Sajuuk Khar.1509

Gonna have to agree with Konig here, Kanaxi doesn't need much explanation to his origins. Hes some crazy/corrupted mist demon. Also don't really want to see him like... suddenly return in the new map either. Maybe some remnant Oni from ages past, maybe some lore more explcitly connecting him to mist demons as a setup for a future mists demon plot, but not Kanaxi himself returned.

We already know she fused Asura tech with jade-tech to make the Jade-tech prosthetics better, so it makes sense she would do the same with the energy stuff.

I could see this being part of the story here. EoD left a handful of big plot points open The Risen in Old Kaineng/whatever Risen horror is in Raisu Palaca The Purist's plot to take over the city The Deep Sea Monster off the coast The eminent energy crisis now that Soo-Won is gone In a more traditional LW season I would've guess the energy crisis might be a meta plot across the season, while the rest of the plots are taken care of. In this new format of mini-expansions I can see them doing the energy plot first, since its the most obvious pressing matter at the end of EoD, and using that to set up some future mini-expansions that deal with the Risen/Purists, and the DSM.

I know we'll find out in two weeks, but I want to see what we can think of before hand. Something tied to the Oni/Kanaxi? something tied to the Deep Sea Monster? Maybe the Purists are trying to get some power to further their goals? Anet just abandons all the EoD plot threads they set up and goes straight into the god arc? What are your thoughts/ideas?

This makes the most sense for how GW2 will likely go, based on how Anet has done storylines in the past, IMO. The Risen, Purists, and Deep Sea Monster, are still active threats in Cantha that need to be dealt with. since we're already there, makes sense its LWS6. There was never a rumor, at least in-game, that Lyssa was messing around in Cantha. We do know Lyssa is doing something, but where is unknown. Also, GW2 has long seemed to retcon the "humans arrived south of Cantha" lore, having them apparently first show up in Orr according to the Orrian History scrolls. And Aurene isn't going to go flying everywhere killing big monsters for us. Shes already seen how direct interference can be bad unless absolutely necessary. Don't forget ending the Inquest, finding Malyck and his tree, and maybe something with the Wizard Tower. Though I don't think the Deep Sea Monster will be Xpack 4. I don't see Anet doing a mostly underwater focused Xpack when they know almost no one likes underwater combat, and when they even joked about Aurene "vetoing" underwater legendary weapons in EoD.

So like I said, in vanilla GW2.

As far as I'm aware no Destroyers appear east of the Shiverpeaks in vanilla GW2, outside of one instance in Vexa's Lab. We see them in Metrica Province Brisban Wildlands Kessex Hills Timberline Falls Lornar's Pass Mount Maelstrom But none is Ascalon. I don't think there's any lore reason for it, just Anet deciding not to put them there. Maybe they felt two fire based enemy groups(Flame Legion and Destroyers) would be too much overlap?

Menzies actively worked with Dhuun and Abbadon back in GW1. There's no ambiguity on if he was evil or not.

From what we can tell the original end of IBS was going to be a Bjora/Drizzlewood style 2 parter in the Centaur Homelands, then a similar 2 parter at Anvil Rock for the Dragonstorm meta map. Primordus simply moved underground like he did in LWS3 when he moved from the Shiverpeaks to Draconis Mons. Don't forget, Elder Dragons are seemingly hollow clusters of magical energy, that using material around it to built its body. Just like Kralkatorrik could turn himself into a literal sandstorm, its quite possible Primrodus can just turn himself into lava, and reform his body after moving.

They explained it in the strike itself. It was a clan of Stone Summit that rejected peace with the Deldrimor, and attempted to use Primordus' magic to stave off/break away from the magic of the Rite of the Great Dwarf that was slowly turning them into stone Dwarves like the rest.

Modern humans came around 300,000 years ago. Humans didn't develop language until 50,000 years ago The first human civilization didn't come about until 6,000 years ago. By comparison, the last dragon rise, which wiped out most life on the planet of Tyira, happened only 10,000 years ago. We're lucky Norn exist at all, let alone at the level they're currently at. Though magically accelerated evolution, and being partially uplifted by the Spirits, may have helped. You want to know what the Norn were doing for the last 10,000 years? The same thing most other races in Tyira were doing for the last 10,000 years or so. Being tribalistic hunter-gatherers, with no real civilization, and thus little to no real history of note. Same as we see with most other races in Tyira such as the Hyleck, Quaggan, Harpies, Ogres, Ettins, Tengu(at least until recently), Giants, Grawl, etc. The Norn have the further issue of their environment. That being the Far Shiverpeaks being inherently limiting to population growth, and development, as it lacks of the needed farm-able land to support large populations. That's really no different than the Charr. Their history, before encountering humanity, really boils down to Spent ages as a brutal, tribialistic, race that was constantly killing itself. Khan-Ur rises, unties the tribes, and begins conquering the tribal races around them. Humans come to Ascalon, and Charr fight them for a long time. Present day. According to "Ecology of the Charr" the Khan-Ur was still alive when humans came into Ascalon. He only got assassinated when they began planning the first big counter assault against humans. This would be around year 116BE. Its only 1336 AE in modern GW2. So what were the Charr doing for the like 8,500+ years between the last dragon rise, and when the Khan-Ur united them? Being a tribalistic species killing itself with inter-tribal warfare and having little to no history of note beyond "another year, another tribal murder conflict" I'd bet the Asuran history isn't much different. Around 7,000-8,000 years with little of note. Around the times humans arrive on Tyira they reach their reach true civilization. Spend most of the next 1,500-2,000ish years reaching their peak of 6 Rata Sum sized cities. Primordus awakes and then they get pushed to the surface. The Asura's anti-social tendencies, conspiratorial nature, and desire to work on things in isolation unless absolutely necessary, very likely means they had little in the way of inter-racial conflict on the scale of noticeable war or anything. The only annoyance they seemed to have had while underground were the Skritt, but that was more the view of pests, rather than a serious threat. That's reality. Its only been the most recent 2% of human history that we actually accomplished much of anything. The other 98% being a lot of "very little". Even with the magically accelerated timescale of evolution GW2 has, we really wouldn't expect most Tyrian(world) civilizations to have true history going back much farther then the arrival of humans around 2,000 years ago. And given the isolated nature of most Tyrian races, even the last 2,000 years wouldn't have been that exciting for most of them until the current dragon rise.

Well "The Great Dwarf" supposedly fought the Great Destroyer in the last Dragon Rise, and yet normal Dwarves continued to exist into this one. There might be some way to undo it.

Assuming they did even actually come from Kodan. Several Kodan in the village in Bjora dismiss the idea as nonsense. People have a tendency to sit on ideas they personally like, and invent increasingly larger/more complex storylines in regards to how those things should be dealt with, only to be disappointed when the actual narrative doesn't do it because it was never that big in the first place. Its not even just a GW2 issue, its an issue in any series.

Looking at How Anet did LWS3, LWS4, and IBS How they used LWS4 to expand on Elona after PoF Comments they've made about expanding LWS6 maps over time I could see LWS6 going something like this 3 releases set in Old Kaineng. The general story of these releases would be dealing with the Risen, and the Purists, who are attempting to agitate the Risen into attacking New Kaineng as part of their plan to take over 3 releases set in the Battle Isles. The story of these releases would be dealing with the Deep Sea Monster, closing out that mystery The season would have an over arcing story of trying to solve Cantha's power issue, and this, combined with the events above, would lead to a revelation/discovery that leads us into expansion 4, which I suspect will be about the Gods/Mists. The narrative of the Norn, their homeland, and the spirits, is finished. It was finished before Champions even began.

I very easily can. None of those maps were about the larger fight against Zhiatan. It wasn't about the Pact taking the fight to him, we weren't on the big military campaign to take him down, it wasn't part of some huge operation to fight him. We were just in the area, as was his forces. Exactly the same as Primordus' forces were just in Metrica, Brisban, Kessex, etc. Kralks in the Dragonbrand. Jormag's forces in Forsgorge, etc. Mount Maelstrom especially. Neither of the map metas were about Zhaitan's forces, and Zhaitan's forces don't even appear in most of the normal events either. They're just lumbering about in the swamp in the bottom corner, and attack Quandry Scratch in one event. Not only are the Destroyers FAR more involved in the map(being the focus of one or two metas), but all the other dragon minions show up in Mount Maelstrom in almost equal numbers as the Risen due to the post-launch ley line dragon minion events. You could completly remove the Risen from Mount Maelstrom and not change the map in any significant way. And Destroyers were showing up in the Desert Highlands in the Derelict Delve and as bounty bosses. You gonna call that a Primordus map? You don't seem to be able to comprehend difference between the story/map being about something, and something also just existing in that area. Might as well say Skyrim was about the Thalmor since they show up in various places... it isn't. They're there to be a background detail of the world, not the focus of it. A whole lot of misrepresentation and reaching here Trying to pull in trailers, and books, is the ultimate form of reaching. Most people not only haven't read the books(not to mention how many times the books have been contradicted in-game and made not entirely canon anyways), but they don't watch trailers either, so that doesn't actually translate to expose to these character. We were also talking about the game, not out of game materials. So this is just goalpost moving. By the same metric of Jormag being talked about through IBS, Primordus got numerous mentions across LWS3, and their presence was felt heavily in two of the seasons' maps. Just like Jormag was felt in two of IBS's maps. Not to mention things like the Derelict Delve/Bounty bosses in the Desert Highlands, the large presence of Destroyers and Primordus magic corrupted Stone Summit in Steel and Fire, Champions which had Destroyers popping up all across Tyria, etc. I don't know anyone who treated the Mouths/Eyes of Zhaitan as exposure to Zhaitan itself. They were largely treated as odd minions like every dragon had. The Mouth shows up in 4 missions(two of which are mutually exclusive) and just serves as a boss fight. Might as well claim the various odd Destroyer bosses throughout the game are also exposure to Primordus. Mordremoth is heard in two missions in HoT by Sylvari characters, in lines a lot of people miss due to how short they are. The dialogue in Bitter Harvest everyone can hear, and amounts to 2-3 word threats. Nothing that gives us any real insight/knowledge/exposure to the dragon that various quips from normal enemies doesn't give. And Bitter Harvest is part of the finale against the dragon anyways. Its like claiming "we'll we heard Zhaitan speak in Arah story mode!"(if it had spoken at all) Our actual face time with Soo-Won in EoD is all of a couple minutes in each time we see her, the same amount of face to face exposure we get with Jormag, Primordus, Zhaitan, and Mordremoth, across the game. Even counting non-direct screen time most of the dragons got a couple minutes total outside Kralk, who was always far and beyond the most exposed. The dragons almost never showed up directly, rarely had anything to say beyond short threats, and our actual interaction with them numbers in the handful of minutes total for each. If you truly believed this then you wouldn't have made your initial response in the first place. This is just yet another one of your attempt to try to challenge someone, and then back out the moment you get challenged back by portraying anyone who doesn't immediately agree with you as being unreasonable as you've been doing, and been called out for doing, since the Guru days. You're hellbent on starting things you can't finish. Everyone else sees how transparent it all is.

The actual story against Zhaitan had 3 maps + a dragon fight, just like Mordremoth got, and pretty much all the Elder Dragons got Zhaitan had Straights of Devastation, Melchor's Leap, and Cursed Shore, + the dragon fight in Arah story mode Mordremoth had Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, and Tangled Depths, + the dragon fight in Dragon's Stand Kralkatorrik had Vabbi, Jahai, and Thudnerhead, + the dragon fight in Dragonall Soo-Won had Seitung Province, New Kaineng city, and Echovald Forest, + the dragon fight in Dragon's End Jormag had Bitterfrost, Bjora, and Drizzlewood, + the dragonfight in Dragonstorm Primordus had Ember Bay, Draconis Mons, and as mentioned the last map of the Centuar homelands was turned into the first 2 DRM releases, + the dragon fight in Dragonstorm. Only way Zhaitan had 5+ maps if if you're being super disingenuous about what actually constitutes the narrative fight against Zhaitan. But even then the other Elder Dragons, sans Soo-Won who was good and didn't have minions beforehand, got the same amount of teaser content before their actual stories, with minions appearing in cores maps leading to a major champion fight. Zhaitan had the bottom half of Bloodtide, and the Sparkfly Fen map, which led to a fight with Tequatal Mordremoth had bits of Dry Top, and Silverwastes, which led to a fight with the Vinewrath Jormag had the northern part of Wayfarer, the north-east part of Snowden, and Frostgorge Sound, which led to a fight with the Claw Kralk had the Dragonbrand which ran through Fields of Ruin, Blazeridge, and Iron Marches, and led to a fight with Shatterer Primordus' minions appeared in Metrica, Brisban, Kessex Hills, Timberline Falls, and Mount Maelstrom, which led to a fight with the Megadestroyer. Your statements about dragons and living world seasons is also incredibly disingenuous Kralk didn't get a LW season for himself, he shared one with Joko, where both got half the season. Jormag's so called LW season was mostly about the Charr, not Jormag itself.. Just like Primordus' was mostly about Balthazar, which is part of the narrative parallel between the two. Mordremoth didn't get two LW seasons. LWS1 had jack all to do with Mordremoth itself. We learned literally nothing about it, didn't hear its name, and we fought only one minion of it.... which we only found out was a minion of it at the very last second due to the finale cutscene. And LWS2 was just giving Mordremoth the content the other 4 evil dragons had back in core to bring it up to par with them. And none of the Elder Dragons outside Kralk got any real screen time Zhaitan only showed up in Arah story mode Mordremoth only showed up in Dragon Stand/Hearts and Minds Jormag only showed up, as a head, in Jormag Rising, and then again in Dragonstorm Primordus only showed up, as a head, in Draconis Mons, again as a head in "Wildfire", and then again in Dragonstorm Soo-Won showed up in Dragon's End, and the story missions "Deepest Secrets" and "The Only One" In actuality both Soo-Won and Primordus got more actual on-screen time than Zhaitan and Mordremoth did. And just a bit more than Jormag. Facts are facts regardless of if people want to accept them or not. And both Seitung and New Kaineng have everything to do with the Dragonvoid storyline, which was Soo-Won's storyline.

Canthan jade was originally formed by Shiro Tagachi's death-wail after he had absorbed the magics of Dwayna that had been bestowed on the emperor during the Harvest Temple ceremony. It later became affected by the death of Zhiatan, which turned it into the green color it is in GW2. IIRC there is no real origin story for Mursaat jade, but its not related to Canthan jade in any way that we know of.

This mostly has to do with fans having years to sit on specific things they find interesting, and having years to build increasingly complex, and increasingly unrealistic/nonsensical, expectations on how they should play out. Thus they end up being disappointed when those thing play out in far tamer, but far more grounded, manner. I've seen this happen not only in pretty much every MMO, but even other media like TV/movie series. People advocate for things like multi-year Charr civil war plots that focused ONLY on the Charr civil war, or similar for Joko, or Lazarus, ignoring that, even now, its pretty rare for an MMO to make it to 10+ years of active content development. You can't afford to waste multiple years on a side plot like that, or else you run the very real possibility of the game ceasing development before the larger plot is over. This combined with the fact that content development for games is slow, and most people get bored of any one thing fairly quickly, means you also can't afford to go overly into any one thing too much or else you lose most of the playerbase. Even by the time right before "No Quarter" came out there was a rather vocal portion of the playerbase complaining that they were already tired of the whole Bangar/Charr Civil War plotline, despite the fact we hadn't even gotten to the actual war part yet, because the time between "Bound in Blood"(SEP 2019), and "No Quarter"(May 2020) is an eternity in gaming time. Anet has largely taken an "introduction, escalation, resolution" method for their LW stories LWS3 White Mantle: Introduction(Bloodstone Fen), Escalation(Lake Doric), Resolution(Siren's Reef) LWS3 Jormag/Primordus: Introduction(Ember Bay), Escalation(Bitterfrost), Resolution(Draconis Mons) LWS4 Joko: Introduction(Istan), Escalation(Sandsweapt Isles), Resolution(Kourna) LWS4 Kralk: Introduction(Jahai), Escalation(Thunderhead), Resolution(Dragonfall) IBS Charr: Introduction(Grothmar), Escalation(No Quarter), Resolution(Jormag Rising) IBS Norn: Introduction(Whisper in the Dark), Escalation(Shadow in the Ice), Resolution(Jormag Rising) And from what we can tell the Centaurs would've likely followed a similar path in the original plans for IBS. With chapters 5/6 being in the Centaur Homelands, while 7/8 would be in Anvil Rock, starting off in the Woodland Cascades in C7(likely still part of the Centaur lands), and going into Anvil Rock proper in C8 for the finale. This would've given the 3 major races of the north, Charr, Norn, and Centaurs, each a 3 parter in the IBS storyline. The dragon stories themselves get slightly more time with two middle segments, instead of just one, before the finale battle. Pretty much every story in an MMO has to be built around these conceits. If a story goes on for a year and a half its already bordering on being too long in the grander scheme of things, and risks losing the audience. Most of whom have gotten bored of seeing the same plot over and over across 18 months. This is why games like Guild Wars 2, and STO, do these sorts of 18 month storylines for things like living world, and why even WoW typically had like 1.5 years between expansions(counting the post expansion content update as part of the expansion) You need to be going to something different in 18 months or so. Even now trying to wrap up the remaining GW2 plot threads will take another like 5 years, putting GW2 into a territory of active content development only a handful of MMOs have ever reached. They really couldn't afford to take more time than they already have on these plotlines.

I could see Anet easily doing a "Burning Legion"-like story at some point in the future. Though unrelated to the premise presented in the OP. Each of them got "teaser content back in core/LWS2(for Mordremoth) and 3 maps + dragon fight" like the dragons had gotten since Zhaitan. None of the Dragons got any more or less build up than the others. Anet was actually surprisingly consistent about it. Only thing that really got changed was Primordus' last map being changed into DRMs with the same overall story rather than open world maps.

Threatening the local empire with the fact you killed Zhaitan isn't exactly a great first impression to make after 200 years of isolation. That's the exact opposite tact one would take in that situation.

While true, as the DSM takes over larger parts of the deeps its going to have to come closer and closer to the surface to keep spreading. Not to mention, most living things can't survive in the deep ocean due to pressure, its unlikely we we're ever going to go super deep into the oceans to fight it in the first place. The Battle Isles would make a good place for it to be lured, or rise up near, for Anet to make a map involving fighting it.

Given what we've seen of most of Tyria's native species, humans probably outnumber several of them combined. Most Tyrian species are shown to be incredibly tribalistic, living in basic huts, having no real organization, or civilization, outside of their immediate village/family units, etc. The lack of organized farming, and other means of resource gathering, would mean their populations would be very low as they would lack the resources to support larger populations. OFC for the game's needs they're vastly overblown compared to other races for enemy density reasons, but things like Skritt, Grawl, Quaggans, Harpies, Ogres, Centaurs, Ettins, Giants, Jotun, Krait, Naga, trolls, etc. should have comparatively low populations compared to Humans/Charr. Outside of the Charr, Asura, Sylvari, and Norn, player races, only really the Dredge(who mostly built off the back's of the dwarves), Kodan, and Largos , seem to be at a stage that we can consider them to have proper civilization. Though the Norn really only reached "civilization" stage relatively recently, due to being forced together after the exodus north, and I do wonder how high the Kodan's population could actually be given that they come mostly from the cold arctic sea in the north, and seemingly relied on fishing as their primary food source back when their sanctuaries floated in the north. Though this isn't really surprising given that the Elder Dragons wiped out most species in the last dragon rise, and those that survived were likely sent back to the stone sage. Given how, based on the lore of human expansion, most of the Tyrian landmass wasn't populated by intelligent life to any significant degree until humans arrives, I would expect most of the world of Tyria, outside of the places humans settled, to be largely barren with a few intelligent species scattered over a long distance in small pockets.

Except he didn't control Primordus, and even the Spirits of the Wild tell him this isn't possible. The whole "how do you stop an avalanche" question. You don't, you can't control Primordus. The Spirits of the Wild couldn't do it, and Braham couldn't do it either. All he can do is focus the path of destruction more directly to Jormag... a target Primordus was already going to go after anyways. He couldn't make Primordus stop its actions entierly, he couldn't stop the Destroyers from popping up all over the place and destroying things, he couldn't make Primordus only attack the targets he wanted, all he really did was lure it more directly to Jormag.

Is it really "too much" human content when humans were, by miles, the most widespread and powerful race on Tyria for most of the setting of the franchise? Especially when you consider that the majority of non-human races were shown to be increadibly tribalistic, with no real developed civilization, and even the Charr, the most developed race besides humans, only have a fraction of the territory humans had at their height? A return to the past really wouldn't have to be Charr centric at all.

Well no, Balthazar wasn't trying to help anyone but himself. He even point blank states he doesn't care if Tyria is destroyed, all he wants is power so he can get revenge on the gods. That isn't helping, that isn't even TRYING to help. That's just deliberately trying to make things worse for personal gain.