Guild Wars 2

In GW1, actually, we played in a couple of those other lands. As for how big the world is- it’s still somewhat unofficial, but this map is in the game and appears to depict the whole of the globe. Our m map (what is generally referred to as the continent of Tyria) is the relatively small chunk with particular detail in the upper center.

A lot of this is still a mystery, one of the biggest ones we’ve got: but if there can be said to be any sort of consensus among the lore community, it’s that the Gods never directly encountered the dragons, having come to the world long after they went into hibernation; learned what they had recorded from the elder races or perhaps some divine source of knowledge; and didn’t act against the dragons either due to knowing something we didn’t that’d make killing them off a bad thing, or because the Six have a highly magical nature that would make them something of a buffet table to these particular adversaries.

You don’t really see any charr mesmers anymore- only one I can think of off the top of my head is in the PS. I’d mark the change up to the difference in approaching NPC professions- whereas in GW1 every sizable enemy faction had every profession in that campaign (albeit sometimes with constructs filling certain roles), GW2, which doesn’t balance for enemy cooperation, doesn’t feel the same pressure to make one faction cover every profession. It makes the gameplay a lot less interesting, but lorewise it also lets the groups reflect their inclinations and distastes- and for charr, Flame Legion included, that latter category would probably include mesmerism.

CureForLiving.5360:

Tachenon.5270:

Say, who are Taimi’s parents? Did Snaff have any progeny?

We don’t know. We do know they’re probably dead though.

I will point out, though, that it strains credibility a bit for the Biconics to have two secret Destiny’s Edge babies.

I agree with most of your comments, so not much to add. But on the risen commander- I don’t think so. It talks of Tybalt in third person, and there’s an equivalent event with (2 and a half year old spoiler) a sylvari, who can’t become a risen.

Like Plagiarised said, she’s really only got one accomplishment under her belt right now. She may, arguably, be the leading non-Inquest expert on ley lines, but that’s due to how new the field of study is, and her personal inclinations made her one of the first asura to pursue it. Recall that there was (somehow) no actual proof of ley lines until Scarlet- the main bulk of asura society would have been raised believing them to be something theoretical, if they’d heard of them at all.

We do have a lore, if not definition, at least criterion: Ghosts of Ascalon, pg. 128. “Guilds are permanent organizations. They are created and maintained by their own membership, and are usually set up with long-term goals.” That middle part would disqualify most armies- the Seraph, for instance, was created by Queen Salma and is maintained by taxation. The Orders would technically qualify, although I suspect they’re far enough outside the norm to make labeling them as such largely worthless.

On Adelbern- Ascalon’s Chosen wasn’t the Ascalon army. Just by the name of the guild, they were probably created to serve the nation, but it would have been on their own terms, not the King’s. The reason the Guild Wars got their name is that many (most?) of the forces answered to guilds, not kings, and at the time the guild armies were stronger than the national armies.

Mount Maelstrom wasn’t volcanic in Odran’s time, though- it didn’t become active until sometime between the games. Before that, it appeared to just be a larger-than-average mountain, otherwise indistinguishable from the rest of the Shiverpeaks- and located fairly close to one of the largest dwarvern cities to boot.

Slowpokeking.8720:

It doesn’t have to fly away to escape, but went to corrupt the Source again so we could go fight it there.

While we’re kicking down the door to it’s lair? Just abandon an urgent and pressing event to go do something it could do anytime?

Having Zhaitan run away is not going to make him more menacing. Actually, I can’t think of any GW1 boss that moved away from us. (Maybe Khilbron, but he legitimately had more important things to do. Zhaitan, not so much.) Besides, the GW1 format made use of outposts- the closest equivalent in GW2’s structure would be waypoints. Sitting around on the airship between dragons, patching armor at the anvil? That’s the GW1 format at work.

Chiming in to add my voice to the tide of disgruntlement. Day before yesterday I finally unlocked a skin I’ve been looking forward to putting on my guardian for quite a long time, and it wasn’t until the vendor kicked me out of the conversation that I remembered it’d been disabled. It’s been two weeks, and there’s clearly still people who want to get their rewards. I know it isn’t going to be top priority to fix, and that you probably don’t have any sort of a timeframe to share with us, but I hope it hasn’t been banished to the “we’ll look at it someday” stack.

The problem would then be a story concern- explaining why you’re retreating from the final battle to whatever safe place. The way the entire sequence of events is framed would have to be changed.

But, now that I understand your point better, to circle back to your original plea to see these changes in the upcoming patch- it’s not going to happen, unfortunately. To quote Bobby Stein: " Please note that the core gameplay and structure of this story instance has not been changed". This would fall under structure.

I agree, but taking them out won’t make him any better. You fix the thing that’s broken, not the things that are working.

That’s like saying “oh, you killed a risen thrall in your first heart. Whelp, guess there’s no point in seeing another one for the rest of the game, right?” Personally, the lesser dragons were far and away my favorite part of the dungeon- the feeling of vulnerability as these giant things swoop around you as you stand on a platform that’s already gone down once already, the satisfaction as you’re able to go toe-to-toe with them, feeling for the first time that you just might be able to pull this off- at least until Zhaitan showed himself. (That bit about already fighting them before? That’s why we need them here. It took armies to take a single one down every time before. Taking three down with a single crew is what lets you know that the balance has changed.) It was fantastic. The Mouth I’m personally not very fussed about, but it is the most mechanically challenging part of the dungeon, and a whole lot of people like that sort of thing.

Or the Court (and wasn’t the name changed to Guards?) were Pact sylvari that just turned, or not sylvari from a tree at all. It’s premature to jump to conclusions. At this point, the discussion is healthier if we take the care to clarify we’re only dealing in possibilities.

As for the trolls, it’s been observed that they look like a normal creature that’s been overcome by some sort of fungus.

-I don’t think anyone is really responsible for the names. They seem to actually be the names of the dragons, or at least names the dragons have accepted, and not just something the races made up to make talking about them earlier. As for where we learned Mordremoth’s name- even if you don’t want to start on it, I’d put my money on the Scroll of the Five Gods.

-It’s too early to tell, and it might be intended to be a mystery, but… maybe the Mordrem are of Mordremoth’s body, either directly in case of the tendrils and the Vinewrath, or, by way of seeds or spores, descended from Mordremoth’s physical body. It’s still just a theory, and one that’s a bit out there at that, but it does fit with what little we’ve seen and it also would make much more meaningful an otherwise dreadfully lackluster name.

-I would not want to- it’s A.) too predictable and B.) means the humans completely miss out, since what we actually see of the Zhaitan campaign hinges almost entirely on asura, charr, and sylvari. I agree, though, that not counting the DSD it does seem that there are some nice parallels.

-I wouldn’t count on it- this is way in the future, and way beyond my ability to guess, but I will note that the last year or two has seen ANet move rather pointedly away from underwater combat. (Removing the parts of WvW and sPvP that have it, ignoring or simply not having it in new maps, including the coastal Labyrinthine Cliffs and the island Southsun Cove, only including underwater weapons in 2 of the 15 black lion skinsets that’ve been released to date…)

This probably should be in the pre-existing thread, no?

The Inquest are there because asura society, especially at the higher levels, is a shade of gray- and if you want to go through the contortions people seem compelled to to impose a white and black view, they’d probably come down on the black. The Arcane Council is, ultimately, geared towards world domination- it won’t be a brutal military conquest, and it won’t be anytime soon, but all the same they’re out to ensure the superiority of the asura, and the Inquest is the most valuable tool they currently have towards that end. If it helps, remember that this was a body that was perfectly willing to withhold vital information about the Elder Dragons from the orders and the other nations.

The Sons get to stay because the norn don’t believe in collective guilt- one of the writers, I think it might have been Jeff Grubb, said he’d compare them to a motorcycle gang. Sure, some, maybe even a lot, will do horrible things, but that means we hunt down the ones who have killed or stolen or whatever else, not that we arrest or kill everyone who rides a motorcycle on sight. The Sons in Hoelbrak haven’t done anything wrong. They just lurk in their tunnels and mutter unpleasantly. Outside of Hoelbrak, where the Sons encampments raid merchants or attack homesteads, you do see norn fighting them- but it’s not because they’re Sons, it’s because they’re raiding merchants and attacking homesteads.

I think what we were told is the Forgotten withdrew specifically so there wouldn’t be a war. Mind you, the source (the Prophecies manual) has been unreliable in the past… but it’s also the only source we’ve got.

Tread.9208:

The Charr in GW1 were alot like the Centaurs are in GW2.

On the surface, yeah, but it goes a bit deeper. For instance, we see them both take slaves, but I don’t think there’s any references to centaurs eating humans, and maybe not even to sacrificing them. GW2 centaurs are wanna-be GW1 charr.

It’s possible- it was actually a major part of Factions- but it wasn’t something that came easy. Shiro had to ravage a continent to search out the knowledge and ingredients to cast the spell, which included killing a member of the royal blood, and he was an Envoy- it may be that such status was a prerequisite to make the spell work, and if nothing else it’s unlikely that he’d have had the freedom to find what he needed if he’d been a normal ghost.

Like Konig mentioned, though, it’s something that’s a lot easier to do with A.) the aid of the living and B.) the presence of the original body. The one case we see in GW2, Gaheron, may well have succeeded if we hadn’t intervened, and he had the former and possibly the latter.

CureForLiving.5360:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

@Cure I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at… I agree with the historical comparisons, but I don’t know what you’re trying to say with them. Are you arguing that because real world humans did it it’s not bad? Or that it means we’re hypocrites for condemning it? Either way I emphatically disagree, but I would like to know your intent before I attack your position.

No I’m say real world humans have done horrible things in the past but we don’t hold it against them (in general). Because the Charr have done bad things in the past it’s more than possible that people would get over it.

Well, I do certainly agree that the charr of GW2 should not be judged for their ancestors’ actions. My points were directed towards the assertion that the charr of GW1 were the good guys. You’re right, though, that the distinction should be made.

I think the screenshot in their article called it a desert dolyak.

Ranchers and smiths and even fishers, all such support personnel, are also in warbands. Any charr with no warband to turn to is gladium, and no charr raised within charr territory doesn’t at least start with one.

@Cure I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at… I agree with the historical comparisons, but I don’t know what you’re trying to say with them. Are you arguing that because real world humans did it it’s not bad? Or that it means we’re hypocrites for condemning it? Either way I emphatically disagree, but I would like to know your intent before I attack your position.

@Michael There is indeed adult supervision, and it even has its own title, Primus. They’re role is teaching and training, though, not caretaking- closer to a drill sergeant than a babysitter. They aren’t gladium, although it’s never mentioned what the rest of the warband does. That’s not entirely unusual, though- we also know barely anything about the warbands of officers (centurions, tribunes, imperators).

The list of things chefs can make is probably your best bet. Steaks are indeed present (and can be made from dolyak meat) but there are no nachos- no chips at all, that I can find.

The charr were going a bit farther than “just retaking their land”. Beyond the fantasy equivalent of using a WMD, GW2 also glosses over the fact that charr enslaved humans, cooked prisoners alive both for sacrifice and for eating, and enjoyed throwing them into pits unarmed against giant devourers. By comparison the Ascalonians’ approach of killing them like animals and occasionally wearing their skins seems almost justified. Neither side was entirely in the right, but the charr were more in the wrong than the humans- in this conflict, at least.

Incidentally, the initial population of Ascalon, or at least the earliest one we know of, was the grawl, whom the charr conquered, enslaved, then displaced.

The one in Garrenhoff, I think, is raided on both parts of it’s particular branch- Vigil or Whispers, I believe. Every asura will be routed through it at some point. The one under Applenook, as Windu notes, is in the asura mission to join the Vigil.

Inactive, and only briefly at that. Fahrars are a social unit- or, at least, I’ve never seen it applied to a building- and there are a few. Off the top of my head, there’s one just outside the BC’s north gate, another in the home instance, I think a third that shows up every so often and tours the Citadel (although that might be supposed to be the same as the home instance one) and a few clusters of cubs in Ashford, Diessa, and the Marches who are probably fahrars but too much part of the scenery to be directly called such.

She says she lost her boyfriend to the Consortium, not the Mists.

Quick note- the secret base is an Arcane Eye facility, one raided in the course of the personal story. They used it to hold a… political prisoner, essentially, and it is possible that that’s all the place was for, with no connection to the tower.

I think the general consensus is that horses exist (at least in Kryta), we just don’t ever see them. It’s a running joke at this point.

She went to Rata Sum about 1315- ten years before the start of the game. It wasn’t a secret, but it wouldn’t have been common knowledge either- that kind of trivia would only really be known by asura with an interest in the goings-on at the Arcane Council or the colleges, or the ones that found themselves studying with Ceara. It wouldn’t be something that your character could just overhear, but maybe she’d know if she had been doing a little digging of her own about getting accepted.

For the Inquest, the short answer is they’re considered a krewe, or a meta-krewe. For the long answer I’m going to copy-paste from a pretty good official pre-release article.

“Although not actually a college, the Inquest is the largest krewe in asuran culture, and is a relatively new organization.

Where traditional asura training goes through an apprenticeship at one of the three colleges, the Inquest has begun a system of corporate training that is structured rather like a series of progressive aptitude tests. When an asura can pass a test, she is immediately given the next, and her clearance among the Inquest is upgraded accordingly. This leads to a great deal of cheating, of course—both for and against the aspirants.

An asura never graduates from the Inquest, as they do from the other colleges of the asura. Once you join the megakrewe, you’re a member for life… even if the other Inquest members are forced to make sure that life is a necessarily short one. An aspirant is given a krewe assignment and expected to work on their individual task regardless of whether they understand that task’s purpose in the greater schema. They sacrifice their own desires for the greater good of the Inquest’s body of knowledge, like it or not.

The Inquest combines the strengths of the various college disciplines, but they use only what they need, abandoning deeper understanding of those theories in favor of a quick and profitable return. They are more than willing to burn out their young inventors, souring them on their work, rather than waste time with rest—an unprofitable accounting of time.

Unlike the three asuran colleges, which delight in sharing newly completed discoveries (if only to victoriously rub them in one another’s faces), the Inquest do not share their information beyond the Inquest itself. Indeed, they occasionally even go so far as to sabotage the promising research of college krewes that impinges upon what the Inquest sees as proprietary design.

Where the colleges see power as a useful tool toward understanding the Eternal Alchemy—the Inquest sees power as a goal in and of itself. Inquest founders looked upon the amount of knowledge lost when Quora Sum was wiped out by the destroyers, and judged such a signal drop to be complete anathema to their purposes. Gathering information in its pure, crystalline form is their intention, and they will stop at nothing less than the sum of all knowledge. Indeed, the ultimate goal of Inquest research is to achieve control of the Eternal Alchemy, and with it, all of Tyria."

The best source for Scarlet’s relationship with the asura is What Scarlet Saw. Other than that, Vorpp (jump to the bottom of the page) and Yahk are the only ones I know who talk about her before her supervillainess phase, and I’m pretty sure Yahk’s not trustworthy on the matter.

It seemed to me not a set of rules, but an example of the simple rule that each legion is supreme in its own territory, but you could be right. Would you like me to dig up the lines I remember that indicate Ascalon is a special case?

Asura can transfer between colleges, but they’d never really be a part of more than one at a time. I’ve never heard of any non-asura but Scarlet joining a college, and I believe it was stated somewhere that she was the first. For role-play reasons I suppose you could join at any point after her- just be aware it might meet the same kind of reaction that Scarlet did. Krewes aren’t so much an institution as a format- anyone working with an asura krewe could be considered part of that krewe, and there was even a point in GoA where it was mentioned that Dougal’s group, which at the time didn’t have any asura, might be called a krewe. Scarlet seems to have been met by the wider asura with disgust, or as an interesting experiment, but she wasn’t considered an equal either way. Joining an asuran krewe would be less contentious, if done in a labor or otherwise hands-on capacity. I could imagine being part of the krewe’s brains, however, might tarnish the project’s reputation.

From The Ecology of the Charr : “No Charr knows how many cubs the last Khan-Ur sired, but all four of the High Legions claim descendants from his line. Other heirs are suspected, and occasionally a smaller bloodline surfaces with claim–but none have made a successful bid. The four heirs of the Khan-Ur began the four High Legions and named them after their warbands–the Iron Legion, Flame Legion, Blood Legion and Ash Legion. The leaders of these legions maintained their familial name, keeping surnames such as Flamebringer, Ashclaw, and Ironstrike to delineate their warband’s primacy within the legion… Each proclaims its right to the throne, tracing its members’ lineage back to one of the children of the original Khan-Ur. There are smaller legions, both independent and absorbed within the larger legion banner, but few of them can prove their ancestry from a known cub of the Khan-Ur. Still, some bands occasionally try to justify their separate identity either through blood of military strength, claiming independence and raising a new banner… The primus warband of any legion carries the name of that legion–Ash, Blood, Iron and in the case of the Gold Legion, Flame. This singular legion is hereditary, but the leader must claim the name through blood challenge–a fight between descendants of the Khan-Ur for supremacy within the legion. Occasionally, non-descendants of the Khan-Ur join the primus warband, taking the name of their leader as their own, as is Charr tradition. But the leader of the primus is always a descendant of the Khan-Ur, the foremost heir of the legion and their rightful inheritor of the crown of leadership among the Charr.”

That isn’t all directly related to your points, I just wanted us to be on the same page as for what the canon has been stated to be. I try not to argue interpretation- why bother when you could just as easily be wrong as the other party?- so I’ll settle for admitting that I partially misremembered earlier, and the article implies that military strength can be enough to found a ‘lesser’ legion; and that the hereditary name seems to no longer be canon, but the hereditary leadership hasn’t been contradicted. I am curious, though- why do you think Smodur doesn’t have a warband? Is it just because he uses a title instead of a surname, or have you seen something I haven’t?

Seishiro.7468:

The legions came into existance through warbands, that named themselfs after their speciality, since charr can freely choose their surname and even change it during their lifetime.

Not… quite. The legions- the High Legions we see in game, that is- were the personal forces of the four foremost heirs of the last Khan-Ur. While it is probably true their current inclinations stem from the inclinations of their first imperators or their role in the Khan-Ur’s army, they didn’t just aggregate out of like-minded warbands- they owe their existence to the now only theoretical greater charr command structure, and to start a new legion you still need to at least pretend to descent from the Khan-Ur.

Well, not every statue is twisted, so you mean how Zhaitan’s corruption is essentially exploiting the divine energy of the statues, right? Maybe with Abaddon’s fall or death there was no longer any such energy there. Alternatively, the PS mission there is a race- meaning most likely that the risen had just found the place. Maybe there hadn’t been an opportunity to corrupt the statue.

EDIT: Bah, ninja’d.

That’s the stereotype, and is probably safe when thinking of human mesmers as a whole. Like any stereotype, though, it wouldn’t hold true of every member and could possibly cause some offense if it is just assumed to pertain to an individual.

It does vary, and it goes up as well as down- I just caught SoS drop under full, for instance. Hang in there and you might catch Dragonbrand yet.

Ascalonian heritage isn’t what’s important, though. The human monarchy seems to rest on the notion that King Doric was somehow singled out, special, either by divine right for his service to Dwayna or by right of accomplishment for uniting the Tyrian branch of humanity. Descent from Doric is the only right to the throne- any throne, presumably, but especially Ascalon, which was apparently the original kingdom (though that timeline has grown fuzzier due to GW2’s release). Any claim Jennah made would necessarily trump one from Logan, unless, as I mentioned in the line you yanked out of context, there was a sudden revelation in his family tree. You also might notice that I mentioned a Samuelsson- that’d be Wade Samuelsson, head of the Ebon Vanguard, and if his claim is true I cede that he’d probably have a better chance than Jennah. I mentioned him second only because we haven’t had any corroboration yet.

I don’t know. It would be relatively easy, albeit very bad storytelling, for the writers to say that one of Gwen or Kieran’s ancestors, or maybe someone married in between them and Logan, was descended from Doric. That said, though, if Doric’s blood is what the legend is getting at the best way to test it would be to get Jennah to try. I think Samuelsson also says he’s of that line. Logan would certainly not be the first choice.

On Magdaer’s location- I’ll point out that Eir definitely wasn’t going to Honor of the Waves, since she put in an appearance at Sorrow’s Embrace before that. More to the point, Destiny’s Edge doesn’t spend all of it’s time rushing from dungeon to dungeon- if you read the mail they send, it sounds like they spend most of their time doing their own thing, and only go to the dungeons about the same time as you. Eir’s stated plan was to take the sword to a blacksmith she knows- I would presume Beigarth- so I would assume it’s either in his possession or discarded in Eir’s homestead somewhere.

CureForLiving.5360:

Belzebu.3912:

That holds true in Black Citadel because it is the Iron Legion Citadel, I’m pretty sure that you’ll find Blood Legion engineer creating devastating weapons in the Blood Citadel in the Charr Homelands and Ash Legion creating nasty traps and devices in their Citadel.

In the same way that the Black Citadel has Ash and Blood Legions stationed there I’m sure that there are Iron Legion in both the Ash and Blood Legion territories.

Actually, in the pre-release articles anyway (so bear in mind ANet could change this), it was implied that Ascalon is the only place where the legions collaborate, on account of being the only place where their ancestral common foe still gave them grief.

I suspect it’s possible. Ogden recognized the norn at the start of Eye of the North, but I don’t think we ever learned why. That’d give you room to invent some kind of contact between the two cultures.

I’ve always heard that it’s based on players online, and that the best chance would be to attempt it at lull hours- very late night or morning, more or less. Maybe make room to give it a try during your wake-up routine?

At the rate they were sacrificing humans, I don’t think Kryta would have survived to GW2 under the mursaat.

I don’t think the Sons are organized enough to make an alliance… and more to the point, whatever the newer Sons may think, the senior ones are Jormag’s thralls. The way they talk about dragon, it sounds less like they revere a spirit that transcends Jormag and more like they think Jormag transcends other dragons.

Since there seems to be an undercurrent of negativity starting to build here, I will point out that every interview I’ve seen says that the lack of gameplay additions caused ANet to forgo a new race for this expansion -the idea hasn’t been tossed out, it just wasn’t at the time their top priority. I know you guys know that, but I wouldn’t want someone who’s been out of the loop to read this thread and get the wrong idea.

I agree on most of those points, and it’s certainly fortunate for them that few sylvari are in asura territory to begin with, but I think the human response is going to be more complicated, and based on the politics of the kingdom. We did see in the teaser a human mob, including at least a couple seraph, cornering Canach, a known Shining Blade agent, within the city. Jumping from that, I think no matter how Jennah goes the Ministry will seize the opportunity to discredit her. If she commits to the unity ideal, they can say she’s brazenly endangering her citizens. If she prioritizes the safety of her people and has the sylvari expelled (the option most in keeping with her character, I think), the Ministry could either play it as an admission that it was foolish to make friends with them at all, or accuse her of turning away from humanity’s allies in their time of need all the while making concessions and selling out to their oldest enemies. If she has them locked up the Ministry can declare she lacks the guts to go far enough and is instead wasting Kryta’s resources. If she does purge them, which I just don’t see happening, she can be painted as a bloody-handed tyrant. I don’t think there’s any way she can handle it without opening herself to risk, and this is the sort of problem that could be fanned into enough public hysteria to fuel and uprising. All of these complications, to my mind, makes it very difficult to guess how Kryta will handle things.