There has been NPCs talking about studying weather, animals, plants, life and death, rates of decay, astronomy and astrology, metalurgy, chemistry (not only via alchemy which is a mix of traditional chemistry and magic – which is the view of traditional alchemy in fact – but also in things like blackpowder), anatomy (they even have surgeons), herbal medicines, and even studied electricity, radiation, and more.
Like Ehecatl said, the study of magic in many cases is still a study in science for Tyrians – especially asura and hyleks who focus their study largely on magitech and alchemy respectively.
The first heart in Metrica Province has you fixing golems – if you’re on a non-asura, rather than technobabble the dialogue for fixing them is about wires and energy flow. It’s just that rather than electricity, they run on some magical source (or magically generated electricity).
It was less boring and just very terribly written, IMHO. Second only to Scarlet Briar’s writing.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
No you’re not the only one. I’ve been seeing HoT-MKT jokes since they announced HoT would release with October.
- Rebalance all paths to be same difficulty as Aetherpath
Or for the same effect but with much less work they could simply do this :
if the intent of anet is to literally make dungeons so unappealing that people will not do them, why not just remove them from the game entirely and be done with it?
Plenty of people do Aetherpath. It’s not hard at all. It got bad rep because it isn’t a simple “run through all trash mobs, spam 1 to kill bosses, collect gold in under 10 minutes” like every other dungeon run. People had to actually think and work towards the goals for once in any dungeon.
Ah, wait, it wasn’t the first time… first time was TA’s F/U path… which got removed due to hate from playerbase.
Guess they’ll have to remove HoT after the next month of all the complaints of too difficult content that can’t be ran past and bosses just spammed 1!
Yeah I see mini’s being that way, as the mini collectors go nuts over that sort of thing. I just hope it’s not the fire hound looking thing. the wife has tasked me with getting one so she can have a better look lol.
That’s a gargoyle, btw. You fight them in the Mad King’s Labyrinth.
Which current ones have those effects?
If im not mistaken, frostfang (coats the arm wielding it in ice) and Incinerator (Flame coils around the arm)
Current ones really only coat the wrist/forearm, not the entire arm.
Frostfang for example only covers the wrist and front half of the forearm.
Only one that does more than that is Juggernaut, really. And Kraitkin would if it wasn’t broken as it has been for who-knows-how-long where its night version doesn’t show ever.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Candy Corn vendors have new items on offer, Trick-or-Treat bags have a chance to drop new weapons, a mini, or a karka hatchling helm, and those who face the Mad King in his dungeon have a chance for a rare and marvelous reward!
Different items available from different methods, but we don’t know what.
If it’s like the aqua breather from Wintersday, then the PvP track will give a definite option of it.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Movies based on games never turn out good.
Never.
Once players get their DungeonMaster’s title and tokens for gear or legendary s how many players actually go back? A dedicated few speed runners and farmers I’m guessing.
And with upcoming changes…
Only those who actually enjoy dungeons. Which will be… few.
@OP TOPIC:
IMO, a “hard mode” is not the way to save dungeons. Here is my opinion of how to save dungeons:
Do this and their reduction of monetary gain from dungeon running will no longer be a major issue. With rare skins to collect even for veterans, there’d be reason to go do the dungeons for a long time.
This, I feel, would be enough to “save” dungeons. However, if ArenaNet wanted to make “one final update to dungeons and never touch them again while having them remain a viable game mode” they could add the further Quality of Life and balance changes:
you do realize you can play fractals pre 80, right? it actually gives you a good range of gear for your character, and pre-80’s can easily handle up to fractal level 8.
even level 10’s can handle level 1-5
You do realize that fractal level 8 doesn’t give much rewards, right?
Any reward worth getting is from lvl 20+ And a pre-80 cannot do that – Agony begins at level 10, and you need ascended gear for that.
It’s also pretty obvious that the Fractals are becoming more hardcore with HoT’s release, and Anet, currently. doesn’t even point your characters to fractals until level 79 – for a reason.
If Anet nerfs all drops across the game by some percentage, does this mean they’re trying to remove incentive to play the game?
There’s still plenty of incentives to do dungeons such as for the tokens. You’ll also get drops and some coins. All that I have seen them say they are doing is reducing the amount of gold players will get from completing dungeon paths. That does not mean that they want players to no longer play dungeons.
Nerfing across the game is different than nerfing across a single game mode.
And incentive to do dungeons for tokens? Once you get the collections those are rather pointless and you can complete the collections with far more effectiveness from PvP now.
It’s obvious that ArenaNet wants the “unique rewards” from dungeons to be the main thing to do them aside from the fun of it. But what I’m saying is that dungeons do not have enough unique rewards to merit this.
Reducing the monetary income is fine… if and only if the unique rewards from dungeons are worth something.
What are dungeons’ unique rewards?
So where are these useful dungeon-based unique rewards, I ask? I see none.
Also funny how John has stopped responding entirely ever since the huge outlash on the deincentivizing dungeons comment…
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
My guess is there’s no much underwater combat in the new zones. Maybe with the next expansion there’ll redo underwater and then add the legendaries at that time.
They confirmed HoT will have no underwater combat. But this isn’t the point. There’s more content than in HoT.
Or since it takes about a month to develop each weapon, it is a sign that their development is better spent other places. Rather than underwater weapons that makes up maybe 3-5% of the game content.
And the reason why they’ve not made any aquatic weapons for almost every BLC weapon set?
Or even for the blue nightmare weapons from Aetherpath despite them being reskins of an older weapon set which includes aquatic weapons?
It’s pretty obvious that they’re trying to slowly remove underwater combat despite many players enjoying it.
And these weapons should be part of the sets. If it takes a few months for a team that is only working on legendary weapons to make three weapons before going onto the next set of legendary weapons so what? They’re still working on legendary weapons the entire time.
Not adding new is not the same as removing. Or you’re suggesting a massive redesign of current maps? All the water is going to vaporize or what? Poor quaggans.
They’ve already done this to a degree, technically. They removed underwater combat from PvP and almost fully from WvW – once HoT hits and the borderland changes, underwater combat will be removed fully from WvW.
Furthermore they removed it from low level areas – not by removing the water, but by turning all hostiles neutral (even risen which makes no bloody sense).
It would not surprise me if they removed two of the HotW paths that include underwater combat, and turned all open world underwater hostiles neutral…
Hell, I’m half expecting the aquatic fractal to disappear with HoT.
Well you can doudt about anything you want, but they said that it take them one month to create one legendary weapons from scratch. This isn’t just the skin, but also the aura, the footprints, skills animations. It also include the three precursors (yes now it’s 3), the collections, the quests, the trophies, etc.
I’m fairly sure they were referring to just the special journey part.
And I’d argue they were exaggerating a lot too.
Would I be happy if underwater combat was good and there was some new underwater content and skin? You bet I would. But I prefer that they put that time on other stuff tbh.
So you’d rather they spend time making new stuff in only some portions of the game rather than improving the core mechanics which will allow, in the future, new stuff in even more portions of the game than before.
I don’t get this mentality, which sadly seems to be ArenaNet’s.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
No. Disincentivizing dungeons is not the same as telling players that he does not want them to do dungeons.
It rather is.
To deincentivize something is to remove incentive to do something. Without incentive, people do not do stuff.
So removing incentive to do stuff = making it so people don’t want to do it.
Cadeyrn and Ceara’s dissent happened long before the game, so any change would have happened before the time of the game.
But in short, yes. In the pre-release blog post for sylvari, the Pale Tree was distant from all but the Firstborn – this is why in The Newly Awakened the avatar is nowhere to be found; it simply didn’t exist yet. Because of Cadeyrn and Faolain, she became closer to all of her children so that they would be less likely to leave her.
It could be that “disincentivizing” is a term of art from an economist’s standpoint. He might just have meant “we don’t want the incentive to play dungeons to be that they are a gold faucet, so we are removing (some of) the economic incentive to play them.”
He’s an economist, not a PR spinner in tune with how laymen will interpret his terminology.
Makes sense.
However, I don’t think there’s enough unique rewards to mandate doing this at this point. I think that if this is the intent and purpose, and not wanting to push players away from dungeons in general, then they should also do the following:
This would give people a non-liquid gold incentive to play the dungeons, more than just the stuff that’s either useless (masterwork/rare trinkets/backpieces) or stuff that players have had a long time to get (armor/weapons from vendors).
You apparently don’t get it.
As I said, the damage has already been done. I’m just trying to look on the bright side.
I’m not seeing the bright side of killing off dungeons.
I can see the bright side of not supporting them, however. And the two are vastly different.
I don’t think dungeons have enough worthwhile unique rewards to allow reducing liquid gold gains.
Maybe if they upped the unique masterwork/rare trinkets/backpiece drops to exotics, gave every dungeon path a unique drop set like Aetherpath has, and made the recipes for exotic trinkets into ascended trinket recipes then it would be. But as is? No.
However, dungeons have been “dead” since that patch two years ago, with the exception of Aetherpath. They have gotten little to no support, no updates, no buffs, only the occasional exploit fix/nerf.
“Dead” !- “No support”
“Dead content” means that no one plays that content. That’s what ArenaNet’s goal apparently is by deincentivizing the content.
If you’re suggesting that they’re paving the way for dungeons to be removed, then I would say that’s highly doubtful. Dungeons are apart of the original campaign story (if anyone even remembers that), and ANET has been loathe to excise even bloated fat like that, which new content has entirely superseded.
Personality system was part of the original system. They removed it.
Underwater combat was part of the original system. They reduced it greatly – removing it fully from PvP and low level areas, while almost removing it completely from WvW (once the new borderlands go live, underwater content will be removed completely from WvW).
I don’t think “being part of the original campaign story” will hinder them. They’ll just do to the story modes what they did to Arah, then they can feasibly remove the explorables at the wrath of many players. Not like anything of import comes from just the dungeons anymore.
They already built and programmed all the content, why delete it?
Indeed. They already built and programmed all the content around the personality system. Why did they remove it?
They already built and programmed the PvP and WvW underwater combat. Why did they remove it?
This is NOT a good thing. It could be if and only if they were doing other things to dungeons – particularly to improve balance and increase unique rewards – but they’re not. So it’s not a good thing.
If that’s the case, the what’s the case for even stepping into a dungeon after Oct 23rd? Lore? Gold? As I see it now Anet can just remove those dungeons and push more into raids and fractals.
Well there is still the dungeon armor/weapons. but aside from that, fun?
There will still be a point to run dungeons: tokens.
Which you can get from PvP. And honestly? That’s the more reliable way to do it anyways.
Just like the Greatest Fear is a detour drama from the overall war story that began with Claw Island and ended with Zhaitan’s death, Season 2’s finale is just a detour in the war story that is fighting Mordremoth.
That axe!
Those bat wings!
That gargoyle mini!
Ascent to Madness!
Best Halloween since the first!
Now if only the three open world metas, Reaper’s Rumble, and the scavenger hunt return alongside the Bloody Prince plot as well (aka having all content from previous years together).
The quick answer is this:
Whatever armor the Toxic Courtiers wear can glow.
ArenaNet added the armor glow to certain plant armor back during the Tower of Nightmares release. This was so that the Courtiers can glow like their krait counterparts. They did claim that was just the first of many future updates where they’d improve plant armor to have a night-time glow.
Unfortunately, like world boss rebalancing, dungeon rebalancing, biweekly updates, and far more, they scrapped that and went back on their word.
Bit ironic that half of HoT’s features are “and we’ll be continuing this in the future”. Right.
Yet another one of these “I can’t play how I want and get exclusive items” complaint threads.
Seriously, legendary weapons are meant to be hard to get and exclusive to those who put in the work to get them. And part of that work is going across many forms of the game.
Please tell me that is sarcasm. Updates in mmorpg often involves them fading/removing older content (Dungeons was highly neglected from updates too). Ultimately, you got what you paid for, the value of “time spent playing”. They’re not deleting dungeons, dungeons will still exist.
They’re not deleting dungeons… yet.
But honestly, when you look at the other things that were promoted greatly by ArenaNet at/before launch yet were neglected afterwards, and where they are now… dungeons aren’t unlikely to follow the trend that underwater combat and personality systems went (among other things).
And that was the point of my post, if you actually read it. They’re openly wanting to push players away from dungeons – for no reason given – after years of no changes to them beyond exploit fixes. So when will dungeons go the way of the personality system, which was functional upon release but removed in the NPE? When will they go the way of underwater combat, which has not only been ignored for so kitten long, but ArenaNet has been pushing players away from it by reduced aquatic weapon skins, removing it from PvP, early PvE zones, and most of WvW.
There were problems with dungeons, yes, but rather than spending time to reduce incentive to do dungeons they could have spent the same amount of time and effort to fix those problems.
Dungeons in GW2 have their own niche, but you’re removing them in favor of Fractals because…
No reason given.
But they gave us a reason in the Blogpost. They won’t support dungeons and fractals, probably because they feasibly can’t / it takes too much time, so they chose to support only fractals (the newer content).
The devs can only support (balance around new skills, fix upcoming new exploits,…) so much, with raids incoming they have to choose.
Their reason was “we don’t do it”.
I’m sorry but “we won’t do it” isn’t a reason. It’s an action. For unknown-to-us reason, they stopped doing an action.
And you have to just randomly guess at the reason why.
Furthermore, there is a VAST difference between “not supporting” and “deincentivizing” content.
They don’t have to support dungeons. But that doesn’t mean they have to push players away from them.
The less players are in dungeons, the more will turn to fractals – so it gets much easier to get into pugs.
In other words players who do dungeons but not fractals are SOL because “consolodating playerbase” which is exactly what the LFG is for.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
@König des Todes
You don´t know Anet won´t drop them. You just don´t. If the next cycle of fotm content is reached, raids may be dropped quickly again under the flag of “This is new, this is groundbreaking, this is exciting!”. Could very well reasonably happen.
Konrad Adenauer probably said it best:
“What do I care for my speech from yesterday?”
Exactly. My. Point.
Technically, we can never know for sure.
But now ArenaNet has given us empirical evidence that would support them dropping it. Because just about all past “new, groundbreaking, exciting” stuff they did end up dropping after 1 or 2 iterations.
With the intention to deincentivize dungeons, here’s my question for ArenaNet:
Where’s the casual/semi-casual 5-man group gameplay?
Dungeons fill a particular niche and they are trying to remove it. They are removing part of their playerbase. They’re not just ignoring dungeons anymore, they’re removing them. Maybe not fully – yet, at least – but that’s what they’re doing.
And if ArenaNet is willy-nilly about removing working-but-not-perfect content in GW2 when even in GW1 the most broken content in terms of profit-to-easiness remained for years and years, what guarantee do we have that ArenaNet won’t remove other such content?
Ah, wait. They are. Underwater content they’re also removing, piece by piece.
@ArenaNet, you’re taking the game we paid for away. Do you really think people will keep paying long-term for this? Or have you become like EA – just interested in quick moneygrabs no matter what great games and stories you ruin?
Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
YesIs the intention to reduce targeted liquid gold earning, or are you putting that liquid somewhere else thats targetable?
The intention is not entirely to reduce liquid gold earning, we’ll be using up the slack we generate in other locationsWhat type of instanced content do you see offering marketable rewards that players can take part in on a regular basis?
Fractals
This is a very sad thing, in my opinion.
Dungeons in GW2 have their own niche, but you’re removing them in favor of Fractals because…
No reason given.
Allow me to state one thing:
Dungeons are NOT the same as Fractals.
Fractals are NOT the same as dungeons.
They care to two different groups of players, even though they both focus on 5-man groups.
In all honesty, I don’t mind the “no more dungeons, only fractals and raids” but to deincentivize dungeons is no different than removing a gamestyle that a certain group will only like. And that means losing players. Which means no future profits from said players.
What’s worse was that back in 2013 you guys promised to revamp dungeons, with the changes to Ascalon Catacombs being the first set of such, but then you decided to just go do other things. You said the same with world bosses, with Tequatl being the first one, but then you just decided to go do other things. How does that make us feel about these promises of “the first of many” with HoT? How do we know you guys aren’t just going to not only abandon raids after the first one, but then deincentivize them later down the road?
In all honesty, I don’t get the intention behind doing this. And you guys don’t explain.
What the hell is so bad about dungeons that you would rather give them Isaiah’s Balance than to make them proper gamestyles that get discontinued?
I bought HoT two weekends ago because I figured you guys were actually going down the right path again.
Apparently I was wrong.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
Hey don’t worry, as far as I know Howler hasn’t been fixed. It’s not JUST aquatic weapons!
I’m not talking about “fixing” the old weapons. I’m talking about adding new ones.
That’s two very different things.
No offense, but aquatic stuff is hilariously useless in this game
No offense taken, but the fact that its “hilariously useless” is actually why I would like it improved.
It’s only “hilariously useless” because ArenaNet decides to ignore it instead of fixing it. A habit they have with stuff – they don’t fix stuff that people do now, be it world bosses, dungeons, or yes, underwater combat.
And no, I would prefer anet not waste time improving “under water”…. its just there for a bit of fun, but the real content is on land….
Only because they removed underwater combat from PvP and most of WvW, as well as ignored adding more of it in the game. And they stopped adding more of it because it’s “hilariously useless” in the view of the majority of the playerbase.
And… isn’t the entire point of video games to have fun and be entertained?
Ya it would be nice to see an underwater dragon fight like teq but underwater, but I rather not since that means developement for other projects have to be put on hold for something so irrevelent in the grand scheme of things….
It’s not all that irrelevant when we know that there’s an underwater dragon in the future…
Under water legendaries are useless…..whats the point? you wanna dive in and show off to a couple fishes? no is in the water to look at your new shiny besides NPCs……
In this situation, it’s not just about no aquatic legendaries, but that aquatic weapons are continuously shafted in non-existence. Most BLC weapons have no aquatic weapon, there’s no aquatic Ambrite weapon, hell even the Aetherpath’s Aetherized Nightmare Weapons don’t have aquatic variants despite the Nightmare Weapons very much having such!
Besides to me getting legendary weapons isn’t about showing off to others but getting what you think looks good – it’s personal – and about the added benefit of swappable stats.
Developing new legendary weapons is apparently a very involved process according to today’s blog post, and given how much more use land weapons get, it seems like a bad use of resources to develop aquatic weapons before the other 16 are finished. “We’re making aquatic weapons, but they’ll be coming out last” isn’t an answer that’s going to make anyone happy.
Actually, that response of “they’ll be last” would make me happy. It’s the very fact that they’re not doing them at all which makes me unhappy.
I would hope that anet releases more underwater legendaries when we have to deal with the aquatic elder dragon. I imagine that most of the content would revolve around underwater combat and shoreline defense.
I would expect this too, however, that doesn’t mean we should never gain any new aquatic weapon skins until that point. Because by then we’ll have an abyssmally low amount of skins and options for aquatic weapons that it would seem weird to try to make up for in an expansion that’ll be coming in – if we have a dragon expansion every 3 years – probably 12 years!
What if the next set is nothing but aquatics? Would that appease your wrath.
That’s not really a new set though – that’d be a finishing of this set with the three aquatic weapons being last.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
…Again…
From today’s news post:
we will be releasing new legendary weapons in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of sixteen has been added to the game.
There are 19 weapon types in the game. Three of them being the aquatic weapons. ArenaNet seems intent on not making new versions of these three weapons, and now we have confirmation that hold no intent to make a second legendary for them.
This is rather disappointing. Rather than having ArenaNet ignore underwater content, I’d rather they put some effort to improving it. And even if that’s a long-term goal, making 3 skins per weapon set they’re doing shouldn’t be that hard (even more so when so many tridents already share skins with staves, and spearguns with rifles).
Bipolar disorder can be a symptom of depression btw. Yes, they are different but that doesn’t mean they cannot cause one another.
The part I refer to is this, right after the ritual fails, where Trahearne goes from super depressed to super motivated. The voice acting made it more so than the dialogue:
Trahearne: No! We were so close! By the Pale Tree…it’s impossible. All this, all these lives, wasted. All for nothing.
Laranthir of the Wild: Trahearne, didn’t you see? The cleansing worked! For a moment, the spirit of the land rose up like a breath of wind.
<Character name>: We all felt it. It was as if Orr’s own soul was fighting to be free. The ritual was a success.
Trahearne: But the absolution didn’t hold. Though sacred, the Royal Tombs weren’t strong enough. This isn’t the heart of Orr. I wonder if such a “heart” still exists.
<Character name>: Wait…remember the vision that the Pale Tree gave us? An Orrian king spoke of “the Source.” Maybe that’s something that can help.
Trahearne: You’re right. The Source of Orr…yes! I think I remember hearing about such a thing. A priestess of Grenth, and a shaman of the norn spoke of it.
And for the record, no general populace will ever be highly depressed. Soldiers, refugees, sure. But while the game is full of hostiles for us to kill and conflicts for us to fight, the entire continent of Tyria isn’t in perpetual strife down to the individual square mile in lore.
Also, me, dsslive, and Plagiarized pointed out 9, not 5, examples. And that’s not all of them, as we have both pointed out, but some of the more obvious ones.
Depends on one’s perception of “peace”.
Some would view peace as when their “civilized people” has “converted” all “lesser, barbaric civilizations”.
It would not be unexpecting to find an Exalted who’s perception of peace is “human dominated world” (ala Balthazar’s teachings) or just simply “world living under the Six’s rules” (keep in mind that the Forgotten are also devout followers of the Six).
Only drawn out achievements would be for the final story steps of either Part 1 or Part 2 – particularly The World Summit (final story step of Part 2). If you fail you have to sit through – and click through – several minutes of dialogue in The World Summit; not so bad for Part 1’s (name I forgot) final instance but still the most challenging of their respective episodes (overall most challenging would be No Refuge achievements in Episode 7 no doubt).
The only human inhabitants of the Maguuma back then were the druids, though we see several dozen of their people’s souls in GW1 and GW2 so it’s unlikely that they’re the Exalted.
Charr were an issue for Ascalonians, so it any Exalted hail from Ascalon…
On the topic of Chosen, there’s villagers called Chosen Villagers as NPC’s, which could just be part of the deception, but then again there are Captive Chosen. Either its part of the deception or that these people are truly what are called “Chosen”.
I would argue this was part of ArenaNet’s deception towards the players. Take note that there isn’t a single NPC called “Chosen” after the White Mantle are revealed to be evil (e.g., end of Bloodstone Fen). In lore, most Chosen that were rescued joined the Shining Blade but there are no “Shining Blade Chosen” NPCs nor are there exceptionally powerful magic users amongst the Shining Blade.
The only “Chosen” we meet later on are called by name – such as Jacob Salinger – or are called “Seal Guards”. Note that each and every one of these “Chosen” are dead and we’re seeing their ghosts that were trapped in soul batteries.
Still on the topic of the title “Chosen”, there’s Jadoth who is called “chosen of Abaddon”, first of the Margonites, followers who received Abaddon’s magic. Might not be relevant, but these Margonites did survive through the Domain of Torment for hundreds of years despite having absorbed the energies to the point of becoming demons. Though, that could be another adaptation of human ascension. Might also not be related, but whatever.
Different things that use the same term. Take note that “chosen of Abaddon” is lowercase. This is just a case of ArenaNet using a common word as a title for a unique thing – as opposed to using “in the ancient fictional tongue” technique that would result in them being called, idk, The Kosan.
Theory adaptation: Mursaat and Enchanted both stem from the common ancestor of Humanity in the same way that Margonites and Exalted do. The processes may have been different, but they both “Ascended” from their mortal forms via magic.
Enchanted, Margonites, and Exalted are not fleshy anymore. They’re all ethereal.
Furthermore, that doesn’t explain the physical differences between mursaat and humans.
Some are saying that Mursaat are Tyrian natives, but I see no such text specifying that, only that they predate humanity coming over [correct me if I’m wrong] so no hole so far. Forgotten had created Enchanted [the empty moving armor] so it is likely that they are adapted from Exalted, or possibly the first attempt at Exalted.
Technically not wrong, but technically not right either. There’s nothing that specifically says “they were born on Tyria” but if they weren’t then chances are that such would be brought up because it’s rather significant – just like how it’s mentioned the Forgotten are not native to Tyria, or humans are not.
If we work on the premise that mursaat are not native to Tyria, then we might as well go and presume all races aren’t. Until told otherwise, it’s safer to assume that biologically different races are not non-natives.
All old style statues appear to feature the statues’ active states. Not just the branded Dwayna ones.
However, I’m not sure how serious to take that lore. From the get go it was a very mechanical thing, and pre-Searing statues were also perpectually active despite favor status. Furthermore ever since gw2 was releaseda nd the amount of gw1 titles being maxed decreased, the statues have been made permanently active.
So I don’t think that favor has much stance in the world as we knew it. Statue activity does since it has lore, but in gw2 we see this as magical connection to the Orrian temples.
To add onto the list of depression in GW2: Turbulent Seas – a kodan who lost his son in an early icebrood attack, and now waits for the day he dies.
->What will you do now?
I will follow the others, off the sanctuary and away from the waters. I will trudge along, offering myself for the world, until the day when my cub and I are reunited at Koda’s feet.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Unknown to the anticipating populous of GuildWarsCommunityBerg, the maniacal governing company known as ArenaNet has developed a dastardly newsprint to be released upon the evening of October 22nd, 2015. The headlines for the news that day shall read thus:
Heart of Thorns canceled to due unexpected, unfixable bug in the software.
Few people will realize that this bug was no bug… but the root of all evil, Scarlet Briar.
For she placed her toenail clippings inside ArenaNet’s computers. And they keep growing after being clipped.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
The “challenge” is not the difficulty of the encounter, but the sole fact that you have to find out how to make her vulnerable, which is something almost no other encounter in this game has
That’s not even all of them.
Most bosses – or at least most dungeon paths – do have invulnerability phases and mechanics. But they’re not challenging – like Mai Trin – despite that.
So it’s most definitely not a case of “almost no other encounter” having invulnerability mechanics. It’s more of that none of them – Mai Trin included – can cause much issue once you figure out the mechanic behind their invulnerability.
You refer to the ones on top of the Pact fences with the blue glow?
They’re part of the anti-risen defenses that mixes sylvari magic, asuran magitech and the Blue Orb’s power, the latter seems to be fueling the Alseta Generator – the system was, in part, designed by Arcanist Slizz who is found within one of the Orrian jumping puzzles. The Blue Orb is part of the Personal Story plot.
It has nothing to do with Mordremoth – who was still sleeping at the time – beyond the indirect connection of the sylvari presence.
It’s one of the many “hidden lores” of the game.
I see~
But, a question: Chosen were indicated in the Prophesy, yes, but the Mursaat killed multiple Chosen. What is the difference between the Chosen and the non-Chosen which made the Mursaat wish to kill some but not all humans? Wouldn’t this mean that Chosen are a subcategory of humans?
The Prophecies were widely talked about in the White Mantle, as part of their “scriptures”
From Gates of Kryta:
“The dead rising could only mean one thing. The last days of the prophecies are near.”
“The scriptures speak of the walking dead. Soon the true seers will be revealed.”
“The war against the divine will begin soon. We must prepare ourselves.”
“These days have been foreseen. It is the beginnings of the prophecies.”
“Won’t be long now. The Divine Caretakers have prepared for the coming of the undead.”
The White Mantle and Mursaat didn’t know who the chosen were – that’s how the PC managed to slip through their hunt – so they used the Eye of Janthir to seek out those who had powerful potential magic and simply called them Chosen.
Those sacrifices, in other words, were (most likely) not Chosen.
Note: I say most likely because this isn’t confirmed. However, the complete and utter lack of the term “Chosen” outside of the Flameseeker Prophecies (ignoring the title Chosen and the precursor The Chosen) does indicate that the term only had any form of relevance in regards to the Prophecies. Take into mind that the White Mantle were not above trickery and lies, it seems most likely that those commoners being Chosen was a ruse.
Why they didn’t kill everyone is simple and could be for many reasons. Foremost would be to avoid mass revolts – openly killing people isn’t exactly smiled upon. But secondly, those they call “Chosen” could be them actually seeing those who are most likely to cause a problem for them and killing them off.
Then there’s also a good chance they did kill folks without proclaiming them Chosen, but kept it hush hush. I recall dialogue – though I can’t pin point it after searching unfortunately – that indicated that people were going missing after arguing with White Mantle folks.
I’m not sure it is that simple. The Mursaat weren’t just killing anyone, they used the Eye of Janthir to identify the chosen, through what method we don’t know, but if it was purely random then why bother with it at all.
Well, you’d bother for pretext. The entire point of the Test of the Chosen in the public eye was to bring the Chosen to the Temple of the Unseen for special training into White Mantle members.
They also claimed that the Eye sought out those with high magic.
What if the latter is true – that the Eye sought out those with high magic – but the former – that they’re Chosen – is false? And they only use the term because it’s believed those people might be the actual Chosen/because their scriptures which talk of Chosen rising (a part of the prophecies) is public knowledge?
Snipping your bullet points into a single quote for space saving:
- Some Humans are “Chosen”, which allows various uses
- Chosen, for some reason, can be ritually killed to become Soul Batteries
- Chosen, for some reason, can Ascend to gain a dimensional sight to see Mursaat
- Exalted: Sub-immortal beings of magic created[?] by Glint
- Exalted: Similar in appearance to Mursaat
- Mursaat: Hidden to the naked eye except for the Chosen
So, here’s the theory: Humans and Mursaat were of the same ancestor, meaning they’re related. They existed in the Mists or some other dimension before the Mursaat up and left for Tyria for the first time, leaving their less-magical brethren in their home world. This can explain why Humans in particular have the capability to gain Mursaat-sight via Ascension.
An ancient, ancient theory from the days of Prophecies. That one was brought up by Quintus Antonious over on GWO forums, the theory being that mursaat were ascended humans.
It’s proven wrong in the fact that mursaat and humanity hold different origins. Humans come from another world entirely, as you pointed out, while mursaat are Tyrian in origin.
Technically, even non-humans can become Ascended – Talon Silverwing, a tengu, is likely Ascended via Weh no Su trials during Factions, for example, as he’s capable of fighting Shiro Tagachi (and the heroes needed to become Weh no Su – aka Ascended – to fight him due to the ability all souls have to slip into the Mists at will).
There’s also a physical difference between humans and mursaat. For example, the wings and toes. Mursaat have three large toes while humans, as we all know, have five smaller toes. Mursaat have a series of “feathers” as wings on their backs – humans do not.
In this, the Mursaat were originally humans who unlocked this potential to transform into what they are today. The Exalted went through a similar process, thus why they are so similar to Mursaat in appearance.
But mursaat are flesh and blood, while Exalted are literally souls encased in armor… That’s not a similarity at all.
Exalted armor looks a bit like mursaat armor; but Exalted armor looks like Enchanted armor which looks like tarnished mursaat armor. And we’ve been told that the Enchanted are NOT related to the mursaat. By extension, the Exalted would NOT be related to the mursaat.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
That made me wonder whatever happened to the tome that was the subject of Forging the Pact. We never found out its name – just that it was a dwarven tome.
For that matter, how will Exalted respond to any non-human. In GW1, norn were more or less fully unknown to humans while asura were considered urban legends due to no contact for centuries. And sylvari are brand new too – and mordrem.
We are not shown trahearnes depression as much as we read about it.
Against the Corruption shows the pinnacle of Trahearne’s depression in the form of bipolarity.
Then there’s the examples Plagiarized mentioned. And that’s not all of them.
There’s hints to such – hence my mention of “current implications”.
I mentioned in another thread recently. Basically a few bits of lore talks about things happening 3,000 years prior, rather than 11,000 years prior like the Priory claims. And everything about Glint is that she’s 3,000 years old – or at least was freed from Kralkatorrik 3,000 years ago.
Edit: Aforementioned recent mention:
Source? Certainly this has been brought up before, but I haven’t read it yet.
Source on which – that the 10,000 date is Priory speculation, or that there’s evidence for the previous dragonrise to be 2,000 BE?
Either way, there’s a lot of sources in both. But the main three for the latter are:
- GW1’s timeline which states the Forgotten arrived on Tyria in 1769 BE – while not directly supported in GW2, The Forgotten Not Forgotten which was added in Season 2 does indicate all other origins-knowledge of the Forgotten still hold true (the race came from the Mists in service to the gods).
- Bad Blood – during which Sieran mentions the oldest dwarven structures are “over 2,000 years old” (e.g., circa 1,000 BE). An odd way to say they’re over 11,000 years old if the previous dragonrise, in which the dwarves lived, was 10,000 BE.
- Return to Camp Resolve – in which Eir states Glint had 3,000 years of memory; supplemented by Glint’s line in Edge of Destiny page 338 that she was placed as guardian of the world 3,000 years prior.
All claims that the previous dragonrise was in 10,000 BE is done by Priory scholars. But we know they’re not always correct. Most likely that was simply a dragonrise.
Also, it would be weird for the jotun to have knowledge of multiple dragonrises – implying surviving more than just the previous, which would place their species at being over 30,000 years old.
(edited by Konig Des Todes.2086)
Where has it stated that this “betrayal” was anything more than the Mursaat fleeing with their own knowledge?
Directly? No. But:
They betrayed the races, waged war with the seers, and fled the world.
Nothing – not even I – said that the betrayal was more than fleeing the world with their knowledge, but I also said that there was more to their actions before fleeing than “betrayal”.
We don’t know the full details of the betrayal, but we know that they’re the betrayers. We also know that they wiped out almost all seers, and we also know that Spectral Agony and their phasing trick was the most useful thing the non-Forgotten had against the Elder Dragons (as shown in Arah mursaat path).
Is there a source for this figure? And I was THERE in Kryta 250 years ago, the average man and woman didn’t appear all that subjugated to me.
There’s a source for both.Jacob Salinger states “Thousands of Chosen just like me were killed upon the Bloodstones.”
The Prophecies manual states:
“Travelers to Kryta will find a stark contrast between the fortified, polished-stone buildings of the White Mantle and the thatch-roofed huts of the regular citizens. There is a surprising amount of wealth here, but it is kept in the hands of those who adhere to the doctrines of the Mantle, and this is reflected in the architecture of the region.”
So yes, there was poverty. You probably thought that thatched huts was the norm, because anyone who wasn’t White Mantle were living in them. Well, they were the norm, but they weren’t the norm for White Mantle. The norm for White Mantle was polished stone buildings.
Glint was never linked to purple, but blue.
It’s a valid point though, depression in Tyria seems to be unheard of, with all the war and loss going on about you would think it’d be realistic to hear about a suicide story or two. The reason’s probably because it’s such a delicate topic and writers would rather keep it under the rug, just like the “r” word.
Trahearne would like to have a word with you about depression not existing in Tyria.
The thing is that depression does exist in Tyria, but ArenaNet has not had it lead to suicide.
You need to keep in mind that depression can lead to more places than just suicide – just like suicide can have more causes than depression.
Dragon minions have a form of hive mind with their dragon, so it’s no surprise they know the dragon’s name. And that would be how others learn their name – the dragons’ minions utter it constantly. This would be why the DSD’s name is largely unknown – even in-universe it is unknown, unlike Mordremoth’s name.
Then you have Glint, who was allied with the Forgotten, Dwarves, and supposedly the Six Gods too. She would no doubt have a lot of such information.
The issue with the centaurs being former allies is that the centaurs are major enemies of humans and were even in GW1’s time.
They also lived in what became the Maguuma Wastes – the drying of the land is why they lost their homeland and, along with their hatred of humanity, became more willing to work with the Modniir to assault Kryta.
Oh boy, that Glint looks more and more powerful from one blogpost to another. Scarlet 2.0.
Power has nothing to do with what made Scarlet such a poorly written character.
It was that she was capable of doing the impossible many times. Despite being female, she got a sexist faction to work with her (Flame Legion). She managed to trick a xenophobic faction to working with her (Krait). And with no consequence. And when the groups that would normally kill someone like Scarlet on sight for being what she is (female, not-krait, etc.) find out that Scarlet’s been tricking them, what did they do? They kept working for her.
Glint, however, is a prophetic dragon who knew an event was going to come to pass (dragons waking) and so spent 3,000 years working to hinder that event from being as cataclysmic as it should.
Glint isn’t a Scarlet 2.0. She’s an Abaddon 2.0. And just as there’s a huge difference between a god pulling the strings of his many agents and followers to a mortal genius getting people who would kill or enslave her on sight to work with her after knowing she tricked them, there is a huge difference between an ancient prophetic dragon directing her allies to making weapons to face a future foe to a mortal genius getting people who would kill or enslave her on sight to work with her after knowing she tricked them.
The gods left in Year 0 – over a thousand years ago. Current implication places the timeline to be:
~10,000 BE: A previous dragonrise; Giganticus lupicus wiped out
~2,000 BE: The previous dragonrise; seers, mursaat, jotun, and dwarves are major races
1,769 BE: Forgotten arrive from the Mists, sent by the Six Gods.
<Sometime After> BE: Dragons go to sleep, gods arrive, gods bring humans and send them elsewhere (likely Sunrise Crest)
786 BE: Humans land on Cantha by boat
205 BE: Humans land on Tyria/Elona by boat
1 BE: Abaddon unleashes magic from the Bloodstone
Year 0/0AE: Gods leave Tyria
1075 AE: Gods begin to stop talking to Tyrians
1078 AE: Primordus tries to wake, GW1 heroes stop this.
1120 AE: Primordus wakes up.
Etc. etc.
The gods, while knowing of the dragons, did not seem to know their location (per Randall Greystone, they didn’t know they were pulling magic from Zhaitan when strengthening the Bloodstone). And while they may-or-may-not have known they’d wake up, they left the world a full thousand years before the dragons woke. And we’ve bene told repeatedly as to why they went silent – not because of dragons but because they saw what cataclysm they caused (turning an entire sea into a desert, for starters; or turning a lush landscape into a desolated wasteland fatally toxic to all living beings), and because Abaddon was the last thing that tied their attention to Tyria – they knew he’d return with a vengeance and waited until he was replaced to stop talking to Tyrians.
Pretty much a case of “characters knew it, but the player didn’t” and wasn’t properly revealed as such to players.
As Calcifire said, Priory knew it via “The Scroll of the Five True Gods” which is the Priory’s leading information on the Elder Dragons (as of S2, suddenly; previously it was dwarven legends and ancient tomes like the Tome of Rubicon, or jotun stelae).
I wouldn’t find any form of alliance with a race that has not once but twice committed genocide for selfish reasons to be at all interesting.
Which genocides were those then? We don’t know much about why the Seers and Mursaat were at war, not enough to say who was initially at fault. Beyond that they only killed the Chosen in kryta, most people in Kryta still lived normal and happy lives, a lot of people welcomed the rule of the White Mantle after the king fled. That’s not exactly genocide.
It has been explicitly told to us that the mursaat betrayed the alliance of races (consisting, originally, of the Forgotten, Seers, mursaat, dwarves, and jotun) and subsequently wiped out the Seers before fleeing into the Mists.
And we’ve been told that they killed thousands of Chosen in Kryta. Those they didn’t kill they either subjugated or turned into worshipers. Keep in mind that under the White Mantle’s rule there were two groups of people: the poor and starving, and the White Mantle.
Killing thousands and subjugating the rest counts as attempted genocide to me. Or are you to say that the kitten’s didn’t attempt genocide on Jews, because the Jews not in the concentration camps in Germany lived “happily ever after” (which would be a lie).
I know people tend to frown upon relating fictional groups to Hitler and the kitten, but really that’s a good comparison to how the mursaat treated humans in Kryta. They ruled with an iron fist, sent many from a minority to die, rewarded those who served them but had the rest live in poverty.
Charr are now allies of the humans, who killed countless Charr over the centuries and stole their land for purely selfish reasons.
The Charr literally destroyed Ascalon in the Searing, and would have done the same to Orr and Kryta. For what, revenge?
You wouldn’t ally with either of those races right?
Unlike the mursaat, who have been shown as fully evil, both charr and humans have been showed to have good guys among them.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Konig Des Todes.2086
Palawa Joko didn’t kitten an entire species to extinction..
Neither did the mursaat.
Hi, the seers would like to have a word with you.
Except that they can’t, because the mursaat wiped them all out.
When the world was threatened, Joko put aside differences and aided his enemies.
Joko helped us because it was in his best interest. Not the world’s.
He still didn’t stab us in the back, wipe out humanity, and then fled into the Mists before the threat could be dealt with.
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