Malyck's Tree

[TeeracK.3601]

I recently played the Sylvari PS again and I just had a thought. We know that Malyck was going to be part of HoT and he was cut. Isn't there a perfect fix to where the tree could be right there in front of us all this time?

Right here in the guild wars 1 zone Alcazia Tangle on the far out island closer to where Mordramoth's source was located.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone else suggest this, but idk... doesn't it just kind of work out perfectly so they don't need to retcon things with Malyk since he could have followed the rivers in the zone north right to the nightmare court and they wouldn't need to change the story?

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

The personal story establishes that Malyck's pod floated down the river. Ignoring mechanical border issues of following that river, the river heads west of Metrica Province, towards the empty space north of Rata Sum and eventually to Tangled Depths - or would have, if they continued the river that far.

HoT maps are all connected directly, so it would be very weird to use Alcazia Tangle for a map location. Furthermore, there's even a question of if that spot can be used without issue, as technically The Grove's map extends that way in a copy of Cursed Shores for A Light in the Darkness and A Vision of Darkness story steps, and that might cause technical issues for putting a map there.

[TeeracK.3601]

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:ignoring mechanical border issuesThere is no border issue. All the mages are usually rectangular, but there are a few maps that have weird wiggles and overlaps with their borders. Jahai and Kourna are good example of this with their curved borders. The reason maps are rectangle is more because they dont want to waste any space, but they usually cut out curves when it comes to water if you compare where the death borders are in all the orr maps and istan. Ember bay is a good example of how maps can have weird shapes. Everything needs to fit in a square/rectangle, but they dont need to use the entire thing they can cull it back to be w/e shape they want.

HoT maps are all connected directly, so it would be very weird to use Alcazia Tangle for a map location. Furthermore, there's even a question of if that spot can be used without issue, as technically The Grove's map extends that way in a copy of Cursed Shores for A Light in the Darkness and A Vision of Darkness story steps, and that might cause technical issues for putting a map there.

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:That's not really how the game works. There are plenty of locations in the game that in instances you overlap out into areas you shouldn't be and it doesn't actually matter. You saw this a lot with a lot of core content like dungeons and some season 1 stuff. GW2 is build on instance phases so they don't actually need to worry about anything in another map when developing because the game isn't running anything in other map's packages when its running. You also are forggetting that every single time they add a map even when they dont seem to need to they rework and update the unexplored map to fit the in game map better. That being said this is a lore thread and I don't wanna try to explain how the game engineers here xD

@Konig Des Todes.2086 said:The personal story establishes that Malyck's pod floated down the river. following that river, the river heads west of Metrica Province, towards the empty space north of Rata Sum and eventually to Tangled Depths - or would have, if they continued the river that far.

Hmm, yeah I do guess based on the direction the river flows it being above rata sum does make more sense.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

@TeeracK.3601 said:

@"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:ignoring mechanical border issuesThere is no border issue. All the mages are usually rectangular, but there are a few maps that have weird wiggles and overlaps with their borders.I'm referring to how ArenaNet designs the ends of rivers at map borders. For example, the river that runs by Fort Kessex begins in a waterfall to the north. And in Queensdale, the south end is also a waterfall flowing north. The river that flows from harathi to Gendarran is blocked off by rocks and cliffs.

Point being, when a river reaches a map end, it always ends in a: a cliff, b: a pile of rocks, or c: a waterfall. Even if the other side of that map border doesn't make sense in the context of each other. And in Malyck's river case, it ends in sheer cliff, all three times (south Brisban, north Metrica, west Metrica).

I wasn't talking about the squareness of map shapes (which is indeed a lore issue - no mountains would form perfect rectangles).

That's not really how the game works.Linsey Murdock once went talking about map design in GW2 when Lake Doric - the original one - got brought up on reddit due to a bug where you'd get credit for Lake Doric exploration on world completion (not sure if the bug is still there with S3's Lake Doric being added...). She explained that one of the reasons the map was removed, despite having progress towards it, was because getting the world map functioning properly was a really huge pain because the original Lake Doric wrapped itself around Divinity's Reach - meaning that the two zones overlapped. This wasn't an issue with the zone design, but the world map design, because the game had to deal with two world maps that overlapped.

There are plenty of locations in the game that in instances you overlap out into areas you shouldn't be and it doesn't actually matter.In these situations, you usally only have one world map though. Since the copied Cursed Shore has a world map, it's part of The Grove's world map; any new zone in Alcazia Tangle would also have a world map. No situation of Season 1 covered this - any "overlapping location" was in a story instance and another level on the world map, much like dungeons function, or Verdant Brink's/The Grove's/Rata Sum's vertical map levels.

There are plenty of locations in the game that in instances you overlap out into areas you shouldn't be and it doesn't actually matter.These function differently, because these instances are taking you to a whole new zone. The Personal Story - with exception of Lion's Arch instances (due to S1) and Claw Island instances - use the current open world map, and this includes A Vision of Darkness and A Light in the Dark. Creating a duplicate of Cursed Shore is how Anet got those two story steps to function, because they don't have "zone to zone story instance" tech (even now, though they have instance-to-instance tech with Season 4, and even "story within story" tech that never got used beyond S4E3).

If you manage to map break in The Grove, you'll be able to find this Cursed Shore duplicate hidden west of the map.

You also are forggetting that every single time they add a map even when they dont seem to need to they rework and update the unexplored map to fit the in game map better.I wasn't talking about the unexplored ("fogged") map, but the unfogged map. The way the game works appears to basically have two maps - one is the unexplored world map, the other is the explored zones. ArenaNet sets sections to become transparent as you explore.

With The Grove, it has a "hidden" (read: under an always opaque section of the unexplored map) section which is shown during two story instances - unlike dungeons or selective ToN-and-later instances, the personal story instances occur in the current world map, with Claw Island and post-Season 1 Lion's Arch instances being the exception to this rule. Because of this, the Grove's extra hidden portion, which is a duplicate of southern Cursed Shore, would show up when you make the unexplored map transparent.

The solution to this would be for ArenaNet to duplicate The Grove and its map, then alter the two instances to use these duplicates, and alter the main Grove's world map to remove the Cursed Shore parts. But this is a lot of work that ANet could "not do" by simply using another space on the world map. Though it wouldn't be bad to have some duplicates of core maps should there ever be some LW-related major changes to the maps (ala S1's antics).

[Zola.6197]

I think it’s fine if Malyck’s tree was in the Maguuma. Either one of the blighting trees we discovered that was re-corrupted by Mordy, or a pale tree in an area of the Maguuma we didn’t venture into. Perhaps we could return to the region in a living world update someday? There’s lots of space left in the Maguuma region, so I don’t think the writers wrote themselves into a corner too much with the river detail... And honestly, I could see them ignoring that detail anyway.

I like the idea that Malyck’s tree perished one way or another, and that we may see Malyck (and perhaps a handful of refugees from his tree) again as an “unchained” adventuring sylvari. That would be an interesting storyline and further set him apart from the grove sylvari. What is a sylvari like with its tree dead? Perhaps Malyck/others even succumbed to Mordremoth, and we can see a story about how they’ve coped with that in the time since similar to the lone sylvari in the labyrinthine cliffs. Maybe Malyck’s gone a bit mad or the trauma made him isolate himself vs returning to the grove sooner.

I could see him adventuring in search of new trees, maybe even taking him to cantha after hearing about the Echovald Wardens?

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

interesting this tech, i always liked the idea of having alcazia tangel as a map (extending all the way to the ring of fire ) as a long map for storystuff, but i guess thats not really possible as cuirsed shore is already there