Guild Wars 2

I have a stack of 200 or so tournament chests, since glory is gone and the update is going to remove mystic crafting, are these chests now effectively worthless?

Has ANet mentioned what will happen to salvagable pvp items after the mats are removed?

I’ve earned up a bulky nestegg that I’m inclined to blow on trying to be a market maker.

So: share your stories on your successes or failures in trying to reset an equilibrium for an item by buying out existing walls.

How’d you pick the item, why’d it succeed or fail, what lessons did you take away from the experience?

It used to be bugged and was LIFO 8 months ago.

But it was fixed and has been FIFO ever since.

Careful Penguin.

Could very well be that the cheaper precursors soar but the expensive precursors crash. A fixed material cost for all precursors will inevitably average things out.

That being said the average price is currently undervalued IMO.

So, ANet wanted to give people minis. The issue is that anything that isn’t exotic is forgable- which destroys the value of other minis.

Their solution was to make exotic minis that are effectively exotic in name only.

This avoids the Holographic Risen Knight problem.

I wish they’d also do this for the Black Lion Chest minis, but I suppose they’re happy to destroy the mini market provided they get a cut.

I hear this 20g thing a lot.

It just isn’t a reasonable statement. 20g can easily be gotten with 1 day via multiple different avenues. They aren’t secrets, you don’t need guides, they’re publicly available activities.

Yet people keep making threads or posting replies to money making threads about how they’ve been ‘playing since day one’ and have ‘20g to their name’. It’s pandering self flagellation.

The issue is not with earning money, it’s a spending problem. GW2 is unique in that endgame stats can be gotten with the minimalist of effort. Running 30 dungeons should kit your character out completely, we’ve all done it. Spread it extremely casually and do 1 per day and within a month you never need another item.

No other MMO does such a thing. Yet people still come here and cry poor, as if they’re missing some tool that the elites are keeping from them.

Just stop spending your money. Don’t buy the useless skin, ignore the instrument, all of those mini pets in your bank- pick your 3 favorites and sell the rest. Limit yourself to things which are necessary or that bring you actual joy and you’ll never be poor. Act like you need to ‘catch them all’ with vanity items and of course you only have 20g- you’re wasting your money on trivialities, you’re living above your means.

Once you have enough money that it’s earning you 20g per day, then you can be frivolous, but if you get to that point you likely wont want to be.

It’s a Twisted Mender that spawns. One of it’s abilities heals at a percentage rate- meaning things with higher health are healed substantially.

It’s most certainly not a bug, and it’ll only occur on blue, since that’s where the menders patrol.

It isn’t the pet (I’m a ranger), it’s an automatic trigger that happens if you get too close without it being very close to after a ‘grab’ attack (the gigantic circle).

Slot Quickening, and Protect Me. Use protect me very very very soon once the grab animation finishes and you start flying back. You need to use it so close that you’re going to need to predict when the throw happens- using it prior to the throw, when the grab is still happening doesn’t work.

Once you’ve broken the throw, run up and hit Quickening. You should do this before you start the stomp, not after, and you cannot pause at all so you need to activate it while running.

You can activate quickening 1 second before and have plenty of le-way.

Only get close enough to stomp (about 1.5 bodylengths), going very very close (standing on the body) will get you pushed back- the thing you’re misinterpretting as a bug.

The pet doesn’t effect anything. Just keep it on passive to keep it from blocking the visual of the body- making it harder for you to judge.

So, as usual the ‘insider trading’ was idiotic speculation.

Let’s take this as yet another lesson on not to cry wolf.

@Rez: GW2Tradingpost.com posted it as a tip.

It’s most likely just speculators buying and selling to speculators. The site does it all the time, mostly scamming public speculators after telling private subscribers to stock up a week before hand.

If Gift of Wine turns out to be used then you’ve got an issue. But we keep having these threads that disappear if the prediction turns out to be false. There will always be speculation and mostly it’s just fabricated or someone trying to monopolize a market.

@Lord Dark Dragon.5427

Please take a screen shot of your:

Items I’m Selling

Items I’m Buying

Items I’ve Sold

Items I’ve Bought

Pick Up Tab

screens.

Put them on imgur in an album and post the link. If you’re posted buy or sell orders, bought or sold enough items to move the items in question off the first page take shots of the pages up to and including where the items are listed.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

My girlfriend has a Dragon Jade ticket, she forgot to trade it and now it seems it’s useless.

Just speak to the Black Lion Weapon vendor with the ticket in your inventory.

You’ll get an option to see an additional screen. This was covered in the patch notes.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Well, there is another 80k wall at 39s now, someone really has too many ecto’s.

I think it may settle around 37-39s each for the time being

What exactly do you mean by ‘too many’ ectos?

The person bought the ectos from people happy to sell to him for the offered price, they didn’t steal the ectos from helpless victims. Why are you implying dirty dealings here, what exact scenario are you imagining where someone can have ‘too much’ of something outside of hacking or exploits?

Don’t purely flip, you’re extracting profit from sacrificing time value, but this value is incredibly small due to the velocity of the market.

Instead focus on extracting impatience and uncertainty.

I tripled my money in a day by using buy orders for non-infinite Quaggan tonics. Doing so required basically zero amassed capital, I could have doubled 20s just as easily as doubling 20g. All it really required was storage space relative to the amount invested, you should have plenty of alts available for storage if all you’ve been doing is pure flipping.

Anyone could know they’d rise as they would have had their supply cut forever in a few days, the spike happened early due to speculation.

Getting the same return from mat flipping would take several hours, much anti-fun, and a fair amount of risk. Find markets where supply is abundant and will be eliminated,

Edit: As a PS, don’t underestimate the risk involved in pure flipping. Materials have, on many many occasions, tanked suddenly and gradually. Either one can wipe out dozens of successful flips, if not more. Since you’re spending so much mental energy on flipping, such drops can be devastating- far more than pure speculators whose diversification strategy will offset any one particular loss.

I lost about half the money put in to mithril recently. I’m able to hold the investment hoping for an upside due to diversification and liquidity in other markets, but to someone who is just involved in mithril, and is flipping it (and is as such relying on it for liquidity) this could have been a deathblow.

LordByron.8369:

The gem part is possibly the reason this system haven t been changed…..making this game P2Win for most players.

To win what? What exactly are rich players able to do that someone with 5 gold to their name cannot?

The entire game is open to everyone, end game stats are handed to you for a pittance, the only thing that you need to pay gold for are exclusive, rare, pretty things. It’s fluff and nothing else.

I like fluff but it’s not remotely related to game play.

So, answer: what is gold allowing people to win? Because I have gold and I’m not doing it. So I’m clearly missing out on something.

Ensign.2189:

Risingashes.8694:

Very quickly you’d have 25,000 Peach Dyes listed at 15c and then no one would ever go back there again.

I, for one, would be perfectly happy to buy out 25,000 ‘for a good home’ Peach Dyes at 15c and feed them to the forge.

Precisely, my brain (as well) automatically started figuring out how to exploit the system, how to stop those exploits, and subsequently how to exploit the fixes.

It’d be insane, and we all know ANet isn’t going to do it. But if they did it would be a never ending hassle. The traders would have a field day, the proponents would demand fixes that would make things even worse, ANet would make proper fixes but they would inadvertently miss something.

I just don’t know how some people don’t see how their restrictions to trade actually help the people they think are destroying the game. Traders love regulation, because it’s never perfect and within those imperfections lies opportunities for profit.

Nike.2631:

A good home

Having read through your suggestion and thinking about it, I have to say that it would work.

It would certainly not be used for every item, but for specific markets- like dyes as your suggested- it would have a small following.

But realise that while the suggestion wouldn’t be ‘bad’ it also isn’t anywhere near as important as much much easier to implement changes would be.

You’re asking for something that would effect the trading post UI, item binding, and duplication of many TP functions. Compare this to other changes and the impact they would have on quality of life.

Armor filtering by light, medium, heavy: this is a fairly simple fix that people have been asking for for over a year, and would have a positive impact on every single player.

But it hasn’t been done, because developer time is limited, and what you’re suggesting is of such limited use, and such arguable benefit, for such a low number of players that you can’t realistically expect it to gain any traction.

Implementing a formal system for something which can, just as efficiently, be done with map chat and the mail system just isn’t reasonable. It wouldn’t solve any imagined problems with wealth distribution, it wouldn’t assist trade, it wouldn’t really do anything but allow strangers to gift unwanted dyes to strangers.

Very quickly you’d have 25,000 Peach Dyes listed at 15c and then no one would ever go back there again. The number of new players who stumble in to the system and end up with an unsellable item would be massive compare to legitimate users, those who do use it would be dissatisfied as their raw materials are snatched up and converted by traders for profit, new updates would be demanded wasting more and more development time on something which should never have been a priority in the first place.

If you want to give people dyes, then give people dyes. But if you want to suggest a complex system, make sure it has actual value to a wide range of players, not just something that might be used by some people.

Wanze.8410:

I would argue that rich players arent responsible for inflated precursor prices, especially because prices have been stable for 6 months.

Your argument is compelling to me.

I might have fallen in to the trap of applying a bit too much real-life economic theory to a virtual economy (or, arguably, misapplying it). Achievement pride has much more of an impact to specific items than real life where displayable physical goods can really only ever be an indirect sign of status unlike certain items in GW2.

I would still say that rich players have a higher tendency to buy out a precursor simply due to them being in the unique position of being able to, while a poor player being able to would be a contradiction of terms, and that individual would really be mislabeling themselves. But I’ll rethink how much of an impact the various groups have on price setting.

Essence Snow.3194:

“best possible adventuring game focused on trading”

How can you justify claiming that the intention, or reality of GW2 is focused on trading?

The trading post is a tool that allows people to exchange unwanted drops for wanted drops.

Were there no trading the game would either be

1) extremely frustrating as most of the drops would be useless to individuals (the exact problem Fractal weapon drops have currently)

2) an infinite collection of tokens: as the only way to stop drops being useless to individuals is to allow choices, so instead of a global token system (gold) you have a hundred different tokens with 10-15 different choices between them. People already complain about the 15 or so different tokens, to have a trading-less game you’d need literally hundreds of them.

Very few people spend the majority of their time trading. And no people are prevented from playing if they don’t play the trading post. With this in mind, justify your claim that the focus is on trading.

Wanze.8410:

I liked your post but i disagree with your view on pre cursors because i dont think its a manipulated market at all.

I think the disagreement might be down to the definition of ‘manipulation’. It’s used so much by enemies of competition that it’s really hard to pin down what it actually means.

So let’s abandon the term entirely:

I believe that the market for precursors is not controllable, is not controlled, that the price represents a fair approximation of demand, that speculation exists but is not overbearing, and that no one person can have any significant medium term impact on either volume or price.

However I believe that the price of precursors is primarily determined by richer players, not as a form of control (or collusion), but simply due to their demand for precursors being higher than other players. Once you have a lot of capital it’s a far easier decision to head to the trading post to get your precursor.

I’d think that this might clear up any misunderstandings, and I’d like to hear if you disagree with any of my assumptions or conclusions.

Essence Snow.3194:

Simplifying of terms….the 2 impatient parties other than yourself get cancelled out due to 2 other patient parties that it still effects. There are 2 sides, both instant and listings.

Explain this.

Are you talking about the person the trader overcut in order to get the item, and the person they undercut in order to sell the item?

Those people are not effected, they chose a price point that was either higher or lower than what the market rate was.

If the patient seller and buyer had their order fill instead it would mean the impatient seller and buyer would have received less and paid more for their item respectively.

It’s called competition, you cannot ‘cancel out’ the two impatient players, the patient players aren’t a part of the transaction.

Essence Snow.3194:

Risingashes.8694:

There are two sides to every transaction. No one can force you to buy or sell to them. Everyone benefits.

Everyone involved in that particular transaction yes, but not everyone else that that or those transaction/s effect. Each transaction within a market effects that particular market and to an extent other markets as well. There’s a lot more being effected by trading than just the two sides in a particular or series transaction/s.

How does my buying 5 ectos at 6s59c, and someone selling those 5 ectos at 6s59c effect anyone other than 2 people?

Edit: Just to save time-

You: Other people aren’t able to buy those 5 ectos.

Me: Those ectos aren’t available to them, the only market that effects them is the one they can immediately act upon.

You: People buying items that turn in to ectos use the price of ectos to make their purchasing decision.

Me: Their decisions are effected only by current buy and sell prices, not by my individual purchase. They might use historical prices as part of that decision but that is their choice and goes against the spirit of what I was actually saying, which is that individual transactions have no involvement and as such no responsibility to anyone other than the two people engaged in that transaction.

If you’re arguing determinism I have to ask what exactly your point is. If you make things meaningless enough, everything can arguable effect everything else. But such a definition of ‘effect’ holds essentially zero meaning outside of a drum circle.

We’re trying to examine an actual thing that is happening, what use does ‘everything effects everything’ have to this discussion?

I highly expect another non-committal ‘some people just don’t understand the infinity of the universe’ fob-off that you’ve used for other legitimate queries higher up in the thread but here’s hoping for an actual defense.

Now, the more important point is (3). “That Inflation is Bad for Casuals.”

I would say that this is fundamentally false. It’s true that inflation is bad for poor people in the real world, but that is because the majority of income is spent on necessities, which cannot be stalled and so poor people must give up some nessessities (a bad idea), go in to debt and/or live a pleasureless life devoid of any ‘wants’.

Not so in GW2. In the game everyone is effectively a titan of industry. They magically are granted finished goods which are resaleable to other consumers, or the materials to make those items.

To the normal player the price of mithril ore matters. They get a lot of it, and they tend to not use hardly any of it. Mithril ore spiked recently due to the toilet craze, and that meant all those casuals selling their mithril ore got more for it than they would otherwise.

The spike helped the little guy, and it was caused by rich people trying to get richer. It’s an exact demonstration of trickle down economics.

Your system would hurt all those mithril holders, the very people you wish to protect, by killing the thing that caused it. And this is only one market, this exact thing happens constantly throughout the trading post. In fact ‘inflation’ the very thing you’re railing against is the aggregate figure representing how well common people are being given more money for their goods.

The higher prices inflate the more common people are getting for their goods, and the easier it is for common players to get enough money to buy things. Were prices to decrease this would solely benefit those with large stockpiles of money as their purchasing power would in fact increase.

I apologize for any rambling, it’s a result of a genuine attempt at civil discourse.

LordByron.8369:

That videos instead showed that despite queen s gauntlet affected for a time gold value, there were no subsequent deflation and a steady increment of inflation continued despite the event finished (that was even during summer with less people playing)….

Okay, I see what’s happening here.

I’ll take a step back and stop being defensive since what we have here is a difference in fact rather than a difference in philosophy.

You’re worried about inflation because, you believe, it destroys the purchasing power of individuals and, as such, degrades player enjoyment.

I get that concern. I hope to demonstrate to you why what you believe is wrong, I ask that you do me the courtesy of countering my specific statements and I promise to keep an open mind. Hopefully by the end one of us will have changed their mind.

Your claims:

1) Inflation is happening
2) Inflation is caused by speculators
3) Inflation is bad for casuals

We’ve seen the data on (1), so it’s fair to say that some inflation is happening.

As to (2), we need to understand why inflation happens, I have an economics background so if I start obfuscating with needlessly complex terms or if I skip a logical step please kick me and force me to restate rather than just assuming I’m purposefully trying to hide something.

Inflation has two generally causes (in reality), demand-push, and supply- pull. Demand-push refers to consumers having more money and pulling prices upwards via competition. If there are 10 loaves of bread and 20 people want that bread, a shop owner might not notice immediately, but if it happens each day they are likely to raise prices slightly so that one person drops out and the maximum amount of profit is captured.

Supply-pull is where item scarcity allows supplies to increase prices as they are not faced with supply competition.

The issue is where the demand-push inflation is coming from. The truth is that it’s a mix, but the mix is slanted towards different groups of items. Rich people don’t care about the majority of items that non-rich people care about. The rich have already maxed out their professions, so lower tier mats are useless. They’ve gotten their armor, so that is useless. Many have even gotten enough luck, so greens and blues are useless.

The inflation in the majority of items is, as such, caused by the creation of money from nothingness. And that is solely the responsibility of non-rich players.

But, to be fair, inflation does certainly occur that is caused by rich players. Namely in the precursor market. Rich people need something to spend money on, and precursors are the highest end items you can go after, if you desire atleast some degree of function rather than just fluff (minis, seasonal skins, etc being the extreme end of the fluff scale).

However, while rich people cause demand-push inflation on these high end items, they are also one of the major forces that keep supply-pull inflation down. Look at all the recent threads about people pouring 10’s of thousands of gold down the mystic toilet to get precursors. Imagine what the prices of precursors would be if suddenly those people stopped gambling due to a market that no longer allowed speculation.

Even one person doing toilet runs creates a significant number of the listed precursors.

…Continued below…

chronometria.3708:

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe….a tool that lets you tunnel under the ground is not intended to include “jumping”.

Jumping is a fairly nessesary part of player movement, the lack of it really limits the enjoyment of the item.

The animation for jumping has already been created, it’s just tied to an action button instead of the jump button, and stops halfway through.

Adding jump would turn a frustrating vanity item in to something that can be used without frustrating. Your argument, that a drill item doesn’t jump, is ridiculous. A drill item such as this cannot realistically exist, using realistic limitations as an excuse for frustrating needless problems is petty and childish.

The person who listed 53,000 ecto did not farm them, obviously.

But they certainly did buy them. They bought them from up to 53,000 players, who did not want the ectos but instead wanted gold.

They went to the TP and got exactly what they wanted.

Were this trader not there each of these 53,000 people would have received less money for their drops. They benifitted from this trader.

And so the trader relisted the items well above the trading price, in order to recoup the fees charged. And then some more as profit.

Now 53,000 people who want ectos can come to him, and pay less than they would have otherwise.

All 53,000 buyers, and 53,000 sellers getting more and paying less just because of the actions of this one person.

There are two sides to every transaction. No one can force you to buy or sell to them. Everyone benefits.

@LordByron: So instead of addressing anything I said you’re using the ol’ “You must be joking, anyone who thinks differently than me is a clown” defense.

Okay. We’re all monsters who want to hurt casuals- you got us.

There we go sarcasm. Compare the above line to my other post so you can see the difference in the future.

After you’ve completed your exercise, tell me: why do people who get drops deserve less money for their items? Because that’s what your system would do.

Since you’ve (purposefully) forgotten that there are always two sides to every transaction, I think it’ll be nice to see how you justify hurting suppliers just so you can get more shinies.

I bought this toy close to a year ago, and it lacks the ability to jump.

It would be really appreciated if when you press jump you jumped out of the ground and went back in.

The animation is already associated with the item, so this little bit of polish would be great.

I’m sure it would be low priority. But I wanted to put this issue out there just in case a dev saw it.

Does anyone else actually own this item?

LordByron.8369:

Rassst.5791:

Why you want to affect those who play like they want but not like you want?
Current system was done with purpose.

Because when you see in TP section a topic about a guy posting an order of 92.000 ecto (about 30.000 gold) nobody bats an eye and instead discuss how profit the situation….

Even the dev doesn t ask himself if there is nothing wrong with a player having 30.000 gold (nothing achievable by playing any other part of the game).

This person got this gold by directly benefiting other players.

When someone wanted gold he bought their item. When someone wanted the item he sold it to them for gold.

Both parties benefited, no gold was created.

That’s the difference between trading and ‘other parts of the game’. Non-trading wealth is gained from nothingness, it’s created. Trading wealth is gained only with direct consent of other players.

If other methods of gaining wealth was pegged to trading there would be a massive influx of gold in to the system, causing hyperinflation. Under inflation the trader is able to make even more money, meaning the droprates would need to be increased again, causing more and more hyperinflation, which will increase trader profits.

It is literally impossible for a trader not to make more money than farmers, because farmers contribute nothing to other players, and their wealth is created out of thin air.

If your suggestion was put in to place it would make things harder to sell for people with items, and things harder to buy for people with gold. And the benefit would be your feelings not being hurt because of jealousy.

It’s not the game’s job to make you not feel jealous of people with imaginary pixels. Why not do things in the game that you enjoy and leave the markets to those who happen to enjoy playing them?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Behellagh.1468:

Ah! This topic again.

takes a drink

No one told me we started a drinking game. Was the word of the day “manipulation”?

We’d all be dead within the week. Can’t buy spare livers with GW2 gold.

@Smooth Penguin: Looks like you’ll need to work your way up again.

Just apply the same logic that got you the money in the first place. I’m a high volume trader so a few recent changes have made me ridiculously wealthy, but niche investments will always offer the highest predictable returns over the long run.

As to your original topic (which everyone seems to of ignored to sprout personal grievances or bragging, me included):

(1) Mithril and Elder: I got in to salvaging in a fairly big way in the recent mat spike, and found my way to 80 items once I figured out how ludicrously high their trade volume is compared to other levels. So I stockpiled a lot of mithril and elder when they were around 60c. Lost a fair bit from that since I’d convinced myself the luck made ‘breaking even’ worth it.

(2) Toxic Hybrids: Made the incorrect assumption that the chest would disappear after the tower fell.

(3) Set 1 Minis: So ANet decides to announce the end of set 1’s. I knew prices would crash a bit due to overspeculation. But what I didn’t realise was that ANet would flood the market with forgable rares at never-before-seen volumes.

I’m sure it hurts now, and I for one am happy to hear trading war stories, but don’t fret too much about it. The TP is rife with opportunity and the prices of unique and desirable items will inevitably rise to previous heights as new entrants smell profits.

Buy 1) Things that have a large supply now, which will be cut off at a later date.

2) Things that have a lower demand now, which will have a higher demand at a later date.

3) Things that may rise in the future, that have a buy price close to vendor price (aka no downside risk).

What someone please explain how this is ‘manipulation’.

Because the word has an actual meaning. You shouldn’t just be shouting it whenever you feel that something is ‘wrong’.

Feels like this forum is under it’s own version of the ‘red scare’ sometimes. Burn the 1%.

How good would it be if when the update goes live the Black Lion Trading post UI is changed to the Consortium Trading Post.

Would be an awesome little touch.

Zaxares.5419:

The “hardwon personal assets” that he opted to keep from LA merchants who had been raided by the Aetherblades instead of returning them to their rightful owners?

Firstly, it was stolen from Divinity’s Reach merchants. But let’s look closer at the situation.

There was a pile of stolen treasure, Kiel claims to be returning it but how could she possibly do so? Do you think that each coin is stamped with it’s owners mark? Do you think sky pirate keep a ledger of the origin of all the loot?

Of course not. Did anyone see any of the money return? Did anyone find the recients or hear their thankful tales of re-enrichment? No, of course not. Kiel couldn’t have returned the money and didn’t.

Gnashblade on the other hand, split the booty with his crew, something any responsible commander would do, while Kiel kept it all for herself. I prefer to support someone who takes care of those he fights with rather than the nameless elite of a foreign city, who failed in their personal duty to protect their own assets.

A vote for Gnashblade was a vote for personal responsibility for wealthy foreign merchants, and comradely for those closest to you. But the Asuran sponsored Kiel doesn’t hold those values, she was bought and paid for.

@Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

All your arguments amount to “We cannot know therefore we’re guessing wildly”.

Of course we cannot know, this is a speculation thread. If we knew the thread would be useless, or it would be a “describe things that are apparent to everyone thread”.

And since it’s a speculation thread and any reasonable person would be working off the ‘balance of probabilities’, rather than ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ as you wish to impose upon us. How about you offer alternate explanations that are more credible?

1) The Pale Tree says a dragon made of plants is related to Zhaitan. Under the theory the Pale Tree is hiding Mordremoths influence (consciously or subconsciously). Therefore the most supported explanation is not that the dragon is related to Zhaitan but that it’s related to Mord.

To demonstrate how not to respond: Yes, the plant dragon from the tutorial could be related to a non-plant dragon, say why this is more likely than a plant dragon being related to a plant dragon. Could the plant dragon from the tutorial be related to a plant non-dragon, say why this is more likely than a plant dragon being related to a plant dragon.

2)

Rikimaru.7890:

Considering all we know about her love for wrecking havoc and how she went mad after her accident in Omadds machine I found a possible answer on what is her goal.
I think that she is a Dragon Champion of the Jungle Dragon a.k.a. Mordremoth and her goal is to awaken him.

I don’t think she is a dragon champion, because as far as we know dragon champions lose all rational thought.

Give examples of why you believe dragon champions lose all rational thought.

Explain why Scarlet only being partially converted wouldn’t adequately explain the difference (if a difference is demonstrated).

3)

The entire personal story revolves around fighting Zhaitan. It would make no sense to suddenly tie it to the current Living Story.

The dragon is a plant dragon. If it was an undead dragon it could easily have been put in to the tutorial. Just because you believed an unreliable source doesn’t destroy the story. It is clearly a plant dragon, and you should clearly have been more skeptical from the beginning.

Having the clue to Mordremoth be right in the face of everyone the whole time is good writing, not bad as you suggest. It’s foreshading, and it’s foreshading that isn’t stuck right in your face with flashing arrows. Players can replay the story and see: “Oh- wow. They actually had a plan all along.”

Instead you want to make out that because a character who has a reason to misdirect, or simply a character that is making the best estimate based upon current information, says something that isn’t eventually true than the writers have no idea what they’re doing.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What matters is the arguments, not if you happen to take a lucky guess.

The issue is that a lot of the people arguing against the theory simply tried to say that it had already been disproved by completely idiotic arguments.

If the discussion was actually productive it would have been a much more enjoyable experience for speculators.

Plus you defining it as ‘a guess’ is one of the major issues with the community. Being right when what you were saying was based on more rational analysis than any other theory doesn’t make what you’re saying a guess- it isn’t a luck based outcome. There were facts, those facts were analysed, and the correct conclusion was reached.

You’re literally trying to diminish the correct answer because it turned out that it was correct. As if everyone was just rolling dice and 6 just so happened to be where it landed. We’ve had multiple short stories, tonnes of lore, and fairly bold-faced foreshading for close to a year, and people still stubbornly insisted Mord was no more likely than Primordus- when one had a heap of evidense and the other had earth-y words in a few random news posts that only resembled Prim when taken completely out of context.

Just do a search for Primordus on Reddit. You’ll get comments like “Tyria is going to be rocked… Primordus confirmed!!1!”, and “Get fired up for… wow Primordus update incoming.”

Edit::

On a hunch, let’s see why you’d have this attitude towards the people who correctly worked out it was Mord months ago.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Ah, I see. Well I just want to be sure that people understand that I’m not dismissing the possibility of Mordremoth/The Jungle Dragon being involved. He could be.
I just find Primordus a more likely candidate. The red eye, the darkness, death and destruction, and an underground threat. All of that spells out Primordus to me.

From a post 20 days ago. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

laokoko.7403:

I think many people don’t know they arn’t making any money. And some people might just want to clean up their bag.

A better question is why am I responding to such unimportant issue, and why are you posting about such an unimportant issue =)

Because it’s weird.

Why do people have 1, 2, 37 tiara’s sitting in their bank?

Why are they choosing now, 6 months later to cash in their items? What could they possibly be using that 67c on? Why are they selling it instead of just deleting it?

The item has never been low enough for them not to of lost 70% of their money, if they need the inventory space why not sell it for 6c, you’d atleast recoup some of your costs.

Do they need those 67c, or that 1c right now in order to purchase something else?

Why are there so many of these people? I’ve gotten over 250 of each. That’s around 70 people all in this very unique position.

Is working this out somehow less important than the 50th nidjit complaining that the gem price is too high, or about how ANet not allowing hyperinflation is a ruse to force people to buy gems, or how ANet not doing something about inflation is a trick to force people to buy gems?

KyreneZA.8617:

Evon will charge the innocents of LA 15% tax before he’d even lift a single whisker in their defence. If he were ever to mobilise and form a defence, they would aptly be called “Black Guards.” The only good Gnashblade is a dead one and judging by the trailer, “Mr. E” might just be killed while he scurries to escape with his bags of gold weighing him down.

Typical Kiel supporter, trying to demonize free enterprise.

Gnashblade has a long history of helping the citizens of Lion’s Arch: be it by providing them services they depend upon, or by contributing the local community.

Kiel on the other hand sold her soul to secret Asuran interests in order to buy her way on to the council, while Gnashblade only used his hardwon personal assets for his campaign.

http://i.imgur.com/pZYXNxu.jpg

Why are items like this still in existence, not from a game design point of view- but from a human interaction point of view?

Who would hold on to a single tiara for 6 months only to sell it for 1 copper, while paying a 1 copper fee? And while I can imagine there being 1 guy out there doing this, I’ve bought over 500 of each item over the past 2 days for effectively 0 copper.

Giving time a value, the people selling to me are actually losing money. And why would you sell for 0c when you could just type in 2c and end up with 1c?

I’ve seen this in many markets, items that should realistically have no supply coming in, yet people are still selling in to buy orders that make no economic sense.

Other markets exist where supply should be zero, but buy orders are still being filled as if someone is magically getting the items from something, but this particular market is just the most absurd example.

With the upcoming sigil update I’m worried they’re completely ignoring the issue with race specific sigils.

Currently nearly all the race specific sigls are at vendor price, and understabably so. They’re simply horrible compared to active sigils. The only reason you’d ever use them is for running specific dungeons, and with the update to active sigils even that would be a waste.

If salvaging isn’t put in, and if it remains as a pure % damage no one except bad players would ever consider slotting a race sigil, and they’ll continue to just pile up at vendor+1.

That’s simply a lie Nike. Pure demand numbers are a horrible way to select farming materials.

That list was never useful for anything, and now it’s a preview of under-appreciated skins.

It’s a pure improvement of a completely worthless frontpage. Stop complaining for the sake of complaining.

> this creates inflation and benefits no one but the super rich

Just to make it clear: Inflation in no way benefits the super rich, or the rich, or the moderately wealthy.

Inflation only benefits those who get item drops, and the ability to get item drops is uniform across the playerbase. And because of the relative wealth of players, the benefit of inflation primarily goes to the ‘poor’.

It really frustrates me when I see people decrying deflation as if they’re a ‘man of the people’ as it’s either disingenuous manipulation of popularism, or proud ignorance.

Any cursory thought on the actual mechanics would reveal this. Someone is farming, they get drops, they try to sell them on the trading post. Inflation is a measure of how much they can get for their drops.

If poorer players were forced to buy things, as they are in reality by biological imperatives, then you’d have a point. But in a virtual world ALL goods are ‘wants’- not ‘needs’.

As it is you’re actually arguing for the poorest players to be disadvantaged so the lazy top 30-60% are able to buy out materials on the cheap without having to work for any of it.

Shades.4572:

I’ll add one more to your list and I’ll be happy: 3) remove/send back all bids that are at/under the vendor cost!!

Why does this bother you?

@Gene Archer.8560: “You can’t force someone to get better. You just can’t.”

This just goes against the basic tenant of game design. Think of any other game, Pacman, Tetris, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, even GW2.

As games go on they get harder, this is to keep people from getting bored as they naturally improve over time.

People are going to improve at different rates, but they are going to improve. The ‘skill cap’ of the normal player is very high, and simply coming to understand traits, skill swapping, dodging, and positioning will lead to a large jump in player effectiveness.

Is Marri suited to teaching people these skills? That’s certainly debatable. The larger and more pronounced ground warnings should certainly spur some thoughts, the gigantic arrows and telegraphs should make some people think. But the telegraphs may be too quick for people to catch on, and nothing really prompts or highlights dodging as the solution if people are not already familiar with it.

But your argument: that hard content is somehow discriminatory, and/or it shouldn’t be worked on AT ALL is simply ridiculous.

If you want rewards, doing Marri pales compared to running 3 dungeons which you could easily do in that time. If you want story, there is none. If you want achievements then you can get the meta simply by participating. If you want to ‘win’ then making things easier doesn’t do that, it simply hands you a meaningless victory.

If you believe you cannot beat the Marri then you simply haven’t played the rest of the content the game already provides. Do that, and leave the Marri to the people who’ve already reached the content cap, or listen in map chat, watch for the gigantic telegraphs and dodge. You might actually enjoy yourself.

Josh: Love the Marri- despite the frustration caused by watching a group of baddies fail.

Can I suggest a more focused training program for the individual for a future patch?

You’d need to make it essentially mandatory, either by rewards or locking Legendaries, level 80 or something behind it.

Have something that specifically teaches dodges, something that specifically requires trait swapping, something that specifically teaches positioning.

I’d love some harder content, and if the only way to get it is ensuring the playerbase is competent then it’s really up to you guys to actively push it forwards systematically and not just hope people pick things up while being carried by others.

Let’s make this clear as it’ll just be expanded upon in finer detail: Of course this is conjecture, of course this is unprovable, of course this is not hard fact. You’re just listing synonyms for ‘theory’. This is a theory, it cannot be any of the things you’re listing because then it wouldn’t be a theory- it would be an overview.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

There’s not much suggesting Glint could do what the Pale Tree does – generating new intelligent and reasoning life.

You’ve managed to merge two completely separate points.
———
You said:
1) that there was no reshaping by Sylvari,

2) therefore they cannot be minions.
———
I said:

1) the theory catagorises Sylvari as minions,

2) the basic minions of other dragons do not reshape things,

3) the champions of dragons and special units of dragons are the ones who reshape things,

4) the Pale Tree and Husks would be champions and special minions of Mord under the theory,

5) the Pale Tree and Husks reshape things,

6) therefore there is no contradiction.
——-

No where did I imply that ALL dragon champions teraform, the entire spiel about Glint is irrelevant.

“The sylvari are immune to dragon corruptions” I am so sick of this sentance.

You’re right, I should have said “immune to known dragon corruptions”.

Well if you had said that your original sentence wouldn’t have made sense, since you were using it as a counter to Sylvari being corruptable by any dragon.

The immunity is very likely a hint

_Pure conjecture

Yes, that is what a theory is. But ‘pure’ conjecture? I’ve provided a gigantic paragraph justifying why the immunity should be important from a narrative and storytelling standpoint, but that was all cut out and ignored.

Not playing around with definitions.

If the definition is important, say why. Don’t just reply with an explanation of what a corruption is and what a construction is, or what a creation is. Unless the definition used counters the fundamental argument you’re simply adding words to the page with no relevance to anything.

You’ve now spent a paragraph claiming that Destroyers are constructions, you’ve spent another paragraph explaining the difference, something I already knew, but didn’t want to discuss because of it’s seeming irrelevance. Where does it go from here? You’ve failed to actually link either paragraph to any lucid point, the definitional split and the exposition simply can’t be used now.

If I was to disagree with you, what purpose would it serve? You’re offering facts as if they support your case- but they don’t in the format you’ve presented them in. I’ll ask for the third time: describe clearly why Primordius having creations, as opposed to corruptions, is related to any previous point mentioned- with the proviso that it has to invalidate something said- not just be a nitpicking defintional irrelevence designed to make your other points appear more supported.

These theories on “Mordremoth” are drawn from one skill’s title.

Okay, so you’re ignorant. That’s fine.

His name is from one skill. But his existance has been confirmed by the main developer since a few months after the game’s launch. The original release schedule actually had two additional dungeons in the Maguuma region. The games next step was planned to be Maguuma and the jungle dragon was always planned to be from there. But it was cut for time constraints.

This isn’t theorising, this is fact. What is theory is the pale tree connection, or the state of awakeness of the dragon, or what his name is (although you’re really pushing it by claiming the skillname isn’t his name considering all the other skill names are Elder Dragon related).

- The sylvari are the natural predators

- The sylvari are creations of someone who tinkered

- The sylvari are another race from a previous cycle

- Time Lords.

Yes, those are all opposing theories. I believe they are all incredibly unsupported in comparison to the theory supported in the OP. If you wish to theorize about the other theories then please make a new thread about them or make a post in here dedicated to offering an alternative.

But the fact you can list a theory with no evidence doesn’t make the case for the OP theory any weaker.

And again: just because something cannot be proven doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It just makes it a theory- which is what this entire thread is- a theory thread, not a “confirmed fact” thread.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

All right.

It is highly unlikely the Pale Tree is, itself, a dragon minion and the sylvari fruits of dragon corruption. I say this because the Pale Tree does not behave like dragon minions, and there is no corruptive element to how sylvari behave.

They do not reshape things to serve them or their needs, save for the plants which are their houses. Given it’s not the first time we’ve seen things like that (the Maguuma Jungle has had plants of really strange forms for a long time) . . . I find it hard to follow that thread along.

The sylvari are immune to dragon corruptions, and simply die instead. It’s been noted the few dragon corruptions known cannot coexist . . . but this was the crux of some research in the Crucible of Eternity, wasn’kitten And it became realized you could in fact merge them, but it was an unstable result.

(Also, the destroyers are not corruptions, they are creations. Primordius for whatever reason does not seem to corrupt with its influence. When it needs minions with different abilities, it creates them. At least from what we have seen and experienced so far.)

There are suggestions of other trees out there, but we haven’t actually seen them. We were told they exist, but not where they are. (Though close enough for one to arrive from elsewhere.) the Nightmare Court and Soundless are both strange forms of sylvari but seem more permutations of what is possible with the unique life cycle of the sylvari than dragon corruption.

And all of this is pure conjecture and supposition because we simply don’t have information to disprove or prove either side.

The Pale Tree = Jungle Champion theory doesn’t assume the Pale Tree is a servant, but that it’s a free’d champion ala Glint. The Slyvari would be minions, the minions of the dragon aren’t the reshapers, rather specific units and champions are the ones doing the enviromental terraforming. In this case Husks and the Pale Tree would be reshaping capable, something we clearly see ingame. But since the Husks and Pale Tree are free’d the extent of terraforming is understandably restrained.

“The sylvari are immune to dragon corruptions” I am so sick of this sentance. They’re immune to all current forms of corruption. It’s a plant dragon, if any dragon was to corrupt them it’d be a plant dragon. Our knowledge of the world is based upon current understanding, big reveals change that understanding. Why are you, and certain people, so caught up on this logic? Yes a character preview mentioned immunity years ago. But this is something a storyteller would do if they wanted to reveal a big threat to the race that changes the playing field, it’s also something a storyteller would do but then change if a thematically important event occurs- such as a plant dragon resurfacing when talking about a plant race.

The immunity is very likely a hint so that people can later look back and see that something was up. Immunity to dragon corruption is a special thing and needs a reason for it, the immunity being a result of being dragon minions makes perfect contextual, thematic and narrative sense- is it the only explanation? No, not even close. But the immunity has absolutely no impact on the legitimacy of the minion theory.

“Also, the destroyers are not corruptions, they are creations.”

This old tidbit. Stop playing around with definitions. Trying to define what is and what isn’t a corruption to fit what you already believe is not interesting or helpful to anyone. The important thing to ask is: Does the definition matter to the overall point? So- does it? Does calling destroyers creations instead of corruptions change the fundamentals of anything anyone here is saying? Because it just bogs down paragraphs otherwise. If something matters say when it matters, don’t just play the dictionary game and throw your hands up in the air as if it’s an actual point.

The rest of what you said is, I think you’ll agree, rambling that concludes we can’t know anything- a fairly redundant statement for a theory thread.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• Nightmare Court are not corrupted Sylvari.

I would like to state, on behalf of the lore forum, that your post does not represent the lore forum.

Nothing in their post relies on this strict definition, so you’re nitpicking instead of addressing the theory. Under a lot of viewpoints NC are indeed corrupted Sylvari. At most you can say that NC are not proven to be corrupted Sylvari, in which case your statement is filler.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• The seeds which guarded the pale tree were not guarded by minions of Mordremoth.

They were guarded by non-specific plant monsters, not mentioned in any other part of the game or book. So at best you can say they were not definately Mordremoth related. Which again is simply trying to present a non-confirmation as proof of disproof.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• In fact, Mordremoth’s existence isn’t even officially recognized.

And how does that counter anything expressed in the theory? Theories cannot be officially recognized as then they become fact. Your critisism is again filler in an attempt to pad out a paper thin rebuttal which has half a point at most, which I assume we’ll arrive at shortly.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• The dragon during the Sylvari opening is a dream, not an actual dragon.

How is this evidence against the theory? This is simply you purposefully misinterpreting things to pad out your list. When talking about the dream you assume you’re talking about non-physical representations, the OP would need to of said this to make this point relevant.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• We know from the writers, that what Scarlet ‘thinks’ she saw, is probably not true.

Firstly, this requires a misreading of the quote. Secondly this requires the assumption that devs wouldn’t lightly mislead people in order to maintain a twist.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

• None of Scarlet’s attacks have focused anywhere near the Sylvari region. And the upcoming trailer shows her attacking Lornar’s Pass. If her plan was to attack the Pale Tree, someone should get her a map first. The logical conclusion is that she is not interested in the Pale Tree at all.

Now you’re not even reading the OP. This point is clearly outlined in the post. So again, another padding.

So we’ve reached the end and all you have is misquoting devs, purposefully misunderstanding the OP, pointing things out already addressed by the OP, and general filler.

Par for the course for lore forum police.

Melchior.2135:

Unfortunately, the “Pale Tree = Dragon Minion” theory has been torn to shreds by the Lore forum. At any given time, you can probably find five or six threads there taking turns digging up its corpse to kick it again.

Which is probably why you chose to post it here, where people were less likely to know.

No, the dragon minion theory has never been debunked in the lore forum.

All people do is say “this cannot be so because Sylvari are immune to dragon corruption” or something equally irrelevant and then fail to come back.

The counters to the theory are paper thin and rely on assumptions that are downright silly.

Instead of just repeating things in the hopes that it becomes true why not actually present your counters so you can be proven wrong.