What's GW2's biggest lore mistake according to you?

[Raknar.4735]

Overabundance of Inquest.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

The mysterious void as the ultimate answer. It is basically Necron with a few extra stepps.

Edited May 12, 2022 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

2 hours ago, Dami.5046 said:

Only because it's the way Anet decided the story should take that turn. It didn't have too. I still believe they didn't want cantha and MoP was supposed to deal with that and i still think some small lore should of gone into why we just 'passout then' and not totally die.

Regarding the death mechanic thing, it comes a point where you need to separate what is lore from what is mechanics.

For example, waypoints as they are in mechanics functioning the same in lore would be horrifically broken for storytelling purposes and reduce the drama exponentially. If literally anyone can instantly travel across the country in mere seconds, then it'd be impossible to chase down foes, set up defenses, etc. The governments of the world would only set up waypoints in locations that are guarded with instantly triggered death traps, and prisons would simply be incapable of functioning - the only way to stop criminals would be to actively murder every single one, regardless of crime, or function on an honor system which criminals by virtue don't give a kitten about.

And to limit the mechanical side of things for waypoints would make them so obsolete that movement around the game - especially prior to mounts - would be so asinine that people would quit the game only a few hours in no matter how great the story or combat ever got.

I mean, could you imagine if you get defeated and the only way to resurrect would be to sit and wait for someone to come along and revive you? Because that's turning lore into mechanics. That is nothing short of a quitting moment for thousands of players.

The whole defeated terminology part is just lampshading and is only relevant whenever resurrection comes into play - the rare times its talked about in lore, it's talked about not being a thing. And that's why PoF onward makes a huge deal about the Commander coming back from the dead - it's literally something no one has done in over 200 years.

 

I went on a tangent there, but I don't think it really needs to be explained in great detail that the defeated state is not the same as you died. The labels itself tell the story, and a distinction between mechanics and lore is and always will be a thing in video games - especially MMOs that can't have a game over state due to the persistent open world nature of them.

Quote

Maybe I read the title wrong, , however it doesn't change my mind that 'making everyone friendly' was rather boring to lack a better word.

I mean, it was either that, fracturing the playerbase, or simply not having playable charr.

ArenaNet knew playable charr was a must for the playerbase and they didn't want to fracture the playerbase, and I agree with that. But like I said in my post, it's a subjective thing.

However, it should be noted that it is more than just "oh it's been 250 years we're friends now". The racism and strife among the factions wanting to continue warring plays a heavy hand in Fields of Ruin, Season 3, and Icebrood Saga. If there's any fallacy there, IMO, it is that it didn't play a heavier hand - but that strife should have still been purely NPC side.

 

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Druids had left husk of themselves that had barely anything to do with healing. They were all about farting nature spirits and traps. There was 0 reference to stars of celestial corpse associated to the druids while the oracle do have some ties with all the celestial stuff which is why I say that I would have accepted more easily a GW2 druid as an oracle than with it's current name.

They weren't "all about farting nature spirits and traps" though? I don't know what lore you remember, but GW1 lore on druids is basically:

Ancient Druid Spirit: "All that exists is all that must be."
Ancient Druid Spirit: "We are renewed by these waters. We are unchanged by these waters."
Ancient Druid Spirit: "Time moves neither forward or back. Time is the lens of perception."
Ancient Druid Spirit: "The spirit beholds the truths that the eye cannot see."

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_Druids

Dark Oak: "Darkness and light, good and evil...all are a part of nature. There is no regrowth without death...without decay. Such is the lesson that I can teach you, stripling."

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dark_Oak

Beyond that, it's simply "protect and respect nature" and that they were once humans, suspected followers of Melandru, who shed their mortal forms to become spiritual and "one with nature" about 100 years before GW1.

Nothing is ever said about nature spirits, though they do share models with them as spectral oakhearts, and definitely nothing about traps. And yes, nothing about stars or celestials, but plenty of stuff about time, darkness, and light and the perception of it all, and certainly nothing saying not stars. So I'm not seeing the disconnect tbh.

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

"Which, incidentally, are what the Celestials are: human spirits." That's not what the wiki say.

"Celestials are the physical embodiment of the spirits of the stars." This is what the wiki say.

You should read more than the very first sentence of https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Celestial because:

Quote

 

Major celestials

• Hai Jii, the Phoenix, the representation of fiery eternity in the Underworld.
• Kaijun Don, the Kirin, the embodiment of corruption.
• Kuonghsang, the Turtle Dragon, the eternal paradox.
• Tahmu, the Dragon, a reminder of atrocity, pain, and anguish.
• Chong, the Celestial Pig, the embodiment of honesty, tolerance and support.

 

• And if you click any of those links, you'll see that Hai Jii, Kaijun Don, Kuonghsang, Tahmu, and Chong were all human beings in the past. If you read the lore a little deeper than the first line, you'd see that they are human spirits elevated to the stars, and that the line you read is in reference to this fact.

The Oracle of the Mists has nothing to do with the stars themselves. He's a ritualist who summons and binds human souls - be they the souls of criminals bound to escort the souls of the newly dead to their proper afterlife as penitence, or be they human souls elevated to the stars with powers that can awaken the true power within someone and make them Ascended.

And that, truth be told, does not fit the ranger at all.

 

It's fine if you think applying the name "druid" to the aesthetic and mechanics is a lore mistake, not really arguing against that tbh (just that I'm not seeing it), but I do think that you seem to have misconceptions about the GW1 lore that you're making associations with. IMO, based on GW1 lore, tying the Oracle of the Mists to an elite spec about stars and vines, let alone coming from ranger, wouldn't fit at all.

  

1 hour ago, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

The mysterious void as the ultimate answer. It is basically Necron with a few extra stepps.

Personally I liked the Void, because it ties back into lore as far back as 2010 - though I suspect that was somewhat unintentional on their part.

They just... really needed to put more focus on it and the worldbuilding around it. They just slapped it in as this pretty thing to serve as an antagonist because they decided the deep sea dragon should be good in order to subvert expectations in the most predictable of ways.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Kalavier.1097]

12 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Regarding the death mechanic thing, it comes a point where you need to separate what is lore from what is mechanics.

Same thing for the Asura gates really. In lore to travel through them you have to pay a fee to the keeper, in game mechanics it's just a free teleport.

[Vanthian.9267]

The entire story arc leading up to, and all the way through, PoF.  Absolutely trash.  If it were Menzies I would understand, but turning Balthazar is just stupid. 

Guild Wars 1 Prophecies was outstanding.  Factions was above average/average.  Nightfall was poor and EotN was above average. 

Guild Wars 2 lore team has constantly churned out below average work.  Perhaps if they stopped focusing on social propaganda and focused on the lore it would be better. 

[Fueki.4753]

3 hours ago, Vanthian.9267 said:

The entire story arc leading up to, and all the way through, PoF.  Absolutely trash.  If it were Menzies I would understand, but turning Balthazar is just stupid.

Guild Wars 1 Prophecies was outstanding.  Factions was above average/average.  Nightfall was poor and EotN was above average. 

Guild Wars 2 lore team has constantly churned out below average work.  Perhaps if they stopped focusing on social propaganda and focused on the lore it would be better. 

I'd already be happy if the devs knew the lore.

The pre-EoD livestreams just gave us more hints that the current developers do not know it.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[cyberzombie.7348]

Like annike mentioned "Character building over world building." But also how fractions you join becomes readily irrelevant after each plotline. Especially when they follow the same pattern of: join fraction, put in some work &  gain rank, new fraction comes, shift toward the new, forget you still have connections and rank with the old. This repeats until you're railroaded to Dragon's Watch, a rag-tag "guild." The same can be said for all the tech you come across through each story arc.

 

In all, its all missed opportunities to flesh out all the fractions you come across and make a genuine larger-than-life feeling. While granting the agency to fix the long list of plot holes/armour along the way. Instead we have the PC relying on the bare minimum of resources to pull things off. It also doesn't help how they moved away from GW1's method of having a different PC for every crisis.

[maxwelgm.4315]

Any particular mistake I can think of boils down to what more than one person has already mentioned it, which is that the writers who took up the job after Ree Soesbee's worldbuilding went into the polar opposite direction from hers, going towards "characters over worldbuilding". Tyria is no longer a character and in a story where Tyria and the Elder Dragons are interwoven so intensely, this turned things into a steamy pile of bad takes.

 

You can see the trend starting precisely after 2017 when the narrative team shifted focus to character development - that's around the time when PoF released and most likely when Kralkatorrik became a literal human grandfather to Aurene instead of an Elder being 10,000s of years old. It's also when things started to happen with little care to continuity or consistence, and every aspect of the world of Tyria became mere plot devices. Some examples: the entirety of the Underworld/Domain of the lost arc, the gods simply leaving forever and far away without so far as communicating with humans - Grenth being a great offender by simply leaving the seven reapers and Desmina to fend for themselves, AND later allowing Kralkatorrik to actually eat up their domains. Braham's unusual change of heart more than twice within the same story arc, Taimi coming up with inventions just because in order to progress the plot, putting Jormag and Primordus to sleep for no reason other than we want to develop Balthazar's character and so on. 

 

In sum, the writers picked up a fantasy RPG writeup with emphasis on worldbuilding and continuous lore development and decided to write episodic romances on top of that buildup - any kind of positive that comes out of it, is precisely because of the strong groundwork they are building on top of, but it simply ruins any potential for the world to be improved, and all we can expect are nostalgic rehashes or assets that although new are going to feel weak, due to not focusing on the worldbuilding aspect but rather on presenting new characters coming from these new (and properly contrived to not emphasize worldbuilding) settings. There is a reason the raid "stories" are so praised in spite of having almost no story at all - they are using assets from the very strong worldbuilding of GW1, and while GW2's core does have a lot of this, we are still going through all of that instead of ever trying to come up with more. Instead we are stuck with eternal character development, something that would fit far better an open world action game rather than a massive sprawling fantasy RPG.

Edited May 16, 2022 by maxwelgm.4315

[Narcemus.1348]

I think there are degrees to which choosing to focus on character development has proved as a boon for ArenaNet. I feel like the characters in End of Dragons we're very enjoyable throughout the whole story and I doubt it would have been near as enjoyable for me without those characters.

 

That said, you should never focus on one thing to the detriment of others. And End of Dragons was very much a world building expansion and it needed a bit more emphasis on that build up in order to really drive home what was going on and how everything related to the beginning of time in Tyria truly worked. It wasn't terrible and it wasn't their biggest mistake in my eyes, but it could use better balance.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

On 5/11/2022 at 1:51 PM, Aodlop.1907 said:

I feel like rushing IBS and Jormag's demise are a little to obvious as an answer, so maybe we'll say "besides this one".

IBS wasn't "rushed" by any metric.

There were originally going to be 4 more chapters of IBS(instead of the 4 Champions releases we got), and from what we can gather those would have been a 2 parter in the Centaur Homelands dealing with Primordus' rise(as we saw in the first two chapters of Champions) and then another 2 parter around Anvil Rock were we kill both dragons as part of Dragonstorm(ala the 2nd two parts of Champions).

If you really think about it, there wasn't much more for the Jormag story to do. Like, if you remove its connection to Primordus, the Jormag story was pretty much complete as is. We had

• Gone back to the old Norn lands in the Far Shiverpeaks.
• Gotten to see what happened to many of the old Norn homestads like Longeye's, Sifhalla, Jora's, etc.
• Gone to the place Asgeir fought Frostfang and Jormag, and learned the secret truth regarding that battle, and the Norn's exodus south.
• Fought and killed the Fraenir, the highest ranking of the Svanir.
• Helped Jhavi defeat Drakkar in combat, earning her family some measure of vengeance for what Drakkar did to them.
• Found out what happened to the "Lost" Spirits of the Wild, stopped Jormag from corrupting the major Spirits of the Wild, and got to visit the place the Spirits first revealed themselves to the Norn.
• Got a spiffy new Claw of Jormag fight.
• Takes the whole "Norn of Prophecy"/Asgier 2.0 to its logical conclusion.

By the time Jormag Rising ends the only thing left to do is recover the bow, and use it to kill Jormag, which would have been a two parter and then the story is over. It was only as long as it was because we just let Jormag go for several months to artificially delay its death because of the whole Jormag/Primrodus connection thing. Its the exact opposite of rushed, its artificially delayed.

This also fits with what the other Elder Dragons got. When it came to the actual larger story against the Dragons each one got 3 maps + a meta fight

• Zhaitan had Straights of Devastation, Malchor's Leap, Cursed Shore, and Arah story mode
• Mordremoth had Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon's Stand
• Kralkatorrik had Vabbi, Jahai, Thunderhead, and Dragonfall
• Soo-Won had Seitung, New Kaineng, Echovald, and Dragon's End
• Jormag had Bitterfrost, Bjora, Drizzlewood, and Dragonstorm
• Primordus had Ember Bay, Draconis Mons, the first two champions releases replacing its third map, and Dragonstorm.

The whole "IBS/Jormag was rushed!" is sheer copium.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

7 hours ago, maxwelgm.4315 said:

and while GW2's core does have a lot of this, we are still going through all of that instead of ever trying to come up with more.

You really shouldn't be trying to come up with more 8-9+ years into a game's existence. That just leads into the territory WoW has gone into with "DUDE THE JAILER, THIS GUY YOU NEVER HEARD ABOUT BEFORE, WAS THE REAL BADGUY ALL ALONG!" If something of great importance existed, and actually had an effect on the world, we should have felt it/had it hinted at already.

This also ties into an actual problem GW2 has, which is its environment range already covers pretty much everything as is, so its hard to add new things when finding places for those new things would just dredge up the logical questions of "ok but why are you making up something for a new desert setting when the Crystal Desert already exists, and can just expand upon that and its stories?"

We have the twisted jungles of the Maguuma, the dense forests of the Echovald, the high peaks of the Shiverpeaks, the expansive deserts of the Crystal Desert, the savanna/badlands of Elona, the corrupted watery landscape of Orr, the rolling green countryside of Ascalon, etc. etc. The three major setting of the GW universe, Tyria, Elona, and Cantha, cover most of Europe, Africa, and Asia. We're really only missing an "Americas" setting, which Utopia was seemingly going to provide, and has been hinted to likely exists based on people like Doern Delazquez, the S2 Priory map, and the artbook which seemingly still treats part of it as canon. So even adding that wouldn't really be anything "more" or "new" just going through what we already know exists.

As is they could easily spend the next 5-6 years just building more off of what has already been established in the GW2 setting in 3 more LW seasons, and the 4th Xpack.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Aodlop.1907]

58 minutes ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

This also ties into an actual problem GW2 has, which is its environment range already covers pretty much everything as is, so its hard to add new things when finding places for those new things would just dredge up the logical questions of "ok but why are you making up something for a new desert setting when the Crystal Desert already exists, and can just expand upon that and its stories?"

In Jahai, they pretty much confirmed the existence of other planets.

It's weird that it was never brought up again by the way. Taimi should have been obsessed about this one.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

12 minutes ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

In Jahai, they pretty much confirmed the existence of other planets.

It's weird that it was never brought up again by the way. Taimi should have been obsessed about this one.

It's always been a known thing that there were other planets out there since Prophecies. The original lore about the gods is that they "left to make other worlds" after the Exodus, after all (though we know now that's not true, but with PoF it was shared they left to find another planet).

 

That said, there's nothing wrong about having two separate regions share the same biome. It's not like there's only one singular desert on Earth, after all. What matters more is the worldbuilding of that region than its biome.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[TheQuickFox.3826]

Not letting Gwen deal with the Charr after GW:EN

[Kalavier.1097]

10 hours ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

The whole "IBS/Jormag was rushed!" is sheer copium.

More of "Canceled early and thus they had to squash chapters together"

8 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

In Jahai, they pretty much confirmed the existence of other planets.

It's weird that it was never brought up again by the way. Taimi should have been obsessed about this one.

To be fair she's been focused entirely on saving the current world, before looking at others.

[Ultramex.1506]

I havent played GW1, have the Shining Blade alway been like this?

Because forcing PC to join the club with "you talk you die" BS just to get the story moving is something i will never forgive or forget.

[Fueki.4753]

50 minutes ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

I havent played GW1, have the Shining Blade alway been like this?

Because forcing PC to join the club with "you talk you die" BS just to get the story moving is something i will never forgive or forget.

No, they weren't a fanatical club in GW1.

Even in GW2, they weren't a fanatical club until that one chapter in Season 3.

[Diovid.9506]

53 minutes ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

I havent played GW1, have the Shining Blade alway been like this?

Because forcing PC to join the club with "you talk you die" BS just to get the story moving is something i will never forgive or forget.

I forgot about that but yeah.. that one ranks high on my list of worst mistakes. How did Anet think that sequence of events made any sense for non-humans? 

[Hotride.2187]

Spoiler

Killing and reviving aurene. I didn't care much about the story at this point, but at least I listened to it and watched the cutscenes. Things were just getting good you know? After that I stopped following the story.

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Kalavier.1097]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

No, they weren't a fanatical club in GW1.

Even in GW2, they weren't a fanatical club until that one chapter in Season 3.

There is a difference between "Fanatical club" and "Guardians of the crown who use the oath to make sure they are NEVER BETRAYED AGAIN." You know, like how the Shining blade was betrayed by one of it's highest ranking members to the white mantle and almost entirely wiped out or captured.

It really didn't change anything about how they acted, besides that if you are in the top ranks of the shining blade, you are placed under oath to ensure you cannot backstab the group like they were betrayed at that time.

2 hours ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

I havent played GW1, have the Shining Blade alway been like this?

Because forcing PC to join the club with "you talk you die" BS just to get the story moving is something i will never forgive or forget.

It's not entirely "You talk you die" it's "You share any of the deepest, most critical secrets of the Shining blade to an enemy, you die."

It's not the best part, but it makes absolute sense given how they got pretty much wiped out at one point because of a traitor in the inner circle.

And in the end, depending how you look at it. A: The oath means nothing unless the Commander actively turns against the Krytan crown (unlikely). B: The oath is actually nullified because they did die, to Balthazar and was resurrected (the only one in many, many years). And since the only secret they knew (how to kill and fully resurrect Lazarus) was now void, the Shining blade don't care.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

9 hours ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

I havent played GW1, have the Shining Blade alway been like this?

Because forcing PC to join the club with "you talk you die" BS just to get the story moving is something i will never forgive or forget.

That was all invented for S3E6.

From a doylist perspective, in GW1, they were largely your typical guerilla freedom fighter group. In core GW2, they're your typical secret service/spy agency combination with a fantasy twist.

From a watsonian perspective, this all began after GW1, but held in secret, all done because of the internal betrayals that happened during GW1's timeframe.

And given how negative it was received, it's unlikely to ever become relevant ever again. Though it would be an interesting plot point to use the forced joining against the Commander in some manner.

[Fueki.4753]

12 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Though it would be an interesting plot point to use the forced joining against the Commander in some manner.

We don't even know if the death curse is still active on the commander, given that the commander already died once.

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

21 hours ago, Aodlop.1907 said:

In Jahai, they pretty much confirmed the existence of other planets.

It's weird that it was never brought up again by the way. Taimi should have been obsessed about this one.

We've known there are other planets since GW1, since humans come from another planet and were brought to Tyria by the gods.

You know what environments most other planets are probably going to have? Expansive deserts, high mountain peaks, twisted jungles, thick forests, open grasslands, sprawling savannas..... etc etc. the same stuff we see on Tyira.

10 hours ago, Diovid.9506 said:

I forgot about that but yeah.. that one ranks high on my list of worst mistakes. How did Anet think that sequence of events made any sense for non-humans? 

For the same reason it does make sense in the released version? Lazarus is a Mursaat, an ancient evil creature of the past, and the Shining Blade is an organization thats, in many ways, been dedicated SPECIFICALLY to making sure the Mursaat all died. Makes sense we would want to go to the organization designed for this specific thing, even if its mostly based on a singular race, to deal with said problem.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Pax.3548]

On 5/12/2022 at 8:48 AM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

"Nah, the worst hard retcon IMO would be the Jormag x Primordus rivalry and twinning.

And yes, I do consider this a hard retcon, though I understand it's a bit of a gray area. In Icebrood Saga, Primordus "woke up because Jormag woke up" and went to immediately attack Jormag out of animalistic desire to end Jormag's life. This openly contradicts the worldbuilding for Guild Wars 2's core story, where Primordus and Jormag woke up 50 years apart, Jormag the later, and there was zero confrontation between the two in the 150 years between Jormag waking up and Icebrood Saga; in fact, Jormag went towards Primordus after just waking up (e.g., at their weakest) despite proclaiming never wanting to confront Primordus without clear advantage. And in Season 3, Primordus went away from Jormag instead of blindly attacking like the wild animal they are...

In retrospect, the actions taken by Primordus and Jormag from waking until Season 3 make zero sense with the establishment of IBS: Champions. This is ultimately an issue of the "characters over story and lore" writing philosophy because it's writing characters without consideration of their past established actions.

 

As bad as Champions was, as bad as the rushed nature and sudden death of two Elder Dragons with zero worry despite all the build-up since S3 of needing multiple replacements was, this always felt the most dissonant from the rest of the game and story in IBS.

Primordus "woke up because Jormag woke up"   -  I'm pretty sure it was Braham with the spirits of the wild that reawakened primordious, before that he was dormant.

"and went to immediately attack Jormag out of animalistic desire to end Jormag's life"   - Weren't Primordus and Jormag forced to face each other, by luring them to the same ley line center?

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

2 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

We don't even know if the death curse is still active on the commander, given that the commander already died once.

No reason it should end. The "curse" merely stated that the Commander would die if they spoke out of turn. Never said that it ends in death.