Showing Posts For Aaron Ansari.1604:

What happened to the Ritualist?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

They became obsolete. The guardian and maybe the necro got a bit of their skills, but the package as a whole fell out of favor.

Scott McGough: The alternate magical energy employed by ritualists has fallen out of general usage, as illustrated by the absence of ritualists in Guild Wars 2. The techniques ritualists used for casting spells are still valid, but in the 250 years since Guild Wars, Tyria has learned and mastered more efficient ways of casting spells. It’s analogous to telegraph technology—it still functions and it still does the job of communicating across long distances, but in modern times there are newer, better ways to communicate so the old ways are effectively defunct.

Source

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Fort Marriner Waypoint

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I was told there was a vine there before the last patch, so I would assume we’re getting a sneak peak at what will happen to the waypoint network if Taimi’s idea doesn’t pan out.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Sylvari and keeping Secrets

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

The Eye of Zhaitan was a powerful mesmer. It’s possible that the mesmer ability to intrude upon minds allowed it to see what the captured sylvari saw before she awakened, but iirc nothing implied that it was able to do more than read her memories of her own Dream.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Asura building new city?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

There’s nothing to say about it, really. You can go poking at the Luminates Plant yourself, if you want (northeast Metrica), but all there is is plans for an eventual city cube, and attempts to set up and maintain a power grid that’ll be able to support it. Still very preliminary/early stages.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

that’s a couple thousand miles mind you if we’re to think on real scale

I’m not criticizing you, but this comment made me stop and think. The distance is actually much, much shorter than that. I don’t know if it’s been done, but it would be fairly easy to create a scale bar on the map of Tyria based on how far a toon can run in a set amount of time, assuming toons run at a reasonably realistic speed. I’d bet if we do this, we’ll find the the entire explorable world map is less than 10 miles across.

As an experiment, a while back I did toggle walk and went from the eastern edge of Blazeridge to the western edge of Brisban in a little over 2 hours. There are a few ways that you can interpret that, but by the direct way that you suggested, and setting the walk speed at approximately 3 miles per hour, you come up with a map less than 7 miles wide. Of course, that’s a product of gameplay scale, not lore. GoA is probably your best source for trying to figure out the lore dimensions.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I try to keep my armor logical though. I don’t wear any armor that is on fire, or any nonsense like that. I wear things that are practical and look convincing. No bikini armor.

Uck, yes. A thousand times yes. As a general rule, I am very, very iffy about equipping any of my characters with a skin I’ve never seen on an NPC.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

As far as the armor goes, there are several examples in-game, and even at least one from the books, of characters fighting outside their “weight”. I think it’s safe to say that armor type restrictions are purely mechanical, not part of the lore.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Do we really want GoT?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Personally, I don’t think GW2 can be like GoT, because the widely celebrated suspense that is the hallmark of that series is built on characters the audience is made to invest in. Our game doesn’t have that, and it’s why even when people do die, the response here is very lukewarm. It’s not enough to make it so that anyone can die- GoT is successful because anyone you like can die. The biconics are the only faces in the current story that have the level of development to even be in the running for that, and I personally don’t think I would mourn for any of them, should they encounter a tragic twist. Quite frankly, I’m not sure the MMO medium can generate that degree of investment in a character, at least on a consistent enough basis to make the style of storytelling currently in question worth it.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Charr and Human treaty - is it complete?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Our timeframe for the talks is still stuck at the point it was at launch, so 1325. At that point, at least by the sound of it, they were still working on the preliminaries- trying to convince themselves and their races that this thing would work, basically. A few concessions- the charr pulled back from several of their positions closest to Ebonhawke, and the humans have been allowed to build settlements throughout the Fields of Ruin, and the legions and Ebon Vanguard were running joint exercises, but that’s pretty much the extent of what had happened at the time. As for the two years since then, we’ve heard a grand total of nothing, beyond that things were at the point that the charr were expected to send a representative to Jennah’s jubilee, suggesting that they were officially recognized as allies. Even that was almost a full year ago, though.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Strike while the iron is hot

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I’d argue that, for instance, the Fort Salma meta is already made a mess. I think a revamp, in that particular case, could only be a good thing, and it would give us confirmation that the centaurs are still doing their thing post-Ulgoth.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I had a small notepad file I wrote up while I was slowly working through how “Tobias Trueflight” existed in Ascalon, and now today. That’s right, I took a crack at explaining the inexplicable.

I’d tell you more, but you haven’t proven you can be trusted yet.

Ah, don’t be like that. I know we would all love to scrutinize the inscrutable.

As for me, I guess I’ll start with Cinder, since I already mentioned her before, and frankly, as my least developed she could use the love. She’s an elementalist/engineer, Iron Legion. (I know secondary classes aren’t mechanically possible in 2, but I figured that they share enough of an intellectual focus to not require too much difficulty to integrate. It serves as a justification, anyway.) She has natural talent in both fields, but splitting her focus hasn’t done her any favors, so she’s only a mediocre combatant. Most of her early contributions to the cause took a more constructive form- good ol’ Iron Legion engineering tradition, bolstered by more novel application of elemental magic (while fire magic can only add a little flexibility to existing heating equipment, being able to cool things down in a rush is much more difficult for machinery to pull off, and having ready access to magnetism and electricity expands possibilities even further). More recently, with Smodur’s emphasis on cooperation with the other races, Cinder’s been moved to diplomatic missions, with promotion to centurion thrown in when she demonstrated both an aptitude for the work and a need for more perceived authority to deal with the other side. She finds the work suits her, as she gets along well with others (rare enough in a charr) and doesn’t carry nearly so much rancor for humans as some of her kind, on account of having occasionally been on the receiving end of such attitudes herself. Cinder’s been pretty lucky in that account, being an elementalist, which is fairly uncomplicated and easy to understand for magic, in the Iron Legion, known for it’s progressive attitudes and willingness to make full use of what’s at hand, and a female to boot, and so not a defection risk. Still, every race has it’s bigots with bones to pick, as well as people who have had a thoroughly bad day and really just want a drink and a scapegoat. She sympathizes with humans, even if their customs, especially their social structure, amuse her.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

[Spoiler] Ancient Dragon (?)

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

and we saw the same thing scarlet saw. you grab her diary and compare her notes with the cutscene, it’s about right. you compare the “what scarlet saw” story with what we saw, it’s about right.

Mostly, but I find it interesting that we didn’t see the thorn vine.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

S2: Entangled observations

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Forget Abaddon. I’m much more terrified of the prospect of having to again play uncomfortable bystander while Anise and Logan quarrel over which one loves Jennah more. We’ve got quite too much of that already between Rox and Taimi.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

S2: Entangled observations

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Obviously I’m not any more qualified than the lot of you, but my two cents on the vision: I think what we saw was the totality of magic. Whether that constitutes the Eternal Alchemy or not is semantics. I think the center orb in the vision is Tyria, and the Pale Tree having a central place in the vision has something to do with her being the only known creature that interfaces directly with Tyria, and by extension, magic (though that isn’t enough to explain why non-sylvari would see her). I think the Mordremoth sphere becoming so much more prominent could be explained three ways(in order of my opinion of least to most likely): It’s a representation of some connection between him and the Pale Tree, whom we passed through/into to reach that stage; as the PC explains, Mordremoth was reacting to our presence within the device (perhaps due to his intermingling with the leylines, presumably including the one that appears to be powering the device); or it’s because he’s the only one who’s literally spreading through the ley lines, which in theory would rapidly allow him to become the most efficient at consuming magic and thus allow him to out-compete the others.

@Poplolita between that and the magic locket that really doesn’t work (wasn’t the succession in SoS determined simply by the king’s death bed whim?), I feel Jennah’s going to be coming back into the foreground very soon. Great.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

[Spoiler] Ancient Dragon (?)

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Personally? I think the center globe was Tyria. Remember, we were supposed to be seeing the Eternal Alchemy there, and while it makes enough sense for the dragons to be notable parts of it, it would be really weird if they comprised all of it.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Heh. I wouldn’t mind doing that, but I am not going first.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

your toons - with lore or against it?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I do have a charr ele myself, and I feel she does work with the world- she has her powers, and the Iron Legion leadership is not nearly so wasteful as to let them go undeveloped, but she feels under-utilized and perhaps just a bit marginalized, to the point where she feels pressured to develop skills as an engineer, to the detriment of her true talents.

I think that’s the sort of way it should work- a balance that allows for a caster charr while also acknowledging that such a combination would have repercussions in their society, with a dash of RP justification for my utter ineptitude with the class. It helps that eles are the most straightforward- they don’t toy around with life force or the mind, but with tangible, fundamental forces- easier to understand, and thus avoiding the additional unease of the unknown and rather creepy, and also easy for the brass to imagine clear applications for, especially in the utilitarian structure of the Iron Legion or the brute force mentality of Blood.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Jade Sea status: still frozen?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

In the Sea of Sorrows book, there definitely was trade between Kryta and Cantha before the rising of Zhaitan, although we don’t know much about the circumstances of that trade (for instance, Cantha might have a special trader’s area that foreigners are restricted to).

Ahh, no. Canthans loved humans, they were xenophobic. Cobiah mentioned that he explored Kaineng City when he went there. I see no reason why the Canthans wouldn’t allow traders to see their city, if you recall, they LOVE showing off their superiority.

It’s mainly a case of seemingly conflicting information- as far as I can tell, early on they meant for Cantha to go isolationist much earlier, and I recall seeing some relics of that in-game. Other in-game sources, and the more recent Sea of Sorrows, seems to have done away with that, so I’d lean towards thinking Cantha was open to foreigners until Zhaitan’s rise.

That said, there have been several points when Cantha closed themselves off from foreign contact, so it wouldn’t be out of character for them.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

A Discussion of Elder Dragons

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

That hound model actually is in the game, but it has nothing to do with dragon corruption.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Krait in the northern sea...?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

The furthest north they’ve ever been in cold areas is Lornar’s Pass. The furthest north they’ve ever been in not-cold areas is Gendarran Fields and Queensdale- and that is very, very minor in numbers. They’ve never been very far north.

There were Krait defending thumper/probes in Snowden and Frostgorge. (as well as defending them in snow areas of the Mists)

Those were just being ferried up by Scarlet, however. They weren’t native to the area- it’s one thing to do work somewhere and quite another to live there for the long-term.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Quaggan design oversight...?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

And, of course, there’s the simple possibility that not everything in a different world needs to conform to Earth’s taxonomic classifications.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Shady Asurans and dry quaggans.

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

There is an implication in one of the dialogues that Gixx might have just sent them someplace to get them out of his hair.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Krait in the northern sea...?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I’m with Konig on this one. One of the kodan does mention krait, but not in any way that suggests they live in the north (the kodan in Frostgorge seem to have learnt enough about several southern cultures to pass judgement on them), and it’s implicitly stated elsewhere that cold-blooded creatures usually can’t live in the Shiverpeaks- the same Shiverpeaks that are almost intolerably hot for creatures from the northern sea.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

The Identity of the Entity

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Assuming, for the moment, that Lazarus is still around- remember that we don’t even have a point of reference for a mursaat’s lifespan- then it might well be that he can’t phase out anymore. Remember, the whole reason that he swore revenge is that we managed to somehow turn his own power against him.

I read about that on the wiki, one of his portions of self was destroyed or somethin’. I imagine that would be detrimental to his power, but I didn’t think about how it would affect his abilities.

More or less. For all intents and purposes, we poisoned a part of his power, so that when he reclaimed it it somehow turned on him. We don’t yet know what effect this had, since he promptly fled and hasn’t been seen since, but it’s within the realm of possibility that his magics were hobbled in some way.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Who is Janis?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I suppose there’s also a chance it’ll be an upcoming character. But yeah, never seen a Janis myself.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

The Identity of the Entity

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Assuming, for the moment, that Lazarus is still around- remember that we don’t even have a point of reference for a mursaat’s lifespan- then it might well be that he can’t phase out anymore. Remember, the whole reason that he swore revenge is that we managed to somehow turn his own power against him.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Just speaking for myself, my aversion to wiki editing is largely an aversion to the formatting aspect. I can alter or add to plain text just fine, and I have on occasion, but anything more complex, like, say, a footnote, is more than I know how to do… and if truth be told, more than I care to learn. That last bit is probably specific to me, but I think the fact that being able to make substantial contributions requires wading through sidebars and this does constitute something of a barrier to entry.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

You are right, hell, appearently we have stars being born in accordance to Elder Dragon risings. Which again goes to show that the fluctuation of magical forces can do weird things in the universe of Tyria seemingly completely unrelated. Who is to say that no magical events effected anything we are debating and blaming on bad writing? It is the point of “magic” to be mystical and unknowable in its potential, even so dragon energies/chaos magic.

Just had an interesting thought regarding the stars thing.
Maybe it’s not the dragons waking that triggers a star to be born, and instead is the other way around. Those stars are going to be quite distant, and by the time Tyrians see them being born, it will have actually been born long before. But maybe the newborn starlight finally reaching Tyria triggers the dragons somehow. If that is the case, however, there probably wouldn’t be a new star for Mordremoth, because he was awoken artificially.
Maybe there’s a connection of some sort between the stars and ley lines?…

All of that is, of course, assuming the information regarding stars being born is from a Tyrian point of view, rather than a universal one.

It could also simply be correlation rather than causation. They might coincidentally be on the same 10,000-ish year cycle, or there might be a third factor causing them to mirror the same cycle without actually interacting with each other. Unfortunately, for the time being there’s insufficient data to determine which of the theories is likely.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Entanglement - trailer recap/speculation

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

It wasn’t roots, it was a bone wall.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Entanglement - trailer recap/speculation

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

That’s pretty much it. Zhaitan was trying to stop us from getting that tome, and also to kill the leader of the nascent force that was mobilizing the entire continent to take him down.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

"Must-read" lore threads & lore dungeon runs?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I can make that.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Breeding Compatibility

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

@Cure we have had confirmation that the Hybrid was a normal krait altered by the tower’s toxins.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Where did all the undead in GW1 in Kryta go?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

@jheryn The working assumption I’ve seen a lot of is that Khilbron gathered up all of Orr’s army, accounting for why there’s no overlap and why the GW1 undead all seemed to have Orrian emblems. By that theory, all the cavalry would simply have marched out long before Zhaitan ever woke. It’s not confirmed, but it’s as good an explanation as any I’ve heard.
@narwhal Actually, freed from Khilbron’s control, I would personally expect some of them to want to go home. It’s a more or less moot point, though, since we have evidence it didn’t happen.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

Who is the Deap Sea Dragon?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Bubbles wasn’t in Guild Wars 1, but Primordus and Kralkatorrik were both seen in the last expansion, Eye of the North (albeit still hibernating).

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Where did all the undead in GW1 in Kryta go?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

We don’t really have any clear answer, but I don’t think they went back to Orr, since for the most part we don’t have Risen who match the GW1 varieties of undead.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Who is the Deap Sea Dragon?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I will add that he is implied to be what drove the quaggans, krait, and possibly largos into Tyria as we know it, and that the devs have stated they are being deliberately vague regarding him.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

On the other hand, I feel that there is a certain alarmist quality to the opposition here. Can change in no way implies will change, and certainly not have changed. Coming from the GW1 loyalists, it’s understandable- to them this must feel like another plummet in a long slide towards cynicism, given the major changes to a lore they had invested so much in and built so much on, justified by the explanation “they (and by extension you) just had no idea what they were talking about.” I get the negativity there, and ArenaNet should understand that that’s the price to the community of their decision to alter fixtures like the gods and the bloodstones. To say that there cannot be a point to theorycrafting, though, just seems ridiculous. Theories were already guaranteed to more likely than not be off the mark; it’s the major reason I never got involved in them. This statement hasn’t changed that, and in many cases- most, I would personally hazard- it won’t even make you more likely to be wrong. I stress again- “can” is not “will”. I’m still undecided on whether the people saying “there’s no point to/is no lore” are hysterical or just overstating their case from a surfeit of frustration, but when they’ve re-established a cool head I do doubt they’ll hold to the position.

Now that I’ve reamed out both sides, my own observation is this- ArenaNet seems uncomfortable within their own lore. I still hold that they’ve done relatively little to undermine what they’ve already laid, but I don’t think it’s an accident that nearly the entirety of S1 was introducing and then utilizing new elements instead of building off of the old. Even the dragon we’re set up to fight next is a new one, when there were four pre-existing ones they might have chosen from. I honestly do not know why this is the case, and I will not pretend otherwise- I may speculate, but I would have nothing to back it up. Still, I cannot help but observe that so much of the resistance they’ve run into with us story fanatics would have been averted if they hadn’t felt like they were pulling things out of the blue. It doesn’t matter that all of their new enemies and allies could be linked into Tyria. Those links always felt like justifications, not reasons, and that has not done favors for our collective enthusiasm. It left an especially sour taste because we were left to make those justifications for them, forcing us to take their side and explain how it could make sense because ArenaNet couldn’t work out how to do it through the game. In a way, this timeline discussion is an extension of that issue- several people went to impressive contortions to mesh the new information from Prosperity into the timeline we already knew for Scarlet, and having this date change follow kitten the heels of such effort must feel particularly like being shafted. Now, ArenaNet has gone the extra step of clearing room for themselves to sweep away much of the lore that we feel they are less invested in than us fans.

Since Bobby also asked us to put forward our opinions on the most recent lore implementation, here’s mine: I’m not the sort to say something’s too late, but it is most certainly too little. Yes, having random tidbits about Scarlet’s backstory and the human nobility is a step in the right direction, but it isn’t near far enough, not if you want our take-away to be to stick to what’s in the game. That kicks a crutch out from under us, but it was a crutch propping up your ideas. Now you have to see your way to limiting the power you’ve claimed for yourself, to re-establish our comfort. For that to be viable, you need to make it a priority to get what currently exists out of game into the game- maybe not THE priority, but A priority, enough so that we see measurable progress towards it in most patches. Given the generally narrow focus of every living world patch thus far, that would require quite a bit of change. As far as the books go, I think the idea as a whole is good; I think this patch’s implementation was not. The actual books we got were very scarce on content, and only one of them seemed to be relevant beyond the immediate purview of the S2 story. I really do think you’ve hit a good point with the storytelling, so these books would really be better used for worldbuilding instead. I know you once mentioned that you have hundreds of unimplemented book scripts written out from before launch. It seems to me there will never be a better time to implement them, in whatever form you think your team can manage.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I really don’t know if it’s worth chiming into this again, but… here goes.

To start off with, first and foremost- I think the devs should not lay down lore unless they mean to keep to it. I find altering the base material that serves as foundation and grounding for their stories to be distasteful and honestly in bad faith. The lore, essentially, serves as the terms by which they ask us to invest in their stories. Altering those terms after the fact feels like it invalidates our investment in and care for those stories. It is certainly not a way to retain interest in them. All that said, I do not fool myself in thinking that I, or any of us, have any say on the matter. Development has always been a solely internal process, and ArenaNet only grows less transparent as time passes. Whether that is a good thing or bad is beyond the scope of this thread; suffice to say that the only role we have in plotting this game’s course is that of the proverbial beggars.

To ArenaNet’s credit, they have, by my eyes, rarely gone back on their lore. Beyond the (still arguably questionable) big changes between the first game and this one, which they did put a deal of effort into reconciling, I’ve only known them to ‘retcon’ once in a blue moon, and it was in fact the scarcity of the changes that caused such a great fuss to be raised over each one. As far as trust in the company goes, at least in the narrow sense of their continuity, I’ve had no real cause to complain, and I do not currently expect that to change.

That brings us to issue at hand, the change to accommodate Scarlet’s birthdate and Bobby Stein’s input on it. Now, to be clear, I think the birthdate is no little thing, and it does have some worrying implications. It also has fallen so far to the side of this argument that it serves only as a distraction, or to obfuscate an untenable position. I, and most of the serious voices here, are only addressing this quote- “Unless we’ve built content around something, it’s usually considered malleable from a design and lore standpoint. Occasionally we decide to go in a different direction months or years after the first ideas are documented or even talked about externally. In some cases that means what one member of staff says in an interview can change when it comes time to building a release. It’s part of our iterative process. In short, go by what’s in the game.”

Now, a few voices here have been taking a “no kitten” stance. They feel that this was always a unstated fact, something so obvious that it never needed to be acknowledged. In short, when in doubt, expect the industry standard. That’s all well and good, but such an argument misses the bigger picture, specifically that GW2 is lacking several industry standards. A codex. Text-dump quests. Lore NPCs. My personal experience with MMOs is limited to this game and RuneScape, but I have more extensive experience with single player RPGs, and every one of them (hell, RuneScape too for that matter) had at least one of those things. Guild Wars 2? Sometimes you can get the equivalent, if you have the patience to collate a dozen or more disparate dialogues, some tied to events that take 10+ minutes to wait out, some hidden in non-repeatable content, shockingly little recorded on the wiki. Sometimes you can’t. On the other hand, our game has this .The industry standard treats out-of-game statements as a rarity, mostly to clarify obscure points, and that is precisely why it does not, and cannot, apply to Guild Wars 2. To us, interviews and lore documents aren’t secondary or tertiary sources- they are our primary sources, more comprehensive and more reliable than the game. That is why many of our community perceive this statement as a threat- we had a coping mechanism to handle an implementation of worldbuilding that leaves much to be desired, and this statement comes across as a threat to pull the rug out from under it.

Continued below.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

"Must-read" lore threads & lore dungeon runs?

in Lore

Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Gear really isn’t an issue, not in this game. As long as you aren’t still wearing something from level 70 or so, it really makes much less of a difference than traits, skills, simply knowing your class, and FPS.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Elder Dragon sleep cycle + world domination

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

They aren’t in an alliance, they’re just all after the same thing- magic to consume. They fall asleep, according to current theory, when all the magic is drained from the world, that is, once they have nothing left to eat. It’s not really clear at this point why their pursuit of magic wipes out the races of the time. And the others have made significant upheavals- Primordus and Jormag depopulated entire regions, Bubbles presumably did the same to the ocean-dwellers, and Kralkatorrik’s Dragonbrand may yet prove to be the doom of the charr in Ascalon. The Elder Dragons just don’t move around much- Zhaitan didn’t leave Orr for all his 100+ years- so once they clear their core territory, their power is spread only as quickly as their minions can advance.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

Entanglement - trailer recap/speculation

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

@Xukavi There are actually six giants in-game right now- the friendly one you mentioned in Kessex, another friendly one in Lornar’s (part of an explorer achieve), and another in south-west Harathi (that one is another event), then hostile event champs in eastern Harathi and southern Diessa, and a single normal hostile during an event in south-west Brisban (though that can scale to be more, which is the only semi-sane way to get Giant Slayer). But yeah, I’m hyped for more giants.

As to the attacks, I’m not convinced that they are being targeted. The tendrils so far seem to just be spreading haphazardly. Concordia might be proof to the contrary, but then again, it might just be the trailer’s choice of several more random targets that will get attacked next patch.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

"Must-read" lore threads & lore dungeon runs?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

My computer doesn’t have the slightest chance of being able to handle recording, but I’m certainly down to come along. I’d need a little advanced notice, but I should be able to flex my schedule to handle just about anything that isn’t the dead of night.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Personally, my take on Bobby’s contribution is this: either this is honestly something that fell through the cracks, and nobody recalled that they had tossed us a figure on the Secondborn a long while back, OR we just got roundabout confirmation that nothing out-of-game is written in stone. Until Mr. Stein gets back to us, I’m left to use my own judgement on the matter, so… accounting for the existence of their internal wiki, I find the later more likely to be the case, so the rest of this will be written from that position.

Honestly, I am a little disappointed, but I’m not at all surprised. We’ve seen signs of this for a while now- between the multiple alterations to the game after we were shown the Movement of the World and Angel’s frank statement that the krait blog post reflected an iteration of that race that didn’t last to launch, I’d even come to terms with it. It’s not that big of a deal in the long run- it means we’ll have to shift our thinking to weight certain sources with more credence than others, and it does bite that we’re only being clued into this almost two years after the game launched, but both are surmountable problems, and in the long run I think it’s better for the lore community to be able to be in sync with the dev’s approach to their canon. All in all, better late than never.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

It’s a small point anyway, but I’m not sold that Ceara was secondborn- that would have required Mender Serimon to already be holding that job perhaps as soon as a couple days after he awoke. Seeing as we don’t know how long passed between the secondborn and thirdborn, and that the firstborn (our only point of comparison) are made out to have all awoken within a pretty narrow window, I would guess that Ceara was thirdborn, coming in the same year as the secondborn but with enough time between them for Serimon to progress beyond being a sapling himself.

The oldest Secondborn would be 17 years old by 1325 AE. The youngest would be 16.

She HAS to be a Secondborn, reason being: She was Scarlet Briar after she turned 16. And she was Scarlet Briar in early 1325 AE or late 1324 AE – reason we know this: Steam Incursion meta event and Thaumanova Reactor explosion. She was Scarlet Briar when both happened, and both happened very recently. In 1325 AE, the youngest Secondborn would be 1309 would be 16. So she has t obe in the older half of the Secondborn (those born 6 years after the Firstborn rather than those born 7 years after), so that she would thus be 16 in 1324 AE.

If she turned 16 any sooner, then she would be older than the Secondborn.

And yes, it means that she was “Scarlet Briar” for about 2 years when we met her.

It’s the only way the timeline makes sense. Any other outcome means “ArenaNet flubbed up with this episode alone.” Because even if you ignore all we learned in Season 1, this is the only logical conclusion: she turned 16 sometime in 1324 AE.

Only if every sylvari born that year was secondborn. Do you see what I’m saying? The Firstborn all came in a very compact timespan. I’ve always thought of them as being spread across no more than a week, and iirc at least five awoke in the first 24 hours. If the secondborn awoke in a similarly compact timespan, or even if they were spread as far apart as a month, there’d still be room for a few months afterwards with no awakenings, and then the thirdborn (Ceara among them)waking, in the same year.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

The Real Saboteur? (Spoilers!)

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Personally, I didn’t get any cold feeling of MoP in the instance. If anything, he just sounded a little weary- and determined, definitely determined.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Magic, the Mind and Maguuma

in Lore

Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Snaff’s book might be hinting at bigger things to come, but it’s right next to Omadd’s journal, which in turn almost explicitly says that he’s drawing on those ideas of Snaff in the concept of his device. I think that the book is just there to explain why Omadd’s device worked- the idea that you can somehow “open the mind” and view all of reality sounds a lot less crazy with the basis that the mind is inextricably linked to the fundamental force of reality.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Interesting things in Scarlet's Room [Spoilers]

in Lore

Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

It’s a small point anyway, but I’m not sold that Ceara was secondborn- that would have required Mender Serimon to already be holding that job perhaps as soon as a couple days after he awoke. Seeing as we don’t know how long passed between the secondborn and thirdborn, and that the firstborn (our only point of comparison) are made out to have all awoken within a pretty narrow window, I would guess that Ceara was thirdborn, coming in the same year as the secondborn but with enough time between them for Serimon to progress beyond being a sapling himself.

@Shiren The device is Omadd’s, but just under the blueprint Scarlet had Omadd’s journal and the book Omadd seemed to have based his theory off of. She wqouldn’t have had any qualms about taking his schematics while she was at it.

Personally, coming away from this- I think we may have been overstating the connection between Scarlet’s insanity and the voices in her head. Between the indication that Ceara was struggling with the entity before going into the machine and the reaffirmation that she didn’t break until Omadd’s experiment, I’m tempted to say that we have no reason to say they’re interlinked at all. My working theory is that what she saw in the machine wasn’t the entity, and possibly had nothing to do with the entity, but it was enough to break her mind, which left her unable to effectively resist the entity’s… suggestions? Compulsions? Still unclear on that bit.

EDIT: Also, how in the Realm of Torment did Marjory find out about the contents of Scarlet’s vision?

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

(edited by Aaron Ansari.1604)

Is Aerin a Soundless?

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

Went back and got screen caps:

Attachments:

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

Realm of Torment Likeness

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

As was recently brought up in another thread, the alchemy circle things are just generic maps of the Mists. It could mean any realm in the Mists, only one of which is the Realm of Torment, or the Mists as a whole, which was more or less the consensus among the characters.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.

I am the Boss Part II

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Posted by: Aaron Ansari.1604

Aaron Ansari.1604

I’m going to skip most of your points, since in the past I’ve said all I feel I have to say, but on the issue of our ‘scripted’ contributions this patch- I actually thought that part was well done. We were more or less trading off with Marjory as far as the discoveries and deductions went, and that simultaneously managed to avoid feeling like sitting through someone else’s show, like the investigation way back in Dragon Bash did, and feeling like a very transparent bone being tossed to the players with the mildly insulting feeling that we were supposed to be grateful for it, like the Study in Scarlet instance. Similarly, I don’t mind at all that we weren’t given choice- I mean, what would our choices actually be in that situation? Put our foot in our mouth and publicly embarrass ourselves, or get it right and progress the story? I’d say the streamlined approach is another improvement over Study, and the places where our choices from way back when made up for it- playing through, I picked out two dialogues that my character was only able to contribute on account of his race, and it actually felt like me positively being able to bring something valuable because of who I’d chosen to be, rather than a simple nod to the fact I have green skin.

R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.