Castigator.3470

There's one thing I can agree with: The megaserver system, while keeping maps populated, makes it difficult to grow and maintain a server community. Guilds are excellent places to meet people, but they would greatly benefit from something like GvG.Other than that GW2 is an overall upgrade over GW, at least as far as I am concerned.

That reminds me: Have we ever encountered a Flame Legion Guardian?GW1 featured a lot of Monk type spellcaster charr.

You are biologically correct.Sadly, the fantasy genre has the tendency to name playable groups races. If I'm not mistaken, this stems from early fantasy (Tolkien? Beren and Lúthien come to mind.), where humans and elves could procreate, creating fertile progeny, which would make elves a part of a wider humanoid species.But then Dungeons and Dragons went crazy and allowed everything to mix, causing a giant headache to all geneticists, pondering how a half lizardman is even remotely possible. Or half dragons. How can a large scaled winged creature with six limbs even be remotely compatible to a small four limb mammal? Anyway, the developers of GW2 decided to make their "races" proper species. Norn are not compatible with humans despite superficial similarities. One group has evolved from giant, the others come from a different world. Asura are subterranean creatures and charr are felines with horns. There must be some evolutionary reason for the horns, but modern charr seem use horns as a form of self expression. And sylvari are the fruits of the pale tree, so they're something else entirely.

Can we hide skill effects? Large zergs usually feature so many players of all classes with so many visual effects, that you can't see what is happening. It may be better, if you were able to tune out all those effects and concentrate on the boss.

While I do enjoy Holosmith for the over the top flashyness and the sci-fi blade, I agree that the class has its issues and having one well designed elite spec doesn't magically solve all the other problems. For the time being I use the sword, but whenever I need to go ranged the rifle is there in my backpack. As for the good old rifle. I'd love to see more classes being able to use the rifle. We have Deadeye, which is pretty well done, but what about hunters, when right outside of Divinity's Reach in the Queensdale forest there's a hunting lodge with rich nobles using all sorts of weapons, including rifles. Will there be a hunter elite spec?

Iron Legion guided tour leaflet. (Inspired by Egyptian cruise leaflet.)

The ranger needs an answer to the deadeye. You guys need rifles. I don't understand how rangers didn't get the rifle as a core weapon to begin with, but here we are, Hunters apparently have to specialize in order to use daggers, but get two handed swords as a core weapon.

But with a system, that ensures timezones with largely equal activity get matched against one another, this would go a long way to prevent you from going to bed with the entire map red, only to come back the next morning to a green map, because all the defenders had to sleep, while the attackers came out of their bed.

They already did? Then what is stopping them from allowing their windows client to use OpenGL rendering mode? Or a hypothetical Linux client. As for Vulkan, it's a lower level(as in less abstraction) implementation, which can gain additional frames per second, but isn't it more work intensive to implement?Or maybe it isn't since DX9 is already pretty close to the wire, we may already have experts with Anet, who can work their way around the GPU and only get confused, when additional layers of abstraction are stacked on their habitat.

You actually experience fewer driver issues on Linux. Linux drivers have a tendency to be written for correctness with a strong regression testing. IHV do not have room to play this driver obscuration game like they do on windows since all drivers are open source. For games like Gw2, Anet is pretty good at Q/A. If you see graphics issues on tech support, it is more likely it due to driver issues than Anet programmers. That and the occasional graphics card giving in to old age.As for sinister logic, I guess we'd all welcome it, if Anet ported GW2 to run natively on Linux. However, Anet may not have the time and manpower to port their client/engine using inhouse labour, nor the money and risk/reward expectation to let their client/engine be ported over by another company.Though I suspect their servers may already be running on linux, porting over all those graphical goodies from DirectX 9.0 to OpenGL is a lot of work. And Anet may not be willing to open up their codebase for a group of maintainers to port the client, because of trade secrets, that may inevitably be picked up by the competition.So for the time being, WINE is good enough to run Guild Wars 2 on Linux. It is not hyper-optimized, but I can enjoy dungeons, raids and any instanced content without issue, open world is generally fluid, only massive zergs with lots of effects á la prime time Palawadan get my FPS to noticeably slow down.

I see your issue, but I don't see it that way precisely because the charr state is organized the way it is.People in our world are taught by their own teachers, who have their own biases, that bottom up revolutions are the only way for society to change, that all reforms are doomed from the outset and the only lasting change is radical change.Which is untrue. There are ample examples of societies being changed by their leaders, not through violent radical change, but gradual reform. The Human-Charr peace treaty didn't exactly have what you call public approval. But the Legions are not a democracy.If you want change and you're at the bottom of the chain of command, there is nothing you can do.If you want something to change and you're a Legionnaire, you can tell your warband to clean their act.If you're a Centurion, tell your Legionnaires you have a standing order.Tribunes can do the same to Centurions.And finally, an Imperator has the authority to make laws.Smodur is the progressive today, and I bet he is preparing Tribune Kindleshot to take his place, thus ensuring consistency even after he dies.In german schools our teachers call this "revolution from above" usually scoffing at the concept, but in the framework of legion society, the rulers hold societal initiative. Which is also true for real world monarchies, where rulers set the societal standards. See the introduction of the Potato into Brandenburg by Frederick II.As for telling the charr they are not allowed to be proud of their history? A people that is not proud in its heritage dies, simple as that.

It is established that only a descendant of the Khan-Ur can become imperator, but if the Khan-Ur had a comparable amount of concubines to Genghis Khan, and if his sons continued that practise, we know Flame Legion continues this until present day, that figure is likely to include a lot of cubs, maybe even a significant percentage of all modern charr. Especially if just being loosely related counts, which would reduce this requirement to a mere formality, provided you're not a cub of unknown parentage.The other requirement seems to be, that a prospective Imperator should be a Tribune. And from Ulma Ripleather we hear, that there's already contenders for the next Iron Imperator.

To be fair, the Elder Dragons actually have the capacity to wipe out civilizations and devastate entire regions. So any political event between the tyrian governments can be voided by Kralkatorrik or Steve Bubbles causing the death of everybody involved. And as you might know, trying times make for strange alliances. This is not bad storytelling. Otherwise you might dislike the reign of Carol II of Romania (von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen). The king had to juggle the political factions within Romania, attempted to appease both Germany and France in order to ensure Romanian independence, no matter who'd win the war, had to bridge the gap between his image of a populist leader and the unpleasant image of his mistress Magda Lupescu, who's expensive gifts earned her the ire of the romanian workers. And that was just a game of major human powers and their allies.The tyrian politics definitely take the backseat, when an entity is powerful enough to wipe all players from the board. Meanwhile, Balthazar attempted to break the board itself to gain more power. Now Kralky may be going out of control. The human charr alliance has been made because both humans and charr want to continue living in Ascalon, and both can tolerate each other more than the thought of Ascalon becoming, as stated earlier, a vast nothingness of Dragonbrand.We see this in eastern Vaabi: Cristalline monsters, lightning strikes, the annoying background ambience of Kralkatorrik's resonance. After thousands of years, the land may recover, but humans and charr would be both extinct. In Vaabi, we support Joko's brand patrols not out of love for Joko, but because failure to contain the Brand means the end of Elona. You may have reason to rejoice, though, the Elder Dragon plot is nearing its conclusion: With Zhaitan and Mordremoth gone, Primordus and Jormag asleep, we have to sort out Kralkatorrik and Steve. Depending on the tools the Forgotten and the Seers have left us, this may be faster than we'd think. For instance, converting Kralkatorrik failed, but it may succeed on Steve, which would shorten that plot dramatically, leaving more time for other things, like moving to cantha, to see what they have been up to, or moving east into the lands of Blood and Ash Legion, or into the Deldrimor Front, and the underbelly of Tyria (Calling it now: "Center of Tyria" will be a thing!). As for your hatred of Legion society, give it time. In 250 years the charr went from a tribal empire to a military dictatorship. In order for their government to change, their society has to evolve further. Don't forget that the societal and cultural development in central Tyria is still somewhere along the lines of the 17th century, which is funny because in Kryta absolute monarchy seems to be the new thing, after the queen was basically a figurehead of the Ministry (Will Kryta become "La grande nation" of Tyria?). Dayol Stormwatcher is making advances into the field of electricity. (Will the Black Citadel have electrical light before other cities?)As for the charr, there's people like Jobral Hackfoe, who mourn the loss of cultural pursuits in charr society, so it's not like all charr are warhungry monsters. (Will the charr (re)discover their artistic creativity?)The Olmakhan may have a positive influence on the spiritual life within Legion society, which still has to recover from the flame experience. (Since Revenants are a thing, maybe ancestor worship? I mean they already practice hero worship. (Don't tell them that, though.)) As for the Olmakhan themselves, you dislike them because they have families? Even in a tribe, and the Olmakhan cubs do have a lot of time to roam freely, the people put a great deal of importance in their parents and grandparents. In fact, this is a part of the old charr culture the Olmakhan preserved. Old legion soldiers will often tell younger charr to respect their elders.It's not unlikely that the Olmakhan don't use the Fahrar, because they remember it as the place where young charr were turned into soldiers.As for the "western model" hate, I don't get it. Particularly on this topic. There were many tribes in history. The Hellenes started out tribal, the celts, germanics, slavs, all of these consisted of tribes and had families. In fact, the clan or large family model is not confined to the west. India, China, Japan and Vietnam developed marriage rites independently of the west and to a degree independently of each other.So I'm not upset that the Olmakhan develop this simple straightforward model. It makes sense in universe, especially as a reaction to a shaman claiming all the cubs and teaching them how to murder things.

Now if you want to go by the principle that the rightful ownership is not dependent on the consent of the dispossessed, you might have a point there, but that blade cuts both ways, meaning the charr do not have to care about the human's opinion and are rightful owners as soon as they conquer the land. Now in our world international legal provisions against annexiation did not exist prior to 1899/1907. On Tyria the concept might be entirely unknown. And if we say that the human conquest of Ascalon is legitimate because Balthazar said so, yeah, let's not go there.

I see the grawl argument resurfacing. This is an odd argument, considering the grawl still live in Ascalon. In fact, there were efforts by the Ascalonians to remove the Grawl from Ascalon since Flame Shamans managed to convince the Grawl to ally with them. Utini Wupwup, for instance, a forefather of the current Wupwup tribe chieftain, can be killed in GW1.And one observation about the Grawl makes me doubt they'd settle the land in the same way other races did. Grawl seem to settle in natural cave formations, almost exclusively. Areas without caves, are unlikely to contain a significant number of Grawl. The other races, Quaggan, Kodan, Hylek, even Skritt are capable of constructing villages of their own, which would be a prerequisite to enforcing your claims on a certain land. Another issue is the ease with which a Grawl tribe can be tricked into abandoning a land because their current object of worship promises them a new home. Even worse, we have many hearts, where we have to prevent grawl from worshipping Jormag. I shudder to think what a grawl major power could pick up as deity in the worst possible moment. Another odd topic that seems to be forgotten is the duration of the human charr conflict. This war lasted longer than even the longest war in human history. The Reconquista could be seen as a series of wars stretching from 718 A.D. (Covadonga) to 1492 A.D. (Fall of Grenada). This period of 774 years saw many phases of conflict, but since no side ever agreed to give up their claims, the situation had to end in the defeat of one side.The conflict between humans and charr lasted from 100 BE until 1325 AE, which is the long duration of 1425 years, or almost twice as long and the first time any truce was made was 1324 AE giving this conflict a duration of. There was one previous attempt by Iron Legion to forge a peace with Ebonhawke some time before 1256 AE. Until the Human-Charr Peace Treaty, there has not been a single border between humans and charr, that had been agreed upon by both parties. This is relevant because of the nature of territorial claims. A claim that is currently fought over, does not decay¹. So by keeping the conflict in Ascalon going, the charr never had to make any territorial concession whatsoever. The reasoning was, that their territories would be recovered soon enough. charr are stubborn when it comes to giving up.Another interesting observation is, that the human-charr conflict likely cooled off after Scorchrazor's Rebellion in 1116 AE, as the Flame Legion Imperator had died, and the three Legions had to reorganize internally, purging the shamans from their ranks. As for the genocide, the gigantic gap between start and end of this conflicts makes it difficult to gain any numerical insight into the losses of both charr and humans.²Over that time human and charr population must have experienced drastic shifts between growth and stagnation, even regional decay.Also, there is a psychological aspect that makes it far easier for human and charr to see the other as enemies, as it is for humans and other humans.³charr are not humans and humans are not charr. This is pretty obvious, given the biological differences between the two species, but this leads to charr and humans naturally forming communities of their own. Even in Lion's Arch, there's bound to exist Blood, Ash and Iron expatriate communities, plus a more silent group that emphatically denies any connection to charr politics and consciously avoids all things red and gold.But before Cobiah Marriner founded the current Lion's Arch, there was no concept of a charr living anywhere outside a charr community. Even the Olmakhan, who live and trade peacefully with their neighbours, are cautious around foreigners. Conversely, the concept of a human living within charr society has been introduced by Smodur the Unflinching, with the release of the prisoners in 1325, some of which stayed in the Black Citadel. So we are progressing, but slowly.Before that, however, a charr caught by a group of humas was likely to end up as a rug and several decorative horns. Likewise, a human caught by a group of charr might end up dead and during the time of the Searing, as dinner.I also reject the claim, that the charr were just out for conquest. If that were the case, they could have taken any other territory much easier to conquer. Instead, they committed lives and resources to the land between Shiverpeaks and Blazeridge Mountains. Nor were they all driven out immediately upon human arrival. As charr are stubborn, the humans likely killed any charr that refused to leave. Which, according to modern times was a massive crime against charrkind⁴, in turn gave them the ultimate justification to stop at nothing until this threat to the charr was eliminated. Then again, holding archaic societies to moderns standards will lead to disappointment.Interestingly, the charr of 1328 AE do have a concept of war crimes according to Camp Chef Gristlemane. TLDR: In the early history of Tyria, around 100 BE pushing other races from your desired territory was accepted practice, as well as slavery. As the races progressed, these practices became frowned upon. During 1425 years of warfare, the human and charr societies of today have become completely different societies. Notes

Double Post, please remove.

*(The town had supported Radu.)**(Can never be too sure.)

And who is to say that human industry is better for the environment? If your argument is magic, let me remind you of the ecological damage Magic has done to Tyria, which includes Brand and Foefire, the Sinking and Rising of Orr, the Dragonbrand, the magical anomalies, the Crystal Desert, which was known as Crystal Sea, and that are only the events we know of. The Asura magitech is not exactly clean either, see Whitland Flats. As for mercury, the real world has an interesting precedent: In the earth near Belgrade lie major deposits of cinnabar. In medieval time, some of the outlying villages were known for their crazyness and the older locals say, that on especially hot summers, they observed a silvery rain. The last part may be due to old mines near Šuplja Stena, which existed since ancient times. Horgan will discover soon enough, that mercury is not good for his daggers, as the liquid metal builds amalgames, which tend to be soft, but at least they bind the quick silver, so it's safe to transport.In fact, Vermilion cinnabar pigment will likely be an export good by Iron Legion along with Arsenic Green, Cadmium Yellow, Lead White, Cobalt Blue and Purple. On the other hand, artists in Kryta and Lion's arch will like the pigments for their rich colour and fastness against sunlight.

The Iron Legion has much more steel than a human guild could realistically handle. Plus, releasing the Ghosts of Ascalon into the Mists aligns with Iron interests, so you can at least solve that problem before committing suicide by charr. Also, a human faction openly fighting the Charr in Ascalon would nowadays call in Kryta to fight as an ally to the charr. This is a reciprocation of the charr assistance during Caudecus' White Mantle insurrection.With Flame Legion likely defeated, Iron allied with Blood and Ash, Ebonhawke in a campaign with the charr against ogres, where would your group get its manpower, funding, supplies, to even begin a campaign to liberate Ascalon? What allies would you be able to mobilize? Align with the ogres and Ebonhawke will hate your guts, Kryta's anti charr faction is pretty much dead. The Free City of Lion's Arch has roughly 14% charr population (taken from Playerbase Poll.), the Dredge will no longer trust any non dredge after Scarlet. Grawl make for unreliable allies, following whoever impresses them at the moment. You might be able to get one or two norn, but then their rivals would join the opposing side for an epic duel. The Inquest is just as likely to sell out and betray your human freedom fighters - no wait, that is an inevitability - once they got what they wanted.Elona has just experienced two conflicts (Balthazar, Sunspear uprising) and has an ongoing defense against the branded. The last thing they want right now is another conflict. And you still had to negotiate free passage through the Fields of Ruin, unless you like fighting the Ebon Vanguard.Most likely, your group is on their own, with little support and little resources, besides what they already have. And even if you managed to gather your loyal band of rebels and cuthroats, you'd still have to actually remove the Iron Legion from its own territory. As an early modern state, that's likely in the range of millions of charr (around 10-15). Their technology level is comparable to industrial England, while their actual weapons range from 19th century to pre WWI and they have retained some of their cossack level friendlyness from 250 years ago. If you ever wanted to test whether your unbending fury actually bends or breaks of chokes, this is it.Not only that, even if your companions started out loyal to your cause, how much slaughter could they handle? Could the group rationalize slaughtering a Fahrar? A Primus and all the Cubs? And if not, how would you deal with defectors?Would the group's ethos survive massacring Butcher's Block, Nageling, Smokestead?How would the self proclaimed freedom fighters react, if Seraph reinforcements called for them to lay down their arms?Or if they heard the news, that the Pact set out to stop a group of terrorists, that so far evaded capture by lawful authorities? And lastly, would the Ascalon you produce be greater than the Ascalon that currenty exists? Or would it be overrun by ogres, branded and harpies, turning into a depopulated crystalline wasteland?Right now, the former Kingdom of Ascalon houses a successor state, the Duchy of Ebonhawke, which is experiencing peace and has been granted a good amount of surrounding land, which the Iron Legion has ceded to it in the Human-Charr peace treaty. Human settlers are establishing new villages and farms, which will later grow into towns. Ebonhawke has the geography to become the gateway to Elona, allowing the humans to dominate regional trade. For now, it is better for everyone involved to stay peaceful and work together to prevent a magic induced cataclysm. Humans can worry about their former possessions much later.

To be fair Ebonhawke in game is a bit simplified in layout and fortification to fit into the fields of ruin map. It's probably more similar to this: Except the wall part is actually a mountain, or rock formation, that is around 100 metres in height and fortified with arrow carts, ballistas, catapults, trebuchets, and even cannons imported from Kryta. The Hawkgates can actually be closed so that an attacker has to either blast a hole into the massive rock formation, or has to overcome the cities mountainous walls. Even Nox Darkheart didn't manage that. He and the Dark warband driven off by the defenders, before they could open the gates, or allow Iron Legion to occupy the wall. The defenders likely had (or still have) tunnels to quickly deploy troops, when the charr managed to overwhelm a position on the wall.And even with that wall, Ebonhawke would have fallen to lack of resources, if not for the Krytans, who kept supplying the City of Ebonhawke at their own cost. Lastly, whether or not Ascalon is currently great. The Legions are not really comparable to a military unit in the traditional sense, they are more like nation states in the early modern age. Just the Iron Legion on its own is competitive with Kryta economically and militarily. We couldn't visit the other legion's homelands for comparison, except for Flame Legion, who seem to be much smaller than Iron. The charr have water treatment plants, lots of forges, armories, factories, settlements, ranches, villages/fortresses, mines and other stuff. They do seem to lack the same sense of culture that the humans have, but this is partially rooted in their history, which doesn't compare to the ancient human history. Instead, you could compare the charr to the humans in other fantasy stories. They went from barbaric conquerors to settlers and explorers to successful states. What they lack in a sense of history, they make up for in technology.

Well, a rifle would give elementalists a 1500 range single target dps weapon. Something that fires beams and high velocity elemental projectiles. A power weapon? A condi weapon? A versatile weapon, that does different things depending on your attunement? Fire -> condi Air -> power water -> sustain earth -> damage mitigationElemental pistols may be interesting too. Elemental pewpew flashyness? But we already have dagger for high speed stuff, so I'd cover the long range department first, then move on to the nice to have things.

It's a wall issue. The walls in this game are not functional, in that they don't protect the defenders in the same way a real castle wall would. My suspicion is, that there was not enough research on the topic of medieveal/early modern period fortifications. Since everyone has a rough idea what a castle looks like. Most of the tower and fortress designs are not even bad as far as the layout is considered. But there are some things amiss. There are no proper parapets, they should be chest high (german "Brustwehr"), while the murlons shoud be a man's height. The murlons and crenels would form a proper battlement. There may also be arrow slits nested within the murlon to allow defenders to shoot from relative safety, while embrasures would allow siege engines (cannons) to be fired from the protection of the battlements. Pulling someone over a man high obstacle would then require coordination.Also, some walls, tier 3 in game's terms can have machicolations, which allow defenders to attack enemies, who are at the foot of the wall. In game there are no murlons and the parapet is ankle high, or knee high for Asura. This does not give any protection to the defenders, to the point that anyone standing on the wall may aswell put a target sign above his head.

Well thanks to Gaheron Baelfire, who burnt off most of his fur, we know how many breast warts (papilla mammae) a charr has. The answer is two.However, they are nomally buried under a layer of fur. Which is why Gaheron is unintentionally relevant for the science of anatomy. That's odd. Of all the races on Tyria, charr look nothing like humans and the little degree of sexual dimorphism doesn't add any radical differences between a male and a female charr.The main differences are: Different faces: Males tend to have a more sqaure jaw, while female faces tend to be more streamlined.Different Tails: Males have a tail tuft, while females have a long and soft fur on the entire length of their tail.Different body mass: Males tend to be heavier, ranging from 170 - 250 kg, while females weigh in at 150 - 230 kg.Other than that, female charr tend to be rather similar to the males. Both are stubborn, intelligent cat people, who eat meat to survive and like to hunt. I'd say that female and male charr are both just as likely to run around barechested. Case in point: This outfit.