Guild Wars 2

…there are only a few noted sword-wielding characters in the history of Tyria (the world). Of them, these are the most memorable:

1) Talon Silverwing — an Angchu tengu from The Aerie. During The Tengu Wars, he was defeated by General Zhan and has since sworn to protect and serve him. He is the initial trainer for Canthan warriors (either as a primary or secondary profession) at the Shing Jea Monastery.

2) Galrath is a warrior seeking to learn arcane magic at the Wizard’s Tower in Kryta; stopping him is the objective of the Villainy of Galrath.

3) Jaizhanju — Jaizhanju was an exceptionally tall and very strong young Warrior who lived over three hundred years ago. Orphaned at birth and self-trained, Jaizhanju traveled Cantha and single-handedly defeated bands of monsters that threatened villages all over the countryside. When the emperor invited her to visit him in the Forbidden City so he could reward her, she arrived days late, having stopped to defend an orphanage from a skale invasion. Standing before the emperor’s throne, she refused his proffered reward, and instead offered her sword and her life in exchange for the insult of tardiness. The bemused emperor refused her offer, and Jaizhanju continued to defend the weak until her death five years later, by which time legends numbered her kills in the tens of thousands. The emperor himself petitioned the Oracle to give her a place in the Tahnnakai Temple, and so it was.

4) Turai Ossa — my personal nomination for greatest swordsman for numerous oh-so-obvious-and-obviously-correct reasons. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Turai_Ossa

Almost all of these characters are likely still relevant in Guild Wars 2, as well. Regarding Shiro Tagachi — he was talented with one-handed blades of all sorts, but isn’t memorable as a “swordsman” in my mind… and I dread very really possibility of another encounter with him in the mists…

Regarding Shiro using swords or daggers – lorewise, I think they were swords. Mechanically it was treated as daggers when PC assassins decided to pick up both of them, but that’s because GW1 mechanics didn’t have the concept of dual-wielding and daggers were the closest match to two swords (mechanically, I think daggers were treated by the game mechanics as a single two-handed weapon with low damage and a high attack rate).

Out of all the characters we’ve seen in-game, I think Shiro would beat them all in a swordfight – mechanically speaking he’s in the group of the most powerful single beings in GW1, and I don’t think anything else at his level uses a sword. However, if I had to pick the best swordsman to walk Tyria, it’d probably be Balthazar. :P

This guy for those who havn’t seen it

Drakenvold.9761:

Tyria the world i think,thats what he meant,is Shiro undisputed in this claim?

Considering he’s dead it’s pretty hard for anyone to actually challenge his claim. Trouble with these proverbial pissing contests of “skill” :p

Danikat.8537:

Even outside of lore it takes a minimum of 2 people to bring him down

Even in lore it did. And the Luxons and Kurzicks were fighting over it hundreds of years later

The best swordsman in all history of tyria to my knowledge was Shiro Tagachi of cantha some 300 years ago, he killed the dragon emperor back then and became evil.

Because all hats shave your head. This is an old process that no/most game companies have not, apparently, figured out is undesirable.

Basically, in order to have your hair they would have to make a separate asset for each type of hair it would be possible to have under the helmet. This gets really complicated for Sylvari who have “hair” that would be incapable of fitting in any hat to begin with.

So instead of worrying about it, they simply replace your hair with the helmet and move on.

Why it also removed your beard, though, I can’t even begin to comment on. That seems dumb, but is probably for the same reason since some head items are masks.

i got 1 after 20 coffer, second one at 180. ive opened 222 more (402 total) and havent gotten another yet.

Farmed about 200 coffers, got nothing. Decided I would buy a bunch, since I’m probably out the door soon with this game anyway. I just was curious if the RNG was as bad as everyone said (No I didn’t spend money, just my gold). After opening 2100 coffers and spending about 75 gold, finally got one:P

I did a /sleep and zoomed in so the only part of me I saw was my knee (was on a male human).

My very old and outdated (but not disproven – there’s just more information found that works with or independent from my research/stance) theory on Mordremoth’s minions.

My findings were more or less summarized by draxynnic.

My personal theory is that the Nightmare Court are being manipulated by Mordremoth via the Nightmare. Not corrupted, just manipulated.

Keep in mind that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption – rather than being corrupted, they simply die. The reason for this is unknown, but we know that dragon minions are not immune to other dragons’ corruptions. So we know for a fact that the sylvari are not dragon minions – given this, Malyck, and the nature of how sylvari are made all being different.

The Nightmare witnessed within the Dream of Dreams, however, does seem very similar to dragon corruption, so it may be Mordremoth’s influence. Not just for the “there’s no turning back” that joining the Nightmare Court have, which may be an indication of either Mordremoth finding a way around the “immune to corruption” or that the mere influence is enough to prevent return, but there’s also the “pods” that the NC toss sylvari into to twist to their cause – very similar to the blocks of ice and crystal seen to make icebrood/branded in Frostgorge Sound and Iron Marches respectively (northeastern areas in both zones).

Fafnir.5124:

Proof is in that all Sylvari are connected to the tree share a hive mind like the dragons.

Wrong. The Dream of Dream is not a collective consciousness. It’s a one-way reception of memories. Think of the Dream of Dreams like a television, and the sylvari are recording devices.

Dragon minions function differently – they hear the dragon’s thoughts, and the dragon learns everything they know, and have known. The dragon minions’ mentality and thoughts are also changed, turned into fanatic followers of the dragon. It’s not a case of the dragons seeing what their minions have seen like the sylvari, but learning everything there is to learn.

Furthermore, dragon minions have shown no sign of sharing knowledge among each other.

Fafnir.5124:

additional proof Sylvari are spawned by the tree like the dragon minions from the dragons.

Wrong. Don’t forget that dragons cannot create, only corrupt pre-existing things. However, the sylvari are born – are created – from the Pale Tree. Even destroyers come from lava and rock. The more dragon minions there are, the less ground and beings there are. But the more sylvari there are, the amount of ground and beings is unchanged.

In short:
The sylvari themselves are nothing like dragon minions. The Dream of Dreams doesn’t function the same as dragon minion collective consciousness or fanaticism. But the Nightmare may, but not the sylvari on a whole in any way shape or form. And hell, the stone dwarves are closer to dragon minions than sylvari. They were turned from flesh to something elemental, given a collective consciousness, and had their mentality changed to becoming fanatic for something (destruction of Elder Dragons).

Lokheit.7943:

in fact I think Jormag doesn’t even care and they’re just passively corrupted like any creature standing on Jormag’s “radiation”, I think at best Jormag finds the SoS amusing

I’d disagree with this. Jormag is said by a Whispers agent in the Arundon Vale of Frostgorge Sound to convince individuals to join him before corrupting (while other Elder Dragons corrupt to enslave), and the Frost Portal makes mention of offering strength by joining Jormag. There’s also mention within Edge of Destiny about how the first Sons of Svanir were seduced via promises of power, and we saw how the Dragonspawn was trying to corrupt Zojja by making her interested in it. Then in Honor of the Waves’ story mode, that Koda’s Bane norn calls upon Jormag after corrupting the Voice for more power, and is granted such – this shows that the SoS take power after proving their worth (be it because they’re opening a “channel” to Jormag, or because Jormag is offering it as a reward).

This points to Jormag wanting to corrupt those who seek strength or are powerful, so I think those gifts truly are “blessings” proactively granted from Jormag. Jormag is also said to hand-select his champions, the Claws of Jormag.

It could be a stretch, however if you compare the NM Court to the Sons of Svanir then it is a possibility. Although the SoS are not technically minions of Jormag (READ: Icebrood).

Like I said, a small stretch but I believe the NM Court deviance from the main Sylvari is a more localized/racial issue than being drawn by the power of Mordremoth.

Totally agree, shameless bump

I agree that this does deserve some more attention. Especially by the cartography freaks out there.

Best thread ever.

P.S. Sry for necrothreading, it was necessary.

This topic is about the globe of Tyria in the Chantry of Secrets, the associated map and how bad they are. But it is not about the (in)accuracy of the map (so no Frostgorge Sound, Isles of Janthir,… stuff).

So first of all, you can find the map and a picture of the globe here: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyria_%28world%29

About the map: The first thing you should notice is, that the left side connects with the right side (obviously) but also the top connects with the bottom.
Here is the map with highlighted borders
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/93/tyria1.jpg!
and here it is translated
!http://imageshack.us/a/img827/5418/tyria2.jpg!
And on the model the top and bottom of the texture actually connect.
In a map, where the top and the bottom represent poles, this would not make sense.
Also if the top was a pole, then the entire top would have to be either land or water, because it all represents the same point, and not some parts water and some parts land. For comparison, look at a real world map.
You will later see, that the globe is too messed up for poles anyway…
In fact, a map with these properties dose not represent a sphere at all but a torus.
I know, that mapping textures to models is not exactly like charts in maths, but if you start like that, you can only fail!
But this chart of a torus gets forced onto a sphere (the globe in the chantry) and the result is pretty bad.
So to identify parts I translated the map a bit, so that no land mass is cut and colored some parts, so we get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img607/2835/tyria4.jpg!

Now we look at the globe. The first thing to notice are the blue lines and discs, wich we later need to identify places.

Lets start with this picture to highlight the problems with the globe
!http://imageshack.us/a/img834/3332/gw011gx.jpg!
In this picture you can see two islands which are on there twice. If you cannot see them, here they are highlighted
!http://imageshack.us/a/img248/8845/gw011h.jpg!.

But lets look at that at a bigger scale.
In this picture
!http://imageshack.us/a/img69/2871/gw012h.jpg!
you can see Istan in red, below that Cantha and some other stuff, all colored like in the texture above. We especially see the top part of the texture at the bottom.
Now we go in the direction, the arrow points, and get this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img11/5608/gw013hc.jpg!
Now we see the top part of the texture at the top and when we go down from there, we get, as it is in the texture, to Tyria, Elona and… Istan again. But we obviously did not go around the globe. You can especially see this on the blue lines and discs, which are fixed on the globe, but are obviously in other places in relation to Istan, so this is another copy of Istan on this globe.
In fact, there is at least a third copy of Istan (and Tyria) on that globe, as seen here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img703/2551/gw014h.jpg!
(again look at the blue stuff)

But there is more. Some parts of the globe look like they are not on this texture.
Lets take a look at the picture of the globe from the wiki. There are some parts that look smoother than others, highlighted here
!http://imageshack.us/a/img42/2116/chantryofsecrets1.jpg!
On first glance, they also do not fit the texture.
So here is this picture colored in as above with the smooth parts left out
!http://imageshack.us/a/img842/6782/chantryofsecrets2.jpg!
You can also see Istan there twice.
But the smooth parts are actually on the texture too, and here they are colored
!http://imageshack.us/a/img850/1930/chantryofsecrets3.jpg!
But they seem different than the other parts and that is because the texture is scaled up and moved like this
!http://imageshack.us/a/img811/4251/tyria5.jpg!
Apparently the texture is overlayed on itself, moved and sacaled up, thus losing detail and gaining “smoothness”.
When both is colored, you can see the purple islands are rotated about 90° and scaled up and distorted a bit
!http://imageshack.us/a/img252/2803/chantryofsecrets4.jpg!

Now you could explain all this with magic, which creates copys of places all over the planet, or that this globe is not actually a globe at all, but some kind of other representation of the world.
But it seems more like someone had no idea, what they were doing, when they created this map and globe.
So are there any explanations lorewise, or are the map and globe simply useless?

The Pact is going to be pretty hard-pressed to fight a two-front war though. I’d figure they’re going to have to go after one at a time whether they want to or not.

IMO, if we get another dragon before an expansion I see it being Jormag. This reason for this is if we go after Krak there is a lot more at play there with Palawa Joko. Plus is opens up Elona for us.

Now if we don’t get a dragon before an exapansion, I think we will get Jormag and Krak at the same time. That would allow enough of the map to open for an expansion and I think two dragons at once will work at better. The game opened with one dragon for the simple reason of setting everything up and now isn’t limited by that. With everything it place it can really start focusing on the offensive to take the other dragons down and what are part will be in this story.

spoj.9672:

Im pretty sure primordus will be last due to him supposedly being the strongest? Im torn between it being Jormag or Kralk next though. I have a feeling Jormag is more likely as they have it setup with the tooth in Hoelbrak and all the lore surrounding him. But then sometimes it seems like they are hinting in the way of Kralk next and I really want to go to the crystal desert and see Palawa Joko.

I think you are spot on. It could be either. It all depends on if developers are more interested in taking us North (old EOTN territories) or South (original Prophecies territories). Because both dragons are said to be in those respective areas.

If I had to pick one, I would think that Jormag would be first. Going Crystal Desert first gets us closer to Elona and you do that and you will have a storm of people clamoring to get back there. Even more than we have now.

Im pretty sure primordus will be last due to him supposedly being the strongest? Im torn between it being Jormag or Kralk next though. I have a feeling Jormag is more likely as they have it setup with the tooth in Hoelbrak and all the lore surrounding him. But then sometimes it seems like they are hinting in the way of Kralk next and I really want to go to the crystal desert and see Palawa Joko.

It’s on the site of the old Bloodstone Caves. The seal is odd- honestly, it looks to me like a fusion of asura and hylek. At any rate, I would theorize that asura or otherwise, someone thought it was dangerous and sealed it off. The fact that there’s a door, rather than a cave-in or such, gives me hope that we may be able to go there eventually.

And let’s not forget that although Kryta may not have much of a navy, it appears that the pact is building one of sorts. Air ships. So I guess I’ll amend and say they are building an Air Force. Of course, I would speculate that the pact will also have a water fleet due to some of the personal story line arcs.

A group of us were speculating that it may be these airships that take us to other parts of the world since sea and land has us blocked at the moment.

Well there is still the Giant’s Basin (and the Lesser Giant’s Basin), which could support a navy. Sadly we never got much information about it, though in my opinion this is odd, since Kryta’s focus shifted more towards the north, so actually the Giant’s Basin should be more important now.

Edit: I forgot, the Lesser Giant’s Basin doesn’t exist anymore. Instead we now have the Lake Doric, which is located in the Harathi Hinterlands (how much I hate the world Hinterlands, sounds so wrong).

I think the only operating navy is owned by Lion’s Arch, or the Black Lion Trading Co. since all the ships have their emblem on them. OF course, the ships all suck anyway, they’re tiny, have no cannons, and about 50% of the ships in game are sitting so high or low in the water they’d capsize.

Kryta never has been a big seafairing nation in my opinion. And given the fact that during GW1, the ships in Lion’s Arch all had sails with the mark of Orr I would think that it where originally Orrians who wheren’t caught in the cataclysm and started working for the krytans.

Personally, I think that the female Norn and the Female Charr voices should have been swapped, the female Norn one sounded so much like how I imagined a female Charr’s would have and vice versa.

Actually, by definition pitch is frequency.

I somewhat agree with the OP that the female player charr voice is too mid-frequency for the lore. Most of the charr female voices are too high pitched for my taste. I would have preferred something that was hardly distinguishable from the male voices, to further play off that inter-species tension.

But I’m assuming they were afraid it would make an already hard-to-relate-to race even harder to relate to, and that’s why the female charr got such different voices from their male counterparts. I might think its a bad trade-off, but with the stats showing that the charr are already the least played race, I have to wonder. (the other part of me wonders if it’s just too hard to jump with charr)

I don’t think the Charr player female voice fits into the lore of the game because it’s too “human” sounding, too mid-tone. Charr ears are made so that the top ones hear high pitched sounds, and the lower set hears low pitched sounds (this creates a difficulty hearing mid-tone sounds, and contributes to the stress between human/charr).

Just wondering if anyone else thinks the same. I would like to see an option for the voice or have the voice lowered in pitch.