Guild Wars 2

Oh I don’t know, I mean that whole snowy area in pre with the Wizard’s Tower is outside the “brown-out” zone, and that was considered Ascalon. When I look at that map it’s easy to see the extent of the Searing, perhaps people assume that giant, upside-down, pear-shaped brown-out doubles as the borders of Ascalon? Sure the gameplay limits you to the central area, but is that really all there is?

~note: I’m considering Ebonhawke outside the realm of my argument since it is GW2 material.

Oh, so it is a DBZ reference. Thanks for clarifying.

Oh, you mean the entire region got the same shelling? For some reason I thought it was concentrated in the middle and lessened as you went out.

That’s prolly my own assumption though. :/

ColinJohanson.2394:

randomfightfan.4091:

I’ll pit my Galic Gun against your Kamehameha any day.

YOUR POWER LEVEL IS AMAZING!!! IT’S OVER 9000!!!

Colin, I realize this is all in good fun, I get that. But when was the decision made to turn Guild Wars into a cartoony, theme-park game that appeals to either very casual, or very young players?

Honest question. :/

Sirius.4510:

Pretty much all of Ascalon was blasted by the Searing though, whether we visited it or not.

How do you know that?

That’s an old article and chart(Oct 16th), so maybe the values have evened out more. Since GW1 was only playable as a human, perhaps this reflects those players who migrated to this game and wanted to continue that in some way. It would be interesting to see a chart now and how, if at all, those race stats have changed. I would bet they have evened out some.

I am rather suprised that the dev is surprised with that chart. I mean, they had to expect a lot of GW1 players would want to roll human, if only out of nostalgia.

Vayne.8563:

I knew the pets would be permanent long before I bought the game. It’s the ranger’s profession mechanic. Without it, you’re kitten. There were many people who asked for a non pet option for ranger. It would be like asking for an elementalist option that doesn’t swap attunments. It can only kitten you.

And yes, I know how traits were originally. Do you know why they were changed, because Anet was very clear about the reasons for the change, and they were kitten good reasons. The way it used to be, everyone would always put 10 points in every trait line to get the most powerful trait they could in each trait line, meaning 80-90% of the playerbase has the exact same builds, with no variety. They changed it for two reasons. One to make people have to choose between one thing and another, and two, to give a sense of progression, which is quite missing from the game after level 30. Before, you could get any major trait as soon as you could get them. Now you have to wait till level 60. That sort of progression is important in an MMO and I think the choice to go this direction is better (particularly in the light of so many people putting 10 in each attribute to get the best major trait in each line).

And the story…well, the story in Guild Wars 1 wasn’t all that. I don’t know why people think the story was so great. Take Prophecies. People complained about Rurik. They hated him. A lot of people were happy he died. Anyone with half a brain new the white mantle was evil…why didn’t we? Are our characters that stupid? I knew Vizier Khilbron was a mistake too, why didn’t my character.

Do you think people didn’t complain as much about Komir as they did about Trahearne? Another NPC stealing our thunder. I can go through each story for each game and show you how bad those stories really were. It wasn’t exactly high literature.

And then, a good portion of the missions in Prophecies and Nightfall were strictly filler and were very bad, particularly in the design of some of the bonuses. I can give you examples if you really want.

But even with that, the story probably WAS better in Guild Wars 1. Why? Because the entire game was instanced, and it’s easy to tell a story in instances than the open world.

However, the world in Guild Wars 2 is far more alive than the world in Guild Wars 1. The conversations in places are much better than anything in Prophecies. A living world, to me, is far more important than a stagnant story I’m only really going to experience once.

Well…you act like the pet is the only thing a ranger could possibly have for a class mechanic. Just find something better. The volume of pages from players on this very thing attest to it. There’s nothing that says the pet has to be the ranger class mechanic aside from stubborn devs at this point.

And I was talking about attributes, not traits. Like power, precision, vitality, etc. Those used to be manually adjustable pre-beta.

As for the story, if you think GW1 was just marginally better than GW2 that’s certainly you’re right to think so. I’d bet you’d be in the minority on that one though. :/

Kasama.8941:

I’m always surprised not to see more Rangers use drakes. The drakes have by far the most powerful F2 skills, they deal really good sustained damage, they deal great AoE damage, and they have fairly good survivability. River Drake and March Drake seems to be the best, as they can hit up to five foes at a time, with their F2 skills. Why a lot of Rangers choose to run felines or canines, I can never understand. They die so fast, they hardly get to dealt any damage.

Try the drakes the next time you’re in a dungeon. And don’t forget to use those F2 skills (just let them auto-attack first, or they will usually mess up the targeting).

Well, as a non-BM build, I keep my pets on passive at all times in dungeons and just use the F2 for party support(regen from fernhound, and fury from moa). I think you see canines so much because they are so useful in pvp and that’s what they are used to, the kd’s and cripples are priceless. If it didn’t cost money to retrait/respec gear it would be easy to switch out builds. But it isn’t. It’s a shame that W3, PvP, and Dungeons really call for different builds and that those builds cost money every time you want to change it.

Well…I never considered the central area we get to explore is all there is of Ascalon. Why assume that’s all there is left when we don’t do that for the other factions? Kryta had lands we couldn’t explore, and I doubt the Deldrimor Dwarves only owned those few cities we were able to visit. Same with Cantha and Elona. The Charr lands we don’t even get to see until EotN, but it’s just assumed they have fertile and populated lands up north.

Most games like this don’t try to accurately reflect demographics. They show you a piece of the pie, and you’re left with assumptions or allusions to the rest. It’s up to the writer’s to expand on that aspect, and when they did that for the Charr it makes so much sense that Ascalon was doomed. They could have just of easily done the same for Ascalon though. Oh there’s another city past that fishing village to the south, or the wizard’s tower, or Khylo in the SW, or something farther east who knows?

I never assumed that the relatively small area we get to explore of Ascalon in the game was all there was of it, just like for other kingdoms. Maybe that’s just me though. :/

Narc

The same could be said for Ascalonians just as easy. 20 years could have brought Ascalon a brand new army as well. Keep in mind that just like before EotN we didn’t get to see all the Charr lands to the north, we also didn’t get to see all the Ascalon lands to the south. Heck, post-searing Ascalon has a large strip of it cut off from it in the south that we could go to in pre-searing. Not to mention all the other unkown/unwritten towns and keeps to the east, west, and south. At first, we were only shown parts of both the Ascalon and Charr lands, albeit less of the Charr. But they simply chose to expand upon the north and the Charr…and then everyone says ermagerd it’s so obvious that Ascalon was done dude…look at all the land the Charr still have!

It was simply a choice they made when they decided to have the Charr be a playable race, nothing more. But I think we went over that topic in length a few days ago. :P

To answer your other question: why do I play the game? Well 80% of my time is spent in WvW. My server has an awesome teamspeak community that I find extremely enjoyable…and I like large-scale pvp. 10% hanging out with friends in pve, 5% leveling alts, and 5% helping with the temple chains or guild missions. That’s about it.

Same question for GW1? 80% running around solo or with friends doing missions, quests, skill hunting, build experimenting, and just plain enjoying Tyria; 10% in Jade Quarry pvp, 10% doing guild stuff like dungeons, etc. I would do missions over and over because they were both fun to do, and I liked reliving the storyline.

Rednik.3809:

Obsidian.1328:

But he wouldn’t have done it out of hatred and blind rage, he would have done it to save his people and his kingdom.

You know, this is a VERY odd way to save your people and kingdom, because if your kingdom is no longer have any citizens alive, it can hardly be called a kingdom. Adelbern could say “ah, hell with it, we can retreat to Kryta, eat our pride and ask for help, and after rebuilding our strength we will come back and kick those cats out of my kingdom”. But apparently he loved his power and his pride far more than his own people, and he chose to sacrifice them, to stay and rule as king of the dead, rather than ask for help.

Well…that’s because of the way they wrote him. Before the new lore he was a lot like Theoden at Helm’s Deep. Stubborn, prideful, but still very much in charge of himself. Theoden actually laughs at the 10k zerg trying to storm his castle. Then, at their bleakest hour, he basically says “Eff it, if we’re gonna die we’re gonna do it throttling an orc on the way out. RALLY!!” He doesn’t know what Aragorn knows, that Gandalf and the others are nearly there, he just wants to go out fighting like a true soldier would.

Now…they could have written it so that Adelbern and Ascalon City went out like that, went out fighting and dying instead of him murdering his squire and dropping a nuke out of madness. Why do you think they didn’t? Because if they did, ANet would have made martyrs out of Adelbern and the Ascalonians with the player base and there’d be even less players wanting to roll a Charr. It’s painfully obvious! You can’t turn a main antagonist into a main protagonist inside a former protagonist’s land without introducing something that provides some legitimacy to it. ANet had to make something or someone in Ascalon look bad somehow so that some players will rally to the new race. And Adelbern was the obvious choice for that.

Simply expand on his outburst with his son, let him stew for 20 years inside Ascalon City watching his kingdom slowly get gutted, and his mind starts to falter…

…and poof! instant crazy old man.

Narc

Hmm…well, to me, the way it was presented we were actually pushing back the Charr day by day. On the east side, you push the Charr back north in the Fort Ranik mish, then make a raid north of the wall to save some ele’s, then run back to the capital to kill off the Charr who bum-rushed your capital. In every mish ‘cept the first one you’re wiping out their army and saving an area. Where is the losing ground that you see?

Unless there is some unwritten rule that says the Charr have unlimited numbers and just keep spawning north of the wall like the undead do in Orr DE’s, then it’s a little silly to assume they just keep coming. I mean, they blitz Ascalon and Orr with a mega zerg, and get wiped by the Cataclysm. Blitz Kryta with a normal zerg, and get wiped by the Mursaat. Regroup, blitz Ascalon again with a mini zerg because apparently they just ran right through it last time and didn’t bother to kill everyone, and get wiped again by you and what’s left of the Ascalon army. Yet they still keep massing armies in the north…their females must be dead tired with all those cubs they are producing… -_-

That not enough, ok well 2 years later those Titan baddies that gave the Charr all that power and zerker rage just got wiped in front of their very eyes. And the gods didn’t even help this time…just you, some half-beaten grisly Ascalonians, and an old king who can barely hold up his sword anymore. Where’s this Charr dominance??

As for Adelbern, given the situation where his back was against the wall in Ascalon City, then yeah…he probably would have tried something like the Foefire in order to kill off all the Charr there. But he wouldn’t have done it out of hatred and blind rage, he would have done it to save his people and his kingdom. There’s a very important difference there. Because the way ANet portrays him in the AC dungeon with those fiery demonic eyes and raging rhetoric, it’s hard to see him as anything but psychopathic. That not-so-subtle shift from “stalwart defender” to “genocidal lunatic” is what I take issue with, not the general facts of those events.

Dustfinger.9510:

Ascalonians are fine. Murderous ghosts who kill everybody they meet, not so much.

Also, Id like to express my gratefulness to the posters that chose to look past their racial preferences in favor of the actual current GW lore. It’s good for worthy discussion. +1 to you all

touche sir!

Clever word usage. You’re either a civilized modernist or some kind of game-racist. -_-

For the record, it has nothing to do with racial preferences and everything to do with good story-telling and practical continuity. I really don’t care what the race is as long as it all makes good sense and fits together with some kind of plausibility.

I would also like to express my gratefulness to the posters who look past their dev preferences in favor of actual past GW lore.

Uruz Six.6594:

Ascalonians are the ‘bad guys?’ Has anyone told Ebonhawke about this?

Erukk.1408:

I really don’t think they changed Adelbern all that much. He just grew old, and his mind was probably slipping towards the end. The 20 year outright war, the time between the Searing and the Foefire, against the Charr didn’t help his mind either. He was 78-79 when he died.

He might have seemed fine at the end of The Last Day Dawns, but then you need to add the stress of another 10-15+ years of war to get to him at the Foefire. All of his soldiers and countrymen slowly getting picked away, attack after attack, battle after battle by the Charr.

I really can’t blame him for going insane at the end. Plus with him being in his late 70s, and him thinking that Rurik’s still alive sometimes, I wouldn’t be surprised if he developed Alzheimer’s or something.

This. And Adelbern’s slide was pretty predictable once the Searing opened the floodgates. For a good example of a leader of the people losing his kitten as his country disintegrates, go watch Downfall.

(I’m not saying Adelbern is comparable to a certain paperhanging kitten, just that their final days were likely comparable.)

But ya did compare the two.

And that is one heck of a comparison lol.

Healing Spring is very useful in zerg fights, the water field alone is worth the blast potential. Now roaming, TU wins out.

I would say Asura if only for their access to retal from the racial abilities. Ranger’s have zero access to retaliation and Pain Inverter is very helpful in that regard. Balth Hounds hits hard, and may be good for larger fights, but in small skirmishes most players just dodge em.

Rednik

Official or not, you owe it to your audience to present a believable narrative. Yeah, they can change any darn thing they want and call it fact, but people have their own brains. If they don’t care to make things sound legit, then people won’t take them as legit. The dev/player or writer/reader relationship is based on a certain amount of trust, and if they want to start changing things that don’t make sense they shouldn’t expect people to just blindly accept it. Which is why these forums are chock full of these discussions.

drax & Zax

I agree kinda. I’d say Adelbern’s mind was fine…until the GW2 team tweaked it and Ghosts of Ascalon was released. Had he not been portrayed in that manner, none of us would be having this discussion. The decision to stay and fight is, in my mind, admirable because he drew a line in the sand against a horde of evil(how the Charr were portrayed before EotN), where others, including Rurik, decided a better chance at life trumps defending your homeland. Where would Greece had been if a brave few Spartans hadn’t sacrificed and given Greece the time they needed to assemble an army to beat the Persians? It’s more important to die for freedom than live in slavery, or even exile, in my opinion. :/

I didn’t mean to imply that he knew about the Mantle outright, only that his distrust of them because they were Krytan saved Ascalonians from that possibility. A case of prejudice ending up helping you? /shrug

At any rate, it’s important to distinguish between the GW1 Adelbern and the GW2 Adelbern because they aren’t the same individual.

Narc

I disagree. There were a few npc’s about who, when speaking of Adelbern, always thought of him a good and just king, especially in pre-searing. He was known for being a respectable leader. And whereas some would say his convo in the quest “The Last Day Dawns” is an exception to the rule, I would say his argument with his son is the real exception. That’s really the only time he loses his temper in all our encounters with him in Guild Wars. Yeah he didn’t trust Krytans, or Orrians for that matter, they had been at war(you know, the Guild Wars) for decades before the Charr blitzed Ascalon. It’s only natural a king would find a sudden offer of help from a longtime enemy as suspect.

Why did he fly off the handle like that? Who knows for sure. Maybe the writer’s simply needed a mechanism to advance the storyline over the Shiverpeaks and into Kryta. Whatever the reason, they never developed it. Personally his decision to stay and fight is the right one in my eyes. Here’s what I wrote in a different post:

“I guess it just boils down to opinion but by my eyes Adelbern was vindicated by his insistence on staying. He won, albeit with help from the Chosen Ones(you). Rurik’s decision to leave cost him his life. And Adelbern’s distrust of Kryta was a two-way road. Keep in mind the the ambassador to which you are referring to was wearing Mantle clothes. It wouldn’t be a stretch at all to think the Mantle and Mursaat offered help only to eventually subjugate Ascalon. He was stubborn and what he did to Rurik was wrong, but he wasn’t mad.”

Additionally, Rurik should have counseled with Adelbern on the matter in private, not in public in front of Ascalonian citizens. Telling a king he’s an old fool and that your taking his countrymen away from him would put you under the guillotine in some Middle Age kingdoms lol.

Now this is all messed up to no end because of the direction the writers went with the Charr in GW2. On the one hand you can actually say that Adelbern and Ascalon won the war after the defeat of the Charr Titans. But then GW2 lore comes out and all of a sudden in EotN they are still fighting somehow.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the GW2 writers saw both Adelbern’s outburst with his son, and there being no “official” end to the war(I mean, the Charr supposedly still held most of land north of the wall at the end of Last Day Dawns right?), as a great opportunity to develop the Charr and use Adelbern as the perfect villain: he hates Charr, he’s stubborn and has been known to lose his temper, and, most importantly, his kingdom lies right where the Charr lands lie in GW2.

They just used his under-developed persona, as well as a few holes in the story, to create an alternate scenario where he’s some psychopath that hates life. I don’t buy it. Not at all.

Lol, jeez you like to argue.

The Canthan district doesn’t exist now…you just agreed with me on that. I don’t know what you’re getting at there.

As for the assassination thing, let me get this straight: You’re taking a comment made by a dev in an interview in a fansite, that then got deleted for w/e reason, and then is never mentioned again …as what you like to call “canon”? Konig, I don’t know what you think passes for creating a history with which to base a narrative on, but taking every single dev utterance as unassailable truth is silly. Not only is it not mentioned anywhere since then that I know of(and please correct me if I’m wrong), but it doesn’t make sense in the first place. Why the heck would the humans even need help with the Charr when the gods had their backs? Think about it.

Additionally, it’s no secret ANet has a soft spot for the Charr. You’ve got to be pretty naive not to see that. I even remember an interview late last year where a dev was lamenting about how humans are so popular and “why won’t more people play the other races?” Sometimes I’m not even sure the devs played GW1 with comments like that.

Oh and the “/rage” thing wasn’t directed at you Konig sheesh! I was being general, don’t take it so personal. And “if i cannot see it, it didn’t happen?”…well that’s odd considering the majority of my arguments with GW2 lore are abstract and subjective in nature. Shoot, I think I wrote a whole page on the forums once about why GW2 just feels wrong to me. lol

And the snarky thing, well maybe I was but I certainly didn’t mean it to offend. Sorry if I did. :/ And what’s your beef with WP?? I’ve only seen a few of his vids, but I don’t recall seeing any blatant misinformation. Maybe I’m wrong, who knows. I suppose it would be better if he was here to defend himself.

Not that you would, but if you want my advice Konig, try gleaning the story of Guild Wars from other things besides the “specific minutia of dev-approved cannon” for lack of a better phrase. Look at it from all angles, including ones not found in any official press release or data sink. Let yourself feel the story too.

At any rate, you shouldn’t have ended your post with the assumption I’m wrong. When in reality, neither of our stances can be technically proven true. That’s a clever old debate trick to subtly lead the audience to agree with you, and that’s just not very nice.

It’s an old habit of mine as well to make sure people don’t misunderstand.

Obsi

Tolmos.8395:

>_>

I must be doing something wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever accidentally hit the wrong target. I mean, I’m really trying to remember a time when I have cause I really enjoy kittening about broken stuff, but I just can’t seem to think of one.

Huh… well, if I ever figure out what it is I’m doing, I’ll share. lol

EDIT: For additional info sake- While I have played every class to at least 30, my 80 main that I started at headstart is an Engineer. And when I play, I never let up on the right mouse button. Ever. It is pressed down every second I am playing.

You’ve actually hit at the very root of the problem here Tolmos. For someone like you who never lets up on the right button, you won’t have this issue. I have no idea how many people do that, but for those of us that don’t keep it pressed, it opens up a whole world of possibilities lol.

Both left and right mouse buttons can currently acquire a target, problem is tons of peeps use the right one to pan the camera around. And when you press it(or sometimes even depress it) it likes to target whatever the cursor is hovering over.

~sidenote: doesn’t your finger get tired? XD

Well yeah, there’s a mountain of material never mentioned in Guild Wars. Irregardless, a source no longer linkable doesn’t mean that it is so either. Perhaps we should all imagine that the giant hole at Divinity’s Reach is still the Canthan Quarter?

Well…if currently the humans are said to not be responsible for the death of the Khan-Ur…and at one point in the past it said they were…that’s pretty much “current lore trumping old lore.”

“…lore that is no longer source-able but is still the case…” -that would have carried some weight had it existed as part of the original story, but it was something they added briefly then took away. The Ranger “Pet Attribute Bonus” used to be called “Empathy” during the beta’s, should I /rage whenever someone doesn’t call it that?

And the misleading/general thing…you’re reaching there. But if it makes you feel better then yeah, you have a pretty solid case on this one…I should have specified east of the Blazeridge. My apologies all around. /rollseyes

Vayne.8563:

Obsidian.1328:

Vayne

Very good point, but I think there’s some middle ground that was expected here. It is a giant sales pitch, but good sales pitch’s are laced with truth if they want to seem believable. And ANet historically enjoyed a relatively healthy relationship with the player base. There was a certain amount of trust there. Not like friendship trust by any means, but it was there in some form.

For one thing, they probably meant “you all” and not one person in particular. But more importantly, what did they mean by saying “everything you liked”? Were there things in GW1 that a majority of players could agree were good things, or even great things? Were there things that most players thought were unacceptable? Or maybe this is all about developer preference and it’s what they thought were good things or what we liked.

Surely there is a general consensus about some broad qualities of Guild Wars 1 that can be seen as things that “people liked.”

Let me put it another way. The manifesto video was many paragraphs long. The line everyone seems to quote (one of the two lines anyway), is a small part of something much larger.

We knew most of the differences before the game launched. What a dynamic event was and wasn’t was explained in great detail. The way weapons worked was explained in great detail. I don’t think too many people who followed the game didn’t know about skills being bound to the weapon.

Anet did a pretty good job of telling people pretty much what would be in the game. There were exceptions. Some things changed, but the bulk of what Anet said is still there in this game.

And people seem not to realize this.

Hmm, good point but I still think there were things not expected.

For instance, I never knew Ranger pets would be permanent…not after the beta’s nor after leveling to Orr lol. It just never occurred to me and I never stowed the pet because it was novel and new and I wanted to try it out. There’s no info for this stuff unless you look it up online or buy the manual, which takes time away from the game or money away from your wallet.
by the way, since when do manuals not come freely with games??

I knew about the skills being binded to weaps, and I wasn’t very happy about it. But I was willing to give it a shot because I trusted ANet to do it well. I would say they did an average job of it.

Did you know that attribute points were originally adjustable? Right up to before the first beta you could manually adjust those to a certain degree but they nixed it in an effort to keep any trinity-esque builds out of the game.

And the story, goodness the story!, I think we all thought this would be a strong point with ANet. It didn’t exactly turn out that way at all though.

I will say there were not many big things unexpected…but rather a ton of little things here and there and everywhere that individually don’t seem like much, but taken as a whole it’s different. It’s hard to define really, and I’m doing a lousy job of it, but there’s something that’s just really off about what I thought this game would be like. :/

Actually, it never said that in Guild Wars lore. And if it once said it in GW2 lore, it doesn’t now. Konig, you’re a self-confessed proponent of “current lore trumping old lore.” So by your own convictions, this isn’t true.

And stop using this post to reiterate a point you’ve made on another post. The “charr elementalist” thing is covered elsewhere.

And yes, it was east of the Blazeridge, I was being general for the sake of keeping the post short. But if you want to move their homeland even farther away from Ascalon, by all means, post away!

The humans didn’t kill your leader or steal your homeland.

So far, no one knows who killed the Khan-Ur, so that’s pure speculation.

And Ascalon isn’t Charr homeland, that would be the Blazeridge Mountains if it was anywhere.

They did force them to flee north of Ascalon though(with divine help), so you got that part right. 1 outta 3 ain’t that bad.

Vayne

Very good point, but I think there’s some middle ground that was expected here. It is a giant sales pitch, but good sales pitch’s are laced with truth if they want to seem believable. And ANet historically enjoyed a relatively healthy relationship with the player base. There was a certain amount of trust there. Not like friendship trust by any means, but it was there in some form.

For one thing, they probably meant “you all” and not one person in particular. But more importantly, what did they mean by saying “everything you liked”? Were there things in GW1 that a majority of players could agree were good things, or even great things? Were there things that most players thought were unacceptable? Or maybe this is all about developer preference and it’s what they thought were good things or what we liked.

Surely there is a general consensus about some broad qualities of Guild Wars 1 that can be seen as things that “people liked.”

Meriem.3504:

…first im a C cup then an H cup! -_-

There’s an H cup?!?

*drools

Optional pets. Period. The pet should be a build preference, not a class mechanic. And no, it’s not “ANet’s version of the ranger.” The Guild Wars ranger was hand over fist better than this…thing. In no game anywhere, even the original GW, are ranger’s specifically pet classes. Those are called Beastmasters.

Since they got rid of the trinity, ANet needed something to make Ranger’s unique and they went with the pet. It’s impossible to make it optional now, since it’s the class-specific ranger mechanic. And even if it was possible they won’t change it because that would mean ANet would have to admit they were wrong with this. Fat chance.

hex.3218:

I love how I make one post about how SoR is the little Arrow Cart that could, and whoa! OMG did he jus say dat??? Naw, not my SoR!!!

Okay some of you remembered me and were like Oh that hexy, he so crazy. I told y’all back when JQ was number 1 I’d be back to force feed you a taste of your own medicine. The idiotic claims I make are yours from 2 months ago. Just wanted to see how you liked wearing those shoes after I put a little dog poo in them.

But anyone who’s all undie bunched about me giving SoR a little bit of the business should know better. You guys should know me well enough by now. Go eat you apple sauce and take a nap.

So, here’s the scoop. Since SoR are in first place, they must be a bunch of try hards PvDooring on our off hours, zerging 70 deep, hiding in their keeps what else… oh right! Bunch of bads that can’t take a camp without 40 people.

This post is awesome.

BG will kick your butts once they get their new assistants.

JQ would kick your butts right now, but we only care about the times we’re on and hate PPT and aren’t the try hard nation of Rall. Booo! lols.

Bye Arrow Carts!

You’ve been patiently waiting for 2 months to throw this back at us? Yikes, methinks ye need some sunshine and fresh air.

Honestly, I think this got read and forgotten like 95% of all the posts on here. What are we talking about again?

Cristobal.8640:

Imbecile business decision-makers, listen to this:

When we say we are tired of asian bullkitten we mean anime looking characters, exagerated weapons and overly flashy skills. We mean we are tired of all the tropes and conventions found in asian mmorpgs.

We do not mean we don’t want an in-game civilization that is based on real world Asia.
Asian cultures provide some of the most aesthetically (If not the most) interesting architecture, landscapes, clothing… etc.

So yeah, get your crap straight.

^This…and I hate using “^This”

Unfortunately GW2 has, so far, done exactly that. Barbie female options, rediculously flashy weapons and armor(for a GW heir), and fighting in even a small group is like being at a disco while on LSD. And the unique human cultural distinctions they had in GW1 are pretty much gone.

There are parts of the game that are very well done, but the overall sugar-coated, circus-feel of GW2 is over-bearing.

Well said Narc, I can respect that I guess.

I’d like to add that it’s the reasoning behind the changes that is the root of my problem with GW2. With Dumbledore it made sense that he died in a way…not only did he save the Elder Wand from falling into the wrong hands, his death near the end of the series gave further meaning to Harry’s ongoing fight with V. His death, while tragic, makes sense in the overall storyline of Harry Potter.

With GW2, the reasons behind these changes are…what again? When I asked myself this question over and over with the lore, one thing kept popping up as the answer…

…more customers.

The new races, the gods’ decline, the long time-lapse, the storyline, etc…all these things funneled back like a river in reverse to a single over-arching decision made probably 6 years ago: we need to make certain GW2 appeals to as wide an audience as possible.

Profit motive, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a healthy and needed thing. But when you let it influence your story to such an extent that it forces you to change the fundamental nature of the foundations of that which you are building on…you’ve already ceased to be a true heir to that foundation.

I don’t mind things coming to an end, everything has an ending, including Tryia. And I don’t mind change at all, it’s the one constant in the universe. What I do mind is changing a creative story and artform largely for the sake of your wallet.

What is really nutty about all of this is that that the game has a one-time fee…unheard in today’s market for a game of this caliber. That takes cajones, and I applaud them for it. But I think they were a bit scared that they wouldn’t have enough people to sustain the game using the old lore. The old story was beautiful…but it was probably hard to see it as something that would attract players from all walks of life. And I suppose they thought that if they were going to gamble with this “no monthly fee” thing, they better make darn sure GW2 has broad appeal.

It’s too bad really, I’d be willing to bet there’d be legions of loyal fans willing to pay a small monthly fee of, say 10-15 dollars, to be able to play Guild Wars with both these new amazing graphics and combat mechanics, as well as a high dose of continuity. I know I would. I mean, it’s more than a little silly that people get upset about spending 20 or 30 bucks a month on a game they play for 3-6 hours a day. That’s like 140 hours of entertainment for the same price as a cheap beer night out with your friends…that’s gotta be one of the lowest return on investments for the entertainment industry.

meh…it’s late and I’m rambling again.

Well I’m saying truth trumps life. It’s morally wrong to hide or change the truth for the sake of life. My comment was aimed at FirebrandFrog’s remark that certain ruins should be removed or taken down for the sake of “moving on” for lack of a better word.

For instance, dismantling something like the museum at Auschwitz because it is difficult to confront or evokes feelings of guilt or shame is just plain wrong. If one is too afraid to confront your past, you don’t deserve to be blessed with a good future. Fear, in any form, is not a good reason for anything…no matter how noble the ends may be.

Huh???

What are you talking about? I’m not sure you read my meaning right…

No way. History should not be erased for any reason, even if it means saving a life, or thousands of lives. That’s extremely dangerous territory to tread on Frog. You learn from the past, you don’t try to escape or deny it.

The whole Ascalonian debacle is a failure on ANet’s part to try and rewrite the past, and they shouldn’t have tried to do it in the first place. There are much better ways to introduce a new player race into a game instead of criminalizing an entire culture. They should have written it better if they wanted to do that.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Tobias
Not really. That might carry weight if it were the same writers but it isn’t. None of the writers from Proph and Factions are still with ANet I believe, and as far as I know Jeff is the only one since Nightfall. If you wrote a novel, and I came along and used all of your characters and setting for my own book, and then changed the style, direction, and tone and claimed mine is actually how it really is…would you take issue with that?

Bad example, because you’re forgetting one detail.

“Say you wrote a novel for someone else and then later I wrote a novel for the same person using the same world and characters . . .”

If I was no longer working for them, and the characters/world notes are their intellectual property due to contract . . . whether I take issue with it or not is irrelevant. It’s not mine to deal with anymore. That’s the case here, with any “Expanded Universe” material from Star Wars to Forgotten Realms to World of Warcraft.

I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. The original writing team don’t own the rights to the characters or story. The company does, and if they want to hand it to someone else, then that’s their right to do so and it doesn’t matter what the original writers think of it. It’s not their call.

Now, if you would be so kind, start listing off cases in which GW2 lore completely rewrites something which existed in GW1. It’s not as often as you think.

I didn’t forget that detail, I simply don’t think it matters. If I have to choose between doing the right thing and having the right to do something, I choose the former. Who gives a hoot about copyrights?? Ofc they have the right to do whatever they want, that’s not what we are discussing.

Several decades ago, an oil company somehow got the Supreme Court to let them patent a microbe that cleans up oil spills; the very first known patent on life. That seemingly insignificant case has been used over and over by companies putting patents on parts of human genes…our genes! They have the legal right to do so, does that make it right? I would hope you think not.

Take one of the Ascended Items for instance: Blood of the Khan-Ur. Why is this legendary Charr’s blood for sale at a vendor in LA? There are dozens of examples of old persons and items of significance used for names on jewelry for players to enjoy. This just shows a complete disregard for old lore conventions. It’s almost as if ANet wants us to think of the past events as quaint nursery rhymes or fables because the real stuff is what’s going on now.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever change things, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. It’s the same when you hear a really bad cover for a Beatles song…or a strip mall addition to a historic colonial building…or any ’84 Mustang model lol. They all have the same thing in common: they failed to adequately reflect the spirit of the thing which gave them life.

There’s a saying in Latin: firman consesus facit. It means “our future will copy fair our past.” Our history defines us, we can’t escape that. What ANet has done is basically to ask us to deny that which they first got us to believe in. It’s not just irreverent, it’s silly…and wrong.

I’m tired of this topic.

Sorry for the late response, work sucks this week.

I’ll list a bunch of things that I find underhanded with the modern lore if you wish Narc, although I warn you very little of it is specific in nature. I’ve posted before on how it’s not the small details that are irksome(ANet actually did a great job making sure everything technically fit together), but rather the big picture.

-A meticulously planned multi-racial agenda which does not accurately reflect certain historical paradigms that are present in the original game.

• Asuran magi-tech superimposing worldly magic, that all the intelligent races equally shared, as the new premier power in Tryia.
• The replacement of Melandru’s traditional role of earth-guardian by the Sylvari ethos and Pale Tree dynamic.
• Norn inexplicably assuming the social mantle the dwarves once held with slight changes like being more individualistic and human-looking.
• Charr engineering might, which is only surpassed by Asuran genius, as an almost completely redesigned characteristic of an otherwise savage race.

-A distinct effort to discourage or downplay old paradigms in order to legitimize a highly unique, yet unprecedented, cultural shift in the narrative.

• The systematic white-washing of many human accomplishments and historical events to the point of virtual insignificance in modern Tyria.
• The relative dismantling of human cultural distinctions like Elonian, Krytan, Ascalonian, etc, to a single stale culture which can only be described as mostly “white European.”
• The subsequent artificial elevation of a new multi-racial system which surpasses any human meanderings of dominance in Tyria.
• The decision to have 250 years pass between games in order to make all the new cultural shifts seem more palatable, as well as more believable.

-The addition of mainstream MMO ideals which dilutes Guild Wars highly original background and story.

• The introduction of huge dragons in the game follows dozens of other games’ method of “interesting” antagonists and villains.
• The decision to market to a younger audience in the hopes of attaining lifelong fans alienates many of the older players who expected an evolution of material which reflects Guild Wars’ aging fan base.
• The change from a PC customization method that was very high in build diversity and low in visual appearance to one that is very low in build diversity and high in visual appearance.
• The fourfold increase in level max(80) which not only bears almost no resemblance to how Guild Wars played, but also introduces grindier elements to the game for game-shop reasons.

-An overarching, subtle narrative which not only tries to bestow its own morality upon the PC, but absolutely refuses to let the PC retain any legacy of Guild Wars which is counter to this new morality.

• The dissolving of old rivalries in a backhanded and inaccurate manner in an effort to equalize all races for the sake of a forced marketing agenda instead of a more realistic cultural evolution.
• Unrealistically changing old heroes into villains to legitimize the Charr’s social hegemony of Ascalonian lands.
• Removing the gods’ historical role both as the purveyors of magic, as well as the apex beings of power in Tyria, because of their close association to a single race(human) which would run counter to this new narrative.
• Literally asking a Guild Wars player to take a lot of what was known 250 years ago as mere folklore or myth which bears little resemblance to this new reality.

Ludo

Hmm, yeah I used to think it felt bigger, but now I don’t think so so much. I’ve noticed that the longer I play the game, the more I notice how the scale of the topography is tweaked. For instance, when walking around Lornar’s Pass, a mountain top in the distance seems like a formidable climb. But when I get to it, it’s a just a short platforming feat to get to the top. Things look immense, but they are actually scaled down much smaller. I would think a lot of games do this actually, but this one seems to “trick the eye” more than I’m used to. Perhaps it’s the awesome graphics, idk.

As for your last point, I would agree…with an important caveat. A lot of the content I have issue with that this game promotes comes with a very large leap of faith attached to it: that a lot of the key themes and ideas shown to us in GW1 were really just mythical beliefs or constructs of a skewed point of view.

The question you have to ask yourself is…was this the intention of the original game. If it was, I’m totally wrong in my line of thinking. If not, then we have a problem. Because then we get into an area of false convictions and artistic truths which I personally have issue with.

No, that’s not what I’m saying either. I read Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn series, they were very well done. Great addition to the Star Wars franchise. What’s the problem with those??

I’m not sure we are playing the same game. Are you all really saying that you detect no thematic, stylistic, or contextual differences between 1 and 2?? And I don’t mean subtle changes here and there, but such vast differences that the game doesn’t even feel like we’re on the same planet? Cuz if ya’ll don’t, as Inigo Montoya said, “Then we are at an impasse.”

Even without the style transmogrification, I don’t know how how anyone can play this game and not feel like they are back in junior high. It’s a children’s game.

Edit: I think it was Cary Elwes who said that, not Mandy. Sorry! D=

Tuomir & Ludovicus
I’ll come up with some examples for you if you wish Tuomir, but as for the physics thing I don’t think there’s a discussion really. Take Star Trek’s transporter technology. There’s an actual mechanism written into the series called a Heisenberg compensator. Since Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty theorizes that a particles position and momentum cannot be know at the same time, it is virtually impossible to transport particles from point A to B and put them back together in the same fashion. Since Trek’s transporters do just this, the writer’s simply got around this by creating a “Heisenberg Compensator” that supposedly solves that problem. The writers weren’t tyring to pull one over on us, they were simply saying the equivalent of, “Yeah, we know it’s bogus…but for the sake of immersion in the show just pretend it works.” It’s a legit way of inviting the audience to participate in your story, and it happened to work great for Star Trek. But yeah, you can explain fantasy with both common sense and magic…but it certainly doesn’t have to both, nor is it expected to. That’s part of the ‘magic’ of it.

Tobias
Not really. That might carry weight if it were the same writers but it isn’t. None of the writers from Proph and Factions are still with ANet I believe, and as far as I know Jeff is the only one since Nightfall. If you wrote a novel, and I came along and used all of your characters and setting for my own book, and then changed the style, direction, and tone and claimed mine is actually how it really is…would you take issue with that?

Narc
No I’m not the writer, neither is anyone else here. I’m just a guy who calls out bulls&%t when he sees it. I’m not picking and choosing what I want, I’m just pointing out the glaring inconsistencies in storytelling that are more obvious than OJ at his murder trial. Sorry if that bugs you. :/

drax
I don’t know how to respond to you. Personally I don’t believe in creationism, even though a form of it was taught to me as a teenager. And last time I went to mass I was a kid…what does that have to do with this again? /shrug

Evidence is within the realm of the real world. Storybook evidence is whatever the author says it is…it’s not based on human conventions. The GW2 writers can claim whatever the heck they want as evidence, that’s their right as the current owners of the Guild Wars story. But their “take” on a world created by someone else deserves to be scrutinized just like it would for anyone else.

Also, not sure how we switched topics to “gods creating/not-creating Tyria,” I thought this was about whether or not they knew about the dragons. Personally, I don’t remember ever thinking they were the world creators when playing GW1. Everything I remember coming across said they had from come somewhere else, bringing humans with them. Is that wrong? :/

Oh for christ’s sake…

It’s a fantasy game!!! It’s not supposed to adhere to all the laws of physics and biology and whatever else. Why does everyone keep using real life scenarios as analogous evidence? That’s ludicrous.

Guild Wars is a make-believe world that we, as players, let ourselves be immersed in to participate in and experience that world. There is nothing in those first three games that leads us all to think what we were experiencing and seeing was all legendary hogwash. It’s fake for us as real people, but real for us as players…get it?

Just because another game comes along and makes the claim that all that first stuff was a bunch of malarky, doesn’t make it so.

Good grief Narc, really?? You’re acting like GW1 was some ancient culture that an Asuran dug up in Orr. It’s a legitimate game with a legitimate story. And since whatever narrative it presented to us then was never meant to be taken as legend or myth, it’s story is valid.

It’s eternally amusing to me how players here try to justify taking GW1 lore as bogus by saying either one of two things:
1) New lore trumps old lore. Period. End of discussion.
2) Injecting real-life historical constructs like “the winners write history” to legitimize a certain point of view. That line of thinking doesn’t make sense in a fictional work like this. The giant difference being the “writers” of the game were not actually in the game world…it was a couple of awesome nerds in front of a pc.

Stories will always evolve or die?? I have no idea where you get this. History changes, stories and myths not so much. That’s what these games are, not actual events that are dependent on point of view or interpretation. There’s a 2,000 year-old story about a dude from Nazareth that hasn’t changed at all. Last I checked it was still pretty popular.

Narc

Fair take on my posts I suppose. Although it’s not so much that I prefer the first game as it is I prefer good story and responsible continuity. There’s a lot of things I like about GW2, but the lore obviously isn’t one of them though. And for good reason…it was very poorly executed. I can confidently say I’m in the majority on this one. Besides, it’s a fans job to criticize a narrative that tries so hard to make you forget the game so many of us enjoyed and were inspired by.

No one should expect things to stay static when hiring new writers. But you should expect said writers to respect the foundations that they are building on, and not tear them down to build new ones. Like my signature states, I only make the posts I do because I both want new players to realize certain truths, as well as remind ANet why GW1 had such a loyal following. They said they used the best aspects of Guild Wars when making this game, I see very few examples of that. And almost none when it comes to story.

frans

Well yes and no.

Before Nightfall and EotN were written, Abaddon was not the man behind the curtain pushing the Titan’s to the Charr like pawns on a chessboard. Proph was a complete story on its own, as was Factions. With Nightfall and Eye, Abaddon was written in as the real force behind all 3 campaigns. It was a good decision imo, it ties all 3 games together without messing with any established lore conventions or storylines.

But yeah, coincidence or not dem Charr still wanted to PvZerg all of human Tyria. :P

dot dot dot

The Elder Dragons were written into the GW2 storyline starting with Eye of the North.

So it’s true that the gods didn’t know about ED’s…because they didn’t exist before then.

^

That’s a bit of an overstatement. First of all, not only did the Charr want to conquer anyone in their path(not just humans), but they also didn’t need any prodding from the Titans. The Titans were a means to an end to the Charr, the “end” being humanity’s annihilation. They were especially ticked off at humans because apparently they were the only ones to beat them on the battlefield and force them to retreat, albeit with divine intervention.

And saying they were swayed by the Titans would be like saying a terrorist was being swayed by an arms dealer. They already want to destroy, the dealer(Titans) just gave them the means to do it.

To restart the convo…

The fact is, GW2’s tone and style is fine and dandy…if you take away GW1. That’s the real problem as I see it. It’s perfectly ok to create this kind of game that sets a more fun-loving and relaxing mood. I just don’t think comes close to the feel of GW1, and how you connected to it as a player. For instance, here’s an old trailer for Guild Wars Prophecies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdSXOmyO9go

Note that the content with the undead and bone dragon(I assume Rotscale) was obviously not exactly the direction they went with the main antagonists. But the tone is glaringly obvious.

I’m still waiting for someone to elaborate on the “past catching up with us” comment…

Vayne

At least Shiro required certain classes,skills, and/or the right hero’s to finish. Not so much at all with Zhaitan.

I do agree the Orr temples are a unique end-zone mechanic, kinda wish they didn’t reset so darn fast though. Fractals, I hear, are fun, but it’s still a form of gear-grind…thank goodness we have laurels for that.

Who is Lupi?

Silver

Well true, what I meant was timers I guess. This games’ skills largely come down to timers and positioning and reflexes. And with all the dodging, leaping, and launching, it feels more console-ish to me I guess. Which isn’t in itself a bad thing, just different.

The recharge times on GW1 skills were all relatively short compared to this game(leet skills even shorter…like under 10 seconds), so it was the energy bar which dominated your skill choice and frequency. Not sure how, but it seemed easier manage the skill bar with that one, over-arching limiter. And yeah, it was a lot easier to synergize with other classes.

There wasn’t any fee to play GW1 either. In any case, GW2 will eventually get more content…it just takes time. But I don’t think that’s what the OP was commenting on. He/she was remarking on the mechanical gameplay differences between the two.

Strategic/build-heavy(GW1) vs tactical/skill-timing(GW2). <—can’t change that dynamic in either game really.