Guild Wars 2

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

By the way, my money is on the original Ascalonian settlers being exiles from Kryta. That being the seed which began the tension between those two nations.

Actually we know that prior to there being 3 nations in Tyria there was just 1 nation that spread from Orr to Ascalon, and a human colony from Elona that was in the area now known as Kryta. So Ascalonians are much more closely linked to the Orrians than the Krytans.

I would have to agree, Abaddon, by himself, was more powerful than a single Elder Dragon. Everything we have been told says that the dragons are on par with the gods, and with Abaddon having the ability to tackle two of the gods on his own, it seems very believable that by himself he could take on the elder dragons one at a time. Of course the end result, assuming success, would be a world that looks a great deal like the Realm of Torment.

Well, the asura actually do fall in love, quite passionately. In my storyline, I lose and asura partner and I have to tell his wife about his passing. In the end, she curses me and the pact for killing her lover and runs off almost getting herself killed trying to get away.

And yet, interestingly, from a cultural standpoint the Charr are much more roman.

Well I think there is a lot of truth to that statement, but they have segregated themselves somewhat. We know it to be true that they have 4 class distinctions, the four winds. What this means for them we do not know. It could be similar to the human class distinctions having to do with wealth and power, but it could also be class distinction based on where they came from. Sadly we as a group will not know until they become released.

Well the Caromi enforcing the isolation may not be a sign that they are evil, only that they, perhaps, are following their orders like good soldiers (blood legion).

Yes WvW is part of the mists, along with every PvP map in the world at this moment.

I don’t know how often the pale tree sprouts more sylvari, but as of now we know that there was a large span of time that there were no new sylvari, then in late july sylvari started sprouting, then in late August there was a massive influx of sylvari that have kept a steady stream of soldiers headed to Orr ever since (reference to BWE and GW2). Honestly though we just know that at this point in time it’s a relatively steady rate of birth, but what the rate is is unknown. And since the oldest Sylvari are 25, it is unknown if they die of old age.

It is scenery and spell FYI.

But yes, Divinity’s Reach would be awesome to see under seige, from either side. Though I don’t think I want to wish that on either the people of Shaemoor or humanity in general, who have already lost so much.

Well, they honestly can do a lot. They already have the model types to give the districts their proper looks, but it seems to have been a decision on their part to make humanity one specific look rather than add the type of diversity that they had in the first Guild Wars.

They’d send us and logan thackery in to kill the Mursaat, probably ending in our gruesome death.

I think the only siege of Divinity’s Reach we will ever possibly see is by Centaurs. If the White Mantle ever took over it would be so they owned the power, and they would want the city standing strong once they had control. And then the Mursaat show up and spectral agony every human in Divinity’s Reach to death because they are still pissed about that genocide thing…

Yet the corrupt trees, they corrupt flesh and blood, but they just can’t wrap their mind around little trees that make up representations of flesh and blood. Why are we fighting these dragons again? They are idiots.

They did unify, but they fell apart afterwards.

Honestly we know very little abotu the area above Harathi Hinterlands. We went to 1 tiny area up there filled with Quetzal Tengu and skelk if I remember right. It was also the location of the Slaver’s Exile elite dungeon.

evolverzilla.2359:

A champion of Jormag corrupted Svanir (brother of Jora) and he was well and alive in the same period of the dwarves, azurans and other races. And for all lore we know every champion can corrupt what he can touch.

Many dragon champions have touched sylvari. Sylvari have died at the hands of champions in the Dragonbrand, up in Frostgorge Sound against the Claw of Jormag, on Claw Island, and throughout all of Orr. From the Eye of Zhaitan it seems clear that Zhaitan took our mentor from Claw Island and tried to make them one of his champions to fight against our character, which for Durmand Priory folks is a Sylvari. So not only have they been in the hands of Champions, but they have been in the hands of the ED himself. It just seems to me that there is something bigger going on here than that they are too ‘new’ for him to figure out, when other creatures that were not around during the first dragon rising were corrupted within minutes of their awakening.

They wouldn’t ever get far with a siege on Divinity’s Reach, they may be well resourced but they aren’t getting the siege weaponry to get thru or over the walls very easily.

That was Giganticus Lupicus, and if I remember right you actually fight one of those in the dungeon in Arah.

Firstly, there are other walking plant lifeforms that have been corrupted by dragons, corrupted husks if I remember right in the Crucible of Eternity. Now these lifeforms would be similar, if not the same, as the sylvari in their need for food consumption and a means in which to transport energy throughout their body (aka a circulatory system).

I also want to point out that Primordius doesn’t corrupt individuals. He forms lava and rock into his minions. This can be seen in the Edge of Destiny book where they have to plug the caldera of a volcano in order to stop his minions from forming together and then coming out of it. We have no proof that the Dragons could not have corrupted the dwarves at one point in time, because there are no dragons which corrupt living beings that are active near where the dwarves are. You see once the individual is cut off from the Hive Mind (something as simple as death) the body is readily available for corruption, but strangely enough nothing that Zhaitan does can revive the form of a Sylvari.

My point is, on his first meeting with a Norn Jormag corrupted him within a matter of minutes, and upon his awakening Kralkatorrik corrupted everything around him without struggle. Whereas Zhaitan has had access to Sylvari within his realm for almost 25 years (Caithe, Trahearn, Rhiannoc) and he has thus far had no success at all at raising their corpses. And also who says they use magic any differently than any other races, the bloodstones seep magic into the world as a whole. That coupled with the fact that the sylvari are limited the same way as the other races when it comes to magic says to me that they are limited to the same sources as well.

In Guild Wars 1, a Norn tries to marry your human character because he/she sees your character as an equal. You must then go out and kill a great frost worm in order to make your glory outshine theirs so you can no longer be legitimate lovers. So I think there is a little bit of the equal glory thing going on there, but love does grow out of it for them. Mainly because after they marry, many times they will hunt together to gain glory as a unit as opposed to an individual. This, at least, was the Norn that was trying to marry you’s plan in Guild Wars 1.

You understand the mists well Hallen

Oh, there is no question that this Island was never on the GW1 map. The question is how an island was built up in 250 years. It does seem possible because of the fact that it is near a volcanic island chain, it is inside of a bay, not deep ocean, and when the waters receded from Orr’s rising it would have dragged large amounts of sediment and shipwreck material out.

Alright, I do want to point out that the Pale Tree claims that she doesn’t control the dream at all. That the dream is it’s own object, and she merely watches over it. Now, I realize that what I am saying comes directly from the Pale Tree, and there is no objective way to be certain that what she says is true. Still, at this point in time I choose to take this as the only known situation at the moment, but when the situation changes (like a Glint situation) I will be glad to change my opinions.

There are a few problems with this though.

It is obviously not difficult for the dragons to corrupt plant life. In fact plant life is what grows when you remove Zhaitan’s Corruption in the end of the Personal Story and it can be seen corrupted throughout the Dragon Brand. Also, every race in Tyria currently is new to the dragons. Nothing that currently exists was around back during the dragon’s last rise, but they have no problems corrupting charr, norn, humans and asura. With these two points, it should technically be simple for the Elder Dragons to corrupt the plant lifeforms represented in the sylvari. Lastly the hive-mind type situation is nothing new. We do not know exactly what the dwarves were like back in the last rising of the ED’s, but it is known that at one point in time there was the Great Dwarf, which currently appears to be a Hive Mind version of the Dwarves. But either way, hive minds are not new to the ED’s, and there is no evidence that anything along the line of Hive Mind situations are a major roadblock in the process of corruption.

Well there are a few things that the idea hinges on that don’t really add up to the theory working out.

1) The Dream/Hive Mind – The Dream is not a hive mind. The Dream is merely a limbo that the Sylvari live in while they are waiting to be born. This connects them, but it is only a faint sensation they feel when around others, as opposed to being fully controlled like most other Dragon minions. I would also like to point out here that the Dream is not controlled by the Pale Tree, but that she merely keeps it, like a shepherd keeps sheep.

2) Freed from the Dragon by the Ventari Tablet – Only 1 dragon champion, that we know of, has been freed from the will of her master, and that took a strong spell cast by one of the ancient races, the Forgotten. Nothing found in game seems to state that prolonged exposure to good has any effect on Dragon Champions/Minions at all.

3) Immunity to Corruption – A major henge of this belief is the fact that dragon champions cannot be corrupted by other dragons, so the Sylvari are dragon champions because they cannot be corrupted. This has actually been proven false. In the Crucible of Eternity there is a boss called Subject Alpha, and he is a creature with layers of multiple dragon corruptions found on him. Now it is unknown how he came to be like this, but we have to remember that we have yet to be in an area where dragon minions are in the same vicinity of each other. Because of this we have not seen how they may interact between each other, or if they can be cross-corrupted.

Well, I think the whole point is that their plan hinged on the Mursaat. And when they were needed they up and vanished leaving the other races to be run down by the dragon minions. After their failure, because of the Mursaat, Glint was freed and she hid the other races from the dragons so that they would somehow survive.

That is a popular theory, but it is a theory that is pretty much despised by most of the long standing lore hounds of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, including me. It makes very little sense for the Sylvari to be minions, because of the complexity of thought they show compared to any other type of minions.

Well because of the state of the Great Northern Wall in this instance, and the amount of greenery that had returned to the land, I get the feeling that is has to be some time after the Eye of the North. More than likely this is just one of the battles they had to fight to prepare for the Invasion of Ascalon.

Well, there were 4 clans of Tengu in the beginning right? I’m thinking the Angchu, Sensali, Caromi, and Quetzal. Well, I think we can rightly assume that these 4 clans became the 4 winds. So I get the feeling that whatever wind the Sensali are will be reflected as the rogue faction for them. The reason I believe this is the fact that the Sensali not only felt betrayed by the humans during the Tengu Accords, but they felt betrayed by their fellow Tengu, the Angchu.

I am fully of the opinion that the Pale Tree is not, and never will be, a Dragon Champion.

There are loads of enemies not related to the dragons, lol!

You can stick with your theory all you like, and please don’t stop because of me. I am only saying that this is a theory and nothing more because there is no solid lore background to give any evidence that Sylvari and Pale Trees have existed before.

Yes, but here is one thing that I would like to point out. There is at least 1 more pale tree that has, that we know of, no contact with humanity. Interstingly enough, though, the Sylvari from this tree have the same form as the sylvari from the most well known Pale Tree.

Yes, there are many other plant-like beings within Tyria. There are oakenhearts (and their many variations), Thorn Stalkers, Aloe plants, and so on and so forth. But none of these plants have ever shown any type of sapience (I hope I’m using the word correctly).

Yes, because the death magic that Zhaitan uses appears to rip the soul from the Mists and place it back within the body, only under Zhaitan’s command. No other necromancy is known to do this. Even Palawa Joko just seems to merely trap the spirits of those he kills within their rotting bodies, as opposed to ripping them out of the Mists.

Actually, from what I’ve read, the only text in the game that cannot be translated (that I know of) is the text running down the draperies in the holdings of Chokhin and the pillars in the library within the Realm of Torment.

Well the Ascalon City that we saw in Guild Wars 1 was more of an encampment than anything else. It was mostly tents used to make use of the most defensible area left in the region. I mean the wall around the old Ascalon City to the south was ruined to the point of you being able to walk right over it, thus they chose a small place with 1 or two major choke points to use to defend those left. I do have a feeling that eventually the humans would have expanded back out to the remains of the old city and repair the wall/rebuild houses. I mean this would almost be necessary if they wanted to mount a proper defense. It is just that when we saw Ascalon City it was merely two years after their world was literally blown apart. They just hadn’t had the time at all to recuperate.

I think part of the somewhat non-existent lore within the Fractals of the Mists is the fact that they mean to keep the mists a mystery. I would love to somehow learn more about them, but it doesn’t seem possible.

The only major feature I miss from Guild Wars 1 is being able to go into a first person point of view for taking screen shots and such. It’s a pain in the butt to try and make your character sleep and get him out of the shot if you are looking for a landscape view.

Another crazy thought I just had. There are obviously multiple languages in Tyria, when you look back on ancient civilizations. I think it would be cool to have to search the world for these carvings, or manuscripts and such. After you find these and transcribe them (assuming it’s a carving that you can’t move or something similar) you can then take it back to the priory and translate it yourself, or take it to an expert in the field and have them translate it for you.

This would give something for the many players who absolutely love the languages in Tyria and give them more reason to learn how they work, and it would also give a side option for those just looking to gain achievements by bringing them to others to be translated.

Zhaitan roars in either anger or fear a few times within the game as we are taking out key strategic positions. Our characters like to view it as fear, but we have no way of really knowing.

‘Bubbles’ isn’t a race or anything. ‘Bubbles’ is a name given by fans to the DSD or the unnamed Deep Sea Dragon, nothing more.

Is it? In the last dragon awakening we know for a fact that it was 5 races (Jotun, Seer, Mursaat, Dwarf, and Forgotten) against 6 Elder Dragons. A much more popular theory is that the Pale Trees and sylvari are a recent development by the world of Tyria to fight against the Elder Dragons. Whatever you may think the Pale Trees could be a number of things. Evolutions of the living and moving plantlife of Tyria, regular seeds that were enchanted with some magic by an unknown individual, the experiments of an oucasted asura that ended with his experiments killing him before he could tell anyone. There is a number of ways things could go in this world, but because of the past that we have read over, it seems unlikely that Sylvari existed before now.

Well, if theories are correct about this being a breeding ground, it could be expected that a large portion of their population is on the island to protect their young. But as of now this is only speculation.

Sorry, I misread your last post, reading it as the whole thing was an insurgence against the flame legion as opposed to just during the point in time after the Eye of the North. But, for those who claim it is closer to the time of the foe-fire (Noting that we haven’t technically seen Ascalon since the beginning of the game, because locations are trapped in time), we could say that this is after the flame legion got the Claw of Kahn Ur and wrangled some control over the other legions for a short period of time.

You gotta remember, Turai Ossa was around looooooooooooooooooong before Norn were even thought into existence. I mean his form as a Ghostly Hero was around in Guild Wars Prophecies, the norn didn’t appear until two years later.

Except for the design of the people that we are fighting, nothing about this area seems canthan to me. I would say, personally, that this space is more of a creation of the mists than anything else, though I would love for ArenaNet to prove me wrong. BTW, for anyone that’s interested. There is an Achievement in this dungeon, when the Colossus bows to you in the end, if you bow back you’ll get it.

Well, if I remember right, there is a decent amount of grass and such still around on the ground, because of this one would believe that this was before the searing or long enough afterwards that life started growing back in the region. I would say it was a pre-searing invasion of perhaps a city north of the wall. I have trouble believing that it could be an insurgence against the flame legion just because of the fact that I was fighting alongside a group of veteran flame legion guys the whole fight.

Well that’s what I was saying, it may exist, we just don’t have any access to it yet, with few exceptions. Guild Wars 1 had very few instances where it may have been possible to see something of Orrian text, Gates of Kryta mission where you pick up Orrian manuscript, but we never physically see it. I would love to learn more about written ancient languages. I know that I’ve heard there is also old Asuran, and I would be interested to see if there was any Charr written language (besides coded text in Eye of the North). I would assume much of Norn history and such would have been passed down by speech until more recently. Still it would be an interesting subject to pursue, and also could make an interesting side quest to the idea of creating a library of ancient knowledge. It would be cool if you could find these scripts and you would have to decyfer them or bring them to people who could do it for you.

I want to point out that the Son’s of Svanir’s strive for strength and power may also be a remnant of the norn’s basic need to prove themselves to others through feats and prowess. And this basic part of the norn outlook on life is becoming corrupted through the worship of the dragon slowly. Not to say it’s not possible, just that there are other possibilities.