Why Change the land of Tyria So Much?

As a former player of Guild Wars 1 I find nothing familiar about the lands as they stand in Guild Wars 2. I understand that a few hundred years in the game has passed since Eye of the North Expansion Storyline and that things would have changed out in the Shiverpeaks and Kryta after the rise of Orr.

But what I find most disturbing is how different Ascalon looks, even with the Foefire incident the lads of Ascalon would not have changed so much, the land up around Grendich Courthouse would not have lost it's large mountain that stood in front of it in GW1. Evolution is understandable and so are changes, but areas that did not have mountains in GW1 now has mountains, as I said change in a game story is understandable but a total reworking of the lands of Tyria was not a good idea IMHO.

IT would have been better to keep the lands like they were in GW1 and expand and adjust for some mining, dragons and the rise of Orr and the flooding that followed, changes happen over time even during the timeline of GW2, but never as drastic as what GW2 looks like. This is my only issue with GW2 that the lands are too alien compared to what they were.

Extreme geographical change can and does happen in the real world. More so, and sometimes much quicker, than you might think. Knowing that, and taking into account that in the world of Guild Wars we have so many magical and powerful forces at work, I don't see anything wrong with what the world in GW2 is like.

I think you have to forgive the developers for taking a little creative freedom in designing the new maps in GW2. It would have been far too restrictive on them to create fun environments to play in if they were forced to adhere to GW1's maps in designing the new ones. They had a lot of new tools for building environments in the sequel as well and they would have been unable to make good use of those.

Good design definitely comes first in this case and they made the right choice in reimagining a lot of the regions as necessary to make them fun and interesting to explore. At the end of the day anything that doesn't match up is meant to be down to the dragons in some form. MMO devs love using dragons as an excuse for retconning the world design for some reason.

I understand fully what you're saying and to a point I hate it as well. I'm for the most part okay with it sure you'll miss some old key landmarks or things you liked however it does add new things to view and explore. It's not the first game to do this even grand theft auto v changed things over time from how the originally looked and it's mostly due to the new tools they have available and the new limits they are able to work with.

They also been changing maps within gw2 over time to prevent stacking such as fractals which has an area that teleports you below or added jump pads to help move around.

When I think of GW1, I see the narrative very god-driven while in terms of GW2, it has shifted to a more dragon focused story. I find the environment of Tyria to be a vessel of the story rather than the other way around if that makes sense. I find the circumstances of the GW2 story to have much harsher effects on the setting from what GW1 did- The dragon magic has a much more debilitating effect on the environment compared to the influence of the gods- take Orr for an example.

To make a lame analogy, if the city of Mexico can sink tens of feet in a few decades due to exploitation of the ground water and aquifers, I think a few hundred years of dragon magic and tyrian (human, asuran and charr) meddling and exploitation can have a pretty substantial effect on the environment. I do understand your view on large mountains disappearing, but I'm not totally surprised.

There are places you can see from gw1. The gw1 lion's arch is underwater, for example. I remember Avalon having wreckage of old sites too.

This way it looks new, but familiar. Finding old places and lore tidbits is amazing, while everything else only looks naggingly familiar but new enough that you're not caught in the feeling like it's all just the same thing entirely. If I knew exactly where everything was at the start of the game, even after over 250 years had passed by, I wouldn't have the same awe that I do in finding the searing cauldron that's still there, or the sewers that hold that point of interest. You have a leg up on the people who aren't as familiar with 'Diessa this way, Maguuma that way' but it's not like you know to take a left at that building and find what you're looking for anymore either. You can go search, and seek, and discover same as everyone else.

My only issue was with the vast changes in the land shape of Tyria, I miss Beacons Perch or the Frost gate etc, I fully understand lands changing over time due to events, but did they have to change so vastly, like the Frontier gate not being there anymore.

Perhaps the Devs could put in more POIs where the GW1 main areas would be, like Fort Ranik on the main map not in a WvW area and the Main Dwarven city which is now underwater on the main map.

If you look carefully, you will see that there's many parts of the terrain and landmarks that match.

But after 250 years of dragons rising and magical disasters things change a lot.

If you look at that_shaman's Historical Guide to Tyria you can actually see many places that look almost the same.

@Wolfheart.7483 said:Extreme geographical change can and does happen in the real world. More so, and sometimes much quicker, than you might think. Knowing that, and taking into account that in the world of Guild Wars we have so many magical and powerful forces at work, I don't see anything wrong with what the world in GW2 is like.

I mostly use your explanation as well, though I have to say, it makes me wonder more often than how much the worls actually has changed due to this and how much is due to creative freedom.

Especially the huge pyramids near Amnoon make me raise a sceptical eyebrow as to how plausible it is to expect that to have happened in such a short time.

Theres..actually a lot of places from GW1 that you can still go to, they are just ruins now..or completely gone.

The Link that Mithran posted is by far and away the best tool ever for lore seekers ^^

More places tha you'd think are actually very faithfully recreated. Have a look at Yak's Bend, and open your GW1 client at the same time! Check the Balthazar shrine in AB/The Falls. Swim through Sunken Droknah...Also, overlay Diessa Plateau & Iron Marches over Northlands/Great Northern Wall.

I am sad ToA is so changed, and that the Grenth Statue in Lornar's is so different, however.

500 years the continents change so I they can design it close.Even in our own world things change a lot in hundreds of years.As long as were getting fun content to play I'm happy.

Still, some areas are familiar to some extent Ascalon for example, but the land up around Grendich Courthouse not even 350 years or more and Dragons would that mountain bit sticking up would change, but I suppose some creative Freedom has been used on that area.

What I found puzzling was how much the Barradin Estate and the lands surrounding it changed and the fact in Post-Searing Ascalon in GW1 it was not accessible, but I suppose the makers had their reasons.

But there is 1 definitely improved thing in GW2 that was never in GW1 and that is you can actually swim in the water and walk or jump down a side of a tall hill and more movement freedom compared to GW1 those are improvements.

It would be nice if they opened the Tengu lands, as it was part of old Kryta in GW 1 (wishful thinking)

If I'm not mistaken someone already made an overlay of both game maps... anyone?

@Omar Aschi Popp.7496 said:If I'm not mistaken someone already made an overlay of both game maps... anyone?

MithranArkanere.8957 above my last post already linked it! Its by that_shaman

@Dante.1763 said:

@Omar Aschi Popp.7496 said:If I'm not mistaken someone already made an overlay of both game maps... anyone?

Oh sorry I didn't see all the posts. Was just excited to tell people.

The main reason is likely the change in engines. GW1 maps had to be smaller and had a wider variable in boundaries (not just cliffs but Even just fallen logs could act as a map boundary). Prophecies also required due to poor engine to have a cluttered view (lack of detailed distant art assets) which changed by Nightfall (hence why NF had bigger plains than Prophecies).

Being able to change this, they did. But they are also restricted in map boundaries due to jumping - a simple log or thicket of trees won't block players anymore.

There is also the fact that it's pretty darn hard to perfectly replicate 3d maps across different engines I'd bet. They might be able to get things similar but with gameplay so different, why?

The better question is why A net seems to think a mere 250 years is a long enough time to consider the gap ancient and leading everything to ruins.

Well, I suppose the gap could be wider, but there was that pesky Foefire incident in Ascalon which altered that landscape same for the rise of Orr ruining the Shiverpeaks, but what explanations are there for the loss of Piken Square and the Frontier Gate?

Wow I did not know that the latest Expansion accessed elona too!!! http://www.thatshaman.com/tools/guide/

Still the Map overlay makes my point about there being mountains where there were none in GW1

As someone on the old forums theorized years ago, perhaps there are multiple Tyrias scattered throughout the Mists, and the Tyria of GW2 is similar, but not the same, as the Tyria of the original game.

@Jaguar.9104 said:As a former player of Guild Wars 1 I find nothing familiar about the lands as they stand in Guild Wars 2. I understand that a few hundred years in the game has passed since Eye of the North Expansion Storyline and that things would have changed out in the Shiverpeaks and Kryta after the rise of Orr.

But what I find most disturbing is how different Ascalon looks, even with the Foefire incident the lads of Ascalon would not have changed so much, the land up around Grendich Courthouse would not have lost it's large mountain that stood in front of it in GW1. Evolution is understandable and so are changes, but areas that did not have mountains in GW1 now has mountains, as I said change in a game story is understandable but a total reworking of the lands of Tyria was not a good idea IMHO.

IT would have been better to keep the lands like they were in GW1 and expand and adjust for some mining, dragons and the rise of Orr and the flooding that followed, changes happen over time even during the timeline of GW2, but never as drastic as what GW2 looks like. This is my only issue with GW2 that the lands are too alien compared to what they were.

Anet doesn't seem to value their lore. Wooden Potatoes has a video where he mentions a lot of the changes Anet has made not only to the geography but to the stories as well, retconning things left and right. Anet is teaching us a lesson that we shouldn't care about what we're playing in GW2 because they will probably only go on to change it also at some point. And Anet has already shown us that they don't care about many of the characters and stories they've introduced in GW2 by completely dropping them even if they are important. Instead Anet decided it was more important to write a story like "The Commander is forced to join the Shining Blade to prove his loyalty!? (no matter how stupid an idea it is for your race)". Just goes to show that there is no accounting for taste.

It's only been 255 years, though , and while geography does change to a degree, it won't change that dramatically in that period of time without something massive. I assume Ascalon looks so different as a result of what happened to it, things crumbled, shifted, etc afterwards because of the sheer enormity of what took place. In the real world, if you go somewhere where something historic happened two centuries ago, things like mountains and cliff-sides are still there, because they're too monumentally big to just disappear. The main difference you can assume to have happened would be overgrowth/vegetation/etc because any sort of significant geographical shift takes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. Another added explanation could be that between the Charr settling in the area, and the humans re-settling half of it as a part of the peace treaty, they've probably caused changes to take place because of needing to build. That's what I'm going with.

Still Mountains in places that were not in Guild Wars 1 is stretching things, flora growth and small land changes due to mining is understandable, even the total destruction of the Ascalonian City Ruins can be explained with the Foe Fire. How come a Moutain can replace hills and flat area in 255 years? As it has been mentioned over eons maybe, but 255 Years and the mountains magically where there were none in GW1, very strange.