Guild Wars 2

And that’s a problem, because it throws any notion of a canon timeline right out the window.

The problem with that is that at the end of the personal story, DE is very clear in that they are staying together and turning to the next dragon. Logan outright says that he won’t be returning to Jennah until they’re dealt with.

Then the Living World turns around and spits in the face of that. ANet’s argument is that if the Living Story reflects the character development of those five, it would confuse players who hadn’t finished the personal story yet. Fine and well, but that means that they’ve also redacted the only real character development they had in the game, and in so doing wrecked most of the memorable characters who outlived Zhaitan.

Looking at how the term is used in both games, I’d say it’s the kind or form of energy or energy-infused intangible material mesmers use in their magic. I think it’s jumping the gun a bit to say which it is- Tyria, like the ancient European societies who conceived of aether, has not broken down their conception of the universe to the modern dichotomy of matter and energy, and in any event such a dichotomy may not be possible in Tyria.

I concur that it is probably what makes up mesmer illusions and basic weapon attacks, and why those things cause more damage than you’d expect from light.

Dustfinger.9510:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

As to the rest of what he says in there, the idea that they were similar to grawl upon arrival is patently false. As Konig has pointed out in the past, Thruln himself admits humans sailed to Tyria, and shipbuilding is a fairly advanced art, well beyond the capabilities of the grawl.

“They arrived naked and defenseless, except for one thing: their desire for control.”

“We discovered fire”

“Soon humans had everything we required, and it was then that we began to prey upon the other creatures.”

From the Guild Wars 1 manual, History of Tyria

It’s human nature to assume the best version of everything. But humanity didn’t even have fire at first. So “sailing” may have been little more than rafts/canoes. They may have been ships built by the gods. Or even divine building instruction, Noah style.

Except all of those lines came from a source that has been heavily, heavily retconned. Good ol’ Thaddeus has proven to be an even worse source than Thruln. Hell, even at the time of Prophecies that piece had plenty of contradictions; now, it’s a symbol of how wrong humans got history. I wouldn’t trust a single word of it.

@Brother Dulfite It’s possible, provided that that continent wasn’t scrapped with the rest. A whole lot of the Utopia stuff got completely repurposed to be put into EotN, which would nix the chances of it showing up as it was originally conceived.

That said, if the continent is canon, I’d put money on it being Doern’s home.

I think he uses “Age of Giants” to refer to the pinnacle of jotun strength.

That line you quote I think is an especial candidate to have been altered to fit his audience, given this line from a pre-release article: “The closest thing that the jotun have to “religion” is their firm, avowed belief that their blood is magical—that it is powerful, and akin to the divine. Each clan of jotun reveres their ancestors and can trace their lineage back to some powerful giant-king of lore. Many of the tales of these giant-kings have taken on the feel and tenor of religious myths, and each clan calls to their legendary blood to empower them, see them through trials, and ensure them victory. While it cannot be said the jotun “worship” their ancestors, they certainly attempt to emulate them through conquest, single-minded self-absorption, and personal pride.”

As to the rest of what he says in there, the idea that they were similar to grawl upon arrival is patently false. As Konig has pointed out in the past, Thruln himself admits humans sailed to Tyria, and shipbuilding is a fairly advanced art, well beyond the capabilities of the grawl. That second line seems to be mostly true- Tyrian humans are said to have lived in tribes before being united under King Doric- but the idea that the gods only noticed the humans after the formation of Ascalon is also likely false, as both charr and human histories say that such was only accomplished with the aid of those gods.

Personally, my take on it is this: Thruln is very desperate to hang on to the idea that the jotun were once great, the continent’s apex race. All of his stories seem to rest on that idea. One of the ways that those storys try to claim credence is by being altered, either by Thruln himself or one of his predecessors (oral tradition, remember), to claim that the only historically verifiable apex race, the humans, somehow owed all that they had to the jotun who came before them, that they would have had nothing but for the greatness of the Age of Giants that came before them.

As for the norn being there with them? Who knows, maybe they were. Modern norn history only seems to stretch back to around GW1, save for a few undated legends like the origins of the moot. All we can say for sure is that both they and the jotun had been in the Far Shiverpeaks for a long time before any record-keeping race came along that way.

Few corrections there, KeyLimPi (yum, by the way):

The true god magics, as you call them, are the seer magics. The seers created the bloodstone to seal away magic, and the Gods later broke that seal, returning magic to the world.

The story that Abaddon handed handed out magic to the races has been completely debunked- a soft retcon, if you will. The latest, that follow-up Konig posted above, says that the idea that magic was given to the races was a human misunderstanding, and in fact what happened is that the gods-all of them, not just Abaddon- were returning magic to the world. The fact that that would mean that the races would be able to use said magic is implied to have been rather beside the point. Also on this topic- Abaddon was the Sixth True God, not fifth.

The jotun you refer to isn’t in GW1, but rather the very same Thruln the Lost referred to above, in GW2. He does say that the norn were very powerful, but rather you believe him or not is up to you.

The GW1 wiki usually describes the lore as we knew it in GW1, and does not account for new developments from this game. Back in GW1, it was believed that the bloodstone was created by the Gods; due to Arah explorable, we now know that the bloodstone was created by the seers, and the Gods only made the (still substantial) contributions of opening and sundering it.

If by ‘he’ you mean Thruln, he’s been hanging around Hoelbrak since launch. I believe he moves around, though, which may account for your not having seen him.

Arcanist Fenn at Earthshake Basin is the only NPC I’ve found that specifically lays out the difference. The defining characteristics he lists are A.) superior strength, B.) intelligent killer, as opposed to mindless drone, and C.) the power to corrupt living beings.

I think there is at least some basis in lore for it- there’s an NPC is Soren Draa who says that asura enjoy jumping, and many of their staircases require it. I’d say that since they’re the only race to use jumping on a day-to-day basis, they’re just better at it then the others, and that advantage is enough to offset their size.

I’d argue it’s a sort of apples and oranges thing. Abaddon wasn’t twisting the world- he was twisting his realm/prison in the Mists, which is far more mutable, and then battering down the wall between the realities to overlay that onto this one. The dragons corrupt this version of reality, and have next to nothing to do with the Mists.

Abaddon also was actively striving to bring about the change- Nightfall was his goal. The dragons change the lands around them as a means to, or perhaps byproduct of, their ends.

On professions: the devs have been really careful in this game to balance out light/medium/heavy classes. If we see another, which is in no way certain- ANet intended for the present 8 to fill every niche- it will almost certainly be a heavy class. I would not expect to see any casters like the chronomancer or summoner would have been.

For races, I think the only ones in the current line-up that have a chance of becoming playable are tengu, largos, and kodan, roughly in that order. The others currently in-game are either too hostile of a faction or too primitive/physically unfit to fill an adventuring profession. Each of the three I listed, though, have potential problems all their own, and it may well be that ANet decides to sidestep this by making any future playable races from scratch, or drawing on the non-playable races from Cantha or Elona in GW1.

I want to see so much more of the map! I certainly can’t confirm that we’ll see anything of it, but there are hints that ANet is moving slowly in that direction- Southsun, the temporary Labyrinthine Cliffs, their creation of desert assets as displayed in Skyhammer and Edge of the Mists. Personally, I’m dying to see Scavenger’s Causeway- the name really captures my imagination, all the more so because there’s really nothing for us to base expectations on.

I’m with you on wanting expansions. As much as I enjoy the free ride of not having to pay a cent for content, the current system only allows for iterative storytelling, slowly adding more and more that builds up on itself. That model sorely limits the story’s ability to integrate with the setting, and it harshly curtails the sense of player exploration to barely bite-sized chunks. That’s what hooked me in both games, and it saddens me to see ANet has over time moved progressively farther away from that.

The short answer is that Kormir wasn’t a goddess at the time- she was a mortal who ascended to godhood four years after the Sinking of Orr. She ‘helped’ in the slaying of Abaddon and replaced him. Her godhood is Abaddon’s godhood.

We’ve seen Caithe too, in the Aetherpath of TA, and I believe they all had new VO- in the cases of Eir and Rytlock, it was in Braham’s and Rox’s instances.

To the OP: We didn’t see Caithe until October. It might just be that they haven’t seen a chance to work Zojja in. Personally, i would prefer they never did- it always felt a bit contrived the way they balanced things so all races could take an equal part.

I’d dispute you on your first point, saye. Humans drove the charr out of Ascalon 1500 years ago. You can hardly count that against their current level of civility. By real-life comparison, the the western countries that we call civilized today were murdering and displacing indigenous populations in large numbers within the last couple centuries. Also, the charr had been displacing and killing other races since before the humans arrived- the humans were just the first race that won against them.

Furthermore, during the wars between them, the worst thing the humans did was slaughter the charr like animals. The charr not only did the same to humans, they also enslaved humans to work them to death, ate humans, and burned humans alive.

And for 3, you can’t point to one individual and say that it reflects on the society on a whole. And Zhaitan didn’t wake up because of the Sinking of Orr- he did it 150 years later, and would have woke then even if Orr hadn’t sunk.

If you use “aggression towards other races” as a measure of how uncivilized a race is, which is what you seem to be doing, the charr come out ahead in a landslide. They’ve waged war with each and every race they’ve ever shared a border with, whereas the humans have grown out of that in the last 200 years.

Dustfinger.9510:

There is a skritt NPC that sais asura thoughts are too “linear”. That backs up the multiple view theory.

To be fair, that skritt’s argument was that chaos refuse that turns skritt inside out is a good thing to have. That doesn’t strike me as one of the outstanding examples of the skritt race’s potential intelligence.

I agree with Foxx, but with one caveat: ANet, or maybe NCSoft, are putting a lot of emphasis in getting into the East Asian markets. I don’t think we’ll see anything of Cantha until the game settles in over there, and then only if it is believed that it won’t drive away the new players in droves.

You could certainly look at it that way. The parallel isn’t perfect, but it comes surprisingly close.

Off the top of my head, this, this, and this all speak of demons consuming souls. This involves souls destroying souls.

EDIT: Oh, and this.

And humans aren’t granted eternal life, either- they get one shot at the afterlife, but there are things, namely demons, that can destroy their souls forever.

I don’t think that demons are or can be based off of templates- the torment demons in a couple cases (the mesmer is the only one I can think of) had a vaguely similar pose and number of limbs as some of the great beasts, but in no way seem to be based off of them. Other than that I think you make some pretty good points.

The counterargument would be that all of those powerful demons you listed (save Kanaxi) are the subservient minions of either Abaddon, Dhuum, or Menzies, all of whom fall under the human gods umbrella.

All the dev comments I’ve seen on the topic have made a point of saying “defeated”.

To answer your earlier question, Psynch, the Molten Alliance used a mixture of flame portals and APCs, the aetherblades all came in airships (which I believe just swooped out of the sky, though we also know that they’re capable of coming through portals thanks to the Queen’s Jubilee), and “Scarlet’s minions” came through her steam-esque portals suspended in the sky. This last category was almost all twisted clockwork, but every so often you could (and can, I suppose) come across a portal that lets loose steam creatures instead.

Fair enough. But they still gathered artifacts relating to how three of the races handled the dragons, on the site a fourth used for their solutions. They’re also known to have had followers among at least two of the five races that we know survived the dragons. I just don’t see how they could have no idea at all about the dragons… though I could see them suffering from some false assumptions or misconceptions. That they didn’t have a contingency placed could mean that they didn’t expect the dragons would rise again.

Stooperdale.3560:

Did we ever find out why Scarlet wanted to kidnap the minstrel and hobotron at the Queen’s jubilee? Those guys are back in town but seemingly not offering any clues.

Scarlet didn’t. A couple of Aetherblades picked them up because they seemed amusing. Scarlet just took their idea and ran a bit with it.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The Elder Dragons are not divine in any way. And the Six Gods were only on Tyria while the Elder Dragons slumbered so there’s nothing to reason that the Elder Dragons know of the Six Gods beyond the knowledge of the minions they corrupt – which would to them be little more than worshiping bodiless ideas given that no minion known is from a time that actually saw the Six Gods (the only known entity to be that old and close to dragon minions is Malchor whom is not corrupt).

Furthermore, the Six Gods didn’t even know of Zhaitan (or at least that Zhaitan was the power source they drew from) when they drew power from him, and there’s nothing to argue that they knew of any of the Elder Dragons.

I wouldn’t go that far… while they may not have seen the gods themselves, most of Zhaitan’s Orrians are from a time when their avatars frequently put in appearances. I doubt he’d write them off the way the sylvari supposedly do- he just would see no reason to pay them any heed as long as they stayed away doing whatever it is they’re doing now. The other dragons, though, are another story.

Loathe as I am to bring it up, Angel’s follow-up does give us reason to believe that the gods knew about the dragons- specifically the “the reality was that the dragons had gone back to sleep, and the gods felt it was safe to begin returning magic stored in the Bloodstone to Tyria.” part. Even if you choose to ignore the way the ideas are paired, the “felt it was safe” part indicates that the gods had a fairly good grasp on the fact that there were reasons it may have been a bad idea. It makes sense, too- a good deal of the dragon lore in the game comes from Arah explorable, which is more or less doing the same research as the gods did while they were around. All that begs the question, though: if the gods knew, why didn’t they give any warning?

Arguably, the two aren’t incompatible- it’s perfectly possible for the devs to write the gods out in a way that makes sense within the lore. I know that when this has come in the past two of the ideas that gained much traction were that the dragons could be capable of consuming the gods, which would give the deities plenty of reason to stay away, and that even if the gods did get involved the amount of destruction their battle would cause would make their goal self-defeating (the same reason the Valar were unwilling to war with Morgoth a second time in The Silmarillion, for you Tolkien fans). There’s a common thread between the two- as long as the gods getting involved would actually make matters worse, there’s a solid reason for them not to become involved. There’re also theories drifting around that the gods may be dealing with a more pressing threat elsewhere, though I think that would create more narrative difficulties than it would solve.

Glad to help. I’ll be honest, that console has my mind scrambling for answers too.

EDIT: Do you think that might be talking about the holograms?

I’d argue that the cultural diversity of humanity would’ve been enough that their flavor could’ve survived… but of course that’s now gone for the foreseeable future too.

Divinity’s Reach doesn’t really bother me. Humans have always been talented at construction, especially the construction of walls. The problem there is that other races’ developments look to be making walls obsolete. At this point deus ex machina is the only chance they have to be restored to prominence.

Or the iron fist of the Dragon Empire. I could live with either.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Personally I feel like the Sylvari get put on a bit of a pedestal. But I maybe just think that because I love them so much
The Sylvari after all are arguably the most tied to the battle against Zhaitain – considering the Sylvari PC gets a direct Wyld Hunt to kill him.

I feel ya. I’m proud to say that my main is a salad, and their storyline just flows the best, both because they’ve got Zhaitan on their mind from word go and because they got to see the whole of Trahearne’s story. The race as a whole has the best motivation to go after Zhaitan, and many of the most prominent individuals in that fight are sylvari… but we don’t see that motivation translate into contribution. The only thing the race as a whole is able to bring to the fight is a unit that is safely expendable. Of the races who need it, though, I believe the sylvari are the only ones who will see a prominence boost. As soon as the devs tire of the “new kid on the block” excuse that’s currently holding them back, I have every hope that we’ll see something truly interesting come of them.

Which will promptly send the forums into convulsions of sylvari hate once more. Can’t win them all.

Gonna go check now.

EDIT: Did I say quaggan? I meant the most unnerving abomination of nature yet to appear in the game.

Ahem.

“The Nightmare sylvari came after that, [cut for brevity]. They hid it when it got too big.”

Doesn’t one of the NPC’s say that the veil was made by the Nightmare Court? I think it was the quaggan.

Hm. Well, while we’re taking Konig’s jest seriously… eh. It’s been done. Remember Grimjaw and Henst?

(If this reads a bit like a ramble, please bear with me; my reasoning isn’t one developed line of thought but rather a heap of independent evidence and comparisons.)

They’re at least on an even foot with the other races magically, and they’re decades ahead in technology. If you look at the Pact, their contributions are at the very least the most visible. The civilized centers of Tyria are tied together only by asura tech, which the asura jealously maintain control of. Every weapon we had that was capable of harming Zhaitan was asuran. While there had have to be huge and multitudinous changes to the circumstances of the other three races if they’re ever to get a shot at ruling the continent, the charr and asura are each only one problem away from it.

To go back to what I was saying last post, those two races were raised to the point that humanity held in the last game, but instead of doing the same for the norn and sylvari they wrecked humanity and then left all three to wither in shade, as it were.

To be honest, I do. Equality is admirable, but it should come primarily from raising the other races to the existing standard, not by gimping the fanbase’s favorite race- and certainly not by gimping them with no explanation. And it just stings all the more because they failed in their aim. Instead of human dominance, we now have charr and asura dominance. Bad enough that they excised some of the most interesting parts of the setting, but we’re also deprived of the mollification that would have come if ANet had succeeded.

I try very hard not to be bitter about this game, but I cannot dispute that they dropped the ball when it came to existing human lore.

Just going to respond here as I read…

The Dream may possibly be older than the sylvari and the Tree. We don’t know enough to say for sure how old it is, though that’s a moot point here as it isn’t an entity/being.

We also don’t necessarily know that there are only Six gods. There might be more back wherever they came from.

While the gods may have arrived from the Mists, there rather scant evidence points to their apparent origin as another “tangible world”.

It’s not the position, but the power. While the gods themselves can be slain, their power is uniquely indestructible/undispersible.

That’s… arguable. It would be far more accurate to say that the other races were able to destroy an Elder Dragon with the aid of humans, and even that is assuming a fully even contribution spread. The sad fact is that Zhaitan was slain with asuran technology held aloft by a combination of asuran, charr, and human technology, and dragonfly wings.

The gods also didn’t aid in the destruction of Abaddon. That was an entirely human undertaking, with the exception of one centaur.

The GL, while powerful, does not seem to have near the power of the Dragons or gods. Both have been known to utterly alter the landscape of entire regions at a time; the GL in Arah just didn’t demonstrate anything near that potential.

As to rather the gods or the dragons are more powerful… I just don’t think we have enough to say. The memory of the actual exploits of the gods has been reduced to a handful of tales, and even those have proven to be mostly false. The only real means of comparison we have is the mark they’ve left on the geography, the changing of the Crystal Sea into the Crystal Desert and Desolation against the Rise of Orr and the shattering of the Shiverpeaks. By that measure, I’d say the dragons seem stronger… but even that isn’t necessarily accurate, because the dragons were rising from their tombs, which uniquely positioned them to change the landscape.

TL;DR: I’d say it’s a tie between the Gods and Dragons due to lack of evidence.

… kind of. I still think there’s a lot more to that story that has been conveniently forgotten. “He threw a temper tantrum because other people took back his gifts” sounds like the victors writing history.

The asian documents, should they prove correct, would be much more satisfying, but I believe that we’ve never gotten 100% confirmation that they’re canon.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Have you tried Kralkatorrik the new fragrance for men?

Is that the brand name? ;D

On a serious note, if indeed any dignity can be salvaged after that, this is just a theory. Not really any evidence for or against it. No one’s asking you to believe, Stooperdale, but then again none of your points are really convincing arguments not to.

Small correction- Glint defected because she came to empathize with the intelligent races after the Forgotten freed her mind. It wasn’t some cold judgement or calculation on her part about their capabilities, it was a horror-stricken “what are we doing?”

I like your idea about the Elder Dragons being corrupted by the magic they consume, though. It leads to some interesting theories, and I know of nothing that would speak against it.

I do apologize, Nicholas. You didn’t know you were opening a can of worms.

There are two theories in particular- that the Six are somehow inextricably tied to the dragons, and that the sylvari/Pale Tree are dragon minions- that produce a lot of rancor on this forum. They both go back to before launch, I believe, and they both for a while propagated wildly despite repeated efforts to point out that the evidence is wholly against them. This frustrated quite a few people here, and as a result we collectively have a tendency to come down with force on any hint that there might be a resurgence.

So again, I’m sorry. The effort here isn’t to shoot you down or snub you. It wasn’t meant personally is what I’m getting at; the problem is that you’ve just walked into the nearest thing we have to a minefield.

1.) Like Foxx said, it seems that the experiences go into the Dream, not the Pale Tree’s mind. That said, the Pale Tree also seems to have unlimited access to the Dream, and I would expect that she uses the knowledge she can glean from it to help guide… whatever decisions it is that she makes.

2.) The sylvari don’t keep it secret, but the other races have issues wrapping their heads around the whole concept of the Dream, so I wouldn’t say it’s something they really get as common knowledge. I would expect those to whom it is relevant- say, the Master of Whispers- to know about it, and those who spend a lot of time with or among sylvari to have at least some vague conception of it (and probably misconception), but your average citizen of DR or the Black Citadel? Probably not.

3.) I’m… not quite sure what you’re saying there. Trahearne barely plays a part in that story, and he isn’t treated any differently than the other Firstborn. The Pale Tree chooses him to speak to simply because he’s the only Firstborn present who was wanting to plunge their race into a war. He spends most of his time away from the Grove, so I would think that he’s actually rather distant from the Tree.

4.) Again, I don’t get why you think that. Trahearne goes to Orr because that is his Wyld Hunt- he has an irresistible impulse to do so.

5.) As for the first part, if you read the line again, Caithe’s question was if it was wise for Trahearne to return from Orr. The dialogue isn’t up on the wiki yet, but immediately following that line, when you first go to meet Trahearne in Where Life Goes, he says “It is hard for me to return. Each time, I feel more and more distant.” Caithe and Trahearne are close. It isn’t your character she’s worried about, it’s him, and what returning to the Grove does to him.

As for the second part, the Pale Tree treats the Dream as a distinct entity who assigns the destinies of her children. When she says “don’t question the Dream” what she believes she is saying is “don’t resist what is supposed to be”… and to be fair, she has good reason to do so.

6.) It exacerbates the wielder’s qualities in general, not specifically the negative ones. It’s a sword. It does not have the capacity to make that kind of abstract judgement.

7.) Like Foxx said, while ANet may pull their names from various mythologies, that in no way means they’re meant to be anything more than very loosely related… and in this case, I think “magic sword” is as close as the relation gets.

To give other examples, Jormag does not wrap around the entire world, and the norn do not determine fate.

Yes, but the jump from megalomaniac to crazy is in her manic glee, inability to come to grips with the fact that we’ve bested her, not once but multiple times, and her blowing herself up. Repeatedly. At this point her megalomania is in danger of becoming a sideshow rather than a defining character trait.

I was only in a couple times, but it was my experience that players tried to work around the towers that were on top of an objective they wanted and otherwise conveniently forgot they existed. I saw a zerg swarm one once, but in that regard it hardly counted as a speed bump.

EDIT: Then again I’m on a bottom-tier world now. Experience may vary back home on Sanctum.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Maybe she’s duplicating money using the Mists and then bringing it into Tyria – why has no one done this?

Maybe Dhuum is still active out there : P

@Stooperdale the term “megalomania” is a far cry from the kind of crazy scarlet is. It just means that she thought the world revolved around her. I wouldn’t call that crazy, per se, just arrogant to an extreme.

But all three of those options basically amount to fleeing Tyria (the continent), their only source of profit and the hub of all of their interests. We’ve dealt them a setback, but not nearly enough to send them whimpering into the unknown with their tails between their legs.

That was a line from the Molten Facility. She was unlikely to be speaking literally, though- all she was doing was operating a dredge drill.

But… but… Scarlet! Don’t hate on the Arid Alliance!

On a serious note, though, I agree with Konig and Foxx. None of the WvW zones appear to be reflections of anything specific in Tyria. All five are such an assorted jumble that they’re only accurately described as their own place. In this case, though, I think the Aetherblade stuff was deliberately built within the Mists, rather than being copied from the real world.

And it just occurred to me- we’ve already witnessed Scarlet directing attention to the WvW zones. Remember the stalks out there, and how Scarlet was present at them via hologram? In light of new information, I would bet that those events were depictions of her scouting out the territory.

… Just not with gold. My wallet is just coming off of life support from my last bet.

Hm… I think we can rule out Orr and the Ring of Fire- you don’t want to moor by active volcanoes (although being in the air would seem to obviate that problem, the flying lava rocks present as much a hazard as encroaching lava) or within the hub of interest and activity of the most powerful of your potential enemies. Remote, uninhabited places like Bloodstone… Gorge? (doesn’t look like a fen anymore, at any rate) and Labyrinthine Cliffs certainly have much to be said for them… but I would suggest another possibility.

We know, from this latest patch, that Scarlet seems to have an interest in setting up a base in the Mists. And for those who have beta access to Edge of the Mists, or have watched those who have (I’ll hazard pointing you to Wooden Potatoes if you haven’t)… there is quite a bit of Aetherblade architecture in the desert corner, even down to a docked airship with Aetherblade markings. Now, it’s not a perfect theory- the area is populated with ogres, not sky pirates- but maybe it was an abandoned first attempt? And if so, maybe the second has worked out by now?

Like most of the “new” information about Scarlet this patch, nearly all of that came from this short story from four months ago. While I give ANet due credit for responding to criticism, the only thing really new there is the Arcane Council’s motive for allowing her, which really doesn’t impact Scarlet much at all.

EDIT: Maybe that was exceedingly harsh. A lot of the earliest cries of lore-shattering were due to her apparently easy acceptance by a notoriously ethnocentric governing body. Being told that they did in fact see gain for themselves mitigates that point, even if the reasoning is slightly ridiculous.

“According to historians, these early Ritualists from the pre-magic era relied on a similar power granted by the dead—by ancestors of the great and powerful who maintained a connection to their descendents. The power of Spirit allowed mortal humans to practice what might be seen as a form of magic. These human Ritualists adapted to true magic when the gods introduced it, but still rely on the Spirits of the dead to put these skills into practice. Unfortunately for scholars such as myself, the skills of the true Ritualist are no longer to be seen; but those that evolved from the merging of magic and Spirit certainly are widespread.” http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/An_Empire_Divided

Villain Sue is still supposed to be wish fulfillment, but I think you’ve pretty much hit it on the head. “Mary Sue” is a term that technically describes a motive for writing a character, but in practice it can only be assigned to characters who display the hallmarks of that motivation, and it’s weird to say one character is a Mary Sue due to the fact that she’s unbelievably perfect, and another isn’t despite displaying that same trait. It does dilute the meaning somewhat, but I think it’s a perfectly natural progression of the term. It may not be used in the same way as it was in the golden age of star trek fanfic, but the new usage is nonetheless popularly accepted. It is, love it or hate it, here to stay.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Then there’s the fact that Ritualist’s abilities were a kind of ancestral magic, which is pretty darn awesome. Guardians and Engineers can go die, I want my Rit back >.>

I know >.< Maybe if we offer them as sacrifice to the sacred ancestors?

Erukk.1408:

I think it more has to deal with the fact that Ritualists aren’t a Tyrian (continent) profession.

I really, really, want to believe you are right, and I seem to vaguely recall a dev statement to that effect… but I think my hopes may just be deluding me on that account. In any event, though, the problem is that none of that came through in McGough’s reply. He was asked point-blank if we would ever see ritualist magic return, and his answer wasn’t that it never took hold in the north or any other such cultural consideration- it was that that method had effectively been rendered defunct by newer, “better” ways of spellcasting. And as much as that makes sense, in it’s own kind of way, it is a terrible disappointment.