Guild Wars 2

I think it’s debatable if Cthulhu is killable or not, Lovecraft never wrote a story about someone actually trying, since it was not his style. I hold it like Arnold Schwarzenegger, “If it’s bleeds, we can kill it.”

If a boat can hurt Cthulhu, missiles can too. Compare him to Godzilla, does that guy even feel missiles? Certainly not, but he is not invincible.
Now I want to see a Cthulhu vs Godzilla match, what wins, the aura of madness and despair or a atomic breath to the face. I don’t think Cthuhlu had to consider wearing hats for a while after getting hit by one.

Well there is concept art of them running, weapons drawn towards something. But it’s a rather old piece, the Kodan shown on the concept art is towering compared to Eir/that Norn lady that kind of looks like Eir.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/2/28/Snowden_Drifts_loading_screen.jpg

That’s the one I ment

Hi there, could you draw my human ele? She is hot-blooded and impulsive. Her favorite element is air, so feel free to add some lightning effects.
And then there is my Norn engineer, he lost his sanity a long while ago, but it isn’t too noticeable, unless he equips his flamethrower and goes all nuts. (yes he should have the flamethrower equipped^^)
Both can appear in the same pic if you like.

Considering how much Anet loves their Sylvari, I heavily doubt they make Trahearne a villian, if they haven’t planned it anyway. He rather never shows up again in future expansions, to avoid annoying the players with him.

It’s a while ago since I read the story, so I misremembered the ending a bit it seems. I know the old ones follow some really bizarre alien biology, but I can’t recall they were ever be made out to be truely indestructable, besides the prophecies by people who soon lost their minds afterwards.
In other words, the sources on them aren’t the most trustworthy, so we can only go by the things we know, that is a boat to the head can wound a old one. In conclusion, you can concetrate your fire power on one until he’s a pile of dust. Sure, maybe he will reform, but that could be enough time for the stars to align differently (seriously why did he even bother to wake up, if his time window was so ridiculously small?) That is of course if you can keep your sanity that long, which seems to be depended on the individuals willpower.

To be honest, I hardly see much difference between them and EDs. We could only kill Zhaitan because, we weakened him and had superior fire power. I think you could possible do the same to an old one.

That said, I think old ones are great villians, and I love that the EDs are very lovecraftian, but they are not entirely the same. Meaning rules that apply to old ones, don’t have to apply to EDs.

Gaudrath.6725:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

He didn’t die, but he was knocked out by a boat ramming into his head.

Exactly my point.

To be honest, I don’t think you understood what I ment. Yes, Cthulhu did not die, but the point of my post was the second part. He was knocked out by a freakin’ boat rammed into his head.
Meaning, no matter how terrifying Cthulhu is described, how it’s mentioned that he could devourer the souls of every last human on earth, he is still not undefeatable. One guy with ba… courage could take him out. And it’s not like Cthulhu woke up 2 hous later being slightly enraged, no he was send back into a deep slumber!

Imagine what a nuke could have done to him! Okay, if I remember correctly, the story is set in the 20’s but still some concentrated fire power and the old one could be gone for good. Really most people forget that part entirely. They think old ones can not be defeated, but yes they can. The prophecies of them being the harbingers of the apocalypse were made in times when people did not have superior fire power.

You want something truely unkillable? Then look at Azathoth, the Demon Sultan. Compared to him Cthulhu is a catholic schoolgirl. But the Elder Dragons of GW2 are nothing like him and I never likened them to him.

Earth elementals. Love eatin’ some good old dirt.

WarriorOfAsgard.3705:

Who are you to say what another person can or cannot RP? In the RP world that’s godmodding to suit your own views. Just because you can’t be kittened to say he’s already defeated doesn’t mean someone else has to say that as well. Furthermore, I’m not RPing with the NPCs, I’m RPing with other players, so I can choose to ignore them. That is simply a mechanics issue for me.

Was about to write the same.

@ Gaudrath: I don’t RP myself, but I know people who do and they have no problem with the game as it is, because they use their imagination, something you should be able to do too if you claim to be one. Otherwise, I think the majority of the community hardly cares about you not being able to RP, because the game is not RP friendly. In other words, I’m going to ignore future “it breaks my immersion QQ!” posts. They have nothing to do with lore anyway.

Rubbish. The minions of Zhaitan are so fanatic that they believe every single lie he tells them. There are other minions that yell similar things, but it’s not true. They are probably trying to break the moral of their partially human attackers, using their former religious authority as basis.

Oglaf.1074:

You just don’t get Norns.

This. If you don’t understand why your Norn says those things, Norn are not for you. (you can still paly them, but not in a rp kind of way, I guess)

Kain Francois.4328:

Why do Sylvari Hounds follow a Charr Ranger?

Sylvari Hounds behave like normal dogs and therefore follow the same masters a normal dog would. Why can the pale tree produce them? I don’t know, Mary-Sue power-hour I guess.

Gaudrath.6725:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

The elder dragons aren’t classical villians and Anet never claimed they would be. They are more like forces of nature or Lovecrafts old ones.

So tell me, how did Cthulhu die? Does whipping a stormy sea produce any results? :p

He didn’t die, but he was knocked out by a boat ramming into his head.

@Grmilore:

“The Elder Dragons are completely different life forms who think differently from the sentient races of Tyria, make their will think that they are doing good and arent “Typical evil” bad guys.”

I presume you haven’t played the full story yet, because the way most of Zhaitans higher ranking minions talk you get the impression that they actually do think that they are doing good and the races of Tyria are evil and want to stop their mission for greater good.

Except the rather modern siege weapons, but this again, is probably just resources.

The elder dragons aren’t classical villians and Anet never claimed they would be. They are more like forces of nature or Lovecrafts old ones. They have no motives you can understand, they just live to consume and once almost everything is conusumed they go back to sleep until there is something to feed on again.
That said, I would have liked to see Zhaitan before the “epic” battle, for example with him directly attacking Claw Island, but that would have been a plot hole again. If he flies around attacking the races personally why didn’t he just destroy LA and so on.
No Zhaitan has no interest in dealing with the races of Tyria personally. He has his minions which gather food and troops for him and that is enough.
There are enough villians with more understandable motives, like all the racial enemies. I myself, like the fact that we have both classical villians and lovecraftian ones.

At least since Nightfall, GW has a stronger focus on comedic elements. That’s another thing I really like, since in my opinion it keeps the story fresh and the attention of the average audience. When I write longer stories, I always put in comedic elements, for me it just has to be part of a good narrative.
This also seems to be Jeff Grubb’s style since, as I said it most obvious since Nightfall, the first part he worked on. So you can expect those comedic elements to reappear in future storylines. If that puts you off, well than I’m sorry, but I don’t think they’ll change it.

Btw GoA had comedy elements too, pretty much all the interaction between Kranxx and Gullik for example (“don’t touch that!”).

It’s supposed to be now, or atleast closer to GW2 than 1. There are more inaccuracies than the Northern area. The Janthir-Bay for example is wrong, Shing-Jea is attached to the Canthan mainland and the Jadesea is not marked as a sea (still petrified?).

This could be due to fact that the map was made by people on Tyria, which may don’t know how certain parts of Tyria look in reality.

Mystic Starfish.2586:

The Guild Wars (you know, since that’s kinda the reason why we’re here)

This so much! I actually once had the idea of making an RTS about the Guild Wars, with the 3 human nations, Charr and unspecified guilds as factions. I think they could make a broader brand out of the GW franchise, however I also understand that they are MMO designers, so switching to a RTS game might not be easy or even possible for Anet, especially with the NC Soft as publisher.

As I said, it’s debatable if King Frozenwind is in fact an elemental. He looks like one that’s for sure, but that could be due to limited resources. The Frosties or snowmen do appear in the mists, in the repeatable Dwayna versus Grenth quests. Yes they can be made in Tyria, via magic snow I guess but they are undoubtly connected to Dwayna.
I suspect Gargoyles to be magical creatures for 3 reasons.
A. In most settings Gargoyles are animated objects.
B. They appear in the Mists as servants of Thorn. All of Thorn’s other servants are ghosts, undead (aka animated corpses), candy-corn soldiers (who could be some kind of elemental) and since GW2 also plastic spiders (which undoubtly are animate objects). So all of his other servants are magically created (except ghost who are souls that tagged along with the king, but I don’t want to go into detail on the properties of a soul in GW lore again^^), why would the Gargoyles differ?
C. Their appereance in GW2 reminds more of elemental creatures than anything that evolved naturally. In GW1 they looked rather normal, however they were all spellcasters, most of them air elementalist. Now due to GW1’s game mechanics that might mean nothing. I mean there were plants that were monks. :P

Okay I was wrong about the reason the veil is thin, I didn’t know that about the necromancer, I should have payed more attention to the events there. But it’s not so much about the reason why the veil is thin in certain places, I for example knew about the ritual in the Gendarran fields, but only the fact that there are places with a thin veil.
Let me explain again. Human gods are very powerful beings dwelling in the mists. If they interact with humans on a regular basis they weaken the veil. The spirits of the wild and possibly the ancestor spirits of Cantha can also interact with Tyria, weakening the veil. This however is a process that takes some time. It’s not like some god says hello to his human followers for the first time and the next day the place is filled with creatures from the mists.
However if for hundreds of years a strong connection is held between mists and Tyria it eventually weakens the barrier. If that connection stops, it regrows to it’s natural strength.
It could be pretty much anyone from the mists who interacts with Tyria on a regular basis and then stops, it would be the same effect. So the barrier has nothing to do with the gods per se, they just happen to be powerful beings in the mists, who interacted a lot with Tyria, thereby weakening the veil. There absense let’s it regenerate. Places who still have a rather thin veil, were just hot spots of Tyria-Mist interaction and therefore need more time to regenerate.

And again, that’s my speculation, of course it could be completly wrong, but so far I see nothing that would completly disprove it in one swipe.

Twill.6217:

i think you should look up the definition of sarcasm.

What Rhinzual said, also I saw that same statement by you in another thread. Either you made the same joke twice or you were serious. I thought it was the letter. So sorry if I jumped at conclusions. Sexism is just something that really annoys me, no mater who it comes from.

Well I’ll further elaborate my theory. Yes elementals aren’t from the mists, they come into existing in places with an above average magical power. However King Frozenwind is also an elemental and he lives in the mists, specifically the underworld. Now one can argue that he is no normal elemental, but there also frosties, the servants of dwayna, which are also elementals and happen to come from, you guessed it, the mists. And let us not forget about the candy-corn soldiers, who seem to elementals too.
Djinns are said to be some kind of elemental too, they are spirits connected to an element who usually protect places of magical power (either by their own will or being bound to it). Also notice that I said related to elementals and Gargoyles, in a way that all are creatures created by magic. The mists just happens to be a place that creates magical creatues (for example demons or Razah), that why I connected them to it.
Secondly, I think that you cna’t just go to any place in the mists from any point in Tyria. For example the Temple of Ages, only connected to the Underworld and the Fissure. Want to get to the Rift? Well you have to travel to the Tomb/Battle Isles then.
The reason we still have problems with aatxes and shades is simply that the veil to teh underworld is still thin their, because so many players traveled there. This was acknowledged in lore with the awakening of Dhuum story arc.
However as I said, no Gargoyles live in the Underworld except the special portion, the Mad Realm, which only connects to Tyria during Halloween.
So why did the Gargoyles leave so long after the silence of the gods? Because the veil became slower thicker not over night. It needed years before it was so thick that they could not return. The Gargoyles noticed it just in time and left.
Last but not least, yes the Havroun can go into the Mists, but there is always only one Havroun, with disciple, so they can barely weaken the veil much. Also there are a lot of ghost like creatures and djinns in the Far Shiverpeaks. I could see them coming from the mists, because the Norn lived there for hundreds of years communicating with the spirits.
The human gods are simply stronger than the spirits, weakening the veil more than they interact with Tyria than the spirits do. Same for Koda.

“So a one-time event that occurred in the persistent world was the signal that Zhaitan was, officially, dead as far as the plot of GW2 was concerned. All the players who hadn’t fought Zhaitan before then in their personal stories, their stories can’t be considered canon because it was happening after Lost Shores”

I facepalmed so hard at this. I don’t mean to attack you personally, but you seem incredibly pretentious here.
Yes the story has a canonic timeline, as did GW1. When you play it, you play that part of the timeline. And now don’t tell me this immersion breaking. How hard is it to think of the personal story stuff to be something that happend before the Lost Shore event.
Let me give you an example. I played Prophecies and then Nightfall and Eye of the North and only after that Factions. And during that time I shifted my main char from ranger to dervish, so I re-did all the prophecies stuff with my dervish. So timeline wise that would be all over the place, but you know what, in my head I just pretended that it happened in the correct order.

I’m sorry but if you want never anything actually important to happen in the timeline only because you can’t play it when it’s first released, than why should the game have a plot at all?
The worlds not revolving around you, learn to live with the canonical timeline as it’s shown in the game or don’t.

Twill.6217:

aha! so this IS just male testosterone filled issue after all! i was correct….

no, honestly, “being a whimp” is not always a bad trait in leaders. i welcome it in real-life military men. being too “whimpy” to push that shinny red nuclear warhead button is a favorable trait when it comes to survival of our species :P

get over yourself, we’re not cavemen any more. it’s not about who has the bigger stick.

What a incredible sexist remark. Only because one guy thinks a male character in a game is whimpy doesn’t mean he is a dumb caveman and it certainly doesn’t mean that every guy things that. A lady friend of mine for example doesn’t like Logan because she things he is a wuss.

I personally dislike Trahearne because he is a Mary-Sue, he comes in knows everything and everyone and every NPC loves him. I would feel the same if he was female. In fact, my most despised character in GW lore is Gwen, undoubtly female and drama queen.
Maybe there are people whose dislike is based on a characters gender, but that would be the minority. So please stop your generalization, take an example in a Norn, they never judge groups only individuals. You could learn much from that.

Twill.6217:

aha! so this IS just male testosterone filled issue after all! i was correct….

no, honestly, “being a whimp” is not always a bad trait in leaders. i welcome it in real-life military men. being too “whimpy” to push that shinny red nuclear warhead button is a favorable trait when it comes to survival of our species :P

get over yourself, we’re not cavemen any more. it’s not about who has the bigger stick.

What a incredible sexist remark. Only because one guy thinks a male character in a game is whimpy doesn’t mean he is a dumb caveman and it certainly doesn’t mean that every guy things that. A lady friend of mine for example doesn’t like Logan because she things he is a wuss.

I personally dislike Trahearne because he is a Mary-Sue, he comes in knows everything and everyone and every NPC loves him. I would feel the same if he was female. In fact, my most despised character in GW lore is Gwen, undoubtly female and drama queen.
Maybe there are people whose dislike is based on a characters gender, but that would be the minority. So please stop your generalization, take an example in a Norn, they never judge groups only individuals. You could learn much from that.

SirDrygan.1823:

I can’t wait to see a “I told you so.” from players who predicted Trahearne is actually evil. Since you all wanted him to be evil and if ANet agrees with you all and really put out a plot twists like everyone wanted to in a future Expansion or storyline update.
Since you all “want” him to be evil, you may get this wish, in the future.

Don’t be silly, just because the players don’t like him Anet wont change their plans for him. If they wanted him to become evil, they would do it no matter what the players say. While Anet certainly listens to players concern over game mechanics, I can’t imagine them to change their story for that. The closest thing we got into that direction was including the Mursaat in a side quest in EotN after people wanted to see them again, and even that is debatable, the side quest could have been planned anyway.

Besides that, is there any official raction from Anet, addressing the overwhelming negative overwhelming over Trahearne? I mean it’s certainly disappointing for the people who came up with him, to see how loathed he is.

I had no problems with the way we killed Zhaitan. I mean we flew in on freaking blimbs, a massive air battle was going on and we shot some laser guns at him. How cool is that? Crazy cool! That’s how! And I agree, the rest of the dungeon was pretty awesome too.
The only problem I have is that, I wanted to fire the laser. Not battling of endless waves of Risen. And when I finally get to fire at the big Z himself, he just hangs there on that rock. He looked so sad. I would have rather hugged him at that point.

So what could have been done better? Make the players aim the super laser. Make the big blimb crash after a ram attack by Zhaitan, but he goes down with it. Use cannons to weak Zhaitan who lies under the blimb and tries to snatch you off. Finally jumb down and attack his head, while Zojja activates the self-destruction. Then run away and watch Zhaitan going down in flames. That would have been an epic ending.

Hmm first we might ask, what are Gargoyles in the GW Universe? In most settings they are animated statues, not unlike Golems. In Tyria, however there is no reference to them ever being statues, however such exist in form of the stone guardians in Cantha.
But what are Gargoyles then? My guess is, they are related to elementals and djinns and as such come from somewhere in the Mists, meaning Ascalon was never their natural habitat to begin with. The reason why they are gone is the silence of the human gods. With the gods being more active, the veil between Tyria and the Mists was rather thin, allowing Gargoyles to easily pass it. With the gods being more distant, the veil grew thicker again. The Gargoyles in Tyria were about to be trapped , so they used their last chance to get back into the mists, the rest went extinct.
Now there are still places with a thin veil, like the godlost swamp, but this part leads directly to the Underworld, so only Underworld creatures come from there. The only part of the Underworld that seems to have Gargoyles is the Mad Realm, which only connects to Tyria around Halloween.
That’s my theory.

The minor races, not ever being playable is not a question of story line, but if they are capable of contributing in the same way the big 5 do. The problem the minor races have, none of them has a nation. They are split apart locally and in allegiance.
Notice how one Skritt burrow will welcome you, while another attacks you on sight. Grawl are even known to fight among each other over religous matters, same with Hylek, though it’s more territorial fighting here.
The most unified seem to be the quaggan, as in they are not attacking each other or other races, but they are, to be blunt, just to stupid to be playable race. I highly doubt a quaggan could ever be an engineer, even if he had the dexterity, he still lacks the intelligence. Same for Skritt, you had to play atleast 10 Skritt at once to be able to hold your ground. Ogre and Grawl also don’t seem to be keen on technology.
Granted, Norn don’t have a nation too, and they are also less technological advanced than the other races. However, they don’t fight amongst themself (except Sons of Svanir), and they are also intelligent enough to use machinery.
Last but not least, some of those races have aspects about them that make them hard to balance. Ogres are always beastmasters, Hylek are immune to poison and the Skritt as mentioned before would need to be always in a group to be playable.

The Sylvari being a race of Mary-Sues? Of course they are, just listen to the dialog of other races about them. Except the Charr who apparently mildly distrust them, everyone and their mother loves those salad heads.
The game is about to bring the races together so they can defeat the dragons. This fact makes the Mary-Sue status of the Sylvari even more obvious as no one dislikes or distrusts them. And it’s not just the other playable races, even the freaking Kodan up in the north like them, one of them even says they are his favorites.
That’s not enough? The only characters liked by all other characters around them, who are needed to get the others working together? Caithe and Trahearne.
Oh yeah, they are also immune to physical dragon corruption and have a ridiculous high birthrate. And to top it off, in the 25 years they are around, they managed to aquire high ranking positions in all orders of Tyria. If I would live in Tyria, I would be very suspicious. But no, everyone loves them.
“You don’t win friends with salad” a wise young man once said. But in Tyria you apparently do.

Counterquestion, how many races do you want to be added? Tengu, Largos and Kodan (the most likely imo) would be 3 already. That makes 8 for 8 professions. That’s more than enough, we don’t the lesser races to be added as playables, nor do we need the elder races like dwarves, Mursaat and so on.

I know I have asked for a sketch already, but it was so nicely done, that I just have to ask for another one. This time my human ele wants to be in the spotlight. She is a little hot-blooded and therefore wants to be drawn in a, let’s say seductive manner. Be creative with her. And again thanks.

Those are some very good ideas. Well the story is done Zhaitan is dead, but I hope Anet enhances future personal storylines. Making the story branch off into houndreds of directions means nothing if they don’t feel connected. It’s funny how the GW2 storyline reminds me so much of the Prophecies one, many different stories stuck together, to what can barely be called a continuous narrative, with a rather disappointing boss fight (get lost Lich, I’m hear to fight Mursaat!).
If history repeats itself, we will get good ideas, but a ridiculous villian next and after that finally a great storyline with great characters. Let’s all get our hopes high for the second expansion!

To be honest, that seems to me more like a thing Rurik said, to make his plan look better in front of Adelbern. If they really wanted to get their home back, they would have tried, but they never did, atleast not as a whole group, maybe some individuals joined the vanguard in Ebonhawke, but apparently most of them were fine with starting a new life in Kryta.

They still might see Rurik as a war hero. Even Adelbern’s Ghost wants to see him again, as seen in the Ascalon Catacombs story mode, IIRC. Yes, he was exiled in a fit of rage, but that doesn’t mean that Ascalonians held a grudge at him. He still saved houndreds if not thousands of lives with his actions, and was a well known hero even before his exile.

Yeah my post was more directed at Oglaf than you, since we pretty much agree on all points anway. But your right, we should get back on track.

loneknight.8425:

2. Ruins of Orr is essentially the next Antarctica once the risen threat is mostly taken of. Imo the map has plenty of encampments & vast open ground, which is ripe to evolve into a GvG (?) map, where each guild/nation will try to claim as many territory as possible.

Just you wait, when the Charr find oil there. :P

neon.4863:

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Hello good sir, I have a Norn engineer who wishes to look bad*ss with his flamethrower. If you could draw like this, I would be extremely grateful. The twist? Make him chibi. Thanks!

This is the bad***est, kawaiiest Norn engineer. If you disagree, you’re in for burning.

(I somehow skipped over the part where he was supposed to have a bad*** pose. Sorry about that.)

Ohhh so cute and yet so fierce, exactly what I wanted. Thanks a million and don’t worry this is kitten even without a pose.

Actually the Ascalonian Settlement started more like a refugee camp. The people, who went there, while born in Ascalon, never wanted to go back. They fled from the Charr to start a new life (compare to the european settlers of america, though they fled from oppression, not war). I highly doubt that they see themselves as ascalonian after that many generations. They may hold up some traditions and names from their heritage, but they are by no means citizens of Ascalon.

Edit: Reworded a little

Well Lovecraft was racist, his portrayal of native americans, polynesians and Inuit for example is pretty negative in all stories where they appear.
To quote wikipedia: “Racism is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft’s works which “does not endear Lovecraft to the modern reader” and comes across through many disparaging remarks against the various non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures within his work.”

He was more of a cultural “snob” than a biological racist though, since he respected people of such heritage if they assimilated into the Anglo-Saxon culture, like his jewish wife.
Another quote: “While Lovecraft’s racial attitude has been seen as directly influenced by the time, a reflection of the New England society he grew up in, this racism appeared stronger than the popular viewpoints held at that time.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft

Technically the Norn have no leader, Knut Whitebear just happens to be the leader of their most important settlement.
The Asura also don’t have one leader, they have the Arcane Council, which I doubt would go and kick a dragons butt, going anywhere near one is too dangerous.
And the guy who got the Claw is Smodur, Imperator of the Iron Legion, IIRC. But even with the Claw, I highly doubt he is powerful enough to unite the Charr under him. However I could see him going and kicking some dragonbutt, he or any of the Imperators.

Yes I know that about the sea, and I get how you can be scared by it, I was just mentioning that I’m personally am not. In fact I’m more fascinated than scared by teh deep sea.
As I said, coming from the ocean depths is part of many of Lovecrafts creations, but far from all (Cthulhu might reside in the deep but he is actually from space). The defining trait of all Lovecraftian horrors is being ancient and so scary they drive you insane, only one of which applies to the Karka. But also only partially, they are never said to live very long, just their species is very old, thus they are more like, let’s say Coelacanths.
Also notice, I said Lovecraft was a bit of a racist, more than the standart of his time though. He wasn’t xenophobic to all non-whites, he for example admired middle-eastern culture, but he was regarding people he thought of as primitive.

The reason lovecraftian beasts are often related to the sea, is that Lovecraft was afraid of the ocean and the creatues that live in it. (unlike me, so many tasty creatures in it! yummy).
Lovecraft was also a bit of a racist and xenophobic, often making “primitive” tribal people into cultists that follow the old ones. Does that mean anyone with a tribal background is lovecraftian? Of course not, nobody thinks that (I hope), so why apply the label lovecraftian to anything from the deep sea?

I don’t see how Karka are lovecraftian. They are ancient, but that is all the similarities they share. Being from the deep sea is not what makes you lovecraftian. Some of Lovecraft’s creation came from the deep sea, but most didn’t and some of those who dwelled there, were originally from space. The Karka also lack the complete alien morals, they behave like normal animals, with a bit of a swarm intelligence, but nothing too unusual. They also don’t make you descent into madness/have mind controlling or altering powers (which the elder dragons have).
They are more akin to living fossils than anything Lovecraft created.

I think it also depends on the race you choose. My human storyline for example seemed much closer timewise, than my Norn storyline. 1-3 months sounds about right for it though, with the order storyline up to the second battle of claw island being maybe 4 months and the forging of the pact and invasion of Orr up to 5 months.
Together I’d say it’s a year max, probably less if halloween and wintersday are canonically after Zhaitan, like the Lost Shore event.

Hello good sir, I have a Norn engineer who wishes to look bad*ss with his flamethrower. If you could draw like this, I would be extremely grateful. The twist? Make him chibi. Thanks!

Most people liked the campaign the best, they started with. Mind you, I was only talking about the storylines, not the setting or music.
I did start with Prophecies, and I liked the lore behind it, but the storyline seemed more like random things I got dragged into than a connected story. Especially the ending sucked, we take all this time to fight the Mursaat and the at the 11th. hour they are replaced by that Lich and his titan friends. There are good twist endings and there are, well this kind of crap.
Cantha had huge potential, making it almost a Shakespearian story of revenge and hybris, but Shiro had such a ridiculous voice (at least in the german dub, the english version was slightly better, but to balance it out, our Danika sounded better) and whenever he appeared on screen he acted more like a dumb muscle than a threating villian, which together just didn’t make it work for me. When I played it, I hoped the fortune teller would replace him as the real villian. Besides that, I’m also no fan of Mhenlo.
For Nightfall it helped that I’m a huge fan of middle eastern and persian culture and I actually like desert landscapes. The storyline was the best written of all, imo. Varesh and Abaddon were great villians and I liked all of the supporting cast. It also gave us Palawa Joko (<3). My only complain is that we actually fought Abaddon. I just think the idea of a few men attacking that poor guys mouth was a little absurd. I expected to fight Varesh in an avatar of Abaddon form (she was a dervish after all) while we see the other gods battle Abaddon in the background. I guess the engine was to limited for something like that though.
What I liked about EotN was the shift from human problems to over races, mainly the dwarves. While the story also gave us Gwen… urgh… it had many likeable characters too. The ending was a bit lame though.
War in Kryta was a great conclusion of the Mursaat arc (one which we did not get before due to Mr. Khilbron) and a good set up for GW2.
Hearts of the North, well I give it credit for making me like Kieran. Before, I saw him as Gwen’s wannabe boyfriend, but in this he showed some character development. Big minus points for being very cheesy and involving Gwen.
Winds of Change, well I saw what they were trying to do, making the PC question his fighting for the greater good and how it can lead into fanatism, but at the time, isn’t it a little late for that? Why didn’t you think about that after the White Mantle used you? Also of course the whole first act was boring, but it got better with the last 2, overall it wasn’t bad.

tigirius.9014:

Thanks Matthew. On a side note I can’t imagine how horrible a Risen Karka would be to fight omg…..the crazy CC from the Risen combined with the extreme toughness of the Karka (spinal shivers).

Only certain kinds of Risen CC, mainly the former Orrians. But I guess it was a joke anyway and I just ruined it…

@Matthew: Thanks for clearing that up (yes, I called it!). How big are the chances we get a lore Q&A in the near future?

Every time I go to Ebonhawke I pretend to spit on Gwen’s grave. Good times.

Well I guess we get one story about it in GW1’s Beyond, if I remember correctly, the live said that they wanted to show how it was founded. Also there is the untold story of Evennia who went missing in Ascalon.

Well Zhaitan would need to kill a Karka first before it can become a risen and seeing how strong their shells are and with Zhaitan being occupied with the Pact forces, I’d say no risen ever killed a Karka. At best they killed some hatchlings, but they aren’t really risen material, they are small and their shells are weak and since they are undead, they wouldn’t grow up anymore.
While I do think a champion of Zhaitan could kill an adult Karka, he just never bothered to send one against them, as long as they are needed to attack the Pact. Besides that, I’m sure the Karka avoided the Risen as long as they were contolled by Zhaitan, only after his death they broke through their ranks to get to what would later be Southsun Cove. It’s impled that canonicly Lost Shores takes place after Zhaitan’s death.

For me, the story starts of good (played Norn, Charr and human so far, from which I liked Charr the most), the only problem I have is that the first 2 quests arcs seem to have no connection at all. They feel more like glorified sidequests than anything.
When the order storylines start, the story get’s really good (played OoW and Priory so far), the quest to choose one was well done and really gives a good idea of what the orders are like. Of the order storylines themselves I prefered OoW over the Priory, mostly because I disliked Sieran (she just has no idea about history, what she tells me, a 4th grader should know), while I really enjoyed doing stuff with Tybalt. That’s how you make a character. He is 3 dimensional, has an interesting backstory, is funny but not silly and kicks kitten while not stealing your spotlight.
The racial sympathies so far were also good storylines, I played Grawl and Skritt, prefering the first since Gara was such a likeable and surprisingly smart Grawl. The Skritt storyline is bynature more wacky but still good, they just lack someone as likeable as Gara.
With the introduction of Trahearne it all goes downhill, since it all starts to become his story, about his wyld hunt and his Pact that he leads. And of course he pretty much replaces your order mentor. However, with the battle of Fort Trinity the starts to get better again, the attack on Orr was interesting and for the most part I was hanging out with strike teams and not Trahearne. I actually liked all those couples I met, the constantly betting Charr, the argueing Asura and the Human coxswains.
The very end about Trahearnes wyld hunt was…. actually pretty good. Especially meeting King Reza was a great nod to GW1. The final battle was better than I expected (as all my guildmates told me how awful it is, however they did when it was bugged, with Zhaitan not doing anything after being hit by the lasers), still not a triumphant finale. It didn’t really feel like I killed him, it was more the group effort, which would be fine if atleast the story before that was about me and not some other characters goals. This is my biggest issue with the “personal” storyline, after the second battle for Claw Island it stops being personal and starts being the “Trahearne and Friends show”.
Final verdict: 6/10 slow start, good in the middle, rather bad third act, okay finale.
In comparison with other GW storylines:
Prophecies: 6/10
Factions: 6.5/10
Nightfall: 9/10
EotN: 7/10
War in Kryta: 8/10
Hearts of the North: 6.5/10
Winds of Change: 7/10

Because he is not an equal oppurtunity badguy.

No I guess it’s not Jormag’s will, he would just corrupt anyone he deems worthy, since he also corrupts female Kodan. It’s just the Sons, they dislike women for what Jora did, so they don’t allow them in their ranks. The have no controle over what Jormag does. The reasons why we don’t see female Norn Icebrood with the Sons, is probably that Jormag just barely cares enough about them (as they are worthy reinforcement for his troops) to not let send female Norn along with them. I mean, why would an elder dragon care about his minions gender? They possibly don’t even have genders themself. He does however care about the moral of his reinforcements, since he isn’t directly mind controlling them. Showing he uses females could potentially drive them away from him.

As the article states, the only people who did not know sex was connected to pregnancy were those Trobianders about which the article also states: “You can’t exactly blame the Trobianders for coming up with such a supernatural explanation when they were practically living on contraceptive yams (yes, apparently that’s a thing). It turns out that if you’re unintentionally on birth control most of your life, it’s actually pretty hard to make the sex-pregnancy connection, and ghosts start to make a whole lot more sense.”

So those were special circumstances, all other articles don’t state the respective people didn’t know about the connection. Yes they had some weird theories, but they still all saw the connection. Which prooves my point to be honest.