Cantha?

[sinsrock.1702]

Hellooo so if you do not know who i am yet most people call me Tryfox, or Fox, im a youtube content creator and have recently started doing twitch for Gw2... the other night i was streaming and i mentioned something about Cantha. Someone had told me Anet may never take Gw2 to Cantha because the culture Cantha was based on did'nt want to allow that is this true? id be very sad if we never got to return to the beautiful place.

[Randulf.7614]

Kinda, yeah

We've known this since launch though

[kharmin.7683]

Please use the forums search function to find the many threads about Cantha.

[Burnfall.9573]

Cantha Stays In Guild Wars 1

[Danikat.8537]

From the Wiki article on The Crown Pavillion (which before launch was going to be the Canthan District): "At one point during development, this area was originally a completed Canthan district and included a blend of Asian architectures. However, this mix of styles received negative feedback from China and Korea, since those gaming markets traditionally prefer a uniform design. Due to time constraints the district was replaced by the Great Collapse."

Cantha in GW1 was the same, it mixed styles, names and themes from many different Asian cultures. I'm not sure why this wasn't an issue when Factions was created (maybe because they weren't planning to release the game in China at the time, or maybe it's just that no one told them).

However that doesn't mean they can never include Cantha in GW2, it just means they'll need to make some changes to how it was portrayed - either picking a culture to base it on or maybe having different areas with different styles to correspond to real-world countries. But that should be relatively easy to do because we know from GW: Beyond that shortly after the end of GW1 the emperor closed Cantha to outsiders, drove out the tengu and fully subjugated the Luxons and Kurzicks, and there may well have been more changes since then. So it would be relatively easy to explain an increased uniformity of architecture, names, clothing etc.

[sinsrock.1702]

Thank you all for the comments, i didnt even think to look for past posts about this Danikat answered everything i had questions for :)

[Burnfall.9573]

@sinsrock.1702 said:Thank you all for the comments, i didnt even think to look for past posts about this Danikat answered everything i had questions for :)

no worries; you're welcome here

[Omega.6801]

Cantha ThreadsYou're welcome.

[Clyan.1593]

I think Anet is well aware of people having high interest (at least most veterans) in having cantha in GW2, and as with capes (that previously were said to be impossible due to technology based problems - yes, lol) one day they will introduce us to that continent, at least to a small part of it. It is very obvious that cantha from a financial standpoint would be immensely lucrative for Anet. Not even NCSoft can deny that. So probably one day when GW2 does really bad in terms of playercount or money they will announce something about cantha for some huge hype.

[casualkenny.9817]

but what's wrong with just having different maps dedicated to each of the countries (cn kr jn)? the crsytal desert, for e.g. has 5 core + living world maps too

[Fueki.4753]

When factions released, was Arenanet already owned by NCSoft?If Arenanet wasn't, NCSoft might be a deciding factor against Cantha in GW2.

[Danikat.8537]

@Fueki.4753 said:When factions released, was Arenanet already owned by NCSoft?If Arenanet wasn't, NCSoft might be a deciding factor against Cantha in GW2.

Anet has been owned by NCSoft since before Prophecies came out. I think they existed as an independent company for a year or two before NCSoft bought them, but they didn't release (or even announce) anything in that time.

According to the Wiki it wasn't NCSoft who stopped it though, it was because of feedback from potential players in Asia. So maybe it's because they were planing to release GW2 in China (which they eventually did a few years later).

[Trejgon.9367]

@casualkenny.9817Thing with cantha tho is that it was blend of most asiatic cultures, not clearly separated areas with diffierent vibes.

But probably what you describe is probably the closest approximation of cantha we will ever be able to get in GW2.

[Nath Forge Tempete.1645]

I read ( a while ago) the issue with Cantha culture was bothering just ONE guy at Anet's who was responsible of the China part of the market. So that it was that guy only saying "no" to cantha (maybe based on that community feedback )

The thing is : That guy isn't working for Arenanet anymore and we don't really know what is the feel of anet internally about cantha so far. I remembered some dev posts (or interviews) saying they were'nt against adding cantha to the game ... it would just have to fit into the story and how the game evolves.

Translation : Cantha could be possible but we will have to wait for a big turn into the story so it might take a while then.

[LucianDK.8615]

The unnamed sea dragon was said to be menacing Cantha after the jade sea dissolved.

So with the following dead for sure:ZhaitanMordremothKralkaltorik

We are currently dealing with a reawakened Jormag. Since the icecube dragon is awake again, it seems reasonable that Primordus will become active as well.If you remember, Taimi had the pair set up to be cancelling out each other in the Draconis Mons episode of ls3.Only when those two are resolved, will there room for the final dragon which players have named 'Bubbles' in lack of an official name.

[Fueki.4753]

@"LucianDK.8615" said:If you remember, Taimi had the pair set up to be cancelling out each other in the Draconis Mons episode of ls3.Only when those two are resolved, will there room for the final dragon which players have named 'Bubbles' in lack of an official name.

If the game ever gets to that point.They might simply drop the story at some point of"We made peace with Jormag because he feared his demise.He became with defense against Primordus, so we don't have to deal with either of them anymore.Bubbles decided to never bother us and went back to sleep without eating too much magic."

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Here's some Dev comments:

Josh Foreman

Environment Design Specialist

Cantha was my favorite GW1 region to work on. And I worked on every GW release. I know a lot of the dev team loved it and would love to revisit it. I kinda agree with critickitten about the negative aspect of tight corridors. Most of that came from hitting technological limits while trying to keep the epic quality of the concept art. I think we could do some really amazing things with those themes in our new engine. Certainly nothing is ruled out. I certainly encourage anyone to express your desire for a Cantha region in GW2 in a positive and friendly way. It could be years away, but it’s worth asking for.

Josh Foreman

Environment Design Specialist

Shanna.4762:

If the only options at the end of the day were that Anet has to make the concession to keep Cantha uniformally one Asian culture moving forward, or never have it then I bet most of us would accept that concession even though it sucks that they have to be “sensitive” to those issues for political reasons. There’s a lot that goes on that we never hear about and never will hear about, and have really no right to hear about at this point in time in regards to the business and relations portion of ArenaNet and the game. As Josh said, many of the developers would love to return to Cantha, I bet many of them would rather do it sooner than later, but there’s probably a lot they have to do in order to move forward with Cantha and I sincerely hope they will and if there’s a way for them to make it happen I am sure they will.

Josh reply:

That’s a very good way of putting it. I certainly don’t know where, when, or how the decision was made. I’m just a map artist. So I’m not in a position to critique it. I also don’t know the extent of the decision. For all I know it was some producer in Korea who doesn’t work there any more and the next time it’s brought up there will be no problem. Or maybe there will be one or two tweaks that will fix the problem. Who knows?

Josh Foreman

Environment Design Specialist

Lady Vireo.5189:

Without ourselves knowing the true situation and full extent of the decision, maybe we players shouldn’t fill in the blanks with “NCSoft Overlords perma-banned Cantha!?!?” I for one will try to stay open and keep hoping!

Josh reply:

Indeed. I’ve been in this industry for 16 years and worked with a several publishers including Interplay, Sierra, THQ and now NCSoft. And for what it’s worth, the amount of creative freedom that NCSoft gives ArenaNet is MASSIVE compared to the others. NCSoft is crazy successful for a reason. They recognize the talent here and support us with a very hands-off policy in general. They give us a LOT of feedback and data to work with, but I’ve never got the impression that they are overlords like I have with the other publishers I’ve worked under.

You can find these and more Dev posts here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Cantha-Thread-Merged/page/50#post4661602

[Teratus.2859]

Cantha in itself is a fictional place in a fictional world..

So yeah while it may borrow themes from reality, In Tyria they are not Chinese or Korean.. they are Canthan.Canthan themes and Canthan culture..

If I saw a building representing Big Ben nearby a building representing the Temple of Zeus In a fictional game world I would not be offended..Hell in Civilization I quite often enough have London built in North America surrounded by the Great Wall of China, with the The Great Pyramid of Giza sitting right next to Taj Mahal which is also nearby Machu Picchu and Big Ben.. and Broadway is in there somewhere too cause I needs my gold and culture so I can drop atom bombs on Ghandi cause he's a warmongering jerk.. Ahh Civilization you wonderful game you.

This though is why it's called FICTION!! and fantasy games do not represent reality no matter how much they borrow from it.

So honestly I don't care how offended some people get over Cantha, It's a wonderful and beautiful part of this game world and lots of us want to see it again in Gw2.I don't care about politics when it comes to gaming, specially when it's coming from bad governments that I have no respect what so ever..I'd see Cantha in this game no matter how much it annoyed some people and some governments.. that's called artistic freedom and we in the west are not beholden to any government or corporation who would see that restricted or censored.

Gotta love freedom.

[Heibi.4251]

A Cantha expansion would probably be a money maker for ANeT. Many players would return to the game just to experience Cantha once again. It would be nice if they were actually working on it in secret. But I probably have my hopes too high.

[Danikat.8537]

To be clear, there's never been any suggestion that any government or other authority was involved in this decision. Anet decided to remove the Canthan district, based on feedback from unidentified individuals that the game would not sell as well in Asia if they decided to go with a mixed design for Canthan architecture.

Artistic freedom is great, but there's a lot of other considerations which will go into making a game and the artists will have to make compromises all the time, for all sorts of reasons. (You can see this by comparing concept art to what eventually ends up in the game.) For example Zhaitan is much smaller and simpler than some of the artists originally imagined it, because their original design was too big to fit into the game, at least in the way the designers wanted it to appear, so they had to scale it down. There's also lots of creatures, costumes etc. which end up looking different to the original design, either for practical reasons or maybe because the 3D modellers and other people who worked on it later thought it looked better that way (and maybe the artists agreed).

(Edit: It's not just artists either. I'm currently writing up a review for a project where I'm having to reject several of my own ideas because no one surveyed liked them and I can't justify the time or cost to implement them, even the ones I still think are good ideas.)

In this case we don't even know that it was a particularly difficult decision. All we have to go on is Josh Foreman's comments (posted above). Maybe the artists just used a mix of styles because it was a quick and easy way to give the area some variety and they were under pressure to get lots of buildings finished quickly, and if they'd had more time they would have been very happy to pick a country, do more research and design a variety of buildings consistent with one culture. Maybe they don't have any interest in architecture at all and only design buildings because game studios don't employ people who don't do environment work? Or maybe it is their passion to design a fictional world where all kinds of Asian architectural styles are blended together and they'd flat-out refuse to work on Cantha until they can do that. We don't know, we have literally no info on how they feel either way.

And as Josh Foreman said at the time we don't know how extensive that decision was. It could have been one person's opinion, or it could be one interpretation of feedback from a focus group and, given more time than they could devote to one district of DR in the run up to release, they could find a compromise or a solution.

Whatever the case I don't think we can reasonably jump from "Anet received negative feedback on the Canthan District of DR and didn't have time to fix it before the game released" to "Anet are not allowed to ever put Cantha in GW2".

[Super Hayes.6890]

Yes Cantha!!! Keep bumping this thread and create more please :)

[kharmin.7683]

@Super Hayes.6890 said:Yes Cantha!!! Keep bumping this thread and create more please :)

Two things that go against forum rules. Not a good idea. I get your passion. I believe that ANet is more than aware of the call for Cantha over the past few years.

[Super Hayes.6890]

Your right, I just get excited and post before thinking too often.

[ShadowGryphon.6257]

@sinsrock.1702 said:Hellooo so if you do not know who i am yet most people call me Tryfox, or Fox, im a youtube content creator and have recently started doing twitch for Gw2... the other night i was streaming and i mentioned something about Cantha. Someone had told me Anet may never take Gw2 to Cantha because the culture Cantha was based on did'nt want to allow that is this true? id be very sad if we never got to return to the beautiful place.

DING! DING! Let the Cantha fight begin again.

[Merzhin Hudour.4698]

@ShadowGryphon.6257 said:DING! DING! Let the Cantha fight begin again.

I don't think there's any real fight here. I didn't follow gw2 since a few years, but from what I see it has evolved very well and still has more to offer than most other titles on the market (in my opinion at least).It's more a question of what gw2 staff want to do with the game and the story and where they want to make it happen, with which characters etc from what I understand.

I just know that back then, some people hated factions because of some flaws and even warned new players that it would be a travel in hell during the whole campaign, but I loved it and enjoyed every bit, because it had lot of charms that the other campaigns didn't, and which we don't find in gw2.And I really hope that we won't have to wait Guild Wars 3 to visit cantha and elona again.