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My speculation on how the rest of the season will play out


Sajuuk Khar.1509

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After posting a similar thread on Reddit, I figured I might as well do so here. This is how I suspect the rest of the season will go based on how the current plot is progressing, and how Anet has handled previous stories.

The next story chapter is obviously going to take us to the northern part of Drizzlewood, where we will be continuing to follow Bangar, and trying to stop him from waking Jormag. We will obviously fail at this, and Jormag will almost certainly be awake by the end of the next story chapter. Bangar might die here, I could see him trying to use the bow to control Jormag, only to have Jormag just annihilate him now that his purpose is served, and all the Charr under him are Frostbrood. That, or he will be transformed into a Frostbrood champion by Jormag that we will either kill here, or later during the final battle. Probably the latter if anything.

The next two chapters after that will probably be the Icebrood Saga's "mcguffin" section. The Rata Novus/Thunderhead Peaks story segment where we go somewhere to find some specific magic/technology/knowledge needed to stop Jormag. They will also most likely have a shared map like Bjora and Drizzlewood. I am not 100% sure where this will be, Thunderhead Peaks was itself something of a curve ball with the rest of the season location wise, but given that I've yet to see any suggestion the world map will be expanded, and that the story so far has been up north, and that we saw a section in the trailer with centaurs and human slaves, we may see another map in the Woodland Cascades, covering the main center section of it.

The chapter after that will be the "fight Jormag" story section. Icebrood Saga's Dragon's Stand/Dragonfall map, where we deal with Jormag. Again, assuming they don't expand the map further north, this makes most sense to take place in that big ice lake area between Bjora, Drizzlewood, the EoTN, and Bitterfrost, as Jormag was already known to hang out around there back when Bitterfrost came out. I will also say this one will probably not be a two parter like Bjora, or Drizzlewood, but instead a single map like the other Dragon fight maps. I just don't see them splitting the big dragon fight meta into two separate, unconnected, metas.

Now, I will say that I doubt this will be Icebrood Saga's last chapter. Icebrood Saga is different from the previous LW seasons in that its called a Saga, a term used for a long, epic, story, and has a dedicated prologue chapter unlike LWS 2, 3, and 4. Long epic stories that have a prologue tend to have an epilogue, and I could easily see Icebrood Saga having an epilogue chapter as well, taking place after Jormag is dead, and leading into the upcoming Cantha expansion. The most obvious place would be the Dominion of Winds, with the Tengu deciding to open it now that four of the dragons are dead. This will end with them either proclaiming they are going back to retake their homelands in Cantha, or the Canthan's just attack for seemingly no reason, leaving us going "welp, time to go to Cantha to figure this out" for the expansion.

I will also guess that we will get Vision of the Past updates between Drizzlewood, and the next map, and between that map and the Jormag fight map, and these will show more of Ryland's action in between the story segments. Right off the bat I can see the next one dealing with Bangar's assault on the villages in southern Drizzlewood, and Ryland not being comfortable with killing all these people for no reason.

Ryland will probably defect from Bangar at the end of the next chapter, after seeing how badly hes screwed up with trying to reign in Jormag. That doesn't necessarily mean hes going to join us, especially not after what Smodur did, but I don't see him staying with Bangar.

With an average of 2 months between releases, and about 6-7 more releases before Icebrood Saga is likely over, this should take us into the middle of next year at the earliest, probably a little later in the year, and the expansion will come out a bit after that.

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There may be more Visions of the Past releases in-between Story releases, but there may be other kinds of releases in-between, as well. Thus, it may be longer until the expansion is seen.

After episode four, again I'm going to be somewhat vague here, but we want to revisit some of the types of content we pioneered in the past. We learned a lot with Living World Season One and one thing it did very well was to bring the community into the story, and make their actions drive the plot forward. The Nightmare Tower, the election between Evon Gnashblade and Ellen Kiel – these things are memorable experiences because the community's combined efforts had an impact on the world. As you may have noticed, we've been testing tech with things like the boss rush event, that we hope to leverage later on in The Icebrood Saga to create a unique, community experience. But, learning lessons from Season 1, the bulk of this content will be built in a way that it is still playable after the Icebrood Saga comes to a close.Generally, as a team, we are placing a greater emphasis on repeatable content (open world events, world bosses, WvW, and yes, even Fractals (hint hint)). We want to make the types of content that have a lasting, positive impact on the game, so expect that design approach to focus on that more going forward.

-Andrew Gray

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Agree with the Bangar/Jormag plot predictions, but I also feel like the "bigger threat" that Jormag has been alluding to will likely come into play, whether it's the DsD, Primordus, or something else. DsD seems far more likely for a Canthan expansion to make it dragon related. I'm guessing it or its minions will show up either right after we defeat Jormag or in a subsequent epilogue episode, similar to how Kralk became more active and attacked Amnoon right after we killed Balthazar at the end of PoF.

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@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:There may be more Visions of the Past releases in-between Story releases, but there may be other kinds of releases in-between, as well. Thus, it may be longer until the expansion is seen.That just makes it seem like there will be something like a content to determine who the next Khan-Ur is, and players will get to participate in determining that. They could easily do that as part of episode 5's content, not necessarily requiring a new, different, thing beyond an episode or Visions of the Past update.

@"Poormany.4507" said:Agree with the Bangar/Jormag plot predictions, but I also feel like the "bigger threat" that Jormag has been alluding to will likely come into play, whether it's the DsD, Primordus, or something else. DsD seems far more likely for a Canthan expansion to make it dragon related. I'm guessing it or its minions will show up either right after we defeat Jormag or in a subsequent epilogue episode, similar to how Kralk became more active and attacked Amnoon right after we killed Balthazar at the end of PoF.That is generally what I predict the epilogue chapter will be for. Jormag will makes some sort of vague statement as it dies, we are like "wonder what it was talking about?" and then we get the Cantha tie in in the epilogue.

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I think we'll get a festival and then the second half of Drizzlewood in which we likely end Bangar and Ryland's plan.

While many would see this as bad considering the "Frost Legion" was just introduced, I'm not sure how much they can really do with that plot anyway. If not the second half of this episode, then the next episode after another Vision episode. If we don't finish Bangar and Ryland in Drizzlewood, I imagine we'll chase him to wherever Jormag is sleeping and will ultimately "wake" Jormag.

I honestly don't see much plot potential with the Frost Legion and unless this Saga is intended to last 2+ years I don't even see Jormag being the center of all of this for too much longer.

Personally, I'd prefer to shift focus from the Charr politics to learning more about Norn, Kodan, Jotun, origin of the Elder Dragons, Jormag's motives, etc. And the plot in general seems to be moving at a snail's pace.

This is a really difficult time to predict map releases though. I'm guessing:

Dragon Bash - end of JuneFestival of the Four Winds- end of July/early August.August - Drizzlewood 2.0 in mid/late August.September - Some other content release/qol update/fractal/legendary armory?Halloween - late OctoberNovember - VisionDecember - Wintersday

It sucks having Dragon Bash and FotFW so close together though, because you're just getting bombarded with festivals. I don't see a vision being released before the second half of this map though. The last vision was kind of setting stage for Ryland's warband and giving us more incite into Almora's death. I don't really see us participating in a vision involving Frost Legion/Bangar/Ryland or setting anything up for the second half of the map.

If we DO get a vision between the two summer festivals, I could see them doing something involving Drizzlewood playing as a Tengu evacuating the map during the invasion of the Dominion. I guess they could wait and do something similar to this after the release of the second half of Drizzlewood that would give us context to diverge from the Jormag plot again and introduce us to some refugees or something, leading us to a new map that isn't dealing with Charr/Jormag but introducing us to a secondary plot they can start diving into.

Idk. The pace of this story is just moving so slow it's hard to gauge what's coming next. At least Drizzlewood felt 10x better than Bjora 1.0. I still think it's likely that the second half of Drizzlewood will involve us taking territory from the Frost Legion and culminating in a meta killing Ryland/Bangar. I'd imagine one of them will survive and be the one to wake Jormag.

One interesting twist would be if something in the plot forces US to awaken Jormag.

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@"cptaylor.2670" said:While many would see this as bad considering the "Frost Legion" was just introduced, I'm not sure how much they can really do with that plot anyway. If not the second half of this episode, then the next episode after another Vision episode. If we don't finish Bangar and Ryland in Drizzlewood, I imagine we'll chase him to wherever Jormag is sleeping and will ultimately "wake" Jormag.We are already chasing Bangar to where Jormag is sleeping, that is where Bangar is going right now. They mentioned this at the end of Visions of the Pasthttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Darkrime_Delves_(story)Rytlock Brimstone: Yeah. Cre's got some updates from the front lines.Rytlock Brimstone: Bangar's forces have trekked pretty far north. He's almost made it to Jormag, and when that happens—well, no one knows.Rytlock Brimstone: Crecia's got all the imperators playing nice. For now.Rytlock Brimstone: Things will only get worse from here. Bangar's a piece of work, but without him there's a power vacuum.Rytlock Brimstone: I know Cre can handle herself, but when the fighting gets ugly, she's gonna need our support.Jormag is sleeping somewhere in the northern part of Drizzlewood, on the other side of the bridge. Bangar waking Jormag is almost certainly going to be the finale of the next episode.

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It would be wasteful to remove a dragon outside of an expansion.

I think we will eventually win the battle against Bangar but we will lose the war against Jormag.

I don't care what happens to Ryland sincerely, I just hope that his part of the story ends soon because he has not convinced me, it seems that we must save him mainly because he is the son of Rytlock and Crecia without considering all the problems he has caused so far.

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@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"cptaylor.2670" said:While many would see this as bad considering the "Frost Legion" was just introduced, I'm not sure how much they can really do with that plot anyway. If not the second half of this episode, then the next episode after another Vision episode. If we don't finish Bangar and Ryland in Drizzlewood, I imagine we'll chase him to wherever Jormag is sleeping and will ultimately "wake" Jormag.We are already chasing Bangar to where Jormag is sleeping, that is where Bangar is going right now. They mentioned this at the end of Visions of the Past
)Rytlock Brimstone: Yeah. Cre's got some updates from the front lines.Rytlock Brimstone: Bangar's forces have trekked pretty far north. He's almost made it to Jormag, and when that happens—well, no one knows.Rytlock Brimstone: Crecia's got all the imperators playing nice. For now.Rytlock Brimstone: Things will only get worse from here. Bangar's a piece of work, but without him there's a power vacuum.Rytlock Brimstone: I know Cre can handle herself, but when the fighting gets ugly, she's gonna need our support.Jormag is sleeping somewhere in the northern part of Drizzlewood, on the other side of the bridge. Bangar waking Jormag is almost certainly going to be the finale of the next episode.

That doesn't mean that Jormag is in northern Drizzlewood. Could be to the right of the map.

While I'm not saying it isn't likely next episode, that text doesn't prove that Jormag is in the northern part of the map.Them going through Drizzlewood doesn't really make sense anyway, when they could have just gone west or southwest.

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@"cptaylor.2670" said:That doesn't mean that Jormag is in northern Drizzlewood. Could be to the right of the map.

While I'm not saying it isn't likely next episode, that text doesn't prove that Jormag is in the northern part of the map.Them going through Drizzlewood doesn't really make sense anyway, when they could have just gone west or southwest.You know that isn't what I meant. Jormag is accessible through the northern part of Drizzlewood, be it to the east, west, or north, of the actual in-game map proper.

Also, going straight west or southwest wouldn't have worked due that giant, unscalable, ice wall on the western end of Bjora Marches, that seems to extend past the map in both directions. Bangar's army would have been forced to skirt around it, probably onto the giant ice lake, and then arrive in southern Drizzlewood, and then go north.

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@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@"cptaylor.2670" said:That doesn't mean that Jormag is in northern Drizzlewood. Could be to the right of the map.

While I'm not saying it isn't likely next episode, that text doesn't prove that Jormag is in the northern part of the map.Them going through Drizzlewood doesn't really make sense anyway, when they could have just gone west or southwest.You know that isn't what I meant. Jormag is accessible through the northern part of Drizzlewood, be it to the east, west, or north, of the actual in-game map proper.

Also, going straight west or southwest wouldn't have worked due that giant, unscalable, ice wall on the western end of Bjora Marches, that seems to extend past the map in both directions. Bangar's army would have been forced to skirt around it, probably onto the giant ice lake, and then arrive in southern Drizzlewood, and then go north.

But if he's waking him in the map, how does that happen if we're not in the same area? Unless Jormag is like, on the edge of the map. I'm assuming the bow will come into play but I'm not really sure how he's going to wake it to begin with. And if it doesn't require being in close proximity, i.e. same map, I'm not sure why he'd have to trek all the way over to Drizzlewood.

Really though, how is he going to "wake" Jormag? Not picking at what you'e saying. Just wondering how that happens. All the previous elder dragons woke up from high magic releases like Abaddon's death or the death of another Elder Dragon, unless it was their time to wake up.

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@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@Revolution.5409 said:It would be wasteful to remove a dragon outside of an expansion.We already did it with Kralkatorik.

The death of kralk is the ending of PoF, we go to Elona because Balthazar decides to kill the dragon and we must stop him, it was obvious to think that with the evolution of the story both Joko and the dragon himself would become our enemies.From the conversations we have with Joko in the domain of the lost it was evident that we would have to deal with him in the future.

If it had been another game they would have released all the xpac content immediately, Anet instead prefers this Living World system, this means that a Gw2 xpac is not limited to those 5-6 chapters initially released but evolves over time.

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@Revolution.5409 said:The death of kralk is the ending of PoF,No, the death of Kralkatorik is the end of LWS4. The ending of PoF is the celebration of the death of Balthazar at Amnoon.If it had been another game they would have released all the xpac content immediately,Also no. Every single MMO I know sets up storylines in expansion packs that get resolved in future expansion packs, or in the content releases between expansion packs. That is called basic narrative setup. That does not mean those future expansion packs, or the content between expansion packs, it just some part of the first expansion pack they cut out.

@"cptaylor.2670" said:But if he's waking him in the map, how does that happen if we're not in the same area?Same way we kill Drakkar in episode 2, despite Drakkar not being on the map when we kill him... we got into an instanced story mission that begins on the map, and takes us slightly outside it.Really though, how is he going to "wake" Jormag?With the power of plot mcguffin. Who knows, maybe Bangar feeds Jormag his entire Frost Legion army so Jormag can absorb all of their power to wake up.

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i'm half expecting a communication from Taimi:

Taimi: Um, Commander? i think I made a mistake....Commander: Oh?Taimi: Remember when Balthazar smashed Jormag's and Primordus' energies together in Draconus Mons? Cancelling each other out?Commander: Let me guess... you can't track the dragons anymore because of it.Taimi: How'd you know?Commander: Because you didn't tell me that Primordus would be here. And Guess who just ate Bangar? Sounds like jormag thinks it's funny...Taimi: i KNEW that laugh didn't sound liek Rytlock!

with all the plot twists Anet tries... the above wouldn't surprise me.... and neither would the below:

Commander: Speaking of Rytlock... Primordus just ate him, too... but i think i caught a glimpse of Sohothin!.Taimi: That would explain where Aurene went! She absorbed Balthazar's magic, too, when Kralkatorric died! She can go through the Mists as she pleases! Do you know what this means! Glint and Vlast can take Jormag's AND Primordus place in Tyria's magic balance! WOOHOO!

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@Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

@Revolution.5409 said:The death of kralk is the ending of PoF,No, the death of Kralkatorik is the end of LWS4. The ending of PoF is the celebration of the death of Balthazar at Amnoon.If it had been another game they would have released all the xpac content immediately,Also no. Every single MMO I know sets up storylines in expansion packs that get resolved in future expansion packs, or in the content releases between expansion packs. That is called basic narrative setup. That does not mean those future expansion packs, or the content between expansion packs, it just some part of the first expansion pack they cut out.

@"cptaylor.2670" said:But if he's waking him in the map, how does that happen if we're not in the same area?Same way we kill Drakkar in episode 2, despite Drakkar not being on the map when we kill him... we got into an instanced story mission that begins on the map, and takes us slightly outside it.Really though, how is he going to "wake" Jormag?With the power of plot mcguffin. Who knows, maybe Bangar feeds Jormag his entire Frost Legion army so Jormag can absorb all of their power to wake up.

That's true. I didn't factor in story instances. As far as waking him up, I doubt feeding Jormag a bunch of its own minions or normal non-magic imbued Charr would really do anything. The only thing I can think of is:

  1. The bow which was presumed to be used as a way to threaten/control Jormag could potentially have something special capable of waking Jormag instead.
  2. Bangar is intentionally drawing Rhytlock to Jormag and hopes to use Sohothin.
  3. Bangar is luring the commander in hopes of using Aurene somehow? I don't really know how that would work.
  4. They have some other artifact whether it's Titan or something else that he can use.

But it dosesn't seem like Bangar is really informed enough to know that much about Elder Dragons so I guess it will just be a simple rub of the forehead that doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the established story.

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@"cptaylor.2670" said:But it dosesn't seem like Bangar is really informed enough to know that much about Elder Dragons so I guess it will just be a simple rub of the forehead that doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the established story.You have to remember, Dragons feed off of the magical energy collected by their followers, and Jormag has had a couple years now for his minions to collect energy to awaken him. At this point I think its more of a "kick start" on Bangar's part then anything, not a "he's taking Jormag from 0 to 100"

Unrelated, but I am also guessing that Anet is setting up Braham to be Asgeir 2.0. Braham already has a weapon infused with Jotun magic(the bow), has gone north with a band of warriors(Dragon's Watch), has been given power by the spirits of the wild(Wolf, Ox, Eagle, Wolverine), killed a champion of Jormag with the spirit's help(Drakkar) and Jormag's already tied to mess with his mind. Unlike Asgier however, who had his entire hunting party get destroyed, leaving him alone to be manipulated by Jormag, Dragon Watch isn't all going to die, so Jormag's attempt to manipulate Braham will fail in the end, and, while Braham probably wont get the FINAL blow, he is going to do what Asgeir failed and use the bow to help kill Jormag.

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