Guild Wars 2

Yeah, I’m assuming it goes green when it’s found whatever Scarlet is looking for. Haven’t seen any others go green yet, but…maybe they never will. Maybe whatever she’s looking for is only in LA.

Oh man, I really hope in 4 months+ time, we forget about this thread, and we’re talking to Braham and he casually mentions he loves ham.

I wonder if Rox likes green eggs?

They seem to have gone with the years changing with us in the real world now for the Living Story at least.

The ‘Story So Far’ trailer indicates we’re at 1327AE now, but they haven’t given us true indication as to whether we’re post-Zhaitan or not. We seem to still be in this weird limbo where personal story stuff happens during an undisclosed period, but the Living Story moves forward through time. Rox telling Rytlock she killed Tequatl (along with an army) is example of this.

Despite getting told that the Karka event was post-Zhaitan ages ago by a developer, the lack of in-game lines to indicate we’ve killed Zhaitan or not (or any mention of him) seems to suggest they still want to keep the personal story stuff out of the picture.

I haven’t had this problem, but for those that have, are you getting long-ish loading screens when you teleport?

It could be that you’re getting hit by it as you’re loading. Normally there’s a period of invulnerability when you load in (or there was), but I think it wears off before the loading screen disappears.

Congratulations, Deso.

I suppose they could bring it back as a fractal boss and make it so there’s only 1 lane to defend.

Another thing they could do, though, is add a new category to Guild Missions that are challenging bosses and have them accessible through some kind of fractal portal somewhere in the world. They’d have to make them instances that can be accessible by a large group of people as soon as the guild activates it, but it’d be a great addition.

I’ve had a bug before where I’ve gone through the teleport and been chucked into a pod, but then immediately thrown back out into the lane. This was on Day 1, so I don’t know if it’s been fixed since, and I’m not 100% sure how it happened. I definitely entered at the beginning of the chain event, so I hadn’t run out of time.

Maybe I was spamming f on the teleport and it made me somehow go back, but because I had teleport sickness, I couldn’t then re-enter the pod.

Keep an eye on the top right for your living story panel.

It’s now more like a ‘quest’ giver. You can click on the text-like objectives and they will show you where to go.

To give you a start, though, you need to participate in the Marionette and the Wurm battle at least once, and then you’ll be given a step to go to Lion’s Arch. You DO NOT have to win them, only fully participate in them.

The marionette spawns every even hour, and the wurm spawns every odd. Since you don’t have to win them, you can turn up at 5pm/6pm for example, go through with it until it fails, or more ideally succeeds, and then proceed with the actual story.

Agreed – I love it.

On soundcloud asap, please!

I dunno, I thought her response to Kasmeer saying she was naked was a good enough hint she likes her too.

I don’t consider their relationship fan service at all, and I appreciate the writers doing it with a race other than Sylvari. I think it would have been even more interesting had it been between Norn, Charr or Asura rather than humans, but it’s a start.

The way they introduced them as characters was appreciated, too – without each other.

Granted, I’m also certain one of them will die soon (I have my bets on Kasmeer!), which I hope doesn’t happen as it’s predictable, but I shall wait and see.

It’s not a good idea to promote elitism in a forum. It discourages people from posting if they don’t have an ‘acceptable’ amount of achievement points, and as you said, from certain people taking their post seriously.

I do not want this to become a, “Mounts should be in this game, I have 15 000 achievement points so I know what’s best for it and you only have 1000.” type of place. As panzer stated, people should be judged on their post content.

The pattern for previous releases suggests he’ll be upleveled for the duration of the event, so all signs point to yes.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Scarlet does not appear to be about death or undeath, which is Dhuum’s domain. If it is one of the fallen gods, Menzies (pretender god of strife) is the more likely candidate. After all, Scarlet is raising alliances in order to sabotage the unity of the five major races.

Oh I wasn’t implying I think it is Dhuum – I don’t think it’s Abaddon, either. If they were going to bring a God (or ex-God more appropriately) back, though, I’d rather it be Dhuum.

So far, though, we’ve had 3 ‘mysterious’ voices in trailers. A female one, one that sounds like a sylvari and one that sounds like he needs cough medicine. I don’t think they’re even necessarily characters. They could just be voice actors they brought in for other roles that had the time to narrate a batch of trailers.

I’d prefer Dhuum than Abaddon, to be honest. I just like him more…it may be because I got to see him ban people in GW1, but I miss the guy.

Keep in mind there are still 3 releases left after this one. This isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning of the end.

The trailer was, at its core purpose, not designed to appeal to us lore fanatics. It was for the gameplay people. Big marching robot, big wurm to kill. All to get you pumped up about seeing/fighting them.

On the other hand, this update is called ‘The Origins of Madness’, which seems to imply, at least to me, that we will find out why Scarlet’s gone crazy in addition to what we already know in What Scarlet Saw.

And yes, the Wurm is not really part of Scarlet’s plans as I see it. It surfaced because of the thumpers (like how you make the ground vibrate to surface worms in the real world), but that’s not WHY the thumpers are there.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I think Anet has forgotten about that plot point.

And if not, they’ve done a terrible job with it because it was a big mystery when E first appeared and by now, with not even small forward progress with (or even reminders of) that plot line it’ll look stupid when it’s brought back.

Marjory mentions him in the Dead End in Divinity’s Reach at the moment. I can’t remember exactly what she says, but ‘E’ sent her some information….so he’s still around.

Only ANet know for sure, but I think it’s probable that it’ll be tomorrow.

Angel.4918:

JayMack.8295:

Angel – how awesome to see you here. Hope you stick around. It’s always great getting some answers, though it’s always fun to speculate, too.

Y’all do some amazing speculating. Even if I don’t come by here often, I do read what you write—usually on my lunch break. And I love nothing more than to see imaginations flying all over the place!

One of the risks we devs take when we answer lore questions is that our answer will either contradict what you imagined (and then you’ll feel bad) or it will put an end to the speculation. And, as you say, it’s always fun to speculate.

I agree.

I think it’s just about balance. Personally, I quite like being contradicted…I like being outsmarted! I always get a bit of disappointed when I guess correctly.

Angel – how awesome to see you here. Hope you stick around. It’s always great getting some answers, though it’s always fun to speculate, too.

I don’t hate her, but I don’t particularly like her either. She’s…meh, that’s the best way I can describe it.

I think some of the ‘hate’ is people just following the popular opinion, but I can see that some people genuinely don’t like her. Quite a few people in game I’ve spoken to actually like her, though.

As much as I hate to say it (‘cause I love dragons), she’s currently a better villain than Zhaitan was…still, that’s more to do with how pathetic his final battle was.

My final thoughts on her are going to be completely dependent on these last four releases. If they can tie everything together in a satisfying way, then I may end up liking her, and if they don’t, then I may consider her a failure. Pretty squarely on the fence.

No-one knows but ANet.

At a rather useless guess, though, it’ll be either March 18th as that’s the Living Story AFTER Season 1 ends, or more likely, April 1st…unless they have a different April Fool’s plan this year.

Antara.3189:

JayMack.8295:

Something tells me it isn’t Primordus or Destroyers. If you take the lines literally, people of Tyria know Primordus and the Destroyers exist – it wouldn’t be a ‘secret deep below’. It also isn’t a secret to us players, either. It may be related to Primordus and the destroyers, but I don’t think they’re the ‘secret’.

But when you look at where the destroyers first starting appearing (GW1 era in the dephs of the northern shiverpeaks) and where you can find them in GW2, it’s a huge advancement, and moreso than any of the other minions. You don’t find minions of kralkatorrik in Maguuma, nor do you find Jormags minions anywhere other than the shiverpeaks.

The only other spread that was on a larger impact was the Undead, which became a direct impact.

Primordus’s minions have been primarily underground, thus unseen to the majority of races. We only know about them since we have encountered them in various parts of Tyria.

One thing is known though, and that’s they cover more ground than any other known minion. I can find them on all parts of the Tyrian Continent. It’s really interesting if you think about how far they’ve moved without much resistance.

Absolutely.

When I said ‘the people of Tyria’, I should have been more specific. Not everyone in Tyria knows about every Elder Dragon, but I’m almost certain the Pact, The Vigil, Whispers and Priory do…and player characters know about destroyers at least if they’ve gone to Maguuma. Ogden’s still around and he’s living proof of Destroyers/Primordus and he communicates with the orders. So while Primordus/Destroyers may be a secret to some Tyrians, they aren’t really a secret to the ‘important’ people of Tyria, and the poem implies it’s something no-one or very few people are aware of.

I could be wrong, and it could just be as simple as Primordus forming a massive army, or creating a champion that’s extremely powerful.

Or it could be something as crazy as Scarlet using the probes to force Earthquakes, so cracks appear across Tyria similarly to Eye of the North letting something out, and us in. All just theories and speculation!

There’s a chance they’ll bring it back in the future at some point. They did this during their anniversary sale last year. I want them to ’cause I missed out on it as well.

It was, yes.

I didn’t realize this either, but I may have missed them saying both Marjory and Kasmeer’s weapons were limited.

I think they stopped selling them with the December 10th release.

Warrior or Guardian is what I would suggest to you if you want to output high damage and survive well.

Race doesn’t really matter. They provide racial skills, but they aren’t going to make a massive difference to the profession you pick.

There’s a TARDIS under Tyria.

I kinda understand you, Joneb, which is why I pointed out bad achievements like the pinata whacking, but I’ve got the flu at the moment, so my brain’s pretty frazzled, so help me understand it better.

Give some examples so I can get the whole picture. For now, we’ve got this: When the Living Story starts back up, there’s going to be two achievement categories every 2 weeks and from previous examples, they disappear at the end of the current ‘month’, i.e. 1 month to complete one category and 2 weeks for the other. At some point, there WILL be WvW Season 2, which means it’s likely there’ll be 3 ‘living story’ achievement categories live at one time.

What do you want ANet to do? Do you want there to be a set amount of achievements per category, e.g. 10. Do you want all the achievements to be relatively quick to complete? If the achievements are permanent, can the achievements be longer to complete? etc.

The problem is, there are also many who like the speed at which we get the Living Story (contrary to some people’s ‘majority’ belief) and the difficulty of some of the achievements. I’ve seen comments of people wondering when the next update is going to be during Christmas ‘cause they’ve got nothing to do.

I think the best thing they could do, which many people have suggested, is to create a historical NPC where you can replay the story and its achievements at your leisure. This way, you’re pleasing both crowds. Now, obviously they can’t do this every single time because some, like the WvW seasons, have to be on a schedule but it should help. Additionally, more permanent content!

However, that isn’t to say there aren’t any problems with some of the current achievements. Some of them are boringly grindy, especially in the earlier LS (Pinatas!!), but they’re getting slightly better each iteration in my opinion, and I think they’ve made comments before about making sure there aren’t any ‘boring’ achievements in the future….of course, boring is subjective, but I think it’s safe to say no-one particularly enjoys achievements like the aforementioned pinata whacking, though I could be wrong.

At the end of the tower collapsing, there’s in-game footage of Kessex Hills, with smoke around showing the now collapsed tower with some NPCs at the camp. I assume that is what Jeffrey is referring to .

I thought I was going crazy and imagined it was zoomed out more than before.

On the other hand, though, they changed the camera to a zoomed out one on the Ice Elemental in Snowblind, which is extremely appreciated.

You get a refund, Allyoh. It says so in the post.

I was waiting out on buying this in case you decided to change it.

This is a good solution!

I took it as the magic ley lines, too.

She goes on to say that they built the reactor on top of an area where they cross, and that’s what caused it to go haywire. That’s how I understood it, anyway.

Either way, Scarlet seems to be aware of where they are in our timeline. How she’s using that information…? We can only discuss.

I’m guessing she’s going to use other key areas where they cross in Tyria, or maybe already has.

No leaderboards wouldn’t stop this from happening anyway. Elitist people are elitist regardless of whether they have a way to prove it or not.

They’ve released as late as 10pm my time in the past, which is 4 hours from now. Recently they’ve been pretty consistent at releasing around this time, but they’ve never specified a time or timezone before.

Nope.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Those rewards are not available in the Fractals at this time, sorry.

Matthew Oswald.3082:

MithranArkanere.8957:

Will this ever play in-game? Like by talking to Dessa or something?

Yes, it will play the first time a new player enters the Fractals…and it will be watchable by triggering it within the hub. It also includes a little VO from Dessa that’s not included in the trailer.

(Somewhat related) There is a plan to allow people to playback cinematics through some sort of story UI. This should help people catch up on what they missed.

That’d be great. The item like Marjory’s Journal, while helpful, are annoying to keep around in your bank to play one cinematic. Getting it implemented into the UI would be appreciated.

Something tells me they’ll combine both of December’s updates into the 10th, anyway. Updating the game on the 24th of December seems a bit…risky. If a major bug gets introduced on the 24th (which can happen, even with proper testing), then they’ll either have to work extra kitten Christmas Eve or cross over into Christmas Day, and I don’t imagine any of their employees would be happy about that….plus how many people are really going to want to play on the 24th of December?

Yes – more of this both in-game and in trailers, please! It’s great.

Yeah, looks like it’s a huge tower currently disguised in mesmer magic.

Thanks for having the forethought to change Poobadoo’s route to coincide with the block, by the way.

Having said that, though, if people haven’t got the Lair of the Seawitch PoI, can they get it in the next 2 weeks?

This doesn’t effect me as all my current characters have it, and I don’t see myself needing to 100% Kessex in the next 2 weeks if I create a new one, but I just wondered.

Need to do the daily ‘Here Be Dragons’ achievement 4 times to get the meta, so you need to do it 1 more time.

If you look at the date of when Halloween started last year, you’d see that it wasn’t until the 22nd of October.

We have 3 living world releases in October. It’s very likely Halloween will start the 15th of October this year with something else thrown in on the 29th relating to whatever we get on the 15th.

I like the longer content, but I agree with the reasons as to why shorter = better with SAB.

No checkpoints, disconnecting, etc. are all frustrating, and since this is also designed with solo players in mind (and Tribulation mode), they can’t throw the excuse that you can just rejoin like you can with dungeons.

If they change SAB so that they can find some way to save your progress, I don’t think people would mind longer levels, but until they do, longer levels are just going to frustrate people.

More challenging on the other hand…bring it on, Josh. World 4 better push me to my limits!

Shiren.9532:

lordkrall.7241:

^ Most likely due to the fact that they wanted it to make sense.

A dragon suddenly turning up 50 times stronger than he was for no reason whatsoever would be quite weird.

What was the story reason for the AC revamp? What’s the story reason for why pets and minions will have 71% more health in the coming patch? What’s the story reason for why Zhaitan was much easier to kill than Tequatl? At a certain point, they will make mechanics and gameplay changes that are in no way related to the story.

I think they are foreshadowing another plot (or a thread of the current plot) that they plan to focus on in the future. To a certain extent I think the Living Story plot is partly dictated by the content. I suspect the devs were working on ‘raid like’ content and it came in the form of Tequatl. The story team were planning on some kind of plot down the road that could involve dragon minions becoming stronger, so the story team decided to work the Tequatl revamp into it. That might be why the story of this update is so thin, it was tacked onto the Tequatl update and ws never intended to be a big story chapter.

Like you said, the difference is they dedicated an entire release to Tequatl being revamped. That didn’t happen with those other changes. We didn’t get a “Catacomb Catastrophe!” living world release when they changed AC, but we had Flame and Frost instead. The same thing happened in this release – they didn’t give story as to why the WvW borderlands decided to just suddenly change though they could have done and probably would have had this Living World release been dedicated to WvW.

They seem to be changing TA in the upcoming release, though, and they’ve tied story to it.

I agree that they probably won’t tie story into every change they make, though, but they most likely will if it’s the focal point of a living world release. They plan on making The Shatterer and Claw of Jormag stronger, too, and they could easily reference back to Tequatl when they do…especially since we were investigating Shatterer/Claw remains this release.

Her starting dialogue changes depending on whether Teq’s been recently defeated or not.

I just checked her 5 seconds ago. She still mentions the Molten Alliance.

FA killed him.

I’ve always thought that the dead body in the water was originally going to be a cutscene we see of Zhaitan’s body sinking into the depths. A kind of mirror to him rising from the depths.

Either way, they removed any evidence we should see of his body before release hit, so it doesn’t matter.

Part of me really wants him to be dead. I just dislike the whole idea of no-one attempting to make sure he’s actually dead or not, or actually even attempting to look for a body. Then the other part of me really wants ANet to revamp his battle so he isn’t completely pathetic to fight, and if they have to tie that into a LW release for some reason, then I’ll deal with him never being dead.

Well BobbyStein (Hey Bobby, come visit us over here at the lore forums! We don’t bite, I promise!) just mentioned that Teq being stronger is all related to the overall LS arc at the moment, so I guess it is more than “ARG, I’m a big boy dragon now!”:

BobbyStein.2315:

DiogoSilva.7089:

To be honest, I feel that this tequatl’s release makes for an excellent build up for something “dangerous” to come in the future. But based on your post, BobbyStein, it feels like there’s no story planned for this, and that the new details behind the new Tequatl are just marketing hype.

Maybe I wasn’t clear in my other post. Tequatl becoming stronger (and Rox being present) are both tied into the overall LW story. More will be revealed later.