Rognik.2579

We also know that elder dragons have always had minions. Zhaitan had the Risen, Mordremoth the Mordrem, Primordus the Destroyers, Jormag is Icebrood, Kralkatorrik the Branded, and there'll be one for this last dragon, too. Presumably, at least some magic is expended to create these minions, or convert the living into them, and maybe that's how it gets into the jade. Or, the jadetech only gets the dragon magic infused into it after it has been treated. There's still a lot intentionally being withheld on the story that true theorizing depends on our imagination.

Konig already covered most of this, but I just want to add that each chapter can have drastically different paths, including a branch in the middle. Every human's chapter 3 will start the same, but the previous two were based on your character's starting biography, and can lead you elsewhere. Going to Black Haven in Chapter 3 is one way to get everyone to the same location before pushing them to the next locale. But as pointed out, there's not really a deep lore meaning as to why that fort is so important. It just happened to be in a convenient spot for the level characters were expected/suggested to be. Fort Salma is too far west for the story (and it was meant to push everyone towards Lion's Arch first), and I don't know Kessex Hills well enough to talk about the other human fortifications. I do know sylvari and asura cut through Kessex from Brisban Wildlands, but I don't think they spend that much time there before pushing on to Gendarren.

Only in the loosest sense. None of them are a one-for-one parallel. Just because Balthazar is a god of war, that doesn't mean that he has the same personality as Ares, or Tyr or any other god of war.

Are you sure you're not confusing Cantha for Elona? The Order of Whispers definitely had secret ways into Elona, but I don't think they mentioned Cantha, which is across the ocean, quite a ways away. However, they did have Kuunavang. While not an elder dragon, she is a large dragon that the Canthan hero of old spoke to.

Remember in Season 3, that became our primary motivation not to kill the dragons, since two dragons' deaths meant an imbalance, and destroying a third risked destabilizing everything and bringing about the end of the world. Somehow, Aurene seems to be counteracting this, so there is no current threat. At least, I hope so since 5 dragons are now dead.

We still don't know that much of the dragons' background, but as far as we can tell, this is a natural cycle. No one brought dragons in specifically to eat all the magic and destroy sentient life.

And Jennah is descended from Salma. I'm not quite sure what your point is.

I was about to like this. Then you ruined it at the end...

Zojja does not count. She's still there, even if she's essentially a vegetable now. As for scale, there were at least a dozen people who died in the path leading up to killing Zhaitan. Far more if you count all the branches. The main difference is those three were important characters, while most of the deaths in the Personal Story were there just for that chapter.

On the flip side, war has been one of the biggest technological motivators. With Tyria constantly under attack from the dragon minions, they were more driven to research new magics and weapons to fight back and survive. Peace is a great time to find other uses for that tech, but much of it was first found while fighting for our lives. I mean, the airships would likely not have been built if not to take down Zhaitan.

Been a while since I played through Mordremoth's story, but remind me how many people died. I'm talking named NPCs, since all the dragons have killed countless NPCs.

Haven't really read replies, but I can look at it kind of how Japan is in modern day. They were isolationists for a long time, and only really opened their borders because people forced them to. Even now, they have a LOT of old traditions, but at the same time, they very quickly learned and developed technology so that they are one of the world leaders in that field. Thing is, the country is a place where you can have a metropolitan area like Tokyo, and the instant you leave the city's borders, there's rice fields and people transporting water from a well on a wagon (maybe not that extreme, but close). So no, I don't think it's that unusual that a country that was supposedly so advanced in dragonjade tech have a lot of old-traditions behind some of their elite specs. Catalyst, meanwhile, seems like a more modern spec with the jade sphere as a field that can change elements. I'm going to wait until the last three elites are revealed before passing final judgement, but so far, no objection to the lore they've given.

I don't think Braham is so bad. Oh, he was pretty degraded in Season 3, when pretty much all of Dragon's Watch abandoned the Pact Commander (PC from here on out) just before going to Elona, but he got better over season 4, and he served his purpose during Icebrood (I hate IBS as an abbreviation; reminds me of Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Honestly, I think they should have killed Braham during Champions, when he and Ryland were going at each other and Jormag and Primordus killed each other. Only reason they didn't, I feel, is because they wanted that last fight with Ryland and force Rytlock to kill his son. I say this because, after having so many people die in the fight against Zhaitan who we barely got to know, the rest of the dragons have been pretty light on ally deaths. Braham was someone we got to know for a long while, and his volunteering to be Primordus's champion to guide him seemed like a fitting end to his arc, where his death would actually hurt. With him not dead and the norn free of Jormag, I think I'm ready to marry him off so Eir's lineage can continue on, and I'm happy for him to be a background character to helps out occasionally, kind of like Logan is now. He wasn't exactly my favourite, but even at his worst, I never hated him.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Queen Jennah also proposed the peace treaty with the charr, and sent Dougal and company off to Ascalon City ruins to retrieve the Claw of the Khan-Ur as a peace offering. If not for both Jennah and Smodur, the charr might still be warring, even though there were signs from both sides of tiring of the long war. Of course, you'll always have people like the Separatists and the charr Renegades who refuse to accept peace, but thankfully they are a very vocal (or active, in the Plains of Ruin) minority.

You do know that Scourge and Harbinger are two different elite specs and, as such, they can't both be used? Equipping three elite specializations would totally break the character, even without conflicting mechanics change.

I mean, just going off the name, I think "virtuoso" is a term derived from musical ability. Maybe this specialization was named because they look like a conductor or musician as they wave their blades around. Then again, I just like the idea that mesmers are the entertainers of Tyria, actors and the like. Harbinger sounds like it came form "harbinger of death", and if they want to inflict themselves with conditions to make their skills stronger, it does kind of fit. Although, they seem more like a leper, running around "unclean" and spreading the infection. I'm cuious what their utility skills might be; I'm guessing alchemy-based. Willbender is the oddest one for me. I really couldn't even guess what inspired this name.

Once upon a time, the dye that you applied to your armour was remembered, even when you swapped out equipment. Sure, sometimes that meant different things when a major dye channel became a minor one, but it was a memory of sorts. I have no idea why that disappeared. But if you really want a specific look, there's always just buying another loadout tab and putting your specific look in there. I'm sure you don't already have 6 different weapon/armor stat combinations.

1. We kind of already have player housing. It's called the home instance. It's not great in its current form, but it has a ton of nodes that can be unlocked. There's not a single home room that the player can really call their own, which is a problem, but that's an idea. Alternatively, there are the guild halls which have plenty of items that can be placed, with the only problem there of it being something shared with a guild instead of individual players. All the pieces are there, just no one has a specified home. 2. The trouble with a new class, as pointed out, is that each expansion promised a new elite specialization with it. In order to be fair and not have people complain about it, there would need to be 3 specializations to come out with EoD. Even if this was ignored, any new class added would invariably require the staff to come up with one more specialization per expansion release (10 instead of 9, with even just one added). Feels like it'll just weigh the whole development time down. 3. As Asum already said, the races are more than just a new skin. For one thing, no race plays differently from another in any competitive format, so that draw is gone. In PvE, you would need to make 6 or so racial skills that are so bad people only use them because they don't have other skills for those slots, and every voiced line by the PC (Pact Commander) would need to be recorded an extra two times, one for each gender. How backwards compatible would they be? As ArenaNet always likes to move forward, I don't see any way to integrate a new race into the story at this point. 4 and 5. While the competitive side of the game is unquestionably neglected, ArenaNet has never relied on a big expansion to modify them. This stuff is probably being worked on right now, and will be released When It's Ready(TM). And if it's not, I don't see how they could be convinced. 6. Downed state is an interesting thing. It is pretty unique to GW2, and there's been so many special events where it's been turned off for a week or two, but it never stays gone for very long. Have you ever wondered why that is? I'm sure there's a reason for it. 7. NO. Hard no to that. The last time any sort of vertical progression was added was ascended gear, with the addition of fractals. Even that caused a fit from much of the community, seeing as one of the tenets of the game is NOT having to grind in order to get the best gear in the game. Legendary doesn't even count in this, as the stats are always going to be equal to whatever happens to be the highest tier gear at the time. No to level cap increases, no to new gear tiers, and no to anything that inflates the power creep of the game; elite specs have already done enough of that. It's not that any of your ideas are bad, but they are all rooted in the old ways of MMORPGs. GW2 is trying to blaze new paths, not retread old ones. And yes, it's stumbled, quite a few times really. But we won't get anything new by recreating something old. Try thinking about what you really like in the game, and what would truly build onto it.

So I was just watching some TV before bed, trying to relax and go to sleep, when apparently the character Lyssa appeared there. I was a bit shocked, and did my research to learn that she was indeed a Greek figure, if a very minor one. Lyssa - Wikipedia If seems that she's listed as, essentially, the goddess of madness, which does seem to fit very well with her Tyrian counterpart, the goddess of deception and illusion. Anybody think we can learn something from this small nugget of info? Or is it far too vague to be useful. Any other RL connections people know to the other gods? I know "Balthazar" is a name thrown around, but I don't think there's a definitive one. I think Ascalon was a biblical city. That's about it for me.

So far, I have been patient in such matters. The initial assumption was that Icebrood Saga (or whatever the Jormag story would've been) would have eventually expanded that area. With all but one dragons gone now, I've come to accept that we probably won't see the area explored except for a very good reason. Cantha is the last major location holdover from GW1, unless you want to count the Far Shiverpeaks, so nothing but new areas await us after this coming expansion.

Abaddon. Oh, wait. No, that was Nightfall. My mistake.

I'm fairly confident that if Zojja was coming back, there would be some news of it, especially considering she has a small yet dedicated fan base. I actually got the impression that it might be the new Commander avatar, the way they were propping her up, but maybe I didn't hear their discussion properly.

I'm pretty sure that Mysterious Stranger was the head of the Zephyrites, going forth with the scion egg. I can't recall if that was confirmed, but I don't see "him" coming back.

One note I want to make here, since no one has brought it up yet, is that the few named tengu we've seen, they tend to have Japanese-sounding named. This doesn't exactly preclude humans from having such names, but it does seem like that's their "theme". The only two confirmed Canthan NPCs I recall seeing are, naturally, Marjorie and Belinda Delaqua. Neither of those names sound particularly Eastern to me, so you have a bit of liberty in your name choice. Or, you can be like a friend of mine, whose RL name has a French first name, Japanese middle name, and German last name.

Sadly, I don't see that happening, either. Once they introduced elite specializations and that one would come out each expansion, it basically locked out new classes since a new class would probably need retroactive elites for each expansion, and that just doubles work from there on out.