Guild Wars 2

I preferd the name Overgrown for the Mordrem. They used it at the very beginning of LS season 2, in Gates of Maguuma. It did fit much better with the names of the other dragon minions imo. I wonder why they changed it.

It’s also worth mentioning that ancient gods, which the pretty much all fictional deities are based on, had a multitude of functions too. Some of them are rarely seen in texts but must have played a huge role in every day life. A professor for ancient history I know once told me that in the greek/roman pantheon basically every god could be associated with absolutely everything. Your wagon broke down on the road? Pray to Zeus. Your hamster died? Pray to Zeus. You want a good harvest? Pray to Zeus. Or you could pray to Hermes, Hades and Demeter respectively, whatever you feel like.

So seeing the GW deities being associated with a multitude of different spheres, even if some of them are only ever brought up once, is not unusual. It would be rather odd if that wasn’t the case.

Most of the gods don’t show too much relation to their element. I mean there is Grenth as a bit of an exception, having King Frozenwind in his service, being associated with winter and such, but besides him, I don’t see any of the gods being more connected to a certain element than Balthazar is to fire. Melandru has plants, which do grow in earth, but aside from that I can’t remember much of a connection to that element. Dwayna has winged servants, but she also has snowmen in her ranks. Lyssa is now the goddess of water since Abaddon’s demise, yet I see nothing that connects her aside from the water in the Mirror of Lyss.
For pretty much all of the gods their element is an “informed ability”, so we only know it through in-game texts, outside sources and NPC-talk. Well that and in GW1 we have the dervish, who uses skills connected to the gods, which in turn usually were coupled with an element. Skills with Balthazar’s name often caused burning, skills with Grenth’s name had cold damage and so on.

Razah is a being created in the mists, like demons are, not a mortal returning from the mists after dying which is what OP was asking for.

I thought that was some kind of antelope, not a horse.

That wouldn’t explain why I didn’t get the crate scrapper achievement though. I will try it again tomorrow, maybe it works then.

Yes to both questions. I made sure to look up if I did everything right before I created this thread.

In the story mission “The Waypoint Conundrum” of “The Dragon’s Reach: Part 1” the achievements “Crate Scrapper” and “Leave no Survivors” seem to be bugged. I did both of them correctly, yet neither was unlocked.

What does a heavy Krytan accent sound like anyway?

Well yeah it’s Drax, the interviewer, that brings up the idea of it being an ascalonian-elonian mix, not one of the writers. If he asked for an ascalonian-orrian mix, I bet you the answer would have been the same. So as I said nothing even remotely confirmed, Anet just did the equivalent of saying “that’s nice sweetie” like a granny when the grandchild keeps telling stories from school.

There are plenty of references to horses, they just haven’t made a physical appearance yet.

Some Examples:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Iron_Horse_Mine

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Celestial_Horse

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Necrid_Horseman

There is also a scene in the book Edge of Destiny which features horses. They are seen in the distance while Rytlock, Logan and Caithe are on their way to Lion’s Arch.

witcher.3197:

Ancient Ascalonian architecture is something the devs use all around the mists and Tyria when they are portraying ruins not significant enough to come up with something for them.

The ocean fractal has: unique Elonian statues and some ancient ruins (Ascalonian, as always), so it’s safe to say that the fractal is Elonian and the devs simply did not want to come up with more Elonian stuff for it and instead slapped some overused Ascalonian to it.

What’s elonian about these statues? The statues of Istan were clearly influenced by egyptian/nubian art, the statues in the fractal only look vaguely egyptian, they remind me more of ancient greek statues from the geometric period (which were in turn based on egyptian style but with less details).

The fauna also isn’t too much to go on, it’s pretty much mediterranean themed. The Krait never appeard in Ascalon, but neither did they in Elona, so they are no hint to where it is either. The whole thing might as well be set in ancient Orr or southern Kryta. Depending on where such cliffs we see in the beginning could be.

I guess the devs “could be” regarding it being a mix was born from the fact that they didn’t really think about the lore of this one and they didn’t want to put a damper on the fan speculation. I think going around and just telling people it’s a mix of Ascalon and Elona like it is a proven fact isn’t the best thing to do here.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• Aquatic Ruins Fractal is heavily implied to be a mixture of two times and places – one location being Elona, the other being Ascalon; the times are unclear.

I still don’t see what’s supposed to be elonian about this fractal. The statues, that’s it. And as I have explained in the past, just because a statue looks vaguely egyptian doesn’t mean it’s egyptian. The same applies here, especially since the area doesn’t look particularly elonian and the humans in the beginng have the looks of Ascalonians/Krytans/maybe Orrians.

Are you okay there buddy? You seem to have a very sticky shift key.

I think it’s more likely from what we see in the game that the dwarves ventured north. Despite their adventurous nature the Norn didn’t really seem to travel much to the south prior to the events of Eye of the North. Atleast there is no case that I remember (except maybe Ulfarr Leadfoot, however he is still pretty close to the Shiverpeaks). The dwarves however, atleast the Stone Summit set up a few camps and strongholds in the Far Shiverpeaks, which takes atleast a few months to do, if not years. And they had the time to do it between the civil war of Prophecies and the events of EotN.

Though my guess would be that the first contact happened before that time, seeing as both races are rather ancient (if the Jotun are to be believed) and inhabited the Shiverpeaks for a long time. Again no sign of the Norn appearing outside the mountain ranges, so I guess they really didn’t like the heat of the flatter lands? Or they thought there was no worthy prey? Or perhabs the dwarves didn’t allow them to go south, Ogden doesn’t seem to trust them and that could be the general perception of them by dwarves? I don’t think the Norn would care though, even if there was a treaty that said so.

I would say there is probably no Lore reason for the Norn not being in southern Tyria, it’s just that they haven’t invented them back in the day.

Edit: That took me 15 minutes to post, because my cat distracted me with her cuteness. Curse you, you white fluffy charm ball!

Why would the Sons start worshipping Sylvari? They don’t worship other dragon minions, only the dragon itself. They even occasionally fight Icebrood instead of working together, though I’d say the aggression comes from the latter.

Anyway even if they recognize Mordremoth as a deity, which I’m not convinced they do, as they only seem to work for Jormag, Maguuma is far away and unlike the Pact the do not have airships. So I doubt they could do much regardless of their allegiance.

The Charr are good at 3 things: Engineering, fighting and being opportunistic*. Each legion specializes in one of these traits, but they still have them all.

*by that I mean, they will strike at your weakpoints and fight dirty if necessary. Honorable fights are cool and all, but in the end the result matters the most.

I’m always sceptical with people self-promoting their own videos, but this was very well done. Just a recap of the story, no speculation, pretty much just facts. The audio level seemed a little inconsistent at times, but overall good job with the narration and the editing.

I also liked that you showed how cool the Zhaitan fight actually is. I know most people complain(ed) about it not being epic enough, however I think it has some good potential, it’s more hampered by the execution. I still think fighting Zhaitan with cannons is more imaginative than just killing him with the run-of-the-mill magic sword (Caladbolg in this case), as many people wished. They only thing I would change is make the phase shorter in which you fire at him while he hangs on the mountain. End the phase with Zhaitan destroying the cannons, so in order to finish him off you have to ram the entire airship into him. That would have been a cool deathblow.

Do you really think this is a modern invention? Because that is clearly not the case.

It wasn’t common knowledge, no. It became a popular theory after the players discovered the Infinite Coil Reactor and when people started playing the Arah explorable mode, especially the Jotun-Path. So about 1 month after lauch I would say. However it wasn’t confirmed until the end of Living Story Season 1.

How are racial skills going to work with the revenant? Will they change with the swapping of legendaries or will they stay the same? Will the revenant even be able to use racial skills or will they be removed from the game altogether?

I want that Skritt smell as air freshener in my car.

Of course that is only a joke, I don’t own a car right now.

Isn’t it obvious? For the glory of EU! Best server region confirmed!

I’m pretty sure, if you buy the expansion you can go to the new maps. Maybe you will have to through the Silverwastes or Dry Top first, but that doesn’t mean you have to play the Living Story first.

Why would they be Heket? Those live in Elona, which is pretty much the opposite side of the super continent, while Hylek live right next to the Itzel. Granted, the adults look kinda toad like, but the young (or smaller ones) look more like tree frogs, so from visuals alone they could be both. Again though, judging by the location Heket wouldn’t make sense. On top of that, the only Heket we know live in arid climate and have african cultural influences, while these share both the humid jungle location and also the meso-american influence with the Hylek.

A couple of things changed between the PC Gamer (or PC Games in my country) article and release. Another thing would be renaming the Iron Citadel to Black Citadel or a more obvious example would be the Sylvari redesign.

- Yo mama is so fat, the Norn captured her as worthy prey for the Great Hunt.

- Yo mama is so fat, she has to consume all magic in Tyria to satisfy her hunger.

- Yo mama is so broke, Ho-Ho-Tron has to collect charity for her.

- Yo mama once was told by an Asura to test a Skritt’s IQ, but they had to stop when she thought the Skritt could read her mind.

I’m not terribly good at these.

JackDaniels.1697:

Oh the possibilities…

How about we just wait and see how the Sylvari betrayal actually plays out in the game? If they are like other dragon minions then yes we have to cut them down. If they are somehow still connected to the Pale Tree by some deus ex machina magic of friendship hijinks (and this is Anet we are speaking of, they love Sylvari so much I’m sure they are going to go this route) then we can talk about saving them.

draxynnic.3719:

I’d have to say…

I’m a little unsure of it. It depends on how it’s implemented, but I’m worried about how learning languages draws from the same pool as the combat and exploration abilities – it’d need to have in-game benefits in line with the other abilities that go beyond simply satisfying curiosity, otherwise I could see it ending up essentially as a tax on being interested in the lore. Want to read this stuff? You’re going to have to put up with having less effective characters than the people who don’t care!

This is what I was thinking when they announced it, but on the other hand they are probably aware of that issue. Let’s just wait until we get more information on it.

ElysianEternity.6215:

(Palawa we still love u)

Nightfall was my favorite campaign because of characters like him. It feels like it has the highest concetration of well written and interesting characters (for an MMO atleast). Since then the quality has been declining again, though they do get some gems out once in a while; Tybalt for example.

Titus.4285:

Hey Solomon. In all of the family trees, I’ve always used the full names (first,middle,last) whenever one exists.

So, the names you see there is unfortunately all the names we know.

I agree though, please give us more lore and info on the various families!
Should be noted: in modern (RL) royalty it is the norm to have/use only the first name. So that’s probably the reason it’s like this.

So it was you who made those family trees? Big thanks for that!

And while we are bringing royal family names together: Wade Samuelson could be a candidate, atleast he is descended from ascalonian royality (though it’s unclear if through Adelbern’s line or Duke Barradin’s, I suspect the latter). I must admit that this doesn’t mean his name comes from a royal family, to me it doesn’t sound very noble-ish.

Well we know that a few of them were named Thorn, not sure if that family kept the throne though. If so, it’s possible they don’t use that name any more, so they aren’t associated with Oswald and Edrick.

Is it caturday yet?

Gotta say, that reveal finally made the Sylvari somewhat interesting. At launch they were the worst written of the 5 main races and that’s saying something since Norn and Asura were basically walking stereotypes.
But Sylvari lacked everything that would make them even remotely compelling in my eyes. They were the blandest of the bland, either completely pure white knights, absolute neutrals (the soundless) or horribly evil black knights (though the latter two are unplayable). Pretty much all major Sylvari NPCs had as much character as a wet towel. And in most cases they were simply written to be superior to all the other races, depsite the games emphasis on cooperation. It was a Sylvari who tried to mend the wounds of Destiny’s Edge, it was a Sylvari that formed the Pact, it was a creation of the Pale Tree that was needed to cleanse Orr. Sylvari were said to be the best smiths and the most balanced (the latter was said by a Kodan). It wasn’t helped by the fact that Scarlet was a Villain-Sue par excellence.
The first time I saw a glimpse of light on the writing of this race was the aftermath of the battle for LA, when a Sylvari asked for help, but an Asura Lionguard just yelled at him. Finally conflict! And now it will only get more interesting. This could be the set-up for a really well written story of lingering racism and resentment. I honestly can not see how any one would not want this. So much potential for interesting plots and characters! It’s like the Charr-human conflict only more relevant to the modern times.

Pshhht no words, only dreams now.

saventis.1485:

lol was her name varuka by any chance

Pretty sure it was Varuka-Michelle-Rollgardina-Victualia-Peppermint. At that time people still thought plenty of given names are the way of the future.

For more random trivia: The secret code phrase of the Order of Whispers is: “The Quaggan bacons at midnight.”

Keeper of Da Cookie.8714:

The Norn […] and Asura all have a full race back story all fleshed out and the full community knows it..

What? I mean I agree that human and Charr lore is pretty fleshed out but both Norn and Asura are severely lacking when it comes to backstory. The Asura for example are said to have had an civilization below the surface that easily outshines the current one, whith several cities atleast as big as Rata Sum of today. But that is all we know. Yeah that and they wanted to kill all Skritt at one point but that’s it. We know there ruins of earlier settlements they had above the surface, but so far this wa never expanded upon.
Norn are even worse off, all we know about their history comes from the Jotun and Charr and that is neither much nor incredibly reliable. Though more understandable in their case, as they don’t seem to have a tradition of written history (a problem I know too well as a historian with special interest in the antiquity).

For your questions:
1. GoA and EoD are your go to ressources here, as SoS doesn’t have any Sylvari in it. I think EoD explains a bit more, especially about Caithe and Faolain’s relationship, but GoA has some bits on Sylvari anatomy.
2. Because they are so young, they just don’t have much backstory. Other races are round for thousands of years, the sylvari are a quarter of a century old. Also as the last LS update shows, they hold some secrets they don’t want everyone to know.
3. Almost everything in GW lore is an easteregg hunt, get used to it. I would even say GW1 was the worse offender in this regard. But GW2 has it’s moments (the Orrian scrolls for example)
4. Better ask the writers on that one.

Little known fact, that was actually the reason for the human-centaur war. The granddaugther of King Doric wanted to ride the “horsie with the funny face”.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

That’s what I thought.
I really don’t mean to be racist here but apparantly I am :S

If it helps you, from my perception you aren’t. Some people like to throw the racist card too easily, which devalues the efforts of people who combat actual racism.

Diovid.9506:

Whether it appeared in the book and in dialogues or not, it was changed to being the arts district in the end. That might be considered a retcon. However, as it stands now, in lore there never was a Canthan district.

For all we know it could have been both the Canthan and an art district. They don’t seem to be mutually exclusive to me.

Sorry, maybe came off like I’m angry with you, I ain’t of course. Cantha and Elona withdrawal makes me grumpy though. :P

Aethgar.1784:

I loved factions myself, and would love ANet to invent a new Asian culture drawing more respectfully on real world inspirations as opposed to lifting bits without thinking.
like.. Shiro Tagachi is very Japanese, but samurai types (which he really seems to be) are not always a positive image in places which suffered under Japanese colonial ambitions. He’s right beside characters with VERY Chinese names, very Vietnamese names.. each just sort of lifting cultural concepts without really smoothing how they work together.

This is exactly what fantasy is doing for decades with european and some times other cultures. Don’t ask me how many times I ran into a knight with a german name, a french armor and an british accent in an RPG. The difference is that in europe nobody cares.
Besides it’s a rather small but vocal part of the asien community that reacted negatively to Cantha. Now those relatively few players dictate what the rest of the world can have and not have in their game. How is that fair? To be honest that looks just like Anet is having their creative freedom removed by nationalists who can’t stand that their beloved culture is stained by another “lesser” one.
I’m all for not explicitly making fun or insulting other cultures, religions and what not, but what Anet did was hardly offensive if anything it could be seen as a compliment that they took so many beautiful ideas from all the many asien cultures. And they sure are beautiful. I wish I could enjoy them in GW2, even if it’s “just a theme park version”.
Of course for the real thing I’ll have to go there. Which I certainly do in the next couple of years, I have to visit some friends in China.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Living Story season 1 was supposed to be happening parallel somewhere to the Personal Story. The timeline is pretty much unknown for exactly when stuff happened, thanks to shenanigans trying to keep them separate.

Not quite, the Lost Shores is pretty much the starting point of the Living Story (even if it’s technically not a part of it) and Matthew Medina (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/No-Risen-Karkas/first#post1156321) confirmed that the event was set entirely after Zhaitan’s defeat. I even have a vague memory of some confirmation that the first Halloween is also after Zhaitan’s death, not sure on that one though.

Ha I did it!

Thanks Angel!

If we repeat often enough that they will never answer this question, we might be able to bait them into answering it anyway, just to prove us wrong. Reverse psychology for the win!

Crovax.7854:

Personal opinion here. ‘Boss’ sounds really silly. Imho it’s better to avoid ‘names’ altogether, e.g. ‘hi there’ instead of ‘hi, boss’ or go with something different. After hearing ‘boss’ for the first time in a scene today I imagined ‘commander’ instead everytime I heard it and that was a lot better. Again, just my opinion.

edit: to clarify: the ‘boss’ sounds really shoehorned in because it’s obvious the npcs call me that since, obviously, the player name can’t be done in spoken dialogue.
Maybe have a look at how the ‘persona’ games handle that.

Just saying “hi there” doesn’t solve the problem though. They almost always refer to the PC as “boss” when he is addressed in third person. The problem is they can’t even use personal prounouns such as he/she because they would to record 2 times for every line that mentions the PC’s gender (which also would need to be checked by the game before). As far as I’m aware they never do this with spoken lines. Probably time and budget constrains.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Hmmm, this actually piqued my interest a bit…

I respect everything you said (though the whole thing didn’t surprise me that much, since I never liked any lore related to Sylvari, so whatever), but you should play atleast the first mission of the update. It will tickle your nostalgia bones in a good way.

It feels good to know that my utter dislike for those filthy cucumber brains was justified the entire time. Come on fellow meat bags, it’s time to go full vegetarian!

On a more serious note: Hurray expansion! (I think)

Go for Kormir then, she needs some love. Dwayna already has half of Winter’s day and is the head of the human pantheon, I think she get’s enough recognition.