Guild Wars 2

aelflune.8590:

If there was no one else there before it spawned, I don’t know how this piece of advice is useful at all.

And it seems like you were just an unfortunate victim of poor circumstances. Most players don’t actively grief others. The population of players piggy backing encounters is small, and the percent of people actively hindering encounters smaller still. That they got to the encounter before everyone else is also unfortunate. What can I say, but tough luck, report it to support, try again with a group of supportive players, and this is a game not a life altering experience. It’s likely not to happen again. All these suggestions given will only increase your odds of doing it successfully. No one is guaranteeing you success. If you want a guaranteed method you aren’t going to get it as that’s life nearly every event to happen is probable not certain.

CHIPS.6018:

So I just tried that “Kill 3 Legendary Clockworks” quest. It is nothing but a DPS test. Can we please stop having quests like these?

These quests are saying:
If you are not using berserker gear, go home.

I agree that timers are a bit much on all the bosses, (¹) but they aren’t purely DPS checks. A DPS check would have it so you had to do nothing but damage to finish the encounter within a time limit, these require you to avoid attacks while having a buff that makes you more susceptible to those attacks in order to burn the mob down. It’s a DPS check with skill. Those with the skills required to dodge the attacks and grab the buffs win the day as they live longer to damage the boss.

Having an individual that can take a few hits is very helpful in controlling the knights and keeping it in the same spot. I happen to run a bit tanky, and while I think the main attacks are too strong considering you have to save your dodges for the much stronger AOEs, I can survive for quite sometime in roughly the same spot allowing players an easier time in maintaining their DPS. If they don’t have to avoid the melee attacks on the knight then they can spend that time damaging them and collecting buffs.

Many people liked the Marionette because it didn’t have a timer, but it was also a DPS check, just disguised behind a meter. Those who killed minion waves fast enough (DPS check) got to have more cracks at removing a chain. True the champions were a timed DPS plus skill check, but it wasn’t the DPS that was the factor in most failures there. Most of the time, in my experience, it was wiped player platforms that cause failure, which is evidence for lack of skill and not having enough DPS. The same can be said for the assault knights. Is the ground littered with corpses? Then skill is more to blame, not time.

What mechanic would you propose to replace the timers in this fight that would still allow it to be challenging/capable of being failed?

¹ – Mostly because they don’t make sense from a lore perspective. Does Tequatl have a pedicure appointment to make?

FANY.6524:

I know the zerg method isn’t everyone’s ideal when it comes to fighting the knights, but I feel this is ignoring the whole “play how you want” thing.

“Play how you want” was marketing speech. It was not a well formulated development goal. Without further clarification we’re just speculating on its meaning. For me, it meant that there would be several game play types that they would develop as their resources allowed, not that every thing they developed would somehow include every game play type, whatever a game play type might be. For some a game play type could be a demarcation between PvE, WvW, and PvE. For others it could be a finer demarcation, such as Open World Zerg PvE, Open World Organized PvE, PvE Dungeons, FotM, WvW – Normal, WvW – EotM, and sPvP. For some twisted individuals it could mean sitting around killing critters should be a path to billions of gold. See why this isn’t a useful phrase to use in defense of the content not delivering on your particular likes?

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

DarcShriek.5829:

What was the point of EotM?

So they could shoe horn it with some lore relevance for that moment, only to have no relevance ultimately like seemingly half the other stuff in the LS?

That being the case it probably would have made the most lore sense to leave it for their quality of life update phase. However, WvW players were waiting a long time on it so it wouldn’t be fair to delay it until April ¹ just so Arena Net could wrap up the Living Story Season One.

¹ – Presuming March 18th is just the epilogue and not the first game update patch. Also presuming that they couldn’t have rolled that smattering of story delivered in EotM into another update.

kayeferr.1745:

Why is it that the average player can not get the Mega Achievements unless they are in a large guild we buy stuff in this game to and it used to be fun but Anet in discriminating against the small guilds and average players ….. this new update for the Knights is just wrong…..

I had a small guild, but wanted to do wurms and Teq. I banded together with others on my server to form a larger guild alliance. If the group you run with is incapable of organizing due to numbers you need to look to yourselves and not Arena Net for how to improve the situation.

If you don’t want to do organized content, that’s fine; I don’t particularly enjoy sPvP, but I’m not about to ask Arena Net to remove it and its associated achievements. Think about how the sPvP and WvW players feel every release. Patch after patch they do not get meta achievement tracks to grind away on, yet they play because they actually enjoy their respective gameplay types.

That said, there are plenty of achievements that can be done in the patch that don’t require a large guild and still will allow you to get the meta and view the ending dungeon. I have not unlocked four of the achievements, don’t plan on getting them all as I’m not some ravenous MMO locust who thinks I need everything, and will likely get the meta tonight when doing the daily. I do not consider myself an above average player, and I did not need to get together with my guild alliance to get most of the achievments. A group of four of us and some solo play was all that was needed. You’re vastly overstating the effort needed to complete the meta.

Healix.5819:

Other encounters in the game do have maximum scaling limits, so there’s no reason to not have these limited at 50.

They do? There is no easy way to tell from a UI, but generally any event seems to scale upward to obscene proportions. You should check the norn boy looking to build armored snowmen in Snowden Drifts after a Maw event. Turn in one armor piece, see how much the meter goes up. Now wait five to ten minutes for the scaling to “refresh” after people have left the area. Now turn in one piece you should see a great difference.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

There is no such thing as a universally-appealing romance.

I don’t know I think we could all get behind an ooze romance.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Death to o-Tron.

He’s a popular character, he’s not going anywhere soon. Though I think he’s more than overstayed his welcome. A gag can only last so long… right?

DrDivine.5378:

Thank you guys for verifying that for me,I always kind of thought it was true, but a lot of people I know who play the game say they aren’t romantically involved.

They are either not playing the same part of the game (i.e., ignoring the Living story content), or are applying double standards. If this were male/female pairing would they question the veracity of their relationship? What hoops do these characters have to jump through to make it more explicit?

Saint.5647:

The 1-80 zones of the game right now are all pre Zhaitan death zones. Southsun is not.

Are you sure?

HumaCarrionEater.8254:

. I’d also ideally like them to be human, because I find that other species don’t really ‘count’ to the average person.

What? I want male Charr romance. They do count!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Except that Malyck states he had no Dream of Dreams – at all. But as we see with Caithe, he didn’t have amnesia so it isn’t that he simply forgot his Dream of Dreams experience.

Right. I believe him and accounted for that in my last sentence. However, I no longer think it’s right to call something a dream if it doesn’t offer experiences as dreams are by definition experiences had while sleeping. I’m just wondering why Mordremonth chose Scarlet as his vehicle for awakening if there were a whole bunch of other Sylvari without the dream’s protection lying in wait.

Edit: I suppose her superior gifts are one explanation for that, but a team of Sylvari under his influence could have done the same and be more convincing.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

it was proven if you go with Trahearne that he never had a Dream of Dreams experience.

I’ve been rereading that dialogue and I found this curious:

Amaranda the Lonesome: A distant shore—and darkness. A root, a cave…you. You are the seed. What Ronan knew and never told still lingers in the Dream.
Malyck: What does that mean?
Trahearne: It means my fears are well founded. You were not born of the Pale Tree, Malyck. We cannot see your Dream; you cannot see ours. I must return to the Grove and speak to the Pale Tree.

Trahearne could just be mistaken about him having a dream at all, but the name of this story step is also called “A Different Dream”.

If by Dream of Dreams you mean what our Pale Tree, our Sylvari, and the White Stag experience/interact with then that is true, if you mean a dream in general I think the above provides some evidence that they have a dream too. Though it may operate differently than our tree’s. Instead of offering pre-birth experiences it may just shield them.

Jelle.4623:

… no. Scarlet was definetly not trying to kill Mordremoth through the ley lines. She basically gave him breakfast on bed, she’s feeding him by redirecting the ley lines.

The video clearly shows this, but it’s odd as I thought the dragon’s awoke because they were drained of magic and needed to eat, when they sleep they seep magic out into the world. Am I mistaken, or was Mordremonth awake this whole time and looking for a quick and very large meal?

DarcShriek.5829:

If someone came to me and claimed to be able to produce a prophet and then that prophet is killed almost immediately, I think I would consider the person that created the “prophet” a fraud. After all, there’s no way an inferior race could possibly kill a prophet so easily, therefore it couldn’t have been a real prophet.

At that point those krait were already turned toxic. Angel suggests this somehow has changed their mentality.

Angel McCoy.1832:

If I’m cagey about something, it’s because I don’t want to give you spoilers, and I’m confident that when you activate your superpowers, you’ll find the right conclusions yourselves—and have a lot more fun than if I had spoon-fed it to you in a forum post.

One explanation for our questions is that it is in fact the case that we aren’t engaging our superpowers and can come to these answers ourselves if only we tried harder. Another is that there needs to be more in game clues to lead us to the answers. It can be a little of both. I don’t think we need to have answers spoon fed to us in a forum post, and I would prefer more of these answers be left out of forum posts, interviews, and short stories ¹. However, It would do wonders if more interesting things made it in game to build back story and expound the lore.

Largely the game presents us with a linear tale. We enter the game every two weeks are given one new task and complete in that tale. Instead of giving us one new task to explore, why not have a main one and several updates to stories around the world, some of which may eventually become part of the main living story thread. Sunroamer’s has a good suggestion for solidifying the lore surrounding the krait in the current Living Story. Just a simple dynamic event chain between the toxic krait fighting the normal krait ² in Kessex Hills would help tighten the in game lore about the Living Story. However, I stress these side updates need not be directly connected to the current Living Story arc. For example, I’m eager to see Fields of Ruin get an update about the peace treaty talks that have been going on for more than two years now.

¹ – Not that I don’t enjoy these things, just that I think you are making a video game not a book and it should be your primary vehicle for conveying the story.

² – Perhaps a fight between the two over collecting slaves in Triskell Quay, which we must prevent.

Woot! Continuing to grow.

lordkrall.7241:

That might however not be as easy as you think.
It would require them to store multiple versions of Lion’s Arch for one.

Depending on circumstances this would be true. They already store all of these versions somewhere, but only one of them is live on their servers at a time. The proposal would likely only have two live at anyone point. The current Living Story version of Lion’s Arch (e.g., Wintersday, Destruction of Lion’s Arch, Super Quaggan Festival Day, etc) and the Personal story version. Theoretically this could multiply to more than two live versions if they introduced new personal story steps that were in a post-destruction Lion’s Arch, rebuilding of Lion’s Arch, Neo-Lion’s Arch, etc.. The solution to that is only introduce personal story steps that require different temporally placed Lion’s Arch-es when they have the infrastructure to handle that many.

I don’t have access to their infrastructure, but I don’t see how they could be far off from a solution to this if they really wanted to do it. Going to a different, temporally placed Lion’s Arch can’t be all too different from going to a new zone or even the same zone in overflow. I suppose it could use a lot of resources unnecessarily by storing a whole zone just to use a small chunk of it to tell personal story steps.

Lostwingman.5034:

It would be extremely negligent if they didn’t save the original Lion’s Arch, Kessex, etc.

Oh I think they have it, but the way their infrastructure works is that they can only serve up one type of Lion’s Arch at a time. Whether it be the Normal, Halloween, Wintersday, or destroyed Lion’s Arch. They’d need to build new tech to allow for multiple types of Lion’s Arch.

Lostwingman.5034:

This was pretty much always sitting at the back of my head when they talked about the LS and started making permanent changes. They might have made a mistake making the PS so connected to a certain time frame that no longer exists in game.

Mistake? No, but they definitely didn’t put the technology in game to handle it. In GW if your character was doing a mission they couldn’t have possibly done (such as a Canthan escorting the Ascalonian refugees to Kryta), they put a message on screen indicating such. GW 2 has it harder as apparently they use the current map as is for the personal story and don’t keep multiple copies of the map around to go back to. If they did all they’d need to do is somehow indicate temporally when the event takes place, which can be done with blatant messaging, contextual cues, or other in game tools (e.g., a timeline that gets filled in as you encounter story events).

The event could be fun if rewards were better designed. This has been a problem with GW 2 (perhaps MMOs as a whole) for quite some time. The rewards get in the way of the content and sometimes become the content. I was in Hooligan’s Route with a small party rescuing civilians and noticed several players were just running by. I took a good look around the cavern and soon found my answer. There is a rubble pile needed for an achievement (one I haven’t bothered with) that they run to instead of helping with civilian rescues. This was made worse by the fact that the cavern is filled with elites and veterans, and every time they ran by they would train the mobs on us just to get their precious achievement points. We wiped once due to this inconsiderate game play.

Kitten those players and kitten Arena Net for introducing achievements that actively encourages game play that hinders playing the encounter.

I’m just hoping this is temporary and that they really wanted to have the old Lion’s Arch during PS sequences for this release, but didn’t have time due to their LS scheduling.

“When it’s ready!”

Shiren.9532:

• Destroy Lion’s Arch. All the conveniences of Scarlet’s alliances and the less than optimal intelligence of the Captain’s Council when it comes to protecting Lion’s Arch. Is it believable that Scarlet succeeded where an Elder Dragon failed?

I think this is a good point, but I suppose they’d argue that Lion’s Arch was prepared to fight off Zhaitan as they saw it as a threat, but didn’t view Scarlet as a credible threat. However, the council’s reaction to Scarlet’s impending attack is a bit ridiculous given that she attacked before and managed a successful council assassination. You’d think they’d have taken the threat a little more seriously considering one of their own died the last time she attempted an attack.

Given the discussions had in the latest CDI on character progression I don’t see them adding a new profession anytime soon. Comments in that CDI seemed to suggest they are more interest in ways we can grow our existing characters and not introducing new ones. Arena Net seemed receptive to a popular idea in that thread of having advanced professions (i.e., professions we pick or choose to advance our current profession into when some goal is achieved). We could still end up seeing advanced profession options like the one you suggest, such as a blademaster (warrior), paladin (guardian), ritualist (necromancer), etc.

This thread probably belongs in the general forum as it is about game mechanics not lore.

I went to the area between the grand Piazza and Fort Mariner to check out the footprint shaped landscape deformation. The three I saw going up the ramp do look like a footprints. The shapes are uniform and look like they are all of the left foot, which would be an unusual way of getting around for a giant. Their gait is also awfully small to be the footprint of something large enough to make them. Most curious is one of the footprint shaped holes is practically beneath an intact archway, which would mean the creatures foot would have somehow passed through it without inflicting damage. Add to this that no NPC reports seeing a giant creature and that the intro movie neglected showing us one and I think we can safely say these are just terrain damage that happen to look like left footprints.

zamalek.2154:

Indeed. They could just be impact craters, but their shape is curios (they also lack scorch marks).

That’s a good point.

Tomzzy.9564:

In-game you can see a lot more details.

I’ll have to do that as in half the screen shots I’m seeing random terrain deformation, and in others I can see something shaped like a footprint, but again Pareidolia.

how can an explosion be at least 3(probably 5) times in similar shape and scale and linear form one after another?

Be careful about discussing uniformity in a virtual world as evidence of one unique in game entity causing that uniformity. Artists reuse art assets to make their jobs easier. How do we get several dozen uniform wreaths on Wintersday? They must use a Asuran Assembly lines with no errors to produce them, or they don’t and the artists were saving time. If you look around the zone carefully you’ll probably see several examples of terrain destruction that is uniform, but not need to be caused by the same source. For example, burning bridges could be caused by airship fire, lasers, molten alliance spells, etc.

if you go look in game it look’s like something heavy must have pressed the surface.

Agreed something with great force must have impacted the surface. There are several possibilities.

If it were and explosion it wouldn’t have soft edges. Also an explosion spreads evenly into all directions(if the material is the same) so you get craters (the shape is a circle).

I don’t think it’s an explosion as zamalek raised a good counterpoint about scorch marks. That said the trajectory of an impact has more to do with the shape of a crater. If you look at images of craters you will see that some are circular, some are elongated, and some look like feet:

Butterfly Crater

Jelle.4623:

I remember you saying last night that Magnus had an eyepatch over his right eye in the novel so if he lost his left one now, that would mean he lost all of his eyesight.

I’m not sure if he lost his eye, he just says something to the effect that he can’t see. Kiel comes and pulls him out saying he is injured. At the very least he is temporarily blind.

I’m just not seeing a footstep in some of these images and the red lines you draw are going to have a biasing effect on any interpretation of the images. Be careful of Pareidolia.

I would think if these were footsteps of something large enough to make them it would have been in the cutscene or had some mention of it by NPCs. A Molten Berserker, one of Scarlet’s Steam Creatures, Flame Legion Effigy, Dredge carrier, explosions from the airship cannons or giant lasers from the sky could damage the terrain in such a way. I suspect it’s some combination of the last two.

CureForLiving.5360:

It’s possible for ANet to put our characters at the center of everything, but to do so will require a change in how they’ve been structuring and conveying the story up until now. I’d imagine that firstly they’d need to give our NPCs a voice, some meaningful dialog options and show consequences to our actions and our choices (something far easier to do in a single player RPG).

It is possible, but it is probable given the costs and schedule adjustments they’d have to incur? The game launched with five races each with two genders giving us ten unique voices. From previous statements on voice acting in the game we’ve learned that it’s hard enough for Arena Net to get the “aconics” (especially Felicia Day) scheduled to do voice acting in the amount of time they have between releases. Trying to get the ten voice actors for our characters may be difficult. They could switch this by having just two, one for male and one for female; but this might be jarring for some players who are used to the guttural voices of their Charr or the English accent of their Sylvari.
I know I wouldn’t appreciate hearing my Charr with a different voice. They could also go for unvoiced characters all together, or stop with two-week release schedule and just go with expansions (or longer development periods).

Kalarchis.8635:

Also, most of the “inconvenient evidence” seems to be related to the fact that:

1) Dragon minions are fanatical and non-intelligent for the most part, and
2) Sylvari are immune to corruption.

And the stuff we raised in this thread about Malyck. It’s not like these are trifling pieces of evidence. You can tell a hypothesis is in need of rescue by the number of assumptions it needs to invent over competing hypotheses . That Malyck is really an uncorrupted Sylvari from another tree that was recently awoken from a pod that drifted downstream from its original tree is much more concise theory than Malyck is a corrupted Sylvari, something we’ve never seen, sent by Mordremoth for mysterious reasons, another assumption that has a lot of burden. His pod was opened close to the Pale Tree and he was uncorrupted, something that’s never been seen in dragon minions.

In terms of likelihood the previous theory has less assumption burden. Of course nearly any theory can be rescued by adding additional assumptions. I can construct an elaborate tale that makes it so Queen Jennah is really Commissar Molenin. It doesn’t mean it’s likely.

I really don’t think them being dragon minions is as far fetched (or difficult to explain lore-wise) and many here have made it out to be.

It is not difficult for Arena Net to introduce any of the information required to make this theory true, as this is a story and they have full control of the lore. That doesn’t change the fact it is an unlikely hypothesis. Likelihood for a hypothesis is based on the evidence you do have, not the evidence you would like to have.

Kalarchis.8635:

Perhaps Malyck was under Mordy’s influence and somehow coming within proximity of the Pale Tree freed him of this, which had the result of him losing his memory.

Except you find the pod he awoke from. Why bother planting the pod at all. The pod is more consistent with the theory of Malyck being a Sylvari uninformed by the Dream just waking up and having no idea where they are than one where Malyck was a fully cognizant dragon minion who brought his pod with him to the area of our Pale Tree and then became uncorrupted.

The fact that he has no memory is very suspicious to me,

Since the Sylvari we play as have their memories and goals provided for them by the Dream, we would expect those without these things to awaken in a state without memories.

1) The Harbinger. Why does the Nightmare Court call him this? Harbringer of what? The victory of the Nightmare Court? Or Mordremoth?

It could merely be referring to the knowledge he’d bring to the nightmare court. Figuring out the Dream or Nightmare is a bit like understanding a prophecy. It’s vague and metaphor is used heavily. For Nightmare, he could be a harbinger of a new age where they find more, easier to corrupt tress. Either way it’s too vague.

2) The Dark Hunt. Sylvari are given their Wyld Hunt by the Pale Tree through the Dream. Nightmare Court are given their Dark Hunt through the Nightmare by…who? Who, if not Mordremoth?

It’s not clear the Pale Tree is what gives Sylvari their Wyld Hunt, rather it seems they witness events from the Dream and then The Pale Tree and other Sylvari may help them interpret it. She’s connected to it, but not its progenitor or custodian. Both the source of the Dream and Nightmare remain a mystery.

3) “What Ronan knew and never told still lingers in the Dream.” What does this mean? Does it mean that Ronan knew something about the truth of the seeds, and that truth lies in the dream? Could this be related to Omadd’s device, and how Scarlet didn’t take anything in there that wasn’t already with her?

There is nothing I’m aware of to connect Ronan to Omadd’s device.

But if they were, I don’t imagine Anet would have any trouble explaining it within the current lore.

Anything is possible, but it seems to be an unlikely hypothesis because it requires inventing multiple assumptions to get around inconvenient evidence that contradicts the theory.

Dakota.4591:

Not necessarily. We don’t know for certain if Mordremoth is awake or not. So it could be that Malyk would go fanatic dragon minion as soon as Mordy wakes up and exerts control.

As far as we know Zhaitan is defeated, and yet the Risen still act as his minions. The Great Destroyer and Primordius’ minion were active while he stirred in his slumber (but didn’t yet awake). From what we know the Elder Dragons do not need to be awake/conscious or seemingly alive even for their minions to act.

Or it could be that Malyk is already a fanatic dragon minion, and just biding his time for the right moment. In one of the Pact storylines there’s a risen mesmer who takes the form of a pact soldier for several missions. So if a risen can go undercover without moaning “Return to Orr” every five minutes and give itself away, a blighted human (aka sylvari) could certainly keep it under wraps to infiltrate and investigate this rogue blighted (purified blighted human) faction.

If we are going to bring intricate mesmer illusions into the discussion it could be that Malyck is a trickster Asura playing a big prank on Caithe. We need more than possibilities to take a hypothesis seriously, there has to be some reason to suspect Malyck is a mesmer in disguise or putting on an elaborate ruse. What in game evidence or Arena Net statements on the matter lead you to believe he is creating an intricate ruse?

Keep in mind what is the whole point of the matter for Malyck to even feign ignorance of the Dream or Nightmare? Request the player’s help in saving the wardens that helped him? Volunteer to find out information about his origins from a master seer who can read the Dream? Kill the Knight of Embers? Leave to find his tree and get help in fighting the dragon minions? Why was the Knight of Embers given a Dark Hunt to find Malyck and turn him to Nightmare? Was the Nightmare Court just part of this elaborate ruse? What was gained for Mordremoth in this elaborate ruse?

Sirius.4510:

Regarding the wiki: because it isn’t actually written by ArenaNet, but by other players making much the same interpretations as we are here, we cannot assume it to be correct unless more authoritative sources are given (in which case it’s better to refer directly to those sources). It’s a good place to learn the background but not for arguing details.

Understood. However, you can’t just dismiss information because of the source, that’s a logical fallacy called ad hominem. You need to provide a much more convincing reason, such as the source is wrong because X, Y, and Z. In this case the wiki is right because it links directly to an Arena Net post that repeats the very same claim. It’s intellectual laziness to just dismiss a claim because it came from a wiki. Read the article and point out why it’s wrong.

Pecto.8914:

You’re going too far guys by trying to fit everything perfectly in the lore. I’ll show you an exemple to explain why I believe this : Let’s say I don’t give a **** about GW2’s personal story and just discover every regions of the game, one after the other. Once I arrive in Orr, I’ll meet the Pact and discover Fort Trinity. But they should’nt exist on my personal point of view because I didn’t do the personal story which is closely tied to the creation of the Pact and the establishment of Fort Trinity.

Regardless of when/if you do your personal story your character has formed the Pact. See Bobby Stein’s clarification on lore inconsistencies between the living/open world and personal story:

BobbyStein.2315:

What Regina means is that for players who are currently going through their Personal Story, the LW timeline will seem to be happening at the same time. Technically, they happen at different times in Tyrian history. Personal Story predates the current Living World season by approximately one year.

So, regardless of whether you do your personal story or not your character formed the Pact in 1325 AE. It is now 1327 AE in the living world (which includes the open world). Should you choose to do your personal story today, you are witnessing past events.

Lonami.2987:

Stop trying to make sense out of “Does Taidha Covington come back to life?” situations.

No one has done that! I’m not trying to make sense of her coming back to life, I am offering an alternative that keeps the event similar to how it is today and still makes sense when occurring cyclically.

So you want everything to make sense?

I would like the world to make sense, yes. ¹ I think that is one of the goals of offering a simulation of a fantasy world. Of course, technology and resources are limited and things have to be sacrificed. I’m not looking for perfection, just improvement.

Then the world would be bland and boring as hell, since you would be fighting “random boss #34” instead of actual named characters with goals and personalities.

The event offered above keeps Taidha’s name, but changes the objective slightly. Instead of killing its capture. The mechanics can stay the way they are. If you like the mechanics and find them fun, then this stays the same. As was pointed out to you The Shatter, Claw of Jormag, and Tequatl are repeated events in lore. Are these events boring to you because of this fact?

If Arena Net wants to develop the story around these characters and kill them off they can always visit them in the Living story. For example, there could be an Living Story event that eventually stops the means Kralkatorrik uses to create Shatterers. I don’t think they’d do this, unless they had another meta-encounter they could replace it with; but as Arena Net is fond of saying “nothing is off the table”. That could even mean a beloved world boss finally meeting its demise.

For me, playing in more cohesive fantasy RPG is fun. I suppose it’s because I do enjoy a bit of roleplaying and a world that makes sense adds to the roleplayer’s experience.

There’s no proof dynamic events happen more than once in lore,

No one is saying all of them do, as Taidra was offered as a counterexample of one that can’t be at the moment (they should fix that). However, plenty were given that are cyclical.

PS: Also, never use any wiki as fact or truth of anything -_-.

Why is there something wrong with the information linked? If so, don’t hold out on us, it will only help develop the article. Or were you just being dishonest and you realize the information provided contradicts your narrative for the game and thus are just going to lazily dismiss it by saying it came from a wiki. The information that was linked from the wiki is sourced back to an Arena Net post on The Shatterer.

Lack of interesting characters. Add to it lack of meaning and repercussions, why fight for something when you’ll never win lore-wise?

I sympathize with this. I think their events could have better rammifications to the open world to add a bit more meaning to our actions. Even though Taidha does die, does that really make it more meaningful to you? Do you fight her more than once because her death is so meaningful to you, over say the dragon champions or temple priests who don’t die or are replaced by others of their kind?

¹ – My interest in this stems from Everquest Next’s approach to their open world. Largely promises and marketing speak at this point, but it sounds like they are taking an approach where actions make sense. If you kill the orcs in a region, they do not just simply reappear minutes later, but have to undergo a process of rebuilding their forces. Their buzzword for this type of world is “organic”. To me it just sounds like a developer using the best of technology available today to make a better fantasy world simulation. As technology grows our simulations of fantasy worlds will get better and start to make more sense. GW 2 isn’t using the AI approach that EQNext is using, but many their dynamic events are pretty good at telling a tale in a region that makes sense even when repeated.

His name is Braham. Which seems to be an uncommon way of spelling the name “Bram”. Norn first names are typically nordic (though I think “Bram” is more of a English or Dutch name and not a nordic name), while last names (if they have one and not a title) are patronymic or matronymic. For example, “Stegalkin” means the “kin” of Stegal. “Eirsson” means son of Eir.

http://guildwars2roleplay.wikispaces.com/Naming+Conventions#Names for Major Races-Norn

BobbyStein.2315:

Our hope is to provide better distinction of these timelines within the game, but that would come with the release of a planned feature that we’re not ready to discuss in depth just yet.

Please be the timeline suggested here and in the first CDI.

Zojja is the rarest. Felecia Day is hard to schedule apparently.

While it would be nice to limit the area of the attack since nothing visually indicates that it isn’t a localized attack (none of the NPCs zone wide react to the marionette failure). It will be gone soon and there is a large window for exploration marionette free. It’s a minor inconvenience to playing a very small part of the game. Unless by playing the game you meant “Only being in Lornar’s Pass at the specific times the event fails”. Then yes that is really inconvenient for playing the game, but the way you’re playing the game is out of the ordinary to say the least.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Rox, Braham, Marjory, Kasmeer, and Taimi are referred to internally as “B-Iconics” (or Biconics) as opposed to our “A-Iconics” or main iconic characters, Caithe, Rytlock, Eir, Zojja, and Logan. They are not a “replacement” for Destiny’s Edge; these characters fulfill a different role in the story. Because members of Destiny’s Edge are so entwined with your Personal Story as well as the over-arching story with Zhaitan, and because the Living World plot lines are taking place at the same time all those other story threads, we couldn’t have the members of Destiny’s Edge splitting themselves between these other areas and what was going on with Living World. This is partly why we introduced these new characters.

Arena Net needs to get this straight. Matthew has said in the past:

MatthewMedina.5419:

Canonically, yes the Lost Shores weekend and lead-up was set after the events of the Guild Wars 2 personal story and the defeat of Zhaitan, so this is partially what made it possible for the karka to establish a clawhold on Southsun Cove.

As has been pointed out to Bobby Stein countless times it isn’t possible for both to occur simultaneously as things like the Aetherblades stealing Pact airships does not make sense if the player hasn’t formed the Pact yet. If you think this would confuse players new to the game, then you can add a few things to help them out:

• An in game interface displaying the official timeline of events. When they complete a personal story step instead of having a list of personal story steps have a marker on the timeline they can hover over to see when it occurred. Do the same for Living Story events and other interesting events in Tyria’s history. I would just love this type of interface myself.

• When starting a new character insert a new dialogue says this is a tale of Tyria’s history, where you formed the Pact and fought Zhaitan.

• Add a message or other contextual cues to personal story instances that blatantly point out these events happened in the past.

Vol.7601:

I think it’s pretty obvious that the open world is locked in time except when the map involves the Living Story.

Except that they do a good job of structuring many of the events in a way that they can exist at anytime, repeat, and still make sense. For example. the Skritt are always capable of stealing beer from a Norn moot. There is nothing lore wise that prevents this from being an activity that must occur once and only once. Centaurs can find new leaders, rebuild their toppled walls, and wage a fight another day. Nothing lorewise prevents this from being a repeatable event either. Dynamic events have a good structure in place for making an online world feel organic (i.e., not frozen in time). I don’t think they always achieve this, but they have the power to. Where it appears to be locked in time is where lore can use some tidying up. For example in the Campaign against Taidha Covington, I wouldn’t have the objective being to kill her (unless they renamed her to “Pirate Captain”, there can always be a new pirate captain). Instead it should be her capture, with subsequent events where her crew mates try to free her and re-fortify the fortress. The event returns to the state where the players must capture her again.

webtoehobbit.4201:

everything about the festivals from day one has been instanced.
They probably have a good reason for doing this since they knew that they would eventually be destroying Lions Arch.

Art assets, NPC dialogues, NPC movements, and the few events that occur in Lion’s Arch are not instanced. I agree there is a lot of instanced content, but it is not “everything”. This is a good point though.

OK, I have heard this whole, “Lions Arch can’t be destroyed cause the festivals!” more than a few times but really, during the festivals, how many of the mini events that you partake in actually took place in Lions Arch? ALL of them teleported you to another realm or area to do the events.

It’s really not all that tough to take the decorations that they’ve made for the events and end up decorating Divinity’s reach or some other capital city and have you teleport to the instanced event areas as was how it was done in Lions Arch.

Yeah. I’m not an expert on art assets or Arena Net’s internal technologies for scripting NPCs and events, so you may be right. I was taking a guess that that it would be a harder task than it may actually be to move the NPCs with holiday related dialogue, script their movements in the new location, move the events that do occur in the city (like the Wintersday Doylak), redesign the art assets so they fit the theme of the new festival location, and test.

Saying they can’t destroy Lions Arch due to the festivals is like saying they can’t destroy Lions Arch cause of the Asura Gates there, but even those are getting moved.

I’m not so sure those are good analogies. Moving a festival involves moving the NPCs with holiday related dialogue, scripting their movements in the new location, moving the events that do occur in the city (like the Wintersday Doylak), and redesigning the art assets so they fit the theme of the new festival location. Moving a portal requires some work, but the portal doesn’t need a art redesign or no new scripted behaviors (it performs the same function). It does need proper placement, and some assets in the surrounding area need to be created to house the portal.

Nothing in the “evidence” you provided suggested that the festivals HAD to take place in Lions Arch,

I don’t think they had to be in Lion’s Arch. I think they were designed to be in Lion’s Arch and that moving them would require some design changes.

Festivals in the mists?

That’s the lore explanation. Otherwise they would appear like any other festival. Lion’s Arch is an instanced zone, so multiple copies of it can persist at once; including copies of it as it is now and copies as it will be after Scarlet’s attack. They can allow copies of how it is now to be generated when people enter the Mists portal to the festival.

Erukk.1408:

@SirMoogie.9263

I’m hoping this is a misquote on their part, because if it isn’t, that means the timeline is still screwed up.

I’ve heard similar statements before and they are contradictory to other statements made by Arena Net, such as the one by Matthew Medina that places the Karka Invasion after the defeat of Zhaitan ¹. I tend to go with what makes more sense and Matthew’s statements make more sense than Regina’s. It doesn’t make sense for the Personal Story to exist in parallel with the Living Story (especially with the next update). A common example is how did Aetherblades steal Pact airships if the Pact didn’t exist? Since we have a point in time reference for the first Karka Attack, we can now place the other events as most Living world event rely on it.

Either way, if this is a confusing matter for players, ² they could add a timeline interface to the game that indicates when events happen, or post a little message when you enter your personal story that says, “You are witnessing events your character has done in the past to form the Pact to defeat Zhaitan.”

¹ – Matthew Medina on Living World Timeline

² – I really don’t think it is. Many books and TV shows show past events without directly saying when they occur. They often use contextual clues to place events. Some personal story steps may need more clues than they have now that the story has progressed in the open world, but that would probably be harder to add than a flashing message or timeline interface.

Tuskin.2548:

I don’t think Lion’s Arch will be destroyed because several Personal Story(meeting Destiny’s Edge, joining the Orders, retaking Claw Island… etc.) missions take place there. Otherwise how would they change the Personal Story for all new characters and characters already made who haven’t reached that point yet?

That isn’t a problem. Personal story instances that take place there can have their entrance at the new Lion’s Arch zone entrance (so players don’t have to fight through mobs to get there). When they start that story step they are viewing events their character did in the past like all the other personal story steps. The Personal Story and Dungeons by being instanced content are time-locked. This is one of the reasons I prefer MMOs that aren’t heavily instanced.

I don’t see it being destroyed permanently, because it would undo the whole point of creating the festivals. Last year many players were very vocal (¹,²,³) about the Living Story having a disproportionate amount of story telling to festivals and other distractions. Arena Net’s response to this was:

“We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background." ⁴

Since the holiday festivals are integral to Arena Net’s plan of having cyclical content to fall back on to give themselves more development time on the non-cyclical Living Story releases, I don’t see Lion’s Arch leaving forever. They’d have to abandon some of the events and most of the art assets at the very least. At most it will stay claimed until Dragon Bash if I’m correct.

I suppose one alternative is to have Lion’s Arch festivals in the Mists, where we as players can visit the Lion’s Arch of old for festivals; but Arena Net has been hesitant to add multiple copies of zones as it can fragment the player base. Though I’d be happy if they chose this route. as I think it’d make it a much more Living World if we could lose Lion’s Arch forever. However, I can understand why they wouldn’t do it considering all the effort they went into designing new art assets and some events for the various festivals.

¹ – For a world ravaged by dragons
² – Please no more festivals!!!
³ – I don’t like this update
⁴ – Colin on temporary content

They had to weigh options I’m sure. Either confirm what we all suspected since the first update this year, or leave it as a surprise and receive some legitimate complaints about not preparing us for a move and ruining projects like Project Eavesdrop and the wiki. I personally could have done without the reveal, but I understand why people who work on the wiki and Project Eavesdrop appreciate the heads up.

CHIPS.6018:

With all due respect, the only reason not to carpet bomb a city is a for humanitarian reasons.

Or keeping objectives in tact. Buildings to house you forces. Resource caches to feed and supply your troops. Plunder to pay your mercenaries. Technology to aid you endeavor. And so on.

Juclesia Elcritian.8410:

These inconsistencies, make a Living World really just a failed concept when it comes to MMOs.

Not at all. MMOs need not have a personal story or instanced dungeons, and thus not run into this hurdle. Or if they want to tell instanced personal story steps, as GW 2 does; then they only need to indicate to the players doing them when the events occur. As I said above, GW did this for players who could not have possibly witnessed the Ascalonian Exodus by flashing a little message saying “You are re-enacting events that happened before your character arrived in Lion’s arch” (paraphrased). They need not do this even, as I believe most people are smart enough to understand that when their character enters an instance in a cleansed Orr and that things are suddenly corrupted that they are viewing past events, and not something current. Call me crazy but humans can pick up on the fact that they are viewing past events in a story given enough context. Other media has done this successfully for ages, are video games really all that different?

Lonami.2987:

Sparkfly Fen happens before Zhaitan, but the new Tequatl happens after Southsun Cove.

I’m not so sure that Sparkfly Fen “happens” ¹ before Zhaitan. Most events in Sparkfly Fen do not have actions that contradict a Tyria where Zhaitan is alive or Zhaitan is dead. For example, the meta for reclaiming the Vigil Keep could happen before or after Zhaitan, it is a back and forth between Risen and the Vigil. Both of which exist post Zhaitan. The meta for fighting back Tequatl (who doesn’t die when we win the encounter) is a back and forth between the Pact and Tequatl, both of which exist before and after Zhaitan’s defeat. I can’t verify the dialogue for these encounters, but if they have contradictory text, such as “We are preparing to defeat Zhaitan”, rather than “We are preparing to defeat Zhaitan’s minions”, that needs to change. Generally, when events are viewed as a back and forth between conflicting forces they work well from a lore perspective as conflicts can be waged in the same location over time. Thus, to answer your query it can be both. The Vigil has reclaimed its keep multiple times, but has also lost it multiple times, both before and after Zhaitan’s defeat.

This can break down when they kill off named NPCs during an event, but I believe they have gone back and corrected this in some instances (e.g., they renamed NPCs with specific names to generic names like “Bandit Captain”).

¹ – It’s a zone that depicts events that run cyclically in most circumstances. I’m not even sure “happens” is the right term here. Rather, it would appear there are multiple happenings.

Kessex Hills happens during the war between humans and centaurs, before the Pact is formed, but the ruins of the Tower of Nightmares are there, in the middle.

It can be both here as well. The centaur war is still on going as far as I know. The centaurs have won some battles and lost some battles over the course of Kessex Hills history. Even post Tower of Nightmares the war wages on.

The next release seems to be going to destroy Lion’s Arch, altering the timeline heavily for those who haven’t faced Zhaitan yet.

Personal story exists in instances. Instances by their very nature are detached from the open world’s timeline. Guild Wars handled this nicely when replaying events your character couldn’t have witnessed in the present by reminding the player that they are viewing events that happened before they arrived in Cantha/Elona/Tyria. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t do this, but context should be enough for an observant player to understand that they are viewing events of the past… One big contextual clue is the city the events are taking place in is now in ruins.