Guild Wars 2

Maybe someone has been scattering magic beans around.

Technically, if they can breed they are the same species.

OP gave the impression that there would only be one. I was just pointing out that Modremoths champions are likely to be many and varied.

Dragons have multiple champions.

From a gameplay perspective, a non sessile dragon champion is a bit boring. Can you imagine how a fight against such a champion would go? Stage 1: collect firewood, Stage 2: fire flaming arrows, Stage 3: break out the marshmallows.

At least the vines and roots we have seen so far have a little bit of mobility. And they’re not exactly inspiring enemies.

1030 hours, 834 deaths. But that includes PVE content and standing around AFK.

I reckon at least 100 of those deaths are jumping related :/

Imagine trying to organise three large guilds to compete at the same time. You’d be lucky to get one match a week.

Stormbolt.7293:

I think a more probable theory is that Mordremoth’s means of obtaining minions is corrupting beings with a connection to the Dream. I have a feeling he’s responsible for the Nightmare Court.

Who act no more like dragon minions than the Inquest, or the Flame Legion…

In fact a few, like Gavin, are less evil than many other evil NPCs in the game.

The river might be the one the miners mentioned finding, and the glowing tube might be the Ley Line that Scarlet found.

The Veldrunner Centaurs used to venerate Ancestor Trees, which they use to pass down memories from their forebears.

It’s possible that these Centaurs have a similar tradition. It’s also possible that there are more Pale Trees out there.

Kalavier.1097:

Note how there is vines entangling around a vigil/pact outpost in a green, grassy area.

An area like that isn’t that close to drytop at all…

Ley lines.

Carighan.6758:

Wanderer.3248:

MMOs should take a look at games like Uncharted or Assassins Creed. Forget this bouncing along like a maniac on a pogo stick, and put in some actual climbing.

How is what you do in AC “climbing”? There’s nothing you do. Climbing is as meaningful and interactive as walking forward. You might as well not have it (the biggest issue with AC is that it’s core design component is entirely redundant :P ).

You have to navigate vertically the same way you do horizontally – often you have to find something, to climb, the same way you have to find a path to travel horizontally. You can’t just climb straight up any vertical surface any more than you can walk in a straight line from A to B.

Sure you can play most parts of AC without having to climb, if you prefer. You can play most of it without having to sneak around either, but that’s no fun.

And being able to climb makes much more sense than not being able to.

Maybe they are multicellular Chromalveolata, like seaweed, that are not technically plants.

Or they could be like sea anemones, or sponges, or worms, that resemble plants.

Well, any economist should know that a modern economy is based on specialisation and exchange. That’s straight out of any high school textbook.

Having one player able to do everything (efficiently) gets in the way of specialisation. And having un-exchangeable (bound) items gets in the way of exchange, obviously.

GW2 writers wouldn’t be the first in history to have a hard time keeping track of minor details. And authors love to revise stories, sometimes even their own. These inconsistencies are minor compared to some works of fiction.

The Science Fiction author Alastair Reynolds has an number of inconstancies between his short story works and his later novels set in the same universe. He has said he simply changed his mind. It doesn’t make either the short stories or the novels any worse.

When writing the Dark Tower series of novels, Steven King relied on other people to keep track of lore for him, and he still introduced inconstancies, often deliberately, if he felt it would make for a better story. At one point, amusingly, his main character actually found a copy of a book which had early (from the authors standpoint) references to the main antagonist. The authors main character then dismissed the authors own work as misleading.

Every single time someone decides to enact one of Shakespeare’s works they change things. If they can get away with changing the works of one of the great playwrights, then I doubt too many people are going to care about some game trivia.

If it works it works. If not, it can be revised again.

If anything, the Soundless in Caledon forest are more peaceful than normal Sylvari.

I’m not sure that the Shapers and Menders have any organisational structure.

Perhaps, because of the dream, they don’t really need it. They don’t need to have apprentices, training, certification, and such.

When we first see Aerin, he appears to be looking for something, and mumbles something like “where is it”. Not “where is he”, but “where is it”.

Later, before the final battle, he expresses surprise at finding the Master. “What, you’re here?”

Now, if Aerin was an assassin hunting down the Master, these statements seem a little odd.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Considering Mordremeth controls plants

Once again I feel compelled to point out that there is no actual in-game evidence for this assumption.

She rented the room in prosperity as a student. So it was before she went in the isolation module. And there are multiple references to her having being interested in ley lines for a long time, before she became Scarlet.

Alex.9567:

movement on the vertical axis is an obvious next step for mmo’s as a genre, .

MMOs should take a look at games like Uncharted or Assassins Creed. Forget this bouncing along like a maniac on a pogo stick, and put in some actual climbing.

If it was normal wet quicksand it wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous anyway. Quicksand danger is highly exaggerated in fiction.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The main problem here is that there are so many players who want to get the best stuff, but don’t want to take the time to organize or coordinate themselves. These types of players are prevalent in all MMOs. We call them leechers.

A true leech would join a map and AFK at the merchant until t4 hits, then buy cheap goods and split.

Yeah, it looks bad on my Norn. I have mask with a moustache sprouting from it. It’s aesthetically unusable on that character.

The Realm of torment is supposedly infinite, so there could be other things out there, including Menzies, The Darkness, and whatever was connected with the Lunatic Court in GW1 before it got cancelled.

Nub.2391:

sorry to disappoint you guys, but the katana will be skin to apply on one-hand sword which cost 1000gems or super rare drop from…..BL chest. cough* enjoy

Belinda’s sword is too long to be a one handed weapon.

Wanze.8410:

Its a reward for people that finish alot of different content, in this case, leveling your crafting and Dry Top.
And if you hate crafting, you can pay someone to cook the feast and place it, so you can eat it.

It’d be a lot easier if we could just sell it. That would be a better reward for crafting.

Zanshin.5379:

sorudo.9054:

even seen a ninja in tight jeans?…….

Ever seen an actual ninja?

If you saw them, they weren’t a real ninja!

Ensign.2189:

I would be very, very surprised if they were using anything other than a linear congruential generator. The game makes an enormous number of calls to their generator and speed is almost certainly their highest priority. I cannot imagine how any of the quirks of a LCG would matter, especially with multiple players calling the generator at irregular intervals.

If anyone can explain why a LCG is insufficient for this application, I’d love to hear why.

This. RNGs aren’t account bound. The seed is probably one per VM. So all the players in one VM could in theory be lucky or unlucky. It’s hard to imagine a flaw in the RNG consistently affecting an account.

Flaws in DR are more believable.

But a simpler explanation is that in a game with millions of players and billions of drops, that some people just get lucky, or unlucky, and players are seeing the Gamblers Fallacy.

Zaxares.5419:

Not to mention that “ancient” (and therefore dead, brittle) wood would be a TERRIBLE crafting material to make items from.

http://xkcd.com/1114/

It seems that ley lines are like magic plot-string that can hold anything together, no matter how disconnected.

Sometimes lag can cause the sun crystals not to work, and you bounce off his shield.

Azurite nodes please.

Drop rate seems to be 100 sand for a geode (on average), so you need about 1500-2000 sand to get enough geodes for a hidden chest.

Sand is pretty easy to farm, the dust mites are pretty easy kills, and you get the equivalent of a champion chest from it. Plus there are events spawning all the time that get you more sand and geodes.

Overall it’s not a bad place to farm.

It’s a temporal paradox. The steam over-mind from the future reached back in time through the steam portals and caused both Scarlet and the Asura to invent steam brains in alternate realities and therefore invented itself. Kind of like when Fry from Futurama became his own grandfather.

Or something.

Evans.6347:

Erukk.1408:

After reading the first half of the OP, I seriously thought you were leading to the true nemesis being the Steam Brain. Her first machines were crude, but after the Brain was able to expand on the steam creatures’ intelligence on its own, her machines were able to advance at a much faster rate, since she was probably using the Brain’s own designs.

Hah, me too. I’m kind of disappointed that it wasn’t his conclusion actually. I approve of the image of Scarlet arguing with the steam brain

Wouldn’t it be an interesting turn of events? Considering the alternate reality we’ve seen in the magic 8 cube, which we prevented, that instead of the Asuran playable character it was now Scarlet who discovered and in time was twisted to the will of the “Steam motherbrain”

It could gave been some other intelligence, something that was able to influence the steam brains through the steam portals. Possibly something in The Rift. Something that was also able to influence Scarlet when she meddled with portals and ley lines.

DarcShriek.5829:

This looks good. Just one small point though. The discovery of ley lines may not have happened at Prosperity. The room in prosperity was rented after her time in Omadd’s device, as seen in the hologram where her voice changes. The initial discovery may have happened anywhere. It seems that Prosperity was an ideal location to study them further.

No, she mentions finding a ley line hub near prosperity.

Having replayed this a few more times, I noticed a couple of other things:

Kasmeer and Taimi both seem to think that Scarlet came to Prosperity as a student. This May conflict with dates, and they could be wrong, but its what they both say.

There is mention of her seeking a ley line hub near to Prosperity. This kind-of conflicts with her not knowing of ley lines before Omad’s machine. Also, if she found a hub in Prosperity, why drill in Lions Arch? I find this a bit confusing.

Kasmeer and the player both make mention of the Dragons being a part of something bigger. I can’t help but wonder if this relates to both Omad’s machine and the entity, and ley lines.

Twice in the story, Scarlet is referred to as the tip of the iceberg. Make of that what you will.

Tamias.7059:

Actually, to link to yet another one of my own posts, it seems that while she didn’t rent her room in Prosperity until she was Scarlet Briar, from the tone of the “What could it be?” note it seems that the initial discovery was made while she was still Ceara. The way that Toska talks about her, as well, seems to suggest that the conversation happened with a much less dark incarnation of her character.

The townsfolk in Prosperity make note of her “hair”.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This – as well as her buying a room in Prosperity after becoming Scarlet, with her inquisitions on the ley line beneath the mines – indicates to me that all her interest in those came from the entity, and it may be possible that as Ceara, she never had an interest in them.

Her hologram said that her experience in Omad’s machine confirmed the existence of ley lines, which to me indicates that she was interested in them before she was aware of the entity.

It’s pointless trying to cleanse the scouts blind, they just re-apply it on the next attack. Kill them first, and use a weapon which hits quickly so that the blind only affects a small proportion of your attacks.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

I will throw an idea out for people to consider… what if…

when you killed someone you didn’t get some generic loot… what if you stripped that person of a possession?

So your incentive to fight is that you might get something nice like ascended armor or weapons…

your incentive to fight back is that you don’t want to lose that nice thing you got.

If that was the case only an idiot would wear ascended in WvW. Most people would be wearing cheap karma or badge gear.

Taimi is playing with fire. I get the feeling that the writers are setting her up for a fall.

I like it the way it is, so I can replay the story an each alt, the same as the personal story.

Somebody go pull it and see what happens.

Bags not me.

Also, pirates generally prefer that their targets surrender without a fight. This allows them to capture their prize intact.

That conflicts with the desire of the nightmare court to inflict mayhem. If your ship got a reputation for inflicting harm on crews who had surrendered, it would make subsequent acts of piracy more difficult.

perilisk.1874:

VodCom.6924:

Do we actually know how the zephyrites master the aspects ?

I don’t know if we know the details, but the basic gist is that they’ve discovered how to use a purified form of Kraalkatorik’s magic (if the crystals and lightning weren’t a giveaway). Glint was K’s champion who managed to get free will, and she founded their order. When she died, they somehow managed to master the magic imbued in her corpse.

Or they think they have.

Sons of Svanir like to think that they’re in control as well.

I got the feeling that the steam creatures were waiting for someone to invent them.

Scarlet seemed to be surprised at their intelligence and inventiveness.

He could have had multiple personality disorder or some form of dissociation disorder, including amnesia.

Sometimes he was connected to the dream (or thought he was), and sometimes he was disconnected from the dream (or thought he was). He could have forgotten either state, so when he was connected to the dream he had no memory of ever being disconnected.

Deliberately blocking off memories and/or parts of ones personality are also symptomatic of avoidant personality disorders.

It wouldn’t be surprising to find that occurrences of personality disorders are higher among the soundless. Choosing isolation is a symptom of many disorders. (That doesn’t mean that all soundless are mad, just that mad Sylvari might be more likely to become soundless).

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/01/what-you-need-to-know-about-guild-wars-2s-second-season-living/#continued

Warning: (minor) spoilers.