Sun's Refuge Speculation

Just wanting to gather opinions on the subject. I like the idea of this being a repurposed Sunspear Sanctuary from GW1, but I have read a lot of people who are calling for it to be player housing or the like. My initial thought on this would be that Sun's Refuge is a guild hall. Not any guild hall though, but Dragon Watch's guild hall, with the Commander obviously in charge of everything inside of it given that he is the guild leader. This would set the instance apart from the Home Instance, as there is story-sense for Dragon's Watch needing their own base of operations, while it could still fill the player housing niche as the Commander would be fully in charge of the hall.

By the sounds of it, Sun's Refuge is going to be what ArenaNet originally wanted home instances to be. Not player housing or solo guild halls, but a combination of the Command Post and Hall of Monuments from GW1. The first was a place where story NPCs idled, for the sake of atmosphere or for quest involvement, and service NPCs could be added through various quests. The Hall of Monuments was effectively a place to show off trophies obtained from various achievements and activities (and where story NPCs idled for atmosphere and quests).

I imagine the Sun's Refuge will be much the same. We'll have our Dragon's Watch and friends all idling in there by default, and there may be some achievements that include talking to them there, and we'll be able to get various vendors, trophies, and perhaps nodes via achievements both in Episode 4 and future releases. Perhaps even home instance nodes added retroactively.

Sounds like a stepping stone to housing for xpac 3, or distantish future - get feedback from it, and maybe do more of it too

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:I imagine the Sun's Refuge will be much the same. We'll have our Dragon's Watch and friends all idling in there by default, and there may be some achievements that include talking to them there.

Huh, now that gets me thinking they could do some RPG-style companion side quests.

I wonder if it'll be tied to a particular LW release? It's not that they haven't tied rewards to specific chapters before. For instance, you can't get the beetle without episode 3, but if they keep adding to it over the next season or two, then it'll be awkward if somebody missed the episode it was released in. I suppose anyone could just go buy the episode, though.

Even during my times of inactivty, I've always logged in every few months to catch the story episodes. The idea of not catching them didn't even occur to me as a possibility. That said, I didn't mean to say that the instance would be a personal guild hall, so much as I think it's lore function is probably to be the guild hall for Dragon's Watch, or at least that is what I think would be a fun idea. The game functionality then would still be more along the lines of a new player-home instance, probably.

@Ceit.7619 said:Not any guild hall though, but Dragon Watch's guild hall, with the Commander obviously in charge of everything inside of it given that he is the guild leader. This would set the instance apart from the Home Instance, as there is story-sense for Dragon's Watch needing their own base of operations, while it could still fill the player housing niche as the Commander would be fully in charge of the hall.

Given the NPCs we see there in the preview- the dozen characters in Sunspear gear- not to mention the decor- the very prominent Sunspear banners and the statue of Kormir- I feel fairly confident saying we're not going to be building it up for our guild's personal use, at least not primarily.

Besides, Dragon's Watch consists of, what, eight people if you count Canach? Ten with the brothers Taimi's picked up? Even stretching it to twelve if you assume we'll pick up Caithe and Zojja in the near future, what would we need with a cave that size?

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Ceit.7619 said:Not any guild hall though, but Dragon Watch's guild hall, with the Commander obviously in charge of everything inside of it given that he is the guild leader. This would set the instance apart from the Home Instance, as there is story-sense for Dragon's Watch needing their own base of operations, while it could still fill the player housing niche as the Commander would be fully in charge of the hall.

All the storage for all the LOOT we get, what else?! I for one welcome my new cafe so i can sit on a pile of unid greens and blues :D

It’d be neat if they included your origin NPCs in the Refuge somehow. Deborah, your asura krewe, Charr warband, etc. I don’t know how they’d get there story-wise unless they join DW though.

I hope it isn't a gold sink and has some customizability to it. I definitely don't have high expectations though. I imagine everything is predetermined like Guild Halls in terms of layout and building style. May not even be decorations, especially if there are a lot of npc's in this thing. Because if there is any pathing going on with the npc's and there are unlockable ones, decoration placement may cause issues. But who knows. I for one didn't find the Sunspear Sanctuary in Guild Wars 1 to be anything other than a hole in the ground with some oddly placed ruined structures and obelisks and didn't even notice that I was unlocking more stuff other than picking up quests every now and then. I hope the aesthetic is a little more interesting this time around, and judging by some of the pictures I think parts of it might be.

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Ceit.7619 said:Not any guild hall though, but Dragon Watch's guild hall, with the Commander obviously in charge of everything inside of it given that he is the guild leader. This would set the instance apart from the Home Instance, as there is story-sense for Dragon's Watch needing their own base of operations, while it could still fill the player housing niche as the Commander would be fully in charge of the hall.

Canach, if he still isn't an official member yet (I think that is still the case) may as well be considered one. Although he says he wants to enjoy his freedom for a bit before hitching his wagon to a new group, he is probably been the most dependable and present member. I think he is probably with you on a per mission basis after he 'refuses' to join more often than any actual member of the team.

I'll always save a spot at the table for him, official member or not he is core to the guild's success. Honorary member no matter what.

EDIT- I don't mean to derail the topic, I realised my post isn't that relevant to what you said, it just got me thinking about Canach's actual role in things.

@Moonyeti.3296 said:

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Ceit.7619 said:Not any guild hall though, but Dragon Watch's guild hall, with the Commander obviously in charge of everything inside of it given that he is the guild leader. This would set the instance apart from the Home Instance, as there is story-sense for Dragon's Watch needing their own base of operations, while it could still fill the player housing niche as the Commander would be fully in charge of the hall.

Nah, I get it, and I agree. He's one of my favorites too. I only called him out there in case the devs are planning on bringing his 'unattached' status up again.

I believe that Sun’s Refuge will only be one of a few future personal instanced areas. I don’t think it’ll be Dragon’s Watch’s guild hall only because I imagine that if (assuming Cantha is a future explorable continent) we ever go to Cantha Dragon’s Watch will want to establish a foothold there as well. So I see this more as maybe a trial to future player housing which has been in demand for a while now, or maybe a story based thing.

In PoF we found that the Gods have completely left Tyria which only leaves us with Dhuum unless the Gods had children or something. Maybe with Kormir gone the Commander takes up some sort of huge leadership role among the Sunspears? I mean he/she played a vital role in saving them from complete defeat as well as restoring them to their former strength if not actually stronger with the help of modern technology possibly being brought over to Elona from Tyria through trade and of course the Commander did bring the Sunspears the griffons and rebuilt the Vabbian Sunspear Sanctuary. Maybe the Sun’s Refuge is like it is in Guild Wars: Nightfall, a command hub where the Commander is, as said before, at the head of the command structure. Just a few ideas to throw out there.

@I Love Root Beer.1872 said:I believe that Sun’s Refuge will only be one of a few future personal instanced areas. I don’t think it’ll be Dragon’s Watch’s guild hall only because I imagine that if (assuming Cantha is a future explorable continent) we ever go to Cantha Dragon’s Watch will want to establish a foothold there as well. So I see this more as maybe a trial to future player housing which has been in demand for a while now, or maybe a story based thing.

In PoF we found that the Gods have completely left Tyria which only leaves us with Dhuum unless the Gods had children or something. Maybe with Kormir gone the Commander takes up some sort of huge leadership role among the Sunspears? I mean he/she played a vital role in saving them from complete defeat as well as restoring them to their former strength if not actually stronger with the help of modern technology possibly being brought over to Elona from Tyria through trade and of course the Commander did bring the Sunspears the griffons and rebuilt the Vabbian Sunspear Sanctuary. Maybe the Sun’s Refuge is like it is in Guild Wars: Nightfall, a command hub where the Commander is, as said before, at the head of the command structure. Just a few ideas to throw out there.

Ooh I really like the idea of the commander leading the sunspears until a suitable elonian leader is found, even if it’s only one episode

@Fenom.9457 said:Ooh I really like the idea of the commander leading the sunspears until a suitable elonian leader is found, even if it’s only one episodeThe Sunspears already have a leader, its Spearmarshal Zaeim.

Really, what we need to do is get Zaeim and his Istani Sunspears in contact with the older Sunspears we brought to the Vabbian Sunspear Sanctuary as part of the griffon collection. First Spear Kitur is the one who trained Zaeim, and he seems to have taken a leadership role among the Sunspears in the Vabbi base. Zaeim also mentions he has plans to go to Vehtendi Academy, and recruit some of the rebellions students there to make them Sunspears.

It would be nice to see him having done that, and adding those forces to the ones from Istan led by Zaeim, brining the Sunspears back together as one order.