Tamias.7059

It was a big gamble to introduce these eldritch beings from the dawn of time into the setting as the major threats and imo it didn't really pay off. Even holding over from GW1 alone there are so many interesting unresolved storylines that got sidelined by the Elder Dragons. The Elder Dragons caused big changes in the world but as characters themselves they aren't interesting, which is why they got given personalities (in Zhaitan's case, retroactively)—but that made them less mysterious and threatening as well. Jormag is probably the one that came close to doing both pretty well. Then again, the one time we digressed from the Elder Dragons plot was with Balthazar, and that was a mess. We thought we were dealing with Lazarus for a big payoff from a GW1 storyline and then it turned out we'd been dealing with a totally different character whose motivations I never quite bought. The death of one of the human gods should have had huge repercussions for the entire of human society and it just...didn't, really. Even the Personal Story introduced lots of new potentially interesting story threads and most of them (including some of the more interesting ones), ANet seem to have just lost interest in finishing. It's disappointing. I think the Elder Dragons were a fundamentally flawed premise and it was hard to ever make them work properly, but there are also wider issues with the storytelling.

Honestly, the whole thing is a confusing mess and I'm not sure the devs have a clear idea. This wouldn't be a problem, but the understanding of lots of story points (like what is this Void which is the final boss of the entire Elder Dragons storyline) rely on this being clear and it's not.

One of the things I only noticed about the Factions manual relatively recently was that it describes the Kurzicks and the Luxons as "the two most populous and diverse vassal cultures in the Empire", implying the existence of other, more obscure human cultures in Cantha.

My speculation for Living World Season 5: Storylines: finding a new power source for Cantha, dealing with the Purists Maps: Western Shing Jea, Old Kaineng/Raisu Palace, the Battle Isles, Dominion of Winds My speculation for next xpac: Storylines: the human gods returning to Tyria now that the threat of the Elder Dragons are dealt with Locations: Xotecha, or Sunrise Crest

These areas were labelled in New Krytan on a texture pulled from the game files some time ago. Here's a high res version of the fan translation linked in the OP (I think Gwen Yeh and Kim Dahye are/were ANet staffers): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tyria_world_fan_map.jpg I don't think we know anything more about them, however the map we see in-game is slightly cropped. The data-mined map shows more: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tyria_map_(unexplored).jpg One think I think we can be reasonably confident about is that these areas aren't Xotecha; since that is an island in The Mists and not on the same physical plane as the other continents: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Xotecha EDIT: Should also mention, we do have an NPC who is hinted to be from a human nation which isn't Kryta or Cantha: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Doern_Velazquez

To be fair, back in winds of Change we had no evidence, only rumors that the Jade Sea and forest were "reverting". We've never had real proof of it. Hell, the manual lines don't strongly suggest that either are reverting. It explicitly states the waves under the surface of the Jade Sea are purely unsubstantiated rumors. The Forest always had life growing out among the stone trees. We have jade carvings from Cantha among the Zephyrites at the cliffs. I'm doubtful that the Jade mined from the sea wouldn't also revert if the overall sea was returning to water. I don't know, I think that the manual is trying to hint very clearly that the effects of the Jade Wind are slowly being reversed. The exact text is, Maybe they gave themselves enough scope to change their minds if they wanted to by framing the reports of changes as rumours, but I read that as a very intentional hint that the Jade Wind is being reversed. Like, how weird would if be that the manual talked about rumours of waves beneath the surface of the Jade Sea, and then ANet never meant anything by it? And I think it's pretty clear from the manual as well that the growth in the Echovald Forest is since the defeat of Shiro. ANet of course have the freedom to retcon this, and as you say it wouldn't be a huge retcon because they gave themselves the freedom to be like, "oh, those were only rumours" (at least in the case of the Jade Sea), but I think the intent when those words were written was definitely that the Jade Wind was slowly being reversed. All that said, having rewatched the trailer a few times I strongly suspect that it's depicting Cantha in 1072 AE, not Cantha today. I thought it strange at the time that Kaineng City would look exactly the same as it did hundreds of years ago, given how unstable its construction was (and I'd have thought it would have either burned down or the Ministry of Purity would have addressed this), and there's also the miasma in Shing Jea Island. I don't know why the trailer would show us Cantha's past rather than present. But I think it might do.

A couple more details I've noticed: from this post, although the character might be new to us, it seems that they are ancient (or at least as ancient as Kuunavang). Also contrary to what I speculated in my earlier post it looks like this does not mean the end of GW2.

The gw1 map no, that's all empire now.. however the Gw1 map only showed a portion of the continent.There is a great deal of land south of what we played in Gw1 that was never explored nor did we know anything about it.These are areas I am personally looking forward to seeing in Gw2 as well as the old locations from Gw1, I'd love to know what's down there.Might even be a whole region of non human races down there united against the Empire or something.I'd also point out, the Guild Wars Factions Manuscripts describe the Kurzicks and the Luxons as "the two most populous and diverse vassal cultures in the Empire", implying the existence of numerous otherwise unmentioned vassal cultures besides.

Now that I'm done hyperventilating, some observations: The voice in the trailer (who is addressing Kuunavang), who we know to be a mysterious new characterA potential hint to how the Elder Dragons relate to the history of the Empire of the Dragon: "They built new lives upon the very thing that sought to end theirs"Just after that hint, we head to the sewers and there's what looks like the section of a giant dragon spanning the gap – can't remember if anything like that was in GW1 but if so it was definitely made out to be man-made rather than part of any dragon's body. If everyone knew the city was built on the body of a dragon you'd think someone would have mentioned it.the expansion logo is styled after a wave, which very strongly hints that the water will be a central figure in the storyline. In fact, in the logo there's one dragon above the waves and another beneath the waves (could that be the DSD?) – a hint that there'll be 2 dragons, possibly in opposition to each other?the name of the xpac, End of Dragons, and its possible implications: assuming the obvious happens and Aurene survives the Icebrood Saga and Jormag, having been revealed as evil, does not, this expansion seems poised to resolve the main storyline of GW2 and possibly in some sense imply the death of the Elder Dragons, or at least what they represent. If there were no dragons, what would that mean for their magic? Would magic end? Would it be dispersed across the mortal races, making them all more powerful (think Abaddon's gift of magic on steroids)? What would that mean for Aurene and Kuunavang? I guess that's all up for speculation. And then where does the story of GW2 go after the dragon storyline has been resolved (if that is where we're going)? Return of the gods? Xotecha? Wherever this dude's from? Or does it not go anywhere else, are those storylines best reserved for GW3? Or do we not wrap up the story of the dragons at all, being as Primordus is still out there and we haven't (yet) seen any hint of its involvement in this expansion.That line in particular interests me: "[Mortals] built new lives upon the very thing that sought to end theirs". Is the voice saying that humans defeated the dragon in the last cycle and built Kaineng City on top of it? As far as we know, the last dragonrise was long before humans arrived in the world. Or maybe the voice is more generally referring to a broader class of mortals, including the Forgotten, the offshoot of the Deldrimor dwarves, and the builders of the Altrumm Ruins. Another possibility is that the voice is referring to a dragon that has awoken beneath where humans have happened to build their civilisation, but that for me that doesn't quite scan with the past tense "sought to end [the lives of the mortals in question]", since a dragon that's been dormant since long before humans arrived probably has never sought to end humans. Maybe I'm reading a little too much into it. And if such a dragon has awoken, which dragon? The deep sea dragon? Because that'd contradict The Movement of the World (and it wouldn't be the first time that The Movement of the World has been contradicted), which says the deep sea dragon awoke in, well, the deep sea. The locations the camera seems to pan through are: Shing Jea Island (maybe Monastery Overlook or Shing Jea Arena?)through an archway that looks very similar to the one in this concept artinto Raisu Palacethen the canopy of Kaineng City (looking, unfortunately, pretty unchanged from GW1)into the Kaineng sewersthen into some crazy space realmthen the Jade Sea – looking very unchanged from GW1, directly contradicting the Eye of the North manual which very strongly suggested that it was reverting back to water. Obviously a lot of us are hugely nostalgic for the Jade Sea but I think it'd be a shame if ANet shied away from moving the world on for Cantha in the same way that they did for Tyria in GW2's release, just for nostalgia points. By implication does this mean we can assume that the Echovald Forest will also still be made of stone? That's a shame if so, I think it'd be really cool to revisit there and see the architecture carved out by the Kurzicks magically transformed into woodand if anyone wants to read my feverish hopes for where a Cantha storyline might go, see this thread from more or less a year ago

Hey, if we're speculating (in a weirdly heated way) about how the story might lead into a Cantha/Bubbles xpac, a lot of my rambling story hook from last year still holds up...

As someone on reddit has pointed out, Bangar keeps a corrupted (by Jormag) norn artefact in his office. Now where have we seen this before?

I don’t think he’s acting rationally - Elder Dragons can’t be tamed or controlled. Don’t you think it’s funny that his objective (to be in a position where he has enough power to rival the Pact and/or Aurene) dovetails nicely with Jormag’s presumed priorities - namely to put the brakes on the dragon-killers that Aurene and the Pact represent? Given that Jormag is the most subtle Elder Dragon, I doubt that that’s a coincidence.

He's back. From his new dialogue, it's clear that the player's encounters with him are happening in non-chronological order. When he meets the player in Grothmar Valley is the first time (from his point of view) that he meets the player, and it's where the player gets the nickname "cub". It's also the player that sends him down a rabbit hole with "ninety-seven". Do these new developments shed any light on this mystery? The last time we had an NPC this enigmatic was Bahltek, who it now seems was intended to set up foreshadowing for Guild Wars Utopia, which is why all his hints never paid off. But these these time travel shenanigans, I wonder if we'll see plot elements from Utopia make a return...

My guess is Ryland.