Guild Wars 2

Freeelancer.2860:

A bit offtopic, but isn’t Fort Salma occupied by a gang of lv80 bandit champions? Or did the Corporal send her to the camp south of Fort Salma?

That’s Fort Vandal, in west Brisban. Fort Salma is the Seraph base in north-west Kessex.

That was 250 years ago, though. The balance of probability is that whoever was responsible for that has long since gone to dust.

It might be because he’s a sylvari character, but my ranger recognized the note as a common Soundless mantra/meditation device (can’t remember the exact wording).

Ranael.6423:

Stooperdale.3560:

With all the thorn monsters aiding Aerin, he surely has to be involved with the Jungle Dragon. My reading of it would be that the Jungle Dragon can talk to and coerce plants, including the Sylvari. The dream protects against this and maybe nightmare does too. Neither Aerin nor Scarlet fall into nightmare, and that seems significant to me. If the Nightmare Court are going to become the servants of the dragon then why didn’t these other servants join their ranks?

A lot of other questions follow on from this. If it is the dream that protects the Sylvari then can other creatures be protected by the dream as well? Can another parent tree be protected in the same way as the Pale Tree, and if not are the offsping all going to be vulnerable to the dragon? Malyck’s tree is likely to be dangerous as well as Malyck himself.

Have we been told in game whether all Sylvari are immune to dragon corruption, including the nightmare court, including the soundless?

I think that Nightmare is described as being part of the Dream so if the Dream is the protection one could also guess the Nightmare is.

As for the vine attacking, they could also be here to defend the fleeing Master ?

That’s pushing it. The vines aren’t defending him- they’re attacking the people who are defending him, people the Master would have no reason to feel threatened by.

This idea is starting to feel like a rehash of the Ellen Kiel as villainous mastermind conspiracy theory.

If she comes back into the story, I expect she’ll do just that- come back. As it is, I feel like they dismissed her for the time being only because they didn’t have any clear role for her to play- the story instances left the Seraph behind immediately thereafter, and even in the open world they’re only on aid and relief duty right now, which doesn’t exactly make for compelling storytelling.

Huh… you’re right, at least two of those sound like he was connected to the Dream. As a sidenote, I didn’t realize before how shady he seems if you put all the dialogue together like that.

@Tamias There’s still that mantra to consider, though. He would not have been able to get that once they left.

Actually, I think the Master of Peace is just following in Glint’s footsteps- a well meaning friend who is just too secretive for us to be comfortable with.

He had a Soundless mantra, so I certainly see that as the most likely answer. I’d have to see them for myself again, but I think his mentions of the Tree were all just sylvari exclamations, not actually mention of any connection between it and him.

I disagree. First off- there were other people who joined the Zephyrites, definitely the first time and maybe even this time. Second, survivors in the camp specifically mention that a new recruit (they might even have said it was a sylvari) was responsible. Thirdly, the torn pages were Aerin’s, not the Master of Peace’s. I do believe the Master is up to something weird that deserves keeping an eye on, but everything points, or outright says, that Aerin was the murderer and saboteur.

There isn’t a Ventari’s Refuge anymore, though. That’s why he moved to what is now the Grove in the first place- the fighting between the humans and centaurs got so bad that it was not possible to have a peaceful settlement anymore. If these centaurs are copying Ventari’s idea, it’s just that- copying. They can’t be the same settlement.

Thanks to the holo, we can pretty much confirm that Scarlet invented the steam creatures herself, and that the Lornar’s invasion was her way of getting rid of unneeded prototypes. Interestingly, she also said she sent others to Brisban… does anyone know what that might be referring to?

Yes, we talked to Aerin a few times, but he never gave off any bad vibes before. Linked to what the Master of Peace said, Aerin didn’t turn bad until after the Zephyrites left.

I think you’re mixing up Soundless and sylvari from another tree. Soundless are common knowledge, but they’re such a niche thing that they never (to my knowledge) got mentioned in the PS at all. They’re just Pale Tree sylvari that cut themselves off from the Dream. That said, that Soundless mantra is quite a bit more belligerent then how we’ve seen the Soundless before… I hope they aren’t setting up the group as a whole to be evil.

Now… can we talk for a minute about how there’s a multi-racial town out here that no one has heard about? If it was just human, sylvari, and asura, that would be one thing, but how did norn and charr end up there without Tyria as a whole ever knowing it existed?

Also, very nice touch putting in the GW1 style hylek hut, ANet. I appreciated it.

And in combination with the holorecording, it puts the entire diary before the experiment… interesting…

That’s a unique centaur skin, isn’kitten

My favorite is the skritt, hands down. My least favorite… probably the ettins. There’s just something very unsettling about a race whose defining feature is a hereditary congenital disorder.

Where did you get that order from? And the place he became a god, “where his father had fallen”, was… Malchor’s Leap.

Ayakaru.6583:

He carved dwaynas statute last. So he carved grenths statue before dwaynas statue. And he didnt have alone time with the Gods anywhere else

We don’t know if he carved Grenth’s statue.

flipyap.5789:

I like how the focus is on only warriors, and noone brought up rangers and engineers

We know rangers use magic, and we know engineers don’t. There’s really nothing to focus on there.

The Sanctum doesn’t seem to have been shot down. All the explosions were inside the ship, which suggests either sabotage or a catastrophic and highly unlikely accident.

In Dhuum’s defense, we don’t know the nature of his complaint against the undead, or exactly what meaning the term “undead” even has in the afterlife. As long as they remain in the Underworld, it’s possible there’s nothing inconsistent about Dhuum using such minions.

Sylvari and humans do tend to get along too. They haven’t had centuries to build a report like the charr and norn, but they have enough in common that I can see them ending up at that point.

I think it’s possible, though my bet is that if we do we’ll end up working with them, not against them. It wouldn’t make much sense for either of us to waste blood trying to kill the other while a freshly woken Elder Dragon chortles next to us.

I predict we will revisit the White Mantle in some capacity or another, and that we will discover that the entity was not Mordremoth. Oh, and also that we’ll get confirmation that the Nightmare Court are Mordremoth’s minions. I’m also going to go out on a limb and predict we’ll discover the fate of Glint’s baby.

I predict that we won’t see Malyck’s tree, that we won’t face down the entity, and that a connection will be shown between Mordremoth and the sylvari race on the whole, but will be ambiguous enough, or have enough holes in it, to leave doubt on the matter.

Something you might find interesting- many of the Wardens are elementalists, so we have a solid body of in-universe examples (though they do stick with earth magic, iirc).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Seeing as it’s treated as a very big deal that the Hunter comes back, we actually have some evidence that it plain isn’t the case.

The Hunter is a 100% unique case, however, having been given magic of immortality by Khilbron, a lich.

That’s my point. It wouldn’t be a big deal if demons were typically immortal, it is a big deal, ergo, demons are not typically immortal.

A GuildMag interview established their connection, though it didn’t touch on why they left. It’s stated in-game as well, as a Whispers dialogue at Stoneguard Gate.

narwhalsbend.7059:

Shiren.9532:

Maybe Glint’s children are in that direction? With Kralkatorrik corrupting the Crystal Desert the Maguuma Wastes might be a similar but safer environment to relocate them to?

You mean the Forgotten? They aren’t Glint’s children, they just served her. The lore says that they were only in the Crystal Desert because they left everywhere the other races went.

If they left the Crystal Desert because of the fighting between Palawa Joko’s undead and the Branded, they might have gone to the only other uninhabited place in Tyria – the Maguuma Wastes/Jungle. I suppose they could have gone to Ring of Fire as well.

They mean the baby dragon, and are just accounting for the possibility that there may be more than one.

They aren’t concept art, they’re screenshots. Incidentally, there’s a thorn wolf with the husk.

Honestly, returning enemies are the bulk of what I’m excited for right now. I never cared for the Zephyrites, and I’m keeping my expectations for the story blank, but if we could get pop-up scarabs again…

And yes, the Maguuma centaurs are the Harathi, who have been pushed out of the area. Kind of weird that the most magical clan became one that disdains magic, but maybe that mystical internal wiki has an explanation that we’ll just never see.

Horst Hortensie.5420:

If magic is finite, but cannot get destroyed like some Asura think, then all magic that concentrates on one is not available for all others. In a further thought it becomes a heavy balancing problem over time. Nobody who gathered magic will release it by his own choice.

That sounds exactly like what the Elder Dragons are doing.

Everything we’ve been told, save the odd bit of very vague PS dialogue, is that the gods are not MIA- they just don’t get involved in Tyria anymore. Prayers are still sometimes answered (see: every human racial), and speaking of the personal story, one of the last steps makes it clear that Grenth is still lording over souls in the Underworld, meaning that even if Dhuum is free he is not in control.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Mickey Frogeater.1470:

Shiro, the Emissary of Dhuum, Razakel, The Fury, Jadoth, Varesh, General Kahyet, General Bayel, The Hunger, The Drought, The Blasphemy, the Ravager of Dreams, the Reaper of Agony, the Oath of Profanity, the Onslaught of Terror, the Master of Misery, the Flame of Fervor, the Consort of Ruin, the Bringer of Deceit, the Blade of Corruption, the Bearer of Misfortune, the Harbinger of Nightfall, the Seed of Suffering, the Shadow of Fear, the Shepherd of Dementia, the Shrieker of Dread, the Storm of Anguish and the Vision of Despair will all be working for Dhuum once he’s free as likely as not….

Double dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Double Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. All (known) dead. Dead. All (known) dead and purpose lost (no more Nightfall to harbing). Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Most demons – if not all – encountered in Nightfall are dead. Even a god of death cannot lead the dead, unless he raises them as undead… and he hates undead.

You seem to under the presumption that souls and demons respawn when killed. Ignoring the whole “leaving then returning into an instance” situation, that’s not shown to occur. Ever.

Seeing as it’s treated as a very big deal that the Hunter comes back, we actually have some evidence that it plain isn’t the case.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

BTW, the Fortune Teller wasn’t an avatar of Abaddon and avatars don’t need their gods to exist – the Seven Reapers are the souls of seven mortals who fought alongside Grenth to take down Dhuum, for example, and were merely granted “immortality” as their reward.

Although, to be fair, that’s only one example, for a god that’s already irregular in his power, and there’s really nothing else the Seer of Truth could be but a traditional avatar. Unless Kormir rewrote the appearance of one of the souls in the realm to match her own? In balance, that seems the less likely answer.

Even in the worst case scenario, the Priory has access to bloodstone shards after Arah, and if neccesary I’m sure they have the locations of at least the three we know about recorded as well. If they could recreate it, or failing that recover the pieces (and possibly modify them), then any role the dragons play could be effectively rendered defunct. Like Konig said, though, we don’t actually know what will happen if magic isn’t balanced- it could just as easily be a good thing as a bad one.

Penzan’s song after you finish his event.

I think the issue here is that none of us are you. None of us can define interesting for you. Every single event in the game touches on or contributes to the lore in some small way, and which you find interesting and which you find tedious is entirely a matter of taste. If you like text dumps, there are events for you. If you like quirky dialogues, there are events for you. If you like really clear and/or compelling reasons to be killing what you are, there are events for you. If you like any events with giants because they’re events with giants (can’t be just me, right?), there is Harathi, Kessex, Diessa, and Brisban for you. If you can’t no-life grind giants forever and want something small by contrast, there are events for that too (though I recommend steering clear of the shrunk progeny in Metrica- as far from a giant as you can get, sure, but oh so aggravating). Narrow it down for us and we’ll be able to give you advice.

My only concern about the Triad is that ArenaNet currently has three badly written and/or portrayed alliances, and those were all just two groups, which should in theory be simpler than a triad. It’s all well and good for ArenaNet to say they’ve upped their game in storytelling (and for what it’s worth I am giving them the benefit of the doubt on that) but I can’t help but be uneasy with the prospect of them starting Season 2 by rehashing what was probably their weakest plot device from Season 1. I want some time to see how and what they’ve improved before I’m asked to be comfortable with yet another alliance, so I hope that the Triad, at least for this release, will be an utterly marginal element, just something to remind us they’re there.

I think the worst thing they could do here is reduce the Triad into chaff for us to shoot at while they get the real plot villains introduced, but that seems more likely than my hopes.

We really aren’t near Mordremoth, though. If we’re heading west, we’ll have almost a full zone between us and the nearest place he could possibly be.

They can. It’s not something you’ll see mentioned too much, but it was actually a minor plot point back in Nightfall.

My two cents.

I think the issue isn’t that ANet keeps everything upbeat, but that whenever they try to go dark, they hamstring themselves with either the gameplay (especially in the personal story) or the story (prominent in the living world). That isn’t touching and/or distressing, which people here seem to be building into their definition of dark- it’s just frustrating. Citing the two examples that stand out to me for each:

It’s the climax for Season 1. The Living Story has finally picked up to an engaging pace, and we know something very big is coming up. We go to the Captain’s Council with dire warnings that the rogue supervillain is coming their way… and they do nothing. Now, it’s a bit beyond the scope of this topic to address why it was written that way, but the important thing is they did nothing, for no reason. The razing of Lion’s Arch, the horrible deaths of countless innocents, the implied (which is an issue in its own right) mass graves, all of that had to be hung against the backdrop that the Captain’s Council, the savvy, conniving pirates who rose the ranks of the most cutthroat government on Tyria, chose this moment to become drooling, incompetent idiots. That undercut just about any emotional impact that might otherwise have hit me, but it’s also been gone over extensively and recently, so I’ll move right along.

The personal story undercut itself largely because of the revival mechanism. Over and over again, we saw characters get perma-killed by the same type of risen that they had been beaten down by over and over again in prior quests, only to be perfectly fine once I got around to them. There was one point where a champ killed all of my companions with the exact same attack, but only one couldn’t get back up because… the camera was doing weird things when he died? That’s not dark. That’s not tragic. That’s arbitrary, that’s killing someone off simply to give characters something to mourn. As bad as Zott was, though, the case I have to say was the worst offender for a dark moment shooting itself in the foot was Grechen. I was helping a friend with PS quests, but I decided to stay behind here to participate in the battle that overcame the combined might of the Vigil’s second in command and a norn havroun. I knew it was only going to be a bunch of trash mobs, but I was in a tolerant enough mood at the time to pretend that was reasonable. My friend went on into the crypt, and when everything remained calm, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that we’d be overcome by a sudden rush right at the end. Since I couldn’t see my companion’s progress, I almost missed it when Grechen abruptly turned into a risen and all her companions fled yelling that they’d been overrun. Not a single other risen in sight. What the gameplay showed and what the story said happened were so entirely opposed I missed the rest of the fight laughing about it. That’s not what dark events should do to you. The worst part is that it was inconsistent- even knowing that the devs didn’t expect the player to be there, I also know there are other places where the devs don’t expect you to be, where you can nonetheless watch NPCs get beat down by hordes of enemies. Claw Island, for instance- you can swim around and see the body of your order mentor, with the risen standing clumped around it.

And then, wonderfully tying my whole rant together, you can kill all the risen, squat down, and revive them.

I’m with Xhelock on this one. Knowing who lives out there isn’t the same as knowing what the place is like, especially with the possibility of Blood having their own architectural style.

Iason Evan.3806:

The Isle of Janthir is the part of the map I’d most like to visit. If we never go there I would really like to see us go to places never explored in either game. Would be nice to have the world of Tyria explored more fully. Would also be nice for GW2 to get areas and regions exclusive to itself rather than just revisiting reskinned maps from GW1.

That’s exactly what Orr and Southsun were.

Destroyers? What scene had destroyers?

“But… ah, to Grenth with the gold. My grandparents left behind more than this when they fled Ascalon. I’ll recover.”

kny.3789:

but maybe there are no new and important baddies yet…

I think that’s pretty much it (though the Triad might still fill that role). Mordremoth just woke up, and how many Branded, or Icebrood, or Risen were around before their dragons awoke? I think his minions, when we get to fighting them, will be almost all brand-new mobs, but I don’t expect that to happen in the first introductory release.

Kralkatorrik is on the other side of the continent, and the wastes were probably around before he ever woke up. IF there is an ED responsible, and that’s a big if, it’s far more likely to be Primordus… who I find more interesting than Kralk anyway.

I don’t see any reason the devourers would need to be mordy minions, or even riled up. It looks to me like they’re just showcasing the new environment’s local threats- and speaking of, that sandstorm could be interesting to play in.

We don’t know. Presumably still south of the map, since that’s the direction his minions are migrating, but that could be the Crystal Desert, Elona, or somewhere east of the map we haven’t seen before, if he is diverting his minions around the Blazeridge.

If that’s Vandal, they have a new vine problem.

As far as siege devourers go, they’re called giant devourers now, but off the top of my head- meta in Iron Marches, skill challenge in Diessa, random vets in Ruin and Fireheart. Oh, and two in an ogre event in Blazeridge. And another in an event in Fireheart… point is, they’re around.

Personally, I would like to see your list. When this has come up in the past, the only coherent evidence that’s been offered is that she has opportunity to do evil things, which is true of most major characters.

Actually, I think Taimi breaks the mold primarily with her underlying vulnerability, which is a huge departure from the typical asura outlook that the world is theirs for the taking and just hasn’t noticed it yet.

As far as the stereotypes go- I just don’t see it. Blunt speaking is a charr thing, not human, and we’ve never had a character like Marjory before. For reasons already stated above, Braham and Kasmeer are the only ones who real fit their race’s mold, and in Braham’s case I suspect that the issue is that the writers didn’t go far enough to define his traits as an angsty teen after the Jubilee- something that’s done wonders for his likeability, but for the moment leaves him without a clear identity beyond racial fallbacks. Kasmeer feels pretty typically human, but I’m okay with that- her backstory and character are probably the best defined out of the entire group, and I think it helps that she can be present as a part of the world instead of an aberration conflicting with it, what you call a “stereotype”.

And at the end of the day, as long as they steer clear of becoming cliches, stereotypes are a good thing. They give us a point of reference, a context in which to understand the world, and breaking that can do quite a bit of harm. Scarlet went from a cool villain to a walking plothole in our eyes when she out-asuraed the asura.

The “multi-appendage horror” is definitely a devourer- one of the rarer models, but you can see them in a few places, most notably the farm in Iron Marches. That said, I am honestly thrilled to see an old GW1 enemy return, even if it is a bog standard monster.

More interesting to the story- in the same shot with the Inquest golem, you can see a Seraph in the background. Combined with the geographical proximity of the supposed new area… I know people have been expecting the Triad to come back into play since F&F, but this time I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made.