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Theorizing About War Eternal's Map (SPOILERS?)


Musaroxy.2874

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So, with the next episode approaching in four days, and a phenomenal trailer just released, now is as good a time as ever to try and pin-point where War Eternal will be taking us. There's complete freedom to theorize whatever anyone thinks is a possibility here, but first I'd like to pose an idea.The Tarnished Coast.There's actual evidence (Okay, theoretical evidence) for this to be true! Let's start with the narrative basis for this.

  • Aurene. Aurene was first introduced as an egg which Caithe had stolen away from the dying Master of Peace, and taken on a roadtrip into Auric Basin, where we intercepted her, and wound up taking the egg to Tarir for her. The Tarnished Coast is obviously not the Maguuma Jungle (Although the Maguuma Explorer Achievement would tell you otherwise.), but it is much closer than Thunderhead Peaks, it would be somewhat of a narrative full-circle if we wound up back here after all this time, where Aurene was born, and where we will avenge her death.
  • Caithe's Requiem Story. The art for this story, whether people like it or hate it, is interesting, because unlike Rytlock and Zafirah's pictures, where we definitively can tell they are somewhere within the Thunderhead Keep, and possibly even have the images depicting them in the moment as the story runs through their heads, Caithe's shows her.. In the Grove, with the Pale Tree in the background. A little strange isn't it? That she'd be there, instead of near Aurene, or somewhere in the Keep? It could be that for this one they just decided to have here there for the mood of her talking about the Sylvari, but it's still somewhat out of place, unless we are perhaps, going back there?
  • More narrative circles. We learned of the egg from who? The Pale Tree. The Pale Tree depicted in Caithe's Requiem story, and who is, in fact, on the Tarnished Coast.

The next big point is the mechanical purposes.

  • For starters, should it be an actual part of the story and not just a cool shot for the trailers like it was in the All or Nothing Trailer, in one of the earlier previews of this episode, where the Skyscale was announced, we see Kralky taking a tour through the sky. So surely if this is in a map in Tyria and not in the Mists or something, the location has to have a rather large area of sky in it. Even if it were an instance. Where is there that was sold on having a sky/canopy section of the maps? Maguuma maps.
  • Next is the Skyscale, and the Wyverns we see in the trailer. Now, we know Wyverns aren't solely Maguuma-based creatures (See: Siren's Landing), but they are most commonly placed there. If we're going somewhere with a WHOLE lot of Wyverns, logically it should be closer to Maguuma than to the Desert, right?
  • The geography. We don't see a lot of the geography for these trailers, Arena Net is doing a fantastic job at keeping it under wraps, but what we can see from the
    announcement trailer, the Exordium preview, and the most recent article about the episode, there are a LOT of Maguuma assets used, and, namely in the Skyscale trailer, islands.
  • Why are islands important? Because of the geography of the Tarnished Coast! If we look at the region between Rata Sum and The Grove, there is notably a curved coastal landmass that trickles off into multiple islands, the right geographical shape for the spaces we seen in the screenshots and trailers. It's also notable that if we estimate the map goes from the bordering maps of Rata Sum, Metrica Province, and The Grove for the top, all the way down to the last two islands before Draconis Mons, then we'd have a map with size comparable to both Thunderhead Peaks and Kourna.

These details aren't perfect evidence though, of course. There's plenty of reasons for this to all just be coincidence, and admittedly some of the points are very thinly stretched, with some notable flaws being:

  • Bordering two cities and a starter map isn't quite in line with the way ANet does things post-Living World Season 1, and it definitely seems like dealing with an Elder Dragon there would have some unintended side-effects on the locations.
  • It's SUPER far away from the rest of the maps for LW4. Thunderhead Peaks wasn't necessarily in the Desert, but it definitely wasn't on the opposite end of the world map.
  • Why would Kralky go there? There's really no particular reason, unless the Pale Tree looks like a tasty magical threat.

Insane theory or not, I can't wait to find out where we're going, and what other theories people can come up with! :3

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I see a few flaws in your argument:

@"Musaroxy.2874" said:

  • For starters, should it be an actual part of the story and not just a cool shot for the trailers like it was in the All or Nothing Trailer, in one of the earlier previews of this episode, where the Skyscale was announced, we see Kralky taking a tour through the sky. So surely if this is in a map in Tyria and not in the Mists or something, the location has to have a rather large area of sky in it. Even if it were an instance. Where is there that was sold on having a sky/canopy section of the maps? Maguuma maps.
  • Next is the Skyscale, and the Wyverns we see in the trailer. Now, we know Wyverns aren't solely Maguuma-based creatures (See: Siren's Landing), but they are most commonly placed there. If we're going somewhere with a WHOLE lot of Wyverns, logically it should be closer to Maguuma than to the Desert, right?
  • The geography. We don't see a lot of the geography for these trailers, Arena Net is doing a fantastic job at keeping it under wraps, but what we can see from the
    announcement trailer, the Exordium preview, and the most recent article about the episode, there are a LOT of Maguuma assets used, and, namely in the Skyscale trailer, islands.
  • Why are islands important? Because of the geography of the Tarnished Coast! If we look at the region between Rata Sum and The Grove, there is notably a curved coastal landmass that trickles off into multiple islands, the right geographical shape for the spaces we seen in the screenshots and trailers. It's also notable that if we estimate the map goes from the bordering maps of Rata Sum, Metrica Province, and The Grove for the top, all the way down to the last two islands before Draconis Mons, then we'd have a map with size comparable to both Thunderhead Peaks and Kourna.
  • Kralkatorrik was confirmed to have returned to the Mists in Rytlock's Requiem. His flight had no ground in sight and was surrounded by literal Mists (much like the PvP lobby and Edge of the Mists maps have literal mists). No indication that the Kralk shot is in the map and not an instance. Furthermore, all PoF maps have pretty high elevation as does Draconis Mons. The fact there are giant chunks of land surrounding Kralkatorrik's flight supports that shot is in the Mists, not Tyria.
  • There are no wyverns. If you're talking about the winged creature in the far background seen near a Pact airship, that's a Shatterer. Otherwise it's just the Skyscale, which is not a wyvern (the intention to make it un-wyvern like was even stressed in the latest Guild Chat).
  • Yes, there's quite a few Maguuma assets used. But there's also a LOT of Elona assets used. And the Maguuma assets are also used on the other side of the Sea of Sorrows: Sparkfly Fen and Mount Maelstrom.
  • A lot of coastlines along Tyria and Elona has islands with plenty of space. So this doesn't say much.

These details aren't perfect evidence though, of course. There's plenty of reasons for this to all just be coincidence, and admittedly some of the points are very thinly stretched, with some notable flaws being:

  • Bordering two cities and a starter map isn't quite in line with the way ANet does things post-Living World Season 1, and it definitely seems like dealing with an Elder Dragon there would have some unintended side-effects on the locations.
  • It's SUPER far away from the rest of the maps for LW4. Thunderhead Peaks wasn't necessarily in the Desert, but it definitely wasn't on the opposite end of the world map.
  • Why would Kralky go there? There's really no particular reason, unless the Pale Tree looks like a tasty magical threat.

There's one more issue, and it's a massive mechanical one:

Beneath the fog of the world map, there is an extension of The Grove's map that is a copy of Cursed Shore visited twice in the personal story:

A_Light_in_the_Darkness_map.jpg

Used during A Light in the Darkness and A Vision of Darkness.

Because this map technically exists as part of The Grove's map, there's a lot of technical difficulties in unveiling that area. One of the reasons why the original Lake Doric map was scrapped was because it bordered Divinity's Reach on three ends and that caused a ton of technical issues.

Personally, I'm subscribing to the theory that this map will be between Mount Maelstrom and Desert Highlands (south of Labyinthine Cliffs).

  1. It connects Maguuma assets to Elona assets.
  2. It's close to Thunderhead Peaks.
  3. It's next to never-explored-lands so Skyscales could naturally grow there without being well known. This also puts them close to Orr, suggesting that Bone Dragons from GW1 could be Skyscale corpses.
  4. The map tiles were edited at the beginning of Season 4, just like that of Gandara, Jahai Bluffs, southern Thunderhead Peaks, and Sandswept Isles.
  5. Everything else mentioned in this reddit post.

We'll see Tuesday. :)

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@Perihen the Thawk.9527 said:I'm mostly intrigued by the fact that they seem to be holding back the name of the map, like it's some kind of spoiler.

What could be on the coasts of Tyria, either on the Tarnished Coast, or Scavenger's Causeway, etc., such that the name of the map itself would be very significant? I can't think of anything.

I'm still not ruling Alcazia Triangle out, even if it doesn't have any Elonian assets. There are a ton of jungle assets in these images, that look A LOT more like Maguma with random Elonian assets than Elona with random Maguma assets. And the map overview would fit well.

My next completely insane theory:

We follow Kralk through a rift and wind up in Melandru's Hope in Cantha. Highly unlikely, but that would definitely be worthy of some extreme spoiler prevention.

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My bet was and always be between mount maelstrom and desert highlands. I mean we have some hints:-The ancient pact symbol banner used in mount maelstrom camps, timberlines falls and fort trinity.-We have elonian tents thingies like desert highlands.-We have pact airships, holographic asuran bridges.-An archipelago like a shattered coast.-Took a look on reddit post, for me it's either aetherblade or inquest tech. Aetherblade retreat bis? Would be cool.So for me south maelstrom also that metal gate at the south-east was closed for too long now, time to explore.

6KaMwJw.jpgIn green the case of a small map, in yellow case of big map.Very close to pact hq fort trinity but also of Crucible of eternity.... Interesting and promising, plus proximity with crystal desert... Impatient.

Edit: omg yes, in skyscale trailer we saw an aetherblade airship! But wasn't captain sly airship red like aetherblades?It always felt strange to me that at the end of ls1, aetherblades haven't fled somewhere else with their airships...

Edit 2: I took a look on other comments, for me it's definitely there. That area has high volcanism, lava of maelstrom plus lava river at the bottom of snowy dwarven ruins of desert highlands, so volcanic rocks/ground possible there. Now about the vegetation, mount maelstrom has a very luxuriant one, see the whole west of the map/ middle north too. Not surprising to find a mushroom, since maelstrom is considered as maguuma forest. So maybe also smokescale, pocket raptors... will see.The elevation of the map is also corresponding to those branded canyons, little rivers with broken things....

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@hugo.4705 said:Edit: omg yes, in skyscale trailer we saw an aetherblade airship! But wasn't captain sly airship red like aetherblades?It always felt strange to me that at the end of ls1, aetherblades haven't fled somewhere else with their airships...

In Episode 2, Sly's airship was black instead of red. But IIRC, they retconned it to red in Thunderhead Peaks.

The Alehounds or w/e that corsair's group's name is, however, did have a bonafide red Aetherblade airship.

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@"hugo.4705" said:My bet was and always be between mount maelstrom and desert highlands. I mean we have some hints:-The ancient pact symbol banner used in mount maelstrom camps, timberlines falls and fort trinity.-We have elonian tents thingies like desert highlands.-We have pact airships, holographic asuran bridges.-An archipelago like a shattered coast.-Took a look on reddit post, for me it's either aetherblade or inquest tech. Aetherblade retreat bis? Would be cool.So for me south maelstrom also that metal gate at the south-east was closed for too long now, time to explore.

6KaMwJw.jpgIn green the case of a small map, in yellow case of big map.Very close to pact hq fort trinity but also of Crucible of eternity.... Interesting and promising, plus proximity with crystal desert... Impatient.

Edit: omg yes, in skyscale trailer we saw an aetherblade airship! But wasn't captain sly airship red like aetherblades?It always felt strange to me that at the end of ls1, aetherblades haven't fled somewhere else with their airships...

Edit 2: I took a look on other comments, for me it's definitely there. That area has high volcanism, lava of maelstrom plus lava river at the bottom of snowy dwarven ruins of desert highlands, so volcanic rocks/ground possible there. Now about the vegetation, mount maelstrom has a very luxuriant one, see the whole west of the map/ middle north too. Not surprising to find a mushroom, since maelstrom is considered as maguuma forest. So maybe also smokescale, pocket raptors... will see.The elevation of the map is also corresponding to those branded canyons, little rivers with broken things....

The main thing making me think it won’t be that area of mount maelstrom is the fact that in the preview we see the water hit the edge of the map and nothing after. I suppose we could have a lot of water in the center of the map but I don’t know. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somewhere really out of the box like isle of janthir area. Dismissing something because of a few cliff textures or trees seems kind of foolish considering how much assets are reused. And there are arguably more maguma assets from what we’ve seen than there are Elona. Only two more days though!

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Yup maybe, but if you pay attention how maps are rendered, only what is in the map is rendered, they don't really care of rendering off-map cliffs, mountains or whatever, rare case of ember bay through. Example: Thunderhead peak or labyrinthine cliffs, considering the world map, you should see moutains to the horizons even very far, but just like in the trailer, at the south of thunderhead peak you just have water, no mountains, just water, a question of not rendering what is needed is my guess. Just move my frame to the left, surely then we have a bigger water surface. Frankly, the map is intriguing, a ton of plants and trees but in same time volcanic ground... and a few elonian assets. I noticed some pact airships wreckages so maybe far from there.. I'm more impatient than ever.Could it be the delta at the north? No ways....

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@hugo.4705 said:Yup maybe, but if you pay attention how maps are rendered, only what is in the map is rendered, they don't really care of rendering off-map cliffs, mountains or whatever, rare case of ember bay through. Example: Thunderhead peak or labyrinthine cliffs, considering the world map, you should see moutains to the horizons even very far, but just like in the trailer, at the south of thunderhead peak you just have water, no mountains, just water, a question of not rendering what is needed is my guess. Just move my frame to the left, surely then we have a bigger water surface. Frankly, the map is intriguing, a ton of plants and trees but in same time volcanic ground... and a few elonian assets. I noticed some pact airships wreckages so maybe far from there.. I'm more impatient than ever.Could it be the delta at the north? No ways....

True. But I wouldn’t get stuck on the volcanic ground thing. I think that’s just a Skyscale nest. We see the same thing in Dragon Stand at the Wyvern Nests.

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the fact that they hide the map itself is intriguing, during Season 4, the name of the new maps, was released to create "hype". What's so different about the last episode? I suspect there are only 2 possible extremes: a) either there's something really new, very different from the same "x-map somewhere near Elona," or b) just wanting to hide a new big fiasco/more of the same.

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@"ugrakarma.9416" said:the fact that they hide the map itself is intriguing, during Season 4, the name of the new maps, was released to create "hype". What's so different about the last episode? I suspect there are only 2 possible extremes: a) either there's something really new, very different from the same "x-map somewhere near Elona," or b) just wanting to hide a new big fiasco/more of the same.

Or c) the map name is massive spoiler to the plot of the episode.

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@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:the fact that they hide the map itself is intriguing, during Season 4, the name of the new maps, was released to create "hype". What's so different about the last episode? I suspect there are only 2 possible extremes: a) either there's something really new, very different from the same "x-map somewhere near Elona," or b) just wanting to hide a new big fiasco/more of the same.

Or c) the map name is massive spoiler to the plot of the episode.

I was thinking the map name must be a spoiler, but apart from Janthir I can't think of any island/coastal areas that we would recognize as spoilers.

Unless they went with the Battle Isles, which would be really out there.

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