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Are the main dragons in GW2 too powerful?
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
Something I've been thinking about when reading the GW2 lore. I mean, when thinking about dragons in fantasy stories and worlds, I usually expect that the local fire departments will have their hands full with forest fire control, and that the (female) virgins should be concerned when yearly annual Sacrificial-Tribute-to-the-Dragon Day draws near.
But these dragons... one just flies over the country and huge, major stretches of land and every living creatures in it transforms?! Whoa. What if he wants to take a piss in the forest? Or decides to stroll/fly over the lands, enjoying the view, he turns back to return to his home and bham! Suddenly he discovers that all of the lands have been transformed into something else!
Or the other dragon, he just wakes up, and wham! There rises a whole nation out of the water, filled with all those people brought back from the dead (well, sort of). This must beat any other 'Eventful Waking Up Morning' easily.
The way those dragons just casually reshape whole countries and continents, it surely makes those overgrown fire lizards a hell of a lot better than even the gods that are spoken of in GW and GW2.
Maybe too much better, and too powerful than is realistic, even for a fantasy world?
What do you think?
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The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
Epic Dragon is Epic!
In all seriousness, I can see where you're coming from, but I find it completely interesting. I think they set up a great story for GW2 and I can't wait to play the game after reading the first book!
I don't think you have to worry.
I suspect 90% of their power is the hype machine. People read "world changing" and imagine more then current engines are able to support, kind of like in Rifts rifts talk.
and if it's not, it will be so breath taking, that last thing you will be thinking about will be "How does it actualy compare to what the NPC said in GW1?" and it will more probably be something of the sort: "Oh my this is so cool... aaaargh huge dragon changing the world... aaargh my frames per second."
Oh, hehe, I see what you mean, but I was actually approaching it from a lore kind of viewpoint
Not worried that much about game mechanics in the main dragon encounters, although it'll be interesting how they plan to top the Shatterer dragon fights within the limitations of the engine.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I think It would be 100+ man boss fights that would be realy epic. just like the shatterer but than bigger badder and way more rare
When I think about it, I believe the dragons are instruments of creation and destruction and the fact they are hyped to be that powerful furthers that belief in me. I don't know if they are linked to the Gods or not (even though it is quite easy to link them) but the dragons seem to have a purpose and that purpose, to us, is currently unknown.
So my answer is yes I do think they are too poweful but that power can be put to good use.
This is not a game.
I've got several theories concerning the elder dragons.
The most radical of which postulates that the human gods were actually subconscious manifestations of the slumbering dragons'
A more plausible one goes back to Abaddon giving the races of Tyria the ability to use magic--perhaps there was a reason to it, perhaps he foresaw the awakening of the dragons and wanted to give the lesser races a fighting chance (the whole corrupting the world thing came as a result of the imprisonment).
So while I think that the elder dragons are exceptionally powerful (compared to typical fantasy dragons), I believe there is a reason they are so powerful. And that there is a method for, at the very least, belaying their domination of the entire world.
Didn't the dragons rule the lands before the 6 gods ? If so then I would think they should be very powerful.
Remember that as far as we know the Dragons do not work together. We also do not know if they are intelligent or just act on instinct. Maybe they just eat, sleep etc and wherever they are things around them corrupt without the dragon wanting it nor caring about it. Or maybe they are intelligent but are only concerned with fighting the gods or something, not with exterminating lowly mortals.
The elder dragons are more or less gods themselves. And I wouldn't call them too powerful. Fantasy books are full of powerful and evil beings and gods that makes the life hard for the heroes.
It would not work in low fantasy of course but while low fantasy books like "A game of throne" and Conan are popular have there as far as I know never been a low fantasy MMO. AoC should have been one but it isn't. There is still magic everywhere and you can't get far without magic stuff and healer. Crom, can you imagine Conan with magic ear rings, he would kill anyone suggesting he get those.
I see no problems for this in GW2. besides, the heroes should have the odds against him. Otherwise he isn't a hero.
If someone makes a game of throne online even stuff like healers and wizards would be too much (I really hope someone does, I like the world). In games like that magic should be rare or not at all. But high fantasy is high fantasy.
The way I see it the dragons are kind of like titans, more forces of nature than actual Gods. Like actual earthquakes or storms they are relentless and uncontrollable. In the lore on the GW2 wiki it talks about how its possible they woke up before, killing off the race of super giants that predate the other races.
There like a volcano on a small island, right when the island fills with tropical plants and wonders the volcano erupts sending it back to the beginning. And I think thats what makes them so dangerous. At any moment they could decide to stop playing with the 5 races and end it.
with the three different groups you are allowed to join in the story, I can see the fight being done differently through each. The order of whispers wants to put the dragons to sleep (not believing they can actually be killed) so prob a more indirect method maybe? the vigil want to create an army of all 5 of the races to defeat the dragon, epic scale battle? And durmond priory (the warrior monks) think they can find a way to defeat a dragon using ancient secrets and knowledge(prob more background lore intensive).
All in All the larger the odds stacked against the player, the more impossibly amazing it will be. so with several dragons the size of mountains with power beyond anything imaginable, we got our work cut out for us heroes >:D
Going off of the three faction's different methods, one would think the that the three could, you know, combine tactics... Order:"Hey, we found a way to make the dragons drowsy," Priory:"Oh?, well we found a secret magic weapon, but it requires a large army of different races to use..." Vigil:"Yeah, we've gotcha covered."
lol unfortunately while the game is set in fantasy the races of the world still hold the human charactoristic of superiority complex; aka "we know better than you hence we wont work with you"
The gods created the world of Tyria, so no, the dragons wouldn't have been there before the gods.
The OP brings up a good point. When a dragon turns everything it flies over to crystal without even trying or giving it a moment of thought, that's not the kind of thing you're just going to take 60+ people to and fight straight up without it being silly.
Still, just as with the shatterer event we know there will be prior events to set up and repair cannons to provide conventional support, there might be a similar series of events leading up to any big dragon. Ones that involve leveling the playing field. The dynamic event version of the cloak you need for Onyxia for instance.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Sounds pretty interesting and I don't think it's too powerful if you think of it like a "dragon worshipper" ip, to put dragons on such equal footing with the gods. I am quite fond of lore involving dragons if pulled off right.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
thats not true actually, the Gods didnt create tyria, they arrived and began changing things. they added humans, gave them magic (abiddon) created the holy city of Orr ect...
Creatures like the Char, norn, asura, and the giants that came before, are all creatures not made by the Gods, but naturaly came to be over time. So in a way I think the dragons are like a check and balance to that natural growth, waking up when the population is large or when creatures have evolved to a surtain level. (its important to note that the magic of the other races comes from other sources other than Gods, asura use it through science, and the char suplament it with technology. The norn get it from their animal spirits, and the sylvari get it from nature(though Im not entirely sure on that one)
also the Forgotten (the race of humanoid snakes) are a race braught over from another world by the Gods to protect this one.
The Giants where erased from the planet before the Gods and the fogotten arrived, which is proof that the dragons excisted in the world before the Gods.
While your point about the world and dragons is true, there is some contention about the magic. All the lore say about the magic is that Abaddon gave the races (not known if it was just the human races or all the sentient races) the ability to use magic. So magic may very well be an existing force in the world of Tyria, but each race attributes its practical aspects to gods or animal spirits. Using magic may not require the belief in anything; for example, there may be a human water/ice elementalist who doesn't believe Grenth is the source of his chilling magic.
But now that you bring up the forgotten, the fact that they now (in GW1) serve Glint gives some credence to my theory about the possibility that the gods are an ethereal manifestation of the elder dragons--if the forgotten once served the 'gods', why would they suddenly change masters? It makes more sense if they just moved from serving the elder dragons, to serving the young dragon(s).
Its also worth a mention, that due to lack of written records before the addition of humans to the world, that we don't know when the gods arrived on Tyria--they may have co-existed in the time of the giants.
Ah yes, I was actually about to correct myself on that. Apparently you beat me to it :P
Actually, the wiki says that "Abaddon gifted all sentient races with the gift of magic, but it was abused by all as each race tried to use this gift to destroy the others". It doesn't say the ability as far as I'm aware of. Though I've been wrong before.
Edit: OK I see it now, under the "magic" part of the wiki it says ability. Under the "gods" section it says abadon gave them the gift of magic.
Well, thats actually why I say there's some contention about it, the various wiki pages each phrase the origin of magic (as the playable GW2 races use it) differently; some call it a gift, other say ability. While the gift phrasing would indicate that magic didn't exist before Abaddon. The ability context would indicate that magic existed elsewhere, but the intelligent races didn't know how to use/access it.
In the context of the gods and dragons, I tend to lean more towards magic as a pre-existing thing--certainly the gods used magic to bring the forgotten to Tyria, and certainly the dragons are just seeping with natural magic (Primordus as a statue was seeping enough for the Asura to use it as a magic nexus point).
I dont think the forgotten ever "followed" glint, the forgotten where tasked to help humanity, when the people who lived in orr and in the crystal dessert got wiped out by their own folly, the forgotten took up residence in the dessert to protect glint in wait of the "chosen" who glint would help within the storyline of Prophecies. They never changed hands from the Gods to glint, the gods just asked the forgotten to help guide the chosen to glint.
The forgotten also show up in the realm of torment to help guide the players to some extent in nightfall, the're kind of the custodian/janitors who work behind the scenes to keep everything tidy till the heroes arrive to save the day.
I like that dragons in GW2 are a natural disasters, they are unstoppable. In other fantasy games/books/movies they are this big cool creature breathing fire and a prince have to go kill it to save the princess. In GW2 EVERYONE have to fight against it to save the world and not a single princess. It's the most awesome dragons ever.
They are 2 "kinds" of dragons in usual myths, the first one is just an old beast, a big and antique reptilian animal lets say that live before the human area and spit fire, those are rather small. But there is an other "kind" of myth which talk about dragons as gigantic immaterial beast that were more or less at the founding of life, and have an huge control over it because of that knowledge, this is were lye his magical powers. I think both those kinds of dragons are in most culture, you find both in western, asian, and maybe also in native american, but i'm not sure about the last.
I think both those dragons myth types respond to the way poeple were looking at them, one is more materialist, the other is more mystical. In fact they are not 2 kinds of dragons, but myths put more emphasis in one or the other way to look at them, thats all.
I think GW dragon refer more to the second type.
I would suggest to the OP (and all others) to grab a copy of the newest released GW2 book, (http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&index=blended&field-keywords=GW2 edge of destiny&tag=smtfx1-20). The possible interrelationships of power, dragons, and races is examined within the storyline, including ideas on how to destroy a dragon of this magnitutide. Also this is all canon.