How does boiling someone alive in a giant cooking pot compare at all with suffocating on nasty spores?
Reading comprehension? Nothing you said in your reply has anything to do with anything I said, at all.
I have to snort at the fantasy defense. Big, ugly, stupid, impractical, campy nonsense weapons are a design choice that has nothing to do with the genre called “fantasy”.
Before wondering if anything Scarlet said might be profound, meaningful or prophetic, consider that she once tried to cook Faren in a giant pot before gleefully coming at us cartoon-style with a giant hammer. I never did figure out how all of that contributed to her masterplan.
My theory is that the Pale Tree was planted in a location that’s connected to the heart of the Eternal Alchemy, perhaps a powerful ley line hub. Certainly, there are some floating specks and some light play around the tree when you visit it in GW1. Those might be the same kind of manifestations as we see in the hub we visit in the Dry Top caves. Why did Ventari pick the place for his sanctuary? Something about it must have appealed to him.
We might see the Pale Tree in the center in that vision, because she’s connected to that center. Basically, I think the Pale Tree became a lot more powerful and significant than what the seed she grew from was supposed to be, because of where she was planted.
(edited by Manasa Devi.7958)
I know I’m putting up myself for a disappointment, but the ending cinematic actually gave me hope that the Eternal Alchemy is actually “lessened” in importance.
According to both the malleable, untrustworthy out-of-game lore and the holy, writer-blessed in-game canon, Scarlet saw the Eternal Alchemy in its entirety. If we saw the very same things Scarlet had seen, then we saw the Eternal Alchemy as well…
… and it was about the inner workings of Tyria only: dragons, magic, ley lines, Yggdrasil… erm… sorry, the Pale Tree. Nothing cosmic and universal. Just the designs of a single planet.
The cinematic starts with a ‘swimming’ journey through some fancy lights and mysterious bits and bobbins before you ‘warp’ toward the orb model. Presumably, those are non-Tyria related parts of the Eternal Alchemy.
I’m voicing an opinion. I haven’t seen much to sway it. Pardon me for that. If you want to criticize my delivery… yes, I’m tactless, argumentative and stick to my position until overwhelmed by evidence or apathy. I am far from the only player unimpressed by LS writing, but may be the most unlikeable.
And I will stop now. There is a lot of commentary in this thread that doesn’t deserve being locked. Hopefully after my ban only my posts will be removed.
I apologize to the other posters in this thread. My attitude and apathy about being infracted or banned led me to post as I did.
I loved Guild Wars and the lore. No excuse. I am sorry.
I can be brutally honest too.
There’s actually little of worth in this thread to be honest. Practically no one on the first page has any idea what they’re talking about, ranging from thinking it’s a book written by Varesh to reverting, again, to attacking the game’s writers, instead of discussing what’s actually said on the in-game page.
My main beef with the Eternal Alchemy is that it is might be an actual thing instead of a concept that’s just a fancy way of saying “the whole of existence in one grand Theory of Everything.”
Whatever. Take your lore from a 2nd rate hack arrogant enough to 1 Star JRR Tolkien and yet unwilling to take criticism of their own work.
See ya.
Well, you’re one who can speak from a position of authority about being unwilling to take criticism, so I’ll give you that.
Blast away. Having fun? I’m speaking of Mirza Veldrunner, Zhed, the Centaur we helped in Kourna.. in the era of the supposed Varesh ally to slavery machination. Centaur who had every motivation to tell us of Kournan treachery to enlist our help freeing the captives and fighting the Margonite/Kournan forces. Yeah, those guys.
I think you need to read the in-game book page again.
“Letters sent home from soldiers in the Kournan army have given us great insight into their lives. In the eleventh century A.E., their leader Varesh Ossa inspired great loyalty.”
It wasn’t a “Varesh book”, but apparently a book somehow concerned with the lives of 11th century Kournan soldiers. It looks like a page from a book written well after the fact, seeing how it explicitly states the century. It was obviously written from a very uninformed position by someone with access to very limited sources, being letters from Kournan soldiers. Elonian centaurs were probably unavailable to comment.
Ok, Varesh had a few years window to accomplish this “we didn’t see it” feat. Ok. But no free Centaur we work with brings it up despite the event having to be within somewhat recent memory? So now I have to assume, for poor plots sake, they all forgot. No matter. A wizard did it. Makes as much sense.
I don’t think any centaur in the game at the moment even has the slightest inkling about anything that has happened in Elona like, ever. And even if they did, why would they spontaneously start expounding on rather specific events that happened a few centuries ago on a different continent?
“Yeah, these people just fell out of the sky. I know, right? Tragic! And oh by the way, how about those Kournan slavers? You don’t? Well, settle in, this is a gonna be a long story. Have some oats.”
Makes sense.
My theory is that the seed the Pale Tree grew from was supposed to be a dragon minion, most likely meant to grow other minions as fruits. But that never happened, as we know. The seed was one of many, which doesn’t sound like it was all that special. I think the place she was planted is what makes her special.
My guess is, she grew in the place that connects Tyria to the heart of the Eternal Alchemy. The heart of the world, if you will. That’s why we see her in the vision at the center of things. Instead of taking Mordremoth’s corruption as nourishment, she fed on energies tied to creation itself. It would explain why she managed to give birth to a new major, self-aware race, and ended up a good guy instead of a dragon minion. An extreme case of nurture versus nature. And Mordremoth, of course, can’t have that and will come after her.
As for the Dream, I think that’s something she created to shield her children from corruption, not something that has or had an existence before her.
It’s left to the player to make up an explanation for why it doesn’t match their experience in Nightfall.
There’s no need to make up an explanation.
Just take both what you know from GW1 and what you read in Scarlet’s house at face value, and the answer presents itself. Unless you’re unaware of the concept of ‘propaganda’, in which case you should worry more about your general knowledge than the quality of a video game’s writing.
Has anyone ever figured out the point of double-clicking them? (Or right-click and pick ‘use’). All they seem to do is make a sound. And yeah, they’re way overpriced.
Here’s my take on the Pale Tree and how such a relatively young being came to be so important. (Repost from another topic):
My guess is, the Pale Tree was supposed to be one of Mordremoth’s minion breeding machines.
The seed that Ventari and Ronan planted was one of many, found in a cave, protected by powerful plant creatures. What if those seeds were to be planted when Mordremoth’s next rising was nigh, so the resulting trees could bear fruit to create swarms of plant minions. The vision we witnessed with the Pale Tree at the center of it all may imply that she was planted at the most powerful ley line hub of them all, corresponding to the center of the Eternal Alchemy, or at least the point in Tyria that corresponds with that center. Not nourished by Mordremoth’s corruption, but the more wholesome energies that flow through the world, she spawned a pure race instead of dragon minions.
If the seeds were indeed meant to grow into minion-bearing trees, we might eventually encounter evil trees while we march on Mordremoth. Sounds like fun.
My guess is, the Pale Tree was supposed to be one of Mordremoth’s minion breeding machines.
I don’t think so. The Pale Tree is being elevated to a level of global mechanism. If the Pale Tree was only a champion then she wouldn’t feature so prominently (or at least she and the dragons are being hinted to as being some crucial component of the workings of Tyria).
The rest of my post (the part you didn’t quote) explains how she might have become a ‘global mechanism’. The Eternal Alchemy existed before her, yet she appeared to be at he center of it. It wouldn’t be inconceivable that the location where she was planted elevated her to a higher state of being. There were many seeds like the one she grew from, which suggests that that what makes her special wasn’t an inherent quality but a result of circumstance. Being planted at the heart of the world might qualify as such Also, I never stated she was a champion, I suggested she might have been supposed to become one, but turned out quite different.
As for the Eternal Alchemy/Tree connection, I admittedly can’t say anything conclusive about that. I find it rather hard to believe that a tree that sprouted only 25 years ago (granted, it was around longer than that, but only much later did it finally bear fruit) is suddenly somehow a key to the understanding of Tyria’s inner workings.
Well, if she was planted at the heart of the Eternal Alchemy, she might have been infused with some major importance.
This is were it gets a little tricky. I don’t have a problem with the current LW bending heavily towards Sylvari, but I do hope ANet doesn’t turn the Pale Tree into some… dare I say it… Mary Sue. Well as long as the Pale Tree doesn’t become some god like thing, the ultimate answer to all etc. etc.
Mary Sue? How about straight-up goddess? She gave birth to a self-aware race of beings, a feat that’s usually performed by divine beings.
My guess is, the Pale Tree was supposed to be one of Mordremoth’s minion breeding machines.
The seed that Ventari and Ronan planted was one of many, found in a cave, protected by powerful plant creatures. What if those seeds were to be planted when Mordremoth’s next rising was nigh, so the resulting trees could bear fruit to create swarms of plant minions. The vision we witnessed with the Pale Tree at the center of it all may imply that she was planted at the most powerful ley line hub of them all, corresponding to the center of the Eternal Alchemy, or at least the point in Tyria that corresponds with that center. Not nourished by Mordremoth’s corruption, but the more wholesome energies that flow through the world, she spawned a pure race instead of dragon minions.
If the seeds were indeed meant to grow into minion-bearing trees, we might eventually encounter evil trees while we march on Mordremoth. Sounds like fun.
(edited by Manasa Devi.7958)
Except you don’t play your character from birth to now. You jump into a life that has already been lived for many years, has passed through any book or combat teachings, and upon starting is already more than capable of taking on dangerous enemies.
There’s a rather big difference between skipping trivial parts of your character’s life and skipping the revelation of the name and nature of a newly arisen major antagonist with apocalyptic powers who even happens to be a major part of the current story-arc.
This is like Darth Vader never telling Luke he’s his father, but everyone knowing that to be true anyway, without any rhyme or reason, from a certain point onward in the story. “Yeah, well, someone obviously found out off-camera and told everyone. They can’t show everything, sheesh!” That would’ve gone down well I bet.
They don’t look like real weapons to me, but like something carved out of rock by someone who thought that’s what weapons look like but never actually saw real ones up close.
The question remains: what is the point of creating the false expectation of an end-of-chapter reward? Engendering disappointment?
I‘d honestly have felt better about the whole thing if I hadn‘t received anything at the end rather than a gift from a ‘friend‘ containing 1 blue, 1 white and a smattering of greys.
They could have done without the white and blue and given us some zeph keys.
More whites and blues would‘ve been a lot nicer than the many greys I got.
Why even bother with a packaged reward that reads it contains some things from Dry Top that Taimi wants me to have, if it contains absolute rubbish? It creates a false expectation after a whole first season of getting at least something new or useful every time we get a box like that. It also raises the question of why Taimi wants me to have heaps and heaps of green slime.
Apparently Taimi wanted me to have a big bunch of green slime. What the hell?
Ugly and clunky looking, all of them. With basic shapes like these, I really don’t care what kind of graphical/audio effects they have. The phrase “polishing a length of faecal matter” springs to mind. (Avoiding the kitten.)
I could quote the manifesto (“it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun”) and claim that it does make us spend those hours.
But I won’t.
Because in Dry Top, we’re not preparing to have fun, we’re just preparing to do utterly trivial events more efficiently.
I think the OP’s issue is that they look like things that could be worn together if there hadn’t been a game engine restriction that prevents it (Only one headpiece at a time).
I tend to agree. It makes little sense to need a craft at 400 just to wear 2 items at the same time that appear like they could be worn at the same time to begin with. Why not just let people use the mystic forge, or make it a basic level 0 crafting recipe?
They might be disabling some to facilitate new content that’ll have us containing or driving back Mordremoth’s forces. They wouldn’t want us to be able to use WPs to drop behind enemy lines. Sure, they could’ve just made them contested like usual, but crushing them is more dramatic and a good way to foreshadow bad things to come.
hope he becomes an important ally in LS2: considering mordemoth uses plants and from the southsun story line we know canach has vast knowledge of plants, seems like it would make sence that he’d help fight back the dragon
That sounds good to me. He’s pretty much an expert on mind-altering properties of certain plants. Maybe he can use that knowledge to somehow help sylvari ward off Mordremoth’s corruption or something.
That’s better. Just like no one in their right mind has ever written about people considered “b-listers” as “blisters”. Hyphens are there for a reason.
I say “better”, but I still have a problem with “iconic”. I wouldn’t use a word of such magnitude myself. There’s really nothing “iconic” about those guys.
This thread isn’t about censorship, it’s about education. Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, Braham and Taimi aren’t shaped like 2 cones connected at the bases (biconic).
I can’t stand to see a word intended to describe a certain shape used to refer to characters. It’s turning me off the forum, and off people who use it.
Please, let the forum filter put a stop to this aberration. Posts reading “I hate the kittens” or “The kittens are stealing my thunder” will make me smile again.
If anything, megaservers will help content like this to stay viable. You don’t need a whole lot of people to get to tier 3, and you don’t need to do anything more engaging than a few simple events per person to get there. I don’t really expect any real trouble in getting rewards later on. I’m more worried about the sheer amount of geodes you need to unlock all recipes.
It’s worth noting here that his vines are spreading to more and more waypoints in Brisban and Kessex, following a route. This would seem to indicate something happening below, not using the waypoints themselves to travel.
The path taken by the vine progression also coincides with the path someone might take going from Tangle Root to Fort Salma. Belinda Delaqua was ordered that way. The vine progression goes beyond that though. It will be interesting to see if Belinda also headed into that direction after reaching the fort.
I don’t find it very attractive that the most challenging part of content like this is lengthy sessions of playing musical chairs with servers. After ‘winning’ your seat, the actual content being as trivial as it is, little challenge remains.
I have my own theory about the vines and the waypoints. What if it’s not vines traveling by waypoint, but spores brought along by travelers, that sprout near sources of magic in order to consume it for Mordremoth?
It’s a rare thing to see someone misunderstood and patronized to the extent that’s happening in this thread. It’s hard to believe it doesn’t involve a sizeable amount of disingenuity.
I’ll probably not spend a lot of time there, and I could well understand more people won’t. While I like the content, I can’t say I’m entirely happy with it. There’s not very much of it, and none of it is challenging enough to have much of a replay value.
The reward system is also disappointing. I’ve played quite hard for the past 2 days, and I can still only afford a single chef recipe. That’s with all the achievements that give extra geodes (geode caches) done. That’s 60 I won’t be getting ever again, so future days of playing as hard as I played now are going to give me even fewer geodes. It’s going to take me weeks to get all 10 recipes (unless I get lucky and get them from a buried chest, if that’s even possible).
The problem is, there’s not enough there to keep me interested enough to collect 1,200 geodes. Here’s hoping future LS instalments will offer more ways to earn them.
The fight wasn’t too bad. One thing that was definitely annoying about it was running into crystals when you just want to use your weapon skills. Playing with a large screen and small interface like I do, sometimes I didn’t even notice my skillbar changing because my attention was elsewhere, resulting in me accidentally using a crystal skill or trying to activate a skill slot with no skill at all in it for a second or 2.
In it’s current form, this is content that I won’t go back to once I get the achievements that I want.
One thing I absolutely hate about the new area is the limited duration on the crystal skills. It makes exploring, which I enjoy, an annoyance. I hate that I can’t spare a few seconds to take in my surroundings after making an assisted jump. I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time backtracking to crystals to start over on some climb or other.
It’s still happening, I can’t stay connected for more than a few minutes at a time.
I’m suffering from frequent 7:11s as well. In my case, the game freezes, except for things in motion which keep moving in straight lines or keep repeating skill animations.
It can take over a minute before the game finally decides to call it quits and kick me back to the character selection screen with the 7:11 error. During this “frozen time” my chat keeps functioning perfectly in both directions, which is convenient, because it allows me to tell people I’m about to disconnect. I can also still use party options; when I’m not in a party already, I can use that to quickly join people so I can use them to get back to the map I’m in.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with my internet connection to cause these seven:elevens, because I can still do many things in the game when this is going on. Except, alas, play.
It is outrageous to get closer to 5000 hrs played and receive non precursor.
Your number of hours played has no effect on RNG drops….just letting you know so you can re-evaluate what is and is not ‘outragous’.
For any chance greater than 0%, no matter how small, the more shots you take at it, the closer the chance to hit upon success at least once gets to 100%.
For example, if you take 5000 gambles at 1 in 1000 odds, the chance to win at least once is a little above 99%.
Seeing how long and how intensively people play this game without getting precursors, the drop chance for those kitten things must be incredibly small. Some might call it outrageous and I wouldn’t argue.
You missed my point entirely. I was arguing that the length of time you play has NO bearing on the odds of a precursor ever dropping. I’ll give you the semantics argument over the term “outrageous”, but it’s a well known fact that precursors are a long shot as a drop, so certainly should not be surprising.
If you want to argue semantics, it should be completely obvious to anyone that the claim of having played for an x amount of hours comes with a very strong implication that the claimant has engaged in a reasonable amount of activities that generate drops. “Hours played” are a more convenient metric to present in an argument than “drops generated”, because one is tracked and the other isn’t. If your post had its roots in feigning ignorance of this, I’m glad I missed your point, because it was a worthless point.
It is outrageous to get closer to 5000 hrs played and receive non precursor.
Your number of hours played has no effect on RNG drops….just letting you know so you can re-evaluate what is and is not ‘outragous’.
For any chance greater than 0%, no matter how small, the more shots you take at it, the closer the chance to hit upon success at least once gets to 100%.
For example, if you take 5000 gambles at 1 in 1000 odds, the chance to win at least once is a little above 99%.
Seeing how long and how intensively people play this game without getting precursors, the drop chance for those kitten things must be incredibly small. Some might call it outrageous and I wouldn’t argue.
I’m only interested in new legendaries if the designers won’t be working under the misapprehension that “legendary” is synomous with “kitsch”, like they did with the first batch.
The masterwork ones have always been bound, the rare ones that drop have always been unbound. The rare version isn’t something introduced with the current bazaar, it also dropped during the original run of the bazaar. Your point that “its not fair that an item, that is the same cosmeticly, from the same living story is now worth money and the reward from the first time isn’t”, isn’t a valid point, because nothing has changed since the first bazaar. An item that used to drop, drops again.
The quality difference was probably at least partly intended as a red flag to avoid misunderstandings. The version at the trader was there as a convenience people could save up for with fortune scraps (or a lucky golden fortune). It’s unfortunate that you didn’t notice before getting the masterwork one, but we’re talking about a situation that has existed for nearly 11 months now, not some recently introduced unreasonable measure meant to advantage certain people over others.
More like Living Story version of Caithe, Logan, Rytlock, Zojja and Eir.
What I don’t get is if they’re supposed to be the Living Story version of Destiny’s Edge why are there 2 humans and no Sylvari?
Canach will be out of his cage soon.
Gold farming can’t be the real solution, because real solutions have to work for everyone, always. If a million players suddenly started to do everything humanly possible to maximize their gold gain, there wouldn’t be more of them with a precursor a year from now than if only a few of them did that, because there aren’t a million precursors to go around.
‘Working hard’ is only a solution as long as not a lot of people are doing it, so telling people to go and do it wouldn’t help at all if too many took up that advice. The ‘path’ isn’t to work hard, it’s to work harder than the people you’re competing with for a resource, and that obviously can’t turn out succesfully for everyone.
Out of all the festival content, I like the gauntlet the best. But I won’t be playing it a lot anymore.
See, I’m out of gauntlet tickets. It seems I’ll have to either buy them at the exorbitant price of 20s plus 35 festival tokens per 5, or spend hours in the pavilion getting an occasional bronze reward. I just can’t seem to get into a pavilion that has more than 2 or 3 players who actually want to do boss blitz. Taxis only ever try to take me into full instances, no matter how long I keep trying.
I’m not going to buy those tickets, they’re SO not worth the price. I’m also not going to spend many excruciatingly boring hours playing musical chairs with servers, to end up with enough tickets to last me just a couple of minutes.
I thought this game wasn’t supposed to “make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun.” It actually does.
The blitz bosses do count, but just killing those would make it more than just a bit longer. I noticed there are a few pirates that give xp, loot, and kill credit for the daily, so going for Wiggin would be a good idea when you’re doing the blitz.