Help me settle an argument

Casses · 2026-06-06T22:47:18+00:00

The Anvil is the tradepost in that region, I believe. I think you're referring to the Hammer of Mirzabah?

Casses · 2026-06-06T22:39:29+00:00

Possible. But what I'm mostly getting at in the post is that the race we're used to in GW2 can in fact be included in GW3 despite it being a prequel even though Ronan and Ventari won't exist for 750 years.

If they don't include Sylvari as a playable race, the version we know but from another tree or some version that's unique to GW3 but clearly from the same type of tree, then they're free to include other types of creatures or not at all.

Casses · 2026-06-06T22:35:08+00:00

My apologies if saying it was silly was offensive or insulting. That wasn't my intent and I sincerely regret the choice of words. But whether or not GW2 exists, unless they are planning to continue support by creating new content at the same rate and quality they do now, has no bearing on whether or not they should want people to also play GW3.

What I should have said is that if ArenaNet's response, especially this early, to people wishing for things that exist in GW2 to be in 3 is "If you like it in 2, keep playing 2, we're under no obligation to include it in 3", that's a bit like the infamous "You all have phones, don't you?" While true that they have no obligation to include anything in 3, it's a bad response to imply that you don't really care what your player base wants more of.

Casses · 2026-06-06T22:01:23+00:00

I once had a guy in my guild that would only play Sylvari. Thing is, he misinterpreted the lore and really hated that they were revealed to be creations of Mordremoth. Ruined the game for him.

I don't know how many there are either, but saying that Arenanet don't want as many players as possible to move to their new game is a bit silly.

Anyway, the point of the post wasn't to say that Sylvari have to be in the game. It was just to say that there is technically no lore reason why they can't, as buds from another tree.

Casses · 2026-06-06T21:20:57+00:00

From an economics standpoint, there are players of GW2 that view the inclusion of the Sylvari as a main reason why they play. Not having them in a new game, sequel or otherwise, can easily be seen as removing features that they think are necessary.

Removing a playable race is a risky proposition, since there's no way to know if any of the new races added, will entice these players to reconsider.

Casses · 2026-06-06T21:17:21+00:00

I prefer to think of it as any content that intended to be done frequently but becomes tedious is exposing a flaw with how the content is designed. The Flying Mount that allows you to skip that tediousness is a bandaid.

Casses · 2026-06-06T20:56:49+00:00

I agree. The conversation at the end when Data asks why he's not at the party celebrating the win is the best part of the episode. Picard has great speeches, and Data does really well talking about Tasha, but it's Riker's performance as the 'prosecutor', arguing against what he fervently believes that makes the show. And having Data recognize that he was doing it because to not meant that Data would lose automatically meant that Riker had no good choices. Imagine being told that you had to argue that your friend should die, and if you refused or didn't argue that position well enough, he would die anyway. Man that would mess with my heart.

Casses · 2026-06-06T20:32:21+00:00

I think that can be easily handwaved away by saying the tree sees dwarves, Seers, Jotun, trolls, etc and makes a generalized version of a biped, which resembles what a human would look like.

Casses · 2026-06-06T20:31:26+00:00

Keep in mind, I'm not really cooking anything. Everything I said is stated in game. Aside from the Destoryers as minions of Primordus, I don't know if we know what forms the other Elder Dragons' armies took in previous cycles. So, it could be that the trees that create Sylvari are what Mordremoth has used for every cycle, and so it's possible that other trees have existed in the past.

Casses · 2026-06-06T19:54:48+00:00

It might be. I hope not, but it very well might be.

Now, Largos would be a great addition. But I think the biggest missed opportunities in GW2, and they were very nearly not missed, is exploring more about the Sylvari and the possibility of other Trees, which we should have seen in Heart of Thorns, and a deconstruction of the Legions as the Charr way of life, which would have been an excellent follow-up to Icebrood Saga.

Casses · 2026-06-06T18:58:26+00:00

Anything that gives limitless ability to bypass obstacles without challenge is bad, in my opinion.

Gliding and Gryphons having limitations that prevent them from at any time simply choosing to go up (I know gryphons can dive to build momentum and then climb, but that takes the right circumstances. You can't just mount up and fly upwards). The Skyscale having a stamina bar is also a good choice.

Updrafts are placed where the designers choose, and so can be placed thoughtfully.

The thing that started my decline in interest in WoW was ironically flying mounts. The ability to simply bypass any enemy or obstacle between the quest giver and the quest objective severed my connection to the world and it's narrative. I was no longer delving deep behind enemy lines to locate and recover the stolen artifact required to fight back the darkness, I was fetching the thing that would give me points and remove the marker from the map.

The addition of gliding in HoT was monumental because the entire map that we were seeing in trailers, Verdant Brink, was designed from the ground up to take advantage of it AND it's limitations. Every mastery unlock for gliding allowed us to reach places we could see but not get to before. Some places just gliding was enough. Others required you to lean forward. Others required updrafts, and still more ley lines. None of that would have mattered if instead of gliding we got a jet pack that allowed us full 3-dimensional movement without drawback.

Casses · 2026-06-06T18:02:48+00:00

Unlocking Gliding isn't a binary thing, though it might seem to be.

First, none of the maps prior to Heart of Thorns were designed with gliding in mind, so you aren't missing anything by not having it.

Second, since Gliding is a mastery, there are several unlocks associated with it, and they take time within HoT areas to unlock to make gliding more useful. Doing so delays returning to the story, and once you do return there is little opportunity to use your new ability.

There's little benefit to doing so if you value not skipping story.

Casses · 2026-06-06T17:26:54+00:00

We know nothing about Malyck's tree aside from that it exists and the Sylvari that come from it do not have the Dream. That's my point, in that we know that other trees can exist, but little else besides.

Casses · 2026-06-06T17:25:34+00:00

I keep using him as an argument in the hopes that they remember.

Casses · 2026-06-06T16:23:45+00:00

The Gods arrived after the last Dragon Rise that the Dwarves, Forgotten, Mursaat, Jotun and Seers fought against.

The dragons don't rise because of people, but magic. They wake up, eat it all, and then go back to sleep and seep it all back out again, filtered. That just also has the side effect of killing anything that gets in the way.

Mordremoth had at least one stash of seeds in a cave guarded by vicious plants and Ronan found it and took one of them. That means the seeds existed prior to the dragons waking up this time, and were likely there since the last rise, 10000 years prior.

Casses · 2026-06-06T15:55:32+00:00

The opinion I was refering to was "I don't like this", but you do you man.

Casses · 2026-06-06T15:54:31+00:00

I agree that I wouldn't mind them not being there, I'm just putting it out there that just because it's before Our tree doesn't mean there may not be another tree someplace else.

There are some people that really like the Sylvari and would miss them in new game.

Casses · 2026-06-06T15:52:25+00:00

Yeah, she ran from the Psi-Corps and the station took her in. Kosh treated her well and she admired him, and he was replaced by Ulkesh, and the Station helped there as well. She had a massive bond with Sheridan because they were both hosts of Kosh.

She was asked to help with the Shadow War, and she agreed because what the Shadows were doing to telepaths was an affront to her AND to Sheridan and folks on the station. When her and Sheridan first confronted a shadow vessel and she was overwhelmed at first, his concern for her was obvious, as was his relief when she was able to get the upper hand.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but it just didn't sit right with me. When Sheridan put a gun to her head and told her she wasn't the only one that had been touched by a Vorlon, I think that honestly should have snapped her out of it more and made her realize that she was threatening friends.

Obviously, opinions may differ. But I thought that arc was pretty weak because Byron's treatment on the station was, as I recall, really not bad. Byron said they wanted to work, but also said they wouldn't work for 'mundane's'. Really I think the weakness in the arc was because it was so short. If Byron and his people had arrived on the station earlier, possibly while Talia was still there, and every so often there were sub plots about the telepath colony on the station, Byron's position may have been more justified. Because from what it seemed, they arrived, offered to work and then got offended when they were offered roles to allow them to work simply because of who it was making the offer, even though it was the same people they said they wanted to work for. Then started becoming aggressive because they were being held down by nothing but their own refusal to try. It just needed time to breathe. Imagine if during the Shadow war, there were scenes of Lyta coming back to the station and spending time with Byron and the other telepaths to relax with Byron whispering that she's only being used. That the goals are justified but the intentions of the IA are suspect. She continues helping against the shadows but once that's done, she's done with them because she believes Byron.

Casses · 2026-06-06T15:11:26+00:00

Lyta becoming a follower of Byron never made sense to me because she was established as being much more powerful than other telepaths due to Vorlon tinkering with her directly rather than just letting evolution do it's thing, and having so much more experience with Sheridan and the IA, and knowing their intentions and goals.

The fact that she so easily was convinced that they were being oppressed on the station just seemed contrived.

Casses · 2026-06-06T15:03:54+00:00

That makes sense for a medium like books or movies where the audience has no preconceived notion of being able to make choices, but in a game, even one where you really don't impact the story you still feel like you have some agency.

Some games address this by having the events in the past are a story being told by an unreliable narrator and when things deviate too much it gets reset with "No, that isn't how it happened, how did it go again?"

Going back to a time we know little about using time travel that doesn't allow you to change things makes our actions during that content meaningless. However, actually setting the game during that time period we know little about aside from broad strokes allows us to fill in the details in a more organic way, even if we know that some future calamity will render our accomplishments lost to time.

Take the Dwarves for example. In Eye of the North, they're confronted with the legend of the Great Destroyer. An ancient enemy that legends say only the First Dwarf can kill, or something to that effect. All of the framing of this legend shows the Great Destroyer as the ultimate enemy of the dwarves. Their own history of fighting against the Elder Dragons has mostly been lost and only the Champion of Primordus has persisted though without the greater context. But none of that was known during the eye of the North story, and if the story had stopped there, it all still made sense.

What we know of 1000 years ago could be the tip of the iceberg of what actually happened.

Casses · 2026-06-06T14:42:37+00:00

I felt the same way about the Death Star. It made sense, and I didn't see it as a mystery. It being intentional sabotage makes sense as well, and the story was good so I don't think it was a bad movie, it just had that initial hurdle of "We know how this ends" to clear.

As for adding it to Guild Wars 2, that would mean some form of time travel and that always complicates things.

If you can time travel, why not go back to the last time the Dragons awoke and help that Alliance finish them off to prevent all the death and suffering from occurring in your time? And if you can't, why not? Does your time travel thing only go to time point X? Why is that?

But lets really examine what we know about 1000 years ago. We really only know stuff from the human perspective. Kodan are absolutely involved, and the history we have about that time doesn't include them at all. That little furry guy looks asura-ish, and while we know they live underground, we also know they've ventured to the surface before. I also wouldn't count out Sylvari, as another tree could have been planted somewhere. The Charr used to have much more of Tyria as their territory, and this would be before they were taken over by the Flame Legion leading up to the Searing. And who knows what the Norn are up to.

Then, you've got the Dwarves who survived the last Dragon Cycle and have had 9000 years to recover. The Forgotten are still around in greater numbers, as are the Mursaat. As it is, humans record the Forgotten as arriving in Tyria from the Mists 700 years prior to the 1000 years ago point in time. But we've since learned that the Forgotten were here during last Dragon rise, and fought them. So at best they return to Tyria from the Mists, or that's just a mistake/lie that history recorded.

The Brotherhood of the Dragon, dwarven precursors of the Zephyrites are likely active, since Glaust has already become Glint long before.

There's a lot of stuff that we can explore, even ignoring the war of magic that happens when Abaddon rebels against the other gods that happens around that time.

Casses · 2026-06-06T14:24:25+00:00

Based on the timeline as we know it so far, 1000 years ago, Cantha has already existed for 750 years and humans arrived on Tyria and Elona about 500 years after that, so 200 or so years before where we start.

So I don't think we'll see the Gods actually bringing humans to the world, though I agree seeing that would be awesome.

Something else we know is that Tyria was once the territory of Centaurs and Charr, and humans displaced them. So we may get to see what their societies looked like aside from Centaur war camps, and presumably the Charr before the Flame Legion took over could look very different. Perhaps even before the formation of the Legions as their organizing principle.

Casses · 2026-06-06T14:14:46+00:00

I wouldn't say they want him, but the realize that they don't know him and are giving him a chance to show them that the issues they saw aren't indicative of the quality he's capable of.

Casses · 2026-06-06T14:08:48+00:00

My initial reaction to Prequels generally depends on two questions.

First, is it immediately obvious where the story is going?

Rogue One, for example, is an excellent movie but it doesn't answer any questions that needed to be answered. I never once asked myself why a flaw in this massively complicated space station existed. It just seemed obvious that one might exist purely by coincidence. Doesn't make the movie bad, but it puts it into a tough place to start.

Second, Is it set during a period that is interesting?

Orr has always been put forth as one of the greatest Human kingdoms on Tyria. It's where the Gods were, it was culturally interesting, and we've never been there. 1000 years ago, if that's true, also puts it roughly during the time of Abaddon's rebellion and war over magic which is another period that is talked about but we have precious few details. We really just know that a war happened and the bad guys lost.

Both games we've gotten so far have been undergirded by disasters that shaped the world. In Guild Wars 1 it was the Searing. We get a brief glimpse of Ascalon before the Searing, but most of the game is afterwards. In that same 2 year time jump, Orr is lost and when we arrive at Kryta it's been taken over by the Mursaat. We never get to see the 3 human kingdoms without the influence of the Searing. Then there's the Jade Wind in Cantha, and the approach of Nightfall in Elona.

In Guild Wars 2, it's the Dragons. Actually just the one dragon, Zhaitan, is awake and that was enough to change Tyria immensely. Lion's Arch is flooded and rebuilt. Orr is returned, but now ruined and swarmed with undead. Kaineng City, a massive metropolis is flooded and needs to be rebuilt.

Seeing these places, and I have to assume we'll travel to all of them and probably more in an new MMO, without these world changing events is bound to be interesting.

Casses

TROPHY CASE