Guild Wars 2

In what should be quite a positive thread (go Ree Soesbee! Sea of Sorrows was my favourite novel!), the level of vitriol is pretty unsettling. Everyone has their criticisms of season 1, myself included, but ultimately it was an experiment. ANet have always, from GW1 to release to the Living World, been willing to try out things that other devs just won’t. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and you know what, I think season 1 did actually work. There was a massive improvement between Flame and Frost (remember that “small expansion-sized update” we were going to get in Jan/Feb, which then ended up being quite a bit smaller than that and spread out between Jan-April?) and Tower of Nightmares, and it continued to improve after that. And it will continue to improve in the future. And I think there’s probably very little truth in attributing the problems with S1 purely to the writers. It was an experiment with a poorly-defined scope, and that’s what led to the time constraints that led to crucial things like Ellen Kiel’s victory speech being left out just because someone forgot to add it into the game, and staffers pulling regular 60-hour weeks for the Battle of Lion’s Arch, just for people to turn around and say season 1’s story was terrible, let the “main” writers do the job.

The complaints aren’t really what bothers me. They’re standard for MMO official forums, and every now and then someone actually makes the effort to think about them constructively, and the company gets actual valuable feedback. No, what bothers me is the personal nature of them. ANet do read the forums, and there’s a chance the people whose livelihoods you’re saying are being wasted, who are passionate about what they’re writing to be told that it’s trash, will actually end up reading what you’re saying. No amount of fault with a product, perceived or real, entitles you to be that kind of customer. It’s something you only ever see on video game forums, or in the worst kinds of school classrooms. And it’s possible to criticise without being too personal. This thread was almost entirely negative, but the feedback was also constructive and well-thought out, and was acknowledged and seriously considered by ANet.

And by the way, my understanding is that there are several Living World teams who work on a rotation, so there’s actually quite a few writers (including Jeff Grubb, who is by no stretch of the imagination an amateur) who write the releases. I’d imagine that Ree was on one of those releases you’re saying was so terrible. At the same time, I don’t think everyone at ANet is involved with the Living World, so I’d be interested to hear about whatever those who weren’t were working on.

But yeah, I’m optimistic for season 2. The LW has had a year and a half to find its feet, and since nearly all the characters and storylines were new, nothing got broken. Now it’s going to be delving into more established lore, new areas from GW1, and by the looks of it it’s kicking off with a callback to one of the better releases from S1. I know this isn’t going to make much of a difference, but ANet have shown that they are developers who really are interested in feedback, and if you’re willing to sit down and think and consider what specifically it was about s1 that left you disappointed beyond “the writing is terrible”, and more importantly what you would do to improve it, then they’ll listen to you too.

EDIT: By the way, if you want to see what some of these writers can really do, I recommend the wiki’s collection of short stories.

Two things stuck out to me about Countess Anise as odd:

• Nearly all NPC’s that talk about her refer to her beauty, and some view it as unnatural, i.e. the writers are making a point of her beauty and want us to notice it. Same thing goes for her past – NPC’s make a point of pointing out that we don’t know much about it.
• For someone who has been guarding Queen Jennah since she was a young princess, she looks remarkably young. The ages don’t add up.

I’m going to put my tinfoil hat on here and make an outrageous claim. It’s outrageous because there’s nothing solid to back it up, but it is able to explain the above to mysteries – albeit, by opening up a possibly larger one.

Countess Anise, the Master Exemplar of the Shining Blade with a ruthless “ends-justify-the-means” attitudes, seems to have an unnaturally long lifespan and magically-enhanced beauty. Where have we seen all of these attributes before? You guessed it. I am saying that some way, somehow, the true identity of Countess Anise is Livia.

Now, Livia is not, at least at the time of Guild Wars, trained as a mesmer. The two look nothing alike (although mesmer magic could be involved, but then we return to our first problem). There is no obvious reason that I can think of that Livia would want to disguise herself, given that by the time of Sea of Sorrows she had served as leader of the Shining Blade for 177 years, so people being suspicious of her apparent immortality was of no concern. And yet, there is no other straightforward explanation that I can think of that addresses the above questions. No straightforward explanation, that is, that isn’t incredibly mundane (which we can rule out because why go through the bother of intentionally setting up a mystery if your solution is an uninteresting one – this is narrative, not real life).

There is other, far more circumstantial evidence of Anise’s deception:

• “May Grenth keep you safe.” Seems like a strange blessing coming from a mesmer, doesn’kitten Dwayna would be the god you pray for protection from, surely, if not Lyssa, the patron god of mesmers.
• “There hasn’t been one in over fifty years…or at least, that’s what I’m told.” The punctuation here suggests that Anise correcting herself, that she found it necessary to clarify that she hadn’t been around fifty years ago. A writer somewhere sat and typed that afterthought into that line of dialogue, and I think the balance of probabilities would weigh in favour of that being a hint rather than an attempt at naturalistic dialogue.
• “Ruthless and efficient, eh? You remind me of …someone.” Whoever this someone is, they are known to Anise but for some reason she wants to keep that to herself. I can’t think of anyone who this might be, but if we assume Anise is actually Livia, then Gadd might fit the bill quite nicely. Again, why have the dialogue trail off if you’re not setting up a mystery to solve?

Now I’m not usually one for an “X is actually Y!” theory, but in this case I feel like the evidence is too compelling to ignore. And I can’t explain why or how Livia would do such a thing (although I’m sure the Scepter of Orr is involved somehow, as that’s one Livia-related plot thread that still needs tying up). But I just can’t think of any other explanation of the mystery of Countess Anise.

Beware all ye who enter, for what follows is baseless speculation.
Could this mean anything going forward? Well, we’re likely to be heading into Magus Falls soon with the Pact to confront Mordremoth, but Belinda Delaqua has told us that there’s bandit activity in the nearby area. Bandits have ties to the White Mantle and the Krytan Ministry, so as others in this forum have already pointed out, it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if along the way, we saw a continuation of both the White Mantle and Ministry corruption plot lines from the personal story (and if we’re lucky, maybe even the Lazarus the Dire story from Guild Wars). The arch-rivalry between the Shining Blade and the White Mantle will have been forgotten by most, but I can think of one person who’s been around long enough to hold a grudge…

What other related mysteries are still unsolved? How about the murder of Mendel, and the identity of “E”? What the hell happened to Evennia (although to me, the prime suspect is King Adelbern rather than the White Mantle)? There’s no way that at least some of these questions aren’t gonna be answered in the next 12 months folks, and I, for one, am excited!

So I was poking around concept art websites (again), and found this page on Naomi Baker. For those of you who don’t know, Naomi is one of the concept artists who has been working on the Living World, along with Jamie Ro, Theo Prins, and Ruan Jia. Her work can be seen here.

Anyway, not all of the art on that page is relevant to Guild Wars 2, and since I was looking for art to upload to the wiki, I was looking at the filenames to try and figure out which ones are relevant to Guild Wars 2 and which ones aren’t. Some of them had ‘ka’ in the name, which it seems is an abbreviation for ‘key art’, ANet’s internal term for the “main” concept art for a given release. One piece in particular caught my eye, attached beneath, called Naomi_Baker_Concept_Art_Illustration_Guild_Wars_2_ka_brisban.jpg, which I didn’t recognise. This appears to be ‘key art’ for a release involving the Brisban Wildlands, which of course is where Belinda Delaqua had stated she would be being deployed to soon.

So it looks like, as many of you have already guessed, we’ll be going to the Brisban Wildlands next. What’s new is the little preview of the release’s aesthetic we’re getting. Those little huts in the back look like the familiar Maguuma structures from Guild Wars, and the purple tint and thorns are something we’re also used to seeing, from the Nightmare Court. My suspicion, though, given that the image is framed like we’re sitting in a giant maw looking outward through an enormous pair of teeth, is that they’re a product of something a bit more sinister — Mordremoth.

My prediction? We’ll be seeing a lot more of the immediate consequences of Scarlet’s actions. When Primordus awoke, the asura and all the other races of the Depths were forced to the surface and all their cities were destroyed. When Jormag awoke, it created inland sekittentered mountains, and forced the norn south. When Zhaitan woke, the continent of Orr was brought to the surface, and a tidal wave devastated the coast of Kryta. When Kralkatorrik awoke, the Dragonbrand cleaved the entire region of Ascalon clean in half, causing both Almorra’s Massacre and the Ogre Revolt. What I’m saying is that every Elder Dragon that has risen so far has brought with it immediate catastrophe, and we have no reason to believe that this one is any different.

When will we see this content? Well, I didn’t realise that the April 2014 Feature Pack wasn’t kicking off season 2, so I was surprised to not see a trailer the Tuesday after that and a release the week after that. Given that we’re now into May with no word, I would say we should not expect to see this content before May 15th at the very earliest, since that is when the Chinese open beta begins. It wouldn’t make sense for ArenaNet to launch a new storyline weeks before launching the game in a new region—this way, Chinese players can begin the new storyline at the same time as North American and European players, otherwise they’d be thrown into the midst of an ongoing story at launch. The other possibility is that the new content won’t come until the Chinese launch, which as far as I know has no set date yet. If this happens, I expect that the big update to the personal story will come at the same time, so that the personal story makes sense alongside the Living World for Chinese players.

The way I saw it, Mordremoth’s name was revealed “in-universe” sometime in the last two weeks; it’d be silly if our PC just happened to be present for every major discovery. Still, it was momentarily disconcerting for me as well.

webtoehobbit.4201:

This is unacceptable from a lore perspective, this is worse than anything Scarlet ever did. I hope they hotfix this and have us get the name via a book or note in Scarlets room, that would be bearable, but this? Just unacceptable.

Do you think you might be being a little hyperbolic there?

Wow, and I thought the people complaining that they don’t want their character to be the centre of the story (after so much feedback about players feeling sidelined) were bad enough. This takes “you can’t please everyone” to a whole new extreme.

I guess you could play a pacifist character, and do what an actual pacifist would do – just not go and fight Scarlet in the first place. Seriously, this is a MMO where, by the nature of the gameplay, the vast majority of your interactions with the world take place at the end of a sword. Don’t complain about having to kill stuff.

It seems that the Dream is what acts as a protection against Mordremoth’s influence. So the Soundless are susceptible but strangely enough the Nightmare Court would not be. Despite their nature they remain connected to the Dream. I guess that’s the explanation for why we, as players, are safe, as well.

There aren’t many Soundless in the Caledon, so it’s not a huge concern. Except…there’s a whole other sylvari city somewhere in Magus Falls, and they aren’t connected to the Dream (or our Dream, at least). Something to consider.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Already the system you have up forces lore related dialogue in events to be in text boxes. For example, most Orr events just talk about “finding a relic” but we never find out what the relic is or anything of the like. Only the beginning and ending voiced lines really need to be unique – and this is only to provide lore. And even then, not all have to be 100% unique. But that’s what you do. And like I said, it’s great for immersion, but then you lose your ability to go after the more story-focused lines. You lose your ability to actually let the players hear the lore of the game, and instead you force them to talk to the NPC in the middle of an event to read about the lore. And in sadly most cases, very little at that.

This just isn’t true. The problem isn’t that there’s no lore in events. The problem is just that it’s all gone undocumented. Look at this wiki page. If you looked at that, you’d think that there’s no dialogue worth documenting associated with that event; there isn’t even a dialogue section on that page. But in fact, dialogue for this event does exist, and what’s more, it contains a fair amount of lore. We learn about the Festival of Lights and a little more about Doric, and in subsequent events we finally learn more about Malchor, and we see him somehow staving off dragon corruption (these dialogues are on the wiki now, but for the first year and a half since launch they weren’t).

There’s a lot of ambient dialogue that contains lore that just hasn’t been documented, because it triggers unreliably and, more importantly, doesn’t appear in the chat box. Nearly all of the ambient dialogue in the Labyrinthine Cliffs was like this, and as a wiki editor I can tell you it made it extremely difficult to document :P In fact, it was only with the help of Project Eavesdrop that I didn’t go crazy trying to get all of the pre-Festival of the Four Winds dialogue onto the wiki! Another example is Kessex Haven; more dialogue that has been in the game since release but has only just made it onto the wiki. There’s some incredibly intriguing stuff in there, such as rumours of mountains in Giant’s Passage mysteriously rumbling, and tense centaur relations with Lion’s Arch (which hasn’t been documented yet). These are just the two examples that I’ve gone out of my way to look for, but I’m sure there are many more locations with just as much depth.

As a wiki editor and a lore fiend my request would be to turn whatever switch prevents these from being in the chat box off! They’re so easy to miss, and they require line of sight and quick screenshotting reflexes. The wiki is suffering a dearth of editors, and it’s still quite taxing to transcribe hundreds of screenshots, but I’m sure it’d still help a great deal! I’ve noticed all the ambient dialogue added with Festival of the Four Winds and Gates of Maguuma shows up in the chat box, which has been a boon to me. And once I added the ambient scenes I saw to the Prospect Valley page, other people started taking the initiative and doing so as well.

Stooperdale.3560:

“What about a well thought story with an intended disturbed delivery. The first living story showed a lot disconnected places, but they seem to provide to the whole plot.”

Not really. I’m guessing that the Dead End investigation explained the season 1 plot and that’s all the explanation we’re going to get (for anything that isn’t going to be in season 2). Unfortunately there were massive gaps. More gap than plot. A lot of it was implausible even when the ‘evidence’ was presented. If you were to start asking “why didn’t that happen?” I’m afraid you’d never be able to stop.

Imo, this is an issue with the core game as well. Some of the gaps and inconsistencies are intentional to create the sense that there are multiple interpretations of history or that cultural biases may get in the way of objectivity, but these aren’t signposted clearly enough. If you take it too far, you end up assuming that nothing that anyone says is reliable, and the concept of lore in general becomes quite fuzzy.

Another issue is the assumptions of what the players would and wouldn’t be interested in. I’ve seen a couple of interviews now when people ask who leads, say, the Molten or Toxic Alliance, or who is in charge of the Inquest working with the Aetherblades, and I was surprised to learn that these characters exist and have names, but the writers simply assumed that people wouldn’t be interesting in knowing them. Of course we would! We don’t know what motivates any of these factions! The Nightmare Court using their tower to spread nightmare I can buy, as well as the krait wanting to reach their prophets (this was the most controversial member of an alliance due to their established xenophobic nature, but their motivation makes the most sense out of all of them to me—but had not this been explained, it would have been very confusing indeed). But how do the Aetherblades contribute to the Inquest’s greater goal of controlling the world’s knowledge? How does the Molten Alliance help the Flame Legion dominate the rest of the charr once again (beyond “oh, they get weapons from the dredge”)? What can it tell us about how dredge society is structured, with its competing revolutionary factions? I believe that all of these answers exist and are known, just not to the players.

More disappointingly, I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone ever really planned to explain them to the players. There are six named Aetherblades, and no named members that I can think of belonging to either the Toxic Alliance or the Molten Alliance. Our interactions with them rarely go beyond smashing them with a hammer (an exception to this was the interrogation at the end of Flame and Frost, which is something that never really happened again for some reason—how are players supposed to put the pieces together like that?). This is why people complain about the soullessness of the Living World—where’s the texture, the details that turn broad outlines into actual stories? What’s more frustrating is discovering that these exist, but just aren’t being presented to players.

Just for fun: at a glance, the following is a quick list of characters I could find who are never mentioned in-game, who had minis in the betas, which were removed and then later restored in later mini sets:

• Yaotl the Fierce – green (friendly) hylek tlamatini
• Eelob Poisonfang – some sort of spider boss(?)
• Frost Fang – possible ice drake boss(?)
• High Inquisitor Maut – personal suspicion that he is the leader of the Inquest, mentioned in flavour text of this item, which was added post-release
• Ragar Shardhammer – club-wielding icebrood hunter
• Skarn Darkhoof – could be way off the mark here but seems to have a unique model (indicating some importance?), which wasn’t seen in-game until Kuraii the Cruel was added for the Queen’s Jubilee release

The optimist in me wants to say that between the mention of Maut as flavour text and the inclusion of a Tsuru Whitewing mini (who was not one of the minis removed before release), these are hints at future characters or major players who we haven’t met yet (although if they’re that major, I hope there’s a good reason we haven’t heard their names). But given what we’ve heard about the Scarlet’s Alliance leaders, I’m not so sure.

I wonder…

When ley lines are explained, the analogy that is normally used is the one of them being the river or stream through which magic (the “water”) flows. I guess, then, that would make Mordremoth the greedy monster at the end of our river, drinking all the water for himself. But what does Nochtli’s story tell us about what will happen when we kill Mordremoth?

I’m gonna disagree. Loved everything about the new instances; having recently replayed the personal story both the acting and the delivery in the instances was a huge improvement.

1304: Ceara is born. She is immediately dismissive of Mender Serimon and the Pale Tree.

1312: After 8 years of study in the Grove, Ceara leaves to study smithing under Beigarth in Hoelbrak.

1313: Ceara leaves Hoelbrak to study firearms and explosives with Asagai.

1315—1320: Ceara leaves Asagai to Rata Sum. She completes completes Dynamics and Statics coursework each in under a year, then Synergetics (which takes longer), spends some time with the Inquest, and spends several months wandering.

1316: Scarlet finds proof of ley lines, in Prosperity. This would have been her first exposure to ley lines.

1318 (approx): Ceara is with the Michotl tribe studying alchemy. She is found by Omadd.

1319 (approx): Ceara ceases writing her diary longhand. She begins clumsily building steam minotaurs, and is offered a position as Omadd’s lab assistant.

1320: Ceara begins experiments with steam portals.

1320 (approx): Ceara enters Omadd’s Isolation Module, and emerges as Scarlet Briar (N.B. at this point she hasn’t heard the Pale Tree’s voice in “years”, making her effectively Soundless for this time). She kills Omadd, and purchases a room in Prosperity with Omadd’s gold. The steam creatures, no longer necessary, are sent to Lornar’s Pass and Brisban Wildlands.

1321 (Season of the Colossus): “I wake from nightmares—screaming, confused, and scared. It’s getting wOrse. I’ve decided to talk to a mender. I’ve probably just been working too hard.”

1322 (Season of the Zephyr): “Every night, the same terrors. It never changes. The mender was unable to help Me, and I feel like I’m losing control of myself. Dated Season of the Zephyr, 1322.”

1322 (Season of the Phoenix): “When the nightmare starts, an entity calls to me. I run—run into a seA of darkness. But no matter how hard I try to escape, it keeps calling me.”

1322 (Season of the Scion): “I’m trying not to sleep—too scareD to even close my eyes… So scared. Whispers come from the forest all night long, calling me, taunting me, possessing me.”

1322 (Season of the Colossus): “Tonight, I saw it. I started into the abyss, anD it stared back at me. So much power. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”

1323 (Season of the Zephyr): “Control of my world—of myself—is slipping through my hands. And yet, I’m no longer scared.”

1323 (Season of the Scion): “It communicated with me through images of death, destruction, and destiny. I must know more. I must confront it and put an end to this madness.”

1324: Thaumanova Reactor disaster.

1327: Battle for Lion’s Arch; Mordremoth awakens.

Notes:

• The timeline currently says that Scarlet sends the steam creatures to Lornar’s Pass in 1320, but Priory scholars near the Lake of Lamentation suggest that it was closer to 1324 or 1325 that they began appearing there. This would make more sense, because it would mean Ceara became Scarlet after her encounters with the entity, and it would not be necessary to have to explain why Scarlet Briar was going to a mender for help with her nightmares. However, Short Story: What Scarlet Saw and the holo-recording in her room in Prosperity put Ceara becoming Scarlet much earlier.
• I believe that Scarlet’s time with the Inquest was originally supposed to be five years to a decade later than the timeline currently says, since the suggestion that she interfered with some of the Snaff Prize entries seems like it was supposed to be a hint toward certain events in the personal story. Not to mention the fact that the Snaff Prize didn’t even exist until after 1320, since it was named in his honour. But in the current timeline, it would seem that her tampering was over a decade before our player character becomes the Snaff Savant.
• The Thaumanova Reactor event is implied to not take place until just before the events of the game, and yet according to the fractal it is where Scarlet first got confirmation of ley lines (and yes, at this point she was Scarlet). She was also working with the Inquest, which must be a second stint with them since she was Ceara the first time around.

Christ, what do you want? Five different storylines, depending on your race? Or 5 × 3 = 15 different ones, depending on your race/order combination? Or 5 × 3 × 8 = 120 different ones, depending on race, order, and class combination, every two weeks?

Content is being delivered here every two weeks, and in any RPG each branch in the storyline increases the amount of work required geometrically. Even single-player RPG’s that take years to make, which tout player choice and storyline divergence above all, usually have large portions of the game the same for every player. You could argue “oh, a character dies and they’re not in my squad any more, but that’s just a cutscene. It changes dialogue for the rest of the game, but that’s just lip service”.

“Personal story” doesn’t mean that you, personally, get to tell professional writers how to write their story. And it’s a good job, since nobody can agree on what they want.

Something I found on a former ArenaNet writer’s blog and couldn’t not share: Epic Rap Battles of Tyria! They’re written by members of GW1’s Live Team, and they’re all pretty…well, I hate the word ‘epic’ but I’m sure this qualifies. Battles include Canthan Guard vs. stick (probably my favourite), Prince Rurik vs. Kilroy Stonekin, Keiran Thackeray vs. Logan Thackeray, Mad King Thorn vs. Palawa Joko (this one is incredible).

Some other ones I found, poking around the same site:

• Gwen vs. Miku
• Nicholas the Traveller vs. Professor Yakkington (this one made me aww)
• Master Togo vs. Yijo Tahn
• King Adelbern vs. Emperor Kisu
• Brother Mhenlo vs. Winter Dwarf

Scarlet Briar

Ever since I came out of Omadd’s machine, you’ve been taking credit for my ideas. They are mine! Not yours. Let me be clear. I’m not doing this for you; I’m doing it for me. Nobody tells me what to do. Not ever.

I won’t list all the evidence here; there’s too much of it. And after this thread, I think it will all speak for itself. What I will say is this: I believe I know almost exactly what Scarlet has planned. And it’s not an attack on Lion’s Arch – well, not quite.

We know Scarlet has always strived for independence. From the moment she stepped out from her pod, she has striven to forge her own path through the world. But this was not always possible. Early in her life, she was faced with nightmares, nightmares of an entity, but we are never told anything about this entity except that it is like staring into an abyss. Many people have suggested that this is Mordremoth, and I believe those people are correct – and this is only backed up by the fact that whatever finally broke Scarlet, inside Omadd’s machine (an isolation chamber, remember), must have already existed within the mind of Scarlet – and possibly every other sylvari, too.

So what’s the theory? Mordremoth wants Scarlet to attack Lion’s Arch? There’s a few reasons that this would be tactically viable – it’s a symbol of unity for the races that took down Zhaitan, for example, but I don’t believe this to be the case. This would require Mordremoth to have won over Scarlet’s mind, and I don’t believe that’s happened – or at least I don’t believe Scarlet thinks it’s happened.

Scarlet knows something that we’ve suspected for a long time. There is a bomb in the heart of every sylvari, waiting to detonate and bring them under the control of the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. And this is the crux of my theory: Scarlet’s going to – or at least she thinks she’s going to – stop it. Once you realise this, everything else falls into place.

At the Thaumanova Reactor, intending to study draconic energies, Scarlet learned of the magical ley lines that are integral to the functioning of Tyria. And something else we’ve suspected for a while – the ley lines, if followed, will eventually lead to the Dragons. If she had some way of detecting them, she could locate Mordremoth and kill it before it even wakes. This is where the Molten Alliance comes in. As well as powerful new molten weaponry, they provided Scarlet with the means to drill into the the earth for magic, and while Scarlet put her engineering abilities to the test to create a set of energy probes, she spent a year gathering armies, unifying disparate races into a dark Pact of her own.

Scarlet attempted to gain a foothold in the Captain’s Council, but failed. But with the help of the Inquest, she succeeded in building a fleet of airships to rival the Pact’s, and secured the loyalty of a crew of Aetherblades to pilot them. Knowing that Queen Jennah used technology from the steam creatures to build her watchknights, Scarlet was able to take control of them and have a massive fighting force of her own – one that would only ever obey her.

Scarlet now had advanced weaponry, a loyal fighting force, and air superiority. But she wasn’t finished yet. Her Toxic Alliance built a Tower of Nightmares in Kessex Hills, which spread poison across Kryta. But it wans’t the poison that she was looking for. It was the antidote. I believe that the corruption that the Toxic Alliance cultivated was similar in nature to Mordremoth, and Scarlet needed a way to reverse it, which was eventually provided by the player character him or herself.

Now: the probes. Using Molten Alliance technology, Scarlet placed these probes across Tyria, searching for ley lines, and ultimately, the Elder Dragon. Meanwhile, in Lornar’s Pass, she tested her greatest weapon yet, a weapon powerful enough, perhaps, to even kill an Elder Dragon: her aethercannon. As her weapon tests concludes, one of the probes, in Old Lion’s Arch, turns green. It’s found something. Scarlet has her target. Scarlet rescues Mai Trin from captivity, informing her she has a task for her “in the Mists”, and whisks her there. From the Mists, Mai can lead her Aetherblades through the portals into the heart of Lion’s Arch, unopposed.

My conclusion: Scarlet is attacking Lion’s Arch, sure. But there’s nothing material there that she could want or need – her true target is sleeping beneath Lion’s Arch – Mordremoth. Her armies are converging on the city, her aethercannon stands primed, and her antidote is ready. Scarlet is going to kill the Elder Dragon that has been tugging at her mind for all these years, not because she wants to save the sylvari of the Pale Tree, and not because she’s after the fame or glory of Trahearne and the Pact. But because nobody tells Scarlet what to do.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Erm, the Pale Tree explicitly states that the PC will confront Zhaitan. She makes no generalities.

The Pale Tree states that you fought an Elder Dragon in your Dream, and that you will confront Zhaitan. At no point does she say that the Elder Dragon you confronted in your Dream was Zhaitan, nor does she exclude the possibility that it is Mordremoth (which would make sense, since that is the Dragon with the deepest ties to the sylvari race), or even that it is a representation of the Elder Dragons in general (which would also make sense, since it means that the player’s Wyld Hunt does not end until the last Elder Dragon is defeated, i.e. the entire story of Guild Wars 2 concludes).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And despite your theory, other than shared textures of plant creatures, other than the Nightmare giving the Shadow form, there was no support or reason to believe it but several NPCs’ words against it. Just because it got retconned in your favor, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a retcon.

“Other than this evidence you just gave, there is no evidence that what you are saying is correct” is what I got from that.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Of course by your original reasoning of texture similarities I’m surprised you haven’t gone to say that the charr effigies use Primordus’ power, since it’s fire/heat textures are like the destroyers and Imbued Shaman.

Ok, I’ll humour you, why not? I’ll tell you: we know the origin of the charr effigies, and we know the origin of the Destroyers, and since there’s nothing that links either of those. We know the origin of the Shadow of the Dragon (Mordrem), but we don’t know the origins of the husks. So a similarity in appearance is reason enough to consider a link between the two. What other husks are there? There’s the Evolved Husk, which is almost certainly a Mordremoth minon, and the Mordrem Husks, which are almost identical in appearance to the other husks. And that’s just the appearance; there’s several other reasons to believe that the husks are all Mrordrem.

I’m concerned that your attitude in this thread, and your complaints about Season 2 in general, stem from the fact that the direction that the story is taking is looking to disprove several of your pet theories. Your standard for what constitutes evidence is not only too high, but only seems to apply to ideas that you’re not fond of, which leads to, as someone said above, conducting “mental gymnastics” to keep your theories alive. The thing is, you’re such a prominent figure in the lore community that I think it’s possible that it’s having a toxic effect, confusing people and moving the entire consensus away from what ArenaNet are, at this point, pretty clearly trying to lead us towards. tl;dr I think we know more than you think we know.

Mister Midnight.9837:

Well it’d be really cool if the PC could talk again like the Personal Story, but that’s not really what I’m getting at myself. Apologies if my thoughts are coming across as jumbled or rambling.

The point I’m making here outside of all of this, is that I do not feel like the PCs are being brought to the forefront as the main protagonist. Maybe we’re not meant to be the main protagonist, but it still feels like we’re not even particularly important. Like I said, I feel like we’re the sidekick characters on The Superfriends being dragged around.

I didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, for the first time since the Battle for Claw Island mission, I’ve really actually felt a part of the story. I play a sylvari, and when I played through my character had to make it clear to Marjory that Aerin was Soundless. My choice of race was not only taken into account, but actually made important to the story! I’m sure the same thing would have happened had I played a different race, but what counts is the fact that it felt important that I was a sylvari. I really felt like I was adding an extra perspective to the group. There were numerous other moments like this in the new release, such as Kasmeer having to explain the human class system, and given that guildies who play asura engineers have told me that that race/class combo get unique dialogue with Taimi later on, I feel like it’s not just me.

I’ve already spoken my thoughts on this, but reading that thread should tell you that not everybody wants to be at the forefront. In fact, according to this poll, only 14% of players seem to want what you want. The trouble is, there doesn’t appear to be much agreement between anyone.

The poll I linked above tells us that if you go into the game with an expectation that ArenaNet build the game that you want, not only will they fail to please everyone, but they will fail to please anyone. At some point in the last few months, the community has collectively decided that because ANet is a company that listens and gives the community a voice, that the community is entitled to the game that they demand. Except, as the threads about jumping puzzles in Dry Top will tell you, nobody can agree on what the community is demanding. So rather than telling ArenaNet how they should develop their own game, let’s just all stop, take a step back, and let them create their own vision.

Honestly, and I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion or anything, but I hope the waypoint system is removed or otherwise rendered unusable. And again, I fully do not expect that this will happen, since the system is so entrenched that there would be outcry. But hear me out nonetheless.

I remember Prince Rurik being exiled from Ascalon. I remember preparing for the harrowing trek across the Shiverpeaks to the “promised land” of Kryta, knowing that whatever is on the other side would be better than the terrifying experience of running a gauntlet of charr stalkers with screechy arrows, or venturing through the breach in the Great Northern Wall in the post-Searing Kingdom of Ascalon. And I remember stepping out onto the sands of Kryta for the first time with Jeremy Soule’s magical score playing, and feeling a genuine sense of relief and exhaustion at the journey.

This is a sense of journey and exploration that I feel should be present not only in every MMO, but in every RPG. But this is killed by the idea of being able to teleport anywhere in the world at any time. It’s almost never mentioned by NPC’s and ignored whenever it becomes inconvenient, and that really makes it feel disconnected from the lore. But if it wasn’t disconnected from the lore, the entire story would have to be contorted around it (for example, why can’t Seraph Belinda Delaqua just teleport back to Fort Salma and waypoint a contingent of soldiers to Tangle Root instead of running all the way back). Waypoints are never referred to in the novels or earlier promotional material either, and it really feels like they were added because for whatever reason it was decided that there weren’t enough asura gates. And come on, for something that is supposedly so core to the game’s lore, who seriously uses an asura gate? The only advantage to them is that they are free, and that is something that is completely at odds with the lore, by the way.

I have a number of other immersion-based complaints about waypoints, such as the fact that they completely remove tension from combat—you’d be a lot more careful if faced with the prospect of dying alone out in the wilderness with the knowledge that you’d be sent much further back. It’d add tension to even the many “easy” battles in vanilla zones, and it’d make you consider bringing an adventurer buddy with you. It’s also, of course, responsible for one of the more immersion-breaking styles of play that is seemingly promoted by ArenaNet, which is the hundreds-strong zerg teleporting around the world killing dragon champions like clockwork. The sense of a huge Vigil force massing and organising to take on Tequatl the Sunless isn’t really there when the army spontaneously appears, slays the beast, and then spontaneously disappears to autoattack the Shatterer to death on the other side of the planet.

But yeah, these are just my personal feelings on waypoints, and I recognise that they’re an integral enough part of the gameplay that it’d be basically impossible to completely overhaul them without causing some serious upset. I don’t expect them to be disabled in favour of asura gates whatsoever. I’d just like that to be the case.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

It’s already been confirmed that what’s under LA are ley lines. Many times.

Mordremoth is heavily hinted and known to have influence in the Maguuma Jungle.

There was an intersection of ley lines beneath Orr (that’s why Orrian magic was so much more powerful than any other human magic). You know what else there was? An Elder Dragon. Just sayin’.

Very brief since I haven’t much time. But feel free to add!

• First we see what appears to be the Mysterious Figure blowing a warhorn and rallying a centaur force. Could be wrong but the ominous music suggests that these guys aren’t friendly. But then what of their banners, which apparently show the Pale Tree? My suspicion is that these are an as-of-yet unseen centaur tribe, and I don’t think I’ll be shocking anyone by guessing they’re somehow related to Ventari. So we’ll be getting more sylvari lore, it seems.
• Next: the B-iconics walking through a more lush looking area, with some huge, magical-looking shell of some sort in the background. It looks artificial.
• Same lush region, an earth elemental is visible, and there is a broken cylinder floating above them, its parts held in place. It reminds me of the Vigil Megalaser, but it is obviously much older. Perhaps a weapon against the Elder Dragons from the last cycle?
• A glimpse of what appears to be a miniature Rata Sum, with holographic lines surrounding it. The thing in front of it may be a hologram projector (looks like Scarlet built it). It looks exactly like this thing.
• Next, a shot of Concordia destroyed by jungle vines. Condordia is on the other side of Tyria, so the jungle dragon’s corruption seems to be spreading fast. It is also a Pact fortification (and it is where the Pact was founded), so this could be a tactical move on Mordremoth’s part. It would also mean that the Pact’s involvement in what’s coming is inevitable.
• A lone, scared looking Vigil soldier being killed by a vine. Not much to say here.
• An adventurer getting smashed by a giant; Zephyr Sanctum wreckage is visible in the background. We still know barely anything about the giants, but since the ones we’ve met already haven’t told us much about the species, I’m not too hopeful here.
• The trailer ends with a shot of the town of Prosperity, destroyed by vines. If Mordremoth is attacking tactically, then what is the importance of Prosperity? Proximity to ley lines? Or could it be that Scarlet really was trying to work against the Elder Dragon? If that’s the case, it raises huge questions about who she and Aerin were really working for. It could also mean that we’re not getting a side-arc about the bandits and White Mantle this season after all (but then where is the island we’re visiting in November, if not Janthir?)

The trailer can be found here. Again, sorry about the brevity, it was more a recap than analysis but it’s still worth doing, I think!

I don’t like JP’s. I am bad at them. But I don’t understand the complaint here. No difficult jumping was required for me to fully enjoy the content. There are a couple of hard JP’s, sure, but those are totally optional.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a profession-specific organisation like this. There was also the Order, which was a guild of necromancers. We don’t hear anything about it after pre-Searing (I think?), which would mean either it stopped existing at some point between 1070 and 1072, or that it is exclusively for Ascalonian necromancers (I will say that Elementalist Aziure seems to be at least affiliated with the Order, but everyone else involved is a necromancer). We also have the Flaming Scepter Mages, who are comprised exclusively of elementalists, the assassin guild Obsidian Flame, and Shauben, who are all warriors. Each of these guilds are for humans, and specific to the nation that they are from (Ascalon, Cantha, Istan, respectively). So this sort of arrangement isn’t unusual. What is interesting is the way that Jory makes it seem like this “Mesmer Collective” is the organisation that mesmers belong to. Does that mean it could be multiracial? Rereading the Angel McCoy interview might be a worthwhile start; the discussion of magic seems to raise the question of what commonalities might exist between mesmers of different races.

I hope that this organisation is exclusive and deliberately mysterious. I’d be annoyed if it was played out that way and then it turns out my mesmer was a member the whole time. Players should have access to the same information as their characters in roleplaying games.

I’d be incredibly surprised if we ended up visiting Cantha any time soon, but I can’t help but wonder about the Cantha theme aboard the Zephyr Sanctum. Has it just returned from Cantha? I wonder if it’ll bring news of what’s going on there.

I wonder if it has anything to do with Tsuru Whitewing, the new mini that could, in my view, be a potential tengu b-iconic. The tengu name their houses after each of the four winds, and we don’t actually know who runs the Bazaar of the Four Winds…

Shiren.9532:

Scott’s comments on Kasmeer being a close childhood friend of Faren really irked me. Faren is supposed to be my human noble’s good friend, Kasmeer is someone I’d just met yet she’s now really close buddies with my close friend? It’s another case of the story being written to accommodate these characters even if that means pushing aside the player character. Scott also said Kasmeer was on Southsun to get away from her family’s fall in status, at the time I thought she said she was there on business (From Welcome to Paradise: ““Please: Kasmeer. And thanks for the advice. I work for a private investigator in Divinity’s Reach, and I’m meeting a few potential clients for dinner on Pearl Islet. I don’t imagine they’ll serve us outdoors.” She smiled a warm, dazzling smile. “Not at the prices they quoted me, anyway.”).

Faren and Kasmeer having a history is actually established in-game, it’s not quite out of nowhere. And it makes sense to me as well, that they’d know each other.

Rym.1469:

“Because they wanted more chaos”. What the hell is this? That’s so simply lazy that I can’t even tell. Literally anything, giving any background and reason for them would be better. “Because they wanted to use Scarlet’s knowledge to steal the toxin later when it becomes deadly and use it on their own” – Literally, anything.

For almost any other faction this would be a poor explanation, but actually in the case of the Nightmare Court it’s consistent with their other actions and what’s more has a solid basis in lore—in other words, there’s a reason why “wanting more chaos” would be an understandable objective for the Nightmare Court.

With every terrible act (and acts against sylvari are particularly effective), the Nightmare Court darken the Dream, the collective memory of their species, just a little bit. Their hope is that if they can darken it enough, the sylvari as a whole will be free from the Ventari tablet’s influence and they will be free to fight the Elder Dragons with whatever means necessary.

Shiren.9532:

-snip-

The lack of explanation bugs me as well. Between the A Study in Scarlet instance and the control panels on the Breachmaker, I feel like I’m dumb for not getting what Scarlet’s plan actually was. Awaken Mordremoth because…Mordremoth was controlling her? She was fighting Mordremoth somehow? The game holds your hand with text like “Her plan all along…was the dragon”, but other than the bits that the game explicitly tells you, her plan is not clear at all. And I don’t feel like this was the intent. I feel like we really were “getting” the answers we were promised, it’s just that they were too vague for anyone to understand. They even did things like add dates to Scarlet’s journal, to help us place when these events were in her timeline, but it just…didn’t help much at all.

Scarlet, despite everything, had potential to be sympathetic. She was a sylvari who didn’t want to be constrained by the path set for her by the Pale Tree, who felt its call oppressive. That’s a very relatable, I think, a very human impulse. What’s more, she didn’t want that for the rest of her people either. Her profession, an engineer, set her apart from the rest of her people, and if painted in a different light her determination and single-mindedness could have made her admirable to some and an enemy to others. Her alliances of races that would never ordinarily work together could have served as a foil to the Pact, and yet not once was this mentioned. She was inquisitive and unyielding, and all the while she was contending with another dark force that threatened her ability to act independently, which was the thing she valued most.

Instead, what we got was madcap. Wacky, unexplained antics, the promise that every defeat somehow contributed to her “master plan” (which they only did in the most obvious way possible, namely that she “watched you fight and learned your weaknesses”, and yet she never seemed to learn her lesson), and unexplained tonal shifts. The dark turn to her story was a welcome one, but most it happened offscreen, for reasons that aren’t clear (and I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be), and just as we think we’re able to use it to create something like a timeline for her, she comes along and gives her “fancy panties” speech at the end of Tower of Nightmares and we’re not sure how far along she’s supposed to be.

She wasn’t even a villain that we hated enough that we could forgive a lack of explanation. I think I’ve used this comparison before, but if that were a character as hated as Joffrey Baratheon on the floor of the Breachmaker (so I’m talking someone you hate in a way that means you’re invested, rather than a character that you hate because they make you less invested), I think we’d forgive Braham for giving them a swift, brutal death without the satisfaction of a grand speech. As it was, the remaining investment players had in Scarlet’s story was predicated on her explanation of her plan, and Braham robbed us of the opportunity to hear that. Unless that was intended to make us resent Braham, and will come back to bite him when a piece of information Scarlet could have revealed but didn’t because of him becomes important (which I doubt), then all it does is delay season 1’s already overdue make-or-break moment until the next release, in a few months’ time. This is assuming that we aren’t supposed to understand Scarlet’s plan yet, by the way. If we are, and that was it, well…I guess it was a break.

Where was Scarlet at the end? “Tyria needs me”? Or “Tyria will bow before a new master”? Apparently both, but they’re fundamentally contradictory. I think it’s still possible to redeem her somewhat, if handled carefully. But I’ll be disappointed if “Tyria needs me” ends with “…because that’s what Mordremoth told me”.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I don’t think there’s some deeper meaning to Thruln the Lost blaming the gods – it seems like it is all just him trying to pass the buck of the jotun’s fall away from the jotun themselves.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Having thought about it, I think the purpose of Thruln (narratively) isn’t particularly to hint at some as-of-yet unrevealed lore (although there may be nuggets of it in there, which when devoid of context are unidentifiable), but to demonstrate how the different races have such wildly varying interpretations of the same event in history, and to prime the player for revisions of the human perspective of history that we are used to.

I do think this was quite poorly communicated, though. At launch, I , for one read Thruln’s dialogue and shocked that they had such important lore mentioned by one NPC in a city, and never mentioned by anyone else again. It makes a lot more sense if you think of Thruln’s purpose not as revelatory but emblematic of the multiple possible interpretations of history.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Ugh, I had a nice well thought out response and the darn thing errored. kitten it. Oh well.

I look at it this way: It’s not any different than buying an expansion in chunks, rather than all at once. Of course, if I’m playing regularly anyway, the point is moot because I get it for free.

Not to mention that even if you do join the game later, or if you don’t log in to get your free content as it comes, when you “buy the expansion” through the gem store you’re still only paying for the story instances. New features, such as weapons or playable races, that would traditionally come bundled with expansions, will be presumably available to everyone, for free.

I wasn’t sure where to put this, since there are already several threads covering similar ground. But I think this idea is more to do with the many-dragon theory with how dragons consume magic anyway, but I could be wrong. Anyway, what I am about to posit is a theory on the origin of the Elder Dragons. Pretty big deal.

We know that the more magic imbued in a dragon minion by its master, the more power and self-determination it has. The most powerful (and usually, biggest) minions tend to be the ones with the most magic. Something we’ve missed, I think, is that of course this applies to non-dragon minions as well! The question of what happens when we kill an Elder Dragon got me thinking: what will happen to Zhaitan’s corpse? If an Elder Dragon dies, then the amount of magic that dragon has consumed is effectively “returned” to the world, free to be captured in magical items, like the Aspects, to radiate from the dragon’s corpse, or to be…wait for it, consumed by other Elder Dragons. Then, in order to reduce the world to a low level of magic once again, as is the Dragons’ purpose, each Dragon would need to consume more magic than before, as there is more “free” magic in the world (another way you could view would be to say that you have one less dragon, to consume the same amount of magic). But then, since we know that the amount of power one has is proportional to the amount of magic imbued in oneself, this would mean that the remaining Elder Dragons would have the potential to become more powerful than before! So by killing Zhaitan, we haven’t really decreased the amount of power that we need to overcome, only concentrated it into fewer places!

This works on a narrative level as well; the question since the end of the personal story has been how will the story maintain any sort of tension going forward, now that the races are unified and we have a Pact capable of killing Elder Dragons (and apparently without too much difficulty, although that might just be because there wasn’t much tension in the personal story to begin with)? I think most assumed that with the awakening of Mordremoth, the sylvari would turn out to be dragon minions and the unity of the races would fall apart (although given the recent souring of public opinion in Lion’s Arch against the sylvari, it wouldn’t surprise me if something like this could still happen), but now a more obvious answer appears: each Dragon is more dangerous than the last.

So where is the promised theory on the origin of the Elder Dragons? Well, what follows is speculation that, although it has nothing to disprove it, also has nothing solid to support it. All it has going for it is that it “fits”, and I believe it is the simplest explanation given the evidence we currently have. It comes from taking what was said above, about the remaining Elder Dragons becoming more powerful each time one of its brethren dies, and extrapolates backward, operating under the assumption of the many-dragon theory (that there are, or were, more dragons than jut the six we know of).

The theory would be this: long ago, when the world was young, there was a race of dragons that were spread across the world. Their memory can be seen in the architecture and culture of the Canthan Empire even to this day. Perhaps they were sentient, perhaps they were only sapient. At some point, they evolved, were given, or otherwise developed the ability to consume magic, which would increase the power of the individual who did so. It’d be as if humans, who are born with a variable inherent aptitude for magic, suddenly became able to simply take magic from others and become more powerful.

Survival of the fittest kicked in, and before long, the only dragons that were left were ones that could consume magic. The individuals of that race, greedy for more power, turned on one another, destroying each other and becoming each powerful with each death. They developed techniques for dominating and corrupting one another, enslaving weaker dragons to their service. Glint, Tequatl, and the Claws of Jormag are all descendants of these dragon champions, if not those dragons themselves.

The so-called “Elder Dragons” consumed all the magic of the world, in cycles of awakening and destruction. By 10,000 BE, they had reached an impasse – only six remained, each too powerful and different to be killed by any other. They converged on the continent of Tyria, circling one another’s domains. And the rest, as they say…

There was no alliance between centaurs and Kournans, only slavery. In fact, this was the entire plotline between centaurs and Kournans. So it is impossible to allude to it without talking about the slavery aspect.

While there have been problems communicating what is exposition and what is NPC perspectives in the past, this is a clear-cut example of the latter. Why would Varesh admit to slavery herself?

Ulyssean.1709:

Belzebu.3912:

Those are the words of Ossa, not the developers.

Bobby Stein said last week that the words of the developers are ‘malleable’ ie ‘subject to change’ ie ‘unreliable’.

This is a barefaced lie.

I noticed this in Mount Maelstrom the other day, as well. The song is called The Tengu Wall, and it seems to have been put into the main soundtrack rotation in one of the most recent updates. Previously, the only place it appeared in-game was the Dominion of Winds vista in Caledon Forest.

Honestly, I don’t see the big deal here. Sure, it’s an inconsistency, but it’s hardly the first retcon we’ve seen, and it’s definitely far from the biggest. And I don’t see how it’s saying that novels and blog posts are no longer valid sources of lore either; in this particular case the source was an interview in which a question was put to Ree, and an answer was given. What would the alternative be? Refusal to answer the question, on the off-chance the dating might need to be tweaked later on? Because that’s what I’m worried might happen in future—no more lore in interviews—given the reaction here.

All this tells us is that there is a hierarchy of sources, which is something that should have really been common sense to begin with. Things like interviews in which answers have to be given on the spot, and where, as Bobby said, no content was actually built around the lore in question, are perfectly mutable. It would have been nice to have been told so at the time, sure, but other than that I don’t get the fuss. For some reason we’ve developed quite an idiosyncratic view of what ‘canon’ should constitute, and I don’t see the need to take it so personally when that is upset.

I quite like them. They’re a little reminder that there are more characters in the world than just the biconics, and that when the world move forward, so do its minor characters. I don’t know how I’d feel about them as more central characters, but I think that’s more because quaggans are so specifically defined as a race, it’s difficult to have a huge amount of variation on quaggan characters (same as skritt, really).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

…I’m starting to believe that the 1316 comment was a typo for 1326.

If you make this assumption, the rest of the timeline starts to make a lot more sense. Kind of frustrating, given that presumably the new content was introduced to help clarify the confusion on the forums and now it has added to it. But yeah, Scarlet’s holo-recording can be cast in a completely new light if you work on the basis that “the ley line hub is real” line was actually at some point in 1326. Except, that would mean that Ceara became Scarlet actually at some point between Flame and Frost and Dragon Bash. If it were 1323 or 1324, her being called Scarlet during the Thaumanova Reactor Fractal makes more sense. But it also means that you can’t line up her dismissing the steam creature prototypes in the holo-recording with her phasing the steam creatures out of her forces during her invasions.

At this point, I think we just need an official timeline. Things like the inclusion of dates in her journal and these most recent books are clearly an attempt to help clarify the situation for us, but clearly there’s been some kind of a retcon, or some of the old sources are incorrect, or (incredibly) some of the new sources are incorrect. And without being told what those changes are, working out a sensible timeline just isn’t possible without time travel (wat).

I got the impression that The Dead End: A Study in Scarlet was supposed to be the “a-ha!” instance where everything comes together and we suddenly understand Scarlet’s plans. It has this to say about the Tower of Nightmares:

Marjory Delaqua: “I’ll never forget how close we came to disaster. When I think about those spores spreading their toxins across Tyria, it boils my blood.”
Kasmeer Meade: “The Nightmare Court and krait do make a volatile combination. Scarlet popped some horrifying alchemy there.”
Kasmeer Meade: “I still have nightmares about that tower. I doubt I’m the only one.”
Player: “At least Jory was able to find the antitoxin. Can we test it on this sample?”
Kasmeer Meade: “Scarlet would have spread her toxins all over Tyria if we’d let her. It’s a good thing we found the antidote. She allied with krait and Nightmare Cortiers to do so. Why would she do such a thing?”
Player: “The courtiers grew the plant, and the krait made it toxic. The combination was a poison so powerful…”
Marjory Delaqua: “This sample is resistant to the antitoxin we used against the Nightmare Tower poison.”
Kasmeer Meade: “Jory, we didn’t stop her plan. We just showed her how to make a stronger poison that could wipe out an entire city.”

So the implication is that Scarlet modified her posion to be resistant to Marjory’s antitoxin, and that she could use it against an army. Or a city. I don’t for a moment expect you accept this as a satisfactory explanation as to why Scarlet had to build a giant freaking Tower of Nightmares; a grow-your-own-krait-prohet kit seems like a fairly convoluted plan to create a poison.

I’m not quite ready to write it off as ANet not knowing themselves where the plot was going, though—not yet, at least. The way that miasma was dispersed during the Battle for Lion’s Arch wasn’t similar at all to how the Tower of Nightmares worked, nor did the toxin have remotely similar effects. And iirc there was some dialogue in the Lornar’s Pass refugee camp that hinted that some of the hylek knew how to stop the miasma but seemed reticent to talk about it (the implication, I think, being that the miasma involved hylek alchemy and they were embarrassed to have been linked to Scarlet—remember Scarlet spent some time with the Michotl hylek). So it seems quite likely to me that the miasma isn’t actually anything to do with the Toxic Alliance, and so the Tower of Nightmares was for some other purpose. At least, I hope that’s the case, because otherwise Scarlet’s plan was even more poorly communicated than I first thought.

So if the Tower of Nightmares wasn’t built to test the miasma, then what was it for? Well, short answer is we don’t know. I’m still apprehensive that a “This is what Scarlet’s REAL plan was all along!” reveal is going to inevitably fall flat at this point regardless of how clever it is, but if I had to guess I’d say something to do with Mordremoth. But really, your guess is as good as mine.

Wynne: “We come from the dragon. We belong to it. We’re meant to serve it.”
The…reluctance of certain forum users to entertain the possibility that the sylvari are dragon minions has meant that the implications of this have not really been explored. But with yesterday’s revelation, now seems to be the time to take another look. This thread isn’t meant to be a debate about whether making the sylvari dragon minions was the right storytelling choice, or whether or not there was any substantive evidence for this twist beforehand—-the other thread has already devolved into that.

This thread is for taking another look at existing sylvari lore within the framework of them being minions of Mordremoth, trying to make sense of it and exploring its implications for the future. Whether or not there was any evidence for this beforehand is only relevant insomuch that any “evidence” might be pertinent to the wider lore. It is no longer necessary to debate whether something constitutes evidence for this. Wynne’s testimony is all the evidence we need.

I suppose, from the top: where do the sylvari come from? We all know the origin story of the sylvari—the human Ronan, separated from his patrol, stumbles across a cavern filled with strange seed pods, guarded by terrible plant monsters, steals a seed and plants it in Arbor Bay, upon the graves of his family (who had been killed by the mursaat).

In light of recent events, this tale raises some questions:

• Is the sealed cavern with Caithe’s memory seed the very same cave? Arbor bay to beneath the Mamnoon Lagoon/Sage Lands is quite a distance. And if so, why does opening it ward off the Mordrem, when the seeds were guarded by Mordrem? Or was that the Forgotten magic, since the Shadow of the Dragon has no problem once inside.
• What happened to the other seeds? This is at least partially answered by the presence of Malyck, answered below.
• What are the golden ruins in the sealed cavern? The cavern was sealed by Forgotten magic, so it would suggest that they are the originators of these structures, but we’ve never seen Forgotten architecture before so we cannot confirm this.

I don’t think there’s been any retcon at all. I’ve been saying for months that the Shadow of the Dragon is a champion of Mordremoth. It’s a draconic source of nightmare inside the Dream, that summons Nightmare Hounds and has a glow similar to the Mordremoth minion Evolved Husk in the Crucible of Eternity. These are all things that point towards Mordremoth.

As an aside, I don’t think it was ever said that the player’s Wyld Hunt is to kill Zhaitan. We’re told that Caithe’s is, and that Trahearne’s is to cleanse Orr, but all the dialogue is worded such that it is possible that the player’s Wyld Hunt is to fight the Elder Dragons in general, not just one specific one. If the Shadow of the Dragon had truly been a representation of the player’s Wyld Hunt to kill Zhaitan, it would have been a Risen.

This should help you out

It’s going to be a gem store item. The fact that it’s called “Iron Greatsword” tells us that its a skin, since items currently retain the names of their original models. And the precedent has been set for a main character having a “signature weapon”, that is available via gem store.

Actually, all indications point to Malyck’s tree having a Dream of its own, it’s just that it’s not connected to our own Dream. The thing that would make our Pale Tree unique would be the Ventari Tablet, but I can’t see how that would factor into any of these considerations.

As others have said, Dry Top is part of a new Maguuma Wastes region rather than the old Maguuma Jungle region (none of the explorable zones of which, by the way, are actually located inside the Maguuma Jungle).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

…

You claim that there has never been any evidence for the “sylvari = dragon minions” theory, and yet you acknowledge that it has been speculated to be the case since release…do you think it’s possible that there have been hints and support for the theory since release, and that you just failed to see them?

Also, you don’t think your rejection of any proposed support for this theory has anything to do with your dislike of it as a story direction? Or is that just a coincidence?

With the first major story arc of the living world coming to a close, I wanted to stop and take a moment to appreciate the work done by the concept artists and composers who worked on the releases in the last year and a half. With heavyweights like Kekai Kotaki and Jeremy Soule stepping down, the team has had some massive shoes to fill, and I feel like they’ve stepped up to the task.

Below is a list of galleries of artwork that has appeared in living world releases:

• Theo Prins
• Naomi Baker
• Jamie Ro
• Ruan Jia

If there are any of these that I have missed, or if anyone knows of any artwork I have missed, then don’t hesitate to let me know!

Additionally, several composers have worked on GW2 since the release model came into play; these are Maclaine Diemer, Stan LePard, and Leif Chappelle – the first two of whom do not even have a wiki page! They have worked on the Halloween, Wintersday, and SAB soundtracks, as well as music for Southsun Cove and more recently, Lion’s Arch. Their music can be heard and downloaded on the ArenaNet SoundCloud page.