Guild Wars 2

Those buildings were added this year; last year the area was too close to the downed airship and more infested with Krait.

It’s a slightly off-topic point, but I’m not sure that the ruins being a forgotten Asuran expedition to the surface wouldn’t be at least as interesting. Think about it, they’re one of the few pieces of pre-fleeing Asuran History available to players.

On the plus side, depending on where they go with the LS in the next season, we could well see at least some inference to the Mursaat in the unexplored regions of the map to the West.

From memory is depends on the Dragon. We are told Zhaitan occurs in the legends of the Dwarves, but it’s not said where they got that name from. I would agree with Herald about the ancient races.

To answer specifically Mordremoth, we know his name from an attack used by a boss in the CoE explorable dungeon; it’s called Teeth of Mordremoth and has an earth-based feel about it. It’s important to note that thus far, our player characters have no idea as to the name of the next dragon; it’s not been mentioned in-universe thus far.

It’s likely jut a typo.

/tinfoil hat

That said, it could simply be to hint that the event takes place over a much longer time then we the players experience due to gameplay functions; ie, the Wurm appears in 1327, but isn’t finally killed until the year after, which would make 1328 the present day.

/tinfoil hat

The Zaishen were always in a weird place in GW2 Lore. Pre-release, it was mentioned that they’d petitioned Balthazar to open portals to the Mists, which would be the mechanism which we’d head to WvW through. This was replaced with asura gates, leaving them in a kind of limbo.

As their staging ground is completely destroyed, I’d assume they simply haven’t had a location to rally around yet. As far as I could tell they’re not present at any of the refugee camps, but it’s likely actual survivor numbers don’t match exactly what we see in game. That being said, when Lion’s Arch does being to be rebuilt, we’ll either see the staging grounds recreated and the Zaishen pop up again, or they will simply disappear.

The LA Mist warriors are gone, but each other city still has criers talking about the Mist War.

Although you could work yourself into the guild’s narrative, it just sounds like the GL doesn’t quite wants to RP Guild Wars, but just wants to use the looks.

Do remember that the humans probably widely know their own legends of the bloodstones, but outside of the Durmand Priory (and likely some individuals of the other orders/The Pact) their Seer connection is not known.

As for the mechanical connections, although I’m likely to start a forum war now, you could point out that the Engineer profession likely was born out of the Charr’s industrial revolution, and other races have simply adopted it (the Humans least of all it seems, judging by NPC’s). We’re not given lore on how the skills themselves are cast or created (by that I mean we don’t know what processes go into a Guardian casting Ring of Warding) however it would be silly to assume only one race worked on them, and lead to the current skill sets our characters use.

Saying all that, it sounds like the only way to properly accommodate the viewpoint is to properly break the lore. I’d personally move guilds and be done with it. Good luck with your endevours to teach your guild leader either way

Just one final note; the lore is not always GW1 > GW2. Some of the lore, for example about the Gods bringing humans to Arah earlier then thought, would technically predate the lore we found in the first game; Arah is older. It’s a good general rule though

Not a huge note, and may be contributing to the thread going off topic, but canonically horses exist within Tyria, and Humans have access to them. There was a dev before release that mentioned something along the lines of “we didn’t put them in because people would be constantly ask why they aren’t mounts.” (I appologise, I can’t remember the exact wording or the speaker)

As for the OP, it’s likely most races will survive on the planet Tyria. All the races seem to be more or less equally at threat from the elder dragons by design. The only race that might be slightly more at threat may be the Kodan; we simply don’t know how many of their ice ships existed before Jormag awoke.

Just expanding on what Kalavier wrote; given the events of Destiny’s Edge, and the war between Zhaitan and Palawa Joko, it’s highly likely there are very few Forgotten left within the world. The areas they were found in GW1 would firmly be under the control of at least one force.

The only other races that pops to mind is the Seer, but since we only ever saw 1 (maybe 2) in GW1, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume they’re extinct.

Much like real life, there’s no strict rules. Each race can operate more or less independently from the others, necessitating every discipline be present in some form.

Whilst it’s not hugely lore based, an easy assumption would probably be matching weapon/armour crafting with the professions that use the tools. For example, Huntsman are probably more likely to be Rangers or Engineers, as they use the products of the disciplines.

Just remember, it’s equally likely that adventurers wouldn’t have a crafting discipline at all, or just basic skills. Someone who devotes their life to crafting is more likely to produce better quality weapons then those who do it as a hobby, simply due to practice.

Hope that helps.

I appologize now for sticking this a bit out of sync with the discussion at hand, just wondering if there is a list of the scenarios people asked for in this thread?
(Just thinking of having a go at designing more of them.)

Apart from saying that I like the idea of having differently skinned tamable ranger pets in various fractals, before the crowd rushes in and complains about one class getting it, you could possibly effect most classes’ “unique abilities” as skins to compensate.

Engineers are an easy example; put new skins for weapon kits in (I know this would be terribly hard to manage without an item slot for it), Elementalist’s could have their “glow” for each attunement changed slightly (such as being a fire graphic rather then a red ring around the wrist in fire attunement) Necromancers could have their “reaper” scythe graphic changed slightly (maybe even just a color change?)

It might be easiest to tie these skins into the achievement system; have them show up whenever a player dons a title only earned in Fractals?

This music is really beautiful DusK. Have subscribed over at youtube, and can’t wait for more.

I just have to say as well, that I feel you’ve told a story in the way with the music and it’s rare that is the case. Keep up the amazing work.

For the next idea I have to apologize for being self-promoting. Before the suggestions forums were closed I put up a group of “new” fractals as an idea. Unfortunately the post got slightly derailed.

I have put them on the GW1 wiki’s suggestion section because it is the only other area which would allow Arenanet to use them without problem. The link to those fractal designs is here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:User/MularcTemplare/New_Fractal_Designs

I am sorry if this is not wanted here, as these are a bit “beyond the call” of the CDI. These seem to be on topic. They will in general require a fair bit of work building them, but I tried to design the early lot looking to using existing assets in different areas.

Hope someone gets a kick out of them, thanks for allowing me to post

Mularc

I’ve only had a chance to read about 3/4 of the topic, but have two suggestions. I’ll split them into two posts to make things easy (my apologies for the double post in advance).

Firstly, players in this thread have been asking about making the Fractals more lore-filled, and a few have brought up the books in GW1….what about a join in both?

Basically, the player gets a book from an NPC (if doing a single book, maybe Dessa herself, if doing multiple, maybe one for each Order.) which works like the GW1 Master Dungeon Guide. Each fractal has 1-3 pages, initially blank. Once players complete the fractal, they get a small write-up about it, maybe including information on the “boss” of the fractal, and further questions and mysteries.

Like the Master Dungeon Guide, players would be able to hand in completed books to Dessa or the Orders for a reward of some kind, maybe gold and/or relics/infusions.

It would need a large amount of development time to recreate the code required for the books, but once done they’re relatively expandable; it also allows for concept art of the fractals to be placed in game. The major hassal is having both another item to drag around, and that players will be tempted to keep the book with them if they are interested in the lore. How this is avoided is not my area of expertise.

Other idea after the break.

Honestly completely forgot about the leadup Konig, thanks for reminding me.

To add to what Narcemus said Souly, it’s quite possible that the Door of Komalie took a while to even be opened a tiny amount; Abbadon’s stay in the Realm of Torment was for a very long time after all.

Before Nightfall we only see two “outpourings” of Abbadon’s power; the Door of Komalie, a portal which lesser creatures seem to be able to manage quite easily (for example Glint) and sending one demon to Cantha. Not hugely world modifying stuff.

Thanks Arenanet for this oppertunity. I can only hope some of the more vocal over on the Lore Forums move across here as well to reiterate points.

I could add what I personally thought was good or bad about releases ect, but instead I’d like to attempt to foster some discussion between the community here.

Throughout this post, poster have been using Living World and Living Story as synonyms. I’d argue that they’re almost opposites, especially from a lore standpoint.

Living Story
As far as I understand the concept, the Living Story is essentially a replacement for the Personal Story; each arc contains a story which is contained within that arc, with it all tying together through an overarching narrative (in the personal story, that would be the dragons, in the Living one it’s Scarlet). Much like the personal story, the arc themselves are not spurred by the previous arcs, but are joined together.

The strategy in this circumstance would be one multi-year story explained in parts, which creates a narrative for players to follow beyond the personal story. This strategy allows for players to gain a sense of the world evolving, and with the aid of systems in place or new systems (the web for the former and the suggestions in this post for latter) allows Anet to tell grand stories they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

Living World
As far as I understand this, the idea would be to create a framework where GW2 could operate much like our own world; there’s always something going on, no matter how big or small, and story arc is simply one major event that’s being focussed on; for example, we’re focussing on the Bloody Prince’s awakening at this moment and celebrating Halloween, whilst the Krait are also building their tower (which Marjory and her group is investigating).

In this idea, there would be multiple stories running simultaneously, with one major story taking the spotlight for a period; there is no overarching plot of the living world, but arcs are free to deal with any story that takes the writer’s fancy, without having to tie them in. There is less overall progression here though.

The Decision
So the question for me is simple; what would players rather? Living Story, or Living World?

I do need to point out that there is no having your cake and eating it to. Following a Living Story requires much more top-down coordination and will require that each arc in some way ties into the main story. Likewise, the Living World requires more bottom-up coordination, and means that there doesn’t have to be a narrative at all. In both cases, the way the content is developed is strikingly different, and they both benefit from different changes to the way content is currently developed (based on what little we’ve been told).

The former benefits hugely from the two week fixed schedule, as it keeps the story in players minds. The latter would almost be better off with no fixed schedule, but would mean that an individual release may need to have elements from several story arcs so those arcs make sense.

Either way, I’m excited to hear people’s thoughts, even if it’s just telling me that I’m wrong and we can have both. Thanks for reading.

Mularc

After reading through the thread, as a non-hardcore WvWer first off have to say that a lot of these suggestions have been great, whilst some are not so much.

With the altering points due to population numbers, try and think of this from the off-time populations view (full disclosure, I’m an Australian, so my prime time is your offtime) – why should those who play the same mode, with different constraints get penalized for playing when they can?

I apologize if I’ve misinterpreted the suggestions above massively. The other thing that comes to mind when reading this thread is that ultimately this question is about what play should be encouraged or discouraged in WvW as a game mode; is Zerging the important play in WvW or should players split up into smaller groups?

Personally, whilst it’s fun to run with the zerg, I feel it promotes less tactical play for individuals; the commander/s in this instance are doing more work to keep the zerg going, but due to lag each person’s contribution to the success of the zerg is small. The most fun I’ve had in WvW has been defending keeps with a few players and well placed siege…not that we succeed very often, but it is fun.

I have will be a rather unpopular suggestion but I’ll voice it anyway – add in more objectives to encourage players to split up. Make these objectives have an effect on the capture/defense of other objectives. These may just add another point for the zerg to move through, but it may also help give lower population servers an edge

Make Mercenary Camps Help Defense

Currently the mercs play very little into the way WvW works on any map. Maybe we could have these areas once controlled spawn a group of NPC’s similiar to a Dolyak, but will move to the closest large objective (eg, not camp) and spawn a Siege weapon based on their flavour; like say a Poisen Turret for the Hylek, a patrol of Ogres from the Ogres. The key is to make these objectives bonuses ramp up the longer their held; so each “supply run” adds one defence addition, and once two are added to the nearest objective the group would add to the next furthest objective ect.
(This would also predicate on changing some of the current groups which just wander; the Centaur and Skritt in the Borderlands maps to Mercenary Camps.)

Hey All,

First off, I want to say off the bat I’m not sure this forum is the right place for this post. If it’s not, could the mods please move it somewhere more appropriate.

Earlier in the year Arenanet mentioned that they were going to add more fractals to the game. This was accompanied by several posts here talking about what people would like in the new fractals. At that time I decided instead of just asking for content, I’d put what I thought would be cool down on paper.

So, here are my suggestions for new fractals to be added. Due to the forums having a weird character limit, I’ve had to put the full text somewhere else with comparable licensing; the GW1 Wiki. Link to the full text; http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:User/MularcTemplare/New_Fractal_Designs

This is the list of what’s contained within, repeated over there, but here to allow easy viewing.

The numbered fractals would be added to the current rotation, and the bonus fractals would be joined with the Solid Ocean Fractal to make a rotation of bonus fractals, appearing only as the 4th fractal in a set with every even level of fractals.

The List

1. Desert Fractal
Players travel through the crystal desert before it appeared in Guild Wars 1, and must either activate, and survive the use of the ancient weapon, or protect a priest as she ascends one of the towers to read the people’s petition to the gods themselves.

2. Bottomless Pit Fractal
In this fractal, players will jump into the bottomless pit found in the Far Shiverpeaks in Guild Wars, and attempt to work their way down to the core of the world.

3. Rooftop Fractal
In this fractal, players will be chasing thieves, who have stolen the Krytan Royal Artefacts, across the rooftops of Divinity’s Reach and into top floors of houses along the way before having a standoff in the upper reaches of the castle.

4. Workshop Fractal
In this fractal, players will infiltrate a Flame Legion workshop and attempt to stop their weapon production.

5. Great Tree Fractal
In this fractal, players will defend the Hidden Tree from the corruption seeping into it.

6. Zaishen Fractal
In this fractal, players will attempt to evacuate as many of the Zaishen as possible from the Battle Isles, which are sinking due to Orr’s rise.

7. Market Fractal (Elona)
In this fractal, players will have to manouver through a large crowd of NPC’s to find, expose, and eliminate the Mysterious Assassins hidden within.

8. Exile Fractal (Cantha)
In this fractal, players will break a political prisoner out of Shaisong Prison, and make their way West to the Refuge, or East to the Echovald.

9. Vanishing Fractal (Utopia)
In this fractal, players will attempt to navigate the vanishing island of the coast of the unknown continent before it’s too late.

10. Library Fractal(Cantha 2)
In this fractal, players will venture into the heart of the library and eliminate the darkness within.

11. Ancient City Fractal (Elona 2)
In this fractal, players will attempt to locate and protect the Queens within the chaos of the Ancient City.

12. Mountain Pass Fractal
In this fractal, players will investigate the village, and defend against the attacking minor legion.

Bonus Fractals
- Boreal Fractal
In this fractal players will chase down, and face off against, Feodor.

- Arena Fractal
In this fractal, players will participate in players will participate in an arena style death-match with groups of foes spawning in each of the rounds, before facing off against the champion of the arena.

- Summoner’s Fractal
In this fractal, players will venture into a chain of floating islands, to free the trapped summoner inside.

- Coast Fractal
In this fractal, players will defend themselves on the voyage from the Battle Isles to Tyria.

Thanks for reading,

Mularc

I’ll have a crack at answering things Caedo, and I’m sure if I get anything wrong someone will correct me.

1. Charr who are familiar to each other appear to use first names mainly when talking to the person, and within the warband. If talking about someone within the warband to someone outside of it, they tend to use the term “bandmate” rather then friend. The meaning appears to be the same though.

Unfamiliar charr seem to call each other by their job/rank rather then any name; Soldier, Tribune, Legionnaire ect. If talking about a specific Charr, even of the same rank, they seem to use title and surname.

2. Generally, if the Charr is joining a new warband they appear to take a new surname based on the ‘band; for example, Rox at this point of the Living Story does not have a surname, but if she is successful in joining Rytlock’s warband she would be Rox <Something>stone (e.g Whetstone).

As for older Charr, once they reach a certain age (where we would consider elderly) for example if they outlive their warband though natural causes they seem to keep their name in tribute. Beyond this, they would join a new warband if possible and gain a new surname, or may be reduced to having none at all.

3. Long story short, a warbands name seems to be a group descision; the name is chosen when Charr leave the Farrar as a group, and each individual adds their “part” of the name; for example, the Scorch warband is involved in the meta-event to kill the Flame Legion Shaman in the Iron Marches, with each member adding another word after their warband name; Scorchpowder, Scorchblade, Scorchstep.

(If you do have another character and can do this event, the NPC’s afterwards explain how they found one of the Charr wandering and she became a part of the warband. Might just help clarify this wall of text.)

Charr society looks down on those who leave the warband; so it’s very unlikely for a Charr to form a new warband by leaving one voluntarily, as this would normally make the specific Charr who left a deserter and Gladium. The exception is usually if the warband has died or is presumed dead; then the surviving members need to either make a new warband or join an existing one.

In your example it could go both ways. The only case (that I’m aware of) we see in game of a new warband being formed from scratch so to speak (by way of a group of gladiums) is the player character’s warband, which is never named due to technical limitations. If Random Blackink joined a warband, he’d have to change his name to fit (for example, Random Scorchink) but if he formed one it’s likely the warband would choose a new name once it is fully formed, which could have nothing to do with his previous name.

Hope that helps, and appologies again for the massive wall of text. Thanks for taking the time to explore the Lore

Just wanted to say thanks for the replies. I honestly went back to check sources before writing that up and skipped over the line about not using all four schools but not being restricted to one school.

I’m not sure I’d read that theory before about the elementalists’ magic Drax but it makes a whole lot of sense.

If only the interview had been conducted with as thorough a look at the lore we might have avoided some of the glaring issues with it, but we’re stuck with it now until someone comes along and tells us otherwise. Keep up the good work.

I think maybe I didn’t clarify properly. I’ll chalk that up to tiredness.

What I was suggesting is that they make have broke the mechanism that kept the magic sealed in the first place; over time the magic stored in the stone has leaked out at a faster rate then the previous eras (this is assuming it leaked magic at all. I unfortunately haven’t been able to do the Arah explorables as much as I would like.) thus resulting in more magic being around in the modern age (relatively speaking) then we would’ve anticipated given the amount of time between the two games.

Not trying to say people we’re restricted to schools, and still aren’t (to a more limited extent) but could this account for people being able to use more then one school at a time? (for example the Elementalist being able to use both Destruction and Preservation magic depending on the element they’re attuned to.)

As I said above, it’s majorly grasping at straws in an attempt to get much reasonable from the interview. Any way you look at it, the interview really did just dropkick the existing lore out the window and put something less…unique in it’s place. We’ll see what happens from here on out.

I appologise if this has already been said, but I’ve been chewing over an idea to put the Bloodstones retcon in broader context.

Whilst I agree that the whole psychological distinction being within Humans is very on the nose, and has already been expertly rebutted by several people here, could it be possible that the Bloodstones simply do not work the way the whole stone was meant to.

In a more blunt way, what if the Human Gods, in breaking the stone effectively locked magic away into the various schools, but ‘broke’ the overall mechanism of the stones; storing uncorrupted magic.

I know this is very much grasping for an explanation (I do want to point out that I agree with pretty much everything said in this thread) but is an explanation that makes lore sense?

Thanks for tolerating the ramblings.

Narcemus, I believe we have pretty similiar interests in games.

I’d honestly never thought about the former, I actually though more about having their one-off event chains (with say more actual events then the Lost Shores, which was in effect one thread with repeating events as an added bonus) have multiple endings; if a server fails one of the events in the chain, the next one is a different event then they would’ve received if they succeeded.

The end result that being if the area introduces a new permenent event, it could be different depending on which events a server succeeded or failed in; if a server wiped out most of the new enemy for example, the new area has very few of these enemies. If they failed in some of these events, the area is teeming with them. When the guesting feature eventually gets released, this would allow players to see more then one variation of the zone by visiting other servers.

Because they’ve only done one of these such events, they may well have designed it as such and no server simply failed. It would be a lot of work to get these to work as such, but could be story-driven and take into account player input slightly more then currently happens.

What you explained I’d honestly never thought before, and that would be amazing as well, maybe even more so then what I’ve prattled on about above. Thanks for taking the time to respond

Honestly, I wrote a whole post twice attempting to illustrate my understanding of the discussion being had, and I feel the best way to say it is this; Gaudrath has pointed out that by the rather linear experience which GW2 offers to players in terms of story is not fully leveraging the thing that makes video games different then other forms of entertainment; they actively involve the player in creating the narrative, even if it is a side narrative of how you ran into a group of enemies who feared you off a cliff and you fell but managed to kill a third enemy by landing on it, and this is not being leveraged at the moment in the type of games that should have the ability to do this; MMO’s.

There was an MMO that showed promise of doing this, and if Arenanet ever decides to make a new franchise, I think they would do it well. The game was called Horizons: Empire of Istaria. It never really made it to what it’s developers wanted it to become, but I think if you looked into it Gaudrath, it might provide perspective on that ideas I think you may be talking about.

In counterpoint, Narcemus and Konig’s position is that you’re not getting the most out of GW2 if you’re expecting the above interaction; you are playing through several linear storylines at once, and the story presented is only at best semi-linear.

I apologize for the rant, and hope I haven’t got anything completely off about the above, I am not attempting to poke the hornet’s nest (well, not too much.)

This has got way off topic, but pretty much in answer to the origional post; Arah explorable makes sense because it is after the story mode as the other dungeons are; the Pact has defeated Zhaitan, and are wading into the city of Arah to better understand the ancient races fight against the Elder Dragons, and why they failed the first time. Why the Risen are still around has been answered very well by much better posters then me above.

I don’t know how it hasn’t moved across to these forums, but Dessa also reacts very weirdly to seeing a Sylvari character; she doesn’t recognize the species at all.

Not sure myself what this means, as I didn’t know about it until I watched a video by WoodenPotatos over on Youtube, but interesting none the less.