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About the Charr victim complex, and Anet's hatred for Ascalon


witcher.3197

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You can't assign absolute moralities to a culture, though. Morality is always relative to the culture or individual holding those morals. You, and the society you come from, might consider Pizza On Pineapple to be a grave sin, worthy of punishment by death. The people over the Cola-ocean consider Pineapple to be the most Sacred of Pizza Toppings, and those who oppose Pineappling Pizza to be hideous subhuman monsters, to be shunned and slain with no guilt. The moment you start going forcing your moral viewpoint onto a different culture, you open up a huge wormy can labeled "Moral Philosophy and Ethics", and then your problems REALLY start, because then you're into some seriously dense literature.

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I think my primary issue with that Konig is how Pyre Fierceshot and his Warband frame the event as well as how they considered humans around them. They weren't a terribly empathetic group of people to say the least, one of them confusing the Ascendants for Pyres slaves at first and generally just despising humanity above and beyond even how humans viewed them in turn. Pyre spoke of the Searing with pride, and it's little wonder since Vatlaaw Doomtooh was his father and a scout who had a hand in making the Searing possible. Now i'm unsure how much Charr actually know about Bonfaaz Burntfur, his history could be heavily embellished for all I know to remove the bit about the Searing, but he is idolized and few Charr that i'v seen express any kind of remorse or fault over the event in either game.

Leads me to believe that while yes, the Shaman Caste was deceiving the Charr about the nature of their gods, the Charr were more angry about that then anything they visited upon anyone else.

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@witcher.3197 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.
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@RyuDragnier.9476 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:While we have your attention, do you mind clarifying the nature of the ruins for Cathedral of Flames and The Ooze Pits? In GW1, it was never truly clarified what those structures' origins were (CoF housed spoils from Ascalon, Ooze Pits had a Grenth mural, but all dungeons used a mixture of art assets, and only the Catacombs of Kathandrax was given origin lore: dwarven). When delving through, best guess I could gather was that Cathedral of Flames was charr-made (and, alongside Rragar's Menagerie, the only stone structures of theirs). For GW2, it seems you gave them Ascalonian ruins, but it's unclear if they were built there by humans (if so, why build underground?) or ruins taken by the charr (perhaps as part of the spoils of war), or it's just a case of "generic ruins" being used (wouldn't be the first time Ascalonian ruins got used as generic ruins)?I actually asked about the lore on Cathedral of Flames just yesterday. Doesn't seem to be much of anything on it, and I really want to know why it's there, who made it, and what was it used for (outside of the weapon depository, I mean).

It's my headcannon from reading the Tyrian timeline and lore, that CoF was built by the Ascalonians (probably also during the time they were building the Great Northern Wall, in a 900 year period), given that the ghosts that are fighting the charr (and you) are human: Murakai, her Steward. The Master, and others. After taking Ascalon from the Charr, they built the complex to store their treasures, then when the Charr recovered that land, they killed all within, and are faced with outraged ghosts. The Master Dungeon guide has only this to say about Cof:

  • Once freed, Pyre's warband sacked the cathedral, looking for anything of value. In their search, they unearthed a blocked passage. Clearing the debris revealed a stash of treasure plundered from Ascalonian ruins... but there was more. The spirits of those slain for these spoils of war had attached themselves to the treasure, haunting the vaults. Worse yet, a powerful Necromancer named Murakai dwelt among them. She used the creatures' unliving essence to create a storm of souls, which she planned to unleash upon human and Charr alike. It fell to us to lay these disembodied spirits to rest and to suspend Murakai's wrath, if only for a time.
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@Sylum.1806 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.

To go along with the last bit said here the humans ARE the evil, They and their gods are 100% the cause of almost all the major conflicts and turmoil on tyria. They committed GENOCIDE pf the "Lesser" races for not being like them, and have led conquest after conquest. We only saw their narrative In GW1 but in the further lore, the story goes that when they came here they followed balthazar (A psychopath) to conquer the world. The humans are JUST as xenophobic as the charr are, and frankly I feel the charr are one of the few who have the rite to be. They've been hunted and when they fought back, they found the humans had gods on their side ones who ONLY cared about the well being of the humans. I don't believe balthazar ever changed but that we saw him differently because for the first time, our views and purpose did not align with his.

Im a norn player because of what they were in guild wars 1, the humans not being favorites here? Really. They've been center stage the entire game and litterally have had so many redemption arcs within this story alone. They are becoming fast friends with iron, ash and to some extent blood legion and we even have blood brothers forming from soliders who fight together (See logan and Rytlock.) Looking at the larger narrative the charr are basically a lot like the humans, both worshiped powers beyond them and both got scorned. The charr chose to industrialize and focus on weapons of war, they chose to grow while humans still cling to the Six whom of which are some of the most evil beings in the setting. The tales of them do not speak of fond happy times, they speak of how cruel they could and would be and how the humans were merely their "Play-things".

Lyssa came and convinced men to fight only to die~ Rather then aid them, or even warn them.Balthazar willingly consumed the souls of his fallen, and tormented those he deemed "Cowardly".Melandru killed a mans son, for killing a creature that had harmed him and then left him for dead.Dwayana DROVE PEOPLE MAD, by her shear appearance and presence.Abbadon held secrets, and Kormir continued in his legacy as well denied us any help regardless of if we needed it.

Grenth is the only one to show compassion and even mercy out of all of them, though even then he still claimed the life of a woman who murdered her abusive lech of a husband for all he had done to her and her children. So looking at the humans religion, their way of life and the ideas they come from and how they believe they are superior to ALL the other races INCLUDING the norn/charr/asura/sylvari I would say the charr were the victims. But due to their primal nature they retaliated and decided to wage war; The norn and asuran we hadn't met yet and the sylvari had yet to be born. Im sure that had the humans met the norn prior to the events that transpired when they got here the outcome would be much the same. But I believe the norn would of killed them all because the spirits in my eyes are stronger than the gods, the spirits fought jormag when the gods wouldn't even try. Kormir even stated that the dragons were STRONGER than the six which is why they wouldn't fight, because should one of them fall the outcome would be catastrophic.

The story isn't about who was the victim though, or who was the winner. The story is about two groups of people and two differing species setting aside their differences and coming to realize they aren't that different. The story is a redemption for both of them and a new chapter for them, one well executed and one that has been going since we met Pyre for the first time in Eye of the north. If you still can't see that neither side was the villain fully and neither side won much of anything, rather they lost tons of lives and even almost collapsed as civilizations you are either willfully ignorant to the purpose of the tale or choose to pick a side on the opposite end of a line no one drew in the first place.

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@CETheLucid.3964 said:I've been down this road with some folks back on the old forums. Some people are outright religious about the events of Ascalon from GW1. I'm not sure if they're role playing or they have a legitimate fanaticism about it half the time.

Gonna go out on a limb and suggest these people are projecting their own real-world ethno-centric righteousness and frustrations into the game lore.

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I mean to be perfectly blunt, if saying 'Slavery is bad' and 'creating nations with power systems that serve as fertile grounds for Fascism is something we should generally avoid' is ethno-centric then i'm perfectly comfortable with the label. People seem to be under this belief that purely because the United States, Great Britan, France, Russia, Mongolia, the Roman Empire, etc built their nations on oceans of blood then one shouldn't impose their values on other nations, fictional or real, because they have no room to talk. That seems, frankly, insane. If you're unable to critique something, culture included, then it just gives people a free pass to do virtually anything under the guise of subjective morality.

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@"Loesh.4697" said:I mean to be perfectly blunt, if saying 'Slavery is bad' and 'creating nations with power systems that serve as fertile grounds for Fascism is something we should generally avoid' is ethno-centric then i'm perfectly comfortable with the label. People seem to be under this belief that purely because the United States, Great Britan, France, Russia, Mongolia, the Roman Empire, etc built their nations on oceans of blood then one shouldn't impose their values on other nations, fictional or real, because they have no room to talk. That seems, frankly, insane. If you're unable to critique something, culture included, then it just gives people a free pass to do virtually anything under the guise of subjective morality.

U can argue that today fascism will cause trouble, but hardly will succedd with that in 30's where only 15% of world population lived in "democracy" and all that democracies applied "discriminatory" rules to allow someone to vote. Switzerland for example, only allowed woman to vote on 1971, thats just 48 years ago.

To be clear is what anachronism means: u cant argue where best soccer teams was in 1200 because theres no soccer teams in XIII century to someone who lived at time argue whos is the best. In the same way in 30s some variation of authoritarian regime was the rule.

In fantasy world narrative, if the writters made use of anachronism, its lead to a The Flintstones like narrative, when portrait peoples of other eras/worlds just like "our modern people" with only difference that they use a stone club instead of a computer, of course some anachronism is unavoidable, otherwise the history will be boring, for example people marring by choice, if they just write the history like "in real world was" theres will no romantic couples, just arranged marriages.

When people argue whos have right to owner Ascalon or charr are 'violent' was the case anachronism, Tyrians simply dont bother much with that, thats because much of Tyria is inspired in various of our ancient cultures. In the past the ownership of city/state/region sometimes was decided even in a duel! not in the base of "whos put the feet first here".

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@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.

To go along with the last bit said here the humans ARE the evil, They and their gods are 100% the cause of almost all the major conflicts and turmoil on tyria. They committed GENOCIDE pf the "Lesser" races for not being like them, and have led conquest after conquest. We only saw their narrative In GW1 but in the further lore, the story goes that when they came here they followed balthazar (A psychopath) to conquer the world. The humans are JUST as xenophobic as the charr are, and frankly I feel the charr are one of the few who have the rite to be. They've been hunted and when they fought back, they found the humans had gods on their side ones who ONLY cared about the well being of the humans. I don't believe balthazar ever changed but that we saw him differently because for the first time, our views and purpose did not align with his.

Im a norn player because of what they were in guild wars 1, the humans not being favorites here? Really. They've been center stage the entire game and litterally have had so many redemption arcs within this story alone. They are becoming fast friends with iron, ash and to some extent blood legion and we even have blood brothers forming from soliders who fight together (See logan and Rytlock.) Looking at the larger narrative the charr are basically a lot like the humans, both worshiped powers beyond them and both got scorned. The charr chose to industrialize and focus on weapons of war, they chose to grow while humans still cling to the Six whom of which are some of the most evil beings in the setting. The tales of them do not speak of fond happy times, they speak of how cruel they could and would be and how the humans were merely their "Play-things".

Lyssa came and convinced men to fight only to die~ Rather then aid them, or even warn them.Balthazar willingly consumed the souls of his fallen, and tormented those he deemed "Cowardly".Melandru killed a mans son, for killing a creature that had harmed him and then left him for dead.Dwayana DROVE PEOPLE MAD, by her shear appearance and presence.Abbadon held secrets, and Kormir continued in his legacy as well denied us any help regardless of if we needed it.

Grenth is the only one to show compassion and even mercy out of all of them, though even then he still claimed the life of a woman who murdered her abusive lech of a husband for all he had done to her and her children. So looking at the humans religion, their way of life and the ideas they come from and how they believe they are superior to ALL the other races INCLUDING the norn/charr/asura/sylvari I would say the charr were the victims. But due to their primal nature they retaliated and decided to wage war; The norn and asuran we hadn't met yet and the sylvari had yet to be born. Im sure that had the humans met the norn prior to the events that transpired when they got here the outcome would be much the same. But I believe the norn would of killed them all because the spirits in my eyes are stronger than the gods, the spirits fought jormag when the gods wouldn't even try. Kormir even stated that the dragons were STRONGER than the six which is why they wouldn't fight, because should one of them fall the outcome would be catastrophic.

The story isn't about who was the victim though, or who was the winner. The story is about two groups of people and two differing species setting aside their differences and coming to realize they aren't that different. The story is a redemption for both of them and a new chapter for them, one well executed and one that has been going since we met Pyre for the first time in Eye of the north. If you still can't see that neither side was the villain fully and neither side won much of anything, rather they lost tons of lives and even almost collapsed as civilizations you are either willfully ignorant to the purpose of the tale or choose to pick a side on the opposite end of a line no one drew in the first place.

Actually... No.

The humans have not genocided "lesser races", give examples, don't just say it. On the other hand we know the charr HAVE during their time on Tyria.

Balthazar was not a psychopath, you're wrong, and he did change. We know this for a fact, that you deny it doesn't make it true.

The parables of the Gods you are referring to are just that, parables, and hardly proof that the Gods are bad and can be interpreted in benevolent ways, if they even happened.

  • Lyssa inspired those soldiers to fight regardless, that they died is irrelevant, she did not personally kill them, but she gave them the courage to fight and their contribution to the battle could have made the difference, but we don't know, and she certainly didn't have a hand in making sure each and every one of those soldiers die.
  • Balthazar consumed the soul of a singular coward so that cowardice could not further harm others, he took the coward's shame as his own.
  • Melandru did not kill anyone. There is no implication that she did. She was simply saying in that parable that animals killing humans and humans killing animals is the way of nature. That is not malicious and there's no implication she personally made sure the guy's family got eaten by wolves.
  • Same for Dwayna. She did not intentionally blind people, she did not intentionally make sure that a tree fell on a guys house after he denied someone refuge from a storm.
  • Secrets are not automatically bad, that's by far the most ridiculous of your statements.
  • The wife in question still committed murder.

So... No, everything you said was wrong. (Including Dragons being stronger than the Gods). The charr are not victims, and whilst I disagree with the OP's tone, he has a point.

It's all very well going on about the "Charr PoV" but the problem is that PoV has next to no redeeming qualities, even when it was touched on in the so-called human-centric GW1. The charr didn't rebel because they felt bad about what happened to the humans, they liked what happened to the humans, they rebelled against other charr because they were being controlled and tricked. This still doesn't make them the victims, because they still ultimately approved of the Searing and all the humans who died as a result of their war. (And continued to prosecute it even after they overthrew the Flame Legion, which should tell you all you need to know)

And not a single charr character has ever shown regret for what happened, whilst you see plenty of humans regretting the actions of their own race - Including, again, in the so-called human-centric GW1 (Rurik and Adelbern), where whilst the main characters and only playable race were humans, it still showcased just how bad humans can be.

Quite a few of the storylines in GW1 are about humans helping other races, as well, namely asura, dwarves and norn (AND EVEN CHARR), so I don't really see how the accusation that only a human PoV was espoused in GW1 holds water. Did the humans make war on the dwarves and norn? No they didn't. Did the charr? Yes, they did. There are significant differences in the characters of these two races and how they act towards the world they inhabit that people are willfully ignoring in favour of this charr apologist stance because they cannot possibly fathom the mighty, unbeatable charr having lost to the evil invading humans at one point in history.

People can gurn and moan about how the humans displaced the charr and centaur but I'm pretty sure the dwarves preferred to have the humans as neighbours over the charr, and I'm sure sylvari and asura in modern Tyria prefer to have humans as their closest other neighbours over vast tracts of lands owned by marauding, vicious centaurs. So there's some perspective for you.

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I cringed at these "this Races is more evil than my favorite Races" posts while i'm setting here and saw that both Races have committed atrocities at each other for too long, unfortunately it's just gonna keep going because elders alway talk about the future but send the young and promising to their death for their "fantasy land".

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I've seen people complain about the Charr no longer being faceless generic evil villains who just want to kill everything how many times now. Basically ever since GW2 launched, hell if I was around before I probably would have seen it with Eye of the North. And having gone back to play GW1, I legitimately do not get the big deal about pre-searing Ascalon. It's a tutorial zone. It's pretty generic medieval fantasy. I guess it sucks that it got messed up, but it's a video game tutorial that lasts maybe a few hours if you're not rushing it. How are people so attached to it? Are they that dedicated to their roleplay?

But beside the point, if you don't like the GW2 version of the lore, which has been fairly consistent since the launch of GW2 (and the novels too), why don't you go back to playing GW1 instead of making yourself mad about updated lore? The option's there. The servers are still up. The old 'lore' you love is still there. Old Ascalon, is still there. Go play that if you hate the GW2 lore so much when it's only been expanding concepts that have been around since launch (in this case, the idea that the Charr aren't just big bad evil dudes who want to take over the world but are a war-based culture who, despite the atrocities they've committed, have also been wronged in the past), not changing anything. They aren't "twisting the knife in the wound" by acknowledging that both sides of the Charr/Human war did some messed up stuff. Like, unironically if that's how you feel about this story I think you need to see a therapist, because this is not normal.

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@ugrakarma.9416 said:

@"Loesh.4697" said:I mean to be perfectly blunt, if saying 'Slavery is bad' and 'creating nations with power systems that serve as fertile grounds for Fascism is something we should generally avoid' is ethno-centric then i'm perfectly comfortable with the label. People seem to be under this belief that purely because the United States, Great Britan, France, Russia, Mongolia, the Roman Empire, etc built their nations on oceans of blood then one shouldn't impose their values on other nations, fictional or real, because they have no room to talk. That seems, frankly, insane. If you're unable to critique something, culture included, then it just gives people a free pass to do virtually anything under the guise of subjective morality.

U can argue that today fascism will cause trouble, but hardly will succedd with that in 30's where only 15% of world population lived in "democracy" and all that democracies applied "discriminatory" rules to allow someone to vote. Switzerland for example, only allowed woman to vote on 1971, thats just 48 years ago.

To be clear is what anachronism means: u cant argue where best soccer teams was in 1200 because theres no soccer teams in XIII century to someone who lived at time argue whos is the best. In the same way in 30s some variation of authoritarian regime was the rule.

In fantasy world narrative, if the writters made use of
anachronism
, its lead to a
The Flintstones
like narrative, when portrait peoples of other eras/worlds just like "our modern people" with only difference that they use a stone club instead of a computer, of course some anachronism is
unavoidable
, otherwise the history will be boring, for example people marring by choice, if they just write the history like "in real world was" theres will no romantic couples, just arranged marriages.

When people argue whos have right to owner Ascalon or charr are 'violent' was the case
anachronism
, Tyrians simply dont bother much with that, thats because much of Tyria is inspired in various of our ancient cultures. In the past the ownership of city/state/region sometimes was decided even in a duel! not in the base of "whos put the feet first here".

I actually disagree with this entirely just based on how the NPCs seem to talk, they all seem very modern, fairly modern in Guild Wars 1 even. That's something that isn't even true of the Charr themselves who are argue a right over Ascalon due to it's being their ancestral land. I think that in and of itself is in part why people are so critical of them, even by their own records they aren't the original owners but they like to pretend as such which makes them fit in much more closely with more modern societies as conquerors. Sure the idea's these nations were based on were old, but the actual ideas they expouse are not, with for example the Charr basically undergoing a female civil rights movement or transgender people being accepted in Lions Arch.

Both of those definitely weren't common for the time periods the setting draws upon, but hardly anyone blinks at them. To me Guild Wars was, if anything, deliberately forcing an anachronism to make us examine old cultures with modern eyes.

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@ThatOddOne.4387 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.

To go along with the last bit said here the humans ARE the evil, They and their gods are 100% the cause of almost all the major conflicts and turmoil on tyria. They committed GENOCIDE pf the "Lesser" races for not being like them, and have led conquest after conquest. We only saw their narrative In GW1 but in the further lore, the story goes that when they came here they followed balthazar (A psychopath) to conquer the world. The humans are JUST as xenophobic as the charr are, and frankly I feel the charr are one of the few who have the rite to be. They've been hunted and when they fought back, they found the humans had gods on their side ones who ONLY cared about the well being of the humans. I don't believe balthazar ever changed but that we saw him differently because for the first time, our views and purpose did not align with his.

Im a norn player because of what they were in guild wars 1, the humans not being favorites here? Really. They've been center stage the entire game and litterally have had so many redemption arcs within this story alone. They are becoming fast friends with iron, ash and to some extent blood legion and we even have blood brothers forming from soliders who fight together (See logan and Rytlock.) Looking at the larger narrative the charr are basically a lot like the humans, both worshiped powers beyond them and both got scorned. The charr chose to industrialize and focus on weapons of war, they chose to grow while humans still cling to the Six whom of which are some of the most evil beings in the setting. The tales of them do not speak of fond happy times, they speak of how cruel they could and would be and how the humans were merely their "Play-things".

Lyssa came and convinced men to fight only to die~ Rather then aid them, or even warn them.Balthazar willingly consumed the souls of his fallen, and tormented those he deemed "Cowardly".Melandru killed a mans son, for killing a creature that had harmed him and then left him for dead.Dwayana DROVE PEOPLE MAD, by her shear appearance and presence.Abbadon held secrets, and Kormir continued in his legacy as well denied us any help regardless of if we needed it.

Grenth is the only one to show compassion and even mercy out of all of them, though even then he still claimed the life of a woman who murdered her abusive lech of a husband for all he had done to her and her children. So looking at the humans religion, their way of life and the ideas they come from and how they believe they are superior to ALL the other races INCLUDING the norn/charr/asura/sylvari I would say the charr were the victims. But due to their primal nature they retaliated and decided to wage war; The norn and asuran we hadn't met yet and the sylvari had yet to be born. Im sure that had the humans met the norn prior to the events that transpired when they got here the outcome would be much the same. But I believe the norn would of killed them all because the spirits in my eyes are stronger than the gods, the spirits fought jormag when the gods wouldn't even try. Kormir even stated that the dragons were STRONGER than the six which is why they wouldn't fight, because should one of them fall the outcome would be catastrophic.

The story isn't about who was the victim though, or who was the winner. The story is about two groups of people and two differing species setting aside their differences and coming to realize they aren't that different. The story is a redemption for both of them and a new chapter for them, one well executed and one that has been going since we met Pyre for the first time in Eye of the north. If you still can't see that neither side was the villain fully and neither side won much of anything, rather they lost tons of lives and even almost collapsed as civilizations you are either willfully ignorant to the purpose of the tale or choose to pick a side on the opposite end of a line no one drew in the first place.

Actually... No.

The humans have not genocided "lesser races", give examples, don't just say it. On the other hand we know the charr HAVE during their time on Tyria.

Balthazar was not a psychopath, you're wrong, and he did change. We know this for a fact, that you deny it doesn't make it true.

The parables of the Gods you are referring to are just that, parables, and hardly proof that the Gods are bad and can be interpreted in benevolent ways, if they even happened.
  • Lyssa inspired those soldiers to fight regardless, that they died is irrelevant, she did not personally kill them, but she gave them the courage to fight and their contribution to the battle could have made the difference, but we don't know, and she certainly didn't have a hand in making sure each and every one of those soldiers die.
  • Balthazar consumed the soul of a singular coward so that cowardice could not further harm others, he took the coward's shame as his own.
  • Melandru did not kill anyone. There is no implication that she did. She was simply saying in that parable that animals killing humans and humans killing animals is the way of nature. That is not malicious and there's no implication she personally made sure the guy's family got eaten by wolves.
  • Same for Dwayna. She did not intentionally blind people, she did not intentionally make sure that a tree fell on a guys house after he denied someone refuge from a storm.
  • Secrets are not automatically bad, that's by far the most ridiculous of your statements.
  • The wife in question still committed murder.

So... No, everything you said was wrong. (Including Dragons being stronger than the Gods). The charr are not victims, and whilst I disagree with the OP's tone, he has a point.

It's all very well going on about the "Charr PoV" but the problem is that PoV has next to no redeeming qualities, even when it was touched on in the so-called human-centric GW1. The charr didn't rebel because they felt bad about what happened to the humans, they liked what happened to the humans, they rebelled against other charr because they were being controlled and tricked. This still doesn't make them the victims, because they still ultimately approved of the Searing and all the humans who died as a result of their war. (And continued to prosecute it even after they overthrew the Flame Legion, which should tell you all you need to know)

And not a single charr character has ever shown regret for what happened, whilst you see plenty of humans regretting the actions of their own race - Including, again, in the so-called human-centric GW1 (Rurik and Adelbern), where whilst the main characters and only playable race were humans, it still showcased just how bad humans can be.

Quite a few of the storylines in GW1 are about humans helping other races, as well, namely asura, dwarves and norn (AND EVEN CHARR), so I don't really see how the accusation that only a human PoV was espoused in GW1 holds water. Did the humans make war on the dwarves and norn? No they didn't. Did the charr? Yes, they did. There are significant differences in the characters of these two races and how they act towards the world they inhabit that people are willfully ignoring in favour of this charr apologist stance because they cannot possibly fathom the mighty, unbeatable charr having lost to the evil invading humans at one point in history.

People can gurn and moan about how the humans displaced the charr and centaur but I'm pretty sure the dwarves preferred to have the humans as neighbours over the charr, and I'm sure sylvari and asura in modern Tyria prefer to have humans as their closest other neighbours over vast tracts of lands owned by marauding, vicious centaurs. So there's some perspective for you.

King adelbern was Xenophobic, the canthans were xenophobic and as it turns out even the citizens of divinities reach share xenophobia. The charr do as well so literally they are the same in that respect and to say otherwise is ignorance. Kind Adelbern wanted no one but humans to live and keep ascalon, the Vizer sunk his ENTIRE nation and killed off its people in a "Im taking my ball and going home" moment.

Humans helping other races? Yes when it suited them, which is a parallel of how our species works in the real world. Most people don't do good unless they directly bennefit; The norn got help from the humans because the humans needed the norn. The dwarves only got help because they were needed durring prophecies and the stone summit were an enemy to both. In eye of the north the only reason the dwarves got involved was for the sake of killing their long time enemy the destroyers, The humans are NOT the victims of anything but their own hubris.

The gods a parallel to greek gods, they are neither good or evil but are whimsical. The ONLY RACE they care about are the humans, so when and if tyria goes to explode I promise the humans will be whisked away by their gods but the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves. They are generic fantasy drivel, frankly I actually would like to destroy the remnants of them because I loathe their existence by this point. They don't contribute much in the grand-scheme of things, we have magic users and technicians from charr and asuran respectively. We have warriors from charr and norn, whom would lore wise make more sense to be better fighters than the humans on sheer size and the fact they live harsher lives.

Just because your favorite race FOR ONCE is not the focus, doesn't mean you get to bash on the others. This is a norn and charr story at least until the saga concludes, enjoy it or move on until its done. I skipped most of PoF and only logged in to get the episodes; I played it later on to get to a point where I understood what was going on but Im so done with human centric crap that I can't be bothered to care. (Because its literally just the same old stuff with them.)

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@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.

To go along with the last bit said here the humans ARE the evil, They and their gods are 100% the cause of almost all the major conflicts and turmoil on tyria. They committed GENOCIDE pf the "Lesser" races for not being like them, and have led conquest after conquest. We only saw their narrative In GW1 but in the further lore, the story goes that when they came here they followed balthazar (A psychopath) to conquer the world. The humans are JUST as xenophobic as the charr are, and frankly I feel the charr are one of the few who have the rite to be. They've been hunted and when they fought back, they found the humans had gods on their side ones who ONLY cared about the well being of the humans. I don't believe balthazar ever changed but that we saw him differently because for the first time, our views and purpose did not align with his.

Im a norn player because of what they were in guild wars 1, the humans not being favorites here? Really. They've been center stage the entire game and litterally have had so many redemption arcs within this story alone. They are becoming fast friends with iron, ash and to some extent blood legion and we even have blood brothers forming from soliders who fight together (See logan and Rytlock.) Looking at the larger narrative the charr are basically a lot like the humans, both worshiped powers beyond them and both got scorned. The charr chose to industrialize and focus on weapons of war, they chose to grow while humans still cling to the Six whom of which are some of the most evil beings in the setting. The tales of them do not speak of fond happy times, they speak of how cruel they could and would be and how the humans were merely their "Play-things".

Lyssa came and convinced men to fight only to die~ Rather then aid them, or even warn them.Balthazar willingly consumed the souls of his fallen, and tormented those he deemed "Cowardly".Melandru killed a mans son, for killing a creature that had harmed him and then left him for dead.Dwayana DROVE PEOPLE MAD, by her shear appearance and presence.Abbadon held secrets, and Kormir continued in his legacy as well denied us any help regardless of if we needed it.

Grenth is the only one to show compassion and even mercy out of all of them, though even then he still claimed the life of a woman who murdered her abusive lech of a husband for all he had done to her and her children. So looking at the humans religion, their way of life and the ideas they come from and how they believe they are superior to ALL the other races INCLUDING the norn/charr/asura/sylvari I would say the charr were the victims. But due to their primal nature they retaliated and decided to wage war; The norn and asuran we hadn't met yet and the sylvari had yet to be born. Im sure that had the humans met the norn prior to the events that transpired when they got here the outcome would be much the same. But I believe the norn would of killed them all because the spirits in my eyes are stronger than the gods, the spirits fought jormag when the gods wouldn't even try. Kormir even stated that the dragons were STRONGER than the six which is why they wouldn't fight, because should one of them fall the outcome would be catastrophic.

The story isn't about who was the victim though, or who was the winner. The story is about two groups of people and two differing species setting aside their differences and coming to realize they aren't that different. The story is a redemption for both of them and a new chapter for them, one well executed and one that has been going since we met Pyre for the first time in Eye of the north. If you still can't see that neither side was the villain fully and neither side won much of anything, rather they lost tons of lives and even almost collapsed as civilizations you are either willfully ignorant to the purpose of the tale or choose to pick a side on the opposite end of a line no one drew in the first place.

Actually... No.

The humans have not genocided "lesser races", give examples, don't just say it. On the other hand we know the charr HAVE during their time on Tyria.

Balthazar was not a psychopath, you're wrong, and he did change. We know this for a fact, that you deny it doesn't make it true.

The parables of the Gods you are referring to are just that, parables, and hardly proof that the Gods are bad and can be interpreted in benevolent ways, if they even happened.
  • Lyssa inspired those soldiers to fight regardless, that they died is irrelevant, she did not personally kill them, but she gave them the courage to fight and their contribution to the battle could have made the difference, but we don't know, and she certainly didn't have a hand in making sure each and every one of those soldiers die.
  • Balthazar consumed the soul of a singular coward so that cowardice could not further harm others, he took the coward's shame as his own.
  • Melandru did not kill anyone. There is no implication that she did. She was simply saying in that parable that animals killing humans and humans killing animals is the way of nature. That is not malicious and there's no implication she personally made sure the guy's family got eaten by wolves.
  • Same for Dwayna. She did not intentionally blind people, she did not intentionally make sure that a tree fell on a guys house after he denied someone refuge from a storm.
  • Secrets are not automatically bad, that's by far the most ridiculous of your statements.
  • The wife in question still committed murder.

So... No, everything you said was wrong. (Including Dragons being stronger than the Gods). The charr are not victims, and whilst I disagree with the OP's tone, he has a point.

It's all very well going on about the "Charr PoV" but the problem is that PoV has next to no redeeming qualities, even when it was touched on in the so-called human-centric GW1. The charr didn't rebel because they felt bad about what happened to the humans, they liked what happened to the humans, they rebelled against other charr because they were being controlled and tricked. This still doesn't make them the victims, because they still ultimately approved of the Searing and all the humans who died as a result of their war. (And continued to prosecute it even after they overthrew the Flame Legion, which should tell you all you need to know)

And not a single charr character has ever shown regret for what happened, whilst you see plenty of humans regretting the actions of their own race - Including, again, in the so-called human-centric GW1 (Rurik and Adelbern), where whilst the main characters and only playable race were humans, it still showcased just how bad humans can be.

Quite a few of the storylines in GW1 are about humans helping other races, as well, namely asura, dwarves and norn (AND EVEN CHARR), so I don't really see how the accusation that only a human PoV was espoused in GW1 holds water. Did the humans make war on the dwarves and norn? No they didn't. Did the charr? Yes, they did. There are significant differences in the characters of these two races and how they act towards the world they inhabit that people are willfully ignoring in favour of this charr apologist stance because they cannot possibly fathom the mighty, unbeatable charr having lost to the evil invading humans at one point in history.

People can gurn and moan about how the humans displaced the charr and centaur but I'm pretty sure the dwarves preferred to have the humans as neighbours over the charr, and I'm sure sylvari and asura in modern Tyria prefer to have humans as their closest other neighbours over vast tracts of lands owned by marauding, vicious centaurs. So there's some perspective for you.

King adelbern was Xenophobic, the canthans were xenophobic and as it turns out even the citizens of divinities reach share xenophobia. The charr do as well so literally they are the same in that respect and to say otherwise is ignorance. Kind Adelbern wanted no one but humans to live and keep ascalon, the Vizer sunk his ENTIRE nation and killed off its people in a "Im taking my ball and going home" moment.

Humans helping other races? Yes when it suited them, which is a parallel of how our species works in the real world. Most people don't do good unless they directly bennefit; The norn got help from the humans because the humans needed the norn. The dwarves only got help because they were needed durring prophecies and the stone summit were an enemy to both. In eye of the north the only reason the dwarves got involved was for the sake of killing their long time enemy the destroyers, The humans are NOT the victims of anything but their own hubris.

The gods a parallel to greek gods, they are neither good or evil but are whimsical. The ONLY RACE they care about are the humans, so when and if tyria goes to explode I promise the humans will be whisked away by their gods but the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves. They are generic fantasy drivel, frankly I actually would like to destroy the remnants of them because I loathe their existence by this point. They don't contribute much in the grand-scheme of things, we have magic users and technicians from charr and asuran respectively. We have warriors from charr and norn, whom would lore wise make more sense to be better fighters than the humans on sheer size and the fact they live harsher lives.

Just because your favorite race FOR ONCE is not the focus, doesn't mean you get to bash on the others. This is a norn and charr story at least until the saga concludes, enjoy it or move on until its done. I skipped most of PoF and only logged in to get the episodes; I played it later on to get to a point where I understood what was going on but Im so done with human centric kitten that I can't be bothered to care. (Because its literally just the same old stuff with them.)

So you’re just petty and narrowminded, right.

For the record even a cursory glance of this forum will tell you that I like that charr and norn are getting some attention, I just don’t buy into the narrative that the charr are sympathetic at all.

Just pray ArenaNet don’t treat the norn spirits of the wild like they did the human gods, which is a very real concern I have.

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Candidly Thornwolf, the way you describe things just seems like Witcher but in the opposite direction, and also with less basis in lore. King Adelbern was Xenophobic and the Canthans were Xenophobic certainly, but to say the entire nation of the Charr being Xenophobic and culturally built from the ground up be Xenophobic is comparable to either example is disingenuous at best. There a Hereditary Dynasty that masquerades as a Meirtocracy with a heavy emphasis on Charr exceptionalism and millitary conquest, to say that is the same as a human absolute monarchy with bits of Oligarchy incorporated in it is apples and oranges.

Saying 'humans only do good things when it suits them' in either fiction OR real life is nonsensical, the fabrication of Nihilists who have trouble grasping the concept of altruism even exists because from their viewpoint their modern world and all of history is just a reductive series of power plays where empathy does not exist. Humans in Tyria deeply value compassion, honor, and valor with many devoting their entire lives to the betterment of other people. While that isn't impossible in Charr culture, their values certainly emphasize that those are not traits to be favored. Humans have a culture of vulnerability, Charr have a culture of strength.

Also your whole assertion about the gods only caring about humanity is instantly disproven by the mere existence of Melandru, due to being, you know, the whole primordial concept of nature thing. Even in the parable YOU BROUGHT UP she cares about a fox as much as a farmer, because thus is the way of nature. Just because you feel humans are over represented doesn't mean we're going to write ourselves out of the icebrood Saga or comment on the failings it reveals in Charr society, much as Charr did with PoF, turnabout is fair play.

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Even the assertion that PoF was human focused because it involved Balthazar and was based in Elona is nonsensical and I don’t understand why ArenaNet said that. It was Aurene-focused, everything else including the human gods was badly represented window dressing and does not constitute “human focus”.

Hell, the last stages of the story didn’t even involve Elona or Elonians in any special or notable role at all.

Or it could be presented as human focused if one admits that this focus constitutes breaking down the core features of said race and having the narrative essentially go to them “lol your religion is stupid”.

If PoF was human-focused, then it was not good focus at all.

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@"Loesh.4697" said:I actually disagree with this entirely just based on how the NPCs seem to talk, they all seem very modern, fairly modern in Guild Wars 1 even. That's something that isn't even true of the Charr themselves who are argue a right over Ascalon due to it's being their ancestral land. I think that in and of itself is in part why people are so critical of them, even by their own records they aren't the original owners but they like to pretend as such which makes them fit in much more closely with more modern societies as conquerors. Sure the idea's these nations were based on were old, but the actual ideas they expouse are not, with for example the Charr basically undergoing a female civil rights movement or transgender people being accepted in Lions Arch.

Both of those definitely weren't common for the time periods the setting draws upon, but hardly anyone blinks at them. To me Guild Wars was, if anything, deliberately forcing an anachronism to make us examine old cultures with modern eyes.

like i said anacronism is unaivodable, In fact, in most novels, touches to show some cultural difference "because this is another time and place" are actually the minor part, they are few points selected just to emphasize that "these people are rised in a different way than us", and also to hide that in reality the novel is just the modern stuff with another "avatar".

I guess GW2 writers are very well aware of this all sort of details, look at how the Joko world was presented, they detailed stuff to shows how a very crazy dictatorship can be accepted as "normal daily stuff" by all sort of tricks and social manipulation.

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@Thornwolf.9721 said:as it turns out even the citizens of divinities reach share xenophobia.

Not moreso than other races, really. There's a lot of hostililty to charr and centaurs specifically, but they're currently at war with centaurs, and the adults making those comments have spent most of their lives at war with charr in a conflict that not only spanned centuries, but which resulted in the complete destruction of one civilization, the almost complete destruction of another, and that indirectly caused most of the political troubles of the surviving kingdom. It's true that humans themselves caused a lot of their own problems, but only as a result of the assult. The charr currently represent a very real and existential threat to the survival of humanity in Tyria (the continent).

The gods a parallel to greek gods, they are neither good or evil but are whimsical. The ONLY RACE they care about are the humans, so when and if tyria goes to explode I promise the humans will be whisked away by their gods but the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves

That isn't true, either. They do have a special relationship with humans, but they also have followers in other races, especially the forgotten (and probably the quaggans, by another name). It was prevalent in GW1, but they dialed it back in GW2 mainly to let each playable race have its own religion-equivalent.

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I can't speak specifically to the new patch as I largely quit playing after PoF. I apparently have some catching up to do.

I feel that the idea of "Charr victimization" was absolutely somewhat prevalent at the time of GW2 release back in 2012. I feel that part of the game design to create multiple playable races that allied with each other, including the Charr was to tone down the idea of their established nature as a race in lore and throughout GW1. What was a villainous race, hellbent on war and genocide of the humans (and other races before them) became instead a narrative of "retaking a homeland". Which in and of itself was wrong on a lore standing, but was nonetheless peddled relentlessly following the release of GW2 by players seemingly unfamiliar with the lore, or had never played GW1. Nevermind the fact that the Charr also marched on Orr and Kryta to presumably perform the same Searing upon those kingdoms as well. Am I to believe those are Charr homelands too?

Meanwhile, the remaining Ascalonians were diminished in stature within lore due to the Foefire which nobody within lore or the community would likely view in a positive light. Yet I'm sure the Charr feel the Searing was completely justified. And suddenly the narrative is the mad evil king (which he was towards the end) cursing his people and the land and the Ascalonians are largely reduced to being killable mad ghosts intent on killing everyone and everything. The exceptions of course being Ebonhawke and the Ascalon Settlement in Kryta.

As a more role-player type, the vibe I got from the game, the community, my guild at the time even was basically a big "eff me for being an Ascalonian", and "The Searing is ancient history, get over it."

And I would have been willing to do so, but up till now (presumably), the game did not at all do a good job of portraying these geopolitical relationships between the races and especially the Humans and Charr. A cease-fire and peace-treaty is signed, but throughout the Personal Story, you would think everyone is best of buds, not "we just barely signed this treaty". I realize that's probably a limitation of game design and how much you can possibly branch a multi-racial playable story-line, but I will say the Charr of GW2 feel completely different from the Charr of GW1 to me, and Ascalonians got the short end of the stick between The Searing, invasion, a king who goes crazy, refuses help, and ultimately curses them, and then a narrative that reduces the Ascalonians to little more than fodder for those who don't know their lore. And the dialogue I say, or feelings I have as a player interested in somewhat roleplaying my main human character of Ascalonian ancestry (which is a selectable option in the Dead Sister personal story branch by the way...) never matched how I feel my character would really react. I think that character would be very distrusting of the Charr, not best of buds with them.

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@"Loesh.4697" said:I think my primary issue with that Konig is how Pyre Fierceshot and his Warband frame the event as well as how they considered humans around them. They weren't a terribly empathetic group of people to say the least, one of them confusing the Ascendants for Pyres slaves at first and generally just despising humanity above and beyond even how humans viewed them in turn. Pyre spoke of the Searing with pride, and it's little wonder since Vatlaaw Doomtooh was his father and a scout who had a hand in making the Searing possible. Now i'm unsure how much Charr actually know about Bonfaaz Burntfur, his history could be heavily embellished for all I know to remove the bit about the Searing, but he is idolized and few Charr that i'v seen express any kind of remorse or fault over the event in either game.

Leads me to believe that while yes, the Shaman Caste was deceiving the Charr about the nature of their gods, the Charr were more angry about that then anything they visited upon anyone else.

Probably true, but keep in mind that this was in war, and the Searing, while devastating, did not bring about extinction. It could be fairly easily be seen as a major war victory, as opposed to being a cataclysmic event. After all, the plantlife of Ascalon has regrown since then, and Ascalon remained a threat for twenty more years before all that was left was just Ebonhawke.

As opposed to the Cataclysm or Jade Wind, which destroyed not just the structures and caused a lot of death, but also destroyed the land itself. Or the Foefire, which damned the people's souls. Both the Cataclysm and Foefire are viewed as "cowardly acts" (though the former was also viewed with respect since it "shows the ferocity of charr" so to speak).

Points being, you cannot just equate every massive magical act as the same thing, nor can you proclaim an entire people were in on any one of them.

@"Ra Ra.9423" said:It's my headcannon from reading the Tyrian timeline and lore, that CoF was built by the Ascalonians (probably also during the time they were building the Great Northern Wall, in a 900 year period), given that the ghosts that are fighting the charr (and you) are human: Murakai, her Steward. The Master, and others. After taking Ascalon from the Charr, they built the complex to store their treasures, then when the Charr recovered that land, they killed all within, and are faced with outraged ghosts. The Master Dungeon guide has only this to say about Cof:

  • Once freed, Pyre's warband sacked the cathedral, looking for anything of value. In their search, they unearthed a blocked passage. Clearing the debris revealed a stash of treasure plundered from Ascalonian ruins... but there was more. The spirits of those slain for these spoils of war had attached themselves to the treasure, haunting the vaults. Worse yet, a powerful Necromancer named Murakai dwelt among them. She used the creatures' unliving essence to create a storm of souls, which she planned to unleash upon human and Charr alike. It fell to us to lay these disembodied spirits to rest and to suspend Murakai's wrath, if only for a time.

The ghosts 100% came with the spoils from Ascalon, and were not originally at the Cathedral of Flames. If you looked at other dialogue, you'd get:

"Pyre ordered Fierceblade and I to search the temple for anything of value. We discovered a blocked passage...blocked for a reason, as it turned out. Burntsoul and his band had a pretty pile of Ascalonian treasure down there, sacked from the ruins. You'd think being suddenly rich would solve all my problems, mouse, but the issue is...the spirits attached to the treasure haunt these vaults. Seems one called Murakai is creating a storm of souls to unleash on you mice and the Charr alike.[...] We tried to "liberate" the spirits with steel, but they keep coming back to the relics. [...]https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Temple_of_the_Damned

Murakai was a Necromancer who fought the Charr in Ascalon, but now her spirits rage in the passages below. [...]https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lars_Bridgeater

And as you quoted:

The spirits of those slain for these spoils of war had attached themselves to the treasure, haunting the vaults.

Basically, the charr ransacked Ascalon, killed people to take treasure, the souls of those slain attached to the treasure, treasure was taken to Cathedral of Flames' vaults, and now Cathedral of Flames is haunted.

And it should be noted that the treasures and spoils of war include Diessa Chalices, Golden Rin Relics, which come are central-western Ascalonian areas, and Exquisite Surmia Carving which is from eastern Ascalon.

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@"ThatOddOne.4387" said:Even the assertion that PoF was human focused because it involved Balthazar and was based in Elona is nonsensical and I don’t understand why ArenaNet said that. It was Aurene-focused, everything else including the human gods was badly represented window dressing and does not constitute “human focus”.

Hell, the last stages of the story didn’t even involve Elona or Elonians in any special or notable role at all.

Or it could be presented as human focused if one admits that this focus constitutes breaking down the core features of said race and having the narrative essentially go to them “lol your religion is stupid”.

If PoF was human-focused, then it was not good focus at all.

Path of Fire deals a lot with "Faith", a concept that is human focused in itself.

You may not have liked the direction ArenaNet took with it, but it is a testament of the human-centric nature of that expansion.

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@ThatOddOne.4387 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ArenaNet isn't saying "the charr were in the right to retake Ascalon", they're saying "the charr believe they were in the right to retake Ascalon."

They do. They 100% do. One of the earliest cinematics of GW2 introduces us to the Ascalon Catacombs, and what are some of the first lines in there?

This was originally Charr land. The humans pushed us out and built Ascalon on top of it. Over 200 years ago, we took our land back.

I know what your response to this would be. "But that's just how the Charr see it, Anet isn't trying to do anything here" - I'd like to point out that it was one of the earliest introductions to the lore of GW for a potential new player, before the release of GW2. This line is also fairly irrelevant to the actual dungeon, but they put it in for a reason. Why do we have to know that it was originally Charr land? What does that have to do with fighting 200 year old human ghosts? They could've just focused on the Foefire instead.

I'll tell you why. Because Anet wants to drive home the narrative that humans = evil, charr = good guys who just took back what's theirs. Anet wants us to forget GW1's version of the story, they want to put the whole thing on new foundations so this is what new people will take as fact, and this is what they'll defend to the bitter end. See this thread.

When was the last time GW2 players were exposed to the wrongdoings of the Charr commited against humans? Was there even a time? From what I recall we were supposed to take the Charr's side each and every single time.

And humans don't "have to just concede it". Part of the peace treaty with the charr has been humans regaining some lands of souteastern Ascalon (namely that bit nestled between the Dragonbrand and Blazeridge Mountains). Humans are conceding the majority of Ascalon
because they're losing,
not because "the charr deserve Ascalon more."

Are they losing though? Last time I checked the Charr couldn't do anything with Ebonhawke for hundreds of years and were starting to fall apart because of having so many enemies (humans, ghosts, flame legion, dragons) and no allies. Bangar too realizes, along with people in this thread, that the Charr are weaker than ever.

Humans are conceding because Anet wants Charr to be playable. Simple as that. Otherwise it'd be the perfect opportunity for a counterattack. Humans beat the Charr by killing the Khan Ur and dealing with the divided legions, they are even more divided now.

And "who Ascalon belongs to" is the core of the "amnesty to the charr" situation, since the core part of that "amnesty" is the charr taking Ascalon. And humans are not being painted as villains anywhere.

By amnesty I meant we're supposed to forget every wrong they ever did and just sue for peace.

The only people who don't see what Anet is doing here are those who simply don't want to.

I want to clarify something.
I don't just see the Charr as pitch black, and I don't hate them in that sense. Pyre is one of my favorite characters in GW1 and made me want to roll a Charr ranger for GW2. I think the Charr have great potential for the lore. But to me it seems like Anet wanted to tell a "greyer" story in GW2, making the Charr not be purely antagonistic. My problem with this portrayal is that they went completely overboard with it, ended up continously favoring the Charr version of the story and making Ascalonians seem like the villains. They really did Ascalon dirty in GW2.

Basically in GW1 we get to see Ascalonians as the good guys, in GW2 we see the Charr as the definitive good guys. This doesn't make the story grey, only gives the vibe that GW1 doesn't matter and we should roll with GW2's version because that's the most recent and Anet's known to retcon the lore when it suits them. I think they missed the mark.

What I'm trying to say is, if the intention was to make things grey in GW2, they should've
painted it grey in GW2.
What they are doing instead is just flip which side is bad in the sequel and stick with it, without ever showing the other side.
This is either intentional and Charr favoritism, or a botched attempt at a grey story. Either way currently it's only going to alienate some long time fans.
Since it's been consistent for 7 years, I'm going with the former for now.

  1. You keep repeating ArenaNet is spitting on GW1 and "Ascalon" (I'm assuming you're referring to Ascalonian Humans and the Human kingdom of Ascalon, and not the land of Ascalon) but you forget that you can only play as Humans in GW1. Of course the POV is gonna be pro-human and anti-Charr.
  2. Characters not being able to have their own distinct POV is bad writing. Which you only seem to begrudgingly acknowledge in your later responses after more reasonable people pointed out how ridiculously narrow-minded and personal your original post was.
  3. The real evil of war is that all sides are convinced they are on the right side. Everyone thinks they are the protagonist of the story. It's messy, it's nuanced, it's complicated. A good story-teller is supposed to show that, not tell it to you point-blank. You are having dissonance because you are confusing the subjective POV of the Ascalonians from GW1 and the Charr from GW2 as the objective POV of ArenaNet and that is pretty blinkered. To then blame them for having a personal agenda when they are depicting how two sides see the same conflict differently in a very realistic manner (not so different from our real-world tribal conflicts) when YOU are the one taking this personally is beyond ridiculous.

To go along with the last bit said here the humans ARE the evil, They and their gods are 100% the cause of almost all the major conflicts and turmoil on tyria. They committed GENOCIDE pf the "Lesser" races for not being like them, and have led conquest after conquest. We only saw their narrative In GW1 but in the further lore, the story goes that when they came here they followed balthazar (A psychopath) to conquer the world. The humans are JUST as xenophobic as the charr are, and frankly I feel the charr are one of the few who have the rite to be. They've been hunted and when they fought back, they found the humans had gods on their side ones who ONLY cared about the well being of the humans. I don't believe balthazar ever changed but that we saw him differently because for the first time, our views and purpose did not align with his.

Im a norn player because of what they were in guild wars 1, the humans not being favorites here? Really. They've been center stage the entire game and litterally have had so many redemption arcs within this story alone. They are becoming fast friends with iron, ash and to some extent blood legion and we even have blood brothers forming from soliders who fight together (See logan and Rytlock.) Looking at the larger narrative the charr are basically a lot like the humans, both worshiped powers beyond them and both got scorned. The charr chose to industrialize and focus on weapons of war, they chose to grow while humans still cling to the Six whom of which are some of the most evil beings in the setting. The tales of them do not speak of fond happy times, they speak of how cruel they could and would be and how the humans were merely their "Play-things".

Lyssa came and convinced men to fight only to die~ Rather then aid them, or even warn them.Balthazar willingly consumed the souls of his fallen, and tormented those he deemed "Cowardly".Melandru killed a mans son, for killing a creature that had harmed him and then left him for dead.Dwayana DROVE PEOPLE MAD, by her shear appearance and presence.Abbadon held secrets, and Kormir continued in his legacy as well denied us any help regardless of if we needed it.

Grenth is the only one to show compassion and even mercy out of all of them, though even then he still claimed the life of a woman who murdered her abusive lech of a husband for all he had done to her and her children. So looking at the humans religion, their way of life and the ideas they come from and how they believe they are superior to ALL the other races INCLUDING the norn/charr/asura/sylvari I would say the charr were the victims. But due to their primal nature they retaliated and decided to wage war; The norn and asuran we hadn't met yet and the sylvari had yet to be born. Im sure that had the humans met the norn prior to the events that transpired when they got here the outcome would be much the same. But I believe the norn would of killed them all because the spirits in my eyes are stronger than the gods, the spirits fought jormag when the gods wouldn't even try. Kormir even stated that the dragons were STRONGER than the six which is why they wouldn't fight, because should one of them fall the outcome would be catastrophic.

The story isn't about who was the victim though, or who was the winner. The story is about two groups of people and two differing species setting aside their differences and coming to realize they aren't that different. The story is a redemption for both of them and a new chapter for them, one well executed and one that has been going since we met Pyre for the first time in Eye of the north. If you still can't see that neither side was the villain fully and neither side won much of anything, rather they lost tons of lives and even almost collapsed as civilizations you are either willfully ignorant to the purpose of the tale or choose to pick a side on the opposite end of a line no one drew in the first place.

Actually... No.

The humans have not genocided "lesser races", give examples, don't just say it. On the other hand we know the charr HAVE during their time on Tyria.

Balthazar was not a psychopath, you're wrong, and he did change. We know this for a fact, that you deny it doesn't make it true.

The parables of the Gods you are referring to are just that, parables, and hardly proof that the Gods are bad and can be interpreted in benevolent ways, if they even happened.
  • Lyssa inspired those soldiers to fight regardless, that they died is irrelevant, she did not personally kill them, but she gave them the courage to fight and their contribution to the battle could have made the difference, but we don't know, and she certainly didn't have a hand in making sure each and every one of those soldiers die.
  • Balthazar consumed the soul of a singular coward so that cowardice could not further harm others, he took the coward's shame as his own.
  • Melandru did not kill anyone. There is no implication that she did. She was simply saying in that parable that animals killing humans and humans killing animals is the way of nature. That is not malicious and there's no implication she personally made sure the guy's family got eaten by wolves.
  • Same for Dwayna. She did not intentionally blind people, she did not intentionally make sure that a tree fell on a guys house after he denied someone refuge from a storm.
  • Secrets are not automatically bad, that's by far the most ridiculous of your statements.
  • The wife in question still committed murder.

So... No, everything you said was wrong. (Including Dragons being stronger than the Gods). The charr are not victims, and whilst I disagree with the OP's tone, he has a point.

It's all very well going on about the "Charr PoV" but the problem is that PoV has next to no redeeming qualities, even when it was touched on in the so-called human-centric GW1. The charr didn't rebel because they felt bad about what happened to the humans, they liked what happened to the humans, they rebelled against other charr because they were being controlled and tricked. This still doesn't make them the victims, because they still ultimately approved of the Searing and all the humans who died as a result of their war. (And continued to prosecute it even after they overthrew the Flame Legion, which should tell you all you need to know)

And not a single charr character has ever shown regret for what happened, whilst you see plenty of humans regretting the actions of their own race - Including, again, in the so-called human-centric GW1 (Rurik and Adelbern), where whilst the main characters and only playable race were humans, it still showcased just how bad humans can be.

Quite a few of the storylines in GW1 are about humans helping other races, as well, namely asura, dwarves and norn (AND EVEN CHARR), so I don't really see how the accusation that only a human PoV was espoused in GW1 holds water. Did the humans make war on the dwarves and norn? No they didn't. Did the charr? Yes, they did. There are significant differences in the characters of these two races and how they act towards the world they inhabit that people are willfully ignoring in favour of this charr apologist stance because they cannot possibly fathom the mighty, unbeatable charr having lost to the evil invading humans at one point in history.

People can gurn and moan about how the humans displaced the charr and centaur but I'm pretty sure the dwarves preferred to have the humans as neighbours over the charr, and I'm sure sylvari and asura in modern Tyria prefer to have humans as their closest other neighbours over vast tracts of lands owned by marauding, vicious centaurs. So there's some perspective for you.

King adelbern was Xenophobic, the canthans were xenophobic and as it turns out even the citizens of divinities reach share xenophobia. The charr do as well so literally they are the same in that respect and to say otherwise is ignorance. Kind Adelbern wanted no one but humans to live and keep ascalon, the Vizer sunk his ENTIRE nation and killed off its people in a "Im taking my ball and going home" moment.

Humans helping other races? Yes when it suited them, which is a parallel of how our species works in the real world. Most people don't do good unless they directly bennefit; The norn got help from the humans because the humans needed the norn. The dwarves only got help because they were needed durring prophecies and the stone summit were an enemy to both. In eye of the north the only reason the dwarves got involved was for the sake of killing their long time enemy the destroyers, The humans are NOT the victims of anything but their own hubris.

The gods a parallel to greek gods, they are neither good or evil but are whimsical. The ONLY RACE they care about are the humans, so when and if tyria goes to explode I promise the humans will be whisked away by their gods but the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves. They are generic fantasy drivel, frankly I actually would like to destroy the remnants of them because I loathe their existence by this point. They don't contribute much in the grand-scheme of things, we have magic users and technicians from charr and asuran respectively. We have warriors from charr and norn, whom would lore wise make more sense to be better fighters than the humans on sheer size and the fact they live harsher lives.

Just because your favorite race FOR ONCE is not the focus, doesn't mean you get to bash on the others. This is a norn and charr story at least until the saga concludes, enjoy it or move on until its done. I skipped most of PoF and only logged in to get the episodes; I played it later on to get to a point where I understood what was going on but Im so done with human centric kitten that I can't be bothered to care. (Because its literally just the same old stuff with them.)

So you’re just petty and narrowminded, right.

For the record even a cursory glance of this forum will tell you that I like that charr and norn are getting some attention, I just don’t buy into the narrative that the charr are sympathetic at all.

Just pray ArenaNet don’t treat the norn spirits of the wild like they did the human gods, which is a very real concern I have.

Im not narrowminded I just realize both sides have their villains, notice how pyre Had no issue abandoning their "Gods" and working with humans nor did his warband. I mean we all have our demons right? Is it so hard to believe that they have come that far, and only Bangar remains as one of those "Few" who dislike the idea of peace. Im pretty sure he is just a warmongering "Hero" of his own story sort of character. And Im pretty sure a good amount of the charr with him are under this delusional view as well. We still have humans who are racist against the other races in ambient dialogue so like the real world I doubt it will ever FULLY dissipate at least between the charr and humans but a lot of them seem to be growing on one another. Almora even went in and CHALLENGED bangar over what happened to one of her human soldiers, Im pretty sure she would of have killed him had his true intentions been known right there. (You don't fuck with Soulreaver.)

As for the norn Im already mad, The spirits are becoming a mastery FOR EVERYONE!? Why. Oh because we can't let anyone one race have anything cool, but the norn get the hardest shaft in this game. They've been pretty worthless up to this point and haven't really contributed to the narrative at all, we Lost Eir because "The plot demanded it" when it should of been Zojja or One of the others as I feel her tale had not yet been fully realized. We have braham who is not norn in the slightest, he whines and acts so human its sad. To top that off armor for male norn are hard to come by that look like something they would wear, or even to make it look good because for some reason their model dislikes everything (No clue why.) So they are stripping us of our unique qualities to give it to everyone else, and the sad part is we won't get any compensation for it. We can't shapeshift because those skills are utter trash and you'd be foolish to use them, We can't have it as a passive cosmetic thing where our racial armor will stay otherwise we just go full naked because that would make us too cool. We can't have norn themed stuff and even those this saga is supposed to be about them, I have a strong feeling they will take a backseat to the charr (The real focus of this saga.)

Feels like they hate the norn, their lore and everything tied to them sometimes. Im pretty sure the spirits of the wild will either be killed off completely this saga leaving the norn without them, because we can't have a higher power or beings beyond us being directly involved. OR they will explain the norn really don't know squat and are just big dumb humans like the majority of the playerbase thinks they are. They need more than just narrative depth at this point, they need a face-lift and to be brought more in line with the norn WE ORIGINALLY ENCOUNTERED. They should be imposing but not violent by nature, willing to fight but spiritual in their outlook on life rather than just being "My legend" and the "They are big drunk people". I wan't to be like Olaf seventh son of Olaf or Jora. I want to become the bear and be blessed, I want to be the shamanic viking/celtic native american hybrid they were showcased to be. Im hoping this saga will give them that, and they will get more customization... but the doubt and the worry that its just gonna be more of the same lingers. So I feel you there....> @perilisk.1874 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:as it turns out even the citizens of divinities reach share xenophobia.

Not moreso than other races, really. There's a lot of hostililty to charr and centaurs specifically, but they're currently at war with centaurs, and the adults making those comments have spent most of their lives at war with charr in a conflict that not only spanned centuries, but which resulted in the complete destruction of one civilization, the almost complete destruction of another, and that indirectly caused most of the political troubles of the surviving kingdom. It's true that humans themselves caused a lot of their own problems, but only as a result of the assult. The charr currently represent a very real and existential threat to the survival of humanity in Tyria (the continent).

The gods a parallel to greek gods, they are neither good or evil but are whimsical. The ONLY RACE they care about are the humans, so when and if tyria goes to explode I promise the humans will be whisked away by their gods but the rest of us will be left to fend for ourselves

That isn't true, either. They do have a special relationship with humans, but they also have followers in other races, especially the forgotten (and probably the quaggans, by another name). It was prevalent in GW1, but they dialed it back in GW2 mainly to let each playable race have its own religion-equivalent.

I never meant that all the humans are Xenophobic I should of worded it better, but there is still that racism there and the victimization of the human race is also prevalent in the base campaign and the ambient dialogue. It just goes to show both feel like victims and the older denizens of the cultures refuse to let go where as the younger generation are a bit more open minded.

I highly doubt the norn or charr would get help from the six, I also highly doubt either would want it.

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