Guild Wars 2

Apples and oranges. Yes not every comment that compares people to parent and child means they that, but in this instance it serves no purpose other than to hint at exactly that. I mean there was really no speculation that this could be the case at large from the community, atleast I can’t remember anyone but me saying that it might be the case, so why hint at it, as soon as Livia appears in the story unless they want people to think it is a thing?

Why would she tell Lazarus the truth? If they had lost to him, that only makes him go after her child. As I said, it’s ambiguous, but the way she reacts hints at it pretty strongly.

I think it’s 2 of 3 that were correct now with the last release. The incorrect one was about the Sylvari, I thought they were some kind of dragon anti-virus, born from Tyria to combat them, hence their immunity to the corruption. Well HoT proved me wrong.

The two correct ones were Glint actually being a dragon champ and (Spoiler for last mission of LS3 EP6)Livia being Anise mother.

Ok a bit of the spoiler for the end, so don’t look at it until you haven’t finished the story missions (or you don’t care about spoilers).

That remindes of the time when people thought Glint was just a female of the Elder Dragon species, and females are just that much smaller than males. That was long before the games release, when we only knew Primordus name. Anyway, even back then I said Glint was a dragon champion like the Great Destroyer and I had to wait until the second book was released to get my confirmation. But that only took 3 years to confirm, this spoiler theory took 5! :P

Was on vacation so I only played it now. That reveal was…

LEFT FIELD —> REVEAL

Yep that is where it came from. It seems like they are going completely against the original plans now. They distanced the lore of GW2 as much as they could from Nighfall and it’s focus on the human gods, even saying they are basically gone. And now they are back. Don’t get me wrong, I think that side of the lore is more interesting than the endless debates about dragon magic. It just kind of came out of nowhere. Or was there any build up that in hindsight was hinting as Balthazar?

Ok let’s go from beginning to end.

A Meeting of Ministers: I loved the guy who fought for his rights after Jennah announced her questionable plans. Seriously, if it had been me there, instead of my character, I would said something. That was some Palpatine-stuff. Aside from that, nothing too interesting. Wow Estelle was evil all along. Very twist, such surprise.

Every inbetween quest and the map: Loved the new map. A lot of attention to detail in this one. Especially the hidden areas, that I’m not going to spoil. The quests were pretty standard and we got another “disguise” mission. Why do we get those every episode now? I mean, I like them, but it’s a bit too much.

Confessor’s End: Now this was one of the best missions in the game, if you ask me. Long, but not bothersome. Challenging, but not unfair (well except… I’ll get to that). The letters tied up sooooo many plotholes. Demmi was a nice throwback, and I always enjoy Anise, even if she seemed a lot less witty in this episode. But we had Canach in top form to even it out. Also we finally got to see the face room without glitching into it. Really liked the riddles.

The first Caudecus fight was really cool, the second one was the only unfun and outright annoying part of the mission. It wasn’t hard, it just took forever, because those NPCs do no damage at all and my character was spending 90% of the fight on the floor. Why do we need Caudecus and the Jade Armors to spam knock-downs? I never want to do that again, which is sad, because I want to play the rest of the mission again.

Anyway, I liked that we got to finish Caudecus, he was a good (not great) villain. Much better than Scarlet, because he had character and was not a Mary-Sue. He was a brilliant schemer, his letters reveal as much, but he also was a coward and not the best at changing his plans on the fly. This is how you do it, strengths and flaws. And I think he was killed of at the right time. He had his moment in the spotlight, but his 5 year long run (wow it has been so long already?) is over now.

Overall a good episode, which served as a swan song to one of the longest running villains in the game. Also some great forshadowing regarding E. Is he the Not-Lazarus? We will see next time on Dragon Ball Season 3.

Where is Acht? There it is, right next to 7. Hahahahaha… sorry german humor. I see myself out.

Also the thread necromancy is real in this one.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@Buddha I’m not explaining science to you, you don’t know how rust might affect technology. Google any further questions you have. I am not explaining lore to you, you haven’t realised that Tyria has science fairs, engineers, and mathematicians. Its a game, but even in the game some things are magical, some aren’t. And some magically made things have to work under non magical restrictions.

You are talking about Asuran magi-tech or those impossible to create in the real world charr steam tanks? I’m sorry magic is a core part of what makes Tyria, no all of Anet’s creation (do we call it “the All”?), work like it does. Pretending you can explain everything with real world science is a fool’s errand.
Also I’d like to point out one last time, that you have answered barely any of my questions, most likely because you weren’t able to. Shows how much your physics explanation actually held up.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha. Telling you to read up on something shortens the length of my posts. It allows you to extrapolate the correct answer and avoid this level of discussion.

If you are so desperate to discuss physics, atleast do it like Drax and make it interesting. And for the last time: you don’t even understand what my issue with your point is, spouting the same facts over and over again wont bring you anywhere.

Chilling wind affects water magic expecially because it is cold air. You assume that elemental magic goes beyond simple physics because it is magic. That is simply not the case. They can’t deny the rules of our physics or Tyria’s. This is because reality manipulations is only by Mesmer/Assassins and they weren’t combining skills in the time of Gw1. The other aberrations are because divine fire is not real fire, etc.

The only magical part is influencing the starting conditions/position, at which point the simple physics of Tyria take over.

If you didn’t play Gw1 you can say so. Otherwise you should know a hex targets a person or object. A spell targets a location. Water hexes are the only type of skill where proximity to skin, and heat transferance, affect the phase of the substance.

And you are wrong. Spells don’t need a target. Spells can be anything from self-target, to an area to a specific object or just cast around you. Who hasn’t played GW1? Hexes also do not exclusively affect one target, they could aslo be multitarget. On top of that, no not all water-hex spells function in the same way. There is Blurred Vision that specifically targets the eyes, there is Freezing Gust that slows when the target is not affected by a water hex and does damage when he is. There is Icy Shackles which slows more if the target is enchanted. There is Rust which doubles the activation time of signets (which acording to old lore are sigil rings).

This is a very wide array of effects which can not be explained by “kitten his skin is cold”. What can explain it? The properties of magic which have been provided by both games so far. So for the last time: physics is not the cause of these effects, magic is. Physics helps enabling them, but it is not the sole reason.

You are confusing flame gas with flame plasma. An arrow can move at 150 mph through plasma, and ignite.

All you do is bring up things that are completely unrelated in hopes that I don’t notice. I do though. What fire does to an arrow under lab conditions is non-relevant to fire fields you will find in active combat. Same as the natural updraft of warm air is completely unrelated to the movement of ash in a combat situation. So you can stop bringing up things like this, it doesn’t help your argument, it just wastes my time because now I have to explain why it doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion.

Magic affects other magic but given that elementalists cannot simultaneously use two attunements, your explanation is unlikely. If you want to delve into the natural laws of Tyria look into the combo finishers. They may not makes sense to you, and not all fire fields use plasma, but the finishers are non magical. And they are the last simple physics I will ask you to look up.

Do you want me to bring up more spells which combine two or more elements? Because I can do that. The four elements of greek philosophy are not modern science in case you don’t know. While the ancient minds were brilliant, they lacked the modern tools. Thus their categories of elements aren’t the basis of our understanding of elements today. Anet still took it as a basis for their magic system (which a lot of writers do) and thus build their universe around an inherently unscientific system. This alone should tell you that you can’t base everything on physics alone.
Anyway, knowing our real world physics Anet created a world that follows most of our rules, on a system which shouldn’t. This (and gameplay decisions) is the reason why some of what we see does not make sense. And I repeat. It doesn’t have to. This is a game, not a science fair. Just enjoy the fact that there are people that conjure a magical wind, which also prolongs the effects of water hexes.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha I gave the fifth grade explanation. I will now paraphrase it in case I wasn’t being clear.

Water hexes touch you. Skin warms water touching you. Cold skin means water touching you stays liquid/solid/cloud longer. Pure water vapor is invisible. All water hexes use liquid/solid/cloud water.

And again you have failed to explain why this only applies to hexes, not all water magic spells, or hex spells that function like this, but are outside the elementalist’s water magic. You can keep explaining the same thing over and over and over again. But you still fail to understand what my issue with it is. Not that I can’t grasp the science behind it. No, the problem is that it doesn’t matter in the context at all. Nothing. Not one bit. In absolute no way.

Daniel Handler.4816:

In combat ash is not airborne without an outside force, however very hot fire can easily ignite an arrow.

For someone rambling on about physics you know incredibly little about kinetic energy. You maybe should read up on that. Yes an arrow can catch fire if you hold it into a flame (though that might take a while), but it certainly wont if you fire it through a flame. If you believe it does than I should be the one giving lectures about physics to you, because you apparently didn’t pay too much attention in school.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Not all magic is explained by physics, but elemental magic is. Your friend Joe doesn’t behave like any water/fire/earth/air skill because sentient animation relies on the concentration of magic. Their water behaves like our water until it is concentrated enough to start thinking for itself.

So you are saying the elements can be influenced by magic to the point of not at all behaving like they do in the real world? Congratulations you finally understand what I’ve been telling you for days.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Lastly you implied that cold air greatly affects water magic because of a magical relationship. That is silly given their real world connection. It’s not that physics is magic. It’s that you repeatedly discount explanations you don’t understand. If you don’t want the fifth grade explanation, then draw inferences from the original.

Oh I spoke too soon you haven’t understood a thing. No I’m not implying cold air affects water magic, I’m implying magic affects other magic. Get it? Magic. Not physics. Magic. It’s a card game and also the driving force of this game’s plot. You should read up on it.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha
I asked you to read up so I didn’t have to elaborate on physics. But since you haven’t I will try to be clearer.

It’s great that you enjoy explaining 5th grade physics so much, but you are neither telling me anything new, nor are you explanation in anyway relevant. Of course the spells are inspired by real world physics, if they weren’t they were both hard to programm and could alienate the players. That however doesn’t mean you can explain everything they do with plain physics, as evident by your complete failure to do so yourself.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Hexes affect the person directly. Ergo the person has solid, liquid, colloidal or gaseous water directly in contact with their body.

If skin temperature is below freezing there is less energy for a phase change. Ice takes longer to melt, and liquids/clouds (fog, mist, etc) take longer to evaporate.

You still have not answered the question, you just rambled on about body temperature. This has nothing to do with what I asked you to explain. Explain why it only works on water hexes. If your physical explanation was the correct one, why doesn’t it work on non-elementalist spells that cause cold damage? Examples Grenth’s Fingers and Icy Veins

A person taps a cigarette against an ashtray, or a Ritualist drops an urn, because the force to make ash airborne has to come from somewhere. And even then it rarely gets into one’s eyes.

Fire is a natural updraft. That is why smoke rises against the force of gravity. But smoke tends to go straight up.

In both games, and reality, a projectile pushing through a smoky area deliver the force required to get particles into one’s eyes.

I seriously don’t know what you are trying to tell me here. I said myself that the heat causes an updraft, but that doesn’t matter in a combat situation. Not at all.

Besides the game already breaks physics in case of fire, since an arrow shot through a line of fire (for example from Engineer’s Napalm) catches on fire. That would not happen in reality, as the arrow is way too fast. Same reason your finger doesn’t get burned when you move it fast enough through a candle’s flame. So that much for physical accurate presentation in the games.

I can’t give you a physics explanation for cooldowns. The magical explanation is obvious. A mist of spiky crystals will activate fresh air very quickly.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fresh_Air

This is what I am getting at! Stop pretending everything can be explained with physics alone. It can’t. It doesn’t make sense. Not everything does. Not everything has to.

But if you want to prolong this little game: Explain this guy with physics. Ok I give you chemistry and biology too. How does he move around? How does he see? Why is he attacking some creatures, while he leaves others alone? Where did he come from, where did he go? Something something Cotton-Eyed Joe. Sorry got caught up in the lyrics.

The water cycle is the simplest of physics. Yet somehow you think it’s odd that ten seconds of very cold air affects water more than it affects earth or fire.

Cold air moves across our planet on a daily basis. If phase changes in earth or fire happened in the same range as water then humans would not exist. If you put lava in your freezer does the lava slowly become solid rock or does your freezer melt?

For the last time, I don’t think physics in real world is magic. I’m not a 5 year old. I merely point out that your physics explanation repeatedly failed to address any of the points I made. For one very simple reason

Daniel Handler.4816:

1. Wind chill increases the rate at which the body loses heat. This makes it easier for the skin to freeze and stay frozen.

Neither do all water hexes freeze nor does this work on all freeze spells. It’s exlusively works with hexes. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

2. Ash is a earthen byproduct of fire. Traditionally it stays in the firepit or rises up and away with the smoke. But when something hits the firepit the particles go out and possibly into your eye. Look at the art for
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ash_Blast
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Ashes

The ash is not being thrown at the persons face. Its being thrown at the ash near their feet. So with earth magic one is making ash, then doubling the effect by striking preexisting ash.

So you are telling me that someone on fire just calmly stands there and waits until the natural updraft of the heat carries the ash into his eyes? I don’t know about you, but I would stop drop and roll when on fire. Of course they don’t do that ingame, but they still move around too much for the heat to matter in that case. If anything the ash get’s into their from moving too much. Or because it is magic. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

3. All of air magic, from lightning to wind, is heavily influenced by magnetically charged particles in the air. Either due to electrical charges or because of air pressure.

Still does not explain the cooldowns. That’s not just normal particles flying around they clearly have an influence on the casters ability to use air magic, beyond being “magnetically charged”. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

The only thing they break as far as physics goes is conjuring matter. If they wanted to combine stuff then earth could burn like fire, fire could bounce like lightning, lightning could freeze like water, and water could reflect like earth. They don’t. Instead geysers go up and rain comes down.

Boot up Gw1 and make an elementalist/mesmer character, then echo chain Chilling Winds https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Chilling_Winds The game tells us that Chilling Winds is not a water/ air magic hybrid because it doesn’t affect itself. And as you said, mechanics can be lore unless we are told otherwise.

Neither the game designers, nor physics support the idea of combination.

I never said the spells have to break physics, I’m saying you can’t explain everything they do just with physics. It’s magic, it can break a few rules. What’s so hard to understand about that? I also never said that those spells are a clear 50/50 split, but they certainly combine aspects of another element into the dominant one. Chilling Wind is clearly air magic, but it’s greatest effect is on water magic. Which means there is a connection that goes beyond simple physics.

You can throw physics around all you want, we are still talking magic, hence your “evidence” may not apply. Please explain in physical terms how a cold wind prolongs the effect of water hex spells. Why does blasting ash into someones face only blind him if he is on fire at the same time? Why does having iron dust in the air make your air magic recharge faster? This is not plain physics, that is a combination of magic.

And yes that is technically a game mechanic thing and not strictly lore, however we don’t have any lore that says it ain’t so. Ergo we can assume that lore does follow game mechanics here.

@Djahlat and Daniel Handler: Combining elements is also not new to GW2, Elementalists could do the same in the first game. Iron Mist combines earth and air. Ash Blast, earth and fire. Chilling Winds, air and water.

“Comprehensive Study of Jotun Language” = 4 paragraphs. Checks out. Sorry that is no dig at you, more at the small amount of material we have to work with. :P

Anyway, as you said yourself the Jotun were astronomers. Maybe they also observed the celestials, that we know from Cantha. One of them was a rooster, which could explain the chicken head. Just a wild guess though.

I may be wrong, but I thought those were the firestones you need for the elixir.

After thinking about it again, there is one big benefit of Braham breaking the tooth. We might finally get some story screen-time for the Norn. Since LS season 1’s Flame and Frost, the Norn (and the Charr) have been barely involved. The Charr atleast had Rytlock’s adventure in the Mists and the set up before that. But the Norn, aside from the tiny bits of Eir – Braham interaction, we pretty much had nothing.

Meanwhile Sylvari and Asura drove every single plot thread. Humans interjected every once in a while with some royal drama or White Mantle conspiracies, but even that was for the most part the B-Plot of LS 1 & 2 and pretty much not relevant for HoT. They got the raid though. Norn and Charr however, as I said as good as nothing for about 4 years now. It’s time we give them something to do.

Some thoughts:

I liked the idea behind the first mission. Training the young dragon to fight for us, instead of trying to consume us. I just don’t like Aurene. I think she looks creepy, her name sounds stupid and the labyrinth part of that mission was incredibly frustrating because she was the only one who could end the ooze spawns, yet decided to get stuck fighting every single one of them. I could have bashed her dragon face through those walls during that mission. The final fight was yet another “boss is invincible until you do something”. Seriously Anet, can you atleast try to design other bosses for the story instances? I’m sick and tired of that design. Especially if you have to wait for an NPC or your opponent to do something. I hate that!

Going north was fun, though this season starts to feel like it’s all over the place. Just like season 1. I prefered season 2’s theme over that. But on the other hand, we don’t only get a new map, but also a new geograpic region every update, so I don’t want to complain too much. I also liked the new Kodan lore. Listening to the Flamebearer’s (I don’t actually know their english name, but I hope they went with the pun!) accounts on the Flame Spirit was interesting. The new map mechanic is entertaining and flavourful too. Good job on that.

The Son of Svanir disguise felt like a rehash of the Mursaat disguise. Not a bad idea but not very creative, considering we just did in the episode before. I was confused by the Son’s being idiots now, but a dev on reddit told me that it was always that way, even though I can’t remember any instances of that. I guess I will just role with it. I liked the potion quest though.

The next mission was pretty much just another boss fight and even though it was yet another “invincible” boss, I liked the solution to that fight. As long as I can smash things and don’t have to wait for anything, I’m fine with it. Still less invincible bosses would be better imo.

Now the last mission was incredibly boring gameplay wise, but I liked it on a storytelling level. I wish Braham was less of an emo but I can relate to loosing ones mother, hence I will give him a pass. It’s cool to finally get to know how Asgeir managed to knock that tooth out. I however wondered where that scroll came from and why have we never heard of it before? (or did we?)
The boss figth… I don’t even know what was going on. I just saw another invincible boss and Braham asked me to get the scroll. Problem, there was no scroll. So I ran around looking for it. After a few minutes I climbed up the cliff trying to get a better view. Still no scroll. Waited another 1 or 2 minutes, suddenly all the ice elementals died and the scroll was there. I have no idea if I did anything, or if I was supposed to wait (but there is an achievement for doing it in under 5 minutes…). Maybe it was bugged, I have no idea. All I can say is, please no more invincible bosses, atleast not 3 in a row. 1 per episode is more than enough!

About the ending. Well I actually agree with Braham. Why did we have to create a new guild? Continuing in Eir’s name would have been the respectful thing to do. It’s utterly pointless. Also why was my character stuttering the entire time? Just because Braham got some attitude? I don’t think my Norn, or Charr characters would let that slide. Come on, we killed 2 dragons. Show some respect Braham or I slap it into you.

It would surprise me the most if Anet went with the Six-Gods and Dragons are connected theory, that was (and is in parts) popular with a lot of fans. They already “jossed” it in-universe, so that would be surprising and a bit sad.

Halloween ended on 8th of November this year, because otherwise people would have elected the Mad King for president… Too soon?

The only thing that comes to mind would be the potential of getting your freedom through gladitorial combat. That’s what happens to Logan, Rytlock and Caithe in EoD. There was no court or judge decision in that case, it was an offer by Magnus, the captain of the Lionguard. It’s implied they do that often with prisoners that show fighting prowess.

Galaxy Quest is one of my favorite movies of all time. Loved that they referenced it in both games. By the way, there are a tonne of references to movies, shows, books, comics, mangas and other games in both GW1 and 2.

The Asura scientist Zinn for example is a reference to Invader Zim. One of his Golems, G.O.X. had the mannerism of Zim’s robot Gir. Zim’s assistant Blimm uses dialog based on the movie Office Space (“Have you seen my staff?” = “Have you seen my stapler?”). And then there are Denn and Krayn, two Asuran lawyers based on Denny Crane (Bill Shatner) from Boston Legal. I could go on forever about the Asura alone, but I will round this up with one of my favorite references, the NF quest “Drakes on the Plain”. The title of course is already a reference, but half of this quest’s dialog is made of different movie quotes, from James Bond: Goldfinger to Monty Pythons.

Rognik.2579:

I would like to know more about X

That could be the motto of this sub-forum. Replace X with anything you like, except ley-lines, because that’s the only lore we are getting these days. (INB4 yes I am exaggerating.)

Drewbawb.1902:

So are the gorillas extinct? I doubt that there’s any in game lore on them, but I thought that as we returned to a location so near to Orr, we might be able to see some living gorillas. The fire island chain is VERY close, and these gorillas could hold their own just as well as, say, Karka, or sloths. Thoughts?

To add to what the other posters said, sloth’s aren’t native to the Fire Islands either. It was just one sloth brought by the circus people from the Maguuma jungle. In GW-lore sloth are appearantly susceptible to magic, so they grow rappidly when exposed to lots of if. So far both sloth’s we’ve seen have been exposed to a lot of ambient magic, so that why it appears the sloth was thriving in Ember Bay. In reality it was just mutated. We can not say that the same is true for gorillas.

I would say Mordremoth’s original minions, without the use of Zhaitan’s magic are the copies, while creatures like the Mordrem Wolfs, and Trolls and such are the ones he created with Zhaitan’s magic. Now I know, Taimi says the opposit in episode 2:

Taimi: They changed! It’s… That’s why Mordremoth was able to… The Mordrem, Commander!
Commander: What about them?
Taimi: The ones who came from the blighting pods! Mordremoth had its minions, the sylvari, right? But it was able to create more, new ones from the dead! That power came from Zhaitan!
Taimi: Killing Zhaitan caused the other dragons to absorb the death spectrum, but we only saw it in Mordremoth because it was active.

But honestly that doesn’t make sense to me. The Pale Tree was supposed to be a blighted tree, but she was freed from the dragons corruption. However she was able to create minions (the Sylvari) by copying the dead bodies of Ronan and his family. The same thing the blighted trees do. But the Pale tree was not only cut off from Mordremoth long before he absorbed Zhaitan’s power, but she was doing it herself 25 years before Zhaitan even died.
So I would say the copying effect is Mordy’s natural way of creating minions. The wolfs, trolls and teragriffs look more like zombiefied version of living creatures. Exactly like Zhaitan’s minions, just with a mold, fungus or plant overlay, instead of corals and algae we see on most of Zhaitan’s creations. So those are more likely candidates for the death magic than the spawn of the blighted trees.

On the part about the vision: I’d say it is still a theory, as we have no confirmation, but yes the dark green orb crushing into the All probably means that death magic is now uncontrolled.

Well Anet uses real world cultures and geography as templates for their fantasy world, just as everyone else does. Though I think Anet is a bit smarter than most other creators, as they seem to blend more cultures from different parts of the planet. Not always, but often enough.

Anyway for a quick overview:

Ascalon: Medieval English, French, German, Polish and Russian (yes that one’s quite a mix)
Kryta: GW1: Polynesia mixed with mediterranean Europe. GW2: Renaissance mix of Italy, France and England, with a lot of other cultures too via the Elonians, Canthans, etc.
Orr: Arabic, Persian
Norn: Vikings + Native Americans + some slavic influence
Charr: Rome + Mongols + Sparta + Industrial Revolution Germany
Asura: A bit mesoamerican, but mostly they are Mad Scientist stereotypes
Sylvari: Irish, Welsh, English, French, Knights of the Round Table party mix

I have no idea what Rytlock is hiding, but I hope they resolve it soon, because it is getting annoying. How many ways can they find to make him say “I will explain it later”? Let’s find out on the next episode of DBZ… ehm LSS3!

So I thought about Aurene for a bit. The way she looks she is obviously a combination of Kralkatorrik’s crystaly goodness (the crystal spikes on the back) and Mordy’s planttastic features (the barky skin, the MoM looking face). Now the last part comes from her absorbing part of Mordy’s magic when he died.
Maybe Glint’s other scion, Gleam absorbed part of Zhaitan’s magic when he died? Considering Glint’s forsight it would make sense for her to plan on giving him a role in those whole thing (which is also why she so fiercly protected him and her other eggs, it was more than mother instinct). We could get a half-zombie half-glint-look-a-like Gleam in a future LS update. Wouldn’t that be something.

Mordremoth took part Zhaitan’s power. That doesn’t mean he knew what Zhaitan knew.

Well yeah that thing looks like it was designed by somebody who read that definition, but did not have seen a cute creature themself before.

It’s the eyes. They are freakishly huge. Though I admit she looks less creepy in motion with the sounds and all. Still, not a fan of the design. It’s Rox all over again.

How on earth is this cute? This is an abomination against nature! Kill it! Kill it before it lays eggs!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mouth of Mordremoth is Mordremoth’s physical, reptilian body. Yes it is more of an Asian styled dragon, though I think their inspiration was Quetzalcoatl – a mesoamerican god often depicted as a snake-dragon with feathered wings.

Oh now you are agreeing with me, hu? To quote myself from 9 months ago:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

But the MoM doesn’t just look like a chinese dragon, he also looks very much like a planty version of Quetzalcoatl.

It seems my argument was convincing in the long run! :P

I didn’t even consider this but you are right. Thinking further about it, you could also observe that both use efficient, combat oriented technology. Unlike the Federation’s/Asura(?)’s more flashy technobabble stuff.

Wait who are the Romulans? The Largos, they can stealth and are pretty mysterious! And the dragons that corrupt you into their service? The Borg with their assimilation! But wait then there is Mordremoth who rather makes clones to service him… just like the Dominion! The Sylvari are kind of like Odo, being seduced into serving Mordy/the Founders but ultimately standing against it.

It’s all connected! Guild Wars is Star Trek!

Donari.5237:

Some of them even scream and leap as a challenge But they also have the legionary military structure and the Klingon admiration of the warrior ethos.

They also share the “we killed our own gods”-myth with the Klingons. And both used to have an emperor (well Khan-Ur in the Charr’s case) but now are they are cooperating houses/legions. They even both have a traitor faction (House of Duras/Flame Legion).

That’s most likely all just coincidence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we have a few Trek-fans among the devs.

That always makes me wonder if all dragon champions have the ability to makes prophecies, or if it was just random chance that the two uncorrupted champs we know (Glint and the Pale Tree) both have this power.

We don’t know the exact mechanics of ED awakening, but it looks like in most cases one of their champions wakes up before them and makes sure they get out of bed. They just can’t seem to set their arlarm themselves. Lazy bums!

Pregnantman.8259:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

…prolong their life by unnatural means …

Is it possible to learn this power?

If we ever get to Elona, you might have a chance to ask Palawa Joko. However not sure if you want to be a dried up corpse. Alternatively you could go seek out Livia, if she is still alive. She managed to stay fresh for around 200 years, probably with a little help from the Scepter of Orr.

Don’t underestimate the other classes so quickly. Very powerful Necromancers are known to prolong their life by unnatural means and can potentially control armies of the undead.
An engineer raised an army of robots, wreaked havoc across Tyria and destroyed Lion’s Arch, almost on her own. Besides with their utility belts, engineers seem to be the Batmen of the professions, give them enough prep time and they find a way to dispose of their adversaries.
Guardians and Revenants also have great potential, but we haven’t seen enough big feats by either of them yet. Rangers, or rather their specialization, the Druids are a force to be reckoned with too, as they seem to be able to become one with nature, gaining a minor deity status.
And while they lack the raw power of the other professions, a good thief or warrior can still slay the most poweful mage in a one on one combat. A prime example would be the fight between Turai Ossa (warrior) and Palawa Joko (necromancer).

Leo G.4501:

I’m accusing others of using headcanon? Where?

Here:

Leo G.4501:

Not necessary to reply to every point since most of your replies are basically “No, the way things are is how I say them and you should accept that as fact” which I don’t have the time to argue nor the data.

For the rest, what Konig said.

Leo G.4501:

I’m not basing anything on my own “headcanon”, I’m saying your apprehensions against adding a new race already exists with the existing races. To dismiss a new addition on a problem unrelated to said addition seems short sighted.

And the reason I even brought up my perspective is to expand on further possible solutions. So don’t jump to conclusions here. At the very least, it’d be much easier to form a story without applying hard titles to characters going forward, as it can create inconsistencies and conflicts.

The way it is done in the game is, that if you play LS2 or LS3 or the HoT campaign the game will assume you are the Pact Commander who killed Zhaitan in the PS. That is a fact. So no matter how much you roleplay your characters to be friendly rivals of the the Commander, the fact that it is not presented that way in the game will not change. Hence I said you used your headcanon as an explanation and even more so accuse others of doing so. Don’t you see how incredible hypocritical that is?
Yes Anet could go with your route but they will never do so. It is simply too much work. They would have to design an entirely new campaign, hundreds if not thousands of new voice lines and a Tengu player would be excluded from a ton of content. No sane developer would ever do that. Not only would they have to pour tones of resources into a tiny fragment of the game, they would also create no endgame content for exsiting players.

This is the very reason I made this thread. To create an template for the addition of new playable races that is both inclusive too all sorts of players, doesn’t break the lore and is comparatively little work (though still a lot admittedly).

I also don’t think that taking away the hard titles or adding more would make storytelling easier, in fact it is quite the opposite. GW1 for the most part never gave the player a title, so now in GW2 the players of the first game can’t be referenced at all. Without a well known universal title like “Champions of Ascalon” (or whatever) the game has to be more specific in who it references. However the more specific you get the more you exclude players, because they stop identifying with certain descriptions. So now, since Prophecies never gave it’s players a title, GW2 doesn’t reference them at all, since there is no way to do so, without getting descriptive (even saying if it was a man or woman would already be too much).

GW2 avoided this problem with naming the player the Pact Commander. It is both unisex and doesn’t mention your race or your previous Order. It is convienent and makes it easy to reference the player. Of course it is a bit weird being called Commander or even Boss (which would be the title within the “Dragon Watch”) all the time, but is better than the alternative.

Leo G, it’s nice that you have your own headcanon and all but has nothing to do with the topic. Konig and I are proposing solutions to the Tengu problem based on how Arena-Net designed the story so far and what is feasible within their resources. In other words, the only one here who believes “the way things are is how I say them and you should accept that as fact” is you, since you are basing you argument on you own headcanon, not how they are presented in the game.

Drewbawb, that is pretty much the solution that was assumed by many people at launch, because that is exactly how it was done in the first game. The problem is that Anet pretty much said they wouldn’t do this, since it was such an large amount of work to design new level areas and a new story.
That is why I came up with my solution, since you wouldn’t need new level areas, Tengu could start in Caldeon. And the new story would “just” be the first paths that lead to the Order plotlines.

Sirius.4510:

The big catch is you still have to re-record the original GW2 campaign, LS2 and LS3 with tengu VAs (which is going to be… 8 or 10? Male and female for each supported language). That’s expensive – not so expensive that I’d automatically rule it out since they’ll need to record a lot for the following expansion anyway, but it might make them think twice.

Oh, and you might need to do more motion capture for the original campaign’s cinematics – I suspect the cost of those was a good part of the reason they moved away from doing them. Then again, perhaps the tengu skeleton is still close enough to charr that you could just borrow theirs? Though that’s less true than it used to be with the Heart of Thorns tengu model, where they’re standing up straighter than charr do, amongst a few other things.

Technically possible, still, yes; but I wouldn’t be shocked if ANet decided to axe playing through old story with new characters because of it. The cost of voice talent for new races may already be a significant disincentive to add more, never mind if they need to go through the back catalog too.

I know it is expensive and a lot of work but I never said it wouldn’t. The reason for this thread was tackling the lore issues, not the development problems that come with the idea.
And I think the dialog cutscenes themselves are the smallest problem. They have barely any animation to beginn with. The biggest obstacle is most definitely the voice acting. Still even there you only need lines for the level 1 – 30 storylines of one race and male and female lines for one character for the entire PS. It’s a lot, but I think it would be managable. They probably don’t even have to get new actors, they could just use some of the people that are recording for the next expansion/LS storyline.

Nightbringer Tenchi.5794:

Everyone that talks about the Tengu seem to neglect 1 very big, very glaring flaw in making them a playable race. The Tengu are as racist as the Centaurs. the entire reason the Tengu are so unknown in GW2 is because the vast majority of them refuse to interact with the outside world, there are a hand full of them that like humans but thats like saying Centaurs should be a playable race because Ventari or the Veldrunners. Zhed and Ventari where allies but Centaurs still hate humans.

The second issue, from a lore standpoint, would be the same as in GW1 when you make a Nightfall character and play early Prophesies missions. you get a text on screen that says “your about to witness events that happened before blah blah blah”. it breaks the lore because now you have Tengu fighting against Zhaitan and Mordremoth when they largely chose to stay out of the matter. it makes much more sense to have Largos or Kodan as new playable races and even then i do not believe ArenaNet will add any new options there.

You haven’t read my OP have you? I addressed all of these problems…

So as we know from the end of “Out of the Shadows”, Primordus is active. This could mean that is the next target in an expansion. A Primordus themed expansion of course also has to bring something on the table gameplay wise. Now elite specialization are a given, but HoT also gave us a new profession. I however doubt that the next expansion would give us another one, since we reached perfect balance between the armor classes with the last one.
What we could get though is a new playable race. Tengu seem to make the most sense, as they are in high demand by many of players, since the GW2 was in development and they would tie into a Primordus storyline. We know the Elder Dragon of fire has been attacking the Dominion of Winds.

Now I know there are a lot of arguments for and against a new playable race in general and the Tengu specifically. As I honestly don’t know much about coding, I will stick to the lore based problems (hence creating this topic in the lore forum).

Let’s assume a new expansion is released. It is set after LS3 and we now have the means of fighting Primordus. While LS3 was going on we have had heard of new fierce attacks on the Dominion, maybe we had a mission or two taking place over there, or atleast on the outside of it. The Tengu leadership are now for the first time ever in talks with the outside. They are consulting the Pact and the other nations of Tyria and finally decide to join the fight against the EDs at the end of LS3.
With the expansion release they are now playable, Tengu are part of the new storyline and we get to meet quite a few of them. After playing through the new content, we decide to make a Tengu ourselves. Just like the other races we have a tutorial mission with a big flashy boss at the end. We are guided through this mission, not by a member of Destiny’s Edge like the other races but by an elderly Tengu. This character guides us with knowledge, but he does not fight alongside us, instead 2 of his other students take the combat role.
After defeating the first boss we get a letter from our mentor, depending on what questions we answered during character creation we can take part in any of the 3 first storylines. Now here comes the twist, the year is 1325 AE. That’s right, we start at the same time everyone elses PS starts. In fact, when we go on, we will eventually get to join one of the Orders, form the Pact, clense Orr and kill Zhaitan.
So by now you are wondering, how, the Tengu joined the other races in 1330 AE or whenever the next expansion takes place, why would you play the PS from 5 years ago?
Well, while the Tengu as a race in general have not joined forces with the other races yet, some individual Tengu have, for example Izu Steelshrike. This opens the door for us. We are an exception, we are one of the few Tengu who joined the Pact, while the rest of our kind kept hiding behind its high walls and sharp arrows.
And how do we explain that we meet up with DE, if none of them is our mentor? That’s also not a stretch, our old Tengu mentor is friends with atleast one of them (Caithe makes the most sense to me) and has send us to check up with them in LA. So who is our mentor? Well his name is not important (insert any japanese name here) but his title is “The Herald”. Yes it is the same herald that send us all this mail, regarding the dungeon story modes. Bonus points if he has some relation with Master Togo (as in one of his ancestors studied in Shing Jea Monastery or maybe himself, depending on how old Tengu can get).

So what does that mean for the outside world, when you are just running around leveling? Well on the overworld it is the year 1330 AE, so your leveling is done in the present, it’s just that your PS is set 5 years in the past. Is that confusing for new players? Yes maybe, but on the otherhand, this problem already exists in the game (Lion’s Arch, Kessex Hill etc.) and it never appeared to be that big of issue. So why would it be in the case of the Tengu?

So that’s it from the story perspective, you start as an exception. Maybe it is your actions as commander of the Pact that let your race to the decision that outsiders can be trusted in the first place. It would make sense to me at least.

Everything else, like having to create new models, animations, armors, a whole lot of sound recording and line writing. Yes all those are issues, but the common argument that all this work wouldn’t even create “new” content, doesn’t hold up in my opinion. Of course I have played through the PS several times, but everytime, it was different. I have new point of view. So it felt at least in parts like new content. And it would the same with a new race. So yes it is a lot of work but I think it would be worth it. Enough people created a revenant just because it was new, I think just as many people would create a Tengu, just for the novelty of it.

What do you guys think? Could new races like the Tengu be implemented like this?

A popular theory, but we can’t really confirm or deny it. I think of him as very similar to a titan, but not quite the same. Yes titans were also made of tormented souls, but they were created in a special manner by the Fury, which gave them their special properties (split into smaller version, copy traits of the environment they touch etc.). Gorseval lacks both of these properties. So he is similar in origin, but I’m not sure if we can call him a titan yet.

Well Estel could have also been a decoy like that fake Ras Al Ghul in Batman Beginns.
Honestly the PS White Mantle always seemed pretty weak to me, I like to think that it was just one branch, specifically established to throw the Shining Blade off.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The burst of magic could have been Mordremoth’s attempt to fool everyone into thinking he died – after all, Zhaitan’s death didn’t give such (then again, that could just mean Zhaitan is the one still alive).

There was no visible burst after Zhaitan’s death (though he was beneath a shroud of clouds maybe we just didn’t see it) but Savant Valis’ Research Journal reveals that the Bloodstone started growing and that this coincided with Zhaitan’s death. He also says that the Stone reacted in a similar but more exaggerated way after Mordy’s death.

So I would say magic was also released upon Zhaitan’s death, just less because the Pact starved him before. The Tequatl update pretty much confirms this anyway.