Guild Wars 2

Please Kain, I’ve wanted to punch that dick in the face for years because of the way he lorded it over us that we needed him in order to destroy a greater evil. If they don’t give me a chance to end this I might go insane…

Clockwork Cake.9138:

I agree. One thing that highlights how true this is sometimes is if you choose to side with the Durmand Priory and you get stuck under the leadership of that annoying woman. Seriously, she didn’t fit in with the game at all. I half expected her to be like “oh hi there risen corpse, how are you today?” during battle. I can't be the only one who was actually relieved when she died on claw island.

Completely off topic, but I absolutely DISAGREE! Compared to many of the characters in the game she was very well developed, and really grew on me. I was extremely sad to see her die.

As to the subject on hand, I think dark and grit has it’s places in the game, but I do not think it all needs to be that way.

Mularc Templare.5063:

Honestly, I wrote a whole post twice attempting to illustrate my understanding of the discussion being had, and I feel the best way to say it is this; Gaudrath has pointed out that by the rather linear experience which GW2 offers to players in terms of story is not fully leveraging the thing that makes video games different then other forms of entertainment; they actively involve the player in creating the narrative, even if it is a side narrative of how you ran into a group of enemies who feared you off a cliff and you fell but managed to kill a third enemy by landing on it, and this is not being leveraged at the moment in the type of games that should have the ability to do this; MMO’s.

There was an MMO that showed promise of doing this, and if Arenanet ever decides to make a new franchise, I think they would do it well. The game was called Horizons: Empire of Istaria. It never really made it to what it’s developers wanted it to become, but I think if you looked into it Gaudrath, it might provide perspective on that ideas I think you may be talking about.

Now I might not understand exactly what you are saying, but are you stating that the game should take player initiative into account more often? The best thing I can think of at the time is say players run off to a risen territory and wipe it out, then pact forces can move in and fortify the location, as opposed to just sitting there waiting for the DE symbol to show up so you can do it. If this is what you mean, I 110% agree with you. This type of thing would make the game much more interesting in my mind.

Now if you are saying that it’s something more like, you create this vast open world where players can just go in and do whatever they really want in. There is no major story pointing them in what they should do, but instead they create their own character, rules, story, etc… I can see that done, but not in the instance of Guild Wars 2. And honestly, I personally would have no interest in that type of world. I am a very largely story oriented person, and I will play through games with terrible graphics and gameplay as long as the story is strong and keeps me intrigued.

This is why I love the Universe of Guild Wars. It has a very rich lore base, and the stories of the original Guild Wars when mixed with Guild Wars 2 is something I can really sink my teeth into. I find myself theorizing in my down-time at work about lore that we do not know fully, and I thoroughly enjoy it

I’m pretty sure it had more to do with the destruction of the major port city of Lion’s Arch, the removal of the dwarves (one of the human’s greater trade partners), and the rebuilding of Lion’s Arch by corsairs. You see once Lion’s Arch became a major trade port it more than likely kept the same currency used by the pirates that inhabited it at the time. We know from drops in GW1 that both the Zaishen and the corsairs of elona, (who have a large influence in the area) used a series of copper-silver-gold coins for their currency, so it makes sense then, that as the port city grew in power and influence eventually currency shifted towards their standard.

So we’re just talking lore then, hmmmm

Will we learn more about the gods through extended visits of the rest of Orr?
Is Koda real, and if so how does he relate to everyone else’s dieties?
If the Giganticus Lupicus in Arah is what the creature looked like in life, what are those skeletons found throughout Ascalon and the Crystal Desert?
Where did Southsun Cove come from?
Why did people go to the Eternal Battlegrounds in the first place?
Will we ever get a chance to visit old places in the Mists like the Hall of Heroes, the Underworld, the Fissure of Woe, and the now Redeemed Realm?
Tied in with the previous, are Dhuum and Menzies back?
Is there a 6th? (Highly doubt that will be answered, lol)

I can go all day, lol

No Neilos, don’t you see. Nothing important can ever happen, because if anything important happened in an MMO it would have to be a one time event, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense, it would destroy lore, etc, etc, etc. You see the best we can ever do is to beat Zhaitan, Kralky, Primordus, Jormag, and Bubbles back into little caves and snap their snouts with a newspaper if they ever come out, because killing a bad guy in an MMO is a vile offense of the worst kind. I would say the best you can look forwards to in Gaudrath’s MMO is a single wide open world with a bunch of rats in it that you can kill, and you’ve got a few people that are in the high ranking rat killing guild that everyone has to bow to as they walk by. Any other type of content in an MMO is wrong.

I am sorry for my obliviousness in some things, but what exactly is an AMA?

There’s all kinds of speculation about a Dhuum uprising making resurrection no longer possible, but in all honesty it’s currently not a lore point, but a mechanics point. No one in the outside world has ever been seen saying, “Hey guys why can’t we resurrect anymore?” and to be honest, for the point of story plenty of people got killed that could have been resurrected afterwards, but were not. I’m not entirely sure how resurrection came into the world at all, unless it was just something that only the Chosen could do. But then it would be a kinda big give-away for the Mursaat that we were Chosen all along. In the end, even in GW1 death always seemed final for anyone but the player character. Remember in Factions when Shiro killed us we didn’t go back to a rez shrine…

IDK WarriorOfAsgard, my character in GW1 could carry 100 bars of platinum in his bag (along with like 5 armor sets, including the one he was wearing, and dozens upon dozens of weapons).

All joking aside, I just recently joined the Order of Whispers a first time on my second character, and I noticed that the bar of platinum is still used as a currency of some sort, but it seems that it is only held by the insanely rich, like Caudecus. The ransom note from the pirates to Caudecus’ lieutenant said that he wouldn’t mind losing some platinum for his daughter’s safety.

Well, it seems like platinum is still a currency, it is just a very expensive currency. The only times I’ve seen it referred to in the Guild Wars 2 universe are in a ransom note to Caudecus from some pirates, and in Ghosts of Ascalon when the group was raiding the royal treasury beneath Ascalon City.

The Naga would be an interesting inclusion into the game. From what I’ve read on the Wiki, they were a friendly race, but the Jade Wind almost wiped them out entirely, and they were revived by a priestess who filled them with fury against the humans. It would be cool if they somehow evened out when it comes to their mind-set, and we could eventually learn more lore about them in the past.

Could be scaffolding around one of the great lodges being created?

I haven’t been to Hoelbrak in a while though, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think the main point is just that early on the game designers gave the concept art team quite a bit of creative liberty, and from the concept art they were able to put together what they liked, what they didn’t, and they eventually came up with how things really are.

Gaudrath.6725:

Now, explain to me, if I kill Tequatl, then kill Zhaitan, then keep on killing Tequatl about 20 more times, which one of those times predates and which one succeeds the death of Zhaitan? If you say that all of them predate the death of Zhaitan, then your analogy of time travel just got literal. If you say that some of them succeed the death of Zhaitan, the original question of “but we just killed the reason these things exist” pops up.

I’m going to assume you haven’t actually killed Zhaitan, because if you had, you most likely would have seen the sheer numbers of those dragons flying in the air taking on the Pact Airships, and based on the rate that I’ve seen Pact Airships blow up vs. the champions, I’m going to say that he still has quite an army around after death.

That aside I still don’t get your confusion. Any time that you are in a lvl 50-60 area you are in the middle of the lvl 50-60 storyline. So what happened in the 50-60 storyline? Well let’s see. Claw Island was lost and we had to create the Pact to retake it. So the pact was just in the birthing stages, and Zhaitan was starting to make major incursions into mainland Tyria, well look at that, the storyline of 50-60 matches up with the storyline of Sparkfly Swamp, who would have thought?

So as a medium they have decided to make it so that every area is timelocked, I do not see what the issue is? It is not lore related at all, it is entirely mechanics. There is no time travel in the GW Universe (except for 1 asura storyline and some April fools quests) So you go back to Sparkfly Swamp and you don’t see the immediate change in the game after Zhaitan’s death, it is not a gamebreaker at all. Zhaitan’s death is only reflected in zones and events after Zhaitan was defeated (currently only including Lost Shores, Wintersday, and Halloween, which have no risen involved). In fact most every preference that you have brought up to “better” the game has seemed more of a gamebreaker to me than the way that it currently is.

GOLEM stands for Genius Operated Living Enchanted Manifestation, as is seen in GW1, so no you cannot. It’s a different universe, and they’re more closely related to Elementals than Golems anyways.

I was very happy to see that myself when I completed the game

If it doesn’t mean playable tengu, then it at least means more interaction with them.

drao.4291:

There are some dialog and lore (or lack their of)that feels disjointed or odd. Like ; Currency dialogs from NPC, Mistwar recruiters, Death by plot when “ressurection” magic exist.

For example in story “Estate of Decay” Two soldiers are waging 10 gold in a contest about hitting a chicken. That feels totally from a different currency system /dimension than guild wars 2 currency system.

another example is Tybalts drinking contest where the wager is 50 gold…

Or The mistwar, does it have any lore & story anchoring?

I would agree on the gold portion for the most part. It seems like 50 gold is steep for a drinking contest, I mean that’s halfway to teir 3 cultural armor…

Resurrection magic no longer exists in the world. It existed in GW1, but it does not exist in GW2. The way that it works in this game is that the people that you can resurrect are not dead, but merely knocked out, fainted, whatever you wanna call it. And when you revive them you are rousing them back. You will notice plenty of times, like in Gendarran Fields, where there are bodies of soldier and some of them may be revived and other cannot, because some are still alive.

As for the Mistwar, it is something that I personally would like a bunch more information on as well. For some reason ArenaNet has decided not to give us any real lore on the founding of the Mistwar, the reasons we took to the eternal battlegrounds, why we’re being invaded, etc… All that we do know is the Mists are the building blocks of the universe. And they create this fractals, some massive (like Tyria and WvW) and some small like the Fractals of the Mists or PvP. Otherwise we’re kinda stuck guessing and theorizing.

Here’s a screen shot of my female norn in the early beta’s right next to it. There’s very little of the lighthouse portion left.

Well, if they were already a very male-oriented society, an uprising of females against them could have been enough for them to enforce this law on all Charr. As to why they put women to the kitchens, idk, they are just evil charr.

The biggest bug I remember with it was an awkward set of boxes appearing when under, or above water. I don’t know if it had to do with reflections or what.

You know what Gaudrath you are right. This game is TERRIBLE AND IT SUCKS. They told a story in a wrong way and you are a GOD of story telling. *BOWS Teach us oh WISE ONE!

[/sarcasm]

I don’t understand why you are here, honestly. Because by now I know you understand everything that we are saying, and you seem mostly to be just dragging on an argument for no good reason. And honestly this argument will continue until Konig, Neilos, and I all admit that ArenaNet are screw ups, or you just get bored and go back to playing ‘good’ MMO’s like WoW.

No, the base is still there, the light house portion is gone.

You bring up a valid point. I mean, unless Dhuum, himself, was around before magic was sealed within the bloodstone, there would be no way for us to know his reaction to other races using resurrection and necromancy…

The Lionguard always have been the protectors of the city of Lion’s Arch and nothing else. We do not know what the name of Kryta’s army was before their war with the charr, and the rise of the White Mantle. But I specifically remember during the War in Kryta, when Salma was speaking of returning to Lion’s Arch, her being unsure whether the Lionguard would side with her or if she would have to fight to take the city. To her joy, and everyone else’s they sided with her and allowed her to enter the city. So it seems that their loyalty is city first, and Kryta/Monarchy later.

The charr have their asuran gate rigged with explosives because the asura are a bit too friendly with humanity…

It’s going back a chapter in a book or rewinding a video tape (ugh, am I old to use that as a reference?) And you know what, that isn’t a lore breaking thing. I honestly do not understand why you see it that way. If I watch a move and rewind to a favorite scene, or skip ahead it doesn’t change the overall story, just the way that I perceive it. GW2 is the exact same way.

Faolain is alive, but she left and her forces are left in a power struggle, which is weakening her forces. And I never claimed that the bandit threat was gone, but that it seemed to be leading up to something larger (Fort Vandal perhaps?). Neither did I claim anything about the Sons of Svanir.

Personal opinion the idea to destroy the lighthouse in the first place was a bad one… just saying. Most likely though construction will be continued (or finished) with the end of Wintersday

“In the year 1 BE, Abaddon gave the ability to use Magic to the sentient races of Tyria. However, this gift was given too freely, resulting in immediate and bloody wars. The leader of the human kingdoms in Tyria at the time, King Doric, traveled to Arah to seek audience with the gods and begged at their feet for their compassion and to take back their gift of magic.”

Directly from the article you posted.

Axyl.9408:

Thanks! So would it be probable for a street rat or commoner to learn magic, or is it something that the powerful tend to have due to something like a monetary cost? I’m just trying to figure out if from a lore-point, my Mesmer makes sense (He’s a street rat)!

In my mind, as a human each profession makes sense at any rank of citizenship. More than likely nobles would pay for the best teachers to give their children the best chances to succeed as their profession, but commoners also likely learn through schools as well, probably of a lower caliber. And as a street rat you would most likely learn your skills from a mentor. A mesmer, being a mind altering profession, would have many uses within a community of street rats in my mind.

Okay, so Mercury you got a few things quite wrong, but the overall concept is correct.

The gods, specifically Abaddon, gave magic out freely, not just to the humans but to everyone. Because of this new found power many of the races went to war, and the biggest target was Humanity because the humans pushed many races out at Balthazar’s request. Because of this bloody war King Doric asked the gods to get rid of magic, so they broke the bloodstone into 5 parts. 4 parts representing the schools of magic and the 5th was a keystone that would be required to piece them back together again.
The Guild Wars didn’t happen until many years after this. It is stated that Abaddon’s Mouth (the volcano that held the bloodstones within it) erupted and spewed the bloodstones throughout Tyria. The keystone landed back inside of it, one landed in the maguuma wastes and another in the southern shiverpeaks, the other two are unknown. At this point in time it is stated that magic seeped back into the world, and desire for more magic lead to the original Guild Wars.

Well, I do remember that there are some asura in Brisban Wildlands that are finding ways to harvest the natural world’s energy, through photosynthesis and steam. Also remember that Charr technology isn’t steam powered just yet, it just looks steampunk.

By not making sense, I am not saying that it is not possible or that it is just plain wrong. It is merely that in my mind those professions don’t feel quite as at home with those races as others do, and nothing more.

Grenth taught Desmina

It seems like the dungeons are setting things up to possibly eventually rid the world of a lot of the break-off groups. I mean the Nightmare Court and Flame Legion are kind of in civil wars/power grabs, the Ascalonian Ghosts may be eventually removed by Magdaer, Inquest have been pushed out of multiple places of power/laboratories, bandits/white mantle and the seraph are slowly building up… Again though, there is no saying how long it will be til any of these ‘possibilities’ take place.

Beautiful, just beautiful!

No, you see I like both RPG’s and MMORPG’s and I have absolutely no problem with the game as it is. So I don’t need to change the style of game that I’m playing. What I do not agree with is what you seem to believe the game would have to be. In the end the only real way in which the game you are describing would feel heroic is if you were a full time gamer. No one who played 1-2 hours a day would get any important titles, any salutes, they would be grunts forever, because of the players out there who would spend whole weeks fighting other players for titles of worth. Your style of MMO just took 90% of the population of a MMO and placed it in the worthless grunt pile so 10% can feel heroic and elite. I mean we have a world with thousands of players per server. Now if you took your idea and players had to try and work their way into titles of importance I could only see a few instances, either you could look for titles of importance within the Pact, Vigil, Order of Whispers, or the Durmand Priory. Now in a game like this where the players can’t be the big decision makers (because of storyline) the leader of each one is delegated to a NPC (Trahearn, Almorra, etc…) so you have the second in command slot for each one being the highest player attainable goal. Well I can’t honestly see there being more than (we’re going max here) 50 ranks per group. This is talking ranks from Second-In-Command to a Sergeant of sorts (barely above a plain soldier). So, if you look overall there’s a possibility of maybe 200 titles…….. Well there are how many people per server? And I am counting per server, because obviously people on different servers could hold the same title as someone on another server, since they aren’t interacting at all. So per server, well I’m going to just go off of the release day notes saying that there were 2 million people playing the game, and… 51 servers, leaving 39,215 people per server (assuming equal distribution and no increased sales since the release, which we know is not true). So 200 people out of 39,215 get to be high ranking elitist pricks while the other 39,000 people run around killing small things and getting nothing for it because we couldn’t even think about killing anything big because it would break the lore…

See I have to absolutely disagree with you. I mean I cannot tell you all that my characters have done for Tyria in the past and present, and it kills me every time that Devona, Mhenlo and the likes get all the credit for what I did. I knwo it’s a necessary because of the millions of millions of people who have killed liches, envoys, gods, and dragons champions in Tyria, but it breaks my heart every time that my character gets no credit for all that he has done, and now you expect me to play a game where my character is just a grunt in the pact forces fighting a dragon that will never die in a world that is never changing. I say why don’t I just stop playing MMORPG’s and go to work, to my job where I’m just a grunt doing pointless work day in and day out. I honestly don’t see the difference between what you are saying MMORPG’s should be and boring regular everyday life.

Cushnahan.7058:

1: No doubt Tengu, I love their appearance and they have a proper history. And they are a proper race in Gw1 too. (I know they are on GW2 too but you don’t really see much of them, yet)

Now as for the Kodan: I hope they never become a race. If you want a bear, go to WoW and do the panda. I honestly think the kodan are a waste of space AND time. I haven’t even the slightest idea where they came from, only that they arrived on the Honor of the Waves which was a rescue ship. I forgot if there even were any in GW1, although I played through the whole of EotN too.

Largos: Oh hell no those giant fins.

As for the other names races (mostly the water species): I don’t think so. I’d assume to ‘not dry out’ them would have to be close to water all the time. Imagine a bar like stamina, just worse.

Kodan, Largos, Quaggan, Skritt, and Ogres are totally new to the GW universe with the introduction of Guild Wars 2. There are probably other races, but my mind is running a blank at this moment.

Well in my opinion, any profession really fits a human, and that is because well, we are humans and professions are made with us in mind, lol. That being said I definitely agree that certain things, like warrior asura seem more like a joke than anything else, but at the same time they are obviously necessary to protect the people (when their golems go crazy and try to kill everyone :P)

In the end I think I’ll go with what doesn’t make sense for races (in the lightest meaning possible).

Humans – All professions honestly make sense.

Charr – Necromancers, Guardians, and Mesmers make little sense to me. I can see Elementalists having uses in seige instances, but they are iffy at best.

Norn – Elementalists, Guardians, Mesmers, and Engineers do not make sense for the norn to me. Warriors, rangers, theives, and necromancers do to me because of their animal spirits, reverence for the wild, and hunts for glory.

Sylvari – Honestly I’m going to put Sylvari in the same zone as the humans in saying that everything makes sense to me, just because of the fact that they are more goal driven, and everything that will help them towards their goals they will take into account. Although I found plants making engineering devices a bit weird.

Asura – They are a very magical race, so in my mind warrior and guardian don’t make as much sense as any of the others. I do see theives as useful for stealing others research (lol) and engineers as just asura that are intrigued about other types of technology.

The dragons are present in Tyria longer than the gods, we don’t have any clue on the age of the gods.

No, in GW1 it was never stated what Grenth was before he became a god. All we knew was that he took out Dhuum and claimed the title of Lord of the Underworld afterwards. I agree it is not a battle between good and evil, it is a battle between life and death. Now obviously many people think death and evil go hand and hand, but not in this case. Grenth just asks for citizens to look with somber reflection at the death around them and realize that it comes for all, eventually. Whereas Dwayna asks for the love in people’s hearts to empower her to remove the doom and gloom of winter and bring life back into the world. In all reality it is mainly two different outlooks on the seasons. Now obviously many people take this too far, it seems to me that the creation of Grentches and the killing of random people on the road (Necromancer Scorza) are taking things too far, my character refused involvement in these actions even though he is a devout worshipper of Grenth.

As for Necromancy, I think the way it works is that the magic is out there, and people can do it, it’s just a matter of the god of death. Dhuum refused to allow people to do this. We don’t know how, just that he did. In my mind he probably killed any who attempted this magic, much in the same way that it is assumed he killed those who escaped death, or even survived traumatic events. Grenth doesn’t feel like it is his role to be oppressive to the living as Dhuum did, so he didn’t continue the ban, and in fact taught humans how to use these powers.

Gaudrath.6725:

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

So then, you believe that for MMORPG’s to ever make any sense, your character is a worthless unknown that can never make any title or rank, because if he did that would be contradicting any other person gaining the same title. The world will never, ever change and your actions are pointless, because things have to repeat. And finally the big bad guys never die, or if they do it’s one final event like Lost Shores, and players later on in the game never get to relive this beauty because that would be lore breaking. There could also never be any named epic or legendary weapons either, because then who would really own The Bifrost if 400 players really did. So in other words nothing truly epic can ever, ever happen in an MMORPG, and you can never be important, so why don’t you just go out there and continue being the worthless slug you’ve always been! I’m sorry but your statements just say to me that you just hate MMORPG’s in general.

And, as Konig mentioned, they possibly have one of the MOST dangerous races possible pulling their strings.

It seems unlikely to me that Glint had the power to create something as powerful as those two scepters. I mean she is much less powerful than any of the individual gods, because she is merely a dragon champion, and the Elder Dragons themselves are on par with the gods, according to the lore masters.

Based on the lore we have about them, it seems that they are solely located up in the Far Northern Shiverpeaks. There was only one mentioned split off of them, which could lead to a rival faction, but that seems incredibly unlikely. The split off is mentioned only as a group that left during a great storm and became lost, and are believed by the Kodan to have turned into the Norn.

I would like to alter my opinion. Thinking it through, I do believe that someday we will find friendly centaurs. In the other games we know it is a possibility, plus we know that the current centaurs are all subjugated by the Modniir, and we all know that when groups are forced into action, they only follow their leaders until they fear their enemy more than their leaders. That being said, it seems highly unlikely (with the idea of underwater combat alone) that the centaurs will ever be a playable race. I believe that instead they will have a similar type of racial sympathy thing as some of the other races, later on in expansions.

Hey you know, there is nothing that is making you play this. You can take your terrible attitude and point it at WoW or some other game that would be great. The rest of us here have played MMO’s for a while and we find the story great, and we don’t have little temper tantrums because Gary and Bob are commanders of the Pact and/or killed Zhaitan.

But seriously dude, it’s called RPing (which are two of the words in MMO{RP}G). You take the information you need and create your own story from it. Each of my characters from GW2 exist outside of each other, so each time I play a different characters it is as if each of the previous ones didn’t exist within Tyria. This is vastly different from the way in which I RP’d my multiple characters in GW1, in which they were all members of a prominent trading family that met up on multiple levels of the campaign and lived/died together fighting evil (even though, mind you, none of these multiple characters were in the same missions together, I decided that they were in my head, and made it that way.)

Well, the gods had magic before coming to Tyria, because a majority of them ere specified to have been gods on arrival. How much power they may have gained from the bloodstone is speculative at best.

Or your imagination is terrible, lol.

I think the ‘Entropy’ he’s talking about is the eventual cleansing of the area by the pact war machine turning the undead to pulp.