerous defeats, Scarlet always won something in return which made her stronger each time she fought us. She disrupted many events across Tyria, creating mayhem and fear wherever she went. She became a force to be reckoned with, more than the Dredge Moletariate and the Flame Legion ever were which may be appealing for any bad guys.
Some may argue with me on that point but seriously, the Flame Legion were mostly a Charr problem/enemy and weren’t the boogeyman they used to be in GW1.
I’m not saying that the Flame Legion is not dangerous, but their power clearly waned as the years went by.

As for the Moletariate, it was bad for the dredge race but not a general threat to Tyria’s safety. But Scarlet IS a threat to anyone in Tyria.
As for the Nightmare Court, if Scarlet’s objective turns out to be shattering the Dream (as I think it is), you can bet that some Sylvaris inside the Nightmare Court might want to help her destroy it instead of simply corrupting it.
We can’t assume that every courtiers share all of Faolain’s desires/beliefs. So a splinter faction arose within the court to join Scarlet instead.
Finally, I always thought Scarlet brought the Kraits onboard by promising them the return of their Gods through the creation of the Toxic Hybrid which the Kraits mistakenly believed to be the reincarnation of their prophet or something like that. If you than add the fact that we, the players, aka Scarlet’s mortal enemies, killed the Toxic Hybrid, the Kraits are bound to be kittened about the other races and might still agree to follow Scarlet, especially if she promised them payback. And she’s delivering it right now…

I see.

Naetell.3815:

I beg to differ. If you look at what we’ve seen ingame, we can tell that Scarlet may call them their minions, but these groups often see themselves as anything but.
The Flame Legion side of the Molten Alliance intend to enslave the dredge as soon as Scarlet’s out of the picture.
The Krait are certain they are superior, and as soon as they have their shards, they’re out.

The problem is that this has completely fallen out of the game. Yes, in the aftermath of Flame & Frost, there was a single Flame Legion prisoner who expressed such a sentiment… and that was it. We never again saw any signs of those fault lines from that earliest chapter, never saw any complaint towards the way Scarlet treated or expression of individual motive, never even heard a single Molten Alliance member speak again. All they’ve done since April is jockey with the Aetherblades and Watchworks to throw away their lives serving as a distraction for Scarlet. And the krait? They have the shards, have had them since the Tower of Nightmares. They took them to a secure location in December. So why are they still working with Scarlet’s alliance system?

There are so many things wrong with Scarlet. Many has been listen by Konig already. The worst part is how she got the Kraits to work for her. The Kraits believes that they are far superior than any other race and do not need anything from anyone. They will kill or enslave anything they see on sight. It was never explained why they would even talk to Scarlet for more than 10 seconds.

Scarlet: Hi Kraits! I got this thing that……..
Krait: I KILLZZZ YOUUUZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!

Later on this was passed as a trick on Scarlet’s part. She somehow tricked the Kraits into working for her with the promises of bringing the prophets back. Let’s assume that the kraits are dumb enough to trust her and this is what happened (very unlikely, mind you). Well guess what the Tower of Nightmare project failed big time. That so called prophet (a krait/sylvari hybrid) was simply a priests who got “genetically, magically” modified. He isn’t a prophet, who are supposed to “return” from somewhere. And this krait hybrid was killed as soon as it was completed. And the Tower of Nightmare destroyed.

Ok all is finished then right? The Krait must have figured out that Scarlet is all lies by now right? Wrong! The Kraits join the rest of Scarlet’s minions and attacked LA with them!

Biggest WTF in history.

This brings me to my next point. One of the thing about Scarlet that, to me, didn’t make sense is how she went from an engineer to a bio magic weapon specialist.

Scarlet, being an engineer, should be limited to the benefits and weaknesses of being an engineer. That means good with technological and energy weapons, but not good with other things. Scarlet helped the weapons of Molten Alliance. That was ok. Their weapons seems to be some sort of exo-skeleton. So it is technology related.

The Krait/Sylvari hybrid isn’t a exo-skeleton. It is a genetic modification, magically imbue-ment, etc. There is no way, by lore, that Scarlet would know how to do this. She never studied biology, and she isn’t even a mage.

Think of a Gundam mecha designer. Suddenly this guy also made the C-Virus. >_>

The only explanation from this point is that Scarlet DIDN’T do anything to help the development of the hybrid. The hybrid is only the work of the Krait and Nightmare Court. Ok let’s say that’s is true. But now we have another problem. If that is true, then why would the Nightmare Court and the Kraits attack LA under Scarlet?

Remember the Tower of Nightmare project failed. So the Kraits knew they had been lied to. The Nightmare Court, heck I never figured out what stake they got in this whole thing.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Naetell.3815:

Would you say that Guild Wars usually employs a traditional narrative then? Or has it been on the literature side of the spectrum more often?

I would say that they’ve failed in a literary sense. They avoid putting a lot of the lore in text form and they’re limited by how much they can have said out loud by characters – which means that the lore that is delivered tends to be highly watered down and over-simplified. The lore isn’t really compelling to read mostly because there isn’t a lot to read.

When you’re subjected to two characters going “She’s going to attack Lions Arch” when players have been saying this for weeks in advance it’s a bit sad. They’ve failed to make the story about the player character, which would be fine if they were doing a better job of delivering the story through the personal story characters. As it is the characters seem to know very little in comparison to what the players know – which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since we exist in world and should have been able to say something.

I think in part it’s because there is this idea that gamers don’t like reading walls of text and just skip dialogue and story – so in trying to appease those players a little bit they’ve basically ended up with a weak story. They need to focus on strengthening what players have access to and how players have access to it. People who don’t care about story are not going to care about it full stop, so instead of trying to cater to the hardcore, game-hopping audience they should work on making the story compelling for the many players who do actually care about story.

(GW1 was a good mix of the literary and a traditional narrative, they took a lot more care with the writing – although this tends to be due to the fact that traditional quests do allow you to deliver more story – and the player (as well as the accompanying NPC’s) was an integral part of all of the narrative arcs.)

Hmm, I’ve seen this before, but that does beg the question: Do you think the player character should be central to the story?
We are used to playing as the protagonist because of single-player games. There are, of course, problems with taking the same approach in a multi-player game. No solution will be perfect, and will have opponents no matter how well executed it is.

How far can the game account for our voice? Especially considering the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of voices like that, all saying conflicting things.

I agree on your thoughts about gamers and reading. This isn’t a problem exclusive to GW2. In fact, the entire game industry has been reducing the amount of text in games for decades now. As a writer, it’s sad to see it progress in this direction.
On the other hand, decisions are made by companies. Companies care about the money a decision makes or loses. Hence, they will be more likely to cater to the majority.

As a writer though, I do think many people underestimate the power of a good story. I think games, as a medium, are missing out on a lot by not pursuing this path.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Naetell.3815:

I beg to differ. If you look at what we’ve seen ingame, we can tell that Scarlet may call them their minions, but these groups often see themselves as anything but.
The Flame Legion side of the Molten Alliance intend to enslave the dredge as soon as Scarlet’s out of the picture.
The Krait are certain they are superior, and as soon as they have their shards, they’re out.

The problem is that this has completely fallen out of the game. Yes, in the aftermath of Flame & Frost, there was a single Flame Legion prisoner who expressed such a sentiment… and that was it. We never again saw any signs of those fault lines from that earliest chapter, never saw any complaint towards the way Scarlet treated or expression of individual motive, never even heard a single Molten Alliance member speak again. All they’ve done since April is jockey with the Aetherblades and Watchworks to throw away their lives serving as a distraction for Scarlet. And the krait? They have the shards, have had them since the Tower of Nightmares. They took them to a secure location in December. So why are they still working with Scarlet’s alliance system?

Indeed, it never came back. It would have been an interesting venue for the story to explore as well. But that would have been much too experimental for game storylines, I’m afraid. ^^;

As a dev put it right before this patch:
They’re angry because the players beat them, and now it’s time for revenge.

CHIPS.6018:

There are so many things wrong with Scarlet. Many has been listen by Konig already. The worst part is how she got the Kraits to work for her. The Kraits believes that they are far superior than any other race and do not need anything from anyone. They will kill or enslave anything they see on sight. It was never explained why they would even talk to Scarlet for more than 10 seconds.

Scarlet: Hi Kraits! I got this thing that……..
Krait: I KILLZZZ YOUUUZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!

Later on this was passed as a trick on Scarlet’s part. She somehow tricked the Kraits into working for her with the promises of bringing the prophets back. Let’s assume that the kraits are dumb enough to trust her and this is what happened (very unlikely, mind you). Well guess what the Tower of Nightmare project failed big time. That so called prophet (a krait/sylvari hybrid) was simply a priests who got “genetically, magically” modified. He isn’t a prophet, who are supposed to “return” from somewhere. And this krait hybrid was killed as soon as it was completed. And the Tower of Nightmare destroyed.

Ok all is finished then right? The Krait must have figured out that Scarlet is all lies by now right? Wrong! The Kraits join the rest of Scarlet’s minions and attacked LA with them!

Biggest WTF in history.

This brings me to my next point. One of the thing about Scarlet that, to me, didn’t make sense is how she went from an engineer to a bio magic weapon specialist.

Scarlet helped the weapons of Molten Alliance. Fine I will let that go. Their weapons seems to be some sort of exo-skeleton. So it is technology related.

The Krait/Sylvari hybrid isn’t a exo-skeleton. It is a genetic modification, magically imbue-ment, etc. There is no way, by lore, that Scarlet would know how to do this. She never studied biology, and she isn’t even a mage.

Think of a Gundam mecha designer. Suddenly this guy also made the C-Virus. >_>

They probably should have made these ingame scenes. Speculation alone will not suffice to explain any of this.
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t think we will be getting them either.

Naetell.3815:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Naetell.3815:

I beg to differ. If you look at what we’ve seen ingame, we can tell that Scarlet may call them their minions, but these groups often see themselves as anything but.
The Flame Legion side of the Molten Alliance intend to enslave the dredge as soon as Scarlet’s out of the picture.
The Krait are certain they are superior, and as soon as they have their shards, they’re out.

The problem is that this has completely fallen out of the game. Yes, in the aftermath of Flame & Frost, there was a single Flame Legion prisoner who expressed such a sentiment… and that was it. We never again saw any signs of those fault lines from that earliest chapter, never saw any complaint towards the way Scarlet treated or expression of individual motive, never even heard a single Molten Alliance member speak again. All they’ve done since April is jockey with the Aetherblades and Watchworks to throw away their lives serving as a distraction for Scarlet. And the krait? They have the shards, have had them since the Tower of Nightmares. They took them to a secure location in December. So why are they still working with Scarlet’s alliance system?

Indeed, it never came back. It would have been an interesting venue for the story to explore as well. But that would have been much too experimental for game storylines, I’m afraid. ^^;

As a dev put it right before this patch:
They’re angry because the players beat them, and now it’s time for revenge.

Massively did a couple of good articles on the problems with Scarlet’s portrayal. I encourage you to check them out, I found both to be refreshingly well thought out.

To do those a great injustice, though, and paraphrase the salient points in my own terms- the problem is that Scarlet’s armies have been dealt a much greater injustice. They all had some small degree of characterization in their debut releases, but since then they’ve just been cookie-cutter mooks for us to kill, on par with and not meaningfully different than Scarlet’s mindless clockworks. There doesn’t seem to have been any reason at all to use existent factions rather than completely new enemies, unless it was to give Scarlet grounding, and thus legitimacy, in the established setting. As doing so has created the unpleasant symbolism of Scarlet dominating and discarding the existing content that we as players, and especially us lore-hounds, have become invested in, I would venture that it was not a worthwhile gain.

Naetell.3815:

Hmm, I’ve seen this before, but that does beg the question: Do you think the player character should be central to the story?
We are used to playing as the protagonist because of single-player games. There are, of course, problems with taking the same approach in a multi-player game. No solution will be perfect, and will have opponents no matter how well executed it is.

How far can the game account for our voice? Especially considering the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of voices like that, all saying conflicting things.

I agree on your thoughts about gamers and reading. This isn’t a problem exclusive to GW2. In fact, the entire game industry has been reducing the amount of text in games for decades now. As a writer, it’s sad to see it progress in this direction.
On the other hand, decisions are made by companies. Companies care about the money a decision makes or loses. Hence, they will be more likely to cater to the majority.

As a writer though, I do think many people underestimate the power of a good story. I think games, as a medium, are missing out on a lot by not pursuing this path.

I definitely agree. English/Writing Studies major here and it’s depressing watching story take more of a back seat in games.

I do think that it’s possible for the player character to be more central to the storyline in an MMO – we saw it happen in Guild Wars 1 (obviously slightly different to an MMO but it still worked) and we see it happen in the initial Personal Story missions.

The initial personal story missions are actually a really good example of Arenanet doing story right – it seems like a lot more effort went into the initial story experience of GW2. The player is actively involved in a lot of the decision making processes and we form direct relationships with the characters we meet. Things just went downhill when you hit the Order storylines, then got worse with Orr where NPC’s are your friends one moment and are being introduced to you as if you didn’t know them the next. I think one of the issues that Arenanet faced was how to cope with the scope and expectations of the storyline they had set up. If they had simplified a little more things would have gone better and there wouldn’t have been as much disappointment surrounding the personal story. I think that disappointment has partially fueled their work on the living story and resulted in them trying to do something very different. I commend them for trying, but it unfortunately hasn’t worked entirely.

The thing with Lion’s Arch I don’t understand is why they had no decent anti-air defense in the first place…even before Scarlet. I mean, they live in a world with flying dragons, you’d think that’d be something they’d have, not that it would have helped them. They may have anti-air and I have missed it, though.

One thing Scarlet did do right was forge alliances with those who can attack at every possible angle. The krait attack from the water, the dredge from the earth and the aethers from the air. Now how she got these alliances…yeah, questionable.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

(GW1 was a good mix of the literary and a traditional narrative, they took a lot more care with the writing – although this tends to be due to the fact that traditional quests do allow you to deliver more story – and the player (as well as the accompanying NPC’s) was an integral part of all of the narrative arcs.)

I agree. with gw2 came the removal of the walls of text which is where most of our lore came from in gw1. Anet thought it a waste of time to put in good character and story writing if no one could be bothered to read. After all, you want to progress in the game not read an e-book.

I will be honest and say that, no I didn’t read most of the text in gw1 because of two reasons. 1) I was more progress focused, as I said before and 2) the lore just wasn’t of interest to me until the later years of the game when I stopped to take the time to read. I realise now how much I actually missed. Thinking of all the quests I did and not truly knowing why.

So yes, I think anet CAN write excellent stories and lore, but somewhere between what they thought would be a better approach and what the community wants, we get what we currently have; a yearning for more.

Naetell.3815:

However, people making presumptions about the story and where it is going, then being proven wrong, shouldn’t create this level of backlash. Is it that they feel that whatever proves them wrong isn’t good enough that evokes this level of emotion?
Would you say the way the writers handle people’s expectations and play off them is at fault? Or is it exactly a lack of handling that gives this problem so much room to grow?

I would say that it’s because Scarlet’s not very well written in the first place, even ignoring people’s presumptions and expectations, that people feel that it’s offensive. And they think so because a lot of the game’s history is well written. But then including people’s expectations, I would say that yes, their expectations are set so high that when the reality hits them, it hits harder than it should – and I blame this on ArenaNet’s marketing team, because quite honestly the game I hear about in these videos is NOT Guild Wars 2.

And it honestly feels like ArenaNet’s quality has dropped with GW2 – and continues to do so slowly over time. And knowing that some amount of the old developers and artists have left (Kekai Kotaki, Doug Williams, John Hargrove, and others ), with the lack of Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee being active (or rather, their activities being known) and with the same artistry in every other update… it really makes me wonder how many of the over-200-employees of ArenaNet are actually working on the Living World, and how many are, well, not. Or if that number has, unannounced, dropped substantially.

I am, and have been since September, worried about the future of the game. I think that, at this point, there is no redemption possible for Scarlet – that chance has come and passed, squandered with Edge of the Mists and this update. But the game may survive depending on season 2. I do not expect it to – and this is coming from a hardcore lover of the game, who’s played the franchise without anything more than a month long break since 2006 – and honestly, the first break was this past December/January.

Naetell.3815:

I wouldn’t say borderline, or Mary Sue, as Scarlet is not a fan character.

A character doesn’t need to be a fan-made work to be a Mary Sue. Mary Sue was originally a fan-made character, true, but the trope that it stemmed, named after the character which is the most famous example of the trope, counts to characters in general – fan made, or not.

Naetell.3815:

Do you think her flaws have been dragged into the spotlight more because of the nature of a game being the medium of the story?

No. I think her “flaws” – what precious few there are – are not drawn into the spotlight at all. Her insanity is drawn into the spotlight, IMO, in an attempt by ArenaNet to try to salvage Scarlet’s character. The issue is that it’s not a flaw, it’s just an expansion, and it’s done in the wrong way – we’re hearing about past things, not present things. In the end, how she acted two weeks ago is unchanged, even if the past reveal was of 3 years prior.

Naetell.3815:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The krait working for her has yet to be clarified. She somehow got obelisk shards, and she somehow threatened the enslaving race of krait whom view themselves superior to all into working for her to get their prophets made… and they complied without question.

And even that would be speculation, as we haven’t seen any of these moments in the game. We simply know Scarlet convinced them to work for her with the shards as incentive.

Again, it seems a lack of information is a problem here.

What is speculation here?

• We know Scarlet got a hold of the Obelisk shards.
• We know she threatened the krait (seen during Edge of the Mists via one of her holo-recordings).
• We know the krait view themselves superior to everything and everyone and that they kill or enslave everyone else.
• And we know the krait’s goal was to make prophets.

There is no speculation in what I said. The only speculation here, is why the krait agreed to follow Scarlet.

Naetell.3815:

Would you argue then, that the villain of a story usually gets more character development?

I wouldn’t say loved. But the other characters’ seemingly effortless acceptance of her is a character flaw beyond doubt.

I think I am beginning to see what has happened here. It’s strange, but definitely something to keep in mind.

Not always. A villain – or any character – doesn’t necessarily need development. But then again, when development isn’t needed, there is no backstory to the character – Scarlet has a backstory, and by having a backstory, a development is needed.

And it’s usually pretty hard not to have development in a character in a long story – which the Living Story is. But above all, what is needed is to show their reaction to the victories and defeats. This, Scarlet lacks.

And others accepting Scarlet is not a character flaw. It is a writing flaw – or a story flaw if you must. There’s a fine difference.

I think adding to the pile of problems with the story is the PACING of it. It was the one thing I elaborated on several times before. It made things really hard to follow. While some of us understood what was going on because we turned every little rock over and speculated (up the wazoo), others who did not just felt beyond frustrated by the convoluted narrative. Almost most stories of this nature follow a three act narrative arch. An introduction, conflict, and then resolution.

The problems in this story that was presented to us in a sort of “information will be administered via ivy drip, until the floodgates open at the end” fashion. By the time they introduced Scarlet there was already way too many questions that should have been resolved before her appearance at the Queen’s Jubilee. So people did not get bent out of shape when she first appeared. The presentation issue was that the character was literally thrown at us. To which the background information we got on her was way out of line from the person we met in game. The short story “What Scarlet Saw,” which was outside of the game alleviated some of believability issues. Although people who play causally miss these stories completely end up presuming the character is just terribly written from the beginning.

In the end the writers went with answering most of these questions they presumed we understood by the last four updates. Which as much as I am grateful for in the “Origins of Madness/Edge of the Mists” story arch, it did not answer everything. The unfortunate part is if Scarlet dies by the next update there is going to many of those question that will never be answered. So we are left with plot hole galore. Which the community then tries to peace together, until Arena Net latter comes in to straighten those plot knots out. The problem becomes when it’s years latter these question are answered, which by that time some theories are kind of accepted as truths. It is then the missing pieces of the puzzle is presented as a back door event that happened outside of the game.

Honestly Arena Net has written good in game content before. Some of the racial personal story is pretty good. Also the first reappearance of Mad King Thorn (in GW2) was well presented and had good pacing. I think when they are not rushing things out the door it shows up better. When months ahead of time they have executed the concept, before moving onto the actual project which takes several more months. Nevertheless they don’t really want to do this until Season 1 ends. Hopefully Season 2 will be better with the new structure they are going to deliver it in.

Oh dear it’s quote-wars time.

Naetell.3815:

Oh my, more TVTropes terminology.
I think what you mean to say is that Scarlet’s improbable characterisation strains the suspension of disbelief to its extremes, even to the point many people give up on the story.
It seems again, that a lack of information is the cause of what troubles people with this story.

Lack of information or very questionable information. I’m just repeating what was said before, but the issue is that things keep happening that rely on an explanation to be accepted as believable. See what Konig said about Scarlet’s graduation as example. Then imagine the living story without the interviews (that happen to be scattered on fan sites across the internet which in itself should be a red flag for how bad their problem with delivering lore and story is) and livestreams. Until it was brought up in an interview on a site somewhere in the depths of the internet that she only took special courses, Scarlet graduating from all 3 asuran colleges was pretty much a lore sacrilege. And that’s unfortunately exactly what was ingame and in the short story.

Naetell.3815:

A murder mystery isn’t always about who did it. The why and how of things can be made just as interesting. It is all a matter of writing.

I saw the mystery puzzle part as an extended recap of the information they did give us over the past year, with some new information added in.
I do not think that at that point of the story, they should have done more exposition.

Despite that, the why of things is keeping people invested if you look at other parts of the forum. Rampant speculation is going on everywhere. Revealing everything before the end doesn’t suit every kind of story.
There is, however, a lack of foreshadowing.

We’re not running low on foreshadowing itself. The steam vents in Flame and Frost, Scarlet’s first appearance ingame, the veil hiding the tower, were foreshadowing to the respective releases. Scarlet’s secret lair with everything in it is foreshadowing of the ‘reveal’. My point, they shouldn’t have made the big reveal of this mystery the foundation and center of the plot. And then put said reveal on how everything is connected and why everything is happening at the very, very end.

What I meant to say with my analogy is simply that we’re missing the ‘clue’-parts of a murder mystery. Not the EOTM release with the puzzle. I’m talking about the whole living story season. Until recently absolutely everything was a disjointed mess that made little sense and that’s a fairly negative kind of ‘mystery’.

- Next post -

Naetell.3815:

-snip because Aaron pretty much answered everything I wanted to put there-

Worse than destroyers, akin to the doing of an Elder dragon…
Were these things the writers themselves said? Or was it said by characters in the game?

If you would recall, before the game was released, people said the Elder dragons had poor foundations in the lore as well.
I would not say zero, but clearly not enough explaining has been done.
As for succeeding where Zhaitan didn’t. Zhaitan didn’t send a massive air force on LA, a city with no air defenses. His minions came by sea, and even then it took the combined might of the three orders to chase those minions out.

See next post.

Worse than destroyers was ingame. It was even clarified by the devs because the wording was a little unclear that they meant to say that the Molten Alliance is worse than destroyers.

Elder dragons unfound in lore? Wut? Would you back up that claim with something?

And that is exactly the problem. Would you have said before this patch in regards to the PS "oh, Zhaitan only sent his fleet’’? He could have easily sent a dozen of the Tequatl-lookalikes that you can see fighting Pact airships over Orr to LA. But that’s not where the devs wanted to take the personal story with Zhaitan who’s been well established as eldtritch abomination over the whole game. That’s however where they went with Scarlet who even proclaims air superiority wins wars as if Tyria had a whole history of air battles, so that creates the nasty comparison.

Naetell.3815:

Would you argue no good stories can be written with a “Mary Sue” type character in them?

I’m arguing that they set themselves up for a ‘Mary Sue’ by forgetting about the nature of static characters. They could only develop her with backstory (something along these lines is something they admitted in a livestream themselves) and they screwed up exactly that. But to answer your question, no. A good story can be written even with a Mary Sue. It’s tricky, but I’d say it depends on the setting and where the focus of the story lies.

Naetell.3815:

So people complained, they recitified that, and now complain more because it wasn’t handled perfectly? Isn’t that asking for too much given the medium and timespan this was done in?
Had you preferred the exposition be done by a GM avatar instead?

Gameplay and Story will always clash somewhere if not handled right. In this case, I’d say it was simply a kneejerk reaction to the complaints. Gameplay-wise they put all the needed info about Scarlet at one place so no one would miss her backstory. At the same time story-wise it’s created a situation where everyone at one place conveniently happened to know about Scarlet’s mentors and some of her backstory when only one, two patches before no one even knew who she was.

For time and medium it’s been mentioned a couple of times by the devs themselves that the 2 week cadence leads to lots of plot-important content being cut because they only have 4 months for each release. It’s obvious that the development windows they have now don’t suffice to put in everything they want for each release. But they’ve made the cadence GW2’s new unique selling point so whether they’ll change it to something else remains to be seen.

And since you’ve asked me about my preference. I would have preferred it if they left out the backstory completely and put something else for the NPCs. It only made her character worse as stated multiple times in this thread. It’s not that putting the short stories ingame itself is a bad thing, not at all – they just picked the wrong short story to do that imo.

Naetell.3815:

Would you argue no good stories can be written with a “Mary Sue” type character in them?

Just to respond to this:

The character D in the series Vampire Hunter D can be argued to be a Mary Sue of sorts. He is, in effect, perfect in every way (knows everything that shows before him, can’t seem to die or be beaten physically, magically, or technologically, etc.), and so little is told over every book that it gives the author room to make him ever more knowledgable and without limitations. Despite this fact, the series is a multinational best seller, and one I personally love as well because the character trope is (IMO) done very well. Mind you, I only speak with knowledge of the first 5 books (last I saw there were 23 books, in its original Japanese, and 19 of which were translated into English).

So yes, a Mary Sue character can exist within a great story. It’s all about the storytelling and balancing the “Snowflake Syndrome” (a less layman’s term for what a Mary Sue, effectively, is – an overtly unique and sometimes (near) perfect character) with what the character goes through.

Scarlet and the Living World, however, don’t even come close to the level of story writing that Vampire Hunter D is.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Naetell.3815:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Naetell.3815:

I beg to differ. If you look at what we’ve seen ingame, we can tell that Scarlet may call them their minions, but these groups often see themselves as anything but.
The Flame Legion side of the Molten Alliance intend to enslave the dredge as soon as Scarlet’s out of the picture.
The Krait are certain they are superior, and as soon as they have their shards, they’re out.

The problem is that this has completely fallen out of the game. Yes, in the aftermath of Flame & Frost, there was a single Flame Legion prisoner who expressed such a sentiment… and that was it. We never again saw any signs of those fault lines from that earliest chapter, never saw any complaint towards the way Scarlet treated or expression of individual motive, never even heard a single Molten Alliance member speak again. All they’ve done since April is jockey with the Aetherblades and Watchworks to throw away their lives serving as a distraction for Scarlet. And the krait? They have the shards, have had them since the Tower of Nightmares. They took them to a secure location in December. So why are they still working with Scarlet’s alliance system?

Indeed, it never came back. It would have been an interesting venue for the story to explore as well. But that would have been much too experimental for game storylines, I’m afraid. ^^;

As a dev put it right before this patch:
They’re angry because the players beat them, and now it’s time for revenge.

Massively did a couple of good articles on the problems with Scarlet’s portrayal. I encourage you to check them out, I found both to be refreshingly well thought out.

To do those a great injustice, though, and paraphrase the salient points in my own terms- the problem is that Scarlet’s armies have been dealt a much greater injustice. They all had some small degree of characterization in their debut releases, but since then they’ve just been cookie-cutter mooks for us to kill, on par with and not meaningfully different than Scarlet’s mindless clockworks. There doesn’t seem to have been any reason at all to use existent factions rather than completely new enemies, unless it was to give Scarlet grounding, and thus legitimacy, in the established setting. As doing so has created the unpleasant symbolism of Scarlet dominating and discarding the existing content that we as players, and especially us lore-hounds, have become invested in, I would venture that it was not a worthwhile gain.

I have seen and went through these articles before. They’re indeed well thought out.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I definitely agree. English/Writing Studies major here and it’s depressing watching story take more of a back seat in games.

I do think that it’s possible for the player character to be more central to the storyline in an MMO – we saw it happen in Guild Wars 1 (obviously slightly different to an MMO but it still worked) and we see it happen in the initial Personal Story missions.

The initial personal story missions are actually a really good example of Arenanet doing story right – it seems like a lot more effort went into the initial story experience of GW2. The player is actively involved in a lot of the decision making processes and we form direct relationships with the characters we meet. Things just went downhill when you hit the Order storylines, then got worse with Orr where NPC’s are your friends one moment and are being introduced to you as if you didn’t know them the next. I think one of the issues that Arenanet faced was how to cope with the scope and expectations of the storyline they had set up. If they had simplified a little more things would have gone better and there wouldn’t have been as much disappointment surrounding the personal story. I think that disappointment has partially fueled their work on the living story and resulted in them trying to do something very different. I commend them for trying, but it unfortunately hasn’t worked entirely.

Guild Wars 1 had fewer variables to work with as well. The time required to account for every permutation and choice the players have made for their character may well be out of the scope of a 2-week release schedule.

The personal story wouldn’t have needed that much more polish to be acceptable. There are several problems I could list, but none of them would be impossible to overcome. Still, they had a long time to work on it, when compared with the Living World releases.
I will recommend making the player play a more central part, but this also means players will have to accept that they will have to share the spotlight with the NPC characters as well. Else we’d end up with a long history of feats attributed to “nameless heroes”.

JayMack.8295:

The thing with Lion’s Arch I don’t understand is why they had no decent anti-air defense in the first place…even before Scarlet. I mean, they live in a world with flying dragons, you’d think that’d be something they’d have, not that it would have helped them. They may have anti-air and I have missed it, though.

One thing Scarlet did do right was forge alliances with those who can attack at every possible angle. The krait attack from the water, the dredge from the earth and the aethers from the air. Now how she got these alliances…yeah, questionable.

A good point.
One could argue that in the game, the dragons always come down to the ground to fight us. They’re not exactly the “attack from the skies” type of dragon.

Not questionable, simply unmentioned. Her ability to forge these alliances without us actually being shown her persuasive powers is her greatest failing as a character.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I would say that it’s because Scarlet’s not very well written in the first place, even ignoring people’s presumptions and expectations, that people feel that it’s offensive. And they think so because a lot of the game’s history is well written. But then including people’s expectations, I would say that yes, their expectations are set so high that when the reality hits them, it hits harder than it should – and I blame this on ArenaNet’s marketing team, because quite honestly the game I hear about in these videos is NOT Guild Wars 2.

I don’t know about other people, of course, but I was highly suspicious of these marketing videos before the game was even released. No one wanted to hear something bad said about the game though.
It’s unfortunate, but that’s the sad reality of living in our consumption-oriented society.

Scarlet’s character has several severe failings, but I’ve seen worse. Much worse.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And it honestly feels like ArenaNet’s quality has dropped with GW2 – and continues to do so slowly over time. And knowing that some amount of the old developers and artists have left (Kekai Kotaki, Doug Williams, John Hargrove, and others ), with the lack of Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee being active (or rather, their activities being known) and with the same artistry in every other update… it really makes me wonder how many of the over-200-employees of ArenaNet are actually working on the Living World, and how many are, well, not. Or if that number has, unannounced, dropped substantially.

I’m afraid I don’t have enough information to make a sound assessment on the reasons why, or even if, the quality has dropped that much. There is a notable difference, but we are comparing content being released every 2 weeks with a game that has been around for 10 years here.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I am, and have been since September, worried about the future of the game. I think that, at this point, there is no redemption possible for Scarlet – that chance has come and passed, squandered with Edge of the Mists and this update. But the game may survive depending on season 2. I do not expect it to – and this is coming from a hardcore lover of the game, who’s played the franchise without anything more than a month long break since 2006 – and honestly, the first break was this past December/January.

I would not worry about the survivability of the game at this point. GW2 still has a healthy playerbase.
Neither do I think they could have redeemed Scarlet within one month, especially this close to the ending. The problems with the character wouldn’t have disappeared no matter what they had done at this point. All I can do is spend more attention to Scarlet’s analysis, and I will do exactly so as well.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A character doesn’t need to be a fan-made work to be a Mary Sue. Mary Sue was originally a fan-made character, true, but the trope that it stemmed, named after the character which is the most famous example of the trope, counts to characters in general – fan made, or not.

Yes, but if you are going to use TVTropes terminology, then the correct term would be Canon Sue, or Villain Sue, depending on the argument you’d like to make.
It’s also noteworthy that having such a character in a professionally written work does not have to mean the work is worse off because of it, while this is almost universally the case in fan works.
Regardless, Scarlet is an example of how not to handle it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

No. I think her “flaws” – what precious few there are – are not drawn into the spotlight at all. Her insanity is drawn into the spotlight, IMO, in an attempt by ArenaNet to try to salvage Scarlet’s character. The issue is that it’s not a flaw, it’s just an expansion, and it’s done in the wrong way – we’re hearing about past things, not present things. In the end, how she acted two weeks ago is unchanged, even if the past reveal was of 3 years prior.

Ah, my bad. I was referring to the problems with her character with the word flaws, not with actual flaws the character possesses to offset their positive traits.

I have a lot to say about her insanity to begin with, but I’m not going to open that can of bees at this time.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

What is speculation here?

• We know Scarlet got a hold of the Obelisk shards.
• We know she threatened the krait (seen during Edge of the Mists via one of her holo-recordings).
• We know the krait view themselves superior to everything and everyone and that they kill or enslave everyone else.
• And we know the krait’s goal was to make prophets.

There is no speculation in what I said. The only speculation here, is why the krait agreed to follow Scarlet.

Yes, exactly. In addition to: “Why didn’t they immediately kill her on sight?”

The krait remain the weakest link in her alliances in terms of believability.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Not always. A villain – or any character – doesn’t necessarily need development. But then again, when development isn’t needed, there is no backstory to the character – Scarlet has a backstory, and by having a backstory, a development is needed.

And it’s usually pretty hard not to have development in a character in a long story – which the Living Story is. But above all, what is needed is to show their reaction to the victories and defeats. This, Scarlet lacks.

And others accepting Scarlet is not a character flaw. It is a writing flaw – or a story flaw if you must. There’s a fine difference.

Hmm, I think this may be disappointing, but the Living World’s Season 1 story isn’t all that long. It was told over a great span of time, yes, but in actual word count it doesn’t come close to, say, the Personal Story.
The writers underestimated the players’ ability to process information, and we’ll see definite improvements in this area in Season 2.

I would be hard pressed to find a story where others accepting the villain is a character flaw.

Sindex.9520:

I think adding to the pile of problems with the story is the PACING of it. It was the one thing I elaborated on several times before. It made things really hard to follow. While some of us understood what was going on because we turned every little rock over and speculated (up the wazoo), others who did not just felt beyond frustrated by the convoluted narrative. Almost most stories of this nature follow a three act narrative arch. An introduction, conflict, and then resolution.

The problems in this story that was presented to us in a sort of “information will be administered via ivy drip, until the floodgates open at the end” fashion. By the time they introduced Scarlet there was already way too many questions that should have been resolved before her appearance at the Queen’s Jubilee. So people did not get bent out of shape when she first appeared. The presentation issue was that the character was literally thrown at us. To which the background information we got on her was way out of line from the person we met in game. The short story “What Scarlet Saw,” which was outside of the game alleviated some of believability issues. Although people who play causally miss these stories completely end up presuming the character is just terribly written from the beginning.

In the end the writers went with answering most of these questions they presumed we understood by the last four updates. Which as much as I am grateful for in the “Origins of Madness/Edge of the Mists” story arch, it did not answer everything. The unfortunate part is if Scarlet dies by the next update there is going to many of those question that will never be answered. So we are left with plot hole galore. Which the community then tries to peace together, until Arena Net latter comes in to straighten those plot knots out. The problem becomes when it’s years latter these question are answered, which by that time some theories are kind of accepted as truths. It is then the missing pieces of the puzzle is presented as a back door event that happened outside of the game.

Honestly Arena Net has written good in game content before. Some of the racial personal story is pretty good. Also the first reappearance of Mad King Thorn (in GW2) was well presented and had good pacing. I think when they are not rushing things out the door it shows up better. When months ahead of time they have executed the concept, before moving onto the actual project which takes several more months. Nevertheless they don’t really want to do this until Season 1 ends. Hopefully Season 2 will be better with the new structure they are going to deliver it in.

The pacing is a known problem. The writers underestimated this, and will make adjustments in the delivery of Season 2.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Oh dear it’s quote-wars time.

Just my way of keeping this orderly. ^^ If it bothers you, feel free to write more freeform.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Lack of information or very questionable information. I’m just repeating what was said before, but the issue is that things keep happening that rely on an explanation to be accepted as believable. See what Konig said about Scarlet’s graduation as example. Then imagine the living story without the interviews (that happen to be scattered on fan sites across the internet which in itself should be a red flag for how bad their problem with delivering lore and story is) and livestreams. Until it was brought up in an interview on a site somewhere in the depths of the internet that she only took special courses, Scarlet graduating from all 3 asuran colleges was pretty much a lore sacrilege. And that’s unfortunately exactly what was ingame and in the short story.

Yes, exactly. Information should be presented through the story, not through external interviews, blogs, and websites. As a writer, I cannot and will not accept anything less.

ElysianEternity.6215:

We’re not running low on foreshadowing itself. The steam vents in Flame and Frost, Scarlet’s first appearance ingame, the veil hiding the tower, were foreshadowing to the respective releases. Scarlet’s secret lair with everything in it is foreshadowing of the ‘reveal’. My point, they shouldn’t have made the big reveal of this mystery the foundation and center of the plot. And then put said reveal on how everything is connected and why everything is happening at the very, very end.

What I meant to say with my analogy is simply that we’re missing the ‘clue’-parts of a murder mystery. Not the EOTM release with the puzzle. I’m talking about the whole living story season. Until recently absolutely everything was a disjointed mess that made little sense and that’s a fairly negative kind of ‘mystery’.

- Next post -

Ah yes. That too is a lack of information, perhaps joined by the known problem with the pacing of the story. I will definitely make a point of this.
I think I have a pretty good idea where the problem orginated and how to prevent it from happening again. Unfortunately, I’m not a writer for Arenanet. ^^;

ElysianEternity.6215:

Worse than destroyers was ingame. It was even clarified by the devs because the wording was a little unclear that they meant to say that the Molten Alliance is worse than destroyers.

It may refer to the destroyers as the people on Tyria know them now. The current destroyers on Tyria’s surface are much less of a threat than the ones we players know are roaming in the depths.
Even with everything the Molten Alliance has at their disposal, I don’t see them even close to being as threatening as the destroyers as we saw them in GW1.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Elder dragons unfound in lore? Wut? Would you back up that claim with something?

I’m sorry if I am mistaken, but I was under the impression there was no mention of the Elder Dragons in GW1.

ElysianEternity.6215:

And that is exactly the problem. Would you have said before this patch in regards to the PS "oh, Zhaitan only sent his fleet’’? He could have easily sent a dozen of the Tequatl-lookalikes that you can see fighting Pact airships over Orr to LA. But that’s not where the devs wanted to take the personal story with Zhaitan who’s been well established as eldtritch abomination over the whole game. That’s however where they went with Scarlet who even proclaims air superiority wins wars as if Tyria had a whole history of air battles, so that creates the nasty comparison.

Tyria has a history of one air battle. It probably was an oversight of the writers, considering real life has a history of air battles and people would get it even if it doesn’t make any sense in-universe.

ElysianEternity.6215:

I’m arguing that they set themselves up for a ‘Mary Sue’ by forgetting about the nature of static characters. They could only develop her with backstory (something along these lines is something they admitted in a livestream themselves) and they screwed up exactly that. But to answer your question, no. A good story can be written even with a Mary Sue. It’s tricky, but I’d say it depends on the setting and where the focus of the story lies.

I think the issue is more that they made her a static character to begin with. She could have easily been a dynamic character. But perhaps I’m thinking too much as a writer and not enough as a developer here to judge this clearly. There are technical limitations to account for.

ElysianEternity.6215:

Gameplay and Story will always clash somewhere if not handled right. In this case, I’d say it was simply a kneejerk reaction to the complaints. Gameplay-wise they put all the needed info about Scarlet at one place so no one would miss her backstory. At the same time story-wise it’s created a situation where everyone at one place conveniently happened to know about Scarlet’s mentors and some of her backstory when only one, two patches before no one even knew who she was.

Yes, but there were but few ways to handle that gracefully.
We either have a character in-universe who happens to know these things conveniently, thus stretching the suspension of disbelief to extremes, or we have to deal with an omniscient author avatar explaining things no one in-universe could possibly know.

It would, of course, have been preferable had we been able to learn about Scarlet’s backstory in a more story friendly manner. I can think of several ways to do so, but again, we may have run into another technical limitation.

ElysianEternity.6215:

For time and medium it’s been mentioned a couple of times by the devs themselves that the 2 week cadence leads to lots of plot-important content being cut because they only have 4 months for each release. It’s obvious that the development windows they have now don’t suffice to put in everything they want for each release. But they’ve made the cadence GW2’s new unique selling point so whether they’ll change it to something else remains to be seen.

And since you’ve asked me about my preference. I would have preferred it if they left out the backstory completely and put something else for the NPCs. It only made her character worse as stated multiple times in this thread. It’s not that putting the short stories ingame itself is a bad thing, not at all – they just picked the wrong short story to do that imo.

They’ll find another way to make it work.
Restrictions breed creativity, after all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Naetell.3815:

Would you argue no good stories can be written with a “Mary Sue” type character in them?

Just to respond to this:

The character D in the series Vampire Hunter D can be argued to be a Mary Sue of sorts. He is, in effect, perfect in every way (knows everything that shows before him, can’t seem to die or be beaten physically, magically, or technologically, etc.), and so little is told over every book that it gives the author room to make him ever more knowledgable and without limitations. Despite this fact, the series is a multinational best seller, and one I personally love as well because the character trope is (IMO) done very well. Mind you, I only speak with knowledge of the first 5 books (last I saw there were 23 books, in its original Japanese, and 19 of which were translated into English).

So yes, a Mary Sue character can exist within a great story. It’s all about the storytelling and balancing the “Snowflake Syndrome” (a less layman’s term for what a Mary Sue, effectively, is – an overtly unique and sometimes (near) perfect character) with what the character goes through.

Scarlet and the Living World, however, don’t even come close to the level of story writing that Vampire Hunter D is.

I agree. Vampire Hunter D is a wonderful story, and a good example of how good writing can overcome even the nastiest of negative tropes.

The sad part is that Scarlet wouldn’t even need that much balancing to be an acceptable character, had they been looking out for this pitfall from the start.
At this point, she is well beyond redeemable.
I still have to see the end of Season 1, but I feel I can already write a lot about it.

Naetell.3815:

I’m afraid I don’t have enough information to make a sound assessment on the reasons why, or even if, the quality has dropped that much. There is a notable difference, but we are comparing content being released every 2 weeks with a game that has been around for 10 years here.

That feels like a very poor argument, that last bit. Content being released every 2 weeks, sure, but Nightfall was made in 6 months – in fact, in the amount of time we’ve gotten to where we are in the Living World, GW1 had produced Sorrow’s Furnace/Tomb of the Primeval King changes/Titan quests, 4 Holidays, and 2 full campaigns – though one had horrible voice acting mind you (that has always been a down point of ArenaNet, truth be told). Compare the entirety of Factions and Nightfall, along with the end-game content of Prophecies sans Underworld and Fissure of Woe to the Living World on full.

Which is better?

Naetell.3815:

I would not worry about the survivability of the game at this point. GW2 still has a healthy playerbase.

All a “healthy playerbase” needs is one reason for a mass exodus. Ever decreasing story, and ever decreasing soloable content when the game promises the ability to play through the whole game on your own if you wish, can and will reduce the playerbase. A lot of my guild members – all of which lovers of lore – stopped playing, or play far less frequently, as of the end of Tower of Nightmare content. Some returned, but they rarely rep the guild because – I presume – they’re losing interest in the lore and just play the game to play the game, not enjoy the story. Though that last bit is only speculating. I know some players who have flat out given up on the story and if they log on, they’re logging only for the dailies so that in the off chance that the story returns to par or better, they won’t be fully behind.

Naetell.3815:

Yes, but if you are going to use TVTropes terminology, then the correct term would be Canon Sue, or Villain Sue, depending on the argument you’d like to make.
It’s also noteworthy that having such a character in a professionally written work does not have to mean the work is worse off because of it, while this is almost universally the case in fan works.

On the first, hence why I used “borderline” – I’m not well versed in TvTropes, so I went with what I knew to be closest.
And yes, I’m aware. See a later post of mine about Vampire Hunter D.

Naetell.3815:

Yes, exactly. In addition to: “Why didn’t they immediately kill her on sight?”

But I didn’t say that, either. And that is not speculation, that’s a question. Speculation is guesses to questions we don’t have answers to.

Naetell.3815:

Hmm, I think this may be disappointing, but the Living World’s Season 1 story isn’t all that long. It was told over a great span of time, yes, but in actual word count it doesn’t come close to, say, the Personal Story.
The writers underestimated the players’ ability to process information, and we’ll see definite improvements in this area in Season 2.

I would be hard pressed to find a story where others accepting the villain is a character flaw.

I fail to see how the length in comparison to the Personal Story is of relevance. I am aware it isn’t that long, but it is long enough to mandate some character development, of which, as I noted, there is none.

And I see no reason to claim that we’ll “definitely” see improvements.

And as I said, the flaw is not of the character, but of the story – and it is not how others accept her, but how everyone likes her without question. Not just accept, likes and shares secrets with when they’re selfish or prudish, or downright egotistical.

I wish they included more nostalgy from gw1. There are LIMITLESS interesting things to do a living story about. Some random examples on top of my head:

• Glint
• Gods
• Hall of Heroes
• Underworld/Fow/ToPK
• Investigating history about the destruction of: old ascalon, drox, nolani academy, etc…
• “epic new characters” like prince rurik or other gw1 examples
• Xunlai
• Shining blade / White mantle

Even for players that haven’t played gw1, these subjects provide a lot of depth. And playing trough them with a mix of GW1 players. It will give a lot of nostalgia and depth to be able to teach the non GW1 players about the history.

I also think that the open world puzzles are an awesome way to let players work together. You have to actually think, and read to solve mysteries. Instead of just pressing #1.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

That feels like a very poor argument, that last bit. Content being released every 2 weeks, sure, but Nightfall was made in 6 months – in fact, in the amount of time we’ve gotten to where we are in the Living World, GW1 had produced Sorrow’s Furnace/Tomb of the Primeval King changes/Titan quests, 4 Holidays, and 2 full campaigns – though one had horrible voice acting mind you (that has always been a down point of ArenaNet, truth be told). Compare the entirety of Factions and Nightfall, along with the end-game content of Prophecies sans Underworld and Fissure of Woe to the Living World on full.

Which is better?

We can’t know how easy or hard it was to develop for GW1 vs GW2. They’re coded differently and utilise a different engine.
Considering the difference in sheer volume put out in the same timespan, we can conclude something is adding difficulty to the development process. Without inside information, it would be impossible to tell what the problem is exactly.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

All a “healthy playerbase” needs is one reason for a mass exodus. Ever decreasing story, and ever decreasing soloable content when the game promises the ability to play through the whole game on your own if you wish, can and will reduce the playerbase. A lot of my guild members – all of which lovers of lore – stopped playing, or play far less frequently, as of the end of Tower of Nightmare content. Some returned, but they rarely rep the guild because – I presume – they’re losing interest in the lore and just play the game to play the game, not enjoy the story. Though that last bit is only speculating. I know some players who have flat out given up on the story and if they log on, they’re logging only for the dailies so that in the off chance that the story returns to par or better, they won’t be fully behind.

I’ve seen several MMO games close down after players abandoned them, but I’ve never even heard of one mass exodus happening due to the story.

Far more frequently, the company goes under before they shut their servers down.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

On the first, hence why I used “borderline” – I’m not well versed in TvTropes, so I went with what I knew to be closest.
And yes, I’m aware. See a later post of mine about Vampire Hunter D.

TvTropes is useful, but insists on mixing its own “hip” terminology with the accepted standard. This can be quite annoying at times.

And yes, I saw that post. ^^

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I fail to see how the length in comparison to the Personal Story is of relevance. I am aware it isn’t that long, but it is long enough to mandate some character development, of which, as I noted, there is none.

None for Scarlet, at least, and it could have been interesting had they opted to develop her character as the story went on.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And I see no reason to claim that we’ll “definitely” see improvements.

And as I said, the flaw is not of the character, but of the story – and it is not how others accept her, but how everyone likes her without question. Not just accept, likes and shares secrets with when they’re selfish or prudish, or downright egotistical.

Fine line there.
According to the TvTropes version of a Sue, being liked without question by everyone else in the story is a character trope.
It could be argued either way, but it is the same problem nonetheless. A problem that never should have existed in the first place.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

I wish they included more nostalgy from gw1. There are LIMITLESS interesting things to do a living story about. Some random examples on top of my head:

• Glint
• Gods
• Hall of Heroes
• Underworld/Fow/ToPK
• Investigating history about the destruction of: old ascalon, drox, nolani academy, etc…
• “epic new characters” like prince rurik or other gw1 examples
• Xunlai
• Shining blade / White mantle

Even for players that haven’t played gw1, these subjects provide a lot of depth. And playing trough them with a mix of GW1 players. It will give a lot of nostalgia and depth to be able to teach the non GW1 players about the history.

I also think that the open world puzzles are an awesome way to let players work together. You have to actually think, and read to solve mysteries. Instead of just pressing #1.

The problem there would be that most of the story threads in GW1 were human-centric. The devs are actively trying not to make GW2 all about humans. If we get a human-related storyline, then I think the chances we’ll see some GW1 references pop up are quite high, but until then, they’re not likely to touch on them.

The thing is some of those GW1 moments can easily be transcribed as a multiracial event. Look how Orr was handled . Especially it’s explorable dungeon Arah narrative that involves the elder races (not just humans) and priory multiracial investigations.

However Arena Net saying that “we need to suppress all the human lore (to make them boring) and bring the other races into the light.” Which is a pure mockery, because of what we get in game. Especially for the Sylvari who seem to get tossed all around for being an undeveloped race. Out of all the races they are the ones who get poorly written main characters on several occasions. They swing the emotional wrecking ball around way too much. Either dull and boring exposition king Trahearne. Or way over the top megalomaniac Scarlet.

Caithe and Faolain are interesting because they present a morale gray area due to their personal relationship with each other. However TA’s story mode Cadeyrn death was really poorly presented in game and came out of nowhere. Never explained why he was taking orders from Faolain, since he was the original founder of the Nightmare Court. Sieran was believable, even with some of her somewhat annoying antics. Canach had some decent narrative (most the good stuff outside the game), even though some of it was under developed. His transition from being a hardcore renegade to a person seeking redemption feels a bit rushed.

I understand certain people on development team have a bias for the Sylvari. However if your going to write these characters into the game, please make them engrossing. Without excessive emotional roller coaster personality (or lack thereof) gimmicks. If you do a Sylvari with an eccentric personality make them believable to the point where we care what happens to them.

Well, think of it as watching CSI vs Game of Thrones. Like with episodes of CSI, Scarlet is both introduced and ended (presumably) in this “episode” of the living world, and has no connection to the last “episode” (Zhaitan). Contrarily, Game of Thrones is ever expanding on its lore and developing existing characters, allowing the story to proceed without introducing circumstances that may seem weird to the viewer.

Both shows can be fun to watch, but CSI will never feel as fulfilling, entice you to watch the next episode, garner as much interest, or win as many awards as Game of Thrones will.

EFWinters.5421:

Well, think of it as watching CSI vs Game of Thrones. Like with episodes of CSI, Scarlet is both introduced and ended (presumably) in this “episode” of the living world, and has no connection to the last “episode” (Zhaitan). Contrarily, Game of Thrones is ever expanding on its lore and developing existing characters, allowing the story to proceed without introducing circumstances that may seem weird to the viewer.

Both shows can be fun to watch, but CSI will never feel as fulfilling, entice you to watch the next episode, garner as much interest, or win as many awards as Game of Thrones will.

Yeah, but this episode of CSI has lasted an entire year. Can you think of a single criminal on that show who would seem remotely interesting after being stretched out that long?

Someone addressed me in the game today to tell me this:

Magic and the bloodstones have been retconned to be replaced by the leylines.
Everything we did in GW1 is being marginalised to “keep humans equal to other races”. So now they’re retconning everything we knew, and told that the humans were wrong all along.
For example: Compare http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bloodstone with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Magic and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic
And last but not least: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mouvelian_calendar, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Canthan_calendar, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dynastic_Reckoning vs http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mouvelian_Calendar.

What do you say?