Personally, I find that the story to killing Zhaitan and Mordremoth to be too simple and I believe they have a lot of potential to expand an to a new story arc that’s at least twice as long as the entire Scarlet arc.
So here’s my suggestions, I do apologize if its long winded or if someone already had posted similar ideas, I don’t go to forums that often, Wiki a lot, forums not so much.
1. Zhaitan is not actually dead.
a. Zhaitan faked his death because he finds that the army he raised in Orr to not be enough to actually conquer all of Tyria. Since he is bascially a necromancer and the first target marked by the Pact, he had to fake his death and let the other Elder Dragons to help kill and secretly gather a stronger army.
b. Why would Zhaitan do that? A minion master necromancer without strong minions have to let its allies do the initiation for them.
c. Technically we never saw Zhaitan’s corpse and the rest of Arah, we only saw what the Pact and Tyria wanted to believe – Zhaitan died by their hands. Can fireworks from a low mobility mother ship really bring down an Elder Dragon? We did saw how easily Mordremoth destroy the entire Pact fleet right?
d. Even if we did see the corpse, the Elder Dragons are like 10000+ years old, they should have tricks up in their sleeve/wings.
e. And to account for all of this, why is there only a couple of Orrian Royalties and 1-2 Legendary Risen Priest of the Six Gods? Shouldn’t there be more since the city of Arah flourished at least several centuries before it got sank? 1-2 priest and royalties getting slain by the Pact is like at most 2-3 generations worth of risen minions.
f. As for the Sovereign Eye and his speech about the royalties having been freed from Zhaitan’s curse as well as Trahearne cleansing the source of Orr, Zhaitan could’ve actually just let it pretend to be cleansed to get the Pact finally off his back.
g. This should be possible since we do still see all the risen active in Orr, a summoned creature should be dead if the summoner is dead. Tequatl also suddenly gotten stronger and we still have no idea why, Zhaitan could’ve been doing test runs with dragon minion enhancing techniques.
2. What the Pact Commander destroyed wasn't Mordremoth's mind, it was his/her own mind, Mordremoth now possesses the Commander from within.
a. The Pact Commander saw the same Eternal Alchemy as Scarlet, the one that slowly and steadily got her mind broken by Mordremoth. This means the Pact Commander should be more vulnerable to Mordemoth’s control, and especially if it we played as Sylvari.
b. When the Commander kill Trahearne with Caladbolg, the sword was actually corrupted already and it gave Mordremoth a stronger link to connect to the Commander's mind.
c. Why would Mordremoth do that? Simple, destroying the Pact is nothing in comparison to the capturing the Commander since he/she is the real threat, turning the Commander into his minion will guarantee the destruction of all of Tyria. There’s also the idea that the second pale tree never actually appear
d. Basically the whole deal from Verdant’s Brink to Dragon’s Stand, it’s a trap to complete Mordremoth’s invasion to the Commander’s mind. Corrupting Trahearne was actually to force the commander to put him to rest personally, and if you choose to believe, it was never Trahearne that spoke to us during the ending, Mordremoth was using his voice to tell us to finish Trahearne with the corrupted Caladbolg.
f. The Pact Commander doesn’t necessarily have to show symptoms immediately, Mordremoth would be like a parasite or virus, completely merged into its host while slowly breaking it.
3. What this can lead to
a. Arc with Zhaitan’s return with stronger army with unexplored Arah, maybe underground temple?
b. Arc with the Pact in disarray and near collapse since their two spiritual leader, Trahearne is dead while the commander is under Mordremoth's influence . Possibility begin this arc by having an celebration event for “Mordremoth’s dead” similar to the one for Zhaitan and have the commander lose control and start attacking Pact members under some illusion/assumption that they were dragon minions. This could further advance to an story where the Pact is split into two factions, one wanting to save the commander and the other wanting to kill the commander before Mordremoth takes full control of him/her. Maybe turn it that Priority scholar discover that the only possible way to lock/block Mordremoth out of player’s mind is to attain ascension which leads to opening a journey to the Crystal Desert?
c. While the player is in progress of attaining ascension to fight off the insidious Mordremoth, perhaps the player might receive a vision from ascendants of the past warning that Abaddon is taking a advantage of the chaos in Tyria/complete absence of the human Gods and is slowly acquiring power to revive himself? Possibility joined by Dhuum and Menzies? This could bring the player to Elona and gather what remains of the Sunspears to take down Palawa Joko and Abaddon.
These are just suggestions of what could happen, I mean there’s a lot of potentials with all kinds of havoc that can occur with 6 Elder Dragons roaming around and disrupting the flow of energy across Tyria: ancient seals that ward off evil deities could break, landscape change could force ancient deadly monster (like the Karka) to migrate into central Tyria, or maybe war against the Sylvari race (remember the HoT introduction where they say Sylvari can’t be trusted? well if you don’t trust something, you most likely want to eliminate it)
Perhaps even twist the story about the origin of the Elder Dragons, saying that they are actually the dark/corrupted form of the human Gods. That the Gods live their existence between the cycle of awakening (peaceful humanoid form) and hibernation (destructive dragon form). Something like a split identity for the Gods that they have no control over. We got 6 Elder Dragon and 6 Human Gods, the numbers match perfectly. This can even lead to human civil war between factions that completely cast away the God and factions that embrace the Gods as what they are (not necessarily mean that they wont fight against them, just accepting them as the balancing force in the cycle of life and death)
The point is that Elder Dragon Arcs are too simple and have no twist, Elder Dragons should be cunning and manipulative, I mean they have lived over 10000+ years right? there’s got to be some wisdom in there.
Thank you for reading.
Edit #2
Another post, sorry for length and again apologies if someone already posted similar ideas.
Its not just the Elder Dragon story that can get the improvements, I think the race and Orders of Tyria can get more out of it too. Remember how in GW1, whatever faction/order you join (such as Sunspears/Luxon) have rank promotion system that lets you get new titles/PvE only skills/prestige armor? There should be more PvE only utility skills. I think what we do with character race and orders is too little. There should be secondary quest from your character race/order that you can do for promotional points to claim PvE only skills and other rewards.
Joining an Order should have its perks
Something like this:
Joining the Order of Whispers and completing certain side quest allows you to purchase/learn PvE only stealth/crafty skills such as:
1. Stealth mines/traps/gadgets
2. Dagger/pistol/rifle weapon kits
3. Shadow stepping/stealth tricks
4. Turrets
Elite Utility: gives permanent stealth as long as weapon is sheath
Vigil would be:
1. Banners that gives bonus stats vs certain monster types
2. Reinforcement summoning shouts
3. Defensive stances such as giving protection with struck
4. Signet such as increasing maximum health
5. Physical skills that can AoE/counter/block
Elite Utility: mark a target area and summon a delayed heavy damage bombardment
Durmand Priory would be:
1. Target stats modifying manipulation skill
2. Spirits that increases condition duration
3. Wells that causes condition that necromancer/chronomancer wells doesn’t cause, ex: confusion/burning/chill
4. Offensive cantrips that enhance that next weapon skill ability, such as adding damage modifier or cc like daze/stun/cripple/immobilize
Elite Utility: summon ancient spirits to tank/attack for you.
Racial utilies should also be adjusted to be comparable to profession utilities and be able to earn new ones by completing racial mission. I mean for human elite racial skill we have Avatar of Melandru, Reaper of Grenth, and Hounds of Balthazar. Where’s the elite for Lyssa/Kormir/Dwayna?
Another example of additional racial skill/sub-racial order for players to join would be:
1. Asura joining the Peacemakers or perhaps a “less violent group” of Inquest
2. Sylvari joining the Wardens or forming a new version of Nightmare court
3. Norn joining the Shamans or joining “Viking like” groups
4. Charr continuing building the war band that they never actually finish building from the story
5. Human joining the Priest of human Gods/Seraph/Shining Blades/Ebon Vanguard
What I suggested above doesn’t necessarily have to be like 5-6 skills with tons of benefits, it could be split into 10-20 utility skill per order.
It would be nice if racial skills and the skills I suggested to be categorized into skill types for trait benefits. Of course these skill have to be PvE only considering its strong potential, but remember how GW1 had those crazy strong skills too?
Also take into considerations that a lot of monster we got now can pretty much 1-3 shot you regardless of armor and health. I mean even if you have 5k armor with 20k health (4k + Rousing Resilience 1k), you can still get 1 shot by a stray attack. What’s the point of taking toughness over offensive stats then? I kinda want PvE only toughness stat buff against monster
That being said considering the Order skills to be more beneficial to certain profession, I think that as long as the player reaches the rank Pact Commander in the story, they should be allow to do mission and learn skills from any Orders. Maybe even get Pact Commander utility skills.
The Point is that the GW1 we love have like 1k skill to choose from and they have more interaction with the factions/orders you joined. GW2 should have that as well.
In addition to the points above, I think we can get Mastery systems for the Orders of Tyria and Racial factions as well. Again only applicable to PvE only
Thanks for reading.
