Guild Wars 2

Excellent! Then only humans could have erected and cared for the statues? You would agree to that then? I’ll come back to that bit later.

You didn’t respond to my Lyssa or Utopia argument, no comment on those?

If only humans worshiped the gods, then why was the dwarf Ural Highstone a follower of Dwayna in that link you provided? Maybe he thought she was hot like Malchor or something. I guess since you used the adjective “mainly” you can squeak by it huh. Speaking of, why did Dwayna kill him and take his soul?? Odd thing to do for a goddess of life and mercy… At any rate, my point was that all sentient races used divine magic equally. “Mainly” every single creature in GW1 used the exact same spells that humans did, even the Mursaat. So it’s either one of three things:
1)it’s a simple game-play mechanic and not “lore”
2)every race really did use divine magic equally, or
3)chalk it up to that oh so favorite GW2 plot device: human bias.

Which one is it?

I never said the races downgrades the Six, not sure where you get that.

You’re missing the subtlety of Lyssa’s words. Yes, the mortal decision was ultimately Kormir assuming Abaddon’s mantle…that’s not the point. The point is Lyssa’s argument that humanity doesn’t need the gods anymore. Kormir agrees in her last line there. Then, after she becomes a god in the final mission, “The gods spoke the truth. It is your world. Use it wisely.” She is reiterating the same idea of divine in-accountability…i.e. they won’t really matter any more.

One tiny line in a side quest in EotN? Really? Riddle me this then: if ANet had no intentions of “downgrading” the gods for GW2 in EotN, where are all of the statues that are all over the map in every preceding campaign? Did they get torn down? Merged with resurrection shrines? Church of Dwayna forget to pay their utility bill? The only possible scenario I could think of for why that is, is that somehow only the humans worshiped the gods and paid homage to them. Fat chance proving that since every sentient being on the planet supposedly used “divine” magic equally.

“What little we know of Utopia seemed to continue the plot of Menzies and Dhuum”
^— Lol, what? Golems came from Utopia. Asuran architecture came from Utopia. Sylvari came from Utopia. Heck, even Chronomancers came from Utopia. You’re cherry-picking one picture out of 10 there. Someone look at these and tell me that doesn’t scream Asuran-Sylvari love-child. You’re not trying very hard, Konig. :-/

Rognik.2579:

Obsidian.1328:

And since Utopia “evolved” into GW2, and EotN inherited much of Utopia, it follows that EotN was the prelude and intro to GW2.

As such, since things like the Eternal Alchemy, the Pale Tree, and the Elder Dragons themselves(which are all a part of EotN) are diametrically opposed to having “gods” as the masters of magic in Tyria, then it also follows that the decision to downgrade the Six was a fundamental part of any post-Nightfall narrative scenario.

Herein lies the fallacy. Utopia was not initially planned to have multiple playable races, and even if it involved interacting with another race, that didn’t mean the gods were going to be downgraded. Once EotN was released, though, the gods were definitely getting shoved into the closet. All I’m saying is that your cause and effect assumptions were off.

I never said Utopia was to have new player races, it wasn’t. All I said was that there’d likely be new npc races with a fourth installment…like there were with the 2nd and 3rd. Here’s one author’s view of it:

“Although the PC Gamer articles heavily implies that the plans for Utopia were scrapped and the initial plan for GW2 were started at the same time, there is a possibility that this is not the case, and Utopia, not Eye of the North was intended to be a bridge to GW2. Indeed, it is known that multiple races were intended to be introduced in Utopia, such as the Sidhe (which later became the concept for the Sylvari).”

Introduced race does not mean playable race. Whether or not Utopia or EotN was intended to be the bridge to GW2 is largely irrelevant, as they both used a lot of the same ideas. What’s important is that the ending of Nightfall allowed them to proceed with EotN(heavily influenced by Utopia) in terms of introducing a completely new concept of how magic works in Tyria. Without that particular discussion with Lyssa’s Muse in the Gate of Madness mission, EotN wouldn’t make much sense at all:

Kormir: “Gods, we beseech you. Hear our prayers.”
<player name>: “We have come where living men should not be. We have fought armies, crossed wastelands and conquered demons.”
<player name>: “Now we are in the heart of Torment. We must destroy Abaddon before he destroys the world. But we cannot battle him alone.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “You are not alone. The gods are always watching.”
Kormir: “Watching? We need your help. We are only mortals, and we challenge a god.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “There was a time when the gods walked the earth. Every thought and achievement was a gift of the gods.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “But now you must realize that our gifts are within you. Dwayna lives in your compassion, Balthazar in your strength.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “Melandru dwells in your harmony, Grenth in your justice.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “And in your inspiration, Lyssa is there.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “The divinity is within you. And so, we give you our blessing. That should suffice for the task ahead.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “And to you, Kormir, a most special gift.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “This is your world, now. This is your decision. You must make the choice that only a mortal could make.”
Kormir: “Our decision? They leave us some words of encouragement and expect us to fight a god?”
<player name>: “The gods said we have a choice. A choice that only a mortal could make.”
Kormir: “Yes. Yes, there is a choice. We can end this. We don’t have to be driven by gods and their avatars. Let us go.”

That last line by Kormir says it all, curtain call for the Six. Do you really think the author decided to write that for no reason? That he/she just thought it would be a really cool ending? No way.

Rognik.2579:

I do believe this is complete nonsense you’re spewing. After Nightfall, there was initially plans for a 4th expansion/setting (however you want to term the different chapters of the original Guild Wars games), but it was later scrapped when it learned that the player base wasn’t excited about just new professions and skills. I don’t remember how quickly Eye of the North came out after Nightfall, and I don’t know when exactly they decided to scrap the game and build a new engine, but the gods were not completely written out then just because of the sequel game. It may have progressed to that, but that was never the original plan.

“…what began as a brainstorm about Campaign 4 evolved into the blueprint for a completely new game. We kept changing the scope of what we were doing, until it became Guild Wars 2” ~Eric Flannum, PC Gamer, 2007

Utopia(the fourth campaign) was scheduled for release in early 2007. EotN was released in mid-2007, with a lot of the design elements from Utopia simply rolled into it. And since Utopia “evolved” into GW2, and EotN inherited much of Utopia, it follows that EotN was the prelude and intro to GW2.

As such, since things like the Eternal Alchemy, the Pale Tree, and the Elder Dragons themselves(which are all a part of EotN) are diametrically opposed to having “gods” as the masters of magic in Tyria, then it also follows that the decision to downgrade the Six was a fundamental part of any post-Nightfall narrative scenario.

I agree that the ending to Nightfall was not written for the explicit purposes of the new dragon-leyline-alchemy-etc GW2 narrative. On the contrary, I don’t think that was all that fleshed out yet. What I do think though, is that writers like Grubb knew that human-favored gods(whether real or perceived) was a major obstacle to a multi-playable race world. And getting rid of the Six, as the keepers of magic in Tyria, allowed ANet to more easily establish the other races on a level that would give them parity to humans.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Well, there was a reason and they saw it as “good enough” – their ‘gods’ told them to. Without the titans (aka Abaddon’s forces) telling them to, they probably wouldn’t have – but at the same time they wouldn’t have had the Searing Cauldrons either.

Oh come now Konig, you know that’s not true. The Titans gave them the power to invade humanity, not the purpose. The Charr had a thousand-year score to settle with humanity ever since they took over the area that would become Ascalon. They sought out the Titans because humanity apparently had the Six on their side and they wanted their own advantage. They also didn’t distinguish between human kingdoms, so a beef with Ascalons was a beef with all of humanity.

Djahlat.9610:

Well, it wasn’t necessarily retconned, but we realized how biased lore was to make it human-centric. Now that the Priory got multiracial, things were bound to be rewritten because they were simply wrong.
The story of Ascalon follows: as a human in GW1, Charr are the invador against which we have to defend, while in fact the Charr were there first, and the humans are the actual conquerors.
Kinda like in the western world, most people think that the US is the primary responsible for the resolution of the WWII, while in fact it was the Russians that played the biggest part.

That’s not true either. The only way it could be is if the author specifically intended his in-game writings to be viewed as human-centric. And that’s simply not the case, there is zero evidence to support that premise. The lore of GW1, that we see in the game, is intended to be the actual lore of Tyria…not the historical perspective of humans living there.

The author who wrote all of Prophecies and most of Factions left ArenaNet shortly thereafter, and for Nightfall a whole new writing team led by Grubb and Soesbee took over the reigns. They are the ones who created the claim of human-centric historical bias in Tyria, using simple gaps and plot-holes in the basic story to prop up this claim.

Harper.4173:

It’s still a pretty sad deal.
I wish we had the GW1 lore/theme/atmosphere in this story.

Where were you 4 years ago? You struck on an important point there: theme/atmosphere. Like I mentioned above, you have to understand that the authorship of Guild Wars lore changed hands after Factions. There are many indications of this in the story itself, too exhaustive to list here, but suffice to say the new authors had their own ideas on what Tyria should be like. And ANet devs gave them a green light to do so.

Take the gods for instance. It’s no coincidence that they were effectively removed from the story(or world) at the end of Nightfall. The new writers already had plans to introduce new playable races into the game, and having the gods appearing to drastically favor humanity presented a problem to this. The gods were the top dogs of Tyria up until that point; they literally were the creators and keepers of all things magical related. To remedy this situation, they simply came up with a scenario that would 1) remove them from their influence in the world(end of Nightfall) and 2) create a valid historical premise in which they actually are not the apex beings of Tyria by severely downplaying their role in magic.

I could write for days about the drastic, unfortunate, and downright sad changes that the GW2 writing team brought to the Tyrian narrative…but I’m sure no one here wants me to start up again. ;-) Suffice to say while I intimately empathize with your opinion, there is really nothing that can be done about it at this point. GW2 lore is here to stay, whether we like it or not.

draxynnic.3719:

Valento.9852:

Wow Matthew, that is a very careful way of viewing this subject. While it adds depth and tragedy to certain stories, it’s a very delicate subject to correctly add to the game. Nice to know how you go about balancing story.

From the core game, but I’m going to put spoiler tags over it just in case:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Eir in Honor of the Waves could be seen as a case of attempted suicide by Svanir, but Caithe talked her down.

Eh, Caithe didn’t talk her down from going in to try and save the Voice, Eir(and everyone else) went in anyway. The moral of that dungeon story is to not let your failures get the best of you. Eir was still guilt-ridden over Snaff’s death and blamed herself since she was the de facto leader of DE. Caithe’s role here is to try and get Eir to put that behind her, remind her of who she still is, and move on.

It would be a stretch to say that Eir wanting to go down fighting was suicidal, but I suppose technically it could count. Giving up on herself is more apt. But I’d say there’s an important distinction to be made between direct suicide, and wanting to die fighting for a cause…regardless of whether or not you think your death would make a difference.

hardy.7469:

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the egg exists to absorb the powers of all the defeated dragons and become some super dragon that’s good and benevolent.

Oh please no.

Last thing Tyria needs is some sort of GW2 equivalent of DBZ Cell.

Ginora

Well, that’s the first time someone’s accused me of being happy with the story lol.

I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you. I’m merely pointing out that I don’t think it’s okay for you to blame ANet writers, even partially so, for your mental state…which you kind of did. Being critical of someone else’s work is perfectly fine, lord knows I’ve done that enough in here. But to hold someone accountable for your pain and anguish is quite another.

And sorry for asking if you were trolling. I honestly didn’t know anyone liked Trahearne, that’s why I asked. :-/

Ginora.8976:

I just want to tell Arenanet that GW2 used to be my favorite game. Not only among MMOs, btw. It was so interesting and beautiful and the plot was so great, I couldn’t stop playing. But then I paid 50$ for Heart of Thorns expecting a lot of fun and adventures. I don’t know if I want my money back or pay you more for fixing one thing that is very important for me.
Trahearne's fateYou know, I can take Eir’s death. But what you did to Trahearne (who was my very special, my favorite character *EVER*)… I was hoping all that time that you, who claimed that he was your favorite character too, let us save him. Why not? You didn’t kill Marjory because people liked her! Why is Trahearne any different? There’re a lot of people who like him. _I_ love him to death. He was my only reason to buy HoT. Please, don’t tell me “he died hero” or anything of this bullkitten. I don’t need this “adventure”. I don’t need that stupid sword! I just want my favorite salad to be okay. But no, you didn’t even give him a chance like Logan and Zojja. In the end I paid 50$ for my ruined mental health (I can’t stop crying for 2 days) and I’m not sure if I ever play your game again. I don’t want to. I don’t need it. It hurts too much. There were times when this game helped me to beat my depression, but this time it caused it. You know what’s funny? You’ve changed names of stupid dyes because some people weren’t happy about them, but I’m sure you’re not going to give Trahearne a second chance because of people who genuine like him. You always were known as developers who listened to your players, but this time it seems you’ve been listening only that part of fandom who wanted to kill Trahearne for the kitten sword. Well done. Thank you so much. I literally hate you for that.

At the risk of stepping over the line, I don’t think your anger is warranted towards ANet.

Your feelings are passionate and sincere, and I realize that perhaps you let your personal life get somewhat entwined with the GW2 narrative. But I don’t think you can lay blame at the feet of the writers for “killing off” your favorite character. A story, especially a fictional one, shouldn’t be expected to cater to individual preferences. It stands on its own merits, for better or for worse, and whatever course it takes is entirely on the shoulders of the author(s). Not to say you can’t disagree with it, of course you can. But to blame them for any personal anguish is probably crossing the line. Please try and understand that.

If you were simply trolling, bravo…you fooled me. But this is your only post you’ve ever made. And your angst seemed genuine.

@Daniel
@Konig
@drax

All good points, thank you. :-)

Konig Des Todes.2086:

In your sake of argument example, the author could explain that the sun is green in a high fantasy story due to an ancient god-like being throwing a magical artifact into the sun for protection. Then suddenly during the story the sun turns yellow, and the big bad of the story suddenly has a powerful magical artifact. Because of the change in the sun, and knowing why the sun was green, the hero (and audience) can conclude what the artifact is – the one of the story of the godlike being – and figure out how to counter it.

Why not a third option: the sun is green because the the sun is green. Why does it have to be explained at all? Can’t the world of Bubbles just have a green sun and not have to explain itself to the reader? Can’t the reader just accept that as a fact of the world, and move on with the story?

I want to discuss more, but I’ll comment on these two for now:

Eirdyne.9843:

At great example of this is Brandon Sanderson. He so systematizes his worlds there can be joy or wonder in them if you can do the least bit of algebra. These are dead stories, fixed to a course, because they are bounded. By contrast, Lord of the Rings is far less bounded because magic in that world is grounded on properties which the author in writing was able to recover from primary sources of history: ie, Druids had cloaks that could camouflage them. Fire does not burn snow. Gandalf can utterly annihilate whatever he so wants with gratuitous acts of power using something we know very little about called ‘the secret fire’, but is himself restricted by a uber-machina called Manwe, who is a sort of angelic like being that oversees lesser angelic like beings – Gandalf and the other wizards. Melkor, the ultimate evil in Lord of the Rings is actually an increasingly lesser being as it refuses to use divine magic; instead drawing on itself. Consequently, at the beginning of Middle Earth the thing goes around creating demons like the Balrog, Dragons, and etc. Then, just some time before the start of the Lord of the Rings series it has so depleted itself that it essentially gives up so as to retain what powers it has left and starts to work through proxies: ala Satan.

I’ve read the Silmarillion many many times, and I never once got the notion that Melkor was becoming an “increasingly lesser being” somehow. His fall from grace started from almost the beginning of time with the music of the Ainur and his arrogance and pride associated with it. He had major setbacks twice(once with Tulkas’ arrival and once when Beren confronted him) before finally being cast into the void for good…although his influence still remained in Middle-Earth. Sauron was his mighty lieutenant who fought for him, through proxy as you put it, all the way up to the days of Frodo.

Melkor’s power wasn’t something that could be quantitatively measured, nor should it. That wasn’t the point of Tolkien’s story. It was a measurement of quality. Morgoth’s folly, even though completely foretold and known by Eru, was the great lesson of the Middle-Earth narrative. It’s a moral story of good vs. evil on a fantastically grand scale. It wasn’t long on physical understanding, but that’s just how Tolkien rolled. How the world of Middle-Earth exactly worked just wasn’t important to the story. What was important was the events of the story itself and what ideas he(Tolkien) was trying to convey through it.

Finally, language seems to be the major trap here. A century ago what we are doing today is all magic. We’ve just inherited a lot of comfort in developed jargon that enables us to cope more profoundly with the contradictions all around us. For instance I’m using a LCD monitor and I haven’t the faintest idea of the history of these things, what enables them to so precisely make the colors that they do, or how to make one myself if ever our civilization had a hiccup but I can use them!

To use your example, why does it matter that you yourself understand how an LCD monitor works? You know that it took some hefty amount of techno progress over the years to make it happen, can’t that be enough? You have proof that it works because you use it everyday, why measure its parts unless that’s your job? Simple curiosity? Sure why not. But a fantasy narrative doesn’t need to satisfy all of the mundane curiosities of its world just to satisfy a readers’ curiosity. Unless that’s the style of the author and/or it’s somehow pertinent to the narrative. But a make-believe world can, and does, get along just fine without it because it’s just not important to the story.

All you need is two things: a reasonable suspension of disbelief, and trust in the author. It’s sort of a social contract between author and reader: tell me a story that I’ll remember fondly for the rest of my life, and I’ll let myself believe your world lives…if only in my head.

@drax

Ah, that makes more sense to me then. A “fantasy” version of physics, as it were.

Nice Discworld reference, btw. :-P

Konig Des Todes.2086:

People impose their reality onto their fiction while altering it to not be their reality. That’s how anyone who makes stories or art pieces work.

I think the issue is that you’ve created such a stark difference between what is fantasy and what is science. They don’t have to be so separate. Why wouldn’t people go towards technology, just because they can do magic?

I would argue it happens in just about every piece of fantasy and science fiction there is. There will always be a bit of fantasy in science fiction, and a bit of science in fantasy fiction. The question is more of “how much of each” rather than “does it have any of either”.

That makes sense, but I guess I’m talking about switching the emphasis midstream. Like if, say, Picard and crew stumbled upon a group of fireball-wielding wizards that had little to no foundation in the Star Trek verse.

Explaning how magic work doesn’t remove any form of mystery. That’s not a form of mystery at all.

Mystery is more than just “what’s not known”. An issue that ArenaNet truly failed to grasp while making Season 1. Mystery is the subtle hints, pieces of bait that draw people to looking for the meaning behind them. Ascendant’s Ring in Verdant Brink is a mystery because it lead folks like myself wondering what its purpose is. How someone conjures a fireball is not mystery, despite not knowing how it’s done beyond “magic!”

Knowing how someone conjures a fireball in their hand doesn’t reduce magic. It rather builds upon foundation to lay down explanation for how something greater could be done. Usually explaining things like magic results in being a proverbial chekov’s gun – unless the writer is just trying to fill space, it’s going to become relevant later on to explain something.

Hmm…how would you define mystery then?

I think I understand the literary definition, which is what I think you are alluding to…please correct me if I’m wrong. The mystery genre? Like a puzzle that can be solved. Or peeling away at a problem layer by layer until understanding comes? I don’t mean that.

I mean something not understandable or knowable and never will be.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, a make-believe world called Bubbles has a green sun. It’s always had a green sun, that’s completely normal for this particular fictional world. That’s just how it is.

Now, does it really matter at all, even for immersion’s sake, that we, as willing spectators and/or participants in the world of Bubbles, know why the sun is green and not yellow like we are accustomed to? Can’t it just be a green sun and leave it at that?

Daniel Handler.4816:

The only difference between the genres is that Sci fi could happen in our you universe but hasn’t while fantasy hasn’t and can’t.

We want to know how Luke Skywalker performs the force as much as we want to know how an illusion is produced.
Advanced mathematics and scientific theory are both expressions of empiricism. To become invested in a fictional world one usually seeks objective information from the setting. We know that their reality has rules, the information we try to examine is whether their intelligence has grown to the point they can express these rules in math and science/magic. And if they can express their reality in a way similar to our own it makes the immersion process easier.

Huh? I don’t want to know how Luke performs the force, I actually prefer the mystery. It’s not real, we all know this, the mechanics aren’t important. The story is what’s important.

I guess I’m not sure why immersion has to be qualified by science. I mean, I can be completely immersed in a story without ever understanding some of the rules that make up the world in that story.

For sci-fi, it makes sense to have a rather high degree of scientific adherence because…well…it’s a very technologically steeped setting. Even so, like Konig mentioned with Star Wars, it certainly doesn’t have to be absolute. Part of the beauty of that franchise, I would argue, is the mysteriousness of the Force itself…something Lucas destroyed with those medicaloreans(sp) or w/e their called.

But for fantasy…does it really make a setting less immersive if one does not understand, say, the mechanics of a simple magic spell? I would argue that the more technical(for lack of a better word) a fantasy setting gets, the less “fantasy” immersive it becomes because it starts blurring the line between how that world and our own world works.

Does no one like the idea of “mystery” anymore?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

~snip~

Um…I understand human curiosity and technical advancement, that wasn’t my question. That’s real life. I’m talking about fiction.

I guess my question is why turn fantasy into science or science into fantasy(or anything in between) in the same fictional universe ?

Does this happen a lot with fantasy/science fiction? I honestly don’t know.

This subject matter often comes up in fantasy game forums, and I’ve been dying to figure this out for a long time.

My question is: what do subjects like advanced mathematics and scientific theory have to do with “sword and sorcery”-ish fantasy settings? I’ve never understood the need, or wish for that matter, to insert modern scientific thought and theory into a fantasy setting. Isn’t that supposed to be for, you know, the sci-fi genre? One thing Fantasy is, at its core, is a make-believe universe that does not in any way have to try and adhere to the laws of RL science.

Things like the Star Trek ‘verse for instance…of course. It’s Sci-Fi, it’s only natural that something about high-tech space-ships/travel should be relatively highly steeped in science. But high fantasy?? I just don’t see why it should have anything to do with it really. If anything, it’s the one genre where you really don’t need to take a nod to science at all…it’s the power of creative imagination at its purest.

I’m actually not trying to troll here, what’s the deal with marrying science to fantasy? Is this a modern trend or something? Because I never remembered this ever being a “thing” with fantasy in the past. Or maybe I did and simply disregarded it as silly, I don’t know.

Maybe this is why I always thought the Asura never fit in with Tyria??

So mesmers are evil?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Colors are always used to represent things throughout civilizations and even in the natural world. It’s especially prevalent in GW themes.

So it would be a better question to ask: Why wouldn’t it be a thing?

Because GW never used specific colors for that purpose besides the very general light=good/dark=bad thing that everyone under the sun does too. Even so, it was never absolute…the White Mantle, Ministry of Purity and necromancers everywhere are glaring examples of that. Saying a certain color of course represents evil is incredibly simplistic and dull.

Specific colors primarily were used to represent specific classes for combat purposes, beyond that I find it hard to pin down any color-defining absolutes in Tyria. Are you willing to say that Kormir, the god, wasn’t purple simply because she wasn’t evil?

Kossage.9072:

Obsidian.1328:

Grubb’s response was that purple is the color of evil in Tyria.

…

He actually said that??

Yes, he did. I’ll quote the particular bit where he says that as well as put in bold another notable statement in the same answer. Also, I left the misspelling of Abaddon in as that’s how it is in the original written source:

Jeff Grubb:

Q: A little controversial discussion since Nightfall: Is Abbadon still alive in some form? And while on the topic of Abbadon, a lot of people have been comparing the Branded of Kralkatorrik to the Margonites of Abbadon. Is there a connection between them outside of the color purple?

A: Basically the gods have stepped back. They’ve let humanity go forward on their own. They are still part of the world in the way that there’s still worship but they aren’t interfering as much as they were back in those days. The fact that Abbadon’s minions had that purplish glow and what we’re seeing in the crystal is, as far as I know, coincidental because purple is of course the color of evil. The fact that there is some similarity—dragon’s contain a lot of power. And the nature of that power comes to the surface. Not all dragon minions are purple in nature. So there’s no definitive link between Abbadon and Kralkatorrik. (Source)

However, something to keep in mind while reading these interviews: there have been later mentions by the GW2 narrative team on the GW2 forums that if any interview ever conflicts with what’s actually presented in game lore-wise, always go with the game’s version. This was back when there was some controversy over the year gap between Firstborn and Secondborn among sylvari in which an old interview from before the game’s launch conflicted with the information presented to us during Living World season 2.

As mesmers also share the colour purple in their magic, my guess is that what Grubb meant in the interview is the colour of dark purple rather than purple in general. Elder Dragons’ corruption tends to have darker, more intense colours than the magic of purified dragon minions or good professions like mesmers which appears lighter in colour.

Oh I wasn’t doubting the quote.

I was just surprised that it’s something he would get on board for. The color purple means evil? How is that even a thing?

Grubb’s response was that purple is the color of evil in Tyria.

…

He actually said that??

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Oakhearts are treants.

Ergo, treants existed in GW1. But we never saw them by that name. In lore, the term “treant” could be newly made in the past 250 years. It wouldn’t be odd in the least, given how fast languages develop and evolve.

And oakheart was only the name of some of these creatures. Did you forget Pinesouls?

Their group classification in GW1 was just simply “plants”.

Didn’t forget about Pinesouls, there’s also Redwood Shepherds and Singed Oaks for example. They all had slightly different abilities depending on where you found them. “Treant” is just a blanket term GW2 uses to encapsulate all of them into one classification. Languages evolve…sure thing. My point was not only did the name “treant” not exist in GW1, it’s also a blatant out-of-verse reference that was entirely unneeded. Why not just call all Sylvari elves and Asura gnomes if they are going to do that?

No. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a part of lore.

Whether I like it or not. Whether you like it or not.

If you don’t like it, why do you even bother then? By accepting what you don’t like, you’re enabling it.

And why are you even here, Obsidian? To continue your argument that GW2 lore and GW1 lore are of two completely different universes while arguing crap like how different artists in comicbook universes write for the same story universe despite retconning each other?

I’m here to troll…it’s right there under my name, good sir. Also why I do it is right there under my name. Is that against the rules?

Ehecatl.9172:

Obsidian.1328:

No, I’m saying they weren’t Druids until they became spirits. Before that they were just humans like any other, with whatever magical abilities any creature had. Where did I say they didn’t have magic?

Wardens aren’t druids. The theory they were previously druids is one of many from the wiki.

Do you have any proof to support that? Because it’s a pretty strange statement. Druids are not a type of spirit, they are a group of religious humans. Sometimes with nature powers.

And no, that isn’t a wiki theory. What you read was a quote from the Guild Wars: Factions Manuscript. A player guide. Therefore it is official lore that Wardens were either human druids or monks before they transformed. Therefore druids were, in fact, humans before undergoing their transformations. Canthan druids became Wardens and Tyrian druids became spirits.

Unless you have lore that proves this outright wrong.

Even then let’s look at your argument. One of phrasing.

“The Druids were a group of Krytan humans that long ago moved to the Maguuma Jungle in order to live with nature. It is said that they are devout followers of Melandru, though this is only rumors. According to the History of Tyria, they were forced out of jungles in the long distant past by other humans. They were last seen by others sometime before 982 AE and mysteriously vanished decades before 1072 AE. Although generally believed to have been killed off by the jungle’s predatory plants and animals, the Druids actually shed their physical bodies to become one with nature. The Druids now exist as spirits, appearing similar to Oakhearts.”

From the wiki. Reading this it seems pretty clear that the word druid refers to the group of humans that moved to Maguuma. Not ONLY to the form they took after they became spirits. Even the use of past tense makes it quite clear they were druids before the act of becoming spirits.

Do you have any lore that contradicts this explicitly?

“They may have once been human, perhaps powerful druids or holy men…”

Not only is the player guide guessing at the Warden class origin, it’s also guessing at their race. As such, it’s still a wiki theory as to where or who they came from.

As for the rest, you’re right. I apologize. Druids were tribes of humans at first, and later taking on spectral form.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Go visit Brisban Wildlands, there are events near the Priory camp there involved with druid lore. There are “husks” which are called the druids’ bodies.

And there were treants in GW1 – just not called that. Oakhearts are treants.

No, there were no treants in GW1, Oakhearts were Oakhearts. Treants come from Tolkien lore which GW2 borrowed simply to add name recognition to the Oakheart idea. Oakheart was actually an original name for these things; Treants, or “Ents”, is the literary equivalent of a re-skin.

We have developer statement that 1 BE wasn’t the first time the gods released magic from the Bloodstone.

The same Angel McCoy that wrote this?
~ “When you think of the history of Tyria from a non-human standpoint or, broader still, from a pan-racial standpoint, you begin to realize that not everything the people of Tyria believed 250 years ago is actually the whole truth. Just like I was taught in grade school (not quite 250 years ago—hehe) that Christopher Columbus discovered America and Thanksgiving was all about the Pilgrims having turkey dinner with the Native Americans. Just like that, the people of Tyria may have had only a partial or biased view of historic events. Some Tyrian historians might have gotten it wrong. Others might have recorded things in a manner that suited their agenda. Thus, when you quote a scholar from that era, it’s not unlike quoting pre-Socratic scholars in the real world who believed the Earth was flat. At some point, a Durmand Priory scholar or an asuran researcher questioned whether these historians were right or not. Sometimes they were; sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes, they only knew part of the story. We want to give you more of the story.”

That is just plain silly. She’s basically giving ANet a free-hand with the lore, and using real-life historic discoveries to justify hand-picked re-writings of a fictional world. The truth of a fictional world doesn’t reside in real-life at all, it resides only the mind’s eye of the author. To say otherwise is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. And to try and justify an alternate narrative based on that is sideshow slight-of-hand at best, and literary larceny at worst.

Do you really agree with her reasoning there, Konig?

draxynnic.3719:

No, what I know is that you refuse to accept anything that wasn’t written by the original Prophecies writers (although even then, I have it on good authority that the decision to link Prophecies and Factions through the third chapter was made early in Factions’ development at the latest).

That wasn’t what I was arguing. I agree ANet had an idea to link the 3 games, even during Factions. What they didn’t know back then was how that link would take shape. The idea to specifically make it a god named Abaddon came much later. And as such, it’s still a retroactive lore insertion if it counters earlier lore that was meant to be seen as canon. One can’t take Ermenred’s text as “human whitewashing” back then because one thinks there might possibly be a time in the future where they come up with an idea that disregards it. If that’s true, then everything under the sun is fair game for editing.

Regarding Apply Poison: It is reasonable for some preparations to be magical in nature and some to be nonmagical. Specifically, poison generated by magic is pretty much exclusive to necromancy in Guild Wars, and the ranger has never been connected to that branch of magic, but would clearly have a knowledge of natural poisons. A few examples that can be pinned down do not resolve the ambiguity of the others, though.

The only Preps that could be considered magical are Markman’s Wager and Melandru’s Arrows…which are both, not surprisingly, Elite skills.

When it comes to GW1 druids: we never saw what skills they might have in combat because they never had to fight. Where the druids manifest, the only things around are us, their guardians of various forms, and jungle creatures that appear to choose not to attack them (although they’ll happily attack us). It appears to take sapient invaders to threaten the druids. While absence of evidence can be considered evidence of absence, this requires there to be a reasonable expectation that we would have seen the evidence if the thing being investigated was not absent. As it currently stands, there’s no reason to think that if the GW1 druids had celestial magic of some form that we would have seen it.

If they were supposed to have it back then, why wouldn’t we have seen it?

We can, instead, compare to druids and presumed druids in GW2. The projectile used by the Druid Spirit summoned by sylvari is similar to guardian animations, so perhaps the observation that druids are essentially ranger/monks is right on the money in lore as well as in mechanics.

GW animations have been double used many many times, this certainly wouldn’t be the first.

Ehecatl.9172:

So you think the druids of Maguuma didn’t have ANY magic before they shed their mortal body and became spirits? How the heck do you think they did whatever ritual they did to become spirits in the first place?

No, I’m saying they weren’t Druids until they became spirits. Before that they were just humans like any other, with whatever magical abilities any creature had. Where did I say they didn’t have magic?

But if you want to try to play that game check these guys out.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warden

Proof that not all druids were spirits. The Wardens were theorized to have been druids before merging with the spirits to become what we see in the game. HUMAN druids. Implying quite strongly that druids are humans before undergoing whatever ritual turned them into Wardens, which in turn would imply there were human druids in Maguuma before they became spirits.

Wardens aren’t druids. The theory they were previously druids is one of many from the wiki.

Amraston.2846:

By the way, druids didn’t shed their human body into a spirit right away, there definitely IS an intermediary condition: they became willowhearts in the first place, still having a mortal body. So after all they are more or less shapeshifters. They then could choose to leave their willowheart body as an arboreal spirit (or were forced to if it dies, I guess? Or maybe they would’ve died then, too). In Brisban wildlands you can see some lifeless, left-behind treant-bodies. These are former druids. You can see one in the loading screen, too. A sylvari touching a husk to arouse the spirit back into the treant-body.
Also not all druids did the whole spirit thing – the ritual of course had do be discovered first, by a couple of generations of druids after the first came to the jungle, indicating their culture studied various rituals and magic for a long time, before they unvealed this ultimate opportunity to serve the nature.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Druid_(group)#Physiology

It would be interesting to see where Konig got his reference for that entry in the wiki, because that part of the GW2 Druid lore was placed there on May 7 of this year. There’s certainly no mention of it in GW1, they were humans at first, and then Druids second…no intermediate condition is ever mentioned.

There weren’t any treants in GW1.

And that cinematic of the Slyvari awakening a Druid is something never portrayed in-game…it’s an idea ANet never expanded on but left it there cuz it looks kewl.

Ehecatl.9172:

The druids weren’t always spirits. At one point they were flesh and blood humans who revered nature. Our rangers will clearly be flesh and blood and be using the magic druids had before they gave up their bodies. It’s the easiest explanation

Wait what?? Are you saying there were pre-spirit Druids? They were said to be simply human before becoming Druids, there’s no mention of some intermediary condition between that and spirits. And there’s no mention of the pre-Druid humans having any power above a normal human. Where do you get that from?

Ehecatl.9172:

Obsidian.1328:

That’s not true for GW1 though, NPC’s used exactly the same skills PC’s did. The Maguuma Druids you see in GW1 were actually some of the few NPC exceptions that didn’t use combat skills like the PC did. Whoever at ANet created them simply chose not to give them a skill bar. I realize that in GW2 this isn’t the case. But the comparison is to a GW1 example.

Well yah, but in GW1 there was no druid profession to take their skills from.

Additionally druids in GW1 didn’t NEED to fight anymore. They had transcended mortality and became immortal spirits. Our PC druid in GW2 isn’t an immortal spirit, so he still has to defend himself.

We’ve never seen an enfleshed druid who has a need to fight. Thus we have no idea what sort of skills they would have used.

Druid Jungle Guardians used ranger skills, and Druid Ravagers used necro skills. That really fits the “typical” fantasy druid ethos of embracing both life and death equally…especially when the Ravagers are using Grenth’s Balance. =D Not really implying GW1 Druids were druid-typical, only that some ancillary evidence is at work there.

Our PC Druid in GW2 isn’t a spirit at all…which again begs the question why are they called Druids??

Daniel Handler.4816:

You perform powers they would have performed before the spiritual transformation that left them in a more passive role. They like to support this by saying that all druids in real life were heavily devoted to astrology.

I guess the old “Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence” comes into play here. ;-)

What makes it even more confusing is that the reveal is titled “Closer to the Stars,” which has implications I can’t comprehend at this point.

ANet likes to throw retro GW1 phrases around like they were marketing soundbites. It makes no sense that I can don the title of “Flameseeker” either, since that’s who Khilbron was. But it’s still there. “Closer to the Stars” and a new Celestial Avatar raining down moonbeams is close enough a match it seems.

Chalk it up to catch-phrasing.

Hmm…that still doesn’t really explain why GW2 Druids are different from GW1 Druids. Unless the Ranger Druid-spec is somehow different from the Druids we saw in Maguuma. If so, why not call it a different name to avoid the confusion? It’s more than a little perfunctory of ANet to explain this away with something akin to “well, with the ED’s awakening and all, there’s just more magic floating around now…things change.”

I’m also wondering why, if your premise is true, Rangers suddenly start changing a thousand years after the Exodus to become more magical or something. What’s different about the last 250 years that the preceding 1,000 years didn’t have? It seems so odd a thing.

@Daniel

So, based on your premise and the wiki, is the Ranger —Druid spec-- now to be seen not as living as one with the spirit world, but as its master? And if so, how does this jive with GW1 Druids who were largely seen as non-violent caretakers of the wilds?

I guess all I’m asking is why are they different in both appearance and role?

Daniel Handler.4816:

Obsidian.1328:

Daniel Handler.4816:

One could say the exact same with the ranger, in gw1 they were able to spawn spirits without using magic. But now come gw2 they can use nature magic. As the ambient level of magic goes up so do they become elevated to spellcaster rank. The fact it was comparatively slower than ritualists is because Rangers don’t bind spirits but rely on being in tune with them. That would mean the Druid is the pinnacle of being in tune with spirits and at this point they can truly have been said to reach spellcaster rank.

Eh…I always thought a GW1 ranger summoning spirits was magical in nature. Is that not true?

The implications I am seeing is that in gw1 spirit summoning was as non magical as the ritualists before the gift of magic. Now after the gift the game refers to what they are doing as true magic, as you can see in the attributes if channeling magic and restoration magic. There are still skills that fell are under simple communing and whether they are true or pseudo magic can go either way, because as we can see in gw2 communing can even be performed by warriors.

Come gw2 the Rangers now have a trait line called nature magic and I assume this means they have raised their communing or whatever to the level that channeling magic was raised. They seem to be able to invoke the power of a spirit without making it corporeal, just as ritualist could in gw2 under some channeling magic.

Hmm, interesting. It’s hard to compare GW1 post-gift ranger spirit summoning to pre-Gift Rit spirit summoning though…as there are no examples of the latter. Or none that I remember, are there some out there? What do we know of the pre-Gift Rit abilities beyond their simple existence?

But you have a good point in that if those old Rits did, in fact, commune with ancestral spirits in the Mists, and if Ranger communion with nature(Tyrian) spirits is a very similar ability, then it follows that Ranger spirit summoning could predate the Gift…and not be considered “true” magic…whatever that means.

Native, Tyrian, or Inherent magic maybe? :-P

draxynnic.3719:

Daniel Handler.4816:

“This text is not a work of fiction, but is based on historical fact as interpreted by the author. Historical facts have been revised based upon new information acquired by the author between 1022 AE and 1072 AE.” You will need to show me why this statement is inaccurate.

Check that publication date again.

1072 AE.

Prior to Nightfall.

In a period where, thanks to divine historical whitewashing, most humans didn’t know that someone called Abaddon had even existed, let alone the role that he played in the history of magic… and those that did know were keeping it a secret. Any human document prior to 1075AE that does not directly mention Abaddon is suspect regarding any aspect of magic’s history prior to the Exodus for this reason.

drax don’t be silly. You and I both know that Abaddon was retroactively inserted into Proph and Factions by Nightfall writers. He didn’t even exist until then. They got his name from that last mission in Proph, they could just as easily have called him “Komalie” and nothing would be changed. I thought I knew you better than that. :-(

draxynnic.3719:

Part of the ambiguity. Those vague hand movements near the bow could be wrapping the arrows with oilcloth and lighting them with flint and tinder, or they could be casting magic into the bow. In the latter case, obviously the hand movements are going to be close to the bow – which is where the magic is being channeled – while the elementalist hand-waving is to the heavens or to a target because that’s where they are channeling power to.

Obviously, casting magic into a weapon that you’re holding is likely to involve very different gestures than summoning a meteor bombardment from the sky!

Granted, preparations don’t count as ‘spells’ for game mechanical purposes, but there were plenty of things in GW1 that didn’t count as spells but were clearly magical in nature. It’s also worth noting that if I recall correctly, in the original design preparations had the ‘easily interrupted’ property, but this was removed for balance reasons

I agree, but I would say there were also plenty of things in GW1 that didn’t count as spells but were clearly non-magical in nature. Here’s an excerpt of Aidan using the preparation Apply Poison in a lore doc:

“Several hundred yards up the path, Aidan grabbed Devona by the shoulder and stopped her, placing a finger to his lips. “Shhh.” With a nod and a flick of his eyes, he indicated the hanging rocks overhead.
Devona craned her neck, listening. She could just make out a slight sound…a scraping, like someone dragging something.
She looked at Aidan. “Charr?” she whispered.
Aidan shook his head. “Devourers.” The Ranger dropped to his knee and laid a pile of arrows out on the ground. Pulling a small vial from a pouch at his belt, he poured a few drops of a viscous green liquid on their tips, then he nocked one to his bow and, returning the others to his quiver, headed up the path.
The others fell into step behind him. Cresting the rise, Devona could see the double stinger tail, hooked claws, and thick carapace of a Plague Devourer.
“Only one,” said Cynn. “Walk in the park.”
Aidan sighted down the shaft of his poisoned arrow and let it fly. It struck the creature, puncturing its chitinous hide with a crunching pop. Though it was on target, the arrow didn’t kill the beast, and it turned toward the group, its tails waving in the air.
Devona raised her sword over her head and charged in. As she came, the ground around the Plague Devourer began to shift and move. Small rocks tumbled away, and a pair of Carrion Devourers emerged from the baked earth.
“That’s more like it,” shouted Cynn.
That brought a smile to Devona’s lips, and she gripped her sword tighter, advancing on the newly arrived vermin and swinging her blade downward onto one creature’s head. The Carrion Devourer staggered backward under the blow.
The Plague Devourer’s tails stopped waving, and it pointed them at the Warrior, casting something on her just before it fell dead from Aidan’s poisoned arrow.
Devona’s knees grew weak, and her legs struggled to keep her upright. Her sword grew heavy in her hands, and as she swung at the creature again, her Rin Blade rebounded off the creature’s shell, hardly making a dent. The Plague Devourer’s hex had sapped her strength.”

It’s obvious from the underlined part that the prep was a non-magical skill. Just like it’s obvious the Devourer’s hex was magical. If you read some of those passages, you get a good idea of what is and isn’t magic.

It’s also important to note that simply using energy, like in the blue energy bar, didn’t equate to using magic. It wasn’t mana, it was an action resource pool. I don’t know if that matters, but I think some may have seen that blue bar and immediately thought “magic pool” or something. :P

Ehecatl.9172:

Obsidian.1328:

The lore is quite scant, true. I guess what I’m getting at is that we actually got to see and interact with druids in GW1 and that based on that they hardly fit with what the GW2 druid is all about. They were more harmless but wizened sages, not celestial battle shamans. The Warden would have been a better pick for a Ranger specialization…the only problem was they were only found in Cantha.

To be fair, the Guild Wars 2 PC is entirely combat focused no matter what NPCs of the same profession lean to. NPC mesmers don’t produce constant clones and teleport around to fight the way a PC mesmer does because the PC specializes in war magic. Same for elementalist NPCs not cycling through the elements spamming attacks of different elemental aspects.

So it makes sense that the PC, upon learning the powers of the ancient druids, would take a more combat oriented approach to it than the largely pacifist Maguuma Druids did.

That’s not true for GW1 though, NPC’s used exactly the same skills PC’s did. The Maguuma Druids you see in GW1 were actually some of the few NPC exceptions that didn’t use combat skills like the PC did. Whoever at ANet created them simply chose not to give them a skill bar. I realize that in GW2 this isn’t the case. But the comparison is to a GW1 example.

Daniel Handler.4816:

One could say the exact same with the ranger, in gw1 they were able to spawn spirits without using magic. But now come gw2 they can use nature magic. As the ambient level of magic goes up so do they become elevated to spellcaster rank. The fact it was comparatively slower than ritualists is because Rangers don’t bind spirits but rely on being in tune with them. That would mean the Druid is the pinnacle of being in tune with spirits and at this point they can truly have been said to reach spellcaster rank.

Eh…I always thought a GW1 ranger summoning spirits was magical in nature. Is that not true?

draxynnic.3719:

The GW1 ranger always had a certain element of ambiguity in just how the skills worked, with the exception of nature rituals of course. Take Kindle Arrows, for instance: Was this a matter of having the technical expertise to light an arrow, nock, and loose it safely, was it a case of invoking a fire spirit into the bow akin to ritualist spirit weapons, or was it actually the ranger using elemental magic directly a la Conjure Flame? There was nothing to indicate which, and the mechanics would be the same in any case. Arguably, the fire arrow skills moving to the warrior suggests the first, but on the other hand… we have been told, multiple times, that the warrior does have a certain instinctive ability to use magic, and the berserker is clearly taking that into an elementalist direction.

You can tell based on the animation that it wasn’t an invocation, the ranger kneels down on the ground, with hand movements simulating some sort of preparation. Preparations in GW1 were not magic spells, and Rangers were not casters. The fiery ring that appears around the ranger after the prep is activated is a visual combat cue, not a spell cue. Remember, almost every skill, just like in GW2, has some sort of visual cue associated with it for PvP purposes, whether it’s a spell or not.

By contrast, an Elementalist goes through all sorts of hand-waiving to the heavens when casting a spell.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Obsidian.1328:

@dsslive
Ah, very good. I see the modern Ranger is more magic-oriented by utilizing Nature Magic. Although that would mean there are a ton of skills that don’t really reflect a Rangers wilderness experience and prowess, but rather his magical aptitude…something I wasn’t aware had even happened. But for the sake of the argument, I’ll play along.

So what does nature magic have to do with an Elementalist? If the druids of old were really only nature spirits specific to the world of Tyria, and the GW2 Druid specialization lets a ranger use glyphs and celestial powers, then aren’t modern druids not like old druids? Aren’t they a different thing altogether?

Like a mystic nature guardian or some such…

Skills like lightning reflex and quickening zephyr are clearly magical in nature, but they are under survival. It is implied that the skills that bear the same name are an evolution of the same skill. And now for some reason the ranger can perform them without summoning the spirits corporeal form. After all norn can become the bear without actually bringing the spirit of bear out of the mists into their reality.

Yeah, Lightning Reflexes used to be a block, not an evade. And increased your attack speed. And didn’t cause any “lightning” damage. It’s a different skill entirely.

The same goes for Quickening Zephyr, ranger spirits act a lot differently now.

dsslive.8473:

The druid lore on its own is quite little, we know they attuned themselves to nature becoming one with it. So far that representation has been with plants, but nature is in theory a far broader concept than just plants, it contains wildlife, the elements, and even the stars, moon and the sun.
So while we didn’t have anything saying the more specific aspects of natures the old druids in gw1 worshipped (lack of a better word) it leaves open the possibility of it being more than just related to a single aspect, where the celestial aspect would come from. It’s not a contradiction to the druid lore, but it may be intended to be an addition to it. Showing that druids were in fact in tune with all of nature not just the plant aspect of it. Ofcourse this is all speculation , without official comfirmation we can only guess what the addition of celestial aspects to the druid specialization really means when it comes to the old druids.

The lore is quite scant, true. I guess what I’m getting at is that we actually got to see and interact with druids in GW1 and that based on that they hardly fit with what the GW2 druid is all about. They were more harmless but wizened sages, not celestial battle shamans. The Warden would have been a better pick for a Ranger specialization…the only problem was they were only found in Cantha.

@dsslive
Ah, very good. I see the modern Ranger is more magic-oriented by utilizing Nature Magic. Although that would mean there are a ton of skills that don’t really reflect a Rangers wilderness experience and prowess, but rather his magical aptitude…something I wasn’t aware had even happened. But for the sake of the argument, I’ll play along.

So what does nature magic have to do with an Elementalist? If the druids of old were really only nature spirits specific to the world of Tyria, and the GW2 Druid specialization lets a ranger use glyphs and celestial powers, then aren’t modern druids not like old druids? Aren’t they a different thing altogether?

Like a mystic nature guardian or some such…

@dsslive
If what your saying about the Ranger is true, then you might as well include Warriors and Engineers as “magic-users” too…since their physical combat mechanics are little different from a Rangers.

@dsslive
But the GW2 ranger is directly derived from the GW1 ranger, unless I missed something. Muddy Terrain used to be a spirit-based skill, now it’s just a utility skill. So the two can’t really be directly related. Furthermore, the GW2 version not only does not imply magic, it’s also in the Wilderness Survival traitline…which heavily implies simple ranger cunning, like traps or condition effectiveness. Things like Troll Unguent, Healing Spring, or even Entangle aren’t supposed to presume “magic” use, they are survival skills the ranger has learned in the wilds. Entangle itself is supposed to imply a ranger using nearby vines and roots to “entangle” and bleed his/her target…not to conjure magical vines out of thin air.

A lot of this can be attributed to ANet trying to portray GW2 skills as their GW1 equivalents…even though combat mechanics are drastically different between the two. For instance, the Skirmishing line in GW2 reflects the melee potential of a Ranger…something that didn’t even exist in GW1 unless you used a secondary profession. Expertise isn’t needed at all in GW2 as there is no energy pool; which is the niche, oddly enough, that Nature Magic fills…even though the two have little to do with each other.

@dsslive
I don’t agree that Rangers in GW1 used “elemental” magic, at least for the overwhelming majority of uses. For instance, a GW1 skill like Kindle Arrows isn’t supposed to mean the ranger invoked the element of fire, it’s supposed to mean he/she actually knows how to fabricate a flaming arrowhead using his experience as a marksman and wilderness survivalist. The game itself didn’t make any damage distinction, in terms of combat
mechanics, between magically invoked fire, and “regular” fire. But if you’re counting a stick on fire as “elemental” in nature, then you might as well count snow, dirt, and wind as “magical elementals”…which doesn’t really make any sense. The magic of an Elementalist comes from bending the natural elements to his/her will, not from simply using it.

If the ranger really wanted to inflict “magical” elemental damage to a creature, they’d have to attach a fire modification to the weapon itself(in this case a fiery bowstring), and still further become an 2nd profession Elementalist and use Conjure Flame to actually make use of that bowstring. Kindle Arrows does the same thing though…without the use of magic at all.

Conflagration on the third hand, doesn’t utilize Elementalist magic nor physically-prepared fire at all. It involves the ranger invoking a Nature Spirit that provides the fire damage. In other words, the spirit is the conduit through which the fire is evoked.

dsslive.8473:

Daniel Handler.4816:

When you reduce nature magic to elemental magic you completely disregard that it’s closest lore companion was the ritualists, as well as the spirit oriented aspect.

Forgot to comment on this line earlier, but the ritualist is not the closest lore companion of the ranger. Ritualists draw their magic from the mists, which is something the ranger can’t and has never been able to do. Ritualists have a very unique source of magic that no other class in gw1 could tap into, before the gods gave humans magic, ritualists were already practicing their craft. The closest lore companion to the ritualist is the recently revealed revenant.

If you have a source that states otherwise i’d happily take it back, but this claim is quite unfounded.

I believe Daniel is talking about nature rituals in particular, but I could be wrong. Nature Magic, as an area of expertise for the Ranger, didn’t exist in GW1. Almost all of the nature rituals in GW1 came from two Ranger attributes: Wilderness Survival and Beastmastery(Marksmanship and Expertise had 1 each). Knowing that, it would be relatively safe to assume that nature rituals involved communing with the plants and animals of Tyria, and not necessarily the cosmos.

Rituals themselves could only be performed by Rangers or Ritualists(nature rituals and binding rituals respectively), that might be the connection Daniel was trying to infer. It’s also important to note that the Ranger attribute Expertise worked not just with nature rituals, but binding rituals as well. So there has to be some real connection there between Rangers and Ritualists…if only in terms of rituals.

So while Rangers could not directly “tap into” the source of the Ritualist’s powers, they could certainly interact with and modify it. They both “communed” with spirits, it’s just that the Ranger did so with nature spirits(Tyria) and the Rit with ancestral spirits(The Mists)….since, I guess, animals and plants didn’t have an afterlife apparently. :-P

Rednik.3809:

Obsidian.1328:

Some of those elements made it into the shipped product… for Nightfall.

Where exactly it says Nightfall? He don’t say “some of those last elements”.

LOL. mkay.

Rednik.3809:

Obsidian.1328:

“As I mentioned before, I was the sole writer for the first installment. I wrote almost every word of that game. There was a small staff that worked on Factions. I did the main storyline and the cinematics, but there are actually many authors on that game. I started a story document for Nightfall before I left. Some of those elements made it into the shipped product. Others were rewritten.”

So we have a guy who created texts for game and some of those texts are made it to final version, others was rewritten/replaced. And you was trying to push him as “sole creator of first campaign”, to prove your point about some mythical “true GW1”, which was twisted later by evil charr-loving Anet writers.

Some of those elements made it into the shipped product… for Nightfall.

Lern to read.

Also, I actually like the Charr as a fantasy race. My issue was never with them personally.

:-/

Daniel Handler.4816:

Rednik.3809:

Obsidian.1328:

He did develop the main story of Prophecies on his own. For Factions he had some help by then, but the lion’s share was still his.

Source required.

It’s also complete bullcrap. Obsidian doesn’t even read the sources he supplies.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2005/09/07/guild-wars-sorrows-furnace-interview

• He had a team of writers before Factions.
• The main story was not under his sole control.
• Even then lore was being rewritten to match game mechanics.

He has never claimed sole credit beyond being the world creator. World creation is outlines, ones that sometimes other people fill in.

• and this is the problem with the crux of your argument, Jess may have created the charr but he did not have sole control over how good or bad they were.

Lulz…that article didn’t say he didn’t write it. It just said he had help editing it. Which is to be expected.

All you have to do is email him, bud. That’s what I did. Excerpt from an email correspondence with him on March 22, 2013:

“As I mentioned before, I was the sole writer for the first installment. I wrote almost every word of that game. There was a small staff that worked on Factions. I did the main storyline and the cinematics, but there are actually many authors on that game. I started a story document for Nightfall before I left. Some of those elements made it into the shipped product. Others were rewritten.”

If you want, I can forward you both the whole email. Or maybe a screenshot if ya’ll like. Not all of it is relevant to this convo though.

Seriously though…just ask the guy. :-/

Nah.

I already caved before. Do your own homework this time.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Obsidian.1328:

Daniel Handler.4816:

I don’t know if it is a hoax per se. But something is definitely wrong if I can’t find him in official credits. One source doesn’t make any sense considering the Internet existed then.

/shrug

I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re looking at the GW wiki credits page, well it’s probably as simple as being current. To take a queue from the Constitution, the wiki is a living, breathing document. It’s not hard to believe the credits include only those who were around during GW’s last endeavor: EotN.

Here’s some other random, non-ANet, sources I found on the interwebz from 5 minutes of searching:

• IGN’05
• IGN’08
• Wordpress’11
• GWguru’05

That last one isn’t so much a source as a nod to him in the unofficial forums. No idea why his name is kinda clouded in mist, seems odd to me too.

Also, thanks a bunch for reviving this thread dude…it took Kalavier and I weeks to come to an unsteady truce. :-/

No source has declared him sole author. I don’t know why you keep assuming the entirety of gw1 creative direction was up to him.

I said he birthed Tyria into existence through his narration, not that the entirety of creative direction was on his shoulders. Writing was just one aspect of it, albeit a rather large one.

He did develop the main story of Prophecies on his own. For Factions he had some help by then, but the lion’s share was still his. I’m sure his first draft went through editing just like any story would, and I’m sure there were others there that helped him sharpen the edges fill in the blanks. Whether or not you choose to believe me on that is up to you I guess, I’ve certainly no reason to lie about it. Nor does Jess.

Guild Wars wasn’t even conceptualized to have a big PvE aspect to it at inception, the map zones were supposed to all be controlled by guilds through GvG…but that’s another story. When their development focus shifted, they brought him in to give the game a narrative identity. He started writing it when they only had a score of people on the payroll, by the time it shipped there were 3,4, or 5 times that number. But he still created the world and story of Tyria pretty much by himself.