Guild Wars 2

If you think about it the new zone is quite similar to what we had with fighting Zaihtan in Orr, at least conceptually. When fighting Zaihtan we established Fort Trinity as a forward comand base to fight against Zaihtan. Other than the fort we had different camps each with their own uses (such as artillery, lumber camp, magical artifact areas for research), each with their own events. Holding these areas would then let you push towards the entrance to the next zone which was Malchor’s Leap.

This new zone is pretty similar in that concept albeit quite the deal smaller. You have the forward Pact base that Trahearne is in, and 3 other areas to hold. You have events to take/hold/retake these areas just like in Orr. We need those 3 areas to have a foothold in the maguuma jungle/wastes to push further west/south towards Mordremoth. This is the same as we needed to hold the zones to push further west in Orr towards the Cursed Shores and Arah to fight Zaihtan.

The main difference here in this new zone is their incorporation of WvW mechanics into PvE such as protecting the caravans between the 3 points and your forward base. Imo it makes it feel much more like an actual war than Orr did.

Well to be honest I didn’t know that lightning/air there corrupted. I was sure about those ties to chaos for Kralkatorrik which is why I put it as an influence. I’ll edit my previous post

Well that kinda puts a stake in the theory about Primordus and life, but so far what I can see is:

Zaihtan: Shadows – Death
Mordremoth: Mind – Plant
Jormag: Spirit – Ice
Kralkatorric: Chaos/Lightning – Crystal
Primordus: ? – Fire/Lava
DSD: ? – Water/Tentacles?

The first being a method of corruption (shadow being more akin to deception) and the second being the physical after effects of corruption.

I think when we are talking about the two speheres of influence for the Elder Dragons we’re basically talking about how the dragon himself corrupts or lures victims into corruption and the physical manifestation/domain of the corruption itself.

If we look at Mordremoth he’s Mind and Plants which can be see by him corrupting Aerin and Scaret through their minds and them having plant biology.

If we look at Zaihatan he’s Shadow and Death. I believe shadow implies more towards diversion or and dillusion than illusions themselves, similar to have how Thieves use the Shadow Arts to conceal themselves and provide diversions. Obviously the 2nd influence is Death which can be seen by The Risen being undead. Its possible that in order for Zaihtain to corrupt, his corruption must kill first then raise to become the Risen.

For Kralkatorric, we only have information on the corruption from The Brand which imo doesn’t give us much to go on regarding the first sphere of influence (unless I’m missing something on how he corrupts others). The 2nd sphere of influence is Crystal.

Primordus iirc creates the destroyers from rock and lava. Thus it is possible that his first sphere of influence is creating life. His second sphere is Fire.

Jormag lures in his corrupted with promises of power. I think Konig is onto something, since Jormag feeds off other’s will and desire for more power. Will and Spirit could be correlated so in a sense you can say that his corrruption is one that corrupts one’s Spirit. The 2nd sphere of influence would be Ice as can be seen by the Icebrood being encased in ice.

Deep Sea Dragon we know next to nothing about other than he presumably corrupts the Water itself to create minion (not sure of this, honestly)

That’s my oppinion on the idea behind the two spheres of influence. Feel free to criticize or even further this theory. When you look back on the PS before killing Zhaitan, him being associated with Shadow kind of makes sense at least to me.

Could it be possible that Mr. E is not one person but a group working under the identity of Mr. E? It makes more sense to me that a group could be working together and gather and share info together than having one person know a lot of different info.

Maybe Abaddon knows of a reliable way to find this mysterious island and that’s what we find out?

I was under the impression that celestial changes happened due to the Elder Dragons awaking.

ElysianEternity.6215:

@Xukavi

Shaytan can be devil, THE devil and Iblis.
As for the Satan/Shaytan thing, the assumption isn’t quite wrong since Shaytan is the equivalent to Satan. The problem is that Christianity has a very vague concept of what/who Satan is… so I can’t blame anyone. :P

Anyways, while it’s possible that the DSD was ‘named’ by/after Largos who have an arabic theme, IMO it’s even more likely that it was named after the theme of the krait who have a Greek and Latin motif (and prolly threw a ‘ss’ into the name) since it’s been mentioned several times in the game that it awoke in their home.

Though yeah, guess we gotta wait a long time before we find out for real. ;P

Well yea, its not exactly wrong but some people usually take it as a word for word translation and that it means Satan. It is regularly used as the word for Devil or The Devil as you stated and rarely used to refer to Satan himself. Anyways that aside, I do believe that his name would follow a different theme than Arabic.

What Tuomir said. I guess its just Storage and numbering.

Invidia.9074:

I go a hunch it will be some name with an Arabic-like feel to it, since we have Largos whose names follow the same convention, and who can be one of the first living races that probably have met the effects of his corruption. I doubt the quaggans named it, or we’ll end with a Slooblupppplupp, even worse than Spongebob or Steve…

I doubt they’d have 2 Elder Dragons named after Arabic references or having Arabic-like feel as you would say. We already have Zaihtan which is derived from the Arabic word Shaitan which is the Arabic word for Devil. Some people actually think Shaitan is Arabic for Satan but that would actually be Iblees. Anyways, they already had Orr names being of Arabic origin so I think they’d stick with a differet style for the DSD.

Or he’s called Selbbub, we were just writing it the wrong way.

I noticed this ceiling when I watched the trailer but didn’t really know what to make of it. If this is related Lord Odran that can mean a number of good things I guess, but one can only hope. First thing that came to my mind when you said Lord Odran was that maybe we’ll be finding a portal to the Mists. Now the way I see this links to LS is that Rytlock jumped into a bluish hue portal which we speculated could be the Mists. Maybe we’ll find info on another portal to the Mists and go after Rytlock. Could also be possible he ended up in the HoH where we meet Prince Rurik and he tells us how to remove the Curse of the Foefire. Another point to take in mind is that it’s been stated that some of the Elder Dragons (at least Jormag) have been trying to invade the Mists.

Is it possible that there’s a 5th gate to the Mists other than the 4 known GW1? Maybe there’s someone that knows of such gate? Glint maybe and the knowledge was passed onto the Zepherites?

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

What bothers me most is Lyssa’s statue that somehow resembles a largos or a dragon-like entity. Might be a hint, might be something else, I don’t know.

That’s Dwayna’s statue not Lyssa.

tryme.6295:

Is it just me or Ogden Stonehealer is no longer a ‘stone dwarf’? Around 2:05 you can see him…

Ogden Stonehealer has been in the game sine launch and he still is a stone dwarf. You can tell by how he looks like he’s made of stone. He shows up a few times in the PS if you do missions dealing with the Durman Priory as he is apparently helping them with providing knowledge about the past.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

I wonder how the season will end. Season one ended with the destruction of LA and they must top that since this is a dragon waking up. The other dragons completly changed the geography of their region. (a mountain range gone, an island lifted up, a huge scar of branded corruption).

Aren’t the vines Modremoth himself? I wonder what his main body would be like. He can probably be a map itself…

My theory is that it’ll end with Mordremoth going all and andd actually changing the geography like the other Elder Dragons did when they awoke. It’s arguable that he already has but from the PoI episode I got the feeling like they wanna actually show the destruction of the geography from when an Elder Dragon awakens in game. They seemed to be very excited about having an Elder Dragon awake during the time period that we play in. Also I hope that this sets the stage for an Expansion to the game.

Up until 1:30-ish the recap of what happened in LS S2 so far. So the dragon you are referring to iirc is The Shadow of the Dragon.

Guys that looks a lot like the Durman Priory to me in the snowy zone. Also, its just for the next episode.

Was just about to make a topic about this. Looks like we will indeed be going to a hidden temple of some sorts. I also think we’ll be seeing some past events through some sort of memory holding item.

Edit: On second look, it looks like Ogden was keeping something hidden in the Durmand Priory, something that will take us into the past.

lordkrall.7241:

They might at some point, but I doubt they knew it when they brought the humans in. Why else would they place their own city and one of the kingdoms of the humans on top of a sleeping one?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m defintely with you about the gods probably not knowing when they first came to Tyria. I just think that they did find out and kept it all secret.

Iirc we do have info from the living story that the six gods might have actually known about the elder dragons.

@Konig:

-Well they did say from all the stories of GW1, I’m not sure myself how they’d link Factions to it but maybe its more something like linking Cantha to the Zepherytes in a more direct way?

-I’ve seen a lot of hypse from Anet and sadly a lot has not lived up to it, but I’m not saying that we’re gonna see Abaddon again but we’ve been finding out recently from in game sources that its looking more likely that the gods knew about the Elder Dragons, so it might be that he did something that they’ll be telling us about. Personally, I think that the true reason behind him gifting magic was because of the Elder Dragons’ threat and he wanted to give the races a fighting chance, but the rest of the gods disagreed seeing it would only cause harm. But that would be sort of retconning the lore of GW1 and why the magic was sealed off again.

-I guess I didn’t make myself clear. I know Mordy awoke months ago, but what I meant by his Rise was the devastation that you state Elder Dragons do when they awake. We’ve been seeing a lot of devestation with the vines and all but I don’t think we’ve seen the real devestation yet. Usually when Elder Dragons rise you see huge changes in landscape. Zhaitan rose Orr, Kralkatorric made the brand. That stuff we haven’t seen from Mordremoth yet, maybe just the start of it.

Edusd.7893:

Well, it certainly looks like either a bronze or gold statue inside of a temple. Perhaps the Mursaat had something to do with Abaddon at some point. Who knows, it’s intriguing at least. I’m curious about how/what they will tie together. Until the blog post, I really didn’t have much concern for whatever episode 5+ contained, now, I’m interested.

Not sure exactly which blog post you’re referring to, do you mean the Points of Interest episode or am I missing something? It’s really intriguing, I always hoped they’d link current events with stuff from GW1 somehow. Hopefully they link it well with something that makes some sense.

Well there is confirmation from the PoI episode that the rest of season 2’s episodes will be linking the current lore with the lore from GW1. Also, they did say that we’ll see how the events from Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall tie into the lore now. Besides, why end the episode with a teasar of the status of Abaddon if the Six Gods aren’t somehow related to all this?

Edit: I really hope that they do show the Rise of Mordremoth and not have us get there in time to hinder/stop his awakening. I wanna see a representation in game of an awakening of an Elder Dragon. Also about their comment on not seeing an Elder Dragon awakening, I’m pretty sure they just meant that we’ve never experienced that happening in game.

I look like whe we voted between the Fall of Abaddon fractal and the Thaumanova Reactor fractal, there really as a path that had to do with linking Abaddon to the current events. At least that’s what I’m hoping after what they said and showing that picture.

Konig, I think the question is rather, did Zhaitan have an effect on the Cataclysm rather than did the Cataclysm have an effect on Zhaitan. It’s a big difference. Slow is saying that the Scrolls drew from the powers of Zhaitan thus effecting the whole of Orr but not Zhaitain himself. The question and answer is targetting effects on Zhaitan, which the answer was no to. Now that doesn’t mean there’s no room for his power being channeled through the Scroll or in the least effecting the scroll used. Its a matter of who affected who. Jeff said that the Cataclysm didn’t effect Zhaitain in any way, which is true (it was bordering more on he wasn’t harmed at all). Jeff never said that Zhaitan didn’t affect the scrolls by his presence being there. Besides if his power did seep through the Scrolls while being used, it would make more sense that he wouldn’t be in the least effected by the Cataclysm that was caused by it.

I forsee a major fight with the Shadow of the Dragon at the end of the season. The fight will ultimately end with what seems to be our failure only for a shadowy figure comes out and casts an ancient spells that turns the tide of battle winning us the fight against the Shadow of the Dragon. This figure then reveals herself to be Livia, who will lead the pact as Trahearn has been slain during the battle. In the end, Mordremoth arises with a sweet cinematic showing the destruction and change in all the lands he effects changing Tyria to a point of no return. This then leads to an announcement of an Expansion.

One can only dream.

The way I see it, what’s possible is that we were mislead from the start to think that the shadow of the dragon that was in the tutorial was Zhaitan in order for the other races to gain Sylvari trust. Imagine had the Pale Tree told the other races that there’s another Elder Dragon called Mordremoth that is tied to the Sylvari dream somehow and can corrupt them, but no worries, they’ll help us defeat it. Obviously it would be too suspicious of a newly born race to offer help when they themselves are linked to Elder Dragons. I also think that this season of the Living Story will end with a new Dragon World Boss fight having The Shadow of the Dragon become a permanent World Boss like The Shatterer/Tequatl/Claw of Jormag.

I don’t get why you guys are giving him a rough time. The way i read his response didn’t seem to say the shadow of the dragon is still a representation of zhaitan. OP was saying that since the dream is a collected conscious then someone must have encountered this dragon before. This is simply not true. At the time the dragon you fight in the tutorial is indeed said to be representing zhaitan hence after the tutorial you’re told to defeat zhaitan bec its what you saw in the dream. We were also told that it was created from nightmare so honestly what he’s saying could indeed be true. Putting 2 and 2 together then its possible for the following:

1- The shadow of the dragon was indeed created by the nightmare during the tutorial
2- Mordy has some control or influence over the nightmare/dream

This can lead to either the way konig put it that Mordy pulled the shadow of the dragon from the dream that was put there by nightmare to represent zhaitan supposedly at the time and create it in our world. The other explanation that I see is that Mordy influences the nightmare so he put his creation which is the shadow of the dragon into the dream during the sylvari tutorial. This was then misinterpretted or more likely we were misguided by the pale tree to think it meant we must defeat zhaitan and she was just hiding the fact she knew about Mordremoth.

Tobias Valin.5893:

Xukavi.4320:

Will will get Belinda’s Greatsword and give it to Trahearn because obviously he needs a new greatsword to fight against Mordy, since he doesn’t have Caladbolg anymore.

Unless I was seeing things, he clearly had Caladbolg strapped to his back at the summit, at least before the procession.

Didn’t really pay attention honestly, I thought Caladbolg was left at the artesian waters to purify the land

I don’t get why people are having a hard time with the concept that the avatar and pale tree are technically the same. The avatar if you will is like the manifestation of the Pale Tree’s conscious that she made into the form of a Sylvari to put people at ease. The Avatar passing out and looking as if she’s dying is a mere reflection of the actual state of the Pale Tree.

There are 2 arguments from my point of view:

1- The Avatar and the Pale Tree go hand in hand, meaning if the Avatar dies then that’s a reflection that the Pale Tree is dead.

2- The Avatar being a manifestation that the Pale Tree creates is no indication that the Pale Tree lives. What I mean is that its possible that it takes effort for the Pale Tree to manifest this Avatar thus if she’s critically wounded she might not be able to manifest this image.

I honestly lean more towards the first. Regarding Caithe, as much as she’s my first choice when it comes to the person with a heart full of darkness that supposedly helped Mordy, I think it would be a good twist but I think that person was Faolain and I think Caithe went to see what Faolain’s been up to. I think Caithe’s secret is that the Darkness that her and Faolain encountered long ago (the one Faolain gave into) is Mordremoth and she’s known about him since then and that he’s linked to the Nightmare Court

Will will get Belinda’s Greatsword and give it to Trahearn because obviously he needs a new greatsword to fight against Mordy, since he doesn’t have Caladbolg anymore.

I thought it felt like she wanted someone assassinated, but there really is no reason for that at all. I think she’s just going to send him in there to spy on The Pact. But how is he going to enter? Simple, at the end of the summit the Queen said she’d put together a group to help with the rising Mordy issue. What I think will happen later, is that Canach will be corrupted by Mordy and will kill off Trahearne seeing he is the head of the Pact.

Let’s put it this way to sorta kill the idea of the Pale Tree being Mordy’s champion. If she really was Mordy’s champion and betrayed him, I believe Mordy would go after her himself like Kralkatorric did with Glint, and not send one of his Lieutenants to do the job.

Honestly since the start of the living story thats how I felt about its purpose. To me the the living wirld is here to ahow you how the world progresses before an expansion. Its like every time yoy have a game put out an expansion its just this stuff happened and now we have this. But they show it all at the release of the expansion. Take wow cataclysm for example, you have deathwing come out and destroy half the world but you have nothing showing you how any of that happened except the trailer. Imo the living story shows you what happened leading to the expansion.

Dante Stormwind.3794:

There’s a Feature Pack coming September 9, and LS will continue after that.

Yea just read the blog post on it. Seems like they’re doing as I thought. Taking a break to push out the feature updates and then continuing the living story.

Rainin.9812:

What annoys me most is that we had to hear this from some random article out there. Shouldn’t this have been announced like last week or a week before so we had an idea it was coming? Not to mention I can hardly believe this season is only going to be 8 episodes long.. After how last season literally lasted what felt like 9 months, this would be shockingly short.

Aside from that, I’m okay with a short break (though too long will be kind of buzz-kill). But I would assume this break is so that they can start hashing out Halloween.

We did hear it from a random article but to be honest, it is stated on the release page of the new episode. I guess they should’ve just released that page sooner before the other gaming websites released their articles.

@Palador: I share your feeling, I wouldn’t wanna set myself up for disappointment either seeing as how the game has been since release. But this season seems more promising than the previous one.

@ Palador: If we’re gonna talk about LS update exclusively then yes, I’m with you we’re in for some pretty dry times ahead.

Palador.2170:

Xukavi.4320:

Unless of course they do take this break to push out a feature update with some balance changes then that really shouldn’t be a problem. People are also forgetting that not everyone at Arenanet is working on the living story and it was also hinted previously that they are working at something bigger, an expansion perhaps.

Oh, I’m not forgetting it.

Here’s how I’m looking at it: Currently they seem to be doing a LS update every 2 weeks when the LS is going, but the LS is “on break” about half the time. During that time, people that were being kept here by the frequent LS updates will drift away. (Preventing that is the entire reason for the 2 week pace, as ANet themselves stated long ago.)

Wouldn’t it be better to have the updates happen every month (4 weeks), and have no long breaks? Yes, people will have more time to get bored with the last update, but there also won’t be a 2 or 3 month stretch with no LS updates.

But… meh. It’s their game, and their jobs on the line, not mine. I’m sure they’re doing what some guy above them who’s job isn’t on the line (and can pass the blame off onto them) has decided is best.

I doubt it’ll be a 2-3 month break. After all, fall is jut a couple of weeks away. I say they’ll take maybe a 1-1.5 month break in which they put the feature updates which does count as something new for people to stick around for. Possibly also add a new sPvP map or maybe a new mode entirely. There was talks about a new GvG mode a while back.

Palador.2170:

What worries me is this long wait. The whole point of the LS was to keep people constantly logging in by having something new every two weeks. If the LS is on break half the time, then that kind of kills the very reason they’re going through the effort of making it update every 2 weeks when it IS running.

Unless of course they do take this break to push out a feature update with some balance changes then that really shouldn’t be a problem. People are also forgetting that not everyone at Arenanet is working on the living story and it was also hinted previously that they are working at something bigger, an expansion perhaps.

@Spyritdragon: Yes fall isn’t that far away, but nothing also says that they’ll return at the start of fall. After all Fall is 3 months long and they could be returning anytime during those 3 months

I do believe that dungeon additions and the fractals should be part of a feature release unless it has to do with the living story such as the Twilight Arbor dungeon path that was remade. In all honesty I was hoping it would be a bit longer but like you guys were saying 4 episodes leading to a mid season finale kinda means we’re talking about 8-9 episodes maximum 10 i guess. If they’re taking a mid season break to push out a feature patch then I’m all for it honestly. Also I don’t believe they will kill Mordy off this season quite the contrary honestly. I believe they’ll end season 2 with a cataclysmic reveal of Mordremoth in all his glory which will hopefully lead into an expansion that has us going against Mordremoth and ending in his defeat.

Well like the title says, is it? According to IGN and their latest article on GW2 it is and we’ll be having a break till this fall.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/08/12/guild-wars-2-mid-season-finale-available-today

Does this mean that Season 2 of the living story will be a lot shorter than Season 1?

I know this probably doesn’t have any link and probably any lore guru here would hate me for this but…anyone notice how the trailer refers to the ancient evil from the west (Mordy) as the Shadow of the Dragon which is coincidentally also the name of the dragon in the Sylvari tutorial?

Do you guys not notice that the The Dragon’s Reach is actually split into four episodes? Yes, according to their release page they say that the back item will change throughout parts 3 and 4. I highly doubted that he would solve the whole FoeFire curse in one episode when they’re splitting it into 4 parts.

BobbyStein.2315:

Xukavi.4320:

Wasn’t it stated by some devs in the forums that she did indeed have 2 diff voices and it was important to the story that she had 2 diff voices? I believe it was a comment regarding someone that found some voice dialogue that was leaked online for Scarlet and commented on how the voice was different.

Not exactly. Scarlet has always been voiced by Tara Strong. We did coach her to change her tone to reflect her descent. There should be a noticeable progression over time.

Sorry for my wording, I didn’t mean that she was voiced by 2 diff people but I meant that her voice was supposed to change over time (presumably after getting out of the machine) to indicate that there was some a change in her character. The response I was referring to was stating that there indeed would be a difference in Scarlet’s voice’s tone and it was somewhat important (I guess once again to reflect the change between Ceara and Scarlet)

Wasn’t it stated by some devs in the forums that she did indeed have 2 diff voices and it was important to the story that she had 2 diff voices? I believe it was a comment regarding someone that found some voice dialogue that was leaked online for Scarlet and commented on how the voice was different.

TexZero.7910:

Xukavi.4320:

Zackie.8923:

can someone explain simply whats the trailer is about for non-lore junkies?

The only lore related part is the end with Rytlock removing the curse of the Foefire from Ascalon. To quickly put it in perspetive: King Adelbern used his sword Magdaer to annihilate the invading Charr which cused his people to be turned into Ghosts eternally fighting the invaders of Ascalon until the curse is lifted. Legends state that to lift the curse the rightful king of ascalon must do so wielding either Magdaer or the sister sword Sohothin (which Rytlock currently wields and we don’t know how he got it).

You get in in AC story. Eir gives it back to him.

I know we got Magdaer from the AC story and she said she’d reforge it and give it to Logan I was talking about us not knowing how he got Sohothin.

From what I understand what the OP wants is a dungeon in the living story.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

To all those of you who suggest that the locket shows a picture of our character….

You do realize that some players actually play asura, sylvari, norn or charr, right? Right?

No worries. The game will either use your human alt character as a picture or if you have no human characters at all then you’ll get a randomly generated character for free to be used as the heir of kryta.

Zackie.8923:

can someone explain simply whats the trailer is about for non-lore junkies?

The only lore related part is the end with Rytlock removing the curse of the Foefire from Ascalon. To quickly put it in perspetive: King Adelbern used his sword Magdaer to annihilate the invading Charr which cused his people to be turned into Ghosts eternally fighting the invaders of Ascalon until the curse is lifted. Legends state that to lift the curse the rightful king of ascalon must do so wielding either Magdaer or the sister sword Sohothin (which Rytlock currently wields and we don’t know how he got it).

Thanks a lot guys.