Guild Wars 2

On top of what Erukk said, when using Dhuum instead of Grenth you have no ties to ice. Dhuum was just death and, seemingly, darkness. This matches well for Zhaitan, but leaves Dwayna out in the cold with no paired dragon – the closest match would be Kralkatorrik who is hinted to be the dragon of crystal and sky (as Dwayna is the goddess of life and air).

But you again hit the wall of Lyssa having no counterpart, and the only relation between Abaddon and Kormir is that of knowledge, which is missing from dragons too unless you go with Mordremoth’s mind domain.

Simply put, it isn’t so clear cut, as the only dragon-god relation that works is Primordus/Balthazar, and even that’s iffy, as denoted above, the elemental ties to the dragons are constantly changing.

If you go by what’s not constantly changing, you’re left with the following aspects: Life, Death, War, Nature, Knowledge, and Beauty/Illusion. And of that, only Death (Dhuum/Grenth + Zhaitan) really ties over cleanly.

But it’s all moot, as Erukk said, this thing has been around so long with no real way to confirm any hint of a correlation beyond six powerful beings of magic, and ArenaNet kind of debunked it.

I believe there was another post which was more blatant in stating that they fled the DSD, but I’m not 100% certain.

Shiren.9532:

afaik it’s still true that dragons can’t corrupt other dragon minions (I think few excecptions exist such as Inquest experiments like Subject Alpha etc).

It is never stated nor implied in any way shape or form that dragon minions cannot be corrupted by another Elder Dragon.

We merely don’t see it happen – but keep in mind that we’ve only had one case of two different kinds of dragon minions even coming remotely close to them – which would be the mordrem in Iron Marches.

The concept that dragon minions are immune to other dragons’ corruption is purely misconception created by people who used that as “evidence” as to why sylvari are dragon minions before it was confirmed (and since used the confirmation as proof their “evidence” was right) despite the complete lack of correlation and all evidence of sylvari’s “immunity” to other dragons’ corruption being, in fact, the Dream which we have known since release is neither unique to sylvari (White Stag) nor shared by all sylvari (Malyck).

Glint’s a dragon champion. Dragon champions can make minions, even out of compressed ‘corruption’ – like branded crystals. And they could take the appearance of eggs (like the destroyer eggs in the skritt storyline).

The Pale Tree and Malyck’s tree is the same – or at least similar enough.

But unless the risen turned are champions, I couldn’t see them spreading a ‘purer corruption’.

But it’s not really reproduction either. Only way those eggs of Glint’s was actual reproduction would be if she was corrupted while pregnant and the eggs went into stasis for several thousand years (or have a super long gestation period).

Ceera hating the PC if they witnessed Tonn’s death is probably the best part of HoT.

I recall seeing her using the shortbow model. As well as shortbow skills (particularly shortbow 2 and 3).

Aaron Ansari.1604:

the ritual is never indicated to require any particular resources at all, let alone expensive ones,

It wasn’t ingame, but was stated that the ritual used on Glint was both resource extensive and had certain geographical requirements..

Aaron Ansari.1604:

since ANet treats any given player character as one-of-a-kind I don’t believe the lore would need to justify more than a handful of risen undergoing the ritual.

The Commander is an individual who slew Zhaitan – another issue with risen player race that wouldn’t be true for an individual tengu – but the existence of other players are treated as general adventurers in the story too. So there’d still be hundreds of thousands “risen adventurers” running around…

Which makes no sense.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Having playable zombies just doesn’t seem to add anything to the game, certainly nothing that a more hyped race like the tengu wouldn’t do better.

And other than the undead niche, the only purpose they hold is the whole – and imo silly – ‘minion of the enemy’ niche which is already filled (and failed, imo) with sylvari.

Anet never said that Mordremoth wasn’t the jungle dragon’s name, and never said that Mordremoth was never not supposed to be Mordremoth (though they’ve never stated that Mordremoth was always planned to be the second dragon either).

Your examples don’t prove your point. And something as crucial as the origins of the karka is pretty kitten important to keep straight.

Matt H.6142:

What is canon for Modremoths appearance? HOT media shows 3 different looks and the wiki seems to confuse the mouth of mordremoth with the dragon itself.

The wiki isn’t confused. The Mouth of Mordremoth is Mordremoth’s physical body. The game goes back and forth between calling it a creature of Mordremoth and Mordremoth itself, though.

You can even note how the face of the Mouth of Mordremoth and the mental avatar of Mordremoth’s head are nearly the same in appearance.

Mordremoth can transfer his mind into his corruption and regrow his physical body out of his corruption should it ever be killed. This is why we have to go into his mind and lobotomize him.

The Heart of Thorns tree in Dragon’s Stand is just part of Mordremoth’s corruption, and the heart of his domain; the talk about the vines being part of Mordremoth’s body is kind of metaphorical due to the whole ‘he grows his corruption out of his body and regrows his body from his corruption’ situation.

Basically, NPCs switch between referring to Mordremoth’s body (the Mouth of Mordremoth) and his corruption (the massive vines) when talking about Mordremoth’s physical state because, to them, they might as well be the same thing. Without removing both you cannot physically remove Mordremoth – as his mind exists in both and so long as either (and his mind) exists the other can be regrown.

• Biologically speaking, the Mouth of Mordremoth is his body.
• Magically and practically speaking, both the Mouth of Mordremoth and the corruption (vines and whatnot but not the minions and Blighting Trees) are Mordremoth.

Matt H.6142:

But on the Ley energy map, we see Mordremoth is in his corner making a signature no bigger than Tarir or Rata Novus. Considering how out of date that map is, could he have become bigger since then?

That’s a magically lit map, so it’s always up to date (in theory), but it doesn’t show Mordremoth rather than ley line nexuses – and Mordremoth just made his lair on one and remained there. When they say “that is Mordremoth” they’re actually saying “that is the ley line nexus where Mordremoth rooted himself to the ground and has kept himself since waking” – kind of easier to just simplify it, right?

Zaviel.1245:

Orr has room enough for an entire expansion’s worth of content.

When you take into consideration the size of Arah in both story and explorable, there is no room left in Orr except for a small sliver half the width of Lornar’s Pass in height. So no, there is not enough room in Orr. Any room you speak of would be restricted to Scavenger’s Causeway.

Zaviel.1245:

1)Respect the the personal story ending.
Orr has been cleansed for a long time, and the only thing we have to show for it is a buffed Tequatyl. This is a very story-rich location but has been sorely ignored.

Because it’s no longer the story focus. Why would it be featured heavily if the focus is elsewhere?

Until they start doing concurrent plots, we shouldn’t see Orr again.

Zaviel.1245:

2)Keeping Orr/Zhaitan relevant.
As of right now, Zhaitan’s only contribution to the story is being dead. Elder Dragons were described to us as forces of nature. Even in death, Elder Dragons are large and magical enough to alter their environment through presence alone.

The Priory also has Zhaitan’s tail; surely they could learn something about the anatomy of Elder Dragons and what makes them different from any common drake other than magic.

We don’t need Orr to make Zhaitan’s influence relevant. I think he was relevant enough in HoT, despite not being featured in it.

Zaviel.1245:

3)Playable Risen.
Dragon corruption is cleanse-able, and all MMO players like playable races. If we have reason to go back to Orr (which we do) then it would make perfect sense that with the cleansing of Orr Zhaitan’s hold on the Risen will gradually fade, making them easier to cleanse if not cleanse them itself.

No. Just no.

Dragon minions are without free will.

The ritual to give dragon minions free will is stated to be resource expensive and geographically restricted. It would not make any sense for it to be used hundreds of thousands of times while Arah remains the heart of enemy territory (and if it wasn’t, then there’d be not enough risen to purify!).

It makes absolutely no sense in lore.

Zaviel.1245:

Now I didn’t play GW1 much, but I know there are plenty of characters from GW1 that came back as risen, and some of them retained some knowledge and slight willpower. I couldn’t pull out any names, but it is very possible to have a willful Risen come out and lead others into independence. With this new independence the Risen rebuild Arah into their own racial city, like the other races.

There isn’t any risen that was a GW1 character.

Zaviel.1245:

Playable Risen is every bit as story-correct as playable Tengu.

No. It isn’t. At all.

Zaviel.1245:

4)Preparation for the trip to the Crystal Desert.
One of the many great stories Orr could tell would be the start of our journey to the Crystal Desert through a nice chunk of unexplored land to the east of Arah. The Forgotten would have a nice chance to be in this story, especially if you play a Risen or Sylvari, learning more about what dragon corruption actually is/means.

This would also lead us into fighting the Crystal Dragon himself, Kralkatorik. My goal is to hopefully get the ball rolling for what I see to be a very interesting expansion-worthy story/content.
I could go on and on more than I already have, needless to say I would love this.

There is a far shorter and more direct route to the Crystal Desert from both the Fields of Ruin and Mount Maelstrom. There’s no real sense in going from Orr.

Jaken.6801:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Interesting. Could be just because they also go after ley energy, or it could confirm the small theory that chak might be the DSD’s minions.

Nah, I got mine in an fractal. Unfortunatly I don’t know which one, as I did four that day and only one featured dragon minions (ice elemental fractal), so it could be a possibility.

Volcanic fractal’s boss is implied (still unconfirmed) to be a living being turned destroyer (when asked about that boss and if it’s corrupted by Primordus during an interview, Jeff Ree and Scott started talking about how Primordus can indeed corrupt living beings, but rarely does so). And Thaumanova has icebrood wolves in it – so that’s three fractals with (theoretical) dragon minions.

The dialogue when turning the item to Ela Makkay does state that the PC got it off of a dragon minion, so I’m rather doubtful that it’d drop from non-dragon minions.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Which really only extends so far as to show that “Koss on Koss” in Tyria is not a book written by Koss about his five sons named Koss, Koss, Koss, Koss, and Koss, but an autobiographical book by Koss, and aside from writing this book only confirms he married Melonni.

Yeah, that text is completely new and different than what I wrote so many years ago…

The funny thing is that both versions seem completely viable for Koss.

Interesting. Could be just because they also go after ley energy, or it could confirm the small theory that chak might be the DSD’s minions.

BobbyStein.2315:

I don’t believe we’ve ever explored what happened to Koss after Nightfall.

You did, but only very minutely.

Which really only extends so far as to show that “Koss on Koss” in Tyria is not a book written by Koss about his five sons named Koss, Koss, Koss, Koss, and Koss, but an autobiographical book by Koss, and aside from writing this book only confirms he married Melonni.

Unless Koss married Kormir after Nightfall and prays to Melonni?

I wouldn’t put it past him. It’s the afro, I’m sure.

ArenaNet always – ever since Flame and Frost – tried to avoid the 1-15 and home cities when it comes to updates. When they don’t avoid them, it’s only a rather minor or festival-feeling situation (toxic offshoots or queen’s jubilee events or halloween doors/wintersday presents for example). The “mix of past and present” begins with the 15-25 zones. So they do have a realm of consistency.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

True.. so true… I just thought Trehearne would have been more strict about the composition of his attack force. Or.. maybe that was the plan all along. Weaken the force by allowing all the nobles in rather than the soldiers that could have taken their place.

The nobles had their own private airship which remained in the back, away from the fleet and watching from a distance. But it wasn’t far away enough.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I remember reading in history a story about the American Civil War and spectators who came with picnic baskets to watch the show battle, and how the beheadings during the the French Revolution had its faithful spectators who arrived for each one to watch the ongoings. I guess that’s what happens when people don’t have TV shows to watch.

Was going to bring up that American Civil War picnic thing, actually.

So as stupid as it is and as ridiculous as it sounds, this kind of stuff was actually done in our own history, so it makes sense to include it in fiction.

“This autobiography focuses mostly on the events surrounding the Ascension of Kormir in 1075 AE. I am Koss Dejarin, and I gave up a lot for the Sunspears. I lost promotions, a father, a sister, friends, and my home to fight for the organization. I became known as the bane of corsairs and demons. I fought for my country and my spearmarshal. Holy goddess Lyssa gave me Kormir and Melonni. One of the two I married. The other, I pray to. I love them both with all my being. I risked my life many times for Kormir, but she got what every great warrior deserves. She died courageously.”

Along with this, at the end of Nightfall plays a cinematic during which we see Koss and Melonni on a farm. Looks like they settled down, married, and lived on a farm – likely the Dejarin Estate.

Djahlat.9610:

The next GW: Beyond episode was supposed to feature Koss and his relationship with Melonni (à la Hearts of the North with Keiran and Gwen) but it got cancelled because GW2.

The Elona arc was going to focus on Palawa Joko’s return to power, according to what’s on the wiki. Beyond that, I know there was plans for a third mesmer hero to be added and hints that Forgotten might’ve been involved but that’s all we were really told.

And I’ve always thought it would include be build up for Glint’s death that happened in EoD (explaining her mention of heroes returning to kill her after they found out about the Elder Dragons and before they realized she was on her side, and explaining why there were no Forgotten).

Arkengel RaF.9672:

I understand one is supposed to be before the explotion. What I was referring to is that they don’t match. The Fractal one seems to have all this rooms and it’s way bigger than the one in Metrica.

First, keep in mind that Thaumanova is a city, not just a reactor.

Secondly, the fractal is the underground reactor – you can see a (shattered) ceiling floating above in some portions (it even gets highlighted as you kill the anomaly while it floats away and breaks apart) and everything. You know where you jump down in order to get teleported high up onto the Champion Steam Ogre’s platform? Down there is the reactor room, best I can tell, and the center of the fractal in fact.

Open world = the surface of the city (streets and whatnot); fractal = underground lab of the reactor

PetboyJoshua.3108:

Well, there’s Mordrem guards that are regular Sylvari, and the ones that are clones made up from corpses (Diarmid) or living “templates” (Logan, Zojja), right ? Wouldn’t be surprised if the clones are the ones we would be fighting after Mordremoth’s death.

The latter are just mordrem, actually. Mordrem Guard are solely sylvari who turned and despite the name, aren’t mordrem anymore than standard sylvari are.

Jaken.6801:

Btw. what do we know about the leader of Orr? The one who gave us the title saviour of Orr at the end of the PS.

King Reza. We don’t know much about him. Mainly just what Aaron quoted.

Silberfederling.9302:

Jaken.6801:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Ehecatl.9172:

Or Trahearne the second wielder of Caladbolg.

“I’m not a general…” – Heal Skill. Description: Become passive and contemplate the fallacies of life in order to heal out of combat.

“This won’t end well!” – Elite Skill. Description: This won’t end well… for you!

We need to put a rush of neco minons in there somehow.
I mean, he summoned a bunch of them in one mission.

Btw. what do we know about the leader of Orr? The one who gave us the title saviour of Orr at the end of the PS.

Elite skill:
Drown your home instance incase some one attacks.

That was Vizier Khilbron’s doing, not King Reza’s.

Not just that but Occam’s dialogue during repeats of Prisoners of the Dragon and several other banter from sylvari (especially the sylvari PC) indicate that Mordremoth doesn’t enforce his will on sylvari (like traditional dragon minions) but instead that he implants thoughts that he tries to make the sylvari think are their own.

Those who find these new thoughts odd and unlike themselves would ignore them, while those who don’t become Mordrem Guard.

The appearance change was explained during Season 1, technically, when we saw Canach have a drastic physical change – sylvari who undergo drastic psychological changes also undergo physical changes.

Commanders are a bit unique for mordrem guard, however, given that they die and respawn in new bodies. Which would make them far more like mordrem than Mordrem Guard. Especially since Diarmird was made from a corpse (according to Occam, he saw Diarmird die in the crash). So it might be that they’re traditional mordrem that are based off of the three sylvari. Hard to say given that ArenaNet had cut out part of their story (like Malyck and the Nightmare Court).

There are now thousands of sylvari, so I highly doubt that they’re all clones of the village the Pale Tree was buried on top of – the chances of there being thousands of humans in that village is beyond unlikely. And while we do have NPCs who share appearances, this is mechanical.

Elder Dragons don’t have to be awake for new minions made to be without free will. Mordremoth’s waking state is irrelevant to the mental state of sylvari.

And mere teachings alone cannot give a dragon minion/champion free will either.

And none of that really touches the notion of sylvari having souls.

The Dream is described at the end of HoT as a mindscape so it’s unlikely to relate to souls (unless ArenaNet is taking the ancient Greek approach to minds of souls – being that they oft treated them as one and the same – which they’ve given no indication of). And there’s no indication that souls can even be fragmented.

Would make more sense in your theory to just say they have souls and they reincarnate, and not that the souls come from anywhere in specific.

Ehecatl.9172:

Or Trahearne the second wielder of Caladbolg.

“I’m not a general…” – Heal Skill. Description: Become passive and contemplate the fallacies of life in order to heal out of combat.

“This won’t end well!” – Elite Skill. Description: This won’t end well… for you!

Not really. The raid takes place post-Mordremoth, and has dialogue regarding it in the first wing, and the second wing talks about how it is weeks after the first wing.

Of course, it still isn’t a loose thread, really, seeing as we’ve not touched the mordrem situation beyond a few lifeless vines and mention of the Pact scouting north for mordrem forces.

Which basically tells us that the mordrem are still around, but this says nothing about the Mordrem Guard which were never traditionally corrupted. It is theoretically possible for a Mordrem Guard to return to their old self with no more whispering from Mordremoth – presuming they aren’t pressured into that mindset (-coughCanachyoumoron!cough-) at least – but the three Commanders might be a unique situation entirely.

Jaken.6801:

Since we know the mists consist of everything and the multi-dimension-theory and time travel is a thing, I would love a future hero , just to go against expectations.
He could even be of an alternate future, just so we won’t get spoiled (Comander cough ).

The third to last elite specialization for revenants will be someone who seems to be a nobody. We don’t know the race and the profession seems a bit odd, even the gender is hard to tell because the voice sounds a bit androgynous.

Then GW3 is announced, and we find out it is, in fact, the PC from GW3. The name associated is merely a nickname/surname attributed to the character.

Tutorials have a tendency to break the fourth wall but they are still technically canon – else you’d be able to argue that all of pre-Searing was not canon.

And spearing of pre-Searing, it is stated that a priest has to maintain the shrine in order for it to resurrect fallen adventurers. There is even a couple resurrection shrines in pre-Searing which lack priests nearby and do not resurrect – this was largely forgotten in Prophecies but was brought back (halfway) in Factions with the Kurzick and Luxon Priests – if you’re not allied with them (either via faction point majority or via bribing), they will not resurrect you. In Nightfall and Eye of the North, every shrine had someone maintaining it (Kourna had priests, for example, while Desolation had souls and Realm of Torment had Forgotten Wardens) – they also all gave bounties in these cases.

So the resurrection shrine wasn’t as big of a black hole for lore as Xiahou proclaims – there was both a stated and shown allegiance situation with the shrine’s maintainers, as well as a situation okittennowledgement (the shrines only become active if you get near them – ergo ‘when the maintainer knows you’re there’), and quite possibly a situation of distance too (would explain why you couldn’t be resurrected in the next map over, and why folks died in mission areas in Prophecies – no shrines there).

Resurrection in general did leave a bit of a loophole, but it was not unique to shrines – if anything, resurrection shrines were the best written, shown, and explained part of resurrection lore aside from the Bloodstone’s influence on it.

What, Talon Silverwing? He used sword and shield! :P

I think weapon matters less than weapon abilities, depending on what you’re asking for – I presume given the content of OP’s posts this is asking for an idea of suggesting a new elite specialization?

If the greatsword is treated more like a melee weapon – like the staff is – than a magical tool – like everything else more or less – then I’d look at warrior legends, particularly those who either wielded swords or had swords named after them. If it were more of a magical tool I’d look at more magically inclined figures.

Or you can just look at figures we know little about – like Lord Victo! He was an Orrian hero with warrior weapons, but we know now that nearly everyone in Orr had magical abilities, so he goes both ways. :P

Wicked Rin.1972:

So I was trying it all wrong then, I thought we had to hold all four forts.

Definitely not. I’ve seen one or two forts down while a legendary spawns. Just find out which fort you need the legendary for (they always spawn at the same place) and camp that edge of the fort. Taxi folks in – the more folks the better results – and keep that fort up. Ensure bulls are escorted and walls repaired. Soon enough you’ll get it.

If you see someone shout that a legendary is up, depending on which one it is and where you’re at it may not be worth running to grab it. For example, the amber one goes down fast cuz it runs right under a boiling oil trap which nukes it, while indigo and blue (demolishionist and tormentor iirc) are up for a while because they spawn far from the fort; red is a middle case. But it’s not worth running to blue if you’re at red unless the skritt tunnel is up, for example.

You do realize that every single instance in Season 1 was designed for 1-5 players, which number in 30+ instances. Furthermore, all events sans Ancient Karka, Scarlet Invasions, the inside of Tower of Nightmares, Twisted Marionette, and Escape from LA/Battle for LA were not designed for zergs. And despite listing 6 things, that was a vast minority of the content.

There’s no reason for squads to be required for Season 1 to be brought back, since so much of the content was, in fact, designed for solo play. The only reason why people are trapped under the notion that Season 1 was “all zergfest” was because it was temporary and the ‘new thing to do’ so everyone was rushing at the new temporary content. The first half of the Season was horribly bugged because of zerg interaction in fact.

Besides all this, the real problem does not come from party size for the content. It comes from the fact that the content would clash and get screwed up in the modern maps – in most cases. In those situations the only solution would be to make unique maps for the events, primarily speaking, Ancient Karka, Tower of Nightmares, Kessex during ToN, and LA during Escape from LA and Battle for LA (and less so but still so – Twisted Marionette and Scarlet Invasions).

Everything that doesn’t fall under that category is 1) not zerg content and 2) can be added to the game with little issues. Thus the new LFG is fully irrelevant to it.

And I fail to see why you mark Season 2 as “requiring at least 5 players” when that, as well, is all 1-5 players not 5+ players.

It’s never been confirmed but that does seem to be the case.

When I do SW, I see them up all the time. Usually a bare minimum of once every cycle through the meta, and many times two pop up.

Heck, iirc, I got my entire End-All-Be-All title in two days.

A verbatim copy of the original can be found here Paragraphs in question are:

I stood slowly, and as I reached my full height, a body came up gently behind me. Arms wrapped so intimately around me that my fight or flight instincts never kicked in. Then, a knife appeared at my throat.

I froze. When you’ve been had, there’s not much you can do but listen.

A deep voice whispered next to my ear, “Calm.” I sensed no necromantic power radiating from my captor. This was someone different. “The man you’re chasing is Kraig the Bleak. Magic for hire. You’ll probably never see him again.”

Mention of a ‘deep voice’ and arms wrapping around Marjory are canon. Though it should be noted that later on Marjory has noted that they’re not actually sure if E is male or female.

How about they just bring Season 1 back permanently, reformatted for the Story Journal?

Despite common belief, most events were not zerg based and could be brought back with little to no issue in continuity, and there were 30+ story instances across the board, only a handful of episodes needing their open world story to be translated into story instances (mainly The Lost Shores, Secret of Southsun, Cutthroat Politics, and Escape from LA/Battle for LA). Most of the work would come just from translating those old instances from being tied to achievements to being tied to the story journal, rather than reworking the content itself.

A recap that focuses on more than just Scarlet’s plot (which was half of Season 1) would be nice, but I think having the actual content in the game would be nicer, especially since the gap of the ratio of “those who played Season 1”:“those who didn’t play Season 1” is growing every day.

We had gotten some form of foreshadowing with Season 2, as well as progressive updates to the world after the releases came.

One example for both was the waypoints, and how over days they’d flicker and then a vine would spawn next to them, then the vine would wrap around them, and some would be destroyed. Players had tracked them and plotted out their paths – which led straight to Fort Concordia and Iron Marches, and through Fort Salma, where we saw Mordremoth’s vine in fuller force. This went away with the fourth episode, when Taimi ‘fixed’ the waypoint problem.

And then there was the Vinewrath’s vines, that were progressing slowly ever since Silverwastes was first released, which foreshadowed the assault on Camp Resolve.

There were other, smaller, ones like seeing the “mysterious figure” centaur at the cliff edge before Episode 2’s release, hinting towards the centaur camp.

Truth be told, Season 1 did not have as much foreshadowing as you proclaim. If you want to stretch the term to include ‘tying one chapter into something practically fully unrelated via small commentary’ then we got one for Secret of Southsun, one for Dragon Bash, and one for Escape from LA, but the only true foreshadowing was just the Tower of Nightmares arc which you mentioned.

Season 1’s format was far from suitable due to the temporary nature – sure it was better than true one-time events like the Ancient Karka fight, but it was hardly suitable at all. Nor was it a Living World at all, because every single update focused solely on the two main plots. There was never any updates to the rest of the world. EVERYTHING in Season 1 dealt with either Scarlet’s plot (aka Mordremoth’s plot) or Kiel’s plot. Just as everything in Season 2 deals with Mordremoth’s plot or LA’s reconstruction (aka Kiel’s plot).

From the beginning, we’ve been getting a Living Story. I don’t get why ArenaNet decided to start calling it the Living World after Flame and Frost (yes, originally it was called Living Story, not Living World – Living World is the second name for it).

That said, personally? I’d love a mixture of Season 2’s format and the format used for Tower of Nightmares arc. An open world preview that’d go away – just aesthetics maybe dialogue and NPCs – followed by a forced story instance (which starts the journal) that gives access to a changed location (changed/new events, changed/new npcs, and changes to hearts on top of aesthetic changes) and new location(s) with more story instances (which will always hold this second appearance of old location and first appearance of new locations), which culminates into a closing instance and a second change to the old and new locations related.

But that’s still not a Living World. And it won’t ever be until they recontinue adding unrelated events and NPCs across the game. The only time they had close to a Living World was the first Halloween when they added the Modus Scleris and a few mini-dungeons that had no relation to Halloween.

North of the raid is brand new territory. There’s the lake that in GW1 looked like a face (less so in GW2), beyond that it’s fully unknown places that on the map looks like more Maguuma Wastes.

Kalavier.1097:

“Okay guys, we need to rescue Destiny’s Edge and get the Pact up on it’s feet fully!”

“Oh, commander, I saw Caithe going that way.”

“kittenING CAITHE, GET OVER HERE!”

You need to replay Prized Possessions. You make it sound like we dropped everything to go out of our way to get Caithe and the egg, but you have to remember that we were meeting up with survivors (the Priory camp) when Caithe was right there in front of us. Rather than lose her – again – we took literally a few steps to keep Mordremoth from getting the egg.

Kalavier.1097:

The more you delay, the more holes appear in the storyline they set up. Hell, the egg arc only causes that by ‘accident’ in terms of Lore. The commander had zero plan or idea what to do with the Egg after securing it, which makes the Exalted just kinda… spawn in there. And the Exalted don’t do much in terms of the story either beyond that point. They aren’t present in the final fight.

If you talk solely about the story instances you’d be right. But keep in mind that the HoT story is told in both instance and open world, and the Exalted do more in the open world. Furthermore, it’s indicated in various story instances that the Pact began using Tarir as a recovery camp after the events of Act 2. So the Exalted were defending the Pact members incapable of fighting (like Destiny’s Edge after they were rescued).

And I disagree with your first statement. Length in of itself does not add holes to a plot. Bad writing does. They’re not the same.

Kalavier.1097:

In order to make any extra side arcs happen, we’d have to rescue Traehearne/Destiny’s Edge early on. Without that, it makes more detours seem weird, out of place, pace-breaking or simply “What the kitten?” plot hole. I agree it doesn’t perhaps have to be ‘short’, but you have to keep a pace going. It’s like, Mass Effect 2 I guess. “OMG, WE HAVE TO DO THIS MISSION ASAP!” “Eh, okay.” goes and does side missions and exploration for 5 days of gameplay.

Which is EXACTLY what I said. They established every goal to be the ‘end-game goal’ but if they had only one goal be the ‘end-game goal’ and the others being incremental (solved throughout the plot) then it’s less of an issue. And in all honesty, that’s the only way to have made it work, because how it works now simply doesn’t in terms of pacing.

Regarding ME2, that’s not really how it is, because keep in mind that colonies weren’t disappearing day by day but rather month by month. So there was leeway for them, and you can’t just rush into things without preparation – that’s something not many people seem to get when it comes to war. And something I find disjointed about GW2’s plot. Both the personal story and HoT has 0 preparation. You can’t go from a shattered army to taking down a gargantuan force without preparing a force to replace what was lost or repairing that broken army. And while both does such to a degree, not enough to really be believable.

Yes, it means that the enemy gets stronger, you just need to establish a faster rate of increase than the enemy.

Kalavier.1097:

IIRC, the npc we talk to in the camp is OoW, the group is a mixed group that just escaped from a prison convoy, and the ranking officer was a Priory member. The tents were OoW and nothing states much about the camp other then “Hey, there is a Pact camp up here!”

Except in the open world it’s a 100% OoW group. Every single individual. And in the story instances, most wore Priory armor.

Kalavier.1097:

What HoT fails at, IMO, is the Pact. After Verdant Brink and the very first mission in Auric Basin, we do next to nothing with the Pact at all in the story.

Everything past City of Hope feels incompetent compared to Act 1.

Kalavier.1097:

I do feel like some of the stuff they cut out they forgot to actually edit things that were left behind, leading us to get the irrational, utterly crazy and sudden “I HATE CAITHE WITH MY ENTIRE SOUL!” attitude and Braham calling her explicitly a traitor.

Braham calling her a traitor makes some amount of sense though, given that he knows nothing about her and what little he does know mostly revolves around how she took the egg without explanation.

The ones who shouldn’t consider Caithe a traitor would be Rytlock, the PC, and Canach – of those active at the time (naturally, I’d include Eir, Faolain, Trahearne, Logan, and Zojja in that group). Especially if the PC was a sylvari.

Ironically, Rytlock never distrusts sylvari in HoT, despite his opening line in the first HoT trailer being “you can’t trust sylvari, they belong to the dragon now” – the closest thing to sylvari distrust is a casual asking Braham if Canach could be trusted during The Jungle Provides.

That’s not entirely true rebellion. What was said about Season 3 is:

With the recent death of Mordremoth, the Pact and its armies are in disarray with the vast majority of its troops dead or missing. Survivors have begun to regroup or gone home to mourn the dead while the heroes of the great invasion into the jungle investigate a strange disturbance to the north. Within the golden city of Tarir, the last known dragon egg rests protected by the Exalted—but the egg begins to crack. What creature lies within the egg? An enemy or an ally? In other corners of Tyria, the remaining powerful elder dragons continue to expand their control—but what impact will the death of the two of the elder dragons have on them and on Tyria itself? What impact will being held by Mordremoth have on Zojja and Logan? What research will Taimi uncover at Rata Novus? What plans do Anise and the Shining Blade have for Canach? How will the Black Citadel react when they learn of the return of Rytlock? These questions and more await you in season three of Living World! We’ll give you more details as we get closer to its launch.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/state-of-the-game-update-q1-2016/

The ‘north of the Maguuma’ part seems to hint more towards the raids and the ‘establishment for the beginning of S3’ or rather, pre-S3 stuff. And we have more than just the egg and north of Maguuma – we have mention of Destiny’s Edge, Krytan politics, and Rata Novus.

There are norn in the lunatic court.

Hate? Nah. Tired of them being the focus? Ja.

HoT should have been “the focus” TBH, but they skipped just about everything that needed to be covered…

‘The egg arc’ is just two instances, one of which is half about regrouping with the Pact. How the hell is that out of place? Hell, the primary objective before finding out the Pact Fleet fell was getting the egg to Tarir (though the PC didn’t know what or where Tarir was – just that it was a golden location).

You forgot the second primary objective given at the beginning of HoT: recruiting local allies, and that’s exactly what “the egg arc” does – and is why we detour to Rata Novus, why we would help out Malyck, or investigate the Nightmare Court.

The problem, to me, is that they gave us a bunch of new objectives and set them to all be the end goal, rather than incrementing our objective-goal situations. For example, if we had rescued Destiny’s Edge halfway rather than at the end, then there’d be room and reason to spend a bit of time doing other things. And even then, you can have a race-against-the-clock plot without having it short. Act 2 was half the size of Act 1, and Acts 3 and 4 were each half the size of Act 2.

The further we progressed, the less content we got. And the less continuity between open world and story (a Durmand Priory camp in the story instances suddenly becomes an Order of Whispers camp in the open world – referring to the one in Roots of Terror).

Not going to say the plot was bad, but it wasn’t great, and I think pacing was the issue here. Most ‘epic adventure’ stories have 1 overarching goal and several incremental smaller but still primary goal – HoT had 3 overarching goals (recover Pact, rescue DE, kill Mordy) and 1 smaller primary goal (bring Egg to Tarir). There should have been 1 overarching goal (kill Mordy) with 4/5 smaller primary goals (bring Egg to Tarir, rescue DE, recover Pact, recruit allies, and hold off a new push of Mordremoth’s forces heading towards Central Tyria is what I would have gone with – the ‘recruit allies’ would include Nightmare Court and Malyck along with Exalted/Itzel/Nuhoch that we got).

wolfie.7296:

Ehecatl.9172:

Um. There’s nothing political about this. The Sylvari have their own culture.

“All things have a right to grow”, doesn’t mean “Everyone is right”. It means what it says. Everything has a right to exist. From the mighty human gods to lowly insects. Being a pacifist this seems completely inline with Ventari’s teachings. As a result Sylvari do their best not to kill needlessly or discriminate against other beings.

The cycle you are born is in literally the same thing as your zodiac sign. It’s a belief the Sylvari have that your personality is partially dictated by what time of the day you’re born during. Looking around and listening to the NPC dialogue confirm this. Some of the NPCs do follow the stereotypes of their cycle, but others don’t. There is at least one NPC who assumed another is from a specific cycle based on it’s personality, but is corrected. So there are Sylvari who are atypical for their cycle.

I’d prefer if you read what I wrote and what the text says, more than disagreenig for the sake of it.

Ehecatl is absolutely right in his statement, however.

You claimed that “everything has a right to grow” means “everyone is right and no one is wrong” but that’s just simply false – there’s a group of sylvari near one of the vistas in Upper Commons (east of the asura gate) which talks about the tenents and their meanings and I believe this is one of them. The explanation given is exactly has Ehecatl says – everything has a right to live and you shouldn’t kill indiscrimenantly. Another example is in one of the earlier short stories we got – Cadeyrn (who would become founder of the Nightmare Court) wanted to kill infant krait because he believe they’d grow up to be as vile as the adult krait (especially if left to grow up under the adult krait) however other sylvari stopped him because they haven’t done any wrong yet and should have a right to grow up because they just might prove to grow to be good individuals instead of like most krait.

It’s a niave view half the time but that just falls in line with the fact that the sylvari are a new race and as both individuals and as a society they are still learning the ways of the world.

The cycles are exactly as Ehecatl said too, they are not stuck-in-stone things nor is it stereotyping as you claim, but it is more of a general rule of thumb. It’s far from absolute. And you even got the cycle descriptions wrong and are very clearly obviously overexagerating for the sake of proving yourself right.

Dawn are typically more diplomatic, but they are not self-righteous or egotistical in the least. Some dawn NPCs we know are in fact the most selfless of sylvari. Noon tend to be more proactive rather than reactive – doesn’t make them productive, just that they prefer to act first. Dusk is just that they tend to be scholars (nothing about isolation there) and night tend to be less forward and outright giving (again nothing about isolation there) – e.g., sylvari of dawn, noon, and dusk are more likely to extrapolate when asked a question while night are more likely to answer as specifically as possible without giving unasked for information (example: in Ghosts of Ascalon, Killeen, a night sylvari, tells Seraph where Dougal Keane hid something, but because she wasn’t asked she didn’t tell the Seraph that she had re-hidden said something in a new location immediately after Dougal hid it).

But again, these are “guidelines” – no different than “charr of Iron Legion tend to be more technical and mechanical in their lifestyle” or “humans of Ascalon are more militant due to a thousand years war with the charr” – there is probably a good 20% or more outlier from these descriptions.

This is little different from being able to tell who’s British due to the way they act or talk or type.

Honestly, the Sentinel outfit looks more evil than good. Just because you have birds, doesn’t make those birds doves.

And the whole ‘blackened face with glowing eyes’ speaks volumes. Though it does make me think that the outfit was basically a combination attempt of Balthazar’s and Dwayna’s.

Donari.5237:

though given how green is the color of evil things in Tyria I think that’s the more bad-a color in lore

Purple is the ‘official’ color of evil in GW – so sayeth Jeff Grubb back in 2010 or some such when we got the first Shatterer demo – folks were wondering if the shared connection to purple meant a tie between Abaddon and Kralkatorrik, Jeff responded with “purple is the color of evil in Tyria so a lot of evil things will take on purple hues” – as an aside, there’s a lot of purple within the vines of Mordremoth and even spotted in southern Cursed Shore and Arah.

Green is just the color of necromancy and death.

Pretty much any PS or S1 npc that hasn’t been heard from again. The list is far too long. And that list doesn’t count open world NPCs that just disappeared after the content was over.

However, I really hope they don’t pull another Ela Makkay. That NPC is simply put WAY OVER USED. I mean, LOR-748 Field Reporter could have done the recap. Why was Ela Makkay used for practically every Season 1 chapter (Flame and Frost, Bazaar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics, and every chapter/release from Tower of Nightmares to Festival of the Four Winds) and then brought again – higher ranked – in Season 2 and then used as the Season 1 recap NPC… For a scholar, she doesn’t seem to have a singular focus, and why did she get promoted – just to fill the role of ‘a magister we know’? There are other magisters out there…

Ela got to the point of annoying returns like Bloomaloo and Penelopee – the harbingers of death and destruction (for wherever they go, death follow – LA LOOK OUT! AGAIN!!). And not to mention that the movement paths of Bloomaloo and Penelopee make no sense. They’re refugees of Viathan Lake – okay – they go to LA seeking refuge – okay – they go into Gendarran looking for a permanent home – sure, why not – they go back to Kessex Hills – uh…. – just to get to the coastal Grove (note: Kessex Hills is not very coastal, let alone Fort Salma where they were when mordrem attacked) – sure…. – just to go back to LA where they’ve settled down…. – what? What’s next, returning to Gendarran as the Deep Sea Dragon assaults LA, then finding a home in the Grove until the anti-sylvari movement marches on the doorsteps?

And you get exotics for completing the story steps. Why can’t we have both methods for ascended trinkets? Besides, there’s only three stats you can get from chapter achievements overall – that is hardly enough reason to not introduce crafting. Especially since of those three stats, you can’t even get a full set and there is no other method of obtaining those stats beyond raids! And you cannot – once again – duplicate the slot type for what you’re wearing.

The ascended trinkets rewarded from doing the chapter meta achievements won’t become irrelevant, trust me. Why do I know? Because you don’t have to craft them. It’s as simple as that. Most people will go after the achievements for the mastery points and the achievement points anyways, the ascended trinkets will be more of a (sometimes uncared for) bonus.

Agemnon.4608:

To keep story mode achievements and fractals relevant.

Because the rares and exotics that you get from story mode achievements are relevant.

Aenaos.8160:

Given how easy it is to acquire the trinkets for no cost at all,why would you want to
spend expensive mats on crafting them?

Reason 1: Because currently you cannot wear two berserker or sinister (etc) offensive-slot rings.

Reason 2: There are many stats you don’t have access to. Examples: full Dire, Assassin’s (sans accessories via Dungeoneer collections), Magi (sans accessories again), and more. Just compare this list to “the lists here”: to see what I mean.

Reason 3: There are several additional stats atop of Reason 2 which have no Utility amulet variation.

Reason 4: You cannot mix and match base and upgrade stats. You’re given a very limited option, most of the times being base and upgrade being the same but sometimes you got Dire/Rabid (only way to get Dire trinkets) or Berserker/Apothecary – want Berserker/Sinister? Fat chance!

Crafting ascended trinkets would allow fixing all of these issues if ArenaNet so chose.

Trying to properly equip your stats via ascended trinkets is about as limiting as your options for aquabreathers.

Agemnon.4608:

The first point strongly implies that we can still fight the water dragon with our land abilities. What’s wrong with an archipelago theme? We’d just be surrounded by water and surfing on it, not actually going in it.

Sorry but you cannot fight a dragon who lives in the ocean depths (thousands of feet underwater) on the shore.

Sartharina.3542:

I think that Bubbles and Kralkatorrik should be killed off by a team of NPCs from outside Core Tyria (Possibly from Elona or Cantha)… and come across as every bit self-centered and dismissive of the player characters and their accomplishments as we are likely to be of theirs (And our own allies). But making them actually credible in a fight would probably be too much effort, and most people would just be kittened off at them.

The DSD is nowhere near Cantha for all our knowledge (best guess from lore indicates that he would be west of the Battle Isles) and nothing really indicates that Kralkatorrik flew southeast to Elona (lore actually indicate he remains in the northern Crystal Desert, but we players aren’t certain).

Keep in mind that with Zhaitan, we didn’t just shoot at him. He starved then poisoned him.

When we destroyed the Mouth of Zhaitan, destroyed his minion factory, and cleansed the temples (last one being open world), and finally cleansing the Source of Orr, we took out a lot of Zhaitan’s magic – equivalent to blocking most if not all the ley line energy flows leading to Mordremoth.

Then after that we used Gorr’s research to steal magic, turn it into something poisonous to Zhaitan and his risen but not mortal races, and sent it back into him. Further, we used the Inquest’s study on Elder Dragons in a laser canon that was originally derived from one that was tested on -repeatedly – Zhaitan’s champion Tequatl.

Metaphorically, it would be like not eating for a day, then vomiting and being forced to eat that vomit while being assaulted with lethal weapons.

So while we didn’t know much about the nature of Elder Dragons compared to now, we didn’t go fighting Zhaitan unprepared. Rather, during the personal story we specifically research a method to counter Zhaitan specifically, without bothering to look into the role and nature of Elder Dragons which we learn in Season 2.

Honestly it should be made, because there are dozens of stats which don’t have ascended trinket variants – even long before HoT, hell even when the first set of trinkets were released before new stats were made.

With the exception of raid trinkets, all ascended trinkets count as unique gear which basically means you cannot equip two of the same kind. Which in turn means that if you want two rings or accessories with the same stats, you must have one that is offensive and one that is defensive for infusion slots – and what if you want two defensive or two offensive? Only current option is to do raids and pray to rngesus or farm it a lot.

First off, different dragons function differently, and as Aaron pointed out we don’t know the extent of this ‘information transfer’.

Of all dragon minions, risen retain their original knowledge and persona the most (Mordrem Guard do too but technically speaking they don’t seem to be corrupted – but this is an entirely different cup of tea). But just because the ancient Orrians that were corrupted might know resurrection spells doesn’t mean they would still work – let alone risen using them. After all, if the spells worked still, I think the Order of Whispers if not the Durmand Priory would have and use them.

Furthermore, there’s little to no need for risen to use resurrection spells. In the novels, it’s repeatedly shown how risen in general just keep moving no matter how much you cut them down – the only way to beat them is to simply chop them into such tiny pieces that they cannot render harm to others (in both EoD and SoS, there are scenes showing the severed limbs of risen still twitching and trying to fight – this is also shown with the disembodied risen arms throwing rocks at players, and iirc there is an asura lab somewhere where they effectively liquify risen and… that liquid is moving like its alive; then there’s also the other asura lab where risen body parts start coming together on their own to form an abomination – the irony of all this is that there is a Pact npc in Fort Trinity which says “anything that kills the living kills the risen” – hah! bet he didn’t last long in Orr). The only exception to this seems, oddly, to be champions (read: Whiting and The Maw from SoS).

Tangent aside now… Other than risen, the only dragon minion group that might have access to ressurection spells would be the icebrood (branded are too new, destroyers typically don’t corrupt the living, mordrem also too new, and DSD’s minions are unknown but if theory about dragon orb placement in The All is right then the DSD corrupts inanimate environments to make minions, like Primordus and Mordremoth, rather than corrupts living beings like Jormag, Zhaitan, and Kralkatorrik). But of icebrood, only champions seem to retain their personality, and in turn likely only they retain the ability to strategize enough to use resurrection spells if they could.

But again, I’d point out that there’s a good chance that the older organizations like the Order of Whispers and Durmand Priory (if not others) still retain the spells used for resurrection – thus the only reason they don’t use such is because that magic simply stopped working, which would mean even dragon minions couldn’t use that magic even if they wanted to.

People (in large, not universal) loved the execution style.

But people (in large, not universal) hated that it was temporary, and that it would be gone in 2 or 4 weeks.

If they kept their original schedule (one update a month with pre-scheduled alterations showing without patches to add them instead of biweekly) and made the majority of it (like achievements, non-city events and instances) permanent (even if the instances weren’t tied to the story journal), then I think there’d have been no complaints about Season 1.

The lack-of-resurrection in modern times is even highlighted in a small handful of side dialogues as well as CoF explorable mode, where Gaheron’s trying to become resurrected. It’s denoted as something that hasn’t been done in lifetimes (well, for the major races). The particular method Gaheron’s trying to resurrect even more rarer – though Magg clearly doesn’t know/acknowledge it, the only other individual to resurrect without a body was Shiro Tagachi.

As Narcemus says, player characters never die – that’s why ArenaNet uses “downed” and “defeated” in terminology rather than dead. Defeated state is basically unconsciousness.

As for specifically why we can waypoint while defeated… I don’t think it’s ever actually said. But waypoints are a thing in lore, with some background and even seeing NPCs using it (NPCs always have to walk underneath a waypoint to use it, so unclear if this is the lore way to use them or if it’s just to show us that the NPCs are leaving via waypoint – I would expect the former as this explains why the Pact NPCs are stranded if those waypoints are meant to exist in lore).