Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

However, where Bioware excels is in character development. They have a real knack for getting you to form emotional attachments to their characters.

I may be mistaken, but wasn’t Bioware “Black Isle Studios” once? Or people from it came to make Bioware? Because this statement reminded me of Baldur’s Gate and how that game had some interesting character moments.

Though I also remember it deeply thanks to Viconia, Jaheera, Saverok, and Khalid.

darkace.8925:

Singer.8740:

If you had been playing the game since flame and frost you would know that scarlet has an army of molten alliance tech specialists churning out weapons and materials and a horde of aetherblade pirates supplying her with man power and inquest innovations.

I have been playing since Flame and Frost, and I’m well aware of her minions. But even with the Dredge, Flame Legion, and Aetherblade at her beck and call…have you seen that thing? It looks to be the size of Divinity’s Reach. It’s a flying ship the size of a city. That’s about as believable as her being accepted by each of the asuran colleges.

It also looks to be mostly hollow space from what I’m seeing.

For the resources? The Molten Alliance had been mining and testing weapons before, including that strange mineral “Azurite” which piqued my interest quite a bit. Aetherblades have been raiding people, and it’s not entirely unfounded to think they were taking materials as much as material wealth.

Also, it’s now a well known fact Captain Evon Gnashblade stole thousands of silk and other materials from the Black Lion Trading Post. It was long suspected he just flipped it to fund his campaign but now it’s clear he was giving it to Scarlet. Never trust a merchant or banker, especially a charr.

As for “where”? I suspect there’s quite a few places she could have had it built underground and then used her portals to move it into position. It looks to be roughly as large as the Queen’s Pavillion so maybe she was assembling the parts there until we broke in? (I don’t see it being as big as Divinity’s Reach, that’s definitely an overstatement of size.)

Why did nobody cotton to the fact she had it? Maybe people did. The Order of Whispers had agents in the Molten Alliance making dead drops but we never heard if they returned safely. I almost suspect spies did try to find things out but either didn’t return or hadn’t gotten pieces to put the whole picture together. Scarlet’s Secret Lair for all that it’s hyped up to be “right under the Priory’s nose!” is barely a thirty-foot square foot room. Not a great grandiose labyrinth of caves.

She’s clearly operating somewhere else, and just has small labs and bolt-holes around the world.

Zaxares.5419:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

MithranArkanere.8957:

In other games you don’t see much of that. When male homosexuals appear in video games, they are usually single characters, and often either evil or untrustworthy, or comic relief.

. . . what about that guy in Mass Effect 3?

Bioware has a tradition of portraying LGBT characters in a fairly positive and welcoming light, and it’s one thing I have a lot of respect for them for. Most studios will skirt around the issue, or just leave LGBT characters out altogether, for fear of courting controversy, but Bioware often tackles things head-on. I believe they were the first company to make an RPG with a gay love interest (Jade Empire), but it mostly flew under the radar.

Jade Empire or the gay love interest? Because the game flew under the radar for me and it took Mr. Shamus Young to get my attention about it.

Also, I would respect Bioware a lot more but their storytelling chops haven’t been too impressive lately on the macro level of the story. Minor characters and plots are fine, but the whole story isn’t as good. Ditto for Bethesda, though to be honest I recall Morrowind having as many story issues with things as people like to attribute to Oblivion or Skyrim (Good Gods Cassius from House Hlaau . . .)

I think the last really good story I enjoyed as far as RPGs go was Ys Seven, Pokemon Black/White, or Final Fantasy 12.

morrolan.9608:

Raine.1394:

I’m reminded of a town meeting in VT on the Bob Newhart show. He said, “what we need here is a stupid alert.” I like Bob Newhart a lot. CDI has to do with cooperative development. That is what I have a problem with. A game should not be cooperatively developed. That’s the job of the game developer. Hopefully they have some ideas whose time has come. The old Anet that marketed this game had a lot of great ideas. Those ideas seem to have faded to the extent they have interacted with the playerbase. Sad, really.

TBH a lot of the ideas thrown around on those threads are ideas that arenanet should already have come up with themselves.

I have no doubt there are ideas some working there have thought up which have been said in the threads. I also have no doubt they pulled the brakes on suggesting things when certain ideas went entirely awry or weren’t well-received.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I’m sure there’s a flame legion charr somewhere baking some fine human ribs.

Er . . . I never did ask what meat they were using in that stew of theirs. Hmmm. Excuse me, I need to have a talk with some Ash Legion.

Morgash.3165:

Cassocaster.4576:

The true solution to this endless argument about rangers is up to the rangers themselves to solve. It’s up to us who play this class to prove to others that not only is the class a viable one but that also it exceeds many classes in many ways (such as roaming, healing AoE, 1V1 fighting, escape methods and AoE control through Muddy Terrain or Entangle). Once people see rangers played well, they will back off but until that time, to the OP, you are going to have to put up with the ignorance of others.

The player cannot fix bad mechanics. The in ability for rangers to blast fields or make fields with a BOW is not something player skill can fix. When end game is about stacking fields and blasting them a bow ranger is totally left out. This is the problem. No player skill will fix the issue with the bows and given that is why ranger is played more often is to be a range dps class its a glaring issue.

What’s an issue is how stacking fields with blasting them is now considered vital instead of a neat trick.

And a bow ranger isn’t totally left out. We have Warhorn #5 since we can, of course, wield two weapon sets. (That’s twice as many as Elementalists.)

BrunoBRS.5178:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Though in a slightly more serious tone. If you weren’t around for Prophecies, charr hides were one of the more notable ways to get Fur Squares.

prophecies is the only campaign i haven’t played :P

There is seriously . . . one second . . .

There is a collector who trades charr hides for Fur Squares put in after Expert Salvages weren’t getting fur fast enough.

Cactus.2710:

That’s pretty laughable, really. The great majority of the things that have been added to GW2 in general, and WvW in particular, had NOTHING to do with anything requested by the players. Did players ask for Scarlet? Did players ask for badly written Living Story content? Did players ask for more gear grind? Did players ask for siege mastery? Did players ask for more PvE in WvW?

Players probably did request some of that originally, and it’s entirely probable ANet took suggestions such as “we want something to work for which has an impact other than ‘ooh shiny’” and went “well there’s Ascended gear for you”. Or “we want new story-driven content” and they went “sure, let’s try this Living Story going on”. And “we want to feel like our time spent in WvW matters” becoming “WXP progression”.

In short, yes. I think some stuff was developed in reaction to player concerns. I am not going to claim the players demanded bad things and got them, only the offerings were demonstrably not what the players expected.

(I will, however, point to the Living Story writing as not any worse than what we got from this company in the past. Yes, I mean GuildWars 1 era writing.)

Now go make a list of the thing that players HAVE repeatedly asked for and tell me how many of those things you see in the game?

Are we doing this again?

- Account wallet holding all the currencies and tokens which used to gum up bank slots.
- Daily/Monthly Achievement revamps.
- Guild Missions
- Removal of the Orbs of Power and Borderlands Bloodlust when people wanted it back
- Living Story dungeon instances becoming Fractals.
- AoE Looting.
- Easing back culling with more display options to render low-quality models instead of not rendering anything at all.
- Mac OSX version.

I never said that collaborative development was a good thing, and in fact I think it is doomed to failure simply because I don’t believe that ANet is capable of sorting out the good stuff from the bad. I do think however, that good companies try to maintain a healthy and steady dialogue with their customers … they listen, they consider, they respond, and they act. ANet is woefully bad at that. It hasn’t been interaction with the players that has been the problem with GW2 … it’s the lack of it.

Actually, popular sentiment says Ascended is the problem with GW2.

Cactus.2710:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Raine.1394:

Of course, I will be representing a minority opinion here, but I really don’t want to design a game with the game developer. I’d much prefer they assume that role. I think it’s great to hear, understand, and incorporate good feedback, but I really don’t think that joint development is appropriate or possible.

It’s worth noting we’re not developing it with them so much as this is a place they can listen to our ideas, concerns, criticisms, and communicate back when possible about them . . . on a central topic rather than on a broad range of them. So a more focused sort of forum.

I’d say we’re behaving more like a “focus group” than “collaborating developer”.

It’s been noted several times during the CDIs, however, ideas and input are not guaranteed to be included or acted upon. There was only a promise to listen and discuss it, not to use. The final call still is on ArenaNet.

So you pessimists out there? Yes, that does technically mean they could use absolutely nothing from the CDI threads and still be “in the right” about it.

Don’t be inane, OK?

Don’t require me to repeat things publicly stated

First of all, the players weren’t the ones who coined the term Collaborative Development Initiative, or CDI. ANet did, and they were the ones who specifically proposed that devs and players jointly discuss how the game could be improved going forward.

Which is mostly in response to the players jumping up and down and throwing hissy fits over the direction the game goes every time they make a decision. Lost Shores, Scarlet, Ascended, WXP, Scarlet, Daily/Monthly Achievement revamp twice . . . Scarlet . . .

It almost feels sometimes like they threw up their hands and went: “Fine, you don’t want us making the game, your turn”.

Secondly, there was a commitment on the part of ANet to actually discuss the ideas raised in the CDI. That’s what “collaborative” means and at least for WvW it didn’t happen. It isn’t collaborative if one side just sits there listening and doesn’t respond in any manner. That’s called a wall.

Can’t attest to what happened on the WvW CDI as I wasn’t around for it and honestly don’t have much input on it.

What I can say is they have no contract to use anything discussed in a CDI thread if they don’t want to. That’s their right, and anyone who wants to start their argument on “we decided…” forgets who it is who are the developers. Collaboration or no, there’s a point where one side is the company making the game and the other is the consumers.

Forgive the analogy, but it’s almost like a discussion between employees and their boss. Sure, there can be a suggestions box outside the office and weekly meetings about “how can we improve our business”, but the boss is still the boss and they still have to make the decisions. Presumably, of course, they’re making them for sensible reasons instead of “this was suggested by Tom and he’s dating my ex”.

dAcIaW.5107:

so how much ranting is needed to get a response from Anet about this P2W kitten?

. . . where’s the “win” getting paid for? Aren’t sprockets tradeable?

BrunoBRS.5178:

you still speak pretty highly of charr fur.

…don’t tell me that this whole conflict actually originates on a sore interracial break up?

It’s true, Rox is the lovechild from my ex, which explains those eyes.

Though in a slightly more serious tone. If you weren’t around for Prophecies, charr hides were one of the more notable ways to get Fur Squares. Hence, it’s something I just stole and ran away with Sort of like how in one month I had fifteen UW runs and not one Ectoplasm drop assigned to me. Then I go for the black widow spider and suddenly I have Ectoplasm.

Or the fantastic self-destucting Great Destroyer. Just add Pain Inverter and D-Shot.

Hofulu.7325:

why haven’t they said anything yet? are they waiting to see if this really does anger the community like the flamewhatever armour?

I almost have a picture of a dev walking the ANet offices with a tablet having this topic on it and going “who had this idea? Come on, speak up, we won’t fire you, we’ll just reassign you to the WvW forum duties”.

Raine.1394:

Yep, they did. Sad, really.

Honestly, I find it less “sad” and more “interesting”. Sure, I’m of the opinion the developers should be coming up with their own ideas. But when the players are going “your ideas suck quaggan feet” then I do at least think it good the devs stop and go “okay, so what are your ideas?”.

If it works out, then it could be a neat case study for future games. If it fails, then it becomes a bullet point for why you don’t let the inmates run an asylum.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

BrunoBRS.5178:

you’re awfully fascinated with murdering asuras, aren’t you?

No, I’m more fascinated with charr hide rugs. A genuine Ascalonian product since Pre-Searing days, guaranteed to be flea-free and with fur soft to the touch. You just want to take all Kasmeer’s clothes off and let her lay on it.

I’m also fascinated with the potential application of asuran intelligence towards improving the aerodynamics of siege equipment ammunition.

for an ascalonian, you’re awfully fond of rubbing yourself on charr fur.

Incorrect.

I’m more interested in rubbing Kasmeer on charr fur.

Raine.1394:

I’m reminded of a town meeting in VT on the Bob Newhart show. He said, “what we need here is a stupid alert.” I like Bob Newhart a lot. CDI has to do with cooperative development. That is what I have a problem with. A game should not be cooperatively developed. That’s the job of the game developer. Hopefully they have some ideas whose time has come. The old Anet that marketed this game had a lot of great ideas. Those ideas seem to have faded to the extent they have interacted with the playerbase. Sad, really.

To be fair? The players did sort of demand it.

Axialbloom.8109:

Are you talking about John Smith? How do you know who they are?

Anyone who hears the Nexon conspiracy theories knows who they’re talking about. It’s not the economist John Smith.

BrunoBRS.5178:

you’re awfully fascinated with murdering asuras, aren’t you?

No, I’m more fascinated with charr hide rugs. A genuine Ascalonian product since Pre-Searing days, guaranteed to be flea-free and with fur soft to the touch. You just want to take all Kasmeer’s clothes off and let her lay on it.

I’m also fascinated with the potential application of asuran intelligence towards improving the aerodynamics of siege equipment ammunition.

Pennry.9215:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Pennry.9215:

You can scream “no other source!” all you want, but you’re lying. My home instance node with copper pick (most return per strike) says so.

Your home instance node gives you sprockets with a copper pick?

Didn’t think so.

Um, I have a sprocket node in my home instance, I use a copper pick on it, I get quite a few more than the three for three strikes per this type of node. So think again.

I got nine on my parked baby mesmer

Raine.1394:

We already have the forums and feedback is the purpose of the forums. What I don’t understand is the purpose of the CDI. Personally, I’m not pessimistic, just searching for signs of intelligent life.

. . . on the Internet?

Though, seriously, from what I can gather the CDI is a focused topic the forums agree on (as much as they can) and the devs put up a topic for people to weigh in, every now and then dropping in their own input. Then they bundle it all up and take it to a meeting room to discuss it in private.

Sort of like the last time I went to a bureaucratic focus group meeting. Seriously, it’s a thing I took part in once where a school board wanted feedback from administrators, students, parents, and teachers. They invited about 200 people to a convention hall on a Saturday, provided coffee, donuts, and fruit, and had a stage where someone from the board stood up there with a transparency film (remember those?) and a projector taking notes. As well as easels with paper and Sharpie markers in the lobby. End of the day they packed it all into boxes and took it back to the administration building.

Surprisingly the CDI has a better track record for listening and comprehending than that school board

darkace.8925:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

darkace.8925:

Bob F It.5701:

12 months of work condensed into 17 clicks. And in this version, we don’t even have to worry about side character development.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding it more fun to run through Personal Story paths.

I was going to make a snide remark about our characters being side characters, but we’ve been given so little development since release (virtually none) that I don’t think we even qualify as side characters.

Just like Guild Wars 1!

I’m sorry, but what’s your point? Are you defending bad writing by pointing out other bad writing? Or was your going off topic unintended?

Not off topic. We’re talking about how sour characters never developed as characters right? Guild Wars 1 was the same way, really.

And since both are, ostensibly, by the same company . . . it’s like expecting them to actually get innovative with the Madden franchise.

Obsidian.1328:

Oops, I meant the GW2.com Charr race page, not the wiki. It’s on there right now if you go look at it. No idea when they added it but it had to be not very long ago.

I think it’s possible it could be done, but I highly doubt they do. For many of the reasons Foxx pointed out and more. It would mess up too many things methinks.

Welp, back to my other plan testing siege machines on asura.

I mean, with asura.

ProxyDamage.9826:

The “average” player, believe it or not, is incredibly bad. Like… face tanking “watch-out-here-it-comes!” telegraphed attacks. They don’t read descriptions, let alone Dulfy or any resources outside of the game. Remember the Queen’s Gauntlet? I saw people dying over, and over, and over, and over to the first 3 champions. Yes, including the very first one.

I was doing that, til I decided not to bother as I had other things to do with my time then. Especially hearing how it would be back later, like SAB World 2 had me chewing nails and I decided to go back to doing other things that patch. Like WvW.

Psyx.7368:

When I’m downed my instinct is to press all of the buttons as fast as I can

Fight that instinct. It’s not helping you.

. . . and never play a ranger with a longbow.

Palador.2170:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Important question here: does the Watchwork Pick still let you get gemstones from ore veins, or do the sprockets replace the gems?

I’ve gotten gemstones and sprockets from the same copper vein.

Welp there went the thing I thought might balance it – Sprockets instead of “Turquoise Pebbles” and the like.

Honestly that’s how I would have designed it. 20% chance to get Sprockets, 0% chance to get Gemstones, increasing amounts of Sprockets as you climb the ore chunk tiers. So you can get 10 Sprockets from an Ori node, but no chance for orbs.

. . . and, of course, I would have had it be a drop from the Marionette chest and available for Gems from the store.

darkace.8925:

Bob F It.5701:

12 months of work condensed into 17 clicks. And in this version, we don’t even have to worry about side character development.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding it more fun to run through Personal Story paths.

I was going to make a snide remark about our characters being side characters, but we’ve been given so little development since release (virtually none) that I don’t think we even qualify as side characters.

Just like Guild Wars 1!

FlamingFoxx.1305:

You can’t really rebuild ascalon though, that would sort of destroy the Charr storyline – the Ghosts of Ascalon are one of the their main enemies (as well as the Flame Legion), and the area is about the dynamic between the three. If you fix the foefire and rebuild Ascalon it kind of screws things up a little bit.

Who said anything about fixing the Foefire? Just have humans show up and go “okay, this is our mess, we’ll clean it up, thanks”. Then start rebuilding under an agreement the charr leave them alone, they leave the charr alone, and the Foefire effects become more contained.

. . . not totally contained, but more contained.

The living story is limited in what it can do to the existing world by the original storyline. They have to maintain aspects of the world in order for it to be consistent with the personal story for any new players going through it or returning to it – so you’re more likely to see humans expand below Ebonhawke or something in a new zone – less likely to see the foefire lifted.

They’ve said they’re looking at ways of getting around that though, if I recall.

MithranArkanere.8957:

In other games you don’t see much of that. When male homosexuals appear in video games, they are usually single characters, and often either evil or untrustworthy, or comic relief.

. . . what about that guy in Mass Effect 3?

Psyx.7368:

Why would hitting the other buttons make my health go down?

Because it interrupts the self-heal for #4.

Important question here: does the Watchwork Pick still let you get gemstones from ore veins, or do the sprockets replace the gems?

Raine.1394:

Of course, I will be representing a minority opinion here, but I really don’t want to design a game with the game developer. I’d much prefer they assume that role. I think it’s great to hear, understand, and incorporate good feedback, but I really don’t think that joint development is appropriate or possible.

It’s worth noting we’re not developing it with them so much as this is a place they can listen to our ideas, concerns, criticisms, and communicate back when possible about them . . . on a central topic rather than on a broad range of them. So a more focused sort of forum.

I’d say we’re behaving more like a “focus group” than “collaborating developer”.

It’s been noted several times during the CDIs, however, ideas and input are not guaranteed to be included or acted upon. There was only a promise to listen and discuss it, not to use. The final call still is on ArenaNet.

So you pessimists out there? Yes, that does technically mean they could use absolutely nothing from the CDI threads and still be “in the right” about it.

Obsidian.1328:

Calling Ascalon the Charr “ancestral homeland” is what I meant there. It was part of an info bio on the Charr on the wiki homepage a little while ago. Dustfinger saw it and linked it in one of our debates. There was never any mention of that before.

Wiki pages can be edited by anyone, so it’s crucial to have sources

Yes, I am arguing a minor point against “Ascalon was once charr homelands”. Mostly because I’m still wanting to having a Living Story rebuilding Ascalon City . . .

If it turns out to read the Tyrian equivalent of “Drink your Ovaltine” I’m going Vigil.

Terravos.4059:

Lesbian romance got you down?

Know what we need more of?

On that note!

Logan Thackeray and Queen Jennah, may I introduce Ser Jorah Mormont and Khaleesi Daenerys Targaryen. . . . (Spelling may not be accurate, I apologize)

Atlas.9704:

Confirmed: Ham is OP on Guardians.
He’ll use Bramahamehameha on Scarlet in the game, mark my words.

As long as it takes longer than ten episodes to charge, we’re good here.

Solution: Make it drop in the upcoming Living Story at a rare rate, but you can buy it for 800 Gems if you want to bypass the RNG.

morrolan.9608:

What about the WvW CDis? Seemingly nothing is coming from them. Devon has been silent. Josh has come in and created his own feedback thread which has served to create confusion on what is exactly happening with WvW.

Didn’t people hate Devon over his opinions, and other people beg for Josh to “come back”?

Gotta be careful what you wish for and read the fine print before you sign

dephyrius.4089:

That she’s Omadd’s daughter. Would explain the fanatical fascination with Scarlet in a myriad of ways.

Oh that would be hilarious.

“Scarlet, Scarlet, I’m your #1 fan!”
“That’s nice, who are you?”
“I’m Omadd’s daughter! Hey what are you doing with those vines . . .”

imsoenthused.1634:

GW1 did just fine with only 20 levels, and they sped the early parts up even further with the expansions. I can easily see that extrapolated to a no level system that I would enjoy immensely. All it takes is a developer with some guts to step outside of the expected norm, like the old Arenanet did.

The old ArenaNet which had GuildWars take off like a bullet instead of being a niche game?

By the way, last video game I played without levels . . . wait, no that was Gnomoria, a Dwarf Fortress derived game. Hmmm. And before that was XCom which definitely had levels . . . Minecraft didn’t really have levels but . . . hmm. Then Civilization 5 for a demo time . . .

(What was the last RPG I played? Hmmm, Ys Origins, not technically an RPG and has levels anyway. Legend of Grimrock, yeah, had levels even if it was partly a puzzle game. Pokemon X and Y? Yeah right . . . huh . . .)

Seriously, I had to go back quite a ways to even begin to think of an RPG where levels weren’t included. And even then, that was good ol Ars Magica about ten years ago, around a tabletop. Even so, it had a progression of skill levels rather than character levels. And I would have said Call of Cthulhu but I remembered we had another Ars Magica game after we died horribly.

Kartel.2561:

What about letting us play how we want (something I think Anet has mentioned in the past).

I’m starting to wish they had never said that because it’s been used as a rallying cry for everything from “I want to play a fat human” to “I want to never have to ever wait for anything ever” to “I want rifles on my ranger, master of ranged combat my left nut”.

The instant a speech writer used “we want to let you play as you want” in any mission statement for this game, there should have been someone behind him with a two by four to remind them about how idiotic people can be over phrases like that. Remind them gently, of course.

quote=3563048;Knighthonor.4061:]
This would be logically true if not for the flaw in this logic which is WvW/SPvP, which is far more harder to master than anything in PvE.

Yet people can freely enter it from low level.[/quote]

By doing so, they enter without a full array of traits/masteries, possibly without even an elite skill, and are weaker than even a level 80 ranger.

And again, sometimes I run into people far . . . far underleveled for some areas in a zone who get away with it. Heck I’ve done that myself on some of my lower level characters.

Obsidian.1328:

CETheLucid.3964:

They won, they have their ancestral home back. Greater Ascalon is theirs.

You realize they literally just changed that a few months ago right?

Changed what? I think I missed something there.

CureForLiving.5360:

My thought as well, she’s clearly manipulating Logan (who falls for it, probably thinking too much about Queen Jennah to notice).

Or just is blinded by “little young kid isn’t going to do that”, clearly not familiar with how evil the asura are.

Ice of Dragons.1637:

For all the things they have done to Kasmeer and her family and other people of divinities reach.

I’m game. I even know where we can dump the bodies, though I suppose maybe the asura would complain about the smell after the first couple days.

CETheLucid.3964:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

If that’s really the case, why are we even discussing the lore at all? Ascalon was always doomed, and will always have been doomed until a lore writer decides otherwise.

Actually, yes. Pretty much. But a human definition of a doomed Ascalon and a charr definition of a doomed Ascalon are very different.

The context of discussion there was the between Prophecies and GW2 Ascalon.

That’s canon, for better or for worse. You’ll end up liking it or not so much.

Don’t really care enough about it to make a fuss about it getting fixed. But on the other hand, can’t wait for an opportunity to “take it back for the glorious Ascalonian people”.

Either that or let me resume weapons tests on the asuran catapult teams. I mean, with the asuran catapult teams.

Obsidian.1328:

That pretty much sums up my beef with Anet right there. :P

And I’d be with you if it wasn’t common. I’ve reserved all my hate towards lore problems for Wizards of the Coast and the whole “Spellplague” thing.

First of all, if you’re not a member, this is all talk about apples. It’s boring and not all that interesting so why waste your time listening . . .

. . . are they gone? Good.

So, I’m relatively sure this topic has been asked before but I can’t remember reading it. There are a number of hidden secret message items for the Order of Whispers in the world, but has anyone actually worked on them at all? I know they were around at launch and aren’t new, because I collected two of them as I found them – both in Lornar’s Pass.

Secret Message 4

Secret Message 5

Then there’s these, of which there are two copies:

Order of Whispers Secret Code

This:

Order of Whispers Secret Note

And lastly -

Order of Whispers Decoder Ring A1

Obsidian.1328:

Tobius

Alright, one big factor though. RL historians are trying to find a truth outside themselves. Meaning, the truth exists whether or not they write about it or not. That’s not the same with a game-world. The “truth” of the story is whatever is in the original authors mind. Period. Because without that original thought, it wouldn’t exist at all. The truth is completely subjective to whoever created it.

Well if the “truth” is so completely mutable, it doesn’t really matter what was said at any time, ever . . .

If that’s really the case, why are we even discussing the lore at all? Ascalon was always doomed, and will always have been doomed until a lore writer decides otherwise.

Obsidian.1328:

First of all, if you don’t see your first quote as one humongus excuse on the devs part to basically give them a free hand with whatever they want, then I feel sorry for you. Really? You bought into that whole hog huh. The reason they said that was precisely so they could do whatever they want with the story and lore. And have.

Of course I realize that’s what it’s for. I’ve seen the excuse dozens of times and largely when talking about an IP where writing staff either expand, change, or thin out over time. I cut my teeth trying to make sense of Forgotten Realms lore and that’s when I started drinking.

And if you stop you’ll realize it’s not invalid just because of that reason. History books are written not by the victors, but by the survivors – it’s seen even in real life. Especially when trying to pin down things like Roman Emperors, for which there are little accounts which don’t have some sort of agenda behind their writing.

Loremaster Ermerend has a vested interest in glorifying Ascalon, painting them as a “we’re still relevant” world power. Reality sets in if you realize they’re still fighting off charr years later when Nightfall happens. Even if the bulk of the battle is won, there’s still a battlefront and Ascalon is still under attack. It’s not at peace and it’s not being helped.

And yes, there were only five gods until Nightfall…or at the very earliest late Factions. Kinda throws a wrench into the whole “Abaddon was controlling the Charr…that’s why they went after Orr and Kryta too” argument. I find it amazing that later additions and editions to the writing is taken as retroactive fact by peeps…sheesh. Frankly, I’m embarrassed as an historian.

It doesn’t throw a wrench into it, you’re just misinterpreting it. Abaddon’s titans appeared to the charr and lent the shaman caste power and position. They weren’t under his control so much as they got given a means to break the Wall and get across . . . after that, the shaman caste was to blame for pushing the charr onwards.

I don’t think Abaddon had to drive the charr to Orr for the Vizier to get to work. I think there was a lot of speed chess on those plans as the situation went from “charr get set loose on the human kingdoms” to “well that went wildly successful, now what?”.

Nike.2631:

Explain this to me – what are the pets supposedly doing that makes the warden II unbeatable?

Not handling aggro correctly, I think, or rangers siccing the pets on them to keep them in one spot instead of moving them through mines. I’ve used Longbow #4 to send the Warden into a mine and people flipped out about how I was going to mess it up. Strangely the Warden went down though on my platform . . . still got a bit of blame so I wound up just sticking to shortbow from then on.

If there is a type of pet that doesn’t cause this problem, maybe we can just encourage folks to run one of those during the event…

Something which doesn’t immobilize or fear, I understand the ranged spiders are good.

Obsidian.1328:

Foxx

I’ll grant you that, they were supposed to infighting up until then.

The reason the PC went with Rurik to Kryta was to progress the campaign over there. Ever read Rurik’s dialogue? Every other word is about how he won’t rest until all the Charr are dead in Ascalon. ANet needed a gameplay mechanism to get the PC over there and keep the campaign story going. So they wrote up a fight with his dad, got him excommunicated, and voila…you leave Ascalon behind with for a legit reason.

All of those campaign zones on the map were originally designed with an open-world GvG in mind. They switched it to strict PvE late in development, brought in a single writer(Jess Lebow) to write the entirety of the PvE story, and filled in the map with campaign missions. Keep in mind they had like 2 dozen peeps working on this at the time.

Yeah, Prophecies really was the worst as far as the story goes. It’s why I sigh when people go “Guild Wars 1 had a far superior story”, because they must not be meaning Prophecies. The story parts are barely connected until about halfway through, after “The Wilds”. Even then there’s just a lot of real thin threads connecting things.

. . . and the next person complaining about the Living Story dialogue needs to sit through the third and fourth missions in Ascalon to hear/read Rurik’s speeches.

(Want one other weird head-scratching lore nugget? So the Fiery Dragon Sword of Adelbern and Rurik are supposedly a pair of powerful blades linked together . . . where did the one the Captain Osric have show up from?)

Rajani Isa.6294:

Elbegast.6970:

Zaxares.5419:

Braham would definitely win a duel against Logan. At least Braham could last more than 15 seconds in fights against foes like the Molten bosses. Logan keels over after a few slaps from an Elite or Champion.

Are you kidding? Logan would run circles around Braham.

We never seem to run out of Logan running away jokes, do we?

I asked Logan how many there were, but he ran away before I got an answer.