I'm in need of some GW1 people to explain Palawa Joko to me.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Athrenn.9468 said:"People." "Modern definition." "Obsolete for centuries." Where? In our world, not Tyria.

Yes. In our world, where this discussion is happening, and where everyone, including you, know what everybody means by the term. You're trying to reframe the discussion. Furthermore, from everything we've seen in Tyria, words have their modern Earth definition unless stated otherwise. (It's likely that realistically speaking, New Krytan is not modern English or any other modern Earth language, but is being translated into such for our benefit. So in New Krytan, the word "tyrant" might mean the modern definition, the ancient Greek definition, or might not exist at all - but they will have some term for a "cruel and oppressive ruler" which ingame gets translated to "tyrant" or "despot" or some similar term for our benefit, because we are modern English speakers.)

Seriously, you're trying to shift the discussion into whether a word that everybody understands to mean a particular thing actually means that thing instead of focusing on the actual topic of discussion. This is the sort of tactic I generally file under "last resort of someone who knows they're losing the argument".

As for the moral relativism through different social mores argument: Our reference point is the nations of Tyria, for whom most if not all of the items on the list I gave would be considered to be reprehensible behaviour. Except among the villain factions, which are explicitly denoted as such because of their behaviour.

Rytlock's behaviour in PoF indicates that Joko's behaviour is beyond the pale even by charr standards, which are probably the most Machiavellian of the playable race. The other contender for an amoral race would be the asura, for whom we've been told that things like knowingly murdering and torturing sapient beings is taboo, as is using the soul of a sapient being to power a golem against their will (which would be the rough equivalent to animating someone as an Awakened* against their will, which is something that we know does happen in Joko's empire) - asura that break these taboos are presented as villains through the game. For all of your attempts to shift the conversation, the fact of the matter is that by the morals of the factions that playable characters come from, Joko is clearly a villain and a tyrant.

By the modern definition of 'tyrant', if you insist on being pedantic about that, but again: Everyone here is going to be using the modern definition unless stated otherwise. We have other words that mean what the ancient Greek usage of 'tyrant' conveyed.

*Or, for that matter, as Forged - which Joko didn't do directly, but he aided and abetted Balthaddon in creating them before Balthaddon betrayed him.

[Athrenn.9468]

@draxynnic.3719

If you can't stick to debating the facts and feel the need to call your opponents "pedantic" for pointing them out then we can end this discussion right here. Otherwise, we can continue.

And yes, you do seem to be missing the point of my argument and attacking a straw man version of it. I am now going to state my point again very clearly so that there shouldn't be any confusion.

There are two separate ideas that you seem to be conflating: what the characters in the world of Tyria would morally condemn and what you would morally condemn. The two are not the same.

You make statements where in one breath you argue that the PC is "probably right" about Elona being better off without Joko as king (a statement that is only relevant within the world of Tyria) and then proceed to support your claim by citing arguments in favour of why the playerbase should condemn him (a statement that is only relevant outside the world of Tyria).

Those two realms—the real and the fictional—are completely separate. You cannot use arguments about why members of the playerbase should hate a character and apply it within the fiction.

Again, I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. The argument over whether Joko is a good ruler or not is only relevant within the fiction and cannot be supported by what players think. Those are two completely separate arguments that you keep conflating. If you want to debate Joko as a ruler then the only evidence that counts is what the fictional characters of Elona hold as their opinion. If there is evidence that they believe that he is a good ruler then that is their opinion and saying that the PC is "probably right" is an unsupported claim unless you can back it up with evidence.

The only characters whose opinion matters over whether a ruler is bad or good is that of his subjects, not outsiders who can go home to their own countries and live outside of his rule. A good king is simply one who is loved by his subjects and a bad one is hated. It's a subjective thing, and that's why it is all a matter of opinion. The player character has one opinion. So do the millions of other characters who live in Elona whose opinions are mixed from the evidence that we've been presented with in-game.

[Squee.7829]

"The player character has one opinion. So do the millions of other characters who live in Elona whose opinions are mixed from the evidence that we've been presented with in-game."

Well, unfortunately, OP asked for a player to explain Joko. So we get the players perspectives and views for tyranny, etc. Not a lot of NPC Vabbians visit these forums to give their side, so it's kind of a moot point.

[draxynnic.3719]

And I've pointed out that according to the mores of the people of Tyria, what Palawa Joko is doing is wrong.

And there are plenty of examples of people within Elona who think Joko is a tyrant. Those who have bought into his propaganda (including that moment in the clanmarshal's pagoda event chain where the friendly NPC expresses the belief that Joko would fix everything) are supposed to be cringe moments for the player base, and if we are only allowed to consider the opinions of those who have drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid and who remain ignorant of a ruler's worst excesses, then nobody can be said to be a bad ruler. I'm sure we can all think of examples of rulers which are almost universally condemned, including by the people they once ruled after the fact, but who had their supporters while in power, especially before the full extent of what they were responsible for became common knowledge.

It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that from the perspective of the writers, Joko is a villain, a despot, a tyrant, and, overall, a ruler who is bad for Elona. We are not supposed to sympathise with or support him because of the proportion of his population that are not living in constant fear of being arbitrarily murdered or exiled to a slave camp.

[Athrenn.9468]

@draxynnic.3719 said:And I've pointed out that according to the mores of the people of Tyria, what Palawa Joko is doing is wrong.

And as I've pointed out, there are multiple perspectives to consider if you want to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion as opposed to cherrypicking the data. There are characters on both the Pro-Joko and Anti-Joko sides of the debate which are both presented in equal proportions by the writers. From the Riverlands work farms where Joko's name is feared and reviled as a despot, to the Bonestrand and Vabbi where he is called "honorable" and praised for his achievements, there is a diversity of opinions presented to us. We have Herder Tazzik who says, "Joko is the despot undead ruler. He and his Awakened army took over all lands of Elona. The living work the fields and mines, while Joko awaits their deaths to fold them in to his army." Tazzik, a man who guides defectors north along the road to Amnoon, has a very different opinion from Farmer Bunti who says, "We never worried too much about food or security under King Joko [..] Indeed. King Joko has blessed us with protection, prosperity, education and even Awakening.." To discount either perspective is not only disingenuous to the truth but also a biased methodology. Strong arguments are rooted in evidence, taking all of it into equal consideration and documenting it all without selection bias. If all Pro-Joko evidence is rejected out of hand and all Anti-Joko evidence is accepted unquestioningly then the resulting conclusion is pure bias and nothing else. You say that many things are clear when they are not unless you exclude evidence from your conclusion.

And there are plenty of examples of people within Elona who think Joko is a tyrant.

Let's see some examples? I've been roaming the maps from the Desert Highlands to the Domain of Vabbi collecting quotes from scouts, heart NPCs, and dynamic events. The strongest concentration of Anti-Joko opinions come from Palawa's Grace and becoming more sparse the further north you travel. South of the Bone Wall, you see higher concentrations of Pro-Joko opinions around the Village of Purity and all around the Domain of Vabbi. In the Desolation, the ghosts of the Lair of the Forgotten are also Anti-Joko to balance out the opinions of the Village of Purity. Outsiders travelling through Vabbi are sometimes Anti-Joko, the visiting scholar from the Durmand Priory as one example. From everything I have seen, there is a balanced portrayal of opinions on both sides of the debate.

Those who have bought into his propaganda (including that moment in the clanmarshal's pagoda event chain where the friendly NPC expresses the belief that Joko would fix everything) are supposed to be cringe moments for the player base, and if we are only allowed to consider the opinions of those who have drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid and who remain ignorant of a ruler's worst excesses, then nobody can be said to be a bad ruler. I'm sure we can all think of examples of rulers which are almost universally condemned, including by the people they once ruled after the fact, but who had their supporters while in power, especially before the full extent of what they were responsible for became common knowledge.

This is the type of sampling bias that I described above in my first paragraph. Unless you know the writer who wrote that dialogue personally and they have told you that it was written as a cringe moment then we have to weigh it as evidence contained within the lore just as fairly as we would treat dialogue coming from characters with Anti-Joko sentiments. It's disingenuous to reject any data simply because it doesn't fit into the theories that we've come up with. Strong theories are built to explain the existing patterns within the data. All of it. Not just the parts that can be woven together into a neat little package.

It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that from the perspective of the writers, Joko is a villain, a despot, a tyrant, and, overall, a ruler who is bad for Elona. We are not supposed to sympathise with or support him because of the proportion of his population that are not living in constant fear of being arbitrarily murdered or exiled to a slave camp.

And yet we have evidence presented to us on both sides of the debate, Anti-Joko and Pro-Joko in equal quantities. At a risk of repeating myself, we have Herder Tazzik who says, "Joko is the despot undead ruler. He and his Awakened army took over all lands of Elona. The living work the fields and mines, while Joko awaits their deaths to fold them in to his army." Tazzik, a man who guides defectors north along the road to Amnoon, has a very different opinion from Farmer Bunti who says, "We never worried too much about food or security under King Joko [..] Indeed. King Joko has blessed us with protection, prosperity, education and even Awakening.." To accept one character's opinion as object truth and the other woman's as the ravings of a brainwashed lunatic is a sampling bias, and as my professors once taught me, your theories are only as strong as your methodology. Strong theories are rooted in facts first and work upwards from there. All perspectives must be considered in equal fairness or else the conclusion will be biased. If both sides of the Pro- and Anti-Joko debate are given equal representation within the game by characters on both sides then the conclusion that I would arrive at is that the writers want to present it as a complex moral issue with pros and cons to both sides full of nuance and shades of grey. Why? Because that is what writers are taught to do, or at least what I've been taught to do while learning creative writing. You only present both sides of a conflict in equal measure if you're going for a morally grey tone otherwise you're foreshadowing a more complex relationship between the two sides..

[draxynnic.3719]

So...

I'd been deliberately avoiding this thread since my last post, on the basis that there was no point continuing the debate with possibly decisive new evidence only a couple of days away.

Now that it's here, I think the evidence speaks for itself.

[Oromis.2498]

Hey,

Here's some random opinions from a random lurker who simply enjoy reading threads about gw2 lore :

Athrenn, you're getting it too personal, even if you're right on some points. I'm tired to read your walls of text which are more, like we say in french, "brain masturbation".

No offenses intended, just my thoughts.

[Athrenn.9468]

Last I checked, the concept of cultural relativism does indeed translate into French. It also translates into fantasy worldbuilding from Tyria to Westeros and everything beyond. I stand by my points and certainly do find it insulting to compare honest debate with pointless drivel which is what I would call "brain masturbation."

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

I will attempt to answer this, keep in mind I never played GW1. PJ made a Power play during the First Kings and got him self entombed after a fight with TO, then in GW1 the PC frees him and helps him reconnect with his wayward generals because they needed his short-term help. Naturally PJ decides he's the last in line of the First Kings so he trys taking over Elona through political maneuvering, after this falls through he dams off a river and puts his adversaries to ruin while making a habitable area to rule over for the survivers, after his adversaries surrender from drought and starvation he changes the culture of places like Vabbi by rewriting history and incorporating the process of raising undead into their religion.

I hope that's roughly accurate.

[Pax.3548]

In gw1 it was known palawa joko was a dangerous fella who almost conquered Elona but was defeated by Turai Ossa. In the nightfalls events we had to free Palawa for his assistance in crossing the deadly desolation and he, in return for his aid, wanted us to help him reconquer the bone palace and reunite his scattered army (basically he used us, taking advantage of our situation). Back there he was kinda funny, for a being who almost conquered elona he was incredible weak after his release, basically a walking tall mummy. But clearly he was underestimated, he awaited around 50 years after the gw1 events laying low, increasing his armies and waiting for the heroes of that age to die out to finally strike in a way that it almost took him no effort to conquer Elona. And after 150 years of ruling as a god, clearly he has become very arrogant.

One thing must always be kept in mind, Joko only helps Joko, he will use you and kill you if he can't. Some ppl say we did wrong in antagonizing him in the domain of the lost, but that is irrelevant, to Joko there is no one equal and if there is a dragonslayer and a godkiller in his domains Joko would have felt threatened and he would have antagonized us regarless, sooner or later. You can certainly bet on that.

Hell, it could have been a lot more worse had we not insulted him in the underwold, he could have come to us as a friend and stab us right were it would hurt us more, but as we already made him an enemy, he is a clear threat that we will see coming.

[Athrenn.9468]

@"Pax.3548" said:But clearly he was underestimated, he awaited around 50 years after the gw1 events laying low, increasing his armies and waiting for the heroes of that age to die out to finally strike in a way that it almost took him no effort to conquer Elona.

I think we have evidence now that he was already planning an invasion by the year 1093 A.E., so not even half a century. More like within 14 years of the Krytan Civil War of 1079. This information comes from Koss's diary. (Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Koss_on_Koss_(Extended_Edition)) Joko clearly wasn't afraid of the Sunspears; he probably knew that they were spread thin and complacent to his threat as Koss suspected. He wasn't waiting for them to die, but he was taking advantage of their situation to abduct villagers to add to his army without them realizing it. That said, it took him nearly a hundred years for Elona to fall and he was very patient. Between 1093 when his invasion plans began and 1175 where they succeeded, that's a good 80+ years of conquest. Joko doesn't wait around for situations to change. He'll begin his plans on the sly as soon as he has the means and he won't stop until he's succeeded.

From that, I think we can extrapolate a few character traits about Joko: extreme dedication to conquest, all-or-nothing high risk/high reward mentality, calculating intelligence, goal oriented behavior, sociopathy. All in all, it's quite the package of villainous traits. A dangerous combination of disregard for human life and pragmatism that makes him a highly effective conqueror. He'll sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve his goals but is self-conscious of the fact that his subjects need to view him in a positive light for that to happen.

If he has any major vice that could be his downfall, it's pride. Certain scholars at the Astralarium have been punished for reporting ill omens which means he only wants to hear good news. I think that Joko probably doesn't believe in prophecies and thinks that they're all silly superstitions. That's bad news for him if he's wrong and might just bite him in the back.

[Pax.3548]

@Athrenn.9468 said:

@"Pax.3548" said:But clearly he was underestimated, he awaited around 50 years after the gw1 events laying low, increasing his armies and waiting for the heroes of that age to die out to finally strike in a way that it almost took him no effort to conquer Elona.

I think we have evidence now that he was already planning an invasion by the year 1093 A.E., so not even half a century. More like within 14 years of the Krytan Civil War of 1079. This information comes from Koss's diary. (Source:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Koss_on_Koss_(Extended_Edition

)) Joko clearly wasn't afraid of the Sunspears; he probably knew that they were spread thin and complacent to his threat as Koss suspected. He wasn't waiting for them to die, but he

was

taking advantage of their situation to abduct villagers to add to his army without them realizing it. That said, it took him nearly a hundred years for Elona to fall and he was very patient. Between 1093 when his invasion plans began and 1175 where they succeeded, that's a good 80+ years of conquest. Joko doesn't wait around for situations to change. He'll begin his plans on the sly as soon as he has the means and he won't stop until he's succeeded.

From that, I think we can extrapolate a few character traits about Joko: extreme dedication to conquest, all-or-nothing high risk/high reward mentality, calculating intelligence, goal oriented behavior, sociopathy. All in all, it's quite the package of villainous traits. A dangerous combination of disregard for human life and pragmatism that makes him a highly effective conqueror. He'll sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve his goals but is self-conscious of the fact that his subjects need to view him in a positive light for that to happen.

If he has any major vice that could be his downfall, it's pride. Certain scholars at the Astralarium have been punished for reporting ill omens which means he only wants to hear good news. I think that Joko probably doesn't believe in prophecies and thinks that they're all silly superstitions. That's bad news for him if he's wrong and might just bite him in the back.

I meant Joko waited for most heroes of that age to die (meaning henchies and heroes from gw prophecies, factions and nightfall, specially our own character from gw1, who could have organized elona's defenses and defeat him easily considering how they dealt with abaddon) Koss was apparently the only one who perceived joko as an inminent danger years later and tried to act alongside lonai, but because joko was laying low and didn't expose himself much (joko only attacked patrols, probably to make more awakened from them, but nothing as obvious as a declaration of war) no one paid attention to koss's warnings, so in the end he was alone and was defeated by joko. But joko didn't invade elona then, he was just waiting for the heroes who could challenge him to die while discreetly making awakened from elona's population, all for his conquest of elona.

[Athrenn.9468]

In that regard ... yes, I suppose he didn't technically invade Vabbi until all of his chess pieces were in place. Then he executed his plan with such immediate shock and awe tactics that there was no way they could win.

[Randulf.7614]

Hopefully this will clarify things;

Joko the MightyHe roams the Elonian country side,He never needs a place to hide.

With Amala as his sidekick,fighting with her little stick

Righting wrongs and singing songs,Riding Zhaitan all day long.

He's Joko,He's Joko the mighty.

Joko the Mighty,He's really tidy,

Everybody likes him,'Cause he's got a funny grin,

He's JokoHe's Joko the Mighty.