What is next ? (Story)

[Narcemus.1348]

42 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

Anet has said in the past, sometime around LWS4 I do believe, though Konig may know more exactly, that they had an internal rule that all LW/Xpack maps have to be placed on the map parchment we have. So no like GW1 where Tyria, Elona, Cantha, and the Domain of Torment, were on separate map spaces, and they have kept that true all the way through EoD.

I would guess any Mists heavy story would be primarily set on Tyira, though have us going into the Mists fairly often in story instances and the like. Probably set it out west, on that landmass marked by the trade routes on the map in the Priory back in LWS2.

I would make it incorporate a lot of the Utopia design aesthetics, a very central/south America vibe. Tyria itself is supposed to be Europe and the Middle East, Elona is Africa, and Cantha is Asia, so we need an "Americas" setting to round out the world.

I kinda waffle back and forth on dev quotes like that. I agree they are important to keep in mind, but at the same time development teams change and what they can do expands. If anytime would be the right time to break the mold and do something new it would be an expansion. Though I do still hope we stick to the world map.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

I don't think they'll abandon the world map at this time given they just expanded it and well beyond what they needed to. If they were going to introduce PvE with a second world map, I believe they'd have done it with End of Dragons. So the only way I see a Mists-centric plot happening would be a rather Dragonfall-esque scenario where a portion of the world that has nothing but water "suddenly gains" landmass - either by there being this surrounding fog denoting "this isn't Tyria" or literal overlap of Mists and Tyria creating a new continent.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tyria_map_(unexplored).jpg

After seeing all that extra landmass added with EoD but hidden away, I can't help but think ArenaNet's going to make use of it for the next storyline. There really wasn't any need for them to expand north, so far west, or reveal the eastern lands in-game otherwise.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

3 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I don't think they'll abandon the world map at this time given they just expanded it and well beyond what they needed to. If they were going to introduce PvE with a second world map, I believe they'd have done it with End of Dragons. So the only way I see a Mists-centric plot happening would be a rather Dragonfall-esque scenario where a portion of the world that has nothing but water "suddenly gains" landmass - either by there being this surrounding fog denoting "this isn't Tyria" or literal overlap of Mists and Tyria creating a new continent.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Tyria_map_(unexplored).jpg

After seeing all that extra landmass added with EoD but hidden away, I can't help but think ArenaNet's going to make use of it for the next storyline. There really wasn't any need for them to expand north, so far west, or reveal the eastern lands in-game otherwise.

While possible I wouldn't be so sure about it.

I know devs will make map art to a specific size/dimensions, even if large parts of it remain unseen, because its more efficient/easier for the game to process when you keep the art file size/dimensions within certain ranges.

Expanding the map the way they did likely keeps it within these dimensions, but also keeps the playable space from Tyria down to Cantha roughly within the center of the image. Whereas had they expanded more west, and less east, or vice versa, the playable space would learn more heavily to one side then the center.

A lot of that eastern landmass has been in the map art since like way before IBS, and even with the Charr focused IBS it went unused. With LWS6 likely being Cantha focused I don't see it getting used any time in the next nearly 2 years at earliest.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Narcemus.1348]

4 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

While possible I wouldn't be so sure about it.

I know devs will make map art to a specific size/dimensions, even if large parts of it remain unseen, because its more efficient/easier for the game to process when you keep the art file size/dimensions within certain ranges.

Expanding the map the way they did likely keeps it within these dimensions, but also keeps the playable space from Tyria down to Cantha roughly within the center of the image. Whereas had they expanded more west, and less east, or vice versa, the playable space would learn more heavily to one side then the center.

A lot of that eastern landmass has been in the map art since like way before IBS, and even with the Charr focused IBS it went unused. With LWS6 likely being Cantha focused I don't see it getting used any time in the next nearly 2 years at earliest.

Whether intentionally released to gain hype for what the rest of the world holds, or just because of game convenience, there is easily enough space on the world map that exists for us to have 10 more years of Guild Wars 2 world exploration. And if we were to go off of the full world map, they could likely go 20+ years with this game without running out of landmasses to explore. This is exciting to me, though it does leave me in the weird place of having no clue what could exist in most of those places and thus not having much to theorize about.

Edit: this is not to say a story in the Mists could not occur. We could definitely have world maps that exist on Tyria with story instances taking place in the Mists. We could also have expanded fractals. I do hope, though, that we don't fully explain them. I feel like there is a lot of Tyria that has lost its mystery as things have been discovered. I would like the Mists to regain some of its mysterious allure and maintain it as the game continues.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Narcemus.1348
Additional thoughts.

[maxwelgm.4315]

Anet has literally teased other regions by having a NPC on the Ministry of Archives whose sole purpose is hypothesizing about regions far away from the Tyrian continent that may not have felt the effects of Elder Dragons nearly as intensely as us and wondering how their culture would feel about EDs. They have also addressed directly that something else is inside the Endless Ocean and it actually started wrecking havoc after Soo-Won was gone, not before. Every other loose thread or place they namedropped are also related directly to the world of Tyria (Malyck's tree, whatever kind of people live on Janthir/north of Maguuma, Centaur homelands, the inland Sea Kodan hail from, etc.), which is a pretty strong general hint they are not planning, going to, setting up, or even remotely considering having entire open world maps or hubs like Arborstone/EoTN directly on the Mists. 

 

Which area they are going to explore however is very interesting to think about. Sunrise Crest seems like an obvious one from the Priory map but we have absolutely no concrete idea. They are not even restrained by GW1 lore much other than knowing the Luxons/Kurzicks likely come from another continent we have never seen before. My first guess would be we somehow get to learn of a new continent either because of the Deep Sea creature or because of some "Aurene feels a Leyline disturbance" plot device - and depending on whether we have a single one or two living world seasons before the next expansion, we would maybe have a few maps all over the new spaces (east, north, west,...ocean?) and only then start the next expac on whatever region they settle for.

[Mithrilos.8036]

What I'm curious about is, does Anet intentionnally drew all those new part with ideas in minds or was it just for the sake of "art"

 

I mean, you can see some curious painting that looks like buildings (kirin temple in cantha) or if you look at far east of the map, Blue spots that looks like lakes etc. Is it all premedited or are those just some sort of placeholders ?

Edited April 5, 2022 by Mithrilos.8036

[maxwelgm.4315]

2 hours ago, Mithrilos.8036 said:

What I'm curious about is, does Anet intentionnally drew all those new part with ideas in minds or was it just for the sake of "art"

 

I mean, you can see some curious painting that looks like buildings (kirin temple in cantha) or if you look at far east of the map, Blue spots that looks like lakes etc. Is it all premedited or are those just some sort of placeholders ?

I'd say they have very general ideas but nothing concrete that they can't update directly on the in-game world map. You can see what I mean by looking at the Unexplored map of the wiki and check its update history. The 2013 map for instance straight up didn't have the Bitterfrost Frontier region in between Drakkar's Lake and Frostgorge Sound. This was added later to the unexplored map to fit in the future release of Bitterfrost. Same was done for Lake Doric and a few other LW maps - I think the overall terrain such as mountains, lakes, woods and arid lands you can see there are probably going to be used no matter what, but specific landmarks should not be taken as such as they can and probably will update the unexplored texture according to their needs at the time.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

4 hours ago, Mithrilos.8036 said:

What I'm curious about is, does Anet intentionnally drew all those new part with ideas in minds or was it just for the sake of "art"

 

I mean, you can see some curious painting that looks like buildings (kirin temple in cantha) or if you look at far east of the map, Blue spots that looks like lakes etc. Is it all premedited or are those just some sort of placeholders ?

I'd say it's a mixture of both. Mechanically, there's some limitations in place. Just to quote that_shaman on the map size and such:

The amount added to the west doesn't quite add up to make the ratio of the maps the same size from my knowledge, so it seems they've broken tradition in that regard (the maps weren't ever forced to be square, as GW1 didn't have sqaure maps, but both GW1 and GW2 maps they are made out of squares so there is certain ratios that're required).

What's more, expanding the world map north and west broke things internally which expanding south and east doesn't, and they didn't need to expand north or as far west given what's hidden from the players:

So to me it just seems like a very bizarre move to expand north and west, which breaks stuff, without reason to do so. Cantha did require moving west, so I could see that as necessary (though they could have just moved Cantha eastward, like they did with the Battle Isles when compared to this world map). The only reason why I can see them making such a huge move would be  just so that they could safely duplicate the entire map as can be seen here:

Doing this allowed them to "break the map" without needing to properly fix it - they just duplicated all the old maps, shifted them, and we're actually using the new maps save some overlooked instances like the new Twisted Marionette instance (which is now firmly in the middle of the ocean - whoops).

Incidentally this also means that without further cleanup on ANet's part of those old maps, new maps in any of those areas will never work well as per Linsey Murdock's old commentary of overlapping maps (this is why we'll also never get Alcazia Tangle that's between Rata Sum and The Grove): 

So unless some poor dev is stuck on map cleanup duty, that NW corner is likely unusable for future content. Including, sadly, the west coast of Maguuma.

However, all that doesn't quite explain why they would reveal the eastern portion that they had developed with PoF - they're still hiding some west and northern bits, so why not still hide the eastern bits? There is the notion of "making Lion's Arch more central" that got brought up, but is that really necessary? Makes me think we'll be going east....

Edited April 5, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

7 hours ago, Narcemus.1348 said:

Whether intentionally released to gain hype for what the rest of the world holds, or just because of game convenience, there is easily enough space on the world map that exists for us to have 10 more years of Guild Wars 2 world exploration. And if we were to go off of the full world map, they could likely go 20+ years with this game without running out of landmasses to explore. This is exciting to me, though it does leave me in the weird place of having no clue what could exist in most of those places and thus not having much to theorize about.

Edit: this is not to say a story in the Mists could not occur. We could definitely have world maps that exist on Tyria with story instances taking place in the Mists. We could also have expanded fractals. I do hope, though, that we don't fully explain them. I feel like there is a lot of Tyria that has lost its mystery as things have been discovered. I would like the Mists to regain some of its mysterious allure and maintain it as the game continues.

Well, you have to remember that just because we, the players, haven't gone somewhere doesn't mean the known species of Tyria haven't, and we can make some safe presumptions about Tyria with some of the remaining geography we know.

• Like, we know humanity had gone to the western coast of the Maguuma. Fort Koga was a defensive fortification between Kryta and the western coast of Tyria, and nothing of any real note was reported to be there. The Maguuma only got interesting in the last 200 years as Hylek moved in as part of their migration from Elona, and the Forgotten/Exalted built their city there.
• Similarly, while Ascalon is the Iron Legion's territory, Blood and Ash would control similarly sized areas. And actually would take up the majority of the lands north, and east, of Ascalon just as their own borders. However, one's knowledge doesn't just end at their borders, and with the Charr's military focus they would have no doubt at least scouted past that. The Charr almost certainly know whats there.
• If you take the world map given to us back in LWS2, and adjust it to actually fit on a globe, it turns out that once you get past Janthir you are pretty much in Tyria's arctic circle, likewise for going south of the mountain range in southern Cantha. You wouldn't expect to see much life, much less intelligent life, living in those areas as its too cold for most plants/animals to thrive there. This would match up with what we saw back in EoTN, with the furthermost north seen Norn settlement being around the latitude of southern Janthir, and north of that is just ice wastes. The fact that the more northern species, Kodan and arctic Quaggan, came from the oceans rather then land, and Jormag not using any unknown species from the far north in its armies, would further support that.
• Given the naval traditions of Istan, as well as the former corsair presence in the barbarous shore area, I would be surprised if the Elonians hadn't gone to that big, Istan sized, island to the southeast of Elona, and at least partially up the western coastline.

Though given how rare it is for MMOs to reach 15 years of active content development(much less go past that), as well as the average 18-20 month length of a LW season, and the time gaps between Xpacks/LW seasons, I could see around 3 more LW seasons, as well as the confirmed next Xpack, in the 5-6 year range.

Which would give Anet just enough time to round out Cantha with LWS6, go to Utopia land, round that out with LWS7, and then do a free for all with random places like Janthir, the Woodland Cascades, Dzalana, etc.

Around 22-23 new maps.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509