Guild Wars 2

Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong – the dragons are definitely there, and they’re not quiescent. None of the others have been quite so deliberate and motivated about moving into other territories though. I’m happy to accept that the focus on Zhaitan is more a result of the game’s focus at the moment rather than necessarily indicative of lore, but with Zhaitan we have invading armies and lich-minions being very straight up about their intentions to invade and destroy. That’s why I said maybe Jormag – the Sons of Svanir are also kind of aggressively expanding, but that’s probably as much them (as norn) as it is Jormag.

Primordus’s influence is definitely there, but he hasn’t seemed to make major incursions on the surface yet, just the occasional spill-over. The Brand expanding is interesting, but feels to me less like Kralkatorrik making a move and more like a property of the Brand itself. Kralkatorrik has long felt like one of the most difficult and dangerous dragons to me! But maybe that’s just how awesome they make the Dragonbrand sound.

TL;DR: the other dragons are doing stuff and they’re not friendly, but they haven’t been quite so Dark Lord bent on our destruction…yet!

My understanding was that the ‘bible’ includes the answers to a lot of our un-answered questions, secret bits of history that we don’t know about yet, and stuff like that. It lets them be consistent, but it would also give away a lot of the mysteries.

If they produced something like the ‘Making of GW2’ book but focusing on detailed lore and history, though, I would be pretty keen for that

Agreed, I really enjoy my elementalist, and if you’re coming from an engineer I think you might enjoy it.

Failing which, having played a main elementalist I made a warrior and gleefully went around crushing things and not having to worry about dying for once!

Question is invalid, in my opinion, because ‘map completion’ does not exist in lore. Certain stable, regularly accessible part of the Mists count for map completion because ArenaNet decided they do.

Just because the charr are very disciplined and kitten, doesn’t mean they’re more Spartan than Roman. Certainly there’s a very Spartan attitude about them, but I think they’re more like how the Romans imagined themselves (at least when it came to war). Check out this story for an example! The legions, the names of the ranks, the emphasis on a disciplined fighting force rather than a berserker mob… all quite deliberately Roman. Ages ago, before the game’s release, I wrote this piece about how far that comparison can go.

Regarding Ascalon, the culture was portrayed as your standard European pseudo-medieval fantasy kingdom (even if Hadrian’s Wall probably was a source of inspiration, that’s passed from Roman to British history). It’s similar to ancient Rome only in the sense that almost every conventional fantasy kingdom is similar to Rome in some way. Rome is also a great source of inspiration for inter-race dynamics in fantasy, since the culture spread so far and interacted in many different ways with local ones elsewhere.

I think it depends somewhat on how malicious the dragons are right now. Only Zhaitan (and I suppose Jormag) has shown signs, as far as I can tell, of actually trying to make incursions into the rest of Tyria from its own domain. I don’t doubt that they would eventually, but I think if all or even one of the dragons actually got up and exerted all their powers to trash somewhere, it’d be pretty trashed.

Abbadon, on the other hand, made impressive progress into the ‘real world’ of Elona and exerted quite a bit of influence, but he was (I presume) straining at do everything he could from his prison to get that far. I think we’d have to include a bunch of factors like outside help from corrupted mortals (Varesh and others – using magic, fittingly enough), natural weakening, perhaps some inattention on the part of the other gods?

As said above, in lore the Elder Dragons are stronger than the Six Gods. The human gods aren’t as omnipotent as the humans made them out to be, haha, nor are they as ancient as the dragons. That’s why I feel the need to make excuses to explain why what was meant to feel like a world-ending power in GW1 isn’t as powerful as what is meant to feel like world-ending power here!

It takes as much effort to write like that as it does to read it, Rurik – you can tell it’s not just laziness because all the abbreviated words have apostrophes in the right places! So unfortunately I think it’s safe to say that Jack’s distinctive forum posts are a stylistic choice you’d have to talk her out of :P

ArenaNet apparently have a ‘Guild Wars 2 Bible’ which has everything about the world, the history, all the secrets and plans for the future in it (the novel writers and people like that get to use it as a resource). Since they’re not likely to let us get our hands on that though… I would be keen for a good thick lore volume.

I’ve also been considering an ‘anthropology of Tyria’ blog, after realising how excited I got when discovering a new rank in quaggan social organisation the other day :P

I read a good thread about this way back before release, I think it was this one.

^ That wiki page is likely to be your best resource; the wiki is great!

Otherwise, skills which can be used in combos say so in their descriptions – if you hold your cursor over them as well as range etc. they will say they are combo fields or finishers. You need one of each for a combo, so if someone lays down a field (a guardian circle, a line of fire, a smokescreen…) and someone else uses a finisher through or within it, you get a combo. Finishers can be projectiles (firing through the field often adds a condition to your shot), blasts (healing spring + a blast of some kind spreads healing to everyone in the area) or a number of other things.

Check over your skills and see if they mention use in combos. You can combo off your own fields if you want to experiment, or watch out for others to experiment!

There being shipwrecks around makes sense if it was land raised through either the rising or Orr or the volcanic and tectonic activity that happened along with it (which we know had fairly far-reaching consequences, that’s what happens when you shift a major land-mass – everything else gets pushed). I’m fairly certain we can associate Southsun Cove with volcanic activity; I’m from New Zealand and my friends and I were excited to find areas that look like the old Pink and White Terraces that were once a tourist attraction here. They’re formed as part of a thermal area with geysers and hot pools.

A lot of the formations are coral-like and Konig’s observations about karka natural constructions/nests are important too – the karka have probably used this area as a breeding ground (I like the idea that they’re chiefly marine creatures but come on land to breed) for some time. But it still makes sense that it was once land under the Sea of Sorrows (the very name of which hints at numerous shipwrecks) which has been forced up in the course of other activity in the last hundred years or so.

I think that is significant Narcemus. It implies that the Pale Tree is as much a part of the Dream as the sylvari are. I think her consciousness is part of the same mystery that the sylvari and everything else connected to them is – the Pale Tree herself doesn’t necessarily know what she is or where she comes from.

I don’t know about what evidence there is in the game or the lore for it, so I’ll leave that to someone better qualified. As far as speculation goes though, while I agree that individualism and personal freedom are absolutely norn virtues, I don’t think they necessarily lead to open or free sexuality. It could just as easily be the case that they are extremely monogamous and loyal in their relationships, they just pick them up and break them off quite frequently. Serial monogamy, as they say, haha.

It’s also possible that casual sex/‘dating’ (norn hunting dates, hah!) is common, and it’s not considered too serious or exclusive until some form of marriage proposal or agreement. I’m really not sure. I can’t see them leaning too much to the ‘open relationship’ or polygamy end, purely because history suggests people often react badly to the idea of polygamy so I don’t think ArenaNet would go there.

In general, I imagine it probably depends a lot on the people involved in any given case. I always imagined the norn being fairly upfront and unabashed about making their intentions clear. On the one hand, freedom and independance are norn virtues, but on the other hand, so are loyalty and honour.

This makes me think of another question: norn single parents, yes or no? Haha.

What people often overlook when discussing these kinds of theories is that the human gods did not leave Tyria recently, they left a long time ago – long before the original Guild Wars campaigns, in fact. Check the timeline: the Exodus of the Gods marks the year 0 AE (After Exodus). They retreated from Arah, where they dwelled among humans, after the debacle with Abbadon and the creation of the Bloodstones. GW1 starts in 1070 AE at the earliest (the Searing), Kormir becomes a goddess in 1075 AE.

The human gods seem to have continued to withdraw further from human affairs after this and through the intervening time up to GW2. They’re been gone from Tyria itself for well over a thousand years, though. Whatever their reasons for communicating less, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that something dramatic happened to them in the time just before GW2.

Plus, Primordus was stirring during Eye of the North and Balthazar was still pretty involved in things at that point. Not sure how that fits with your theory.

Agreed, if there are sales they will probably be over the ‘holiday season’ so keep an eye out I guess. At this time there is no trial available other than the limited for the weekend one we just had – there may be more like that in the future but we don’t know.

Even if it takes a while of saving up, I hope your friend can make it!

You know, we/they could totally make an event plot out of this. Except instead of us as the adventurers, I’d invent a group to fill a role like the Consortium did: a party of show-off adventurers, maybe a lame imitation of Destiny’s Edge, who think they’re great and constantly step in to save Lion’s Arch from problem great and small. Except they start causing more trouble than they solve, and the Lionguard finds that actually leaving the fate of the city in the hands of random adventurers isn’t always a good idea…

Then maybe (after the Lionguard have you investigating them or trying to stop them from poking their noses into more city business) something really bad happens and the new “heroes” are begging for someone to save their sorry butts – at which point a mob of players turns up to show them how it’s done.

Seriously, have that one for free, ArenaNet

Not arguing that this is the case, but an observation: if sylvari were in some way seeds of the Pale Tree being spread out across Tyria (even if for something other than growing a new Tree, which seems unlikely) then the fact that sylvari are immune to dragon corruption is a very good defence mechanism!

It would be rather neat if we could have a GW version of Deadliest Warrior, but that’s unlikely to happen.

Perhaps we could hold something like the Fantasy Cage Match with narrative pieces speculating on who would win in a fight? Sadly the ‘outcome by popular vote’ that match uses is often a little flawed in terms of realism (i.e. Wheel of Time inevitably wins).

Hadn’t thought about Kralkatorrik as a greed/avarice/acquisition figure, but it makes sense – I don’t think they need to go down the Seven Deadly Sins route either, but that would make for another kind of destructive drive. Just as dangerous to everyone else, really, too.

I like those ideas for the last two – the DSD as madness would link in nicely to Lovecraft tropes, hehe, and I think it’s reasonable to assume we’ll get some Cthulhu vibes from the DSD stuff if and when it’s introduced. And the Nightmare Court are too fascinating not to link into their mentality (even, as you say, without accepting any of the going theories about the Pale Tree). Sadism and causing pain for pain’s sake is another different kind of drive for total destruction. This way all the dragons have different drives, but the same ultimate result.

Thanks Konig, I had a 50/50 chance there and somehow knew I’d get the wrong sylvari. I just couldn’t remember the broader context >.<

I’m tempted to start up a Lion’s Arch Historical Preservation Society. One of my friends and guildmates studied art history, another studied classics, and both get pretty upset at the idea of historical structures being destroyed…

We also talked about starting a Tyrian Historical Recreation Society at one point. Like… role-players role-playing as role-players? We could rampage around Maguuma pretending to be White Mantle and Shining Blade, or something.

Narcemus, that’s really interesting. In myths and legends certain stars appearing as portents of major events is a common trope, and I know it’s popular in fantasy (the comet in A Song of Ice and Fire, the red star related to Cherufe in Malifaux…). In lore though, it would be very interesting if the appearance of such stars was linked to the dragons rising!

Of course, it could be just coincidental that the jotun observed unusual astronomical events around the time that the dragons last rose, and they associated the two separate events. Or it could be something which happens every x thousand years and thus happens to align with the dragons’ cycle. Still, neat.

According to this timeline that still leaves a little under a hundred years (probably sometime in the last, hmm, 80 years or so for the new LA to be established?). Still, that’s very interesting. Time is no doubt a little weird for someone dwelling in the Mists, especially in such an artificially stabilised spot – I wouldn’t be surprised to see the old mythology trope appearing here, like where a day in the fey world is ten years in the real world.

At any rate, this is a really interesting observation!

I would expect something similar to Halloween personally – any one-time events there were just neat extras like the Mad King busting out, I don’t feel like I lost anything from not being there for that. I would expect the main event stuff to be activities over a week or two, and the finale to be like GW1, every hour or every few hours.

Lost Shores represents a point in Tyria’s history as well as the games – The Day The Karka Came, so to speak. That makes sense for a one-off. Wintersday is more a community festival and should be more open. Also, GW1 always did the Wintersday main event on New Year’s Eve to give some leeway to people having Christmas with family, which I think is a great idea.

Honestly, I think it has been hard to get a feel for how busy or empty servers are because we had launch (obviously a temporary rush), then a drop-off, then Halloween, then a brief drop-off, then Lost Shores. On the one hand, the events mean that a lot of people have been logged in to try temporary content and places like Lion’s Arch are occasionally very busy; on the other hand, with everyone doing limited time event content other zones, especially the mid-range ones, have sometimes been unusually empty.

I don’t think it’s fair to say a server is dying because no one’s in Timberline Falls during Halloween, for example – because people who are online have incentives to be somewhere else. But who knows? Sometimes I have a couple of days where things seem empty, and then another couple of days where I run into players all over the place even in maps I thought few people visited. I still say events skew the observations either way.

If caiomacos is correct, then winning is going to be pretty expensive.

I’m pretty sure not. It would require a different model which I doubt they have created. I don’t know how something like the Seraph armour would even work on a charr! And that’s not even thinking about sylvari.

So no, I think it’s for the designated race only.

Yeah, there’s a part in one of the novels – Caithe in Edge of Destiny? – where a sylvari is eating moa. Meat eating seems fairly normal among sylvari.

My hypothesis would be that the particular NPC the OP mentions gets a sort of flashback of the Dream around that Haven, some scrap of memory associating the Lionguard/foreigners and eating meat. Something about that place might spark a half-buried Dream memory from another sylvari’s life. That’s just a guess, though!

It makes you wonder really, what half-baked plans were the Consortium advertising there? Did they decide to just claim Southsun Cove for themselves and start opening resorts, inviting tourists for a quick buck? You’d think they’d do a more thorough survey of the land and get some infrastructure first, heheh. I think I’ll continue to trust my funds to the Black Lion Company, personally…

As a casual player myself, I have never bought armour from the trading post. The above posters are certainly correct that it’s a reliable way to get stuff that’s very good for your level and it won’t cost that much. However I get through just fine with drops along the way (I enjoy the random element, it makes average drops more exciting) and I generally buy stuff from karma vendors if either its stats are decidedly nicer than my current (meaning that piece of gear has fallen behind) or the appearance is cool.

Crafting can get you nice stuff (and more customised to stats you use) but as has already been said, you can probably buy other people’s crafted gear on the TP. Dungeons start at 30, but you should do them whenever you feel like it – it’ll still be some challenge at later levels, haha.

Finally your first question, follow your personal story (if you do stuff that the recommended levels the rewards will be more useful to you) but there’s nothing you should be doing, just wander and do what takes your fancy!

In the early stages of the game there are three main armour appearances available, and you can pick them up through your personal story (be aware that you can right click the images when picking a reward to preview it on your character first!). You can also get them as drops, with time and luck. The armour for sale from Armorsmiths is always the same starter stuff in appearance.

Crafting will get you new armour nicely, so consider taking up leatherworking if you’re into that – though it can take a while to get new styles. Also check out the cultural armour sets (for humans, there are three little blue helmet icons on the map in Divinity’s Reach near the central garden) – you won’t be able to equip them for some time, and it will be even longer before you can afford them, but you might find something to work towards!

It seems to me that ultimately all the Elder Dragons desire destruction, but sort of in different flavours. We know more about some than others, but let’s say that Zhaitan wants to blight the whole world into undeath, destroying life (specifically). If Kralkatorrik desires perfection, it’s perfection through homogenisation: stop all change, cancel all variety, and turn everything into static crystal forever. The Dragonbrand suggests something of this. If the Sons of Svanir reflect Jormag’s views (not guaranteed), Jormag stands for a kind of extreme Darwinism: fight and struggle until only the strongest survive, as only the strongest deserve to survive, and destroy everything weaker in order to triumph.

For Primordus I feel like I have less to go on, but being a dragon of fire and with minions called Destroyers it seems to go more for rampant destruction, burning and smashing for the sake of it. Fire goes with fury and is extremely dangerous when out of control, right? As for the Deep Sea Dragon, we don’t have much to go on, and even less for a sixth dragon.

In regards to the OP, this is why we can’t reason with the dragons – they don’t really have motives which can be negotiated with. They’re forces of destruction, like a part of nature that hates us. So, they’re not evil as such, but they’re definitely bad for all of us (hence the theme in the game of uniting diverse peoples).

(It’s actually been bothering me in the personal story how much people imply more complex or subtle motives for Zhaitan, or how he has servants who infiltrate or deceive for him. It all seems far too subtle for an Elder Dragon as I interpreted them – though I suppose existing undead like liches might approve of the ‘blight the world’ agenda for their own reasons and support it).

Someone was asking about ‘Your Herald’ recently. Apparently we have a number of stalkers – although I can’t help but like the idea of the Herald doing the stalking single-handedly (as part of a Destiny’s Edge project albeit) and then illegally selling the information on to third parties…

I can think of no reason why the Ancient Karka should be a dragon champion. There are plenty of natural motivations to explain the karka attacks (driven, we can assume, under the Ancient’s leadership). They are another deep sea race who have been pushed closer to the surface and the land, as others have already said, by the stirrings of Something In The Deeps (aka Bubbles). Like the krait this means they’re fighting for new territories and pushing other things out in turn.

Add to that the Consortium disturbing the karka in the process of raiding their new lands in search of valuable resources, and it makes sense for them to become agitated and aggressive. The Consortium set up shop in Lion’s Arch… and the karka follow them there. They basically did what we did: chase the invaders back to strike at their homeland.

Things are brand new, I suspect that with time it will level out. At first there is always a crowd who want to get everything done and maxed out as quickly as possible. A lot of the casual players, like myself, haven’t even looked at the Fractals dungeon yet; it’ll still be here after the Lost Shores event, and I’ll have plenty of time to assemble some friends to give it a go.

So no, I don’t think ArenaNet have screwed over casual players or those who have other things on in their lives. You might not always be able to do exactly what you’d like it at all times (if what you want to do requires other people to co-operate) but you’ll be able to at some point.

Warrior is great because there’s an emphasis on weapon skills (I use my utilities on a situational basis) and the class is pretty tough, you shouldn’t get downed too easily. I’d second recommendations for a ranger, especially if you’re in a group and using a bow; you can largely chill out on the edges of the fight, and still contribute nicely.

Technically you’re always limited to 10 skills at a time, but elementalists have 25 if you count all the attunements, engineers can have a comparable amount with kits… so you probably want to avoid them for now. If you want the most low-stress, heavy armour classes might be a good place to start.

Mad King Thorn I don’t think they could have done much more to prevent. Monsters from the Mists is outside the Lionguard’s jurisdiction until they’re fully present and able to be hurt with weapons, surely?

It is true though, some unfortunate negligence on the part of the Lionguard officer corps lately. I know the city’s almost as overflowing with bold adventurers as it is with pirates, but still, we shouldn’t be responsible for every attack!

“What is needed” is subjective. Every patch addresses someone’s issues. They won’t always be yours, or mine, and some are harder to ‘fix’ than others.

Yeah, as a casual player you won’t get rich quick (any more than you do in real life by normal means) but over time you will get money. You don’t need more than pocket change for most things, you can spend karma instead in some cases if you want to save money. Just play, progress, and you’ll start accumulating gold in time.

If you’re not a crafter, you could do lots of gathering and sell excess materials on the trading post – doesn’t need to be any complex economics, just gather stuff (it’ll get you exp anyway) and then sell it in bulk. Someone will want it.

Also… don’t be so hard on yourself!

In GW2, character don’t join guilds, players do. So when you start or join a guild, all of your characters are members of it automatically. Alts don’t matter, the account does. So if you create a guild and you’re the only member, standing down will give you the option of disbanding the guild. If you just switch characters and log in, all you have to do is pick which guild to represent with that character at that time. You’re already a member on all characters.

I can’t think of a reason why there wouldn’t be female Icebrood, unless Jormag is as sexist as his followers (which seems highly unlikely). There may not be any female Icebrood in the game right now, but it’s still possible that’s what the concept was meant to be.

It would seem very weird to me if we were able to dress up like dragon minions with an armour set…

Whatever you do, don’t just farm mobs, haha. In most cases that’s an extremely inefficient way of levelling :P
You usually have to do other things (even if it’s just exploring/map-clearing/events) in order to keep up with your story quests.

It’s probably different for every play-through, and getting some levels under your belt won’t hurt. However, do check the levels of thing’s you’re going up against. If you do what I did and go to Diessa from Ashford, you’ll come out at the level 25 end and get pwned. There’s a gate directly from the Black Citadel (north edge) that will take you to the softer, friendlier, level 15 end of Diessa

As Ramei says, a lot of what we ‘know’ about the gods is actually human religious doctrine which may or may not be literally true. We know the gods didn’t actually create Tyria, but I can understand why that would be a logical thing for humans to assume once they started worshipping them. We’re told Abbadon introduced magic into the world, but it could just as easily be the case that he just taught magic to humans. Still, the creation of the Bloodstones does suggest a significant control of magic (as mortals use it) so who knows?

Re. Abbadon, I wrote this some time ago while playing Nightfall, and it may be of interest to some of you. Purely fiction/speculation, but it aims to show how ambiguous the situation really is.

No I’m pretty sure you can’t transmute medium appearance onto heavy stats or vice versa. The appearance of armour is part of how players are meant to be able to identify your class at a glance (e.g. robes and greatsword? Definitely a mesmer). The dungeons sets are most desirable for their appearances (which you can transmute onto other stuff), so unless the stats/runes of the level 80 stuff are perfect for you, I see no reason why you shouldn’t just get the lower level versions.

Guild Wars 2 takes some getting used to. If you pick a class and play it for a while, eventually I find you get better at it just with practise, and with figuring out what you can do with things. For instance, I’ve got my necromancer to level 25 without using any of the minions at all (and the minions are mostly designed to be blown up in people’s faces, btw!). A character who seems weak at the beginning can develop into something more and more powerful as you add stuff to your build.

That said, you do have to be careful what content you tackle. Although there’s some flexibility, those suggested levels are there for a reason, and especially at the beginning he difference between, say, level 5 and level 8 is HUGE. Try to stay around your own level. Some events can be soloed, some can’t, but your best bet is to find other people – try asking in map chat if anyone wants to come help when an event starts. People will often come.

As for class… staff or sceptre elementalist seems like it would fit your requirements, but it will work better with other people around. Necromancer can be made fairly tough for a scholar class. Once you get past level 10 you can start using traits, which allow you to beef up stats like toughness if you choose to. Trait points actually help a lot.

What server are you on? You might be able to get some company if you need help levelling

Bruno – I’m not certain, but I think that some languages do have nouns with innate genders too. Languages have all kinds of different ways of viewing the world once you start looking into it!

And yes, I think it only makes sense for the Elder Dragons to be genderless, but I’m not surprised that the average NPC – or player! – in the street refers to them as ‘he’. We all tend to imagine the dragons and more purposeful and person-like than they really are, I think, because we’re imagining our enemy. Trahearne’s significantly more educated about the nature of Zhaitan though, so he probably uses ‘it’ more often.

Referring to something which seems to have a mind/intentions as ‘it’ feels really awkward in English. I think they just use ‘he’ so it sounds more natural, even if it’s inaccurate!

I really like that idea of the sylvari being driven by their basic nature to move out from the tree and explore. I think Rehashed’s reasoning makes more sense than the seed/spore idea, but at any rate it makes a lot of sense to me. The Pale Tree is partly an independent organism who wants to ensure her own survival (and the Elder Dragons are a significant threat to that!). At the same time though, she’s a sentience deeply (and literally) connected to Tyria as a land. That makes her like a Gaia/Earth Mother figure, concerned for Tyria’s survival because in some ways she is Tyria. Who else will speak for the land itself?

In this sense sylvari are a way for the Pale Tree to be able to see, learn about and interact with the world beyond her sheltered Grove, as Rehashed says, but they’re also extensions of her consciousness. Sylvari who repeat the lessons of the Tablet are spreading the Pale Tree’s message around, ‘speaking for the planet’ to other races.

My impression from walking around the Black Citadel was that ‘plebian’ was the label given to non-charr who lived in the city (I guess maybe anyone who wasn’t a member of the legions?). Gladium are charr currently without a warband, but they’re still charr.

I got the impression from that area that they were residents, rather than transient visitors – they each have a little space they’ve made their own, notably the sylvari. Maybe they came to the Citadel for its industrial stuff?

And the word ‘plebian’ comes from ancient Rome (like much of the charr stuff), it meant something like ‘commoner’. There were plebians, who were initially limited in what roles and political positions they could have, and patricians, who were kind of like noble families and could hold certain higher offices. Later in the Roman Republic though, these restrictions were loosened and plebs gained significantly more influence (and sometimes got rich!) so the distinction became less important over time.

Personally I have found ArenaNet to be very communicative, but it never seems to be enough for players to feel really involved.

I don’t blame them for wanting to present ascended gear in a positive light from the start, rather than putting up a post that said “ok guys, we know this looks bad, but TRUST US” – how would we have reacted to that?

I also don’t blame the people (probably comparatively few) at ArenaNet who know the ins and outs of how ascended gear is going to be implemented and why it was designed the way it was for not spending the last 48 hours on the forums responding to every bit of speculative criticism. And it is speculative, at this point, because the gear is not in the game.

The only thing they can say to “you’re betraying the principles of your Manifesto” is “no, we’re not!” – and once again, what good would that do?