It's Time For Us To Ascend

I've been playing a lot of the original Guild Wars lately on top of playing Guild Wars 2... and I believe we really need Ascension fractals. Or a really long fractal. It could start with Thirsty River, where we'll destroy the teams of veteran and champion Forgotten and their champion priests with the resurrection mechanic brought back for a challenge and a final legendary Forgotten boss added in for an end boss. No long windup through sand giants and other unimportant enemies, just arenas connected by portals or jumping puzzles. Then we reclaim Turai Ossa's throne in Dunes of Despair starting with a legendary boss fight against the enemy ghostly hero who has taken his throne. Then would be the wave defense followed by the three Forgotten generals (from the bonus... or all five of them) as legendary end bosses. Then to Elona Reach to find the vision crystals using a mechanic like the one in the Deepstone fractal where we teleport back after finding the vision crystal pieces ending with a final fight against Turai Ossa himself to prove our worth. And finally, the doppleganger fight. The mechanics are already in place from the Augury Rock meta in the Crystal Desert.

Honestly, I'd love to be able to relive ALL of the content in GW1 through GW2, but at least these iconic memories from Prophecies could translate pretty well into some fractals.

For those of you reading this thread: If you haven't played the original Guild Wars, I highly recommend it. The Ascension missions start at a part where you feel lost and hopeless from the events in the mission before and from the fact that the game doesn't give you a primary quest to waypoint you to each of the three trials. You either wiki it or follow vague directions on a journey to each mission in the vast desert full of hydras that look like they have one head when you see them from the side. [i only bring that up because I honestly thought they only had one head because I'd only ever seen them from the side, which I thought was hilarious.]

Plus you can also visit the Jade Sea in Cantha, and we don't have that in GW2... yet. Seriously, I hope Kralkatorrik decides to fly off to Cantha to corrupt the Jade Sea into a full on mess of Branded creatures. Now that would be scary.

EDIT: TL;DR I want to see the original Ascension missions recreated as a series of fractals (not necessarily a 1:1 perfect recreation). The intention is NOT to have our GW2 characters achieve Ascension but to be able to relive these missions inside GW2.

Looks to me like a raid and not a fractal. For fractal its way too long (so if it is daily then time for dailies change alot)

Ascension in profecy is like 4 story missions, I think it's kinda difficult to make a single fractal out of it. On another hand, "closer to the star" which is another kind of ascension might be easier to introduce as a fractal.

GW's story missions are often epic and most of them could be translated into fractals in GW2 (I'm not saying raid because raids exist in the same timeline as GW2, while fractals transcend space and time... Thought they could very well add fractal raids wings for all I know)

didn't we mock ascend in season 2?

We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Ascension in profecy is like 4 story missions, I think it's kinda difficult to make a single fractal out of it. On another hand, "closer to the star" which is another kind of ascension might be easier to introduce as a fractal.

GW's story missions are often epic and most of them could be translated into fractals in GW2 (I'm not saying raid because raids exist in the same timeline as GW2, while fractals transcend space and time... Thought they could very well add fractal raids wings for all I know)

Fractal version of ascension would be dopelganger boss fight.

We never had a reason to ascend in the story line.The gods are gone, Mursaat are dead. Two class mechanic will never come.We will likely never have a reason to ascend.Please don't ask to add pointless things to the story only because you like the sound of it. Also we recreated the process in the last episode of LS2.

Doppelganger exists as a meta event.

@Lonami.2987 said:We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

Well, you know, ascension became less and less important as Guild Wars 1 progressed as well. It was four missions in Prophecies and a huge deal. It was a single mission in Factions. It was a short easy quest in Nightfall. They didn't even call it ascension even though it had all the same perks as ascending in the other games, including switching your secondary profession.

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

I think we need to differentiate mechanical choices and consistency an story aspects.

I added a TL;DR to the original post. To sum it up, I am not saying we need a story reason to achieve Ascension. I am saying the Ascension missions would make good fractals.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Ascension in profecy is like 4 story missions, I think it's kinda difficult to make a single fractal out of it. On another hand, "closer to the star" which is another kind of ascension might be easier to introduce as a fractal.

GW's story missions are often epic and most of them could be translated into fractals in GW2 (I'm not saying raid because raids exist in the same timeline as GW2, while fractals transcend space and time... Thought they could very well add fractal raids wings for all I know)

I agree with the idea of making Nahpui Quarter a fractal as well. It would be entertaining to see how GW2 players handle the extra mobs from killing each boss.

EDIT: Yes, that means the title is 100% clickbait. I apologize.

@Timarius.2895 said:I added a TL;DR to the original post. To sum it up, I am not saying we need a story reason to achieve Ascension. I am saying the Ascension missions would make good fractals.

eeeeh... I don't know. They would be similar to deepstone, so dungeon-style maps with lots of trash skipping and bad bosses. I don't like this idea at all.

But... Shiro fight from Factions finale? That's fractal boss material.

I had an idea about adding all of the gw1 missions into gw2 as a "bonus mission pack" like the original game had for historic content but the forum people said if you want to play gw1 missions, play gw1. And they are not wrong, gw1 is still going and putting those missions in gw2 would stagnant gw1 population growth more, if that's even possible.

@segman.3560 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

I think after doing it twice, Anet decided it was a story aspect that didn't need to be completed and they moved away from it. Doing the same thing again and again in different formats doesn't really make sense, particularly if you could get the same ability/results from just capturing the Sunspear Sanctuary.

More to the point, storywise ascension makes even less sense. Ascending, in the original sense, was something to do with the gods, but they're absented themselves, and getting the eyes of the gods to be upon us, for example, is so Guild Wars 1. We're beyond that now, or should be.

@Vayne.8563 said:

@segman.3560 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

I actually was not expecting "Sun's Refuge" to be the Sunspear Sanctuary and was furious when I combed all of Jahai for the refuge before moving the story forward. Honestly this entire thread comes from me seeing fractals as their lore has them, little bits of reconstructed time and space. There's no reason we couldn't have a fractal where we fight the Armageddon Lords then Vizier Khalbron. There's no reason we can't have the Ascension missions as fractals, or a fractal raid. I don't want to see a 1:1 perfect recreation of these scenes, but the distorted reflections that fractals are. These are just points in the GW1 storyline that are memorable and could be brought into a new light in fractals.

@Timarius.2895 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@segman.3560 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:We should have ascended during PoF's storyline. Huge wasted opportunity there, but I guess Ascension is no longer important anyway.

I have no problem putting stuff in Fractals historically. I do have a problem ascending in the Living World because it makes no sense, that's all. Fractals are fine for historical events.