Guild Wars 2

I think she simply means everyone is capable of learning magic. Even the highest ranking Charr. They just don’t, either because they distrust magic, or because they enjoy feel of a sword or bow in their hand. So, just like any mage could have learned to use a sword but chose magic, any archer could have learned magic instead. But for any number of reasons, personal, cultural, or were forced into it by family, they didn’t choose those alternatives. I could be wrong, though.

Also, I should say thanks, to Regina and Angel both, for taking the time to reply. I’m glad to see some discussion here on the side of the devs, and would love to see even more(though I recognize you’re all very busy). It’s always nice to have the creators participate in the discussion, debates(Who gets Orr, for example.), and the like.

NOTE: I MAKE REAL LIFE REFERENCES HERE, INCLUDING RELIGION, CULTURE AND THE EVENTS OF THE REAL LIFE WORLD. I DO NOT MEAN TO OFFEND, I AM SIMPLY USING THIS AS AN EXAMPLE TO DESCRIBE OUR WORLD, AND TYRIA, AND TO SHOW HOW PERFECTION, IS ALWAYS, NOT PERFECT.

I have to say Konig’s responses rather bother me. He is automatically dismissing some things.

1. GW1 Lore was told from a human vantage point. All the lore you got, the lore you received, was from them.

2. In GW2 You get lore from the perspectives of MANY races (and not just the ones we play).

This kind of thought process is like saying:

I was raised a Buddhist.

I have now gone out into the world because of some cataclysmic event (I was being raised in a closed community). I was taught about the happenings in the world, current and past, by the teachers in my community.

I am now in the world, and these people around me keep speaking of Gods Wrath raining down on my village because we did not believe. But this isn’t what happened! The world had lost balance, and now, we are being pushed into the world to restore that balance. I know this, because it is what I was taught.

All your guild wars life (up until now) the lore has been given to you via the characters in the stories, or the game. For every character, race, religion, belief…that perspective, that story will be different.

Are the Charr going to believe what the humans believe? NO. Now, you point to contraindications in their own cultures. Tell me that we don’t do that NOW, in real life, when we do things like wage war for peace. When we make weapons we’ve forbidden others from making. When the very things we CLAIM to hate and despise, infiltrate our lives, our cultures. So yes, Charr might be distrustful of magic. I am distrustful of a gun. It can backfire, it can jam, it can hurt me instead of it’s target. If my life is on the line, I will certainly learn to use it, and do so when I need to. Those are the things that CAUSE those oppositions, those inconsistencies.

Every culture in the real world has them, yet so many turn a blind eye because they believe. Do you not think that other cultures, fictional or not, would not be the same? Full of oxymoron’s and inadequacies?

That pointed out take a different view.

Now instead of being immersed in the lore, you are an outsider, like now, reading these invterviews, these forums. What perspective would you say you have?

Who created Tyria? Who are it’s gods? Do you really believe it’s the six gods? Do you believe it was the spirits? ANet created Tyria. They have the ultimate perspective, and you are being invited to join them. It is the perspective of a god. Imagine looking down at the world you know, and seeing all these things that don’t make sense, all these beliefs that are not true. So much conflicting info….and they believe it, because like children with santa claus, they don’t know any better. You however can now see the truth, the chaos for what it is.

These interviews are done from the perspective of a god, who is not only trying to explain the truth, but the LORE that you know. The TRUE back story, and the beliefs of those in the world. OF COURSE they will conflict.

Imagine if there is a god, or goddess, or God, or Allah, or any of the figureheads(cant think of a better word sorry) of any of the beliefs out there, and they are staring down at us, shaking their head, because our world is nothing but a mess of confusion, chaos and contraindications. It’s what makes us interesting. It’s what makes us…us. We can expect no less of a fictional world. If a story is laid out in perfect detail, then you haven’t gotten all sides of the story.

Finally, on magic having been available for longer than a year…

I’m going to disagree with Konig on this one. This, actually, covers a LOT of inconsistencies that have been brought up in past discussions. We’ve been told that humans used magic en masse in the invasion of Ascalon in 100BE, and we knew there were other cases of magic being used in that century. The timelines are unfortunate, but we’ve seen other histories prove to be inaccurate before, and that particular part being inaccurate solves a lot of inconsistencies. Apart from human access to magic beforehand… the previous timeline expected us to believe that most races went from having no magic at all to magic being so apocalyptically powerful that Doric decided it needed to be limited within a year… with time left over to make his way to Orr (apparently not without having to fight along the way) and make his case to the gods. Now, I guess it could be a case of the various new mages simply gathering together as much raw power as possible and hurling it at one another as uncontrolled bursts, but it seems much more likely to me that it would have taken quite a bit longer than that to go from “we have no magic at all” to “threatening MAD”.

Which reminds me of a fifth point… which is that the assertion that everyone can use some magic does actually fit what we see. The common Seraph archer, for instance, can still shoot explosive arrows, and while that could be incendiary-tipped arrows, having access to one or two simple spells that can be applied to weapons makes more sense. Warriors in general can leap significant distances in a single bound, in heavy armour – good luck asking even a trained athlete in real life to leap half the effective range of a musket while wearing a full suit of metal armour. I think it is reasonable to say that pretty much everyone has some minor magical powers – but since they’re things that most people can do and aren’t close to the level that trained spellcasters can achieve, they may not even be regarded by most as magic, instead being, essentially, tricks. (I would contend, though, that such magic has probably become more widespread in GW2’s time than GW1’s time).

First, I’d like to thank both Regina and Angel for responding. To be honest, I was a little nervous when I saw the Arenanet icon on the thread, given some of the things that have been said here.

Having said that, I would make a few comments:

First, this atlas you speak of: What would it take to get it published? Preferably so that it’s available in Australia? Doesn’t matter if it’s two and a half centuries out of date. :P

Second – Konig’s touched on this, but I think the stuff regarding the gods is symptomatic of a larger problem. We all understand that the story is bigger than humanity now, but it often feels like you’ve overcompensated the other way. Consider Orr, for instance – going into the human holy city and the place where the gods first arrived on Tyria is somewhere where humans and human lore would have been expected to take the forefront, but instead they get marginalised by asura, charr, and Trahearne at every turn (okay, except for Historian Vermoth at the Cathedral of Zephyrs). Personally, for me it really crystallised when, on praising Grenth for her success at locating the Source of Orr, a priestess of Grenth is corrected by an asura who claims all the credit for himself… right in front of the Seventh Reaper. While it’s understandable that humans and human lore aren’t going to be at the forefront everywhere like in GW1 – Orr of all places, possibly more so even than Kryta, is a place where humans and human lore should have played a major role – instead it’s a distant fourth.

At the bottom line, humans being as important as they were in GW1 clearly isn’t appropriate when they’re only one race out of five. But there should be an attempt to give them roughly equal spotlight, and at the moment humans and norn feel a bit like the redheaded stepchildren. Now, the Zephyr Sanctum certainly helped there (not so much the recent event, since the end result was basically to make humanity the victim yet again), but I think the implication that what the gods did with the Bloodstones was nothing, and the response to that, is symptomatic of the way humans seem to have been marginalised.

Really, humans and norn both could do with a little more love and attention – but while the norn can at least hope to have their stuff come into the spotlight when (and I do hope that’s a when) we get to move north against Jormag, humans have already gone into the place where they should have been the most important… and proved to be of no importance there.

Third, as I commented earlier in this thread – change the length of the year if you feel it appropriate, but it needs a more satisfying reason than “it was actually that way the whole time and nobody noticed!” It takes less than a decade for a deficit of five days to make a significant difference in when the seasons start. Maybe the gods were holding the seasons to 90 days for their own reasons, but when they stopped meddling after GW1, the seasons and thus the years reverted to their natural pattern. Maybe there was some event – which may have otherwise gone unobserved by Tyrians – that caused the days to become shorter or the years to become longer – something that may become a hook for later stories. Either way, I don’t think changing the year is the real issue, it’s that the reason given for it is so unsatisfying.

Thanks for the reply, Angel. It feels like we’ve gotten very little new lore in GW2 (and unfortunately, most of it seems to come from interviews rather than the game itself), so it’s nice to at least have some conversation going on the lore forums. I’d like to see it more often.

I only played the original Guild Wars for a few months in preparation for GW2, so I don’t know nearly as much of the lore as the other fine folks that frequent this board, but I do agree that it does feel like a huge letdown with how the old lore (specifically regarding humanity) has been handled. I think it’s important to make things work for a multi-racial PC cast now, but it does seem like the “retconning” for lack of a better word of a lot of the human lore in an attempt to do this has been a bit excessive. Especially because the human lore was genuinely fascinating. It’s kind of a letdown to see just how much of it has been toned down from what it was in the interest of putting the other races on more equal footing. I feel like it’s really cheapened humanity, the Gods (once my favorite part of the lore, but at this point they’ve become pretty unimpressive), and the impact they’ve had on Tyria. It also doesn’t really help that the Eternal Alchemy is apparently the de facto “correct” way of understanding the world all of a sudden.

I guess at this point there really isn’t anything that can be done about this, but I think it’s worth noting. I mean, maybe they’ll throw us a bone and actually do something awesome with the Human Gods sometime down the line. Have the Pact get absolutely decimated by one of the Elder Dragons and when all looks lost, the gods bust in and help save the day in some grand, kitten fashion. Although at the rate things have been going, I’m more expecting a casual “Oh yeah, the risen weren’t lying. Zhaitan really did kill the gods. That sucks, huh?” in some random blurb when they get around to doing a revamp of the Arah dungeon.

They ought to hire you Konig like how they hired Angel.

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

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. […] 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.

This paragraph rather irked me as a response to it. Mainly because… it doesn’t really have anything to do with the interview. At least, not in a way that’s obvious to us. We already know that human historians can be wrong – the History of Tyria shows us this very well. That’s not the problem at all. The problem is that the interview goes and counters not just what we’re told, but what we see. And in some cases of the former (countering “what we’re told”), the alternative presented doesn’t make sense (that the schools of magic were merely a dogma; a cultural limitation – as said in this thread, such would not make sense if people already had access to all four schools at once). It would be a vastly different case if it was just “the schools are no longer as limiting now as they were in the past” rather than “people don’t limit themselves with the schools now like they did in the past” – the way the question on the four schools was answered was basically saying that the schools were never a true factual limitation.

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

> Humans (including Canthan humans) were brought to Tyria (from…no spoilers!). They are not native to Tyria and did not come with much magic of their own. From a human perspective and oral tradition (that can get warped over time), they say the gods were giving them magic, but the reality was that the dragons had gone back to sleep, and the gods felt it was safe to begin returning magic stored in the Bloodstone to Tyria. The gods (not only Abaddon) “unsealed” the Bloodstone and magic flowed back into the world. Humans and other sentient races of the time began using it.

> Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out. King Doric begged the gods to slow the flow of magic back into Tyria and the gods granted his wish by shattering the Bloodstone into pieces and limiting their use. Abaddon was annoyed by this.

A few things to note about this:

• You say this as if the gods did know about the Elder Dragons, and not only that… were around when the Elder Dragons were last awake. However, in-game, we’re told that “They [the Six Gods] pulled the energies of Zhaitan himself, even though they did not know of the sleeping Elder Dragon.” (Source: Randall Greyston) And he’s not the only one who tells us that the Six Gods only arrived on Tyria after the Elder Dragons went to sleep, let alone imply such.
• All lore so far has told us that it was Abaddon who unsealed it, and the other five gods lessened that unsealing. That it was Abaddon alone who gifted magic. Are you trying to say that all the lore – both in and out of universe – saying this is false?
• “Over the course of hundreds of years, wars broke out.” You mean over the course of a year, wars broke out. Abaddon had gifted magic in 1 BE, and the reduction of magic occurred in Year 0/0 AE. Or is it to be that every historical record, even out-of-universe listings of the timeline – are to be wrong here?

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

For many of us players, it’s only been a couple years since Abaddon’s tantrum, but for Tyrians, it’s been much longer. The gods have been gone. Generations have lived and died. The world’s understanding and control of magic has grown and improved. The understanding of the cosmos (the Eternal Alchemy) has improved. And yet, there’s still so much the people of Tyria don’t know.

While that may be, that doesn’t excuse how something that makes no sense other than there being a physical limitation, and suddenly said physical-ness of the limitation never existed.

Of course, Tyria hasn’t advanced as quickly as we have. They don’t have cars or Internet or Post-It™ notes.

The charr and their Circus Charricus disagree with you about no cars.

Again, I do thank you for taking the time to respond to this… but you don’t really clarify anything in your post about the problems raised in the interview. You used a lot of words to tell us nothing on the matter at hand. There is some interesting tidbits and interpretations to take from your four points of lore facts, but you made no mention of the calendar, of the schools themselves, or people’s interactions with the schools, or of how “everyone” can use magic. And those were the problems at hand.

Now, to reply directly to parts of the response itself…

Angel McCoy, Narrative Designer

So, let me explain where some of these lore decisions came from. They and many others are based on the following needs:

1. The fact that GW2 takes place 250 years in the future after GW.

2. The added complications that come with GW2 being non-human-centric. We’re no longer telling a human story, but a multiracial story, and that means only one of five races have the “gods” as part of their world construct. The lore needs to not only make sense for all races, but actually be relevant to them.

3. We want to evolve the lore, not rewrite it, but not just recycle what was already there either. We want to reveal new layers in the onion and expose secrets that even GW players didn’t know.

The first point and the third point is perfectly fine and good. The second point, there’s a bit of a problem.

Yes, it is indeed non-human-centric, however, how you react to this feels more like “humanity was wrong” all the time with a side of “the gods are nothing special” – rather than trivializing the gods and their actions, which seems to be the direction chosen, it should be showing how the other races view and were affected by the acts of the gods. There was an interview a while back, mentioned in this thread, where a dev (I thought it was Ree but drax says it was Jeff) mentioned how the asura reacted to a magical event in the past – that, reasons unknown to them, the amount of magic in the world increased and subsequently decreased – and heavily implied it to be the asura’s reactions to the act of Abaddon gifting magic to the world. That was done properly – it didn’t trivialize the gods’ actions, but showed how another race reacted to the gods’ acts.

After all, these are gods, not just “powerful wizards” – yet it is the later which is how the gods feel like they’re beginning to be treated, especially with the interview that basically says “the bloodstones do nothing” when you read it as a whole. Yet nothing to say “the bloodstones were important, but now they’re not anymore” it was instead treating them as cultural limitations that humanity imposed on themselves. I’m referring to this in particular:

These schools aren’t as important in modern magic as they were even 250 years ago. They have fallen out of style as people have realized that magic doesn’t need these kinds of limiting factors. Only the most ancient magic users, those who based their magical constructs on this dogma, continue to pursue their knowledge in this way. Thus, you’re only likely to find reference to them in the back-most shelves at the Durmand Priory and in jokes made by young people about old people.

This response basically tells us “the four schools were just a mental limitation; a cultural choice on how to treat magic” and never a physical limitation imposed on the world by the gods when they reduced magic.

-continued next post-

Now that I’m not being pressed for attention elsewhere…

Firstly, I’d like to thank both of you (Angel and Regina) for taking the time to respond to the concerns of the lore forum. I really wish we had a few more dev responses on this forum when confusing things come up (other kinds of lore conflicts). And for the record, I was sure to re-read the interview and Angel’s response before writing this in full. Thalador’s posts (which I also re-read before writing) are a good basis for the problems of the interview since he nicely summarized them and explained why they are problems – even if a bit harshly in some places.

This said, however, as I mentioned before I don’t really see anything in the response that actually addresses the points made in the forum before. To summarize (in less than five posts) the issues, I believe they can be dumbed down to this:

• The interview trivializes Abaddon’s and other gods’ actions as well as the entire purpose of the Bloodstone. This is primarily in how folks use magic and how magic of the past is treated. The interview treats the Four Schools as merely cultural, but as shown in this thread, that’s illogically impossible (as folks had access to all four schools combined, and then were forced to not be able to).
• It contradicts observances made in the game itself as well as the novels – the claim that everyone has magic. We see, in the grand scale of things, rather few magic users; and if everyone used magic, wouldn’t that mean that the entire charr society – which is established in modern times on the distrust of magic users – be entirely distrusting of everyone else?
• It seemingly ignores the secondary profession capabilities of Guild Wars 1, even with 250 years this seems out of place.
• And last but not least – there’s the blatant retcon in the calendar. Something that didn’t even need to be done, and the retcon itself was kitten to the point where it only makes matters more confusing now.

Now, the response it self uses a lot of words to say… just about nothing on these points. The calendar – which is, IMO, the worse offender in the interview – doesn’t even get touched upon at all. Similarly, it doesn’t touch upon the “everyone uses magic” notion either. The mentions about Abaddon and the Bloodstone does help to counter the interview’s trivialization of the matters, but does nothing to explain why the situation is such. But while it does this, it doesn’t touch upon the schools of magic at all or how they truly interact in the lore.

All in all, the response feels more like a “don’t hate me” post (using the words of a guild member, Edus) rather than an explanation for this direction in the lore. You explain it simply as “250 years have passed and it’s no longer human centric, and people can be wrong.” And this is all fine and dandy, but it does nothing to actually alleviate the problem at hand. It’s little different than trying to put a band-aid over a ripped-open ribcage (a gruesome comparison, for sure, but I felt it was a proper comparison to how the response to the interview’s damage to the lore acts).

-continued next post-

Thanks though for replying Angel. We rarely see any devs post in the lore forum at all. So any response, especially such a long one, is much appreciated.

Thanks Angel for taking the time to respond to this thread.

In an attempt to steer away from the ley lines issue, one thing I noticed Thalador forgot to bring up that’s been bugging me is Angel McCoy’s comment on mesmers:

Orr: Are the illusions created by mesmers visible to anybody or only to the caster and the spell target?

Angel McCoy: This depends. Casting an illusion that can only be seen by one person is an extremely advanced skill as it requires getting directly into an individual’s mind. Only the most skilled of mesmers can do this, and mesmers don’t talk about this ability. If people were to find out that mesmers could do this, it would prejudice people against mesmers and damage the trust and love mesmers work so hard to inspire in others.

No documentation of this ability exists outside the Mesmer community because the targets of this kind of spell don’t realize they’ve been duped. No one else can corroborate their experience either, so…it’s often explained away as battle fatigue. Even within the mesmer community, knowledge of this kind of spell is “need to know” only, which means only the most elder and experienced are initiated into the circle.

Basically, what McCoy says is that using an illusion on one person in of itself is an extremely advanced skill that affects an individual’s mind directly, and only few mesmers can do this. Furthermore, they don’t share that they can do this, even with the so-called “mesmer community.” However…

1. This is exactly what every single player character does and can do with their very first spell – creating a clone of themselves.
2. Queen Jennah does this on an epic scale – she creates an illusion of Kralkatorrik that tricks the Branded, as well as all humans and charr, and then openly admits she did such. Page 403 and 404 of Edge of Destiny.
3. Let’s not forget that illusions is the thing about mesmers. If they were to be hiding their ability to create illusions, then wouldn’t they be hiding their very existence? But that’s very much not the case. And on the point of mesmers being untrusted – it’s necromancy which isn’t trusted, but elementalists and mesmers are; and like I said, illusions are the thing about mesmers, so it seems extremely hard to believe that it’s merely an illusion.

Addendum to point 3 (didn’t want to make that to large), throughout the personal storyline and open world, we have folks who basically go “it was just an illusion!” Signifying that the ability to make illusions is well known even among NPCs.

• From The Floating Grizwhirl The Fabulous Chakravarti: Hey, that’s not supposed to happen. Oh no, Wiggly’s gone rogue! Help! Someone, help! He’ll kill us all! Thank you, thank you! I mean, uh…all part of the act, folks! Just one of Madam Gilda’s illusions! Yes, just an… illusion. Whew. – an open desplay of mesmer illusions as entertainment. This is just one of at least three cases where it’s done – the other two I know of by Wozmack the Wonderful in Welcome Home and Victory or Death.
• From Follow the Trail _Emer Whipmane: That’s your story. I say we need to find Vallus to find the truth. His illusions won’t save him from me. _ – the gladium father openly uses an illusion to trick the PC and his warband.
• By Seraph Spy Ivy in Brisban, related to a heart – " The disguise will put an illusion around you and make you look like one of them. I’ll let you into the camp once you’re ready. Oh, and in your pocket, you’ll find baneberry poison. Are you ready?" – an explanation of the mesmer transformation magics, openly talking about… illusions! Scholar Olenn does the same, as well as a few other heart NPCs.
• Fixing the Blame and the whole storyline there is all about solving a problem made by illusions, known to be mesmer magic. In Marshaling the Truth Trahearne says If she did use illusion, she’s either a mesmer or in league with one. basically saying “illusions can only be used by mesmers” – and he’s not a mesmer so if it was “a close kept secret, even among mesmers” he shouldn’t really know about it.
• Estate of Decay also makes reference to illusion usage by mesmers. There are other cases too, like Solve the mystery of the haunted marsh or Destroy the undead mesmer illusions events.
• And let’s not forget the Watchknights – hundreds of machines that openly use mesmer illusions to alter their appearance.

lordkrall.7241:

Yeah.. because WoW is the only fantasy world that uses Ley lines……….

^

http://rifts.wikia.com/wiki/Ley_Line_Walker

http://rifts.wikia.com/wiki/Ley_Lines

Konig Des Todes.2086:

For taking the time of providing many of the sources I was thinking of after I saw how little sense that interview was, and proving that I’m just too kitten ed lazy to, I present Thalador with this gif:

(P.S., I fully agree with everything I bothered to read of his posts; I suggest Angel do a recap on the game’s lore, otherwise I may have to hop on Obsidian’s bandwagon after vandalizing it to be “separate lore continuities between Guild Wars 2 and Living Story”)

I…I…erm… o.o

For taking the time of providing many of the sources I was thinking of after I saw how little sense that interview was, and proving that I’m just too kitten ed lazy to, I present Thalador with this gif:

(P.S., I fully agree with everything I bothered to read of his posts; I suggest Angel do a recap on the game’s lore, otherwise I may have to hop on Obsidian’s bandwagon after vandalizing it to be “separate lore continuities between Guild Wars 2 and Living Story”)

Angel McCoy

I love that idea, as do many people living in Tyria. The reality, however, is that only the most powerful have the time and energy to do this. It’s like getting two doctorate degrees, one in medicine and one in engineering. Few have the time to do this, and usually, an individual doesn’t want to turn her back on everything she’s already learned to start a new magical discipline. She’d much rather continue advancing her knowledge in the discipline she’s invested decades in. Some, however, may dabble and experiment with specific spells. If a master elementalist can find a mesmer to teach her to produce an illusion, then she may explore ways to combine them. Most professions keep their secrets close to their chests though. And, the danger of a conflict between magical energies and thus, an explosion, is very real.

The previous point about the bloodstones and the blatant disrespect with those who’ve founded their magical theory on that so-called “dogma” ties in heavily to this. Because it entirely handwaves away that 250 years ago many, many people were capable of mastering techniques related to at least two schools of magic. Does that mean they were more advanced than the spellcasters of the present? I don’t think so. But instead of forgetting the universal fact that everyone is being limited by the schools of magic, magicians worked, experimented with, and combined the techniques and secrets of multiple professions into one. It seems McCoy has overlooked the fact that many professions melded the theories of other professions into themselves, improving their ways or outright creating new professions. The magical professions of today are in no way unaffected by the schools of magic, however. Let’s take a look:

The most obvious example is the Guardian: Preservation and Denial (of harm), with the profession combining Monk magic, Elonian protection magic (Paragon), and some “Ritualist hoo-haa.” That’s three professions in one, which immediately discredits her answer.

Elementalist: It was outright stated on the official site pre-release (unfortunately all the race and profession pages got severely dumbed down) that they use the Destruction school.

Mesmer and Thief: Denial, with Thief being another meld of professions (assassin and mesmer, prominently).

Necromancer: Aggression. Alas, we know very little of this school aside from the Necromancer being the last magical profession to be tied to it. Still, the necromancers are shown to have incorporated more ritualist magic in their ways.

Instead of people being unable to acquire secondary professions anymore, they either permanently built some favored aspects into their own techniques or realized that their secondary profession will be still weaker compared to their primary (obviously), so they chose not to waste their studies (and attribute points) on trying to get a mediocre grasp of that secondary. In other words, today’s magicians have neither degenerated nor risen above the concept of the four schools, but simplified the system for their own benefit – and probably to avoid unfortunate accidents, which I concur to be quite possible when mixing different schools (aggression – preservation, for example) and/or energies (chaos – darkness).

That line kind of confuses me when taking into consideration an explanation of lore, even though this is historical nonetheless…

Orrian History Scrolls

My early career as a merchant began in Foible’s Fair, in southern Ascalon. Imaging my shock at my first encounter with the enchanted markets of Wren.

Fishmongers display live catch in watery orbs above their tents. Porters enhance their strength with spells, routinely carrying loads that would cripple a pack bull.

The finest silks ripple in the air, showing their quality: songs play themselves on golden lyres; parents project their voices across the square to the[sic] find the ear of a wayward child.

Yet the real oddity is just how normal all this seems to them. It makes me ponder: How did magic become so common, so everyday?

In Ascalon, we apply magic only to things of import-when ordinary means cannot succeed. For the Orrians, magic is like any other tool, to be used at whim and with little concern.

And then…

The gods, in their wisdom, dispersed their magic throughout Tyria. Magic was dissipated, so that none by be too tempted by its power.

We know that we can draw and contain magic through intense study and the use of certain materials-‘signets’-and also with the blessing of all the Six.

Have the Orrian people simply internalized these lessons? Is the land there so magical that all are born with the ability to use magic without the need for education? My theory will require more research………

What Angel says seems to kind of counteract this…

The connection between the Mouvelian calendar and our real-world calendar is a practical one. Thanks to your question, we had a big discussion here. The Mouvelian calendar was established way back when Guild Wars was first being created. At that time, we had no idea we’d ever be doing Living World content like we are now. We’ve decided that we’re going to change the Mouvelian calendar to a 365-day year. Here’s the official in-game asuran announcement:

“Friends and fellows. Due to recent (amazing!) reasoning by scholars of the Astronomagical Society, we are pleased to announce that we have added the five hidden days to our calendar year! That’s five extra days we’ve recognized for you to advance your work before the annual review. Gifts and gratitude are unnecessary. We merely acknowledged them officially; we did not create them. May all your projects be almost as successful as ours.” — Mikk

Are you freakin’ kidding me?

“Oh hey, when this was made, we didn’t think we’d be doing this. So lets retcon it! 8D”

Goodbye ArenaNet, hello Blizzard 2.0 who’s lore is written on a piece of toilet paper. >.>

Next thing you know, they’re going to say “no, the Mouvelian calendar doesn’t start at the beginning of spring, it starts in the middle of winter!” Or they’ll go “the Mouvelian calendar didn’t have months in the past, so we decided to give twelve months to it – we named them January, February, March, April, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December.”

First basically retconning out the four schools of magic, and now altering the calendars for no reason? What about the Canthan calendar which has 12 months already of 30 days each? Or the Dynastic Reckoning calendar? Are the years between them now going to be messed up in transitioning, or are those going to get retconned to just to make the living story progress at the same time as reality?

GG Anet, kittening up the lore for non-lore reasons.

I think the main reason I found myself enjoying War in Kryta is because I allowed myself to become swept up in the hype. I checked the websites daily for updates from Murro and waited daily for new bounties and such, anything to progress the story. I think this was another case of the out of game content being somewhat better than the content found within the game.

I thought hearts of the north was good for what it was intended to be, a transition. There wasn’t a big plot spoiler planned for it, it was a scenario where we knew A and C and we were just watching as B occurred.

Winds of Change, I thought, was spectacular (prolly doesn’t help that anything Factions related automatically gets 5 stars in my book… a bit biased). Yes, the first portion was slow, kill all afflicted, kill all afflicted, kill all afflicted, you get the idea. But what I found great about it was once you killed all the afllicted… THEY WERE GONE! And once the rest of the story filled in it was something I could really invest myself in. Was it perfect, heck no, but it was what I would consider some of the most top grade stuff ArenaNet has done.

lordkrall.7241:

And yet I have seen quite a few people talking about how awesome Guild Wars: Beyond was, and it is quite likely that she was doing parts of that.

A friend of mine who went to PAX said she was told the folks working on the Living Story did War in Kryta.

Winds of Change and Hearts of the North was made primarily if not solely by the Live Team.

Honestly, War in Kryta was rather flat and ignored a lot of potential. It also felt like it made the White Mantle into what most GW2 villains are: “hurr hurr kill kitten destroy!”

Obsidian.1328:

Angel was brought into the fold in 2007. Nightfall was basically wrapped up, and the plans for GW2 were already being discussed. Eye of the North was the transitional bridge between the two games and shouldn’t really be considered GW1 proper.

So, technically you’re right. Realistically though, not so much.

And yet I have seen quite a few people talking about how awesome Guild Wars: Beyond was, and it is quite likely that she was doing parts of that.

lordkrall.7241:

^ I suggest you read the forum rules before posting, since they quite clearly states that shout-outs to specific employees are not allowed.

As for the last part you do know that Angel WAS with the GW1 lore-team as well, right?

Angel was brought into the fold in 2007. Nightfall was basically wrapped up, and the plans for GW2 were already being discussed. Eye of the North was the transitional bridge between the two games and shouldn’t really be considered GW1 proper.

So, technically you’re right. Realistically though, not so much.

^ I suggest you read the forum rules before posting, since they quite clearly states that shout-outs to specific employees are not allowed.

As for the last part you do know that Angel WAS with the GW1 lore-team as well, right?

The Jotun may be considered useful for the information they have provided regarding the Elder Dragons, but their lore is otherwise discredited within the Durmand Priory. For the Priory, one of the most authoritative sources of knowledge about the Elder Dragons is Jotun stelae – written documentation of ancient origin. Given the age of this information, the Priory no doubt considers it to be credible particularly in comparison to the Jotun oral tradition which, due to the nature of spoken language, can leave historians playing Tyrian whispers. But just how accurate is the Jotun written documentation?
As you can imagine, recovering the written documentation of a xenophobic race is one thing – but deciphering their language is quite another. There are only so many ways that this can be done. One of the first ways would be to approach the Jotun directly for assistance. Although you might find Jotun willing to assist in the translation of the stelae, the reliability of the work would be subject to the extent to which the language has changed. And changed it may have, given that the Jotun stelae could be as much as 10,000 years old. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s argue that the contemporary Jotun language is reliable enough to provide an accurate translation.
The problem with conceding that the contemporary Jotun language is a reliable translating tool is that it demonstrates that even though the language is now predominantly oral it has nonetheless retained its integrity throughout the generations, suggesting that any forms of knowledge – whether preserved in written or spoken language – retained by the Jotun are probably also reliable in the sense that they have not changed. This does not mean, however, that the stories contained in the oral tradition are not fabrications, merely the details first fabricated have not changed. Thus, we could argue that an influential Jotun made this up, but that the original content of the tale is intact.
This is of particular importance when we consider the roles that both Thruln The Lost and Elder Thruln play in helping us form an understanding of the reliability of any knowledge about Jotun history passed onto us from modern Jotun.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But I didn’t suggest that by your wording (or rather, I how I read your wording which is “different servers get different results based on per-server interaction”), just changes dependent on the players’ actions using a per-server as a means of showing to the players the progress of said actions (since I doubt there’s an easy way of cross-server player-visible bars).

My apologies if I misunderstood. But as I interpreted it, you suggested that Living Story can have a different outcome on each server, based on how the players as a collective work together to resolve it.

Any way, I think the core thing I like about what you brought up is simply the idea that we can make a difference; that the outcome isn’t set in stone. There can be multiple ways to implement this core concept, but the idea itself is what I really like. I hope the Living Story team takes that to heart.

I also think that being able to see how far your server is progressing is a good initiative, but I hope it wouldn’t get too grindy. Currently for example, a lot of players are ignoring the Scarlet invasions that sporadically appear. That’s because unless you have a ton of people like we initially had, you won’t beat those events anyway, and it doesn’t really have any impact on the Living Story anyway. This would of course change if there were status bars that showed the safety of a particular zone. Maybe a server must prevent a zone from falling under Scarlet’s controls within a certain month. Or maybe the server simply collects the efforts of all the players and adds them to the collective progress of the server.

A bit disappointed that ANet is still firmly committed to the idea of the two week release schedule, although Chris seemed to soften his stance on the next few pages (“well, if it REALLY doesn’t work out, we’re keeping our options open”). I am heartened to see that they have noticed that the amount of stuff to do with each Living Story is taking time away from players to do “regular content” though. My progress through the Personal Story and open world exploration has slowed to a crawl ever since the Living Story came out.

Updated dev replies on pgs 16-18

The first step to fixing a problem, is to first admit there IS a problem. I give credit for that. I truly hope their solutions come from good planning and not from this week’s episode of pokemon. I still have hope.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Living-World/page/10#post3115999 This was his first post.