Guild Wars 2

Tarreth.8914:

This kind person just won this website. Hail to the Legions!

Someone mistakes an Asura for a Sylvari and you think that makes him the winner of this site?

I guess that’s the kind of intelect we can expect from a Charr

Titus Bruteforce – Name is cool, but lat name… Meh. 6/10

Maximus Purplexus – I understand, that charr are a bit romanian, but don’t overdo it 4/10

Sienna Tinkerpaw – Finally! 9/10
___________________________________________

Tarreth Stormscream – Warrior of the Blood Legion, fallen with his Scream Warband, during the Battle of Lion’s Arch. To defend the citizen and other soldiers, he decided to “give them time” – which was a suicide, and everyone knew it. Yet, it was essential for victory cause.
Victory at all cost.

Zandira Sparkshot – Young engineer. She likes her job, but she’s a dreamer. Amunition is her speciality. Creates for the Iron Legion.

JoeytheHutt.1742:

well, by your logic absolutely everything could be an offence, even radio, if you choosed to “understand” it kitten. No matter what is/was the intent. So it cant just be the receiver’s judgement who decides whats offencive or not. Because “reasonable” isnt always easy to agree on.

And by your logic nothing is offensive, as the speaker will simply choose to ‘intend’ it inoffensively. No. The interpretation is always in how the statement is understood, as only the person offended will know whether they’ve been offended. The Code of Conduct exists to protect the gaming environment, and people in the gaming environment. It’s not there to protect your ‘freedom of speech’ (in fact, it strongly infringes upon it. Quite legally, too.). ‘Reasonableness’ – an objective standard – simple means that calling someone a radio wouldn’t be offensive, because, as I stated earlier, even if it carried a perjorative meaning, it otherwise only refers to an inanimate object. If radio commonly meant ‘homosexual’ and you were using it to mean ‘bad’, then yes, that would be offensive.

hannah mee.7925:

I agree with this. The etymology of terms plays a huge role in understanding people. In fact, most of these examples looks like OP is just QQing because he doesn’t understand how slang is used in modern culture. Does he have to agree with it? No. However, these examples show few signs of any mocking over sexual orientation.

I think he understands exactly how slang is used in modern culture: namely, that ‘gay’, a term for homosexual people, is used as a catch-all term for ‘bad.’ Associating homosexuality and badness like that is homophobic and offensive. An etymological argument would justify the N-word on the basis that ‘niger’ is the Latin for ‘black’ (literally, just black. The colour). Are you going to argue that?

JoeytheHutt.1742:

A word is never racist or homophobic or anything, its the intent that is. It is what you mean by saying it. Like if you dont want to swear in front of your kids and you start to use the word “radio”. You are still swearing, and after a while the kids will learn what you mean when saying “radio”.
As you would, if everybody started to use “radio” instead of gay. Would it still hurt?
By now everybody knows “kitten” mean emphazising something. Is it better to say “kitten you”, than something else?
It is all about context, intent and situations.
Something I had to learn as a kid, was that it was often MY choice to let someone ruin my day or not. I am me, and the only one that is me, why would I let some random idiot make me feel bad? Even more so if its just some who tries to sound cool because they think they have to? Poor them.

Incorrect. It’s not the intent behind a statement, it’s how that statement is understood. Either subjectively or from the perspective of the proverbial reasonable person.

Now, your example misses the point. It’s not saying ‘X thing is gay’ that is offensive to LGBT people. It’s the implication that gay means bad. If people started saying ‘X thing is radio’ instead, that would be offensive to… radios. Which are inanimate objects, rather than people, so we really don’t care. For a better example, see my post above about ‘Jewish.’

As for choice to let someone ruin your day: this is a game, not the real world. What that means is there is no such thing as freedom of speech/expression – Anet can moderate anything at will. That’s why we can report people, because Anet wants their game environment not to be offensive to anyone. As such, if players are routinely using offensive language, those offended by the language have a valid concern, which isn’t going to be solved by people saying “Just get over it. It’s your own fault you let it get to you.”

Good luck OP. Hope you have a good guild and group of friends that can offer you understanding. I’m a cisgender straight male but I don’t like language of oppression in any form, whether it be racial slurs or slurs against the LGBT community or against people with disabilities. When people are real kitten-heads, I have a tab where have all but game messages unchecked. I have a guild tab that only includes /s, /g and whispers, and if I’m in WvW I put the map chat up since I’m more likely to hear instructions than ignorance.

But if you have sensitivity (thin skin, as some posters referred to it) You have to be sure to not put yourself in harm’s way on the days you feel you just can’t take it. It’s especially crucial if you suffer from depression or anxiety. I know where you’re coming from. I can be doing great or just gaming to get over a rough day and someone chimes in on /say or /map chat with some fresh hot ignorance. At your roughest times, it can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I mean some of us game to get away from IRL problems. But at the same time, some of those ignorant cusses would res you at the drop of a hat, and some of them will complement your armor and color scheme. A lot of times as well, some would stop saying such thoughtless things if they finally met and became friends with those of us in the LGBT community. You have to go through a lot of swine before you find those pearls though haha.

On another note, I think our blocking, online status and general visibility isn’t really all it could be in this game. When you log on, you have to manually set your presence to Invisible, but even then, friends and guild mates are notified of your presence before you can click that invisible option. And if you’ve blocked someone in your same guild, they can still see your chats in Guild chat as well as your current map location. We have some good options so far for communication, but not so much when it comes to keeping to oneself.

Edit: Also much love to Ceridwen for that heartfelt comment! It was looking grim in this thread for a moment, but I’m glad you reminded us of the way things should be. Hopefully ArenaNet can make the changes needed to help all of us who might share OP’s sentiments and perspective.

You know, OP, it’s truly depressing how some people think they can just type and say anything like this. I admire you for posting this, and showing directly how it affects others, and trying to come up with a solution to negate it. I like your idea as a general QoL addition, but I just don’t like why you’ve had to come up with it in the first place.

During the Queensdale champion train the other day, I actually turned map chat off, because it was sexist and insulting. I’m sure the people posting the comments just thought they were with some kind of "in-crowd" and being all cool and stuff, but really it’s just pathetic. Thing was, I cut the map chat, but found it takes away the good map communication and co-ordination. In other words, I lost out on the game experience. So what to do? Am I supposed to report a group of people who are using sexist (or in the OP’s case, homophobic) language? Then it just looks like I’m serial spamming complaints. Should I screenshot, take their names and email support with a complaint after the fact? I don’t feel the report feature in-game accurately covers the offence, but there are chat logs that can be checked. Regardless, I ended up logging and feeling miserable for a spell afterwards.

What I do know, however, is that we shouldn’t have to put up with these attitudes from anyone. OP, it makes me sad and angry you feel your option is hiding. You shouldn’t have to hide, or filter things out. Those people who say the hateful things you’ve shown in your screenshot? They are the ones who should be invisible. They are the ones who should have to filter, be excluded. Not you.

How, in a game with a Code of Conduct where it explicitly states no verbal abuse, is this allowed?

EDIT:

1. While playing Guild Wars 2, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-rules-of-conduct/

I’m always amazed at the amount of people who think “gay means bad” is somehow not homophobic. Trying using the word “Jewish” to mean greedy or tight-fisted, and see how much support you get. (Illustrative example: ‘Stop being so Jewish, lend me some money.’) It’s exactly the same thing.

However, for the purposes of the OP, I feel like Block and Report should be sufficient.

Never said you said they were going to, guess I should have been the clear one. :P

As to different maps – I think the megaserver may be a step in that direction, actually. While one wouldn’t think it would, just consider how much room they’re making by the megaserver. As is, we effectively have 51 versions of each zone and city active at all times. There’s 26 zones and 6 cities – so there’s effectively a minimum of 1632 maps always in existence on the servers. The megaservers’ purpose is to reduce this number – there will be no less than 5 versions of each map at a single time (one per EU language, then one for NA); 6 once the game goes live in China. That means a minimum of 192 maps once China goes live.

This doesn’t count for any current overflows/future “dynamically generated maps” or any dungeons. Nonetheless, that’s a substantial reduction of server loadout I would imagine. And with this, they can easily store versions of the old maps for instances (PS and LW should the later need to) to utilize because they now have much more room.

As to the whole “traveling between steps” – I think you’re making it overly convoluted. Take GW1 for example. Prophecies was the first to chronologically happen in lore, but you can at any point go back and forth between Prophecies and Factions which takes place immediately after, or even to Nightfall which is 3 years after Proph/Factions, and also to Eye of the North which is 3 years after NF. There’s no “glimpses into the past” and no issue with going into Beyond-affected zones then entering a mission.

Technically speaking anyways, the only thing that has progressed in the timeline is anything affected by the Living World. Orr zones? Fireheart Rise? They’re all “stuck in time” effectively, as they haven’t been altered. Beyond guild missions or the very few added mini-dungeons, at least. There is no need to explain the whole “look into the past” or whatnot, since this is all mechanical mumbo jumbo.

To your final question about all characters being commanders – the Living World would likely take them as such, in the “canon lore” but given how Anet wants to avoid spoilers and paradoxes they will do things like with Laranthir’s dialogue – he’ll only call you the Commander if you did Forging the Pact, and will mention the ongoing assaults on Orr if you hadn’t done Victory or Death. But chronologically, Zhaitan’s <s>dead</s> defeated before Scarlet by a year – Bobby Stein already confirmed this.

Treebeard The Swift.9620:

OtakuDFifty.2965

I’m seriously reading all these complaints and thinking to myself “please ANet don’t backpedal on this issue and ruin this for me.” I was promised a schedule, and I’m expecting you to live up to that promise.

Love your posts. Best trolling ever.

Yes, because everything you don’t agree with must be an attempting at trolling. I actually share similiar feelings with OtakuDFifty. Apparently, you all are playing a different game then me because I don’t see where the majority of you are coming from.

Scheduled events will destroy immersion and the living world? All the major events are ALREADY on a timer. The timers may be a little more dynamic and vary from world to world, but they still are all scheduled. I agree that the event schedule should vary from day to day to give everyone a chance to try all the events, but beyond that aI like the idea of a schedule. I am tired of running around trying to find an event thats up and also has enough players to complete it.

WP costs will bankrupt us? Seriously?

The temple events won’t be dead. There actually will be players doing them! Maybe it’s been sweet for some of you guys on highly populated servers, but I run through Orr and see maybe half a dozen people. On a good day.

Like it or not, things have to change. If not server mergers, mega servers. Guesting is NOT good enough to address server population.

ukuni.8745:

there are a lot of handy benefits to a mega server other then bringing players together like putting players that have finished the ps together and the same for players that havnt together, now the question would be how to implement it, firstly story isn’t a big thing here simply because the ps covers the important parts, players that have beat the main story get a new map that covers cleaning up Orr, wait what about all the old stuff how can players get back to that, well I had a thought on that the pale tree has the ability to show the past and future with the dream now let’s say trehearne (who’s wyld hunt is the cleanse Orr) sticks around to aid in the clean up gets a weak version of that and is able to show people the past and those players who have beaten the ps can go back to the old map to enjoy all the old events and get placed back in the old Orr bracket of the mega server, players who havnt beaten the ps stay in the old Orr map, now what if people don’t care to beat the ps and just want to enjoy the new content well same thing with trehearne but shows them what could happen if they beat zhitan but only available to level 80s, everyone wins in this eexcept new players who have to get to level 80

As SunRoamer said, this is phasing which Anet said they will not have – see Tower of Nightmares and Lion’s Arch itself for examples, Anet will alter it for everyone at the same time. Megaservers do make phasing’s problems (dividing the playerbase) a smaller issue because the least common phasing versions would be combined cross-servers thus not so unpopulated, but unless Anet changes their mind about how they’re doing the Living World concept, which I doubt will happen tbh, we won’t see phasing.

SunRoamer.5103:

They just have to figure out what they want to do about the time conundrum caused by Personal Story being locked in the past. Maybe they are going to retire it? There have been different suggestions around the forums already, but having different versions of the same maps is highly unlikely.

Why remove it? Just keep it there and make sure it’s clear “these are past events”. Hopefully they’ll one day get about to making LW Season 1 as an extension to the PS, and make Season 2 in the same format from the get go (or at least a much similar one that can make it function as a continuation). Won’t hold my breath for either though.

But there’s no need to remove the PS – especially since the game promises in advertisements the chance to face and kill Zhaitan… which will become no longer the case, thus false advertisement, thus fraud.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

What is the story behind different server? If there is lore needed for megaserver then we should have a simple explanation for the realms (never heard one)?

Different servers hold no lore, except possibly via WvW in which the other two are – as far as we know – “not (our) Tyria”. And Anet doesn’t seem interested in explaining WvW in lore so I doubt we’ll ever get server explanations in lore.

I do not understand the concerns over how communities might get diluted over the new system. The original blog post made it clear that you will be more likely to be play with people on your own server. All the hypothetical ruinous situations where you got “outsiders” in your previously non-overlow (home) instance is a bit absurd.

What his system will do is to patch the ways where large raid groups would manipulate instance generation and gathering. This isn’t necessarily a detrimental change. It seems some people forgot that willingly manipulate overflow generation is not an intended feature.

In conclusion, how good or bad this new mechanics is largely depend on implementation. I’m pretty sure ANet has not finalize their algorithms on how exactly players will be placed into which instance. And even when they do figure it out, we’ll still have to see how it works in game. ANet isn’t well known to get stuff right in the first try (MMO developers rarely do in large), thus the limited roll out in beginner areas and cities.

Now, instead of worrying about “communities” being destroyed by megaservers (ANet said explicitly that it will not), people should make more suggestions in detailed areas, such as disallowing wvw opposing servers from share city instances.

sirsquishy.8531:

The Good; You will hit the ‘overflow’ with people you normally play with, people in your party and guild, and of coarse on your homeserver. The overflow is getting increased by 225%. So that’s 4x’s the players per map after the change.

PLEASE for the sake of logic, READ the words that accompany the numbers instead of labeling them with your own incorrect definitions. That +225% means if there’s an AVERAGE of 40 players on the map, the megaserver change should conceivable increase that to 90 players (or 130 players depending on the logic used for the math). This has no bearing on the capacity of the server.

So with the recent knowledge of ley lines’ existence out there, there’s been a few people thinking that Orr is over another criss-cross of ley lines. At first I though “no, not necessarily” but I think I’ve found something to further that idea.

I realized this when going through Thaumanova again, and remembering the season 1 finale cinematic which shows the blue pillar of light in Thaumanova light up I thought I’d investigate it (see if anything changed – didn’t notice such). I went to the control panel that you go to with the matrix key for the champion steam ogre, and the thought popped in my head. The panel says this:

Master Control Console LIN39: Safety fields operational. Mass destruction contained.

So the forcefield there, which is lowered to fight the steam ogre, prevents mass destruction. This kind of explains why if you remain up there after the ogre’s death there’s an explosion and subsequent death.

But I was instantly reminded of something else: the Cataclysm. While the original lore of it explained it as an explosion and a pillar of light – this description coming from people seeing it (or second-hand info) from a distance, it led people to think it was an explosion like a bomb or the like. In GW2, we learn otherwise in Arah story mode

There was indeed light – light blue light at that – but no explosion, rather it all sunk directly (this explains why so much is intact, yet so much isn’t – it didn’t sink together). But what’s the most interesting to me is that the shade of blue is the same. And both Thaumanova and the Cataclysm hold a pillar of light – and Thaumanova could result in mass destruction, the Cataclysm did.

So this leads me to believe that the Cataclysm was tapping into the ley lines, similar to the Inquest experiments (which wasn’t a direct tapping but rather mass magic being messed with close to the ley lines).

This also gives some possible insight into the nature of the Cataclysm.

Others’ thoughts?

Sooo , you want Konig ? Time for summoning ! : " The pale tree is a dragon champion and the sylvaris are his minion !" " we already killed jomarg at Frostgorge ". " hey guys , i hâve a new theory…. The dragon and the gods are related ! 6 dragons and six god , lyssa = kraka , grenth = Jormag , … ". Will be enough to lure him.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Find your nearest sylvari and kiss for a long time. Problem solved. :P

I don’t know why, but this made me laugh till I got into a coughing fit. Out of curiosity, can Sylvari actually breath underwater without the rebreater?

Darkbattlemage.9612:

Knock off our rebreather and we be struggling to find a source of air.

Find your nearest sylvari and kiss for a long time. Problem solved. :P

Responses to frequently made arguments

Stop being so vain and egotistical. Are you so special in the real world?

I play this game as an outlet for my vanity and ego. That’s why I enjoy doing heroic things in the story. That’s why I made myself a Sunrise, why I crafted ascended armor, why I hunt for achievements and titles. Why do you play this game?

This is an MMO. There were tons of other people there on the Breachmaker. Why should you be treated differently by the game?

This argument gets used all the time as an excuse to dilute stories in MMOs. But don’t forget that this is also an RPG, which places a great deal of emphasis on personal progression and story. I am special because I experience the game uniquely from my point of view. All of the other players are just there. I don’t care who they are or what they’re doing. The other players on the Breachmaker are no different to me than the Lionguard NPCs. In fact, that’s who other players are: non-playable characters, because I am not playing them. So it doesn’t matter that they were in Battle for Lion’s Arch, the same way it doesn’t matter that a bunch of unnamed Lionguard stand around the rally points. I’m the one in the instance who killed Scarlet. I’m the one who went to the Dead End to celebrate with Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, Braham, and Taimi. It’s not like the game doesn’t already tend towards personalization in many ways. Marjory never talks about the “one hundred and forty-nine other heroes who storm the Breachmaker”. Trahearne never says anything about there being other #2’s in the Pact. Logan doesn’t have any other Hero of Shaemoors he’s mentoring. You are the only one in the story who fills these roles and forms relationships with these characters. Why should some of the dialogue then not recognize these roles and these relationships?

You’ve never talked to so-and-so NPC before. Why should they magically know who you are?

Sometimes it’s reasonable for them to know who you are, and sometimes it isn’t. For the reasonable times, it’s weird when they don’t. I, a multiple-time savior of Lion’s Arch, Commander of the Pact, confidant of Magnus and Kiel, fought alongside the Lionguard to retake Lion’s Arch. I think it would be fairly reasonable to say that the Lionguard rank and file recognize my name and face. All of the Captain’s Council does. Presumably, people who live in Tyria don’t sit around and twiddle their thumbs in silence all the time. People talk to each other. People tell each other news. How is it more realistic that they know Scarlet died, but don’t know how she died? Isn’t this what everyone would be talking about right now? So why don’t the Lionguard in LA right now know I killed Scarlet? And honestly, generally this isn’t a good reason not to have personalized dialogue. Here’s a good check: in an alternate universe where the developers did put in NPC recognition, would you be complaining that it’s unrealistic?

Of course, this isn’t to say that there is completely no personalization. After having stomped Scarlet, I was able to talk to various refugees, Captain’s Councilors, Magnus, etc who thanked or congratulated me on defeating Scarlet. This is nice, and makes me feel like my participation in the Living World has an impact on my relationships with the characters and the world.

Sometimes the personalization is thrown in, but is not entirely complete. These cases are often kind of jarring and ruin an otherwise nice personalization. For example, a few releases back when you are looking at evidence to figure out Scarlet’s plan, you tell Marjory to name-drop you at the Priory. But Marjory herself is a member of the Priory. If she is in any way active in the Priory, how does she not know I am a Magister, and that I was/am Commander of the Pact? Even if she’s been living under a rock, how is it that I haven’t discussed my fairly exceptional Priory status with this friend that I’ve gone through multiple adventures with until now? Or for another example, in the new instance in the Dead End, Belinda Delaqua tells me that Logan has been “impressed” my “progress”. I found that to be very awkward phrasing, given that I am #2 in Tyria’s defense force, and that Logan and I killed Zhaitan together. Or how about the Pale Tree? In this release, we can go talk to the Pale Tree about how we were the ones who killed Scarlet. The Pale Tree expresses her deep gratitude and then proceeds to say “I must know your name.” Um, hello? Your son Trahearne and I came to see you before we went and cleansed Orr, and you gave us a fancy vision. Here are a bunch of examples where personalization was put in, but the incompleteness just makes the problem more noticeable.

The one really good example of a well-executed personalization was the instance where you meet Rox for the first time. You are in the Black Citadel’s Command Core, and Imperator Smodur and the tribunes are having a meeting about dealing with the Molten Alliance. The guards around the conference table refused to let me in at first, but I could respond “Not even for Pact Commander Veron Oakguard?” after which they say they do indeed have orders to let me through. Talking to Smodur, he says something along the lines of “Commander of the Pact? What are you doing here?” and actually briefly gives me the time of day, treating me as an equal. This kind of interaction makes my previous completion of the PS feel that much more rewarding, and is exactly what I want to see more of.

I recognize that writing multiple dialogue versions and programming in conditional checks for PS/LS participation takes a lot of effort. But this functionality exists in the game, as the examples I gave above and countless other examples of personalized dialogue to race, Order, and PS completion show. As a player, I put a great deal of value into personalized dialogue. Immersion is important to me, and the alternative is highly immersion-breaking. Furthermore, I play this game in large part as an outlet for my vanity. After all, what else is the point of legendaries, achievements, titles, and fancy armor? The unpersonalized dialogue feels like it belittles my accomplishments. I would like to see increased attention put towards personalized dialogue in future Living World releases.

I want to feel “This is my story” again.

==

(continued…)

This post is plea to the developers to put more emphasis on personalized dialogue and immersion. I’m not here to argue about things like why the Pact didn’t show up to Lion’s Arch.

TL;DR: There is glaring lack of personal recognition in the bulk of NPC dialogue in Living Story releases. Much of the dialogue treats all players the same, regardless of your personal history in past content. As a current example, most of the Lionguard in Lion’s Arch don’t even recognize you as a comrade who stormed LA with them or as the slayer of Scarlet and just treat you as a random tourist. For me, this is immersion-breaking and feels like it devalues my accomplishments and my participation in previous content. I understand that writing multiple versions of dialogue and coding in conditional checks takes a lot of work. As a player, I value personalized dialogue very highly and would like to see more attention paid in future Living Story releases.

==

“This is my story.”

The opening cinematic on character creation is very powerful. When I made my character, it got me pumped up. I was ready to return to Tyria, to fight against whatever evils threatened the lands. I was ready to be a hero, to live my story.

Whatever your opinion is on the execution of the Personal Story, there is no doubt that it was about you and your endeavours. You first become a hero in your local region, then you join an order and work your way up the hierarchy. Eventually, when Zhaitan makes a major attack against Lion’s Arch, you lead the counteroffensive to retake Claw Island from Zhaitan’s forces. Afterwards, regardless of Trahearne’s role and what you think of it, you become Commander of the Pact. You are number two. You are a leader, not just in name but also by your actions. You make decisions, and you personally execute daring and dangerous operations in Orr, culminating in the death of Zhaitan himself.

Hero of Shaemoor. Magister of the Priory. Hero of Claw Island and Savior of Lion’s Arch. Commander of the Pact. Slayer of Zhaitan. I am a pretty big deal. I have formed relationships with many notable characters, and I have accomplished some mighty things.

All of this gets pushed aside when the Living World hit. The dialogue treats you as a random adventurer who happened to answer the call for help. You can make whatever rationalizations you want about NPCs never having interacted with you before or MMOs having many heroes, but the fact is that it’s really a practical consideration. There will be new players who haven’t done the PS who are going to be doing this new temporary content. At each step of the way, there will be new players in the current LS release that haven’t done previous LS releases or the PS. The simplest and least work-intensive approach is to have only a single set of dialogue. Who does the dialogue target? It would be much more disruptive to have new players hear about things they didn’t do or some mighty Pact that they haven’t yet seen form, than for veteran players to have their past accomplishments ignored.

But what is the dialogue there for, if not for people to go out and discover and read? I’m the kind of player who normally makes an effort to experience all the content and to actually go read NPC dialogue, and it really discouraged me yesterday when I explored Lion’s Arch. The bulletin board lists me as the one who stopped Scarlet, but it doesn’t recognize my very relevant exploits as Commander of the Pact, the hero of Claw Island, the hero who stopped Mad King Thorn from coming out of the fountain, the protector who saved several Ship’s Council members from the Aetherblade attack, and the captor of Mai Trin. All the Lionguard say something like “Get out of here, random guy. We don’t need any more tourists or looters,” despite the fact that I spent the past four weeks fighting alongside them, rescuing citizens, defending their rally points, taking down Scarlet’s generals, assaulting the Breachmaker, and being the one who finally killed Scarlet. Normally, I would really enjoy talking to the NPCs, but this is isn’t really very fun. How can my comrades in arms not know who I am by now, after all I’ve done for them on multiple occasions?

(continued…)

The Pact is not an independent organization. Hell, you can’t really call it an organization. It’s an alliance of multiple organizations.

And the individual organizations did fight Scarlet.

Think of the Pact like this: You have 9 major groups (three Orders, LA, five major races), and in these 9 major groups, you have a portion of each major group dedicated to fighting a massive threat to all major groups (the Elder Dragons). Those individual portions make up the Pact.

The Pact is just a vanguard unit against the Elder Dragons. If you include the full of all 9 major groups, then the Pact is very small in comparison – and the non-Pact parts of the major groups deal with non-dragon threats.

To say the Pact should go deal with non-dragon local threats such as Scarlet is to say the Fallen Angels (a unit of the Seraph sent to Ebonhawke) should be fighting the centaurs because if DR falls to centaurs it’s all pointless. Fighting centaurs isn’t their job, it isn’t their duty. They’re there to protect Ebonhawke.

I have to say that Evon’s personality is light-years better than Kiel’s. She seems so serious and dull by comparison. Gnashblade is often hilarious. Kiel couldn’t crack a joke if it was an egg and she sat on it.