What is next ? (Story)

[Cynder.2509]

Aurene might become instable as she said in the last instance when someone says "Then there's no need for a Dragon's Watch". Aurene said that you'd need to keep a close eye on her just in case. We definitely need to kill Aurene at some point. 
Although I'd prefer the devs picking up on the scrapped Utopia project again it's more likely we'll get another dragon or human gods thing. 

[Tamias.7059]

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

Edited March 10, 2022 by Tamias.7059

[Taclism.2406]

Considering eod is human centered and s5 was charr & norns, we'll most likely have an asura or sylv centered s6. Some hidden asura tribe "Olmakhan style" deep within the jade sea ; and/or a link between kurzicks (juggernauts) and sylvaris. Maybe sylvaris hosts make for even better juggernauts and they get kidnapped, maybe they can "revive" sylv' mother tree thats knocked out since early HoT

Also if "looking back" achievement is canon, and s6 is in Cantha,  we may have Belinda's spirit come out of the sword for some reason. Or at least a few lines about Marjory having to find a new weapon

 

[voodoo.7412]

Within the Mists are worlds (of which Tyria is just one).

 

More hints at the end from Wiki :

 

 

-So the Void's gone then? For good?

 Not quite. It wasn't lying when it said it was a constant.

 

-How do you feel with the Void gone?

I...I don't know. Not as different as I would have expected. Something's changed about the ley energy... Somehow it's more...pure. But make no mistake, my champion. As long as dragon magic continues to exist, so too will the Void. We only destroyed the form it took. But at least it won't be ending Tyria any time soon.

 

-That...doesn't make me feel much better.

It's stable. Now that I'm...the only one, I can "see" the ley lines in their entirety. If there's ever a ripple in the sea of magic, I'll know. As will you. Scion and Champion.

 

Also more adding to the team :

 

 

The Commander: Dragon's Watch could always use your help. Though, I don't see us watching many dragons after this...

Yao: Really? Oh, man-

Yao: Yeah, that'd be...pretty cool.

 

Detective Rama: Marjory was talkin' about starting something up. Might be nice to go freelance.

Acting Minister Min: So that's it, huh? You're gonna leave us mooks while you galivant across Tyria?

Detective Rama: I, uh... it's not like that. I just need some time...

 

There also seems to be an emerging new private detective agency made up of Rama, Marjory, and—remarkably—Ivan and Gorrik. For the rest of us so used to chasing dragons, our own futures are not so clear. What happens to the dragon watcher when there are none left to watch? I suppose we're going to find out.

 

As I looked around, I thought about how good it was to see everyone be able to do the sort of normal things we've all been missing out on for so long. Life's moving on. The guild is moving on. I suppose maybe I'll have to move on some day too. But to what? I don't know yet. I suppose I'll find out when I get there.

[Burial.1958]

16 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

some return of Gods would be the best option as long they have equal at minimum or better development than balthazar.

 Na i really have enough from Gods and Dragons. Nice would be to discover new Lands & Cultures with a complete new direction. Some new villains who aren't that Godlike.

 

 

[Desh.7028]

On 3/4/2022 at 9:54 PM, dusanyu.4057 said:

next living world  i have a couple ideas

 

1. jade brotherhood / Singers Stuff 

2. desolving of the pact and trying to stop the three orders, and the humans and charr from going back to there old wars and bickering (i expect this to be more of a current events thing)

3 I bet my Ears that the Inquest is going to be interested in jade tech.

4 delving into Luxon /Kurzick

 

But the Brotherhood and Singers are now somewhat reconciled. On the other hand the commander is either Krytan (at the very least by nationality) or straight up non-human so Purists already hate us and there are a ton of angles to work with here.

Luxon and Kurzick are somewhat everywhere already but also nowhere at the same time. Without the MinPu (MoP?) around they mostly just integrated into the main Canthan society and appear mostly as collections and singular NPC conversations.

 

Inquest being complete butt plugs wherever they go while still being tolerated by the Asura leadership could form a secondary arc.

 

Didn't Logan touch up on preliminary plans for the Pact?

Charr are docile now with new leadership in place and probably busy rebuilding and potentially even some restructuring now that the Legions and Olmakhan (?) met properly.

 

LW6 being Purists with "where does the power come from now?" and Inquests doing whatever they do seems a likely guess. Other Canthan factions will mostly side with you or be smaller events on the maps.

Who will form the story squad then, now that almost everyone from Dragons Watch has better things to do? There's annoying hat Rama and cool bird Ayumi who are frontrunners imho. But that leaves out Charr, Sylvari and Norn and none of those come from Cantha.

 

LW7 could be Sylvari-ish. They were meant to be dragon minions and now are truly free. There's a lot of room to explore up to and including a second mother tree that just was never found and kept it's fruits in hiding. Probably me just being biased though.

 

Spoiler

Next Expack if it happens

5 human Gods and original human home world with a large smattering of Xotecha

 

I too hope LW is going to be not as dragony and godly. I want a villain of our own size, which works a lot better now that Aurene is busy with being the great filter and not being able to juice you again. But wasn't EoD meant to be the last expansion? Story wise the gods returning and the god of war missing from the pantheon would yield a story arc though.

[Bast.7253]

Making Soo Won some abstract god of creation makes it feel like we'll either be focusing on minor villains and threats native to Tyria or pushed out to the Mists for scale. 

It is interesting to me that Aurene is different and resistant to the void so far. But is that an immunity or a vaccine? Is she the way she is because of the magic signature that Balthazar had when she consumed his power. Sure he wasn't a "god" at the time, but dragons seem to digest magic and metabolize it like food. 

So we have Aurene who is exposed to this before she ascends. We have Soo Won able to hold back the void in the containment facility. The containment facility is run on dragon jade. Jade is the result of Dwayna's petrification magic. 

We already have a heavy link to the gods insisting that they could be key to staving off the void. It may not be a permanent solution, but what would be?

Perhaps if Soo Won had created more elder dragons infused/blessed/exposed to divine magic they wouldn't have been driven insane by the void. 

Maybe the void is just something that's drawn to beings with immense power and immortality. Was Balthazar driven mad by void? Was Abaddon? 

I don't like the idea of void being the catch all but they've established the precedence for it should they go that route.

For living season we could be going after the darkness in Raisu and the creature in the depths. There was also some name There's also whatever an Ione is. 

There are really a lot of Tyria native deities that still exist and we have little reason as to why. The spirits of the wild, Whatever Ione is that's talked about in text in Dragon's End. 

I'd say the larger plot that might be leading up to an expansion would probably be the gods. It's a big plot but it allows them to attribute human characteristics, do voice acting, do character development that they want to on a being that's really not all that different from the commander. 

I mean what were we when we were empowered by Aurene? We had multiple hints about gods and at one point someone asked the commander if they were one. The commander said, not that I know of. Is this line worth reading into? Probably not. But we just went head to toe with a being that's responsible for creation of Tyria. 

If I'm understanding Soo's role that is. 

I get the sense they didn't really want people thinking about the story at this part much and just wanted to be done with the elder dragon plot. 

So if anything I'd say we're focused on smaller entities like whatever is in the depths, or moving into the mists and dealing with the gods. Given Aurene's speach about sensing ripples in magic and ley line energy I think this is another hint at setting up the god plot. What would cause a ripple worthy enough of Aurene and the commander to be on guard more than 1-5 human gods showing up?

How many other worlds like Tyria had beings similar to the elder dragons and succumbed to the void?

 

[Lord Krilik.3692]

I'm unsure what the next threat will be, but I think the direction is Guild Wars Utopia, or at least something borne from those original concepts.

 

Guild Wars Utopia was a time and space themed expansion in the works in the original game which was going to add a summoner and chronomancer class but the idea was scrapped and became Nightfall instead which focused on Abaddon and Elona.

 

The Guild Wars 2 art book released and included a whole section on utopia which lots of people speculatied about at the time and Guild Wars 2 has brought back some of those ideas in game too (like the Chronomancer elite spec for Mesmer) and in EoD time and space gets mentioned a lot, often with emphasis. We also learned about the Void and Chaos which seems to be all magics brought together into one. In Season 2 Ogden also tells us there are several layers to the universe but we can only perceive three of them (life, the mists and the underworld) so we know there are 4 other layers. We also know that the Gods abandoned the world due to the dragons but PoF confirmed that the gods are very real and able to return to us. Now with the dragons gone I think they might come back.

 

So my suspicion is that Anet have been thinking about what they can reuse the Utopia ideas on and will bring it back now that the dragon story is wrapped up. I suspect the gods are in Utopia and they will return to Tyria now that the dragons are gone. We will also find a way to access Utopia and the other universe layers now that Aurene has access to all domains of magic.

 

I can't say whether the gods will be the next threat, but we do know they are pretender gods - mortals who gained lots of power - and we of course already killed one of them as he was bent on destroying everything. So it's quite likely there will be a conflict - perhaps someone wanting to become a god and follow their example.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

3 hours ago, Lord Krilik.3692 said:

Guild Wars Utopia was a time and space themed expansion in the works in the original game which was going to add a summoner and chronomancer class but the idea was scrapped and became Nightfall instead which focused on Abaddon and Elona.

Slight correction. Utopia was the planned 4th campaign for after Nightfall. It got canned got Eye of the North.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

On 3/6/2022 at 3:07 AM, Imba.9451 said:

I still consider a comeback of the Mursaat as possible, considering Lazarus was only the last remaining Mursaat that shifted into Tyria during the events of GW1. There is still a possibility that alot more Mursaat are still phased out, waiting. And now, with the primary reason for them to chicken out in the first place is gone (same for the gods btw), they could reappear.

Although I consider a return of the Mursaat way less likely than the gods, even though my fanboy-brain wished for it to happen.

PS: Mursaat playable race and I'll delet and recreate every of my characters as Mursaat. Promise.

Would the Mursaat returning even be a threat?

We had counters to the spectral agony in Gw1. Asura would find a way to resist it in no time. 

 

"Portal opens" 

WE THE MIGHTY MURSAAT HAVE RETURNED!! 

All 5 races, the pact, the crystal bloom and Dragon's watch:

" It's punch time" 

 

[EMPI.4013]

I hope we head to the East of mainland tyria. I always wondered why all the dragons were centered around mainland tyria. I assume they all kind of migrated there after being spread out across Tyria, and their madness drove them to a point of covergance.

 

 

SPOILER for EOD

 

 

Since we know that Soo Won made/birthed the other elder dragons and that they all had a specific roll, besides their natural elements. Like how Kralkatorrik was originally a hunter, and Mordremoth was essentially a botanist. My theory is what if on the unexplored lands, we witness the dragon's successes. I imagined Mordremoth and Zhaitan would have migrated from the East. My theory being that we encounter good risen there so to speak. Beings blessed with eternal life by Zhaitan. Then another version of Sylvari from Mordremoth. Perhaps since Sylvari are all about exploring and discovery and Mordremoth is mind, I imagine these beings would be capable of seeing the world without needing to go anywhere. Maybe they know all the events that have unfolded thus far. I also assume that since Jormag and Primordus were twins, that means Mordremoth and Zhaitan are also twins. They both came from the East maybe because they didn't hate each other, like Primordus and Jormag. Then in the far North, like arctic circle North. We see the good of Jormag, who's creation are beings that I guess would be super enjoyable. They would maybe understand other beings on a deeper level. Then maybe the good of Primodus would be on the Islands West of mainland tyria. Kralk would be the wild card. Maybe he was always in mainland tyria. I imagine he would be paired with Soo Won in some way, water and rock/crystal. Maybe their coronation, is that they can both give birth to other dragons or something. These are just some broad theories.

Edited March 15, 2022 by EMPI.4013

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

3 hours ago, EMPI.4013 said:

I hope we head to the East of mainland tyria. I always wondered why all the dragons were centered around mainland tyria. I assume they all kind of migrated there after being spread out across Tyria, and their madness drove them to a point of covergance.

More likely the seers trapping the remaining un-corrupted magic of the world into the Bloodstones in the last cycle drove them all the area since dragons eat magic, and would thus be drawn to it.

10 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Would the Mursaat returning even be a threat?

We had counters to the spectral agony in Gw1. Asura would find a way to resist it in no time.

"Portal opens" 

WE THE MIGHTY MURSAAT HAVE RETURNED!! 

All 5 races, the pact, the crystal bloom and Dragon's watch:

" It's punch time"

Pretty much. By the end of Prophocies we have fodderized the Mursaat, then we kicked the butts of the Titans who kicked the Mutsaat's butts. And the heroes of GW2's era are much more powerful then the GW1 heroes.

Not to mention having the Mursaat come back in force pretty much invalidates the whole plot of Prophecies, the War in Kryta, and the Lazarus plotline.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

On 3/8/2022 at 4:19 AM, Luthan.5236 said:

Haven't played the full story yet (almost finished tough - end fight later ... the last 1-2 story missions). But: I think this felt pretty fast/rushed again. Introducing a dragon. And quickly dealing with it.

Zhaitan (long core personal story with choices and slow progress through orr) and Mordremoth (whole season 2 leading to this) ... were the best I think.

I'd prefer some slowly developing stuff on older maps (like S2) ... mixed with opening of new areas - Cantha has still unexplored regions. More of a slow buildup. Political. And people as bosses. An interesting story over different chapters and stuff. Not just a "introduce a super strong creature and somehow get a weapon do deal with it - then gather the allies and beat it" plot like you usually had in the past.

More of the personal story had nothing to do with Zhaitan though. Most of the personal story was racial background choices, joining the orders, and dealing with some of the lesser races. They had frequent appearances of every Elder Dragon minion, not just the Risen. Zhaitan only really mattered in the last like 1/3 of the personal story, and even that only took as long as it did because a lot of it was building the Pact plot... which we didn't need to do with later Elder Dragons since we had already done it in the personal story. Though each later story did have similar plots with us making allies in the new regions we visited.

LWS1 barely had anything to do with the Elder Dragons at all, except in extreme retrospect with Scarlet being controlled by Mordremoth unknowingly at the time. Not to mention people complained about LWS1 being overly long and drawn out for what it was.

If you look at the actual "big" content for each Elder Dragons its been pretty much the same for each. Three maps + a dragon fight

• Zhaitan had the three Orr maps, Straights of Devastation, Malchor's Leap, and Cursed Shore, with the big dragon fight in Arah story mode.
• Mordremoth had Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, and Tangled Depths, with the big dragon fight in Dragon's Stand.
• Kralkatorrik had Domain of Vabbi, Jahai Bluffs, and Thunderhead Peaks, with the big dragon fight in Dragonfall.
• Jormag had Bitterfrost Frontier, Bjora Marches, and Drizzlewood Coast, with the big dragon fight in Dragonstorm.
• Primordus had Ember Bay, Draconis Mons, the first two champions released(which replaced his third map), and the big dragon fight in Dragonstorm.
• Soo-Won had Seitung Province, New Kaineng City, and the Echovald Wilds, with the big dragon fight in Dragon's End.

Its been pretty even for all of them.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[DarcShriek.5829]

They could end up dropping all currently existing threads and pick up an entirely new story line.

[Lord Krilik.3692]

22 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Slight correction. Utopia was the planned 4th campaign for after Nightfall. It got canned got Eye of the North.

OOPS! Thanks - my memory failed me.

[Ashantara.8731]

On 3/5/2022 at 9:45 PM, muradyn.3875 said:

Expansion in the abyss confirmed :)))))

Gods, no!

Just give us a solid grounded story, not the end of the world again.

Give us something that's mysterious, spine-tingling, interesting -- food for the brain and one's imagination. 😉

I'll take any interesting and fascinating earthly (or otherwordly, if it includes ghosts😄) story over yet another end-of-the-world scenario. Also, no more high-tech or Mists stuff, please.

18 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

End of Dragons, but Return of the Gods sounds like a nice story.

At this point, I just wish for a feel of real adventure, not chores that lead to some big bad.

EoD proved that ANet does have good writers...

Edited March 17, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Cronospere.8143]

Lot of interesting ideas in this thread. 

I see mursaat is answered a lot of times. But i think that story is over and done. 

The human gods would be a logic and personally for me an interesting story. As for now that is an unfinished plotline. 

 

I just hope that they will slowly build it up. Mysterious and with lot of interaction with the new characters. 

 

In EoD i feel like Rama and Joon is done well. But Kuunavang and Soo-won was pretty rushed. I would have liked more interaction with both of them. As we now have a major storyline finished lets hope they create a big storyline again. 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Having been thinking on it, I hope they don't go for a "huge overarching story with payoffs down the line". Because that's what the Elder Dragon plot was, and the ending of it was nothing even remotely close to what was imagined back in 2012. The writers changed over three times throughout it all, and that gave quite a haphazard worldbuilding as ideas changed. The core principle might've been there, but it's clear that Soo-Won as we got her was nothing as Jeff Grubb and Ree Soesbee built given the apparent retcons, but an invention later down the line. And the Elder Dragon plot was constantly interrupted with intermissions, many of which felt rushed and half done, just to keep people from getting tired of too much of the same.

 

As such, whatever "big plot" we get next, I hope it's something that can be done within a single set of writers' purview, so that there's no contradictions and blatant changes in the narrative's direction, or at least fewer of them. Maybe an arc that lasts only a combination of major releases (expansions / living world seasons), instead of 10 (9 if we exclude EotN).

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

9 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

And the Elder Dragon plot was constantly interrupted with intermissions, many of which felt rushed and half done, just to keep people from getting tired of too much of the same.

Most of this is a result of people latching onto idea/concepts and building every increasingly complex, and unrealistic, expectations for how those ideas should be done(Joko, Lazarus, etc) Most of the supposedly "rushed" ideas weren't large enough, or complex enough, to be the kind of story people wanted without making then incredibly thin.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

3 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Most of this is a result of people latching onto idea/concepts and building every increasingly complex, and unrealistic, expectations for how those ideas should be done(Joko, Lazarus, etc) Most of the supposedly "rushed" ideas weren't large enough, or complex enough, to be the kind of story people wanted without making then incredibly thin.

Yeah, you've made it abundantly clear that you're satisfied with checklist styled plots like Champions that don't delve into the depths of the lore of those topics and just get them over and done with.

I, however, continue to disagree.

Let's leave it at that.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Yeah, you've made it abundantly clear that you're satisfied with checklist styled plots like Champions that don't delve into the depths of the lore of those topics and just get them over and done with.

I, however, continue to disagree.

Let's leave it at that.

Nope, I dislike checklist style plots entirely. Stop strawmanning every chance you get it just makes you look bad.

On the subject of Champions however, there really wasn't much for it to delve into in the first place since it had already been done earlier in the story.

• The Primordus stuff, as well as the Asura stuff with Primordus, was covered starting back in HoT(with the discovery of Rata Novus) and continued throughout LWS3 with all the research into Primordus, the discovery of his weakness, the building of a weapon to kill him, and two maps focused on him(Ember Bay and Draconis Mons)
• The Norn stuff, including the Spirits of the Wild, and Braham's journey, was covered in "Whisper in the Dark", "Shadow in the Ice", and "Jormag Rising" in IBS
• The Charr stuff similarly had "Bound by Blood", "No Quarter", and "Jormag Rising"
• The Dwarven stuff had been a long running narrative since core. By the time Champions began we had explored all of the old Dwarven lands, gone to all the old Dwarven citadel of note(including some new ones), interacted with the last two living stone Dwarves, found the legacy of the Dwarves(the dragonsblood weapon forge), and used it to kill an Elder Dragon. We also got to collect the stories of the old dwarven heroes, found out what happened to the Stone Summit, and got limited dwarven weapon and armor sets.

The only things Champions did cover were stories that had already largely wrapped up beforehand, and we were just dealing with the epilogues for. Things like the Renegade/Separatist plot, Charr/Human relations, the few remaining remnants of the Flame Legion, the Legions opening up to the Olmakhan, etc. Which were never going t be full episodes themselves because they weren't much to do with them anyways. The only thing we lost from the original plan of IBS was the Centaur plot, which they didn't just limit to checklist style, they just didn't do it at all.

So once again you're wrong. Not only about what I like, but also about what actually exists in the game as is.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Yes, yes, "I'm wrong". Whatever. You'll never not find a reason to disagree with me, even when I say nothing to you for weeks.

Moving on.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Narcemus.1348]

Ignoring the comments above, I was thinking about this the other day and I want what Guild Wars 1 did during it's expansions and that is to explore new lands. If you think about it, to a degree, Guild Wars 2 stalled Guild Wars' world building because it had to re-explore this world that we already had. If we had stayed with Guild Wars, in theory, we would have explored new regions of the world and expanded our understanding of Tyria but instead for the last 10 years we have continued to explore the same place as before. Now, this isn't to say that Guild Wars 2 was a mistake. I highly doubt Guild Wars would have grown to the scale that Guild Wars 2 has, but I am ready to do something new. Let's go to new continents, or even the vast unknown expanse of the main continent yet unexplored. Let's explore unknown cultures, cities, races and lands. Let's continue to build this world by expanding the horizons in ways that we haven't honestly done since Eye of the North. That's my hope...

[Aeolus.3615]

On 3/10/2022 at 10:40 AM, Tamias.7059 said:

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

More Kormir leeching?

Hahahahha

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

well, we are now going to deal with trade disputes, political debates and negotiating treaties. FUN times ahead!