New expansion ideas

[Power Eternal.7209]

Sup y'all, a place I wanted to put expansion ideas. I am not dumb enough to think any arenanet employees will ever see this, but I still wanted to get those off my chest. Maybe you will like them?

Quote

Questions I have that could be answered in expansions:

- Where did Soo-Won come from? Did magic itself just literally create her just like that, or is there a more interesting reason?

-Where did the gods go? WIll they ever come back?

-Why did Abaddon go mad?

-What's Aurene up to?

-Where did the Mythwright Cauldron come from? It is an immensely powerful artifact that we know basically nothing about. Did the Seers create it, just like they created the Shadowstone and Bloodstone?

Quote

Elevator Pitch:

The gods learn of the Dragons and start researching them. They learn of the Void, and learn that it is artificially being made malevolent. Whatever infects the Void also infects Abaddon, that's why he went mad and wanted to destroy the world. They seal away Abaddon, hoping to find a cure in the future, and leave for the Mists to take the fight to the source of the Madness.

The Madness is a malevolent interdimensional parasite that infects creatures that are powerful enough for it to care about them. Aurene detected them in the Mists and went to investigate.

As the player is getting more and more powerful and accomplished, the Madness takes notice and tries to infect us. Aurene notices and comes to help us fight it off, that's how we get involved in the conflict.

We get to meet the gods and fight at their side against titan-sized Void organisms as they try to infect the rest of the Mists.

We get to stop their latest offensive, one that started more than a thousand years ago, and which lead to the Exodus of the Gods.

[mandala.8507]

"What's beyond Soo-Won" is too big an idea to jump into, imo.

God stuff could be interesting, but again, hard to pull off in these mini-expansions. They'd have to pick just 1 and drastically narrow the scope on them somehow. It can be about one god, but it can't be about THE gods, if that makes sense. Still, idk if I'm all that interested in a human god arc again already.

Abaddon falls into both the "overdone" and "too big of an idea" buckets, imo. It would have to be about a part of Abaddon we haven't covered yet. They can't rehash his whole thing again. It'd be too much to tackle, and I guarantee no matter how good it was, the GW1 geeks would be sharpening their pitchforks over it.

We just put poor Aurene down for her nap, it'd be rude to wake her up so soon.

Djinn stuff is actually too narrow, imo. There's nowhere to go with that story. It could be a sidepiece of a more involved narrative, but I don't think the Mythwright Cauldron itself is that compelling for an entire expansion narrative. And we had the raid about it already. Idk, doesn't seem deep enough to me.

And for the elevator pitch, I think Arenanet is scared of their Void lore. Imo, it was great and derived from a lot of wonderful lore seeds over the years for the franchise, but it confused a lot of the casual story gamers and even some of the people who think they aren't casual story gamers, so...I don't think Void is on their radar for now. I do hope it comes back though, at some point.

...

As far as directions that I myself think Arenanet might take for the next expansion, we have 3 major threads to follow out of SotO:

1. Waiting Sorrow, the Kodan, and the Norn Spirits: This one is probably my favorite because it gives connectivity between the mini expansions and I'm a sucker for snow, mystical nature magic, and celestial voodoo stuff.

2. Isles of Janthir and Mursaat origins: This one is very exciting in theory, but Mursaat are so hyped up at this point by all the lore nerds that I feel it's better to leave them up to everyone's imagination. I personally would love to know more, but I know for a fact this narrative would be drama for the community. Too much drama.

3. Mesmer Collective: This one is less concretely established by Soto than the other two, but I think it's a direction people in narrative at Arenanet are passionate about and have been doing a lot of work to lay foundation for. I could see this expansion being successful at any level of scope or narrative complexity, so I'm secretly rooting for this one even though it's not my favorite of the 3.

A very small 4th thread they could follow is the "people noticed when you died, Commander" thing and tie that into another god arc or a more involved Nayos-style venture outside of Tyria, but there's so little foundation for this direction that I don't consider it as a proper follow-up to SotO.

But anyway...

I don't think it's unlikely someone at Arenanet sees your list. I'm pretty sure they lurk here sometimes.

 

[Iustitian.9176]

Guildwars 2 - Origin of magic

 

Story:

- Searching for the origin of magic and the void

- Traveling deep to the core of tyria 

- Explore the secrets of janthir, the unseen, the human gods and primordus actions in the deeps

- save parts of the mists from chaos and the darkness

 

New features:

- Enter hidden ley line portals all over tyria to far away places 

- Explore the highest, wild mountains of tyria with secrets about the ancient stellar magic

- Explore multiple dungeons down to the inner core of tyria

- Prove your survivability in long underground paths while escaping from giant digging Worms or solving riddles in the darkest places in tyria

 

New elite specializations:

- Elementalist -> Arcanist (Mace offhand, elemental towers, arcane avatar form) 

- Engineer -> Tinkerer (Mace offhand, quick-equipments, special ammunition toolbelt) 

- Guardian -> Zealot (Warhorn, glyphs, attunements) 

- Mesmer -> Chaosformer (Mace mainhand, boon-convertion skills, chaos weapon summons) 

- Necromancer -> Banshee (Longbow, binding rituals, demon pet) 

- Ranger -> Beastleader (Shield, nature area skills, call a pack of beasts) 

- Revenant -> Calif (Focus, mist skills from mursaat legendary optimus calif, invisibility mechanic skill and ambush attacks)

- Thief -> Viperfang (Sword offhand, dark hunt skills, attack chains at weapon skill 3)

- Warrior -> Gladiator (Shortbow, tricks, heroic battle shout) 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

just no more world ending stuff. Just exploring. Filling in the holes from IBs (like the centaur stuff). Look up the far away lands from the 'secret' world map. Just wander around and experience the world.

As it is befitting for an aging hero who has seen too much and just want to be in company of some few select friends, while seeing the places you helped to rescue earlier without even knowing that they existed. 

[Dadnir.5038]

How about we just have the asuran engineers that made entering the fractal of the mist possible have a "technology" breakthrough. Allowing our character to get a brand new fractal experience, something more akin to reviving past events with their plots and twists. This could have the support and interest of the priory as well as consequences bleeding in the main world that our character would have to settle.

It would be interesting if the first one were to create tensions between 2 races leading the various races autorities to get a tight control over the technology.

 

 

[Randin.5701]

They mentioned that with these post-dragon expansions, they wanted to address some of the lingering mysteries of the setting (like, "what's the deal with the Wizard's Tower?" for instance), and there are some obvious follow-ups that could be done off of previous story events. The logical ones off the top of my head:

• Return of the gods
• A story where we finally learn who E is

(Personally I rather hope it's not these first two, as I'd like to get some non-human-centric stories before we go back to humans, but they are logical options.)

• Dominion of Winds and the tengu
• The Thing in the ocean
• Malyck and the other Tree
• Exploring the post-Primordus Depths of Tyria with the asura
• Exploring the post-Jormag Far Shiverpeaks with the norn
• Doing a proper visit to the charr Blood or Ash homelands

With the exception of the return of the gods option, they would all lend themselves to smaller-scale, non-world-threatening stories, which would be nice.

[Balsa.3951]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:30 AM, Randin.5701 said:

They mentioned that with these post-dragon expansions, they wanted to address some of the lingering mysteries of the setting (like, "what's the deal with the Wizard's Tower?" for instance), and there are some obvious follow-ups that could be done off of previous story events. The logical ones off the top of my head:

• Return of the gods
• A story where we finally learn who E is

(Personally I rather hope it's not these first two, as I'd like to get some non-human-centric stories before we go back to humans, but they are logical options.)

• Dominion of Winds and the tengu
• The Thing in the ocean
• Malyck and the other Tree
• Exploring the post-Primordus Depths of Tyria with the asura
• Exploring the post-Jormag Far Shiverpeaks with the norn
• Doing a proper visit to the charr Blood or Ash homelands

With the exception of the return of the gods option, they would all lend themselves to smaller-scale, non-world-threatening stories, which would be nice.

i think u right thats where it will go.

matches nicely with Wayfinder.

a little bit like those 80 tv shows where the hero wanders the land solves problems of the locals

"U DID IT WAYFINDER. HOW CAN WE THANK U? wayfinder??"

camera swings shows the hero riding his/her raptor into the sunset of the horizon... credits and music roll.

Edited March 29 by Balsa.3951

[Helliwolf the KrimsonKnight.6523]

On 3/26/2024 at 1:58 PM, mandala.8507 said:

"What's beyond Soo-Won" is too big an idea to jump into, imo.

God stuff could be interesting, but again, hard to pull off in these mini-expansions. They'd have to pick just 1 and drastically narrow the scope on them somehow. It can be about one god, but it can't be about THE gods, if that makes sense. Still, idk if I'm all that interested in a human god arc again already.

Abaddon falls into both the "overdone" and "too big of an idea" buckets, imo. It would have to be about a part of Abaddon we haven't covered yet. They can't rehash his whole thing again. It'd be too much to tackle, and I guarantee no matter how good it was, the GW1 geeks would be sharpening their pitchforks over it.

We just put poor Aurene down for her nap, it'd be rude to wake her up so soon.

Djinn stuff is actually too narrow, imo. There's nowhere to go with that story. It could be a sidepiece of a more involved narrative, but I don't think the Mythwright Cauldron itself is that compelling for an entire expansion narrative. And we had the raid about it already. Idk, doesn't seem deep enough to me.

And for the elevator pitch, I think Arenanet is scared of their Void lore. Imo, it was great and derived from a lot of wonderful lore seeds over the years for the franchise, but it confused a lot of the casual story gamers and even some of the people who think they aren't casual story gamers, so...I don't think Void is on their radar for now. I do hope it comes back though, at some point.

...

As far as directions that I myself think Arenanet might take for the next expansion, we have 3 major threads to follow out of SotO:

1. Waiting Sorrow, the Kodan, and the Norn Spirits: This one is probably my favorite because it gives connectivity between the mini expansions and I'm a sucker for snow, mystical nature magic, and celestial voodoo stuff.

2. Isles of Janthir and Mursaat origins: This one is very exciting in theory, but Mursaat are so hyped up at this point by all the lore nerds that I feel it's better to leave them up to everyone's imagination. I personally would love to know more, but I know for a fact this narrative would be drama for the community. Too much drama.

3. Mesmer Collective: This one is less concretely established by Soto than the other two, but I think it's a direction people in narrative at Arenanet are passionate about and have been doing a lot of work to lay foundation for. I could see this expansion being successful at any level of scope or narrative complexity, so I'm secretly rooting for this one even though it's not my favorite of the 3.

A very small 4th thread they could follow is the "people noticed when you died, Commander" thing and tie that into another god arc or a more involved Nayos-style venture outside of Tyria, but there's so little foundation for this direction that I don't consider it as a proper follow-up to SotO.

But anyway...

I don't think it's unlikely someone at Arenanet sees your list. I'm pretty sure they lurk here sometimes.

 

I know a few of ye olde lore buffs have brought this idea up a few times over the years and I want to see it too:

The fallout post-Balth with the gods. Honestly, I hate how they did my boy dirty, but it is what it is.

The idea is of Lyssa returning to see what happened with Balthazar and then us dealing with her. Part of the story should visit the Fissure of Woe and also finally seeing if Menzies is dead or not. The story can go in either direction really of either us facing Lyssa's wrath or having her lament the passing of her beloved, and then having us help her wrap up whatever is going on in the Fissure.

We did see with Kormir's domain that dark forces have taken up residence there. It is probably the same in all of the gods' realms, so it would be interesting to visit at least some of them and begin clearing out those forces and maybe getting some proper closure.

[Randulf.7614]

On 3/26/2024 at 11:44 PM, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

just no more world ending stuff. Just exploring. Filling in the holes from IBs (like the centaur stuff). Look up the far away lands from the 'secret' world map. Just wander around and experience the world.

As it is befitting for an aging hero who has seen too much and just want to be in company of some few select friends, while seeing the places you helped to rescue earlier without even knowing that they existed. 

I like the idea of us being an ageing hero for one of the later expansions

[Sajuuk Khar.1509]

In no particular order

1. Return to Cantha: Deals with the Purists, their attempts to manipulate the Risen into attacking New Kaineng, the celestial blessing, the monster in Raisu Palace, Xun Rao. Maybe have the Speakers help us as a post EoD "what are they doing" like we got with the Jade Brotherhood in Gyala.
2. Deep Sea Monster: Centered around the Battle Isles, deals with the monster in the depths, Largos, Quaggan, and Krait. Possibly have Zafirah and the Zaishen return.
3. Lyssa: What is Lyssa up to/her plan, why did humanity flee their original homeworld, where have the gods gone/are they actually preparing a new world. Maybe set in Dzalana or location in idea 9 below.
4. Charr: Khan-Ur election, Bangar, cleaning up the last of the Separatists/Renegades, working with humanity to finally dispel the Ghosts of Ascalon. Magdaer retuns.
5. Sylvari: Malyck, his tree, what are the Nightmare court doing, origin of Dream/Nightmare. Possibly set in the Maguuma Wastes, north of the Brisban Wildlands Bandit bridge/origin of the Maguuma Wastes.
6. Norn: Return to the Far Shvierpeaks. Clean up the last of the Icebrood/Svanir. More Kodan lore. see how the Spirits/Braham are doing.
7. Asura: Underground expansion dealing with Asura reclaiming one of their lost cities, and finishing off the Inquest once and for all.
8. Kryta: Queen Jennah tries to deal with threats/make peace with peoples on the borders of Kryta(Centaurs, Tengu in Dominion of Winds, Pirates at D'ellessio Seaboard)
9. New World: We got to the far off lands to the west, which are implied to have a 4th human homeland. Not sure about the plot for this one beyond just seeing whats up over there,

That would realistically finish off every meaningful dangling plot thread in GW2.

Edited March 29 by Sajuuk Khar.1509

[Bobby Stein.3612]

On 3/26/2024 at 11:58 AM, mandala.8507 said:

I don't think it's unlikely someone at Arenanet sees your list. I'm pretty sure they lurk here sometimes.

👀

[zerothbase.7564]

Things I look forward to in the next expansion...

1. More bars to fill in the middle of story

I fondly remember watching a Star Wars movie in a theater for the first time. What really made it special, was where the movie randomly would pause, and everyone had to get up and run around "doing things" until each person's bar was full. Only then could the movie continue. It really adds to the realism and good story telling when GW2 does that. You tend to see that a lot in great works of literature too, where the characters all have to run around filling a bar between dialog, like that classic scene in Romeo and Juliet 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou Romeo. I need to fill this bar with doing random things'.....Shakespeare at his best.

2. Fewer choices in response to NPC dialog

When I play D&D or BG3, or other MMOs, what i enjoy most is hours of cinematics just playing without any interaction. Having absolutely no control over my own character's choices really pulls me in. Especially in D&D when the GM just takes over my character and controls it....just maximum fun! GW2 is moving in the right direction though, so I have hope. Early on in GW2 personal story, we'd get 3 or sometimes more (!) choices in dialogs and i just couldn't decide. But now with SotO, all dialog choices are "continue" or "cancel". And sometimes my character would just say things, so I could walk away and mow the lawn, or do my taxes - complete story immersion!

3. Fewer NPCs involved in a 'war'

When I watch Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, or Lord of the Rings, the most made-up and least accurate part of the movie is when they have more than 3 people in the battle at once. At least they usually get the part right, where the enemy will send precisely 1 or 2 enemies at the hero at once. But when they zoom out and show the whole battlefield, having more than 1 other combatant in view is just crazy talk. As we all know from SotO, when you conduct a full scale war, there are only 2 or 3 people in battle a time. And then once there is a victor, you walk to a new area and get 2 or 3 more. When 100's or 1000's of people try to murder each other, we all know that is called a 'mild disagreement' or even 'police action'. I'm hoping in the next expac that there will be Total Galactic Genocide and the result will be a small dandelion being sprayed with roundup.

 

What are you all looking forward to?

--Zerothbase

[garpu.6210]

I would love to see the Asura reclaim their underground areas post-Destroyers.

[Dilly Mick.2841]

With primordius gone and the dragon cycle quelled I want to see an expansion about the depths.

Most importantly I want a Return to Quora Sum. It would be fun to humble the Asura as they learn how much they got wrong about their pre-surface history and interactions with the skitt. 

but also I want to learn about the aftermath of the ritual of the great dwarf. If they became single minded in their efforts to destroy Primordius then they clearly failed but have any dwarves survived to the present day? Whether they have or not there's a lot of story potential discovering their legacy.

 

On the opposite hand I would love a "return to Central Tyria" expansion. Tyria is currently littered with Debris and assets left behind by a decade old plotline. It's time to rebuild and reset. 

 

 

 

[mercury ranique.2170]

I personally would dislike a human god centered episode. The stories so far has been too much human centered anywats. A decission has been made to have 5 sentient playable races with each their own culture and religion. Favoring one before the other is not the right way forward in my opinion and has been done too much allready.

Having said that, I would love to see a forked story with several paths again. So having a storyline that starts with each race in their own culture and dives from there in the theory of all quest of understanding the fabrics of the world, would be awesome imo.

It would give the opportunity to replay the story from the different perspectives as we did with the original personal story

[mandala.8507]

On 3/26/2024 at 2:58 PM, mandala.8507 said:

2. Isles of Janthir and Mursaat origins: This one is very exciting in theory, but Mursaat are so hyped up at this point by all the lore nerds that I feel it's better to leave them up to everyone's imagination. I personally would love to know more, but I know for a fact this narrative would be drama for the community. Too much drama.

3. Mesmer Collective: This one is less concretely established by Soto than the other two, but I think it's a direction people in narrative at Arenanet are passionate about and have been doing a lot of work to lay foundation for. I could see this expansion being successful at any level of scope or narrative complexity, so I'm secretly rooting for this one even though it's not my favorite of the 3.

I gleefully await my summons to Divinity's Reach.

[Randin.5701]

On 3/28/2024 at 10:30 AM, Randin.5701 said:

They mentioned that with these post-dragon expansions, they wanted to address some of the lingering mysteries of the setting (like, "what's the deal with the Wizard's Tower?" for instance), and there are some obvious follow-ups that could be done off of previous story events. The logical ones off the top of my head:

• Return of the gods
• A story where we finally learn who E is

(Personally I rather hope it's not these first two, as I'd like to get some non-human-centric stories before we go back to humans, but they are logical options.)

• Dominion of Winds and the tengu
• The Thing in the ocean
• Malyck and the other Tree
• Exploring the post-Primordus Depths of Tyria with the asura
• Exploring the post-Jormag Far Shiverpeaks with the norn
• Doing a proper visit to the charr Blood or Ash homelands

With the exception of the return of the gods option, they would all lend themselves to smaller-scale, non-world-threatening stories, which would be nice.

After the teaser image in the latest news piece, I'm feeling pretty good about my last guess.

[Randulf.7614]

21 minutes ago, Randin.5701 said:

After the teaser image in the latest news piece, I'm feeling pretty good about my last guess.

Ascalon is one thought for sure, but as another thread pointed out the image is very close to the original Verdant Cascades art assests. 

[Randulf.7614]

47 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Given that_shaman's tweet, I'm pretty confident we'll be going to the area north of DR - near the delta connected to Janthir Bay.

IIRC, Bobby Stein did say somewhere that there will be a tie in from SotO to the next expansion, and Janthir is something both name dropped a lot, and highly demanded by fans just like when expansions took us to Elona and Cantha and Wizard's Tower.

I like that idea, although I've just read a "meta" theory which suggests if we go by the new world map compass, it'll be NE, SE or SW. NE being Ascalon of course

Of course I wanted an underground or deep sea one, but I think I'll be waiting until GW4 for those at this point

[mirage.8046]

I have often wished to go to the Isles of Janthir ever since I got into gw2. It would be a dream come true. Ascalon isn't ruled out though and that is a pretty good prediction.

[Narcemus.1348]

The Last Day Dawns in Ascalon... Definitely not a one-for-one image but it definitely brings back feelings of nostalgia. Of course it could be anywhere.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

So I just realized that the predominant trees in the forefront of that teaser image are Elonian trees - spotted them in Sandswept Isles, at least.

Which ties in with the Istan / internal name Delta theory.

[Invidia.9074]

Please no :<

[Lord Korag.8439]

*fire alarm*

Destroyers.

I want an expansion full of fire, lava and volcanic areas swarming with Destroyers, even some yet unseen kinds. Primordus might be dead, but we could still get some deeper lore of his background and, preharps, some yet unknown Destroyer lieutenant could lead the rest of his kind towards the surface. Or an corrupted Asura. Yes. I want Destroyer Asuras.

[ugrakarma.9416]

My wishfulthinking is for Janthir Islands.

About a bet, i have no one.