End of Dragons' Force of Chaos Wasn't A Retcon

[mandala.8507]

EoD spoilers ahead.

Almost all the discourse concerning the Void claims that it came out of nowhere, but I disagree. I think the writers did what you have to do if you want to keep something a secret while teasing it, which is be incredibly vague. Despite this, there are plenty of examples from before even the Icebrood Saga that showcase they had a pretty good idea of this void concept even as early as core. By the season3/PoF/season 4 era, it was basically locked down entirely, in my opinion, if not much earlier and they simply chose not to share it in-game yet.

So, here's a video of all the instances where the Void was explicitly mentioned in the story before EoD was even on the table for the devs.

My hope is to get people thinking critically about the world building in its totality so we can stop criticizing things for not making sense that, to me, seem plain as day. The notion that the Void was a plot device simply to wrap up the Elder Dragon Arc and that we won't touch it again is frankly ludicrous to me, and my goal is to get more people on the same page, or to at least push back against the argument that the Void was a recent fabrication in the lore.

Thoughts?

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

It's pretty clear from context that the Void references before EoD weren't referring to the Void, but rather a generic void. ArenaNet did add it in from nowhere, but it isn't a retcon because there was nothing there in the first place.

Retroactive continuity can only occur if you're rewriting something. If you're filling in a blank, it isn't a retcon.

 

Also using Joko as the first source is hilarious because he's a pathological liar and everything he said there was wrong. Hell, well over half of the clips you use is not even referencing the Elder Dragons and void together, it's just a generic void. you just brought in a bunch of clips where the word "void" was used while completely and utterly ignoring the context. Yes, vocabulary exists. Void is not a word invented by ArenaNet in 2022.

The only instance of Void, capitalized, used by ArenaNet before EoD is in Dhuum's title, The Voice in the Void. Whether this has any relation to The Void is unclear. The only time the word "void" is used in relation to the Elder Dragons is in the PoF cinematic in Kesho, and in The Map of the All, but both cases is used in a very obviously generic "nothingness" concept, and not a coalescence singularity of all magic that breaks down and consumes all it touches that The Void is.

Edited January 8 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[mandala.8507]

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Also using Joko as the first source is hilarious because he's a pathological liar and everything he said there was wrong.

If I didn't have the ear for tone that I do, maybe I'd agree with you. It's clear to me that his talk of the Void was sincere. You can literally hear the shift in vocal delivery when he starts lying. 

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Hell, well over half of the clips you use is not even referencing the Elder Dragons and void together, it's just a generic void.

It's almost like the concept of the Void isn't exclusive to the elder dragon story.

2 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

you just brought in a bunch of clips where the word "void" was used while completely and utterly ignoring the context. Yes, vocabulary exists. Void is not a word invented by ArenaNet in 2022.

Am I ignoring the context, or is everyone else? I think it's everyone else, ngl.

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

I agree that the Void wasn't a new thing - I'm replaying the whole story with a new character and I can see the references to the idea of the void, i.e. primordial non-existence outside of dragon magic, in bits and pieces.  Even Mordremoth's horror at his death ("What have you done?!") can be attributed to his fear of the void. 

What they did add was the "Dragonvoid", i.e. the amalgamation of all the dragons we killed into some sort of malicious entity that brought Will to what would have been a Will-less void.   Which is fine if it's something they didn't think of from the very beginning.

Edited January 8 by KnightofPhoenix.3679

[draxynnic.3719]

Dig deep enough, and you can find groundwork that something like the Dragonvoid could exist back in Nightfall. Possibly before, even, but Nightfall established lore of sapient beings being able to be spontaneously created from energy in mimicry of existing creatures, and a tendency of such creatures to be inimical in nature. Granted, those demons were creatures of the Mists, but the Mists are essentially a region dominated by undirected creative energy, and the Dragonvoid is basically the result of excess undirected creative energy (aka magic) within Tyria.

I don't think references to Void were intended to be a hint, though. The Dragonvoid is, if anything, the opposite of a proper void - it comes about due to an excess of something rather than a deficit. It seems to me that, instead, the term 'tipped into the void' was used simply as a poetic reference to destruction, and the Dragonvoid just got hit with the label as a "see, this is the destruction we were talking about!"

[Fueki.4753]

There literally were no hints of the Dragonvoid (or just Void with an upper case V) anywhere before EoD.

It was a pull out of the air around them.

Whenever void (with a lower case v) was mentioned before, it referenced the absence of something, not some kind of corrupting magic.

The issue with three Elder Dragon missing that'd destroy Tyria was successfully averted by Aurene's ascension in Season 4, so that evidently did not refer to the Dragonvoid either.

Kralkatorrik's madness didn't imply any corruption from the Dragonvoid either. I think it was pretty explicit that his Torment came from him having eating too much Zhaitan, Mordremoth and Human God magic mixture (the magic Balthazar absorbed from the Bloodstone after he got stripped of magic, I highly doubt he only absorbed his own type of magic in Season 3).

It's just that the Dragonvoid was shoddily connected to past lore. But when the lore was current, the Dragonvoid had nothing to do with it at all.

The Dragonvoid is basically the same as the Jailer in WoW: Shadowlands. The lore worked perfectly fine without it, but now there's a mediocre antagonist tucked onto it.

Simply having Soo-Won be evil and be the expansion's enemy would have been a much better idea than pulling the Dragonvoid out of thin air and it would have ended the Elder Dragon story as well.

Edited January 8 by Fueki.4753

[draxynnic.3719]

I don't know about that. Kralkatorrik's Torment is basically the same phenomena as the Dragonvoid - it's just weaker (because there was less magic involved) and Soo-Won was better at resisting (at least over the course of End of Dragons). We've also had the 'too much magic makes you crazy' theme right back to the original story of King Doric and the Bloodstones. The Dragonvoid was essentially the ultimate expression of that theme.

The name is a bit weird, since there's not really any void involved. It's probably more akin to Chaos.

The real weirdness is that after being told that multiple replacements would be necessary, we now have Aurene being able to apparently manage all of Tyria's magic without any issues, which Soo-Won failed to do.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The cinematic Glint's Legacy literally and directly references the Void in releveance to the Elder Dragons all the way back in Path of Fire, including a graphical depiction of how it unmakes everything and how that balance can be restored, but if you show anyone this just try to tell you how wrong you are.

 

The only thing people care about is being right anymore, not the truth. Because the devs didn't directly spell it out to them, it didn't exist. They confirmed a long time ago the story is always written several years ahead, btw, and in some parts have been sketched out since the very beginning of the game (despite being called kittenpulls), but sadly alot of this information was lost with the old-old forums.

 

The desync is because the modern writers are interpreting the original drafts in a different way.

Edited January 8 by Mariyuuna.6508

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

10 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The real weirdness is that after being told that multiple replacements would be necessary, we now have Aurene being able to apparently manage all of Tyria's magic without any issues, which Soo-Won failed to do.

 

That was explained albeit I wish it was made clearer and more explicit. 

Magic was several times compared to a light spectrum comprised of multiple wavelengths.  Well Aurene is the prismatic dragon - her power is that of a prism capable of filtering light (magic) and breaking it down to its base unmixed wavelengths.  So Aurene can take all of the magic but she keeps it from mixing.

https://cdn.britannica.com/78/149178-050-F2421B64/light-prism-color-angle-colors-wavelength-wavelengths.jpg

She is a fourth generation dragon bred for this purpose.  She is a perfected version of the Elder Dragons

Edited January 8 by KnightofPhoenix.3679

[draxynnic.3719]

1 minute ago, KnightofPhoenix.3679 said:

 

That was explained albeit I wish it was made clearer and more explicit. 

Magic was several times compared to a light spectrum comprised of multiple wavelengths.  Well Aurene is the prismatic dragon - her power is that of a prism capable of filtering light (magic) and breaking it down to its base unmixed wavelengths.  So Aurene can take all of the magic but she keeps it from mixing.

https://cdn.britannica.com/78/149178-050-F2421B64/light-prism-color-angle-colors-wavelength-wavelengths.jpg

Oh, there are multiple ways to explain it after the fact, but we were explicitly told that the Legacy went well beyond Aurene and then it turned out to be all Aurene after all.

I suspect there were parts of the plot that were cut between PoF and EoD.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Probably some worry that seeking out multiple replacements would drag it out too much. 

[draxynnic.3719]

20 minutes ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

Probably some worry that seeking out multiple replacements would drag it out too much. 

Wouldn't surprise me, but they could probably have subbed in Kuunavang and Albax easily enough. I suspect they have other plans for those two, though.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

12 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

If I didn't have the ear for tone that I do, maybe I'd agree with you. It's clear to me that his talk of the Void was sincere. You can literally hear the shift in vocal delivery when he starts lying. 

There's no reason why Joko would know of the Void. It's something that didn't exist since the beginning of time. There are zero records of it. Even the kodan's origin story for the world, or the charr's, or human's, do not reference the Void.

12 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

It's almost like the concept of the Void isn't exclusive to the elder dragon story.

The issue is, that it is exclusive to the Elder Dragon story - so far at least.

The Void's only relevant because of the merging (or separation) of all six Elder Dragon domains. It might have relevance elsewhere, but such a claim is pure speculation with zero foundation so far, due to the lack of worldbuilding details of what the Void even is.

And the vast majority of your lines - like the Flame Legion's chant or Balth-Lazarus's monologue, is just talking about abysses and emptiness. The generic use of the word "void", not referring to the conglomeration of all things.

Some of those instances you could maybe sort of argue is related, but again it's all pure speculative. Zero hard evidence to support the claim.

12 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

Am I ignoring the context, or is everyone else? I think it's everyone else, ngl.

Yes, you are.

Veteran Flame Legion Ritualist (2): Deliver this water to the abyss! Impure souls will fall in its void!

Veteran Flame Legion Ritualist (2): Tyria's black blood rises from the depths! Shadows engulf this lake! Be water, no longer!

Is very clearly not referring to the coalescence of six magical domains that break down the laws of reality. This guy is using synonyms for the same thing - abyss, void, depths, shadows - i.e., nothingness. Same goes for Lazarus/Balthazar:

Lazarus: The mursaat I was in the tales of the Forgotten is dead. I have been reborn, and rising from the void brings with it a new perspective.

Again talking about "rising from nothingness" - after all nothing comes back from The Void, just as nothing comes out of a black hole. So he obviously wasn't being literal.

 

It should also be noted that devs blatantly and openly stated that they had no story direction after Heart of Thorns - from Season 3 onward was a new overarching story path that hadn't been planned out. So outright, everything prior to Season 3 had zero build-up to what came after. ArenaNet might have retroactively used something old to come up with something new, for example the use of the word "void" in The Map of the All book in Season 2 might be where and why they took the word to use in End of Dragons... But there was no foreplanning in Season 2 for the void usage to be The Void.

And Season 4 onward was a new set of writers and story directors from there, who were the ones who invented Torment that would become the Void. And the lead narrative designer of the time, Tom Abernathy, openly and blatantly (and repeatedly) stated that he didn't care much about lore and worldbuilding, and primarily focused on character story. So the chances of him thinking this stuff up for reference in The Key of Ahdashim when this is said:

Key of Ahdashim: Devastation. Ahdashim will fall. A void of corruption will spread to every djinn and beyond, to nature itself.

is pretty slim. And even then, the context for that is still different - though arguably relatable, thinly so imo.

 

In other words, all usage of the word prior to Season 4 have no intentional relation to The Void, and at most was used in retrospect by ArenaNet for why they chose that very generic name.

 

EDIT: I see the OP changed the thread's title, thus making conversation about the use of the word "void" a bit construed. Heh.

Edited January 8 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

40 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Oh, there are multiple ways to explain it after the fact, but we were explicitly told that the Legacy went well beyond Aurene and then it turned out to be all Aurene after all.

I suspect there were parts of the plot that were cut between PoF and EoD.

Well Kralkatorrik, who had some prophetic gift, did refer to Aurene as "the first of her kind" - I don't think they've abandoned that. 

Aurene will likely, through some form of parthenogenesis, make new Elder Dragons with her prismatic abilities at some point in the future.  

Edited January 8 by KnightofPhoenix.3679

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

8 hours ago, KnightofPhoenix.3679 said:

I agree that the Void wasn't a new thing - I'm replaying the whole story with a new character and I can see the references to the idea of the void, i.e. primordial non-existence outside of dragon magic, in bits and pieces.  Even Mordremoth's horror at his death ("What have you done?!") can be attributed to his fear of the void. 

What they did add was the "Dragonvoid", i.e. the amalgamation of all the dragons we killed into some sort of malicious entity that brought Will to what would have been a Will-less void.   Which is fine if it's something they didn't think of from the very beginning.

"primordial non-existence" is not the same thing to The Void at all, though. That's just the general usage of the word void - synonymous to words like abyss, nothing, darkness, shadows, depths, oblivion, etc.
The Void is, by definition, all things combined - the complete opposite of "primordial non-existence". Dragonvoid is as you said, personality and will imprinted onto the Void by the Elder Dragons' influence by/of it over the dozens of millennia.

8 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Dig deep enough, and you can find groundwork that something like the Dragonvoid could exist back in Nightfall. Possibly before, even, but Nightfall established lore of sapient beings being able to be spontaneously created from energy in mimicry of existing creatures, and a tendency of such creatures to be inimical in nature. Granted, those demons were creatures of the Mists, but the Mists are essentially a region dominated by undirected creative energy, and the Dragonvoid is basically the result of excess undirected creative energy (aka magic) within Tyria.

I don't think references to Void were intended to be a hint, though. The Dragonvoid is, if anything, the opposite of a proper void - it comes about due to an excess of something rather than a deficit. It seems to me that, instead, the term 'tipped into the void' was used simply as a poetic reference to destruction, and the Dragonvoid just got hit with the label as a "see, this is the destruction we were talking about!"

The Mists spawning demons spontaneously in mimcry of other creatures is vastly different from The Void, and even the Dragonvoid, though.
There are some parallels to the Dragonvoid, due to the aforementioned implanted will and personality from influence by/of the Elder Dragons over several millennia, but The Void merely breaks down and combines things into a supernatural singularity - it doesn't create things normally. I would 100% not agree that demons is a hint to Void/Dragonvoid.

In other words, The Void under natural order - breaking down things into basic trash blocks - is the functional opposite of The Mists - creating things from basic building blocks (protomatter).

I've theorized since The Voice of the Void nickname given to Dhuum that "The Void" could be a fundamental 'recycling' for the Mists, to explain how it can be perpetually creating things - eventually matter runs out, if it isn't constantly being created, even if it is protomatter. So either in order to function, The Mists needs to either be perpetually creating protomatter to create things out of, or it needs to be recycling old and destabilized creations.
But that was an unfounded speculation based purely on a singular nickname, Dhuum's antics, and basic laws of thermodynamics. The Void may or may not be tied to the Mists, we don't have enough information or worldbuilding of it to go off of, but it could be.

Edited January 8 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[draxynnic.3719]

9 minutes ago, KnightofPhoenix.3679 said:

Well Kralkatorrik, who had some prophetic gift, did refer to Aurene as "the first of her kind" - I don't think they've abandoned that. 

Aurene will likely, through some form of parthenogenesis, make new Elder Dragons with her prismatic abilities at some point in the future.  

Which is essentially what Soo-Won did in the first place. It certainly would fill a hole if Aurene was to start recruiting or creating assistance - that would shift the narrative from 'Aurene can manage all magic on her own!' to 'but only for so long...'

[draxynnic.3719]

2 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

"primordial non-existence" is not the same thing to The Void at all, though. That's just the general usage of the word void - synonymous to words like abyss, nothing, darkness, shadows, depths, oblivion, etc.

The Void is, by definition, all things combined - the complete opposite of "primordial non-existence". Dragonvoid is as you said, personality and will imprinted onto the Void by the Elder Dragons' influence by/of it over the dozens of millennia.

 

The Mists spawning demons spontaneously in mimcry of other creatures is vastly different from The Void, and even the Dragonvoid, though.

There are some parallels to the Dragonvoid, due to the aforementioned implanted will and personality from influence by/of the Elder Dragons over several millennia, but The Void merely breaks down and combines things into a supernatural singularity - it doesn't create things normally.

 

In other words, The Void under natural order - breaking down things into basic trash blocks - is the functional opposite of The Mists - creating things from basic building blocks (protomatter).

 

I've theorized since The Voice of the Void nickname given to Dhuum that "The Void" could be a fundamental 'recycling' for the Mists, to explain how it can be perpetually creating things - eventually matter runs out, if it isn't constantly being created, even if it is protomatter. So either in order to function, The Mists needs to either be perpetually creating protomatter to create things out of, or it needs to be recycling old and destabilized creations.

But that was an unfounded speculation based purely on a singular nickname, Dhuum's antics, and basic laws of thermodynamics. The Void may or may not be tied to the Mists, we don't have enough information or worldbuilding of it to go off of, but it could be.

I think there's more to it than that. Taimi described the Void not just as destruction, but a cycle of destruction and creation through excessive magical energies. But she adds 'Life can't survive that... We can't survive that.' And she's right - life might be being spontaneously created, but it's not really getting a chance to live if it's only to be spontaneously destroyed hours later.

Which is a pretty good parallel to the Mists, except the Mists seem to be a bit slower, probably because it's less concentrated.

But unlike regular dragon minions that are corrupted from existing materials, the Dragonvoid does (which the exception of corrupted Saltsprays) seem to be creating echoes of past dragon minions, lesser champions, and even the Elder Dragons themselves out of pure magical energy. So it's clearly capable of creating as well as destroying, even if most of what it creates are instruments of destruction. Thus, I think comparing it to the Mists is legitimate - it's just far more chaotic and inimical than any part of the Mists that we can visit and be likely to survive.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

57 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The cinematic Glint's Legacy literally and directly references the Void in releveance to the Elder Dragons all the way back in Path of Fire, including a graphical depiction of how it unmakes everything and how that balance can be restored, but if you show anyone this just try to tell you how wrong you are.

This is fundamentally false though. The exact lines:

Sadizi: But when two Elder Dragons were unexpectedly eliminated from the cycle at one time, we believe it created a void.

Sadizi: A void that caused the system to break down and the collapse to begin.

Look carefully. It is a void - not the Void. Even if you ignore the capitalization because "spoilers" or "plot twist" or whatever, it's a void - as in, one of many voids. It created an empty space that caused the system to break down and the collapse to begin.
And killing Elder Dragons did not create the Void. The Void was existing long before, and the Elder Dragons were created from it not the other way around.
Even if you attribute "they only had half the story", it doesn't line up - the narrative by Sadizi and the Apostate are the fundamental opposite of what ended up being the case in End of Dragons.

57 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The only thing people care about is being right anymore, not the truth. Because the devs didn't directly spell it out to them, it didn't exist. They confirmed a long time ago the story is always written several years ahead, btw, and in some parts have been sketched out since the very beginning of the game (despite being called kittenpulls), but sadly alot of this information was lost with the old-old forums.

They did confirm they have loose plans and ideas - which are always changing - written ahead. But the story is not written several years ahead in detail.
As I mentioned above, the devs openly said that they didn't have a story direction going forward once HoT ended. And even then, the main scope of what they had written out in the end was "god vs dragon" plot, and even that was second fiddle to "fighting two dragons at once" which is why Season 3 begins with Primordus and Jormag both being active, before shifting suddenly to Balthazar coming in.

57 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The desync is because the modern writers are interpreting the original drafts in a different way.

Pretty drastically different interpretation to go from "a generic emptiness" to "all things combined".

But here you're not wrong - they took a generic word that got used often in the topic, and turned it into something different. Not a retcon, not really, but fleshing out a generic emptiness (hah) in the lore to create something new.

And the thing is, the concept didn't begin as "Void" - it began as Torment. Kralkatorrik's Torment is the first instance we had of this in-game, and it had zero relation to Void. I'm not even sure why they bothered to rename it, but it probably was because they were reviewing old lore and saw the word void being tossed a ton and "yeah that sounds cooler".

 

49 minutes ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

Probably some worry that seeking out multiple replacements would drag it out too much. 

28 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Wouldn't surprise me, but they could probably have subbed in Kuunavang and Albax easily enough. I suspect they have other plans for those two, though.

They could have made it pretty easy and simple by using Vlast, the Pale Tree, and Kuunavang - that with Aurene there gives you four Elder Dragons which Season 3 said was the minimum safetynet. Kuunavang was even put on par (alongside Rotscale) to Glint back in 2011, even after Glint was confirmed a dragon champion. Leave finding replacements of the last two as a "someone else's job in the future" - or something the Crystal Bloom takes on off-screen immediately - as the Commander does other things.

IMO, they wrote themselves into the corner the moment they killed off Vlast for the ironic reason of "we didn't want him to be sitting in a cave doing nothing for the whole expansion when he could be helping us" - ironic, because that's what Aurene does in the entirety of IBS and EoD, until the finale of each. But even then, we had other potential dragons that could be used as replacements - Drakkar after being forced under the ritual like Glint, Malyck's tree, Shiny, Albax, etc.

 

Hell, I've often said that I wish Vlast survived and bonded with Braham, the two getting along over their shared dead mother legacy angst. Would have been a much more interesting outcome than Champion of Primordus out of nowhere with an asanine not-actually-a-prophecy Prophecy of "if two people fight to the death, one will die".

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

17 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think there's more to it than that. Taimi described the Void not just as destruction, but a cycle of destruction and creation through excessive magical energies. But she adds 'Life can't survive that... We can't survive that.' And she's right - life might be being spontaneously created, but it's not really getting a chance to live if it's only to be spontaneously destroyed hours later.

I would disagree here. Taimi does not mention a cycle of creation at all. What's said is:

Commander: Do we have any idea what this Void actually is?
Taimi: Oh, boy, there's a question... Kind of? But not really...
Taimi: Our observations line up with what Kuunavang described. Void magic is made up of all the other magics.
Taimi: It's funny because when you hear the word "void" you think of nothing, when the truth is it's everything.
Taimi: But it turns out "everything" is highly volatile. Any matter caught up in it changes states constantly.
Taimi: Life can't survive that. We can't survive that.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Extraction_Point

It's not a cycle of destruction and creation here, it's not even destruction - its absolute coalescence, a merging. Hence my repeated parallels to singularities and black holes, which suck in all things with such gravitational pull that it is crushed to a singular fine point.
Even when you talk to Kuunavang about what Void is, she only mentions "destruction" that Taimi clarifies (as quoted above) isn't actually destruction since it's not destroying it, fundamentally, but taking it in:

Kuunavang: The Void is raw magic—chaos incarnate. In the beginning, everything was Void.
Kuunavang: Then the Mother Dragon, Soo-Won, brought order, splitting the Void into six domains of magic.
Kuunavang: She could not maintain that order alone, so she took on the domain of water and gave the others to the five Elder Dragons.
Kuunavang: It was on that foundation that all material life on Tyria flourished.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fallout

While we do see the Void "creating" things, it's more the Dragonvoid (which again, only exists because of imprinted twisted personality and will from the Elder Dragons' interactions with filtering Void improperly for several millennia) reshaping the Void to obtain more things. I wouldn't call that actual creation or destruction.

Similarly, I can't think of a single instance where the Mists is destroying things. While some things it creates aren't stable (Fractals), based on Dessa's and the Mist Stranger's dialogue, even these do not fall apart over time, rather the instability is that the things in the fractal loops can break out instead - the instability is not in the fractal's existence, but instead in its containment.

Edited January 8 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[mandala.8507]

4 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

EDIT: I see the OP changed the thread's title, thus making conversation about the use of the word "void" a bit construed. Heh.

That was always the title of the thread and I did this to avoid the title being considered too much of a spoiler.

[mandala.8507]

Lines from Soo-Won under the influence of the Dragonvoid for all the semantics gamers in here:

"The end is the beginning, and the beginning will be nothingness."

"You cannot avoid the undertow pulling you toward nothingness."

I don't even know how to argue against such narrow and unimaginative absolutism.

And here will be the counterpoint:

"Well, actually, this is just another example of lack of foresight and bad writing. Clearly they didn't have this concept well defined and were just winging it in EoD. Anet writers so bad, lul."

[Ashantara.8731]

16 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

Am I ignoring the context, or is everyone else? I think it's everyone else, ngl.

Everything @Konig Des Todes.2086 wrote is fact, and your denial of it doesn't make it any less true.

To think that ANet had everything planned out in detail 5-10 years ago already is hysterical in itself, with all the writers coming and going.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

1 hour ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Everything @Konig Des Todes.2086 wrote is fact, and your denial of it doesn't make it any less true.

To think that ANet had everything planned out in detail 5-10 years ago already is hysterical in itself, with all the writers coming and going.

There's no such thing as facts in video game canon, because its not real to begin with.

Edited January 8 by Mariyuuna.6508

[draxynnic.3719]

15 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Taimi: But it turns out "everything" is highly volatile. Any matter caught up in it changes states constantly.
Taimi: Life can't survive that. We can't survive that.

Quoted the important part here. Matter that "changes state constantly" is the cycle of creation and destruction I was referring to: when matter changes state, that's essentially destroying what was there before and creating something new in its place. Which is going to happen naturally over time, but for anything to survive long enough to do more than think "Oh, no, not again", that cycle can't be proceeding too quickly. It's not destruction in the sense of the matter being deleted and leaving a vacuum, but in the sense that whatever the matter originally formed - a rock, a flowerpot, a person - is no longer there and something else is there in its place.

And from memory of what we've been told about the Mists, that's something that's happening in the wilder parts of the Mists. The places we can visit are the places that, for one reason or another, are stable (in the sense that they're not going to have something else created on top of them) at least for long enough for adventurers to do whatever they're there for and get out again.

11 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

Lines from Soo-Won under the influence of the Dragonvoid for all the semantics gamers in here:

"The end is the beginning, and the beginning will be nothingness."

"You cannot avoid the undertow pulling you toward nothingness."

I don't even know how to argue against such narrow and unimaginative absolutism.

And we have other descriptions laying out what so-called Void energy is, and it's not the absence of anything. It's too much of everything.

One could perhaps argue that the logic is that if things are so chaotic that no organised structure can remain for long enough to be observed, that's functionally equivalent to nothingness.

Edited January 9 by draxynnic.3719

[KnightofPhoenix.3679]

The Void is basically primordial singularity the way I see it - all of "material reality" (e.g. mass, energy, and matter) and magic (which in GW are natural laws) is compressed in one singular point.  So the Void is everything, but the Void is also nothing because mass, energy, and natural laws do not exist as separate phenomena.  In this state of the universe, mass, energy, and magic are in constant flux and nothing that is durable and sustainable can exist - that's why I referred to it earlier as "primordial non-existence".  This is similar to traditional predictive models of what happened at and before the Big Bang.

Now the question is, how the hell did Soo-Won come to be?  She effectively initiated the Big Bang, but she is not an infinite God that could have co-existed with the Void.  Was she the one in a trillion trillion things in flux that managed to be sustainable at that singularity?