Sajuuk Khar.1509

Sure, lets ignore the existence of Icebrood Saga where we know that was going to change because of the invasion of Primordus and Jormag's minions. I'm also not sure where you keep getting this idea they are invading Kryta for resources. I don't recall it ever being mentioned in-game, and see nothing on the wiki about it. Everything actually stated about the reasons for the war is Ulgoth wanted revenge, thats it. Not to mention, we've been to the Woodland Cascades in the southern part of Drizzlewood, and can see that its perfectible farmable. Both the Norn and human settlements in the region had observable farms. And lets not ignore the fact Centaurs have always been depicted as a quasi-nomadic tribalistic species thats never had large scale agriculture in the first place because they aren't developed enough for it. So that entire idea directly contradicts what we see in-game in regards to both Centaurs, and the lands they live on. You mean literally the plot of Icebrood Saga where Primordus' invasion into their lands was so great they were being forced out in mass, as referenced by dialogue from NPCs in the eye of the North...... Says he can't see the centaur's relation with Kryta changing any time soon, then directly references the narrative hook created in IBS to make such a change.... HMMMMMM. These comments don't add up here. Sure, but in the case of things like Malyck, and the Centaurs, they WERE going to be dealt with as part of the larger meta narrative, but got cut due to time, budget, or scoping, constraints. At some point you have to accept the narrative has moved beyond the stage where it makes sense to do these things, and trying to fit them in only takes time away from the things that should be dealt with there. Trying to shove in the Wizard's Tower into the Deep Sea Monster story arc would take away a release from the Krait, Largos, and Quaggan, and leaving their narrative unfinished/rushed in the process. Your "solution" is to move the problem from one of the previously listed thing, onto something else, and saying that "fixes" it. No, it doesn't. You're completely ignore the context behind why Anet has been able to do what they did previously, and why these things are different, to create this false similarity between them. You can't make an honest argument when you ignore context. As Gabriel Lorca said in Star Trek Discovery "Universal law is for lackeys, context if for kings".

I recall the exact opposite. The Charr's domination over Ascalon was so complete that they didn't even really need to try to hold it because the last defenders didn't stand a chance. This is part of the reason Rurik took and whole bunch of people and left. Ascalon was a demonstrable lost cause, and Adelbern was treated as loon for trying to hold it despite the obvious. Even with the infighting among the Charr during Eye of the North, the Charr were still so dominate over the Ascalonian humans that no one, outside of a few extremely over-optimistic hopefuls, considered reclaiming Ascalon possible. Yeah, that isn't how economics works. The Asura are a race that has massively declined from its height of originally having 6 Rata Sum sized cities, going down to just one. And the amount of land, and thus resources, they control is relatively small. As they share such of the Maguuma with the Sylvari. After raiding two Rata Sum sized facilities(Crucible of Eternity, and Rata Primus), as well as countless other facilities of rather impressive size, in just a decade's time, the idea that they can just keep bankrolling their operations via the Arcane Council is nonsense. The city's budget would have to far exceeded what they would reasonably have access to in order to not only keep the city, and the Asuran civilization running, but to have this massive amount of cash and resources siphoned off for the Inquest's use and it not cause any noticeable effect on the day to day lives of the Asura. You could just keep hand-waving it to keep them as a Saturday morning cartoon , Dr Claw "I'll get you next time Gadget!" villain. But thats crappy writing, and GW2's writing has never been that bad. Except none of this is true at all. And we've, in fact, seen the opposite. Most Centaurs didn't want war with the humans in the first place, with the Harathi and Tamini where basically being forced into it out of fear of Ulgoth the Mighty's power. Ulgoth got killed back in release after the Seraph pushed the centaurs back from Shaemoor, all the way back into their lands in the northeastern part of Harathi Highlands. The "war" was effectively over at release, which is why its a non-issue in post release content. The war itself was started because of Ulgoth's desire to get revenge on humanity, and to a lesser extent the Norn, for nearly wiping out his tribe back in the GW1 days, and reclaim Kryta which they believed was rightfully their. Not because of resource issues. The exposure of Caudecus, and his hand in starting the war, would've only deescalated the situation even more as it would have revealed to everyone that Humanity was getting played just as much as the Centaurs were, and that neither side was really as guilty as the other believed. We look at Icebrood Saga and we can see Anet originally planned to do a Centaur arc in there, and after the back half of IBS got canned, they were so close to just throwing the Centaurs in as an allied faction during Champions, and had waving the issue away, that they had made an NPC with a reward table set up and ready to go. The Centaurs have had nearly a decade since the main antagonizing factor(Ulgoth) was killed to simmer down, which they very obviously had. They haven't gotten more insane, they've gotten demonstrably less so because most of them thought the whole idea was dumb in the first place. And even Anet is conscious of this fact, to the point that nearly twice in IBS was about to just wrap the whole thing up.... because there's not really anything left to do there. Hell, they can still do the original story they had planned, just have it be the remnants of the Destroyers and Icebrood/Frost Legion still around after the dragon's deaths that instead of it being during the dragon's invasion. Well no given that we've been solving issues for nearly a decade at this point during our larger fight against the dragons. This is just a total, seemingly intentional, misrepresentation/straw man of whats actually being said. Solving these 4 problems(Malyck, Ghosts, Centaurs, and Inquest) in the span of 1.5 years doesn't change that it took us a decade to the litany of other problems Tyria(the world) has faces ranging from the Elder Dragons themselves, to Joko, Scarlet, the White Mantle, the Svanir, the Nightmare Court, the Centaur War proper, Cantha's isolationism, etc. etc. And things like the Centaurs and Ghosts are pretty much done as is, we just need that final step to wrap it up. Centaurs are already right on the tipping point of peace, we just need "X FACTOR" to push them right over the edge, and we know how to get rid of the Ghosts, we just need to get Wade Samuelsson the f**** sword to do the ritual. They could do hof them in an IBS style Bjora/Drizzlewood two parter and not even have rushed it.

If we get some base of operations while fighting the Deep Sea Monster they are more likely to use something more directly tied to the area and lore rather then a non-sequitur add in like the Wizard's Tower. Something like we go to the remnants of the Battle Isles and find a whole bunch of Largos, Quaggan, Naga, and Krait, who have been pushed out of their homes by the creature, and have had to form something of a joint community there. Not to mention, the Pact already learned flying =/= the best defense with the whole airship/Mordremoth debacle. Same thing with the Mists plot. I would presume that such a plot would take place over in the 4th human land over in the far west. Having us be over there pretty much precludes us from doing anything with the Ascalond ghosts problem. Likewise, if they are going to do a GW3 I would think they would just drop these sorts of smaller plotlines rather then hold onto them. The idea we could have another 100-200+ year time skip, to give the world time to screw up again for us to save, and the humans and Charr, who are already good friends now, wouldn't have gotten a cross-species delegation to end the ghost problem, using someone like Wade Samuelson to do the ritual, makes little sense. Carrying over the Elder Dragon plot made sense because its a large, planet defining thing. The ghost thing, humanity making peace with the Centaurs when we are already right on the edge of it, the Inquest finally falling after a decade of us raiding/blowing up every major center they have across Tyria and Elona. Those should be historical footnotes by the time GW3 rolls around.

I wasn't trying to imply they would do it directly after EoD, just that they could do a whole season about these things at some point. Next season is likely to deal with Purist/Risen stuff, and the deep sea monster. Then probably xpack 4 with some Mists related storyline, then probably a LW season expanding on that, THEN they could do the loose ends tie up.... in like 4-5years.

At this point I'm not really sure how most of this stuff would come up naturally besides such a tying up loose threads season. If anything we are probably going to move even further away from those stories with the next expansion/larger story.

They could easily do an entire LW season for all of these small loose plot threads Malyck and his tree The cut centaur plot from IBS Whats the dealio with the Wizard's Tower Finally dealing with the ghosts of Ascalon Dealing with the Inquest once and for all

There was a note you could find in Bjora talking about him wanting to take a leave of absence to the Grove, following the defeat of Kralkatorrik, which is why he wasn't there during the time of Icebrood Saga. Sometimes people need a break after spending nearly a decade non stop fighting dragon minions.

Given that references to the cut/excluded content from the LWS1 return still exist in other parts of the game, any cut/unrestroed content should still be assumed to have happened.

Kuunavang being a dragon replacement never really made sense in the long run because she isn't from an Elder Dragon like Glint, Vlast, Aurene, and the Pale Tree are, and thus, really has no reason to be able to take in or handle the powers of an Elder Dragon. Shes just an old and powerful Saltspray dragon, which are just mortal animals. If she was able to do it, one would think Glint would have contacted her and gotten her in on the plan thousands of years ago, and we would have had references to this way back when we first started learning about the plan. Using the Bloodstone to store an Elder Dragon's magic is itself a narrative turn you almost certainly don't want to do. Doing that doesn't solve the problem, it just delays it, which also makes any conclusion to an Elder Dragon plot unsatisfying because players would know we didn't actually solve the problem, we just transferred the problem from one place to another. This means everything we did was just one giant case of faffing about. Having to last into a hypothetical GW3 would be even worse because it would mean GW2 would end with its main plot unresolved, just to artificially extend the plot into another game when it could have been resolved in this game. And given that the other Elder Dragons are dead and their powers resolved, GW3 couldn't be entirely around that one plot premise, meaning it would be a small side plot, like a LW style side plot, thats over and done in little time making delaying it into GW3 seem even more pointless. Not to mention, its mentioned several times in LWS4 that killing Kralkatorrik in the Mists is bad becuase it would remove all the magic Kralk had taken in from the system, which would end the world. Putting the dragon magic into a bloodstone should have the same result since you're removing that spectrum of magic from the world. There's also a number of other narrative issues involved regarding there being more then Aurene. Having the Pale Tree become an Elder Dragon replacement would create too big of an imbalance between the Sylvari and the other races. Aurene works, in universe, because shes not directly beholden to any of the races governments. The Pale Tree is literally the leader of one of the five major races of Tyira, and even though Jennah, Knut, Crecia, and the Arcane Council would know the Pale Tree is cool and all, theres no real satisfying way to resolve the inevitable political tension that would arise from one of the races having a WMD in its pocket. Again, Aurene only really works because shes a WMD in no one's pocket. And we already saw the issues that caused for people like Bangar. Imagine what would happen if Aurene swore herself to humanity first or something. Vlast has two problems. The first is that if you make Vlast like Aurene, having a champion and being all in on the plan, you just create a carbon copy of Aurene, but a guy, in the process. this makes his character redundant in the plot, and unless his champion like solves the Joko problem in Elona themselves they wouldn't appear worthy of being an Elder Dragon champion compared to the player. But having them solve the Elona problem themselves robs players of a reason/chance to go to Elona in GW2 since the problem would be solved, and you're not going to rob the playerbase of something that important. Vlast's second problem lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. That being, if Anet left Vlast the way he is, no champion, not really all in on the plan and doing it just out of obligation, etc, the only real narrative place for him to go narratively is be corrupted by the magic, turn evil, and then Aurene has to kill him. This just leaves us in the same position we are now, with Aurene being the only one holding the balance together, but it also means we just created an Elder Dragon only to turn around and kill it, making the whole plot moot in the first place. With how volatile the MMO market tends to be, and it being comparatively rare that MMOs make it to 10 years of active content development, I don't think Anet would want to artificially extend GW2's main plot longer then the near decade long time frame it already has. I also doubt people would have taken well to them making Vlast evil. Having him die the way he did spared him having to be either a redundant copy of Aurene, or go evil and get killed anyways. He got to die the hero, protecting his little sister, rather then live long enough to become the villain.

Why exactly would anyone in universe believe that Aurene wouldn't be able to replace Kralkatorrik when not only the whole reason behind why she existed was to do just that, but we also knew of a prophecy by Glint(that involved Joko's death among other things) that would signal the time she was ready for it, and we went through that whole Scion/Champion test in Glint's realm during Thunderhead Peaks that was literally all about preparing her how to do it, and how to handle the power she would gain from it? We had a pretty clear cut list of things that needed to happen before Aurene could do this, and it was all done. You could debate Jormag/Primordus, but at the time that happens we were literally in a 11th hour nightmare scenario where Jormag was poised to defeat Primordus, become unstoppable, and bring about planetary doom. We really had no other choice but to kill them. It literally didn't matter if Aurene could do it or not, we HAD to do this to stop Jormag from winning. Any discussion about it would have been irellivent, and all the major players in universe would have known that. Given that Aurene's ascension seemed to wipe the slate clean in regards to the ill effects of dragon deaths, what with all the volatile and unbound magics vanishing, as well as the lay-infused super monsters, the deaths of Primordus and Jormag would've, at worse, reset us back to LWS4 era, which is bad, but manageable so long as we didn't kill Soo-Won without finding something to replace her with. There's literally every reason for us to believe Aurene would replace Kralkatorrik in All or Nothing, and her ability to replace Jormag and Primordus was a non-factor in the situation we were facing regarding Jormag and Primordus.

I'm fairly sure Menzies is dead, killed by Balthazar between GW1 and GW2, which led to Balthazar's bordem, and desire for something to fight, and thus his imprisonment. Though something God/Mist demon related makes sense for the next big Xpack villain.

And this was the case, no change there. And Glint didn't have 100% perfect vision of the future. She only saw things that might happen, or could happen, not that 100% would happen. She also lacked the ability to see even her own place in the future(remember, she couldn't see her own future past the battle with Kralkatorrik in Edge of Destiny). Vlast could have had a mortal champion, and could've turned out like Aurene, so having him part of the plan makes for a good backup. That it didn't turn out that way was bad luck, but that doesn't change him being part of the plan making sense. Soo-Won also wasn't born/created as part of a meticulous, 10,000+ year long, master plan set up by Glint, and the Forgotten, and assisted by several other groups across time like the Brotherhood of the Dragon, the Zephyrites, and the Exalted, among others, specifically to achieve the result of an Elder Dragon that COULD maintain such a balance. Who would have guessed a naturally forming entirety doesn't have the same specification as something designed for a specific purpose. Did you know trucks are better at towing things then cars? And Aurene's ability to do what she doesn't is "because reasons" , that such a gross misrepresentation of what the game actually says you just threw out any semblance of wanting to have an honest conversation here. Aurene is able to do what she does because, unlike the other Elder Dragons, she doesn't hold all of the magical energy in her body, she instead filters it, and shares it with the hold, preventing the same issues the other Elder Dragons have. They went over this in dialogue back in like PoF and LWS4. By your logic here there is no right answer to the world's problems. All of the other Elder Dragons were fellable(as evidenced that we felled them), so Aurene being killable isn't a change from how the natural order was before. Also, Aurene didn't almost die in EoD, she had a large part of her power drained. Aurene can't die because she consumed Joko's lich magic which made her immortal(they went over this during the end of LWS) She's literally conquered death. Even still, the machine made by Anka isn't something anyone, let alone most people, could get their hands on, let alone operate properly. Only top tier, smartest people in the world, like Taimi, or Joon, could make such a thing. And again, there was never anything earlier in the story that suggested we need 6 Elder Dragon replacements. Only that we needed something to replace the Elder Dragons. The idea of there being six replacements would conflict with game lore going back to launch since there was never 6 things on Tyira that could replace them. At best we had 3, maybe 4, those being Aurene, Vlast, Glint, and maybe the Pale Tree, that could do it. So the idea of having 6 replacements was not only never mentioned, but never made sense. It was entirely a delusion made up by the fanbase never actually suggested or set up by the game. Also, a Deus Ex Machina is something that appears out of nowhere, with no set up, to resolve the plot. The Aurene set up, not only of her existence, but of her ability to do what she does, has been part of the plot for like 7-8 years. Its the exact opposite of a Deus Ex Machina by all definitions.

They didn't throw out "the Elder Dragons need replacements". As we saw before Aurene ascended, the world was going to hell and back due to nothing being there to fill the gap. However, Anet never said each of the Elder dragons need their own replacement. All they ever said was that they need replacements. The idea that there had to be 6 replacements, one for each Elder Dragon, was something made up by the fandom. And it was something that never actually made sense because Glint's whole plan hinged on Aurene and Vlast, only two replacements for the 6 Elder Dragons. Because he got into her vault in Orr and took it. They covered this back in LWS3.

Given Anet's use of three-parters for sub-stories in LWS3, 4, and seemingly IBS, I suspect the Norn/Spirit stuff was pretty much over by the time of Jormag Rising. LWS3 White Mantle plot(Out of Shadows, Head of the Snake, One Path Ends) LWS3 Dragon plot(Rising Flames, Crack in the Ice, Flashpoint) LWS4 Joko plot(Daybreak, Bug in the System, Long Live the Lich) LWS4 Kralkatorrik plot(Star to Guide Us, All of Nothing, War Eternal) IBS Charr plot(Bound By Blood, No Quarter, Jormag Rising) IBS Norn plot(Whisper in the Dark, Shadow in the Ice, Jormag Rising) The last 4 chapters of IBS we were originally going to get likely had a three parter for the Centaurs(5/6/7), with Chapter 8 being the big finale where both dragons die. That way we get three parters for each of the major northern species(Charr, Norn, Centaurs) We still would have had Braham's story where he gets the guidance he needs to become Primordus' champion, but that would be about it.

We've known there are other planets since GW1, since humans come from another planet and were brought to Tyria by the gods. You know what environments most other planets are probably going to have? Expansive deserts, high mountain peaks, twisted jungles, thick forests, open grasslands, sprawling savannas..... etc etc. the same stuff we see on Tyira. For the same reason it does make sense in the released version? Lazarus is a Mursaat, an ancient evil creature of the past, and the Shining Blade is an organization thats, in many ways, been dedicated SPECIFICALLY to making sure the Mursaat all died. Makes sense we would want to go to the organization designed for this specific thing, even if its mostly based on a singular race, to deal with said problem.

You really shouldn't be trying to come up with more 8-9+ years into a game's existence. That just leads into the territory WoW has gone into with "DUDE THE JAILER, THIS GUY YOU NEVER HEARD ABOUT BEFORE, WAS THE REAL BADGUY ALL ALONG!" If something of great importance existed, and actually had an effect on the world, we should have felt it/had it hinted at already. This also ties into an actual problem GW2 has, which is its environment range already covers pretty much everything as is, so its hard to add new things when finding places for those new things would just dredge up the logical questions of "ok but why are you making up something for a new desert setting when the Crystal Desert already exists, and can just expand upon that and its stories?" We have the twisted jungles of the Maguuma, the dense forests of the Echovald, the high peaks of the Shiverpeaks, the expansive deserts of the Crystal Desert, the savanna/badlands of Elona, the corrupted watery landscape of Orr, the rolling green countryside of Ascalon, etc. etc. The three major setting of the GW universe, Tyria, Elona, and Cantha, cover most of Europe, Africa, and Asia. We're really only missing an "Americas" setting, which Utopia was seemingly going to provide, and has been hinted to likely exists based on people like Doern Delazquez, the S2 Priory map, and the artbook which seemingly still treats part of it as canon. So even adding that wouldn't really be anything "more" or "new" just going through what we already know exists. As is they could easily spend the next 5-6 years just building more off of what has already been established in the GW2 setting in 3 more LW seasons, and the 4th Xpack.

IBS wasn't "rushed" by any metric. There were originally going to be 4 more chapters of IBS(instead of the 4 Champions releases we got), and from what we can gather those would have been a 2 parter in the Centaur Homelands dealing with Primordus' rise(as we saw in the first two chapters of Champions) and then another 2 parter around Anvil Rock were we kill both dragons as part of Dragonstorm(ala the 2nd two parts of Champions). If you really think about it, there wasn't much more for the Jormag story to do. Like, if you remove its connection to Primordus, the Jormag story was pretty much complete as is. We had Gone back to the old Norn lands in the Far Shiverpeaks. Gotten to see what happened to many of the old Norn homestads like Longeye's, Sifhalla, Jora's, etc. Gone to the place Asgeir fought Frostfang and Jormag, and learned the secret truth regarding that battle, and the Norn's exodus south. Fought and killed the Fraenir, the highest ranking of the Svanir. Helped Jhavi defeat Drakkar in combat, earning her family some measure of vengeance for what Drakkar did to them. Found out what happened to the "Lost" Spirits of the Wild, stopped Jormag from corrupting the major Spirits of the Wild, and got to visit the place the Spirits first revealed themselves to the Norn. Got a spiffy new Claw of Jormag fight. Takes the whole "Norn of Prophecy"/Asgier 2.0 to its logical conclusion. By the time Jormag Rising ends the only thing left to do is recover the bow, and use it to kill Jormag, which would have been a two parter and then the story is over. It was only as long as it was because we just let Jormag go for several months to artificially delay its death because of the whole Jormag/Primrodus connection thing. Its the exact opposite of rushed, its artificially delayed. This also fits with what the other Elder Dragons got. When it came to the actual larger story against the Dragons each one got 3 maps + a meta fight Zhaitan had Straights of Devastation, Malchor's Leap, Cursed Shore, and Arah story mode Mordremoth had Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon's Stand Kralkatorrik had Vabbi, Jahai, Thunderhead, and Dragonfall Soo-Won had Seitung, New Kaineng, Echovald, and Dragon's End Jormag had Bitterfrost, Bjora, Drizzlewood, and Dragonstorm Primordus had Ember Bay, Draconis Mons, the first two champions releases replacing its third map, and Dragonstorm. The whole "IBS/Jormag was rushed!" is sheer copium.

Local threats, without the larger global threats as a meta narrative, would be over way too quickly to be real stories. Like, if you took the Bangar storyline, but removed all of Jormag's influence in that narrative Bangar wouldn't have been manipulated by Jormag to do any of it in the first place. Even if he did do it of his own volition, there would have been no storm blocking us from following him. Meaning we would have caught up to him moments after he left, and beaten him before he got anywhere. Even if a storm of that magnitude/as fortunate as it was for Bangar did happen naturally, without Jormag's manipulations he would have never gotten to the point of killing Drakkar, meaning no massive PR boost for him that got so many Charr to defect to his side. Event if he did THAT, without Jormag's influence there would have been no spirit energy enhanced Dominion, and no Frost Legion, meaning Bangar's forces would have been so massively outgunned/outnumbered the "war" would have been over the very next release anyways. We wouldn't even need the Drizzlewood two parter to show it. Not to mention we have pretty much already cleaned out all the local/personal threats in the known world The Centaur War is over. They got pushed back to their homelands, and their leader killed. Even Anet was ready to make us buddies in Icebrood Saga before it got cut, because even they think its over. The whole White Mantle/Bandit issue is solved. The Mantle is totally wiped out, and the bandits(who were being funded by the White Mantle) no longer have that organization/funding. The remaining bandit leaders got wiped out during the "Justice of the Blades" side story. We learned the truth about the Sylvari's origins, and their immunity to dragon corruption. And we killed Mordremoth meaning they never have to worry about being controlled again. The Nightmare court was never particularly large in the first place, and has suffered so many losses that it doesn't make sense for them to come back as a significant threat any time soon. We went underground(in Tangled Depths), found a lost Asuran city(Rata Novus), learned more about the Asura who stayed underground to keep fighting Primordus when the rest of their kind fled to the surface(Rata Novans), found some tech/magic/research they developed to fight Primordus(Dragon Lab), used that to find Primordus' weakness, and killed him(LWS3 and IBS), and stopped the Inquest from stealing the ancient Asuran secrets(Rata Arcanum). We went back to the old Norn lands(Bjora/Drizzlewood), visited many of their old settlements(Jora's Keep, Longeye's, Sifhalla), got to visit the place Asgeir fought Frostfang and Jormag, and learned the truth of that encounter and the Norn's exodus south. We helped Jhavi defeat Drakkar, earning her family some measure of vengeance for what the beast did to them. We found out what happened to the "lost" Spirits of the Wild, visited the place the Spirits first showed themselves to the Norn, and the other Spirits played a big role in the story. Braham took his Asgeir 2.0/Norn of Prophecy story to is conclusion, being a key figure in the defeat of Jormag. Jormag's death, as well as the death of the Franeir, pretty much ruined the whole Svanir cult into nothingness. The Charr stories are over themselves. Kralkatorrik is dead, and the Branded in Ascalon wiped out. The Flame legion had been largely reabsorbed into the larger Charr society, and progress has been made at finding peace with the remaining holdouts. The whole Charr civil war dealt with the Bangar/Smodur issues, purging the toxic, and self destructive, elements from Charr society out, and helping them start on a new path. This has likely allowed them to begin reaching out to the Olmakhan, bringing all of Charr society back together. In Elona, Palawa Joko is dead, and his empire collapsed. The Sunspears were rebuilt, and are leading a coalition of various Elonian factions into creating a new republic, which has now began reaching out to the rest of the world. What remained of the Forged have been wiped out as well. In Cantha the Empire has ended its isolationist policies, and reopened its borders. The Aetherblade issue was resolved. The Speakers/Jade Brotherhood have reached a tentative peace, and the Brotherhood is looking to find places outside of Cantha where they can go legit. Soo-Won is dead, and the void threat has been stopped. The personal stories for Logan, Rytlock, Eir, Caithe, Rox, Braham, Canach, Taimi, Gorrik, and Marjory/Kas, are pretty much over at this point. Like, the only really pressing issues left are the Purists likely trying to unleash the Risen horde in Drowned Kaineng on New Kaineng to wipe the city out, and the monster of the deeps thats powerful, and influential, people mistook it for an Elder Dragon. Both of which are likely LWS6 issues, and not small local/personal threats. And there is still the issue of the unresolved God plot with Lyssa, which is probably Xpack 4, barring some mist Demon invasion thing... or something.

Nope, according to Kuuvavang being able to turn human was something the Saltsprays learned themselves. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kuunavang

Humanity was only "on their heels" in regards to how Cantha had become isolated, elona had been taken over by the lich Joko and became isolated, and Orr and Ascalon were destroyed. They were never "on their heels" population wise, only in how much area they actively controlled. Lore never had them getting wiped out in such a way to leave ruins.

This is the only kind of tie in that I would be OK with seeing. Even still, I would more prefer to see something akin to a Burning Legion-esque army of Mist demons, rather then "it was the void" for what destroyed the human homeworld, so we could get an expansion on the Mist demons a bit

Glint was a well known figure on Tyria for hundreds of years, was actively trying to help the world during that time, and even made a grand master plan to save Tyria from the Elder Dragons. The Zephyrites were the successors of the Brotherhood of the Dragon Dwarven group that had aided Glint in her in that task for quite awhile before the end of GW1. Soo-Won spent most of existence hiding under the oceans away from the other Elder Dragons, making her virtually unknown to the world, and only came around to help Cantha at Kuunavang's request around 100 years prior. Its no wonder that the Zephyrites valued Glint given everything she did, and all of nothing Soo-won did for most of recorded history.

Zephyrite. Aetherblades didn't exist until like a decade ago, and didn't arrive in Cantha until Kralkatorrik's rampage through the Mists in LWS4.

Except GW2 has largely implied Menzies is dead. His "agony" https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Menzies's_Agony His "fate" https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Fate_of_Menzies The whole backstory of Balthazar in PoF where he went evil because he had nothing to fight(implying the war with Menzies was over) and the gods didn't want him fighting the Elder Dragons.

Anet has said that you really can't put maps under other existing maps. Also, given the massively negative reception to Tangled Depths, and Draconis Mons, I don't see Anet doing a lot of underground areas.