The life and times of Pact Commander Feyn, Bato Ghostclaw and Pathfinder Gheli, and many others | Tarkana.2841 US | Guild Wars 2 sideblog, follows from sociallyawkwardtoaster | Icon by solarkoza on instagram!
my name is Toaster and this is my guild wars 2 sideblog! i've been playing off and on since 2018, i may come and go but gw2 will always be hometown for me. follows will come from my main, @sociallyawkwardtoaster
its mostly reblogs here but i do write and take screenshots, you can find my fics under #my writing but uhh i don't have a tag for screenshots yet. should probably fix that
i'll introduce the three ladies up top under the cut, but i have more alts you can see on my toyhouse here. feel free to ask me about any of them!
FEYN - Ranger, Cycle of Noon, Vigil, Pact Commander, Wayfinder
Where Feyn would once have been content to remain in Celedon Forest her whole life, the call of her Wyld Hunt pulling her into the wider world could not be denied. Destiny would lead her to joining the Vigil and later the Pact, but her rise to Commander would not come until the death of the original Commander during the campaign against Mordremoth. Though the weight of her new responsibility weighs heavily on her, she knows that with the help of her friends victory is always possible.
Since the end of the Dragon Cycle, Feyn found it difficult to adjust to "normal" life. When the Astral Ward offered her a place in her ranks, she jumped at the chance to use her skills to defend the world once again, but her eagerness has begun to fade the more she sees of the Ward's history.
BATO GHOSTCLAW - Deadeye, Ash Legion, Order of Whispers
The life of a charr is never easy - especially when your father is a known Flame Legion traitor. Bato spent much of her early life proving her worth through strength of claw and force of will, making enough of a name for herself to be selected by Imperator Swordshadow to join the Order of Whispers (and later the Pact) specifically to keep the Imperators informed on their dealings. As time passed, however, Bato found herself more and more torn between her loyalties to her people and her duty to help protect the world from danger, but deep inside she knows she would do anything for her newfound friends.
Bangar's civil war was a trying time for all charr, but in the end it brought Bato the clarity she had been searching for years - that her nature as a charr between worlds was exactly what the legions needed to rebuild and find purpose in a world without war. Though she is not a member of the Ward, she is always ready to lend her rifle and dagger to any cause Feyn believes in.
PATHFINDER GHELI - Elementalist, College of Synergetics, Durmond Priory, Astral Ward Operative
Gheli is the quintessential asura: ingenious, insufferable, and introverted (at least at the start of our story). Her quest for the ever-elusive invention that would put her name in the history books drove away every krewe who would take her, leading Zojja to loan her to the Priory, where she was partnered with one Magister Sieran in hopes that the twoβs conflicting personalities would balance each other out and teach them both to mellow out. Against all odds, the two became nearly inseparable, which only added to the tragedy the attack at Claw Island. Forever marked by the memory of her first true friend, Gheli works to honor her legacy alongside her new companions.
After a decade of fighting dragons and saving the world, Gheli was eager to return to lab research and development. The sudden appearance of the Astral Ward introduced new avenues of research and unparalleled resources, and Gheli jumped at the chance to join their ranks - though the sudden reunion with a post-ascension Zojja has undeniably dampened her spirits.
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Confirmed Arenanet will be starting development on the next expansion for GW2 next year, but the details wonβt be announced or revealed until after the launch of GW3 (they didn't specify whether they meant the beta or the 1.0). The aim is to return to an annual cadence for GW2 like what weβve seen with SoTO, JW, & VoE
The announcement of GW3 has made an overall positive impact on the population of the game. Since the announcement on Friday they've seen a 40% increase in daily active users. VoE set a record with returning players (accounts with no log-ins for a year or more) and this weekend beat that by almost 2x (Saturday was the single best day for new player acquisition since the Steam launch). So the population is very healthy despite some community concerns about player migration.
The strategy they're embracing moving forward looks to keep that momentum and entice more players to try, remain engaged with, or return to regular activity in GW2 and GW1 with the tiered HoM 2.0 releases, GW2 world polish, and more info about GW3 being provided makes people excited to experience or return to the world.
They spent a while emphasizing that they want player time and investment to be and feel respected bridging between the three games, and are fostering an ecosystem where players are encouraged or inspired to try the different 'versions' of the world to earn those HoM rewards/ explore the unique experiences each game has to offer.
They heard feedback about GWAMM being carried over to GW3; that's not their current objective, but they might review/revisit. In that vein, they also essentially confirmed GW1 HoM won't connect to GW3 like. at all.
HoM 2.0 will βfeel like the Return To experienceβ and release in chronological order, with the core game having 2 releases (one focused on open world, one focused on story) to tackle the sheer volume of core content. Confirmed the living world instalments will also be included, not just the titled expacs. HoM 2.0 will grant rewardss in both GW2 and GW3.
Insisted that they have not and will not move devs off of GW2 to GW3 during these 18 months of 'down time' before the beta launch next fall to dispel concerns about gutting GW2's team/ resources. Each game has a dedicated team, they donβt share people or resources.
In talking about the new WVW BL, they touched on where they failed in the release of desert BL back in HoT. The internal approach was βwhat's best for glidingβ instead of βwhat's best for WvWβ and they're acknowledging that wasn't the correct approach. They've taken years of feedback to heart while developing their new map: they didnβt work alongside the community during devlopment of desert BL and they learned their lesson there (will be taking cues from the PvP push mode beta and feedback gained throughout that moving forward). Eg. They want to run betas for the new map for around a year on the live server and not just the private test realms to get broader community feedback and data.
Chatted a bit about the technical challenge of modernizing/optimizing the engine as the game has aged and touched on the coming PBR (physically based rendering), community voiced performance concerns (client performance like frame rate in large scale populated areas, server performance like skill latency) etc. that they want to address in these polish updates and future development. For example, they mentioned added granular settings for individual optimization, so more settings client side for your rig, and making info like event/boss timers and other stuff more intuitively accessible in game instead of through the /wiki commands.
βYou don't make investments in technology at this scale unless you are committed to supporting those investments long term.' Reaffirmed their commitment to developing all three games. All three will be updated with a zippered/staggered approach; a βlullβ in one game will be a leapfrog for an update in another, meaning there's always content in the world of Guild Wars.
GW2 will not be coming to mobile or console; the 3 games are meant to occupy different niches, and they've built them intentionally in that way. in order to do a game really well on console, you have to build it from the ground up with those gameplay and tech considerations in mind. doesn't make sense for GW2 to be placed anywhere other than PC ('Players managing gw2 inventory with a controller seems like a cruel punishment' lol).
The GW3 timeline is intensely focused on high fantasy with little to no technological advances in the world given it's so far in the past, with the intent that seeing how the magitech and jade tech etc. evolve in GW2 and feeling that distance between the setting of GW2 and GW3 is tangible and impactful (and also letting each game fully embrace itβs own unique storylines and themes).
Acknowledged that they've been a bit silent the last few months leading up to the announcement of gw3, but they want to return to more regular dev updates/roadmaps/ communication with the community now that the secret is out and they have more space to speak freely about the schedule/plan moving forward.
-Confirmed continued development on the first and second Guild Wars
-Reforged moving to mobile devices
-New content coming to 2 after VoE includes a new open world Orr map, a Hall of Monuments system, and WvW borderland, as well as updates to older content like the Zhaitan fight
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It sure is a good time to be someone who is very chill about games, because with the fact we're getting more GW2 alongside GW3, plus probably extra stuff for GW1, I really feel like
There's a spot in GW2 that's a surface asuran settlement with little to no information known about it. There's a renown heart there, with the Priory investigating the ruins. The only things known are a) it's asuran in origin and b) it has artifacts dating to when Orr was a thriving nation.
anyway i just want to say i 100% understand people being unhappy about gw3. i am too!! i've seen it happen so many times where a company thinks they can handle just one more live service game and it becomes their downfall and takes what they had going with it.
but all we have is a cg trailer. anet has already promised development on gw2 will continue, we'll get more details tomorrow. let's be a little afraid together, let's keep playing the game we love, but let's not jump straight to doom and gloom so soon.
gw3 announcement, it's a prequel to 1, so there's no charr sylvari or asura.... i feel like im taking crazy pills where a bunch of big games/companies are like "you know what will make this next venture sell more? if we take out all the stuff people loved the most in our other products and called it a day."
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Vloxx and Ankka are really interesting to me in extremely different ways, and that's because their motivations and their end goals are so wildly different from one another, but they're compelling in their own way.
Ankka is a nihilist who got overwhelmed by the Void and Zhaitan's magic, and jaded and pretty messed up from killing her Fractal duplicate over and over again for - as far as anyone is aware - no really good reason. She came to believe that to struggle against life was meaningless, because why is there a point to existence if it could end at any given moment? And her takeaway became "all existence is meaningless; the only thing that exists is this endless, pointless cycle of death and recreation, so why don't we hurry things along to utter nothingness." Creation, destruction, life, death, all of it meant nothing. She felt nothing for it, for herself or anyone else (except arguably Mai Trin though that isn't heavily explored). Life had no purpose. So end it and start over.
Vloxx, on the other hand, is an extremist idealist. He sees power structures in the world and believes that the only way for people to be safe and free is to destroy the power structures that limit them. Monarchies, organizations like the Tyrian Alliance and the Arcane Council, Isgarren and his wizards, all of them exist to impose their own ideas of safety and freedom on the populace, and all that's come of it is more violence and death. His end goal is not to hurry the world along to destruction. His end goal is ending that cycle by removing the structures he believes further suffering, to give the power back to the people to protect their future. It's why he believes so deeply in the Commander, not as a person but as an icon.
And the biggest similarity is that they are both partially right, even if it's not entirely. It's the same with Joko, who was also partially right but missed the big details. It doesn't make them the same, or even similar with their goals and ideals. But it's an interesting thread GW has explored time and time again with regards to how others view our deeds and how we move forward in light of it.
We influenced Joko. Ankka. Vloxx. It's interesting.
To Feyn: "Your friends are acting irrational. The whispers must be getting to them. Send them home, you'd be better off alone."
To Bato: "They're not giving Ryland a fair chance. The Commander's made peace with enemies before, why not now? Will you let fear decide the future of your people?"
To Gheli: "It's so cold, and you're all so tired. Lie down and rest. It's the smart thing to do."
Skyscales can find vertical surfaces to cling to that the six, the spirits of the wild, the eternal alchemy, and all the mists have never even conceived of. The concept of a mime was invented by skyscales
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