Tried to edit it to not sound rude. I had been dealing with annoying folks shortly before writing it. But I would say it certainly does sound like you’re disagreeing, since what I’m ultimately saying is that the mordrem showed zero evidence of being influenced by death magic.
Further, I’m saying that death magic in Elder Dragon corruption in two out of three “supposed” cases was shown in the exact same manner – a change to physical appearance – regardless of the subject matter that was corrupted. Which the third, Mordremoth’s minions, never show – with one arguable exception that was not what Taimi claimed was the connection to death magic.
No worries, happens to the best of us.
I muddied my own point. I’m not at all denying that the first domain manifests physically in the corrupted minions; I’m only contending that we have no indisputable reason to believe that is necessarily all the first domain can do.
When the dragon exhibits a certain magical behaviour, which is heavily associated with that first domain, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to link the two. Mass animation of the dead— abilities and all, above and beyond mere reconstitution of matter— would seem to be that to me.
Essentially, we can only really appeal to precedent to dispute that. We have no iron-clad rule or ‘word of god’ (partially as a result of the woolly way in which magic has been discussed in-game).
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
And what I’ve been saying is that when utilized by an Elder Dragon and it’s minions, the domain of death has always resulted, undeniably and without question, the decay and rot of the subject corrupted.
Whether that subject was a fresh corpse, and ancient corpse that by all reason should be brittle bone, or living being – it resulted in a semi-rotting shambling corpse. Every. Single. Time. And it isn’t like Zhaitan only corrupts corpses in mass; we see him corrupt the living and landscape in mass, and when he does it results in diseases and decay of the living.
And when we see it in Primordus, what’s the result? Rotting stone, and poisoned flames.
The only thing that Mordremoth had in relation to this was the mordrem wyverns’s poison flames, but that could just be his plant’s poison mixing with the flames rather than deaths’ rot mixing with the flames. Beyond that, just the appearance of the adult mordrem wyverns.
Ultimately, there’s little to nothing among the mordrem where the result is showing off death magic. And that’s how every other situation – even the new destroyers – show their domain: the result of the corruption.
….Right. I’m not quite understanding the tone adopted here; I’m not disagreeing with anything written above, and nor have I done so before in this thread.
The Pale Tree comes from Mordremoth, just as Glint comes from Kralkatorrik, just as Tequatl comes from Zhaitan. So the domains are shared. Doesn’t matter if the sylvari “were under its control” or not.
The sylvari were already part of the domain. They had to come from something. That something would be “Material A”.
The Pale Tree came from Mordremoth, sure.
It matters to my line of thinking whether the Sylvari were under Mordy’s control. Since they were not, and then the call— and subsequent further corruption of some, into Mordrem Guard— that would go to show that the subject of corruption was linked to Mordy’s domain.
He could affect them because they were of him. The subject mattered.
Icebrood and branded do the same… They retain their original capabilities, original knowledge, and tend to retain the same old hatreds and goals (prime, but far from sole, example: Chief Kronon ) All long before Zhaitan’s death.
Hell, even pre-S3 destroyers are (imperfect) copies of other creatures. It’s why we now call them Destroyer Crab/Troll/Harpy instead of “Destroyer of Sinew” and the like. Sadly, I prefer the old naming system.
The living retain memories; a corpse does not. Bringing a corpse back, abilities and memories with it, is far more than simply using the corpse itself as raw material. That screams death magic to me.
Except death magic doesn’t take the form of messing with corpses. That’s what you’ve been saying until now – that’s what Taimi is saying.
What I’ve been saying is that death magic results in the decay and death of things, and the manipulation of death.
I am saying that magic is not rigidly defined. And that, by extension, the mere messing with corpses does not instantly label it as Death Magic.
Which is what Taimi is saying. “They copy corpses, so it must be death magic” is her conclusion, summarized into simplest form. And I’m saying that makes no sense, because messing with corpses can be done by non-death magic; death magic just result in corpse-like things (super simplification) but is not required for messing with corpses (even though that is death magic’s forte).
There is nothing that results in death and decay. There is the utilization of dead things, but why would plant magic be so rigid as to not be able to utilize a corpse? Is plant magic so rigidly defined?
That’s not what I’ve been saying until now. What I’ve been saying is that death magic can result in the decay and death of things; it can also have a host of other effects. I would certainly consider the reanimation of huge hosts of soldiers into Risen to be one such, since it deals so very heavily with death and the dead.
Other spheres of magic can utilise corpses, in certain circumstances. We never see any of them do it in even a fraction of the scale that Zhaitan does. That’s significant.
You, actually, were – and so does Taimi.
No, I wasn’t. I said it is involved with it. I did not “equate” it, which is an entirely different thing.
Because it happens 100% of the time.
Whenever anything is touched by Zhaitan’s corruption, it results in poison and decay.
Whenever anything is touched by Jormag’s corruption, it results in ice.
Whenever anything is touched by Kralkatorrik’s corruption, it becomes crystalline.
This happens 100% of the time. Without question. Regardless of what’s corrupted.
The physical manifestation reflects the first domain, yes, I know— but my point was that who’s to say that’s all the first domain can do? The first domain could have a host of other effects. Utilising the dead on mass would seem to be one of them.
Technically, nothing says that whatever the Pale Tree uses as materials to make sylvari is plants. It results in plants, because that’s Mordremoth’s domain.
Material A (Unknown in this case; Variable in general) becomes Material B (Plant in this case).
This is what I’ve been saying the entire time.
Sylvari were not under its control before the call. Afterwards, some were, and some were further corrupted and twisted into the Mordrem Guard. The subject in this case is the Sylvari, not whatever material went into making them.
Taimi is claiming that because Material A was corpse, regardless of Material B, the Domain of Death was used (specifically: “Material A (corpse) becomes Material B (Plant), therefore Domain of Death used”); this does not fit the empirical evidence of every single situation of dragon corruption everywhere.
Well, that’s simplified. Mordremoth was not simply reconstituting the matter: the outcomes were copies, hosting the abilities too. We see something similar with Risen, hosting the abilities of their former selves, hunting their former comrades, and sometimes even having the shadow of their former awareness, like the Eyes.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
The Mursaat tablets don’t really have anything that incontrovertibly contradicts old information. They omit information, but that’s really to be expected.
Your comment is rather contradicting itself.
If “the living decaying” is the form the domain’s corruption takes, then it’s not “the corruption of corpses” that is the domain, because it means that both living and dead are turned into the corruption.
That’s not really a contradiction; only a specific circumstance. Magic can do more than one rigidly-defined thing. The domain of death can cover both; corrupting the living into a walking corpse, and raising the dead as Risen.
Look at the schools of magic, after all: they were never this rigidly defined. It would be like arguing that Rotting Flesh cannot be death magic, because death magic takes the form of messing with corpses.
Zhaitan does it on a scale greater, but that doesn’t make rising corpses to be the domain – it’s just what he does more. If “domain of death” equated “domain of corrupting corpses” were the domain, then as I said (what you never addressed), then Jormag would have the domain of willing converts, and Kralkatorrik the domain of physical touch. Which makes no sense.
It makes no sense because I never actually did equate “domain of death” with “domain of corrupting corpses”. I argued that raising the dead as Risen would come under the purview of “death”, because it deals so heavily with death and the dead.
You seem to be excluding it because for the other dragons, the first domain reflects the physical manifestation of the corruption. Who’s to say that is necessarily always the case? That’s some very rigid extrapolation. It could broadly describe a type of magic they use to raise their armies, which often has more than one application. Grenth knows the variety of kinds of corruption and methodology differs hugely even for each dragon.
Yes, there may be some overlap between the Elder Dragons’ domains – like the supposed domain of sky for Kralkatorrik including the fire of the sun (going off of the aspects the Zephyrites got from Glint’s magic) – but the subject of corruption is never shown to be part of the Elder Dragons’ domain.
Really? Sylvari/Mordrem Guard and Plant?
But we also see Zhaitan “exploiting” the living and plants in the exact same manner as the other Elder Dragons. We’re told that Primordus can corrupt living but never see it; we are told Jormag corrupts willing subjects – does that make Jormag’s first domain “willing living beings”? That makes no sense.
The first domain is not what’s corrupted. It’s what the corruption takes the form of.
Otherwise Kralkatorrik would be the Elder Flesh Dragon, and Jormag would be the Elder Convert Dragon.
We could just as easily say that the dead rising as Risen is “the form the corruption takes”, though, just as much as the living decaying as Risen. That other Elder Dragons occasionally raise a corpse does not preclude that, because Zhaitan undoubtedly does it on a scale many orders of magnitude above anything they do.
We cannot expect these domains to correspond with not even the slightest overlap; light doesn’t, after all, and neither do the Gods’ domains. We’re talking about orders of magnitude.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
Because that’s how the first domain functions. The first domains – Crystal, Fire, Ice, Plant, Death – are what the Elder Dragons’ corruption takes the form of.
Well, it’s how we’ve seen it focus. We also know that Zhaitan exploited the dead on a scale clearly many orders of magnitude larger than anything we saw from any other dragon: we’ve seen a single instance in one of the novels of Jormag exploiting a corpse once. That’s not really comparable in terms of scale alone. It’s still easily possible that Zhaitan’s mastery of death gave it the ability to use the dead on the scale that it did, and that’s firmly within the domain of death.
Further, just corrupting corpses is not what Zhaitan’s domain is, as proven by the fact that other Elder Dragons’ dragon champions corrupted corpses or used corpses as templates long before Zhaitan’s death.
Well, the Pale Tree’s use of dead bodies as a template isn’t really the same as what the Blighting Pods/ Trees did. The former copied a general form, but created endless variations on that basic template. The latter could copy ability and exact form. Again, orders of magnitude.
Mordrem Trolls are, according to Scott McGough, corrupted while alive – and Mordrem Wolves, whether corrupted alive or dead, are not suddenly decayed, which is how Zhaitan’s corruption of the domain of death took form.
Why would it necessarily have to take exactly the same form as it did when Zhaitan did it? That seems arbitrarily restrictive.
And true, it doesn’t say that the seers were wiped out by their civil warring, but it seems implied in the wording.
@Squee: On second look, I suppose you’re right that the line could be twisted to be indicating that it’s talking about the world’s societies. However, the key thing to look at is that it’s a singular society that devolved and divided into violent tribes.
I must say, when I first read the line, before coming onto the forum to see what others had made of it, it didn’t even occur to me that the tribal warring could be what wiped the Seers out. I really don’t think that’s implied at all.
I also assumed that “society” referred to the wider Tyrian societies to which the Seers were gifting the magic (since the line immediately beforehand said they shared it with “the world”). Had it referred only to the Seers’ society, I’d have expected the Mursaat-written tablet to specify “their society” or something.
The reference to the “Crystal Desert” is the only real contradiction I can see. But, then, these tablets are written in retrospect. I always shiver to see the inaccuracies in real-world histories, even when they look back only a few hundred years. This is pretty tame in comparison.
Cant even get away from PC in Guildwars anymore, unbelievable.
What, a request for variety is “PC” now? Nobody’s asking for stuff to be removed, for Grenth’s sake.
It would just be nice if there were also some revealing male armours. That’s something I’m completely behind. There’s nothing bloody “PC” about asking for something kewl and sexeh for the dudes.
I would be all over more revealing male armour. +1.
Here it is again. someone looking at their personal preference and ideals but ignoring the big picture. making legend chasers out to be the bad guys..
Uhrm… “personal preference and ideals” is all anybody is basing their position on. If you prefer they focus on LS, that’s a personal preference. If you prefer they focus on legendaries, that is ALSO a personal preference.
OT: I am somewhat disappointed, I must say. That said, it’s not the end of the world, and I rather doubt many of the people saying they bought this expansion FOR the legendaries actually did so. If you care about the game enough to chase such high-prestige items, I find it quite unlikely that you wouldn’t pick up the expansion.
Still, unfortunate decision.
Just come across this, trying to finish luminescent collections (after putting it off forever). LS can’t be completed at the moment.
What I would like is a statement form the president of ArenaNet and the devs of HoT explaining to a very dissatisfied customer base
You do not speak for the “customer base”, and this board— in which people will complain about literally anything— does not represent the “customer base”.
Oh, for… you have to play the game to unlock stuff. That’s been the case in every game ever made.
Wait… OP is upset that they can’t get certain Guild benefits solo?
They’re Guild benefits. The idea of a Guild is kind of defeated when it’s just you. That’s not a guild. That’s a crazy person running around with a banner.
As long as it makes sense in lore, story, entire game world can be full of gay men or lesbian women for me.
But once you put one into the game just for sake of one or other having different sexual preferences, it doesn’t feel natural and I’m all against it.
Well, nobody is suggesting the character be nothing but his sexuality. The character could have a dozen other reasons to be there. OP (and others) would just like it if, once the character is made, the coin landed on the other side.
Thought so far is: awesome.
Mixed it up after ye olde game mode was getting stale. Need MOAR maps though!
I was always going to buy anything that offered more Guild Wars, tbh. I would have bought it without any details at all.
This expansion does offer a number of things I’ve been wanting for a while, though.
I saw the Engi hammer, he was surrounded by these little flying robot things?
I can’t wait! YAY! I wonder what the Guardian will get?
Dual-wielding focii.
Did those look like Mursaat to you…? I’m still unsure.
If they are, they’ve changed quite a bit… but hey, that’s not unknown. The Dredge have changed drastically too.
Interesting you say that because, to quote each luminary in the first and last instance of Chapter 1 sylvari Personal Story (all three variants):
Aife: I awakened as the sun rose on the first dawn of our race.
Niamh: I awakened at the zenith of the first day of our race.
Kahedins: I awakened as the sun first set on our race.
Malomedies: I awakened on the first night of the sylvari race.[…]
So Malomedies and Kahedins (given your hint, Trahearn’s Dusk) are liars in 7 instances of the Personal Story. Now, Kahedins’ (and Aife’s) lines can be interpreted on the second day but the first sunrise/sunset (implying the first of the cycle was born after the sun’s movement but during the cycle still), but Malomedies’ line (like Niamh’s) is harder to argue out (Melomedies’ more than Niamh’s).
Why does this necessarily mean they were the first to wake? All it means is that they awoke on the first day.
I think people are getting a liiiiittle too focused on minutiae and literalism.
I notice however a far bigger problem: The Sylvari just aren’t very well written to begin with
I can agree there, to a degree.
There was a real opportunity here for the writers, to delve into the Nightmare Court, and show us that things aren’t quite so black and white. That the Nightmare Court aren’t just evil, but a valid alternative philosophy. But the real disappointment comes from how they’ve done exactly the opposite. I think this also explains a lot of the disappointment regarding the idiot-ball plot with Caithe’s storyline. Its not just that Caithe is so willfully ignorant of reality to further the plot, but also that Faolain is so incredibly unrealistically black-hat. There seems no nuance, and it utterly ruins the race in my opinion.
Who’s to say they won’t delve into it later (in, say, HoT)? We’ve only just had the reveal.
Also, I thought the visions of the past gave a really good view of Faolain’s ideology, and how her views (and Cadeyrns) could have planted the seed of Nightmare. It’s far more nuanced than most fantasy villains.
In Game of Thrones there are a lot of weird speculations about the plot. The thing with that book series though, is that everything eventually makes sense. And one of those very persistent speculations has recently been proven to be false (the Coldhands speculation).
Which speculation is that, sorry?
As far as I know, none of the various theories about Coldhands’ identity have been disproven.
With the Sylvari however, people were yelling it as soon as we went into the Mordremoth plot. They instantly guessed it. And a lot of lore fans still disagreed, because it simply did not make sense considering what we knew, and know today, about dragon minions. And that still holds true, it doesn’t make sense. But regardless, the writers should have reconsidered. It wasn’t a very good twist, and it didn’t have a very good basis either from a lore point of view.
Well, this is still a matter of opinion. I think it fits just fine: there’s nothing we’ve learned about Dragon Minions which excludes them. Just a few characteristics they don’t share with others, the importance of which has been (imo) inflated (like that they consume magic, like their masters. Who says they all must do so? It’s a plot element which hardly ever even came up).
On the other hand the Nightmare and Soundless, and the questions they raise over whether Sylvari were being true to their nature, are both relevant and recurring issues. The presence of the Shadow of the Dragon in the Sylvari character’s starting instance is another clue— sufficiently ambiguous, but makes sense.
The novelty of the race, at a time in which the Dragons are only just resurfacing, should have been another clue.
There are clues, and they’re perfectly sensible.
It’s just terrible writing. I can’t really understand how the writing team went with the most predictable conclusion, and stuck with it. Whether they intended this to be the back story for the Sylvari from the start is a bit of a mood-point. But why did they stick with it? It’s a terrible none-twist.
I don’t really write grade-A literature myself, but when I come up with a twist in a story, and my readers guess it immediately, I change it. I don’t want my story twists to be that predictable.
A good twist has everyone go “Ah, it all makes sense now, the pieces of the puzzle are all falling into place”. -I did not have that reaction to this reveal. I just facepalmed, and shook my head. Bad writing, BAD!
You’re judging the majority of players by Lore-forum-reader standards. We might have guessed it, but we’re really unrepresentative.
The majority of players won’t have guessed it.
EDIT: This reminds me, actually, of the various theories about ASOIAF. If you head into a forum, there are loads of people taking certain theories as a given, assuming they’re true. Some aren’t even questioned at this point. Yet, the majority of readers certainly won’t have guessed, because the majority don’t pore over it like the forumites do.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
— A significant amount of new land to explore!
— New dungeons.
— Guild Halls.
— More underwater zones, plz!
That is all.
If there’s one thing that’s consistently improved, it’s boss encounters. Pretty much every boss encounter in S2 has been good.
For the record, I really enjoyed the Shadow of the Dragon fight in the latest ep, too.
They have nothing in common with dragon minions.
They have little in common with the other varieties of Dragon minions we’ve seen.
That’s not an inconsistency, because there’s no actual contradiction of information: only new information. One may as well argue that Platypuses can’t be mammals, because they have little in common with other mammals.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
We have things that mordrem have in common with all other dragon minions (branded, destroyer, icebrood, and risen) on a general scope. But the sylvari – supposedly also mordrem – lack.
Nothing said they are Mordrem exactly, just that they were created by Mordremoth, intended to be his minions.
And the fact of the matter is that all common ground that dragons and their minions hold, the sylvari lack.
Even outright stated things – like the consumption of magic – is lacking by sylvari.
There is something wrong. Perhaps, it is as you said: things just don’t match up. But this is not an obscure thing here – these inconsistencies between sylvari and mordrem are skin deep in how deep into lore you must go.
I’m just not seeing how this constitutes an inconsistency.
Mordremoth had a breed of minion that is, in numerous ways, unique. That’s not inconsistent— it just didn’t fit with what we previously thought. The same could be said of countless new pieces of evidence people have come across in the real world.
It would be inconsistent if Word of God had stated that these characteristics were true of all dragon minions, no exceptions, but WoG said no such thing— people drew that conclusion themselves, and it turned out to be false.
By Ogden’s Hammer, if Mordremoth can attack the Mother Tree in the Grove, then we should go to the armory. That’s where Zadorojny is likely to be!
2.5 seems like the best option to me.
Methinks one of the biggest motivators of all for MMO players is the feeling that you’re making palpable, actual progress towards something.
I’d want a trial or a reckoning of some sort, definitely. She killed a lot of almost-certainly-innocent creatures.
Well, not really failed per se. Season 2 is a thousand times better than Season 1, and in one sense, it’s succeeded in providing genuinely interesting new content, while also releasing very frequently.
That said, I still don’t think LS has the capability to provide the same volume/kind of content as an expansion. The map is still very little bigger than it was when it started.
Such was a common thought after E4 came out. However, we see mursaat structures in GW1 and they be not gold.
Who’s to say they don’t have more than one architectural style/ material? After all, there’s a lot of variety in what humans have made in Tyria.
Maybe a Mursaat residential area would be very, very different in style from a defensive installation like the Onyx Gate.
Women? No. The other stuff distracts the writers from what they should really be focusing on.
What “other stuff” are you referring to? What makes it “pc/sjw stuff”?
drops the PC/SJW stuff
I dread to ask, but… what are you counting as “PC/SJW stuff”?
Including women? Having a gay romance?
This is the silliest thing I’ve read all week.
90% of games have powerful male characters outnumbering powerful female ones. Then, a game has an arguable, possible, ever-so-slight number more prominent females than males in one aspect of its story, and is immediately accused of misandry.
This is silliness. Silliness incarnate.
My experience with the Malevolent Memory was pretty positive. Changing mechanics, fair difficulty, and avoids requiring simple DPS.
The Facet of Light (when doing the ‘Better Red than Dead’ achievement) was a bit frustrating, but overall I really enjoyed the combat in this episode.
I was getting a bit worried that the game was losing me with LS. Still am slightly, but much less, this episode is just fantastic.
Love the map, love the mechanics, love the new music and the missions and the use of lore and the art and I can’t fault a kitten thing. Best episode yet.
It is already available to everyone.
It has an in-game requirement. Why on earth should they remove that? The point of video games is that they reward you for completing content.
If you want to avoid certain parts of the game, that’s not the game’s problem. People who play Ocarina of Time shouldn’t be able to just skip a Temple if they don’t like it much; people who play Mass Effect shouldn’t be able to get the rewards for a side-quest without actually completing the side-quest if they happen not to like it much.
In another myth, when one of the Gods (Thor) kills the midguard serpent, the world ends, and all the Gods and Giants die. Only the Aesir (Elves), survive.
Just a note; the Aesir were not Elves, but the primary group of Norse deities (those kittenided in Asgard). The Elves were the Alfr and Svartalfr (“dark elves”, often seen as dwarfs). A small number of humans were supposed to survive Ragnarok, either taking refuge in the branches of Yggdrasil or, alternatively, in three surviving fortresses.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
I’m afraid I disagree with the OP— I much prefer each legendary weapon being entirely, thematically unique.
Also, we’re due for our new legendaries now!
Well, the drill sent out a surge that went westward into the Maguuma jungle, and we saw a huge, scaly mouth open deep underground there. Marjory spoke afterwards about investigating the “roar” that was heard, and her Seraph sister mentioned heading into Brisban.
So, altogether, I think chances are good we’ll be fighting the Jotun in their icy mountain lairs in S2.
(edited by Neilos Tyrhanos.5427)
The Molten Facility dungeon. That was great fun.
We should go the armory! That’s where Zadorojny is likely to be!! NoNoNo!
You want to have to pay weekly, or you’ll lose out on content?
This will not be a popular suggestion.
If the LS season is all connected, then it forms one story. So, to experience the entire storyline, we would have to buy every instalment. I see no benefit to this.
Also, that “positive feedback” loop would be nice, but unfortunately, fans tend to be hyperbolic and extreme in their criticism, and usually don’t mention good stuff at all, even when it is good.
Why can’t people differentiate between criticism and whining?
I see far less genuine criticism than I see absurd hyperbole, to be honest. Constructive criticism would be fine.
As to the OP: The only one I take issue with is the same amount of content delivered via LS. It’s possible, but… well, I’ll have to wait and see how Season 2 pans out. I have my doubts, but I might be proven wrong.
GW2 releases Story Journals: Feedback/Questions [Merged]
in Living World
Posted by: Neilos Tyrhanos.5427
This system looks like a huge improvement, to me. Past instances revisitable at will, and permanent expansion of the game world. I only hope that they can deliver the same volume of world-expansion that an expansion could.
I have my doubts on that, but let’s see how season 2 starts, maybe I’m wrong.
Also, a note to the hyperbolic in here: Stop being hyperbolic. It doesn’t get your point across any better.
It’s encouraging smaller, better-organised, communicative teams rather than zerging the boss.
I think it’s better than just zerging.