Guild Wars 2

It isn’t anyone.
It is a trailer narration – it exists outside the diegesis of the game. The effect put on the voice is for atmosphere. It is not an in game character, but rather a narration that has been styled to fit with the tone of the content.

Zayd, the narrator in GW1’s first cutscene was Devona – the hero who follows you around for the whole game.

Aedelric – Dwayna is a no no. The Gods have left Tyria and have next to no interaction with it’s inhabitants.

Mordremoth is also a no no. We have never heard an Elder Dragon speak and it’s quite possible they cannot. Also they are “its” rather than he’s or she’s.

I don’t get why you would run that far away from Lions Arch?
We run to the Vigil Keep – it’s fortified and literally across a field from Lions Arch.
Even then, we’d run to one of the major racial cities before we left Tyria.

Following our ancestors can’t work at all. Glint is dead (and a girl), the Dwarves are ALL stone, there is no evidence that Primordius is in the Ring of Fire Island Chain. Shiro is dead dead – as in we destroyed his soul in the Realm of Torment and there’s like 0% chance of him coming back.

That’s the average age of a normal housecat.
She’s a queen so her cat is likely to be of decent breeding which means it’s more likely to live in the 18year range.

Also 12-14 is an average based on a LOT of cats – and people don’t always take amazing care of their cats.

A cat that is cared for properly should live quite a bit longer than 14 years. I have a 13 year old cat at the moment and he is in perfect health and not in the slightest bit old.

Also most house cats don’t die of old age but rather are put down due to health problems – which are generally genetic problems from poor breeding.

>.> I mean this in the nicest possible way but please don’t compare Cate Blanchett’s AMAZING performance with a video game voiceover trailer. Not to say that the voiceover is in any way bad – but rather that nothing compares to Cate Blanchett.

lnguy.5127:

Alright, I’m going to go there. E = Elder dragon (Mordremoth). Could explain how E knows of all of Scarlet’s plans. It’s E’s way of making sure we (players) stop Scarlet before she can accomplish her goals (destroying the source of her insanity)….

Umm. I’d love to know how an Elder Dragon grabbed Jory from behind in the middle of Divinity’s Reach without a single soul noticing >.>

No it is not. 15Charr

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Look, they fulfill a similar role to Destiny’s Edge in the Living Story, that Destiny’s Edge fulfills in our personal story. In that regard they are sort of a Destiny’s edge 2.0, but better written in my opinion. It really isn’t such an odd comparison as you’re making it out to be.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Rox, Braham, Marjory, Kasmeer, and Taimi are referred to internally as “B-Iconics” (or Biconics) as opposed to our “A-Iconics” or main iconic characters, Caithe, Rytlock, Eir, Zojja, and Logan. They are not a “replacement” for Destiny’s Edge; these characters fulfill a different role in the story. Because members of Destiny’s Edge are so entwined with your Personal Story as well as the over-arching story with Zhaitan, and because the Living World plot lines are taking place at the same time all those other story threads, we couldn’t have the members of Destiny’s Edge splitting themselves between these other areas and what was going on with Living World. This is partly why we introduced these new characters.

B-iconics, A-iconics. Basically a new group of characters similar to Destiny’s edge in set up, but for the Living Story, and not similar in personalities. Basically what I was saying.

I shouldn’t have said ‘replacement’, but they fulfill a similar role. I don’t think it’s strange or unjust when some players call them Destiny’s Edge 2.0.

Except that a 2.0 implies that the 1.0 is old, unnecessary, has been replaced, improved upon etc.

This is just a completely separate group. So yeah maybe calling them DE 2.0 isn’t completely unjust – it’s still wrong.

Pretty sure it IS just an OS X problem. The game is running much better than usual in bootcamp for me – which makes sense since they supposedly did some optimisation. It just obviously borked the OS X version which is not cool.

The jump puzzles will presumably be inaccessible since LA is changing drastically…

Although there is an article on Massively which talks about how map completion will still be possible – so perhaps the JP’s will still be there as well.

^— It’s a good read, Massively covers a lot of how certain things are going to be handled – e.g. map exploration in LA as well as what will happen to the personal story instances there.

Ben K.6238:

I wasn’t sure either, until Vorpp said this in the Dead End bar.

Vorpp

Ceara encountered something that literally broke her mind, but the only things in there were things she brought.
I surmise she was directly exposed to a part of her own psyche that had been carefully walled off. Perhaps for her own protection?

Initially I had thought she’d somehow contacted Primordus, but if Vorpp is correct she can’t find anything in that device that isn’t part of her already. This seems to be something the Pale Tree is aware of, and warned her about.

If she is under the control of an Elder Dragon, it has some rather unpleasant implications about what the Pale Tree(s), and sylvari by extension, are. It also indicates that the Pale Tree is shielding them from this influence, making her role something like Glint – she’s there to raise an army for her dragon commander, but has no intention to obey.

I find it interesting that sylvari alone could not be corrupted by Zhaitan.

It’s not just by Zhaitan – they are immune to dragon corruption full stop.

lolwut. Where on earth would Scarlet get the tech for carpet bombing from? I honestly don’t think that’s in the realm of likelihood.

Go play the Gate of Madness mission in GW1 then get back to me
Yes they may still be watching, but that is absolutely all they’re doing and all they’ve done for quite some time.

Yeah what….
Using the default bag slots and getting 20 slot bags you should almost never have any problems….

There is a despot collectables button to clear out any mats you get or salvage and there is no way you could get enough items to fill all the space. Even running FoTM twice should only ALMOST fill it.

If you’re carrying around things then that’s weird because there is very little that needs to be carried in your inventory.

GW2 is WAY better with inventory space than pretty much any other MMO where you have to carry around all your drops as well as any mats you find…

Qawsada.4251:

Do you know what I think about this whole ordeal? I see BOTH TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP as a cheap way of telling a story, and it gets in the way of what actually is happening with the main plot. It doesn’t help that these same-sex relationship in these stories are usually the “in your face” kind of way and that their fans are the loudest when spoken against it.

Relationships are part of a story. They’re a way of making characters feel real – that is why almost all books, films, video games etc have a relationship in them. Of course it isn’t required, but in an MMO you’re trying to construct a world – so it would be really weird if there were no relationships.

People can relate to relationships, so they make sense.

They weren’t active in GW1 though, we already knew that they had begun to distance themselves from Humanity – beginning with the Exodus of the Gods.

And I’m not saying they never lived in their realms, only that they quite possibly had left them by that point.

We know that the gods came from somewhere else before coming to Tyria, so their realms are quite possibly not even that old…

From the GW1 wiki : “Since the Exodus, the Gods have not directly intervened with any affairs in Tyria, although they still watch the world and grant it Favor of the Gods.”

They no longer grant the favour of the gods, so it’s obvious that they have even less of a presence now than the little presence they had 250 years ago. Not to mention the dev statements that they’ve pretty much ceased any kind of intervention at all.

Somewhere else in the mists. Where they originally came from. etc. If the gods specifically were in their own realms I imagine they would have been taking better care of them. As it was it seems more that only their minions/followers were taking care of their realms – hence their realms being invaded/infested by things that should not be there.

Nike.2631:

Retail sales require close to 4 months advanced notice minimum on products that are going to take up shelf space – there is no hiding these things. Unless its purely digital (which would be a terrible idea) or the gap between Living Story seasons is going to be at least 5 months, no, it’s not happening.

Purely digital wouldn’t be a terrible idea.. Most of their sales have been digital and box sales don’t make a lot of sense since they can’t put the client on the disc because it changes too often and because of how the .dat is patched.

Purely digital is also the most likely way they’d release it as well – through the gem store.

There is a difference between a narrator in game – who is part of the diegesis – and a narrator in a trailer – who is not part of the diegesis.

Whilst is is always possible that the narrator is a character – it is pretty unlikely.
The fact that there is an effect on the voice is simply meant to be atmospheric – I imagine if they had the budget for it they would have got Scarlet’s voice actor to do it, but trailers aren’t likely to have big budgets so putting an effect over someones voice is a lot cheaper.

They really have. The amount of content they’ve released every single month is amazing.

Kalavier.1097:

You completely misunderstand “around”.

The gods are quiet, they aren’t interacting, but if the Reaper is summonable and specifically gives a task GRENTH WANTS DONE, they are around. They simply aren’t as close as they were before.

Also, Grenth’s realm is the underworld. How can he not be ‘watching over’ or ‘residing’ there?

Because there has been no indication that the gods are in their own realms.
We’ve been to the Underworld and we’ve worked alongside the reapers – Grenth was not there.

The Reapers should theoretically ALWAYS been summonable because if they aren’t in the Underworld then something must be seriously screwed up and I think we would notice if people weren’t dying correctly…

It’s been quite clearly stated that the gods have backed off from Tyria and even in GW1 that’s how it was. Once upon a time we could still talk with the avatars of the gods – now we can’t. So they have even less of a presence.

Those were things they wanted to try and do, not that they were definitely going to do.

Also precursor crafting was never given a date and it’s been stated that they aren’t working on it at the moment.
We did get new skills – or did you miss that every profession has a new healing skill?

The only reason Blackgate works so well is because there is a massive community in there that works together in an organised fashion.

A dedicated “raid server” would be no different to the overflows on any other server – they don’t manage very well because it’s too difficult to organise the people in there.

Zaxares.5419:

The Captain’s Council has authorised me to offer you 6 random blues and greens and a Gift of Barnacles in your Home Instance. They’ll also throw in 100 AP to sweeten the deal.

YUS now I can harvest barnacles to my hearts content.

Zaxares.5419:

So, it seems that dataminers have dug up story spoilers for the end of the Living Story. I won’t go into any of it here, but let’s just say that I look forward to discussing the implications and consequences with you all once the patch goes live.

Is the only thing that was datamined the Rox dialogue? (that doesn’t spoil anything because ALL of you knew that Rox would have dialogue at some point).
Cause that’s the only thing I’ve seen and it doesn’t really spoil anything >.>

ElysianEternity.6215:

Duh, obviousy Bloomanoo and Peneloopee will die.

2 down, far too many to go.

Execute Quaggan Extinction Plan A.

That doesn’t mean they are around.
The Reapers should theoretically always be summonable because they reside and watch over(?) the Underworld – Grenth himself does not.
Also just because they are watching doesn’t mean they are still around either. You have no clue where they are watching from, how much they are seeing, what specifically they are watching etc.

The novel (like the two before it) was directly published by Arenanet and written by Ree Soesbee – the GW2 lore continuity writer. It is canon -_-
Please have a clue about what you’re talking about.

Lions Arch was completely destroyed in the tidal wave from Zhaitan’s rising. Cobiah Mariner restored it to a city and created the Council.

Kryta has never been able to push back the centaur threat. If they can’t do it from Divinity’s Reach then what on earth makes you think they could have done it from Lions Arch. That makes no sense, they wouldn’t have any resources they don’t already have now.

You realise that the “pen” of Arenanet IS THE LORE. There is no lore outside of what they write. To suggest otherwise is nonsensical.

The white mantle were not mere opportunists. They were a very well organised group who were under the control of the Mursaat and were using Krytans as sacrificial fodder on the bloodstones.

The Centaur raids are NOT a result of Lions Arch being independent. How did you come to that conclusion? The Centaur have hated humans for a LONG time and have been warring with them for a long time. It has nothing to do with Lions Arch.

Jerry.1893:

So, just an update. I switched over to boot camp and the improvement was ridiculous! I now run a minimum of 20FPS on ultra settings in full wvw zergs. Sucks that I cant run this in my preferred OS but with this improvement I can’t go back.

Yeah, that’s exactly where I sit as well. But I still really want to see the OSX version improved, and maybe one day the gap in performance might not be so massive.

Works fine for me.
Try using google chrome and stop putting https in the url
Just type in hom.guildwars2.com

Dawdler.8521:

facepalm

double facepalm

I’m going to keep this short as I have said it many times before: There are no issues with race changing. No issues with the personal story, no issues with cultural gear, no issues whatsoever.

Race change would only be allowed to characters with the following restrictions:
- They are 80.
- They have completed the personal story. Simplest solution to the story info screen is that race changing removes the race specific arcs.
- Any race specific gear is stripped from your character and account bound/soulbound on use (still race specific). You made a choice to race change, you take the loss.

There you go. Race change. Anet are just being lazy and people in this thread are unimaginative. Issues with the story, lol… How many that want to race change have even visited the story page in the last year?

NPC dialogue relies on knowing what options you have selected in your personal story.

Regardless of whether you are level 80, regardless of whether you have finished the game – there are still parts of the game that COULD NOT HANDLE A RACE CHANGE.

Lutinz.6915:

Its worth pointing out state of mind does seem to reflect on a Sylvari’s appearance. At least this was Arenanet’s explanation of the chance in appearance for Canach between the Lost Shores and Secrets of Southsun, attributed to the stress and strain caused by being constantly hunted by head hunters the Consortium sent.

Honestly I think that was just an excuse to make his appearance align with what they consider to be appropriately evil looking. I was really really disappointed by that change – it shouldn’t have happened. His appearance was great before.

They have already stated that they don’t have the systems in place that would be needed to facilitate a race change. The change of character personality and personal story steps is far too complex.

If you rolled the wrong race then that’s kind of your own problem. Either make a new character and transfer all your things – level 80 doesn’t take that long. Or just live with the decision you made.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

She has airships. She doesn’t need the portals in Lion’s Arch, unless she wants access to the Mists.

I think we’re ignoring an important motive for Scarlet here: Ever since the Living Story started, we’ve seen Scarlet trying to improve on existing races. It is a fair assumption I think, that this goal still holds true. So how does an attack on Lion’s Arch achieve this goal?

I don’t think her goal was ever to “improve” on the existing races. It’s more than she realised that in order to defeat the existing races she had to have something MORE than them.

So to defeat Charr you combine Charr with something else – logic would dictate that something with the power of both Charr and Dredge would be more powerful than Charr alone. So I think that was purely about amassing strength and access to technology.

Lmao you know they got to have a holiday around Christmas right? The extra 2 months could very easily have been spent working on OTHER things that we haven’t seen yet…

The daily is there to encourage people to keep playing those two bosses so that there are enough players to do them…

Well if she was wanting to attack the Grove or any of the other cities I imagine getting hold of the Asura Gates in Lions Arch wouldn’t be unhelpful… Although they would just get turned off from the other end, so yeah. No clue.

The bottom line – if you’re looking to make money off something don’t copy ideas from something else. If you’re having to ask whether something is too similar then perhaps you should look in a different direction. Of course if this is just a fan project, or something that you don’t intent to make money off then usually you can do whatever you want. The law around doing a parody of something is also a lot more relaxed.

It’s been pretty clear right from the get go xD.

That’s not so much how copyright works.
If you were to reproduce the characters or lore of GW1 in a substantial form with the intention of profiting from it then you would be looking at legal troubles.

Of course the individual names themselves can be used – since there is no trademark or copyright on them (for obvious reasons). But that doesn’t mean you can go reproducing content.

Also re: Master of Whispers – I don’t think that it’s a throwback to Game of Thrones. It’s not exactly the most original title ever and it’s quite a generic fantasy type thing – which of course GoT is.

Farqual don’t take the lack of weapon swapping as a lore fact. I’m pretty sure it’s only like that to make the mechanics for each profession fair. All professions in GW1 could weapon swap (between something like 5 sets of weapons), so unless they’re going to ignore that I don’t think weapon swapping plays any kind of lore role.

My vote is Kasmeer, Jennah or Anise. There’s nothing to back any of that up except that they’re all Mesmers and Anet likes to treat Mesmers as if their abilities are just ridiculously amazing and can fool anyone and everyone.

My serious vote would be on Ellen – if they hadn’t kind of portrayed her as maybe not being quite the sharpest tool in the box…

It isn’t a bias against humanity. Seriously Nicholas give it a rest.
None of the other races are a bastion of trade – so neither should Divinity’s Reach be.

Please go read the novel Sea of Sorrows, I feel like it may enlighten you a little more.

The Lionguard’s role had been replaced by the White Mantle in GW1, so they hadn’t been the protectors of Kryta in a LONG time – yes they watched over the city, but they weren’t it’s primary caretakers.

The Shining Blade defeated the White Mantle and they took over the role that the White Mantle had – and the Liongaurd had before them. It makes sense. Just seriously, go read Sea of Sorrows – Lions Arch (as it is in GW2) was FOUNDED by a human.

What you consistently percieve as a bias against humans is NOT that at all. They have put all of the races on an even playing field. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ve seen you argue that Kryta doesn’t hold power over a lot of land anymore – but look at the Asura who only have Metrica Province, or the Sylvari who only have Caledon Forest. There is no bias against humanity, there is simply not a FOCUS on them. But there isn’t a focus on any singular race because there can’t be in order for the game to be as inclusive as possible.

You are the one with a human bias.

Playing in full screen and pressing Command+Tab will switch to another window

I think they meant the Elder dragons – but even that doesn’t stack up. Primordius is just a play on the word primordial (or the root latin Primordus) which means ‘existing at or from the beginning of time’. I could go on but I’m pretty sure all of you can read the trivia on the wiki. So sorry Andele but I don’t see it.

Yet a lot of names in GW2 do come from mythology (from across the world), but that’s a staple of pretty much every single MMO ever and it doesn’t apply universally as Konig very aptly shows. I’d be pretty ashamed if Blightghast had real world origins (other than being a splice of two perfectly fine words – when used on their own)

sAdam.5876:

My own fanon is that horses are extincted/Chars ate them all Or maybe as people of Tyria use Dolyaks so maybe horses were not as useful and nobody bothered to domesticate them?

Your second suggestion probably isn’t that far off.
Dolyaks see widespread usage in Tyria – it seems as though Orr was the only nation to use domesticated horses – most likely because Dolyak’s didn’t make sense in the warmer climate.

Actually there is no reason we can’t sail directly to Cantha. Elona has never been used as an inbetween point for travel between Cantha and Tyria. Lions Arch and Kaineng used to have trade ships going between them.

As to needing to beat bubbles first – not necessarily, the ocean is a MASSIVE place, bubbles can’t be everywhere at once. Not to mention there’s always the possibility of Air travel using the pact’s airships.

Are you all kind of missing the fact that Mr. E sounds like Mystery if you say it quickly?

I don’t think E is actually meant to be someone’s initials, I think it’s just Anet being a little bit punny. It’s kind of like Miss Tick in the Discworld series – her name is just a slight adaptation of the word Mystic.

WASD functions exactly the same as the arrow keys, it’s just in a better position.
If left and right are strafe rather than turn, you can make WASD the same by swapping the keybind of A and D with the keybind of Q and E.

But yeah, mouse walking tends to be an Asian MMO thing, most western games have moved away from it. Actually MMO’s in general have moved away from it because action based combat has become a lot more desirable and mouse movement does not work with action combat.

Dark Catalyst the cash shop doesn’t provide any massive advantage.
Yes you can buy gold with gems, but you would have to be throwing a LOT of cash at the game before that was useful. Even then it doesn’t give you any advantage.

Max stat gear is not difficult to come by and the game was designed with Exotics in mind – which can be found frequently as drops or crafted.

So yes, someone can basically buy ascended gear with money, but it doesn’t give them any advantage over normal players. They still have to level up to 80 to be able to use it, and during that leveling process people get pretty close to top stat gear anyway.

The cash shop is not end game. You can play the game without ever touching it.

Personally the only thing I’ve ever purchased from it are character slots, which doesn’t give me an advantage over anyone else, it just lets me make more Sylvari -_-

Not true, there are portals in LA to all of the WvW maps as well as to FoTM.
If they had put a new Asura Gate in the area where the current city portals are then I would agree, but they aren’t.

It’s commonly agreed, both by players and NPC’s, that Lions Arch is going to be attacked.
- In one of the trailers we see two destroyed Asura Gates.

I think it’s possible that the current Asura Gates that lead to the capital cities will be destroyed – and the ones in the Eastern Ward will be used as replacements during the cleanup process – possible with additional portals to a new area.