Guild Wars 2 Path of Fire - The Story So Far Leading to PoF | A Look At The Timeline Over 1000 Years 

Considering all the requests for it I decided to go ahead with this production, and it actually ended up much more in detail than I expected! Fairly close to somehting I was planning to do a couple of weeks from now anyway - a story so far sort of thing - which maybe I'll axe now, we'll see how things go. But here you go guys, you asked for it! I also have another video going up later this evening - Things Path of Fire disappointed me with. Should be fun. See you soon!

WP, all of elona (except maybe istan) is a desert. deserts aren't just dunes. kourna and vabbi very much fall under the "desert" category.

WoodenPotatoes as Silver Sun has noted, not all desserts are flat, or filled with dunes, or even explicitly sandy. There are many desert regions on Earth that are more mountainous. In fact, based on the look if the deserts in the Western and South Western USA, Elona would fit the bill as one of those kinds of deserts

It feels to me like the region of the Desolation is most likely to be the deserts referred to by the devs. I get the feeling from the names of primeval Kings and everything else that it's supposed to be very Egyptian. So it's still a desert but a lush desert due to its Coastal nature and the flow of the Elon River. This then makes me think of places like Morwh and Sahlajah as slightly analogous to ancient world cities like Thebes, Babylon, and Nineveh. The creeping of the desert that is mentioned in those Outpost descriptions and other places I rationalize as referring to the deadly sulphurous haze rather than simply encroaching sand. Plus if they already had cities up there, it makes more sense why the Primeval Kings would set up their tombs northward once the crystal desert had formed.

Mr. Potatoes I just want to say I suffer from bad insomnia. Your videos on lore help me so much. It creates a world that helps me fall asleep too. I mean it in a good way not saying your videos are boring haha. But thank you soo much for everything!!!

Crystal sea transforming into the crystal desert was anet avoiding underwatercontent c:

What would be great is a 2 or 3 hours video where u explain us all the stories and lore about Guild Wars in general. I would love to see that happen ! :D Great work WoodenPotatoes, as usual !

Thank you so much for always doing videos like this. It helps to refresh my memory, and makes current gameplay richer. There's also always something that I didn't know too.

IMO they COULDN;T have shown Kralk moving, not without blatantly spoiling where they were going next. They clearly decided to follow the Balthazar story to feed us the new angle on "we cant kill them anymore, now we have to follow this rogue god and stop him from doing so" Not to mention this part (I hope) can easily be thrown into the PoF story. Either an NPC telling us the dragon had moved for some reason, or Taimi force feeding us more "oh btw X dragon have moved, thought I'd let you know now of all times instead of when it actually did move" (assuming our little leyline reader map thing can go that far, or hasn't been confiscated/destroyed)

Thanks for this background story! I didn't know any of it and now I'm even more tempted to get the PoF expansion!

My god WP thanks once again for making my day :) i've never been much of a lore person in any game but in guild wars you were the one who got me intrigued into this ^^

On the topic of Kralkatorrik moving (after consuming some of Modremoths magic). In the novel Edge of Destiny it was said that Kralkatorrik left the area he fought glint in, and in the short story depicting the zephyrites visit to glints grave (when they find her crystals) there is no sign of Kralkatorrik being there. This suggest that Kralkatorrik's lair is actually at the end of the current dragon brand and that he flew even futher away now (probably far outside of the expantion area).

Deserts are basically just arid regions. Just because there aren't endless dunes and they have vegetation doesn't mean they aren't deserts. Antarctica is a desert. Vabbi and Kourna could absolutely be considered desert environments.

The music piece that plays in background 2:50 - 5:30 reminds me so much of Ascension Song from Prophecies and Wondering Flame from FFX and words can't express my happiness for that reason. Ever since first leaks I hoped for music like this and here it is.

Really enjoyed the vid - hyped to back into the game this week!

I can't stop thinking about how much of a baby the Sylvari are 😂 the youngest race, 20 something years old Right?

Wow so much history :o Thank you for the lore info !

I could be wrong, but I seem to remember a mission where player freed Joko from a rock/statue in Nightfall

Thank you so much WP! I didn't even know that GW1 existed until a friend told me to buy GW2 on release because of how epic GW1 was for him; he played GW1 from launch. I love your videos and I love that you take the time to explain the lore that we Veteran GW2 players are missing because of the lack of GW1 content. This makes me more excited for the new expansion and I cant wait for your vid you mentioned of the tour of GW1 Crystal Dessert!

Perhaps during the clash of the gods Balthazar evaporated the Crystal Sea so Abaddon and the margonites were weakened and out of their element. That could very well have been the deciding factor as Abaddon might not have expected for Balthazar to go that far. And so he lost.

I just feel like I need to nitpick one of your criticism. Defined by Webster dictionary; "arid land with usually sparse vegetation; especially : such land having a very warm climate and receiving less than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of sporadic rainfall annually." A desert is defined by its lack of water, not its apparent sandiness. We have desertic lands in northern Canada by the way ;) But great video!

Yesssss!!!! i'm so happy you did this.

I feel like all the refugees that we saw in the demo who were talking about fleeing from 'the sandstorm' were fleeing from Kralkatorrik's movement. In the novel he has been described as a sandstorm before.

YES! A lore video! Missed these :D

So, we know that Rata Novus fell in 1173 and then Rata Arcanum was founded. I remember you saying Zinn had a peculiar customer which is revealed in Draconis Mons to be Joko. Then, shortly after, in 1175 we now know he counquered Elona. This is the first time we get a date for that event and it lines up perfectly. Do you think we might find out more about their connection?

Man the race soundtrack is so neat.

Maybe someone else touched on this already, but do you think the confusion about where the gods first set foot on Tyria (the spring in Orr vs Cantha) might be chalked up to someone getting confused about whether Tyria, in that context, was referring to the planet or the continent? I should probably just let it go, but I really wish that would get cleared up better. :S

Wild idea came to my mind! What if you, WoodenPotatoes, record yourself reading GW2 novels and make an audiobook out of it which we all can listen to and enjoy your gorgeous voice and superb story content of the novels? Please notice...

Something to take into account in regards to the classification of what is and what is not a desert - precipitation! A good portion of people don't imagine anything beyond extreme heat, expansive dunes, and cacti when it comes to their vision of what a desert is. California, and Oregon are great examples of the diversity of what is considered a "technical" desert based off the amount of precipitation - both states have what are considered "High Deserts" locally and these areas can be immensely lush with a variety of foliage. You have Sagebrush, Chaparral, dozens of wildflower genera, Juniper, and Joshua trees as just a bare minimum example. The Central Valley of California is another good example, it's technically desert but it's been irrigated to foster agricultural growth. Deserts aren't just sad, barren wastelands!

Hey WoodenPotatoes, could you cover some of the lore for The Tomb of the Primeval Kings? It was one of my favorite dungeon in GW1 and I am going to be looking for it in GW2 when they let us get that far in the desert. I doubt they will have it as an instance but I'm hoping to find its ruins

I wonder if as we enter Vabbi and potentially Kourna if the locals will be hostile towards us, as descendants of those heroes that returned Joko to power.

I've been hoping you'd make a lore-based video. Thanks, Mr Taters.

Also Vigil order has a connection with elona region beacuse of Lonely Vigil statue representing female warrior located in the arid sea which is also intresting and it may have some kind of connection to vigil's order and its naming.^^

On the last post it says Balthazar has only one dragon left to take energy from which is Kralkatorrik, but what about bubbles did he/she ever wake up or just slumbered through all the events.

I am now a god. Your god. I deserve this.

I speculate that after the players defeat Balthazar, Palawa Joko absorbs his essence and takes his place, much like Kormir did to Abbadon.

I actually hope Snaff is not dead but has become a champion of Krallkattorik, corrupted and fused with the micro golem swarm he had been using. and we force zojja to help us defeat her mentor as only she understands the tech and even in this state could discover a weakness to let us destroy him and grant his final rest.

"With only one viable target left, Balthazar sets his sights on Kralkatorrik in the desert." What about Steve? :D It would be sad if the devs completely forget about him in the stories to come.

Watching the video and thinking, as you talk about Palawa Joko's defeat of the Sunspears: What if Kormir chose to use her god power to lead the Sunspears against Palawa Joko....and lost? What if that is the event which drove the gods into hiding?

OOOOOOOOOOH DAMN IM EXCITED!

Is there a way to view the map in game without the UI?/blurred out

Regarding Kralk's move further south: I don't know if it's so much that the devs are flying by the seat of their pants on that one. I think it's an unfortunate side effect of ArenaNet not wanting to show their hand too soon. The news that Kralk was moving further south would have been pretty significant and probably would have been too strong a clue as to where the next expansion would have taken place. The Crystal Desert reveal would have been all the more obvious after chapter 5 with Primordus and Jormag exiting the stage for a while leaving behind one gigantic flashing neon purple sign screaming "Over here!" from the east.

Never thought we'd be going back to a GW1 area. They seemed to avoid it like the plague post GW2.

Will there be new hero point quests in the new maps? And if so how much hero points are worth per quest?

did you already do a lore video about the latest LS3 ep? or did i miss it

There's one question I've had about Kralkatorrik for several years that this timeline has really emphasized. That being where was he when the Zephyrites came to Glints lair to recover her corpse? In their writings the talk about how they spent weeks trekking through the harsh desert to get there, but they never say anything about Kralk or his corruption. Before I always assumed that he must have moved on after killing her but this timeline implies he settled down there, especially if you take it that the new brand that we can see has only been around since Mordy's death. So where was he when these guys all waltzed up to claim the body of his traitorous lieutenant?

I'm somewhat new to GW2, so your videos are beyond amazing/helpful. I do have a question though...why are there not more lich out there? Is Palawo Joko like the gods/humans who are 'alien' to Tryia?

WP did you consider that the line "The cost of this information is Joko's release from beneath his mountainous tomb" isn't necessarily saying that players agreed to free Joko, but instead that it was an unintended and unexpected repercussion (which can be called a "cost") of getting the information in the first place. You kind of just assume that it means that players intentionally freed him, but you should know that wording can be taken multiple ways. I understand that newer players reading this stuff may actually read it the way you did and take it for face value, but I'd expect you as a GW1 player to see the what ArenaNet is actually saying here and approach informing your viewers about it from a more, "It sounds like this, but it actually means this" standpoint, rather than from the perspective of "This is ArenaNet once again being inconsistent with the story they're trying to tell/summerize here".

I haven't played gw2, but when I looked up Kourna it looked a lot like chaparral, which is the biome I live in, from the screenshots. Sometimes biomes like that are colloquially referred to as deserts even though they get slightly more rain, so that might have been what the devs were going for. I dunno though, it seems like a weird choice of words.

well, we did kinda free joko, becuase we cornered him (if i remember correctly), but didnt put him back in prison, but let him go. so while its not exactly correct, i think its acceptable giving how short they had to keep it^^

I wonder if Steve/Bubbles isn't a viable option due to being water-based and Balthazar's a fire god, or because he doesn't want to deal with how deep an ocean can truly be and finding a dragon in all of that. I mean knowing already what a trail from Kralkatorik looks like I'd probably just follow all the purple to him too. Just no less intrigued that we only put half the current dragons to sleep and only one's a "viable" option.

So I just did the Palawa Joko "freeing" scene in GW1, which is right after Kormir disappears in the same scene which is in the Jahai Bluffs. While their certainly isn't any animation necessarily "showing it", and he absolutely does state in his comment that the weakening freed him, its a bit more than that, the full quote is "The weakening of reality freed me. Now I must see to rebuilding my empire. For this chance to rule once again I thank you... and bid you farewell." He also says just before that line, after we click on the rock, "Ah, free at last...." I'm pretty sure its safe to say that we let him out of his tomb, at the absolute least we did so in the physical sense for sure, even if there was no proper animation.

I've always wondered. If you question stuff the devs put our lore wise, are there any times that a dev gets back to you on it and tells you why or how?

7:04 I used to live in Tombs :P

Okay, I am seeking some clarification, what is written in the test from the website is that there was only "ONE viable option" left. Still, there is the underwater dragon that was affectionately named Bubbles, which me and my guild at the time have discussed endlessly. This is the dragon that is making life an utter hell for the remainders of Cantha. So if bubbles is a dragon, i.e. the underwater dragon, why would Kralkatorrik be the only option. Or was this explained in some way that I missed. We were still discussing this the other day that their was an allusion to this dragon several times in the first game. Is it a lieutenant of one of the other dragons? Or maybe it is a rouge dragon? All the npc's still exist that state that survivors from the area are still coming to Kryta, and that though the area is devastated there is still some society there. I might be out in left field, but I was just wondering as Cantha was my hands down favorite area of GW1 and would really like to hold onto hope that we may eventually see it again.

The sea drying up from the battle makes more sense. Just because abbadon fell doesnt mean that all oceans suddenly disappeared. With Balthazar gone fire isnt extint, ect

I would love to have a link to that article!

The desolation coastline lore comes from the expiation of the margonite's background/origin.

loving it

Anet : " ... The cost of this information is Joko’s release from beneath his moun..." WP : "Wrong!" Anet : "What ?!" WP : "WRONG!"

Hell YEAH My world lore fix is here

I feel so proud of myself having played GW1 in the past so that I can enjoy the story of GW2 in its fullest.

Is it bad that when I originally seen the news articles length I didn't read it cause I hoped WP would make a video doing that lol

wouldnt it be weird if the devs had put kralkatorik moving into the last living world? i though we had barely any contact with the crystal desert areas, much less eyes on the elder dragon, right?

There's a Guild Wars 2 style map that extends to Istan?!

Hey WP, about the conflict between the Gods and Abaddon that resulted in his imprisonment and the transformation of the Crystal Sea into the Crystal Desert, I think that instead of Abaddon's defeat causing the formation of the Crystal Desert for some connection he had as God of Water, it would be more interesting if the Gods actually used his affinity for water and his appretiation for the Margonites to defeat him. They could have caused the destruction of the Crystal Desert and Abaddon's 'favorite' race race to weaken him, this could give us more evidence that the Gods are not as omnibenevolent as we thought them to be. It would be an interesting thing for the devs to explore this type of plot twists to make the game's lore a bit more dark and nuanced. What are your opinions on that?

What if the Elon river only began flowing south on the scale we're familiar with into the lands of Kourna once the desert was formed? Its headwaters having previously potentially discharged into the crystal sea? Much as how Palawa Joko diverted it north millennia later, to starve Kourna, it could have originally potentially not flowed through Elona on the same scale as we saw in GW1 prior to the exodus, explaining the references to the desert. Likewise, this could merely be due to the variety of definitions covered by the term "desert". We tend to think of things such as the crystal desert, but to arrivals from places like Cantha, the climate would still be considered harsh in comparison.

Arizona native coming to this old ass video It's all a desert, you're being picky XD

Oh hell yes

"And then once we go to Elona we go North again [to Kryta]" North you say?

No mention of how the new combined kingdom is called Elona after the river Elon that flows through the shared kingdoms of the three provinces, Kourna and Vabbi... and Istan, which it doesn't flow through at all?

The lion is the sion and sion is the sun.

So as much as I hate to compare GW2 to another MMO, the retconning and changes seem to be Anet codifying exactly what happened in history similar to how Blizzard is doing with the Warcraft Chronicles novels. Basically this is giving them a starting point that they can build upon storywise for the future, I wish that there was a way to give us access to the full story of Tyria and the guild wars franchise that they use internally but I have a feeling this is as close as we'll get.

not really zigzag migration, maybe humans are already in Kryta before the Elona royalty and empires. Elona started to colonizing Native humans in Kryta, and when Kryta become independent started to conquering Ascalon. so the order is like this: 1. Human from the Mist teleported to Cantha. 2. The Gods mesmer teleport Humans to Orr. 3. Human from Orr started to migrating to north (Kryta) and south-east (Elona) 4. Royalty and empire started in Elona or Orr (not sure), 5. then Elonian empire started colonizing native humans in kryta 6. Kryta became independent and started to conquering Ascalon from the Charr.

I only wish the elder dragons had more of a personality. I know they're supposed to not really care about the world. They do their thing and if left unchecked maintain the balance of magic in the world. But creatures that massive and that old, clearly intelligent enough to make armies and recognize threats really should have more personality. Zhaitan, Primordius and Jormag were kind of just there. ANet did a much better job with Mordremoth, especially for Sylvari players. I hope Kralkatorrik follows in this model.

Honestly the movement of Kralkatorrik not being mentioned isn't that great of an issue. Mostly because of the way new players will perceive it. Their world map will be the latest world map, the one with Vabbi and such, so from the very start they will see that Kralkatorrik moved down into Vabbi. However if the movement of Kralkatorrik is then mentioned it's likely to cause some misinformation, where the players think Kralkatorrik has moved even further south.

Would Palawa Joko have conquered Istan with brute force? Because damming the Elon River wouldn't have hurt them very much, unless they relied to some extent on imported food from Kourna and Vabbi.

i want more cantha:(

u side-tracked a lot, helpful nonetheless. Thanks!

I really miss darker storys in guild wars 2. I just feel that the guild wars 2 Story is so shallow in comparison to guildwars 1. i really enjoyed story in the first game but i really cant get in to the guild wars 2 story.

I miss gw1 so bloody much ugh

Did someone say cantha!!!

I think the game would really benefit from an i game lorepeida. Similar to what they were working on the alpha, dunno why they cancelled it. Now their posting stuff In a random corner of the website pretty much to be referred to once. I've never read the Tyrian chronicles cause I found it inconvenient and not as immersive imo

I find it weird that we learn the Gods entered Tyria in Orr but decided ''Lets start the human civilization in this world from Cantha'' O.o Also, I really wonder how Palawa can't die...considering even the Gods and Elder Dragons, can. Palawa is not more powerful than either and yet he ''cannot be killed''. There must be some BS reason for that because even undead can be destroyed. There must be some phylactery or something that keep bringing Joko back.

Going to throw a bit of information right here, prepare for a wall of text. What I want to talk about, is how poorly the term 'desert' is viewed in the story, the discription by the people, as well as WP missing out on key concepts of deserts. First of all, there's different types of deserts, with keeping in mind that a desert is a place where vegetation has a hard time growing due to external factors and lack of percipitation (temprature, high pressure area's in the climate system etc.). Ergs, also known as the 'seas of sand', are very duney area's where pretty much nothing grows except for some locations where an oasis can form. This is the very archetypical desert most people know about. There's also rock deserts, which are very desolate areas where most often loose rocks are found in conjuction with mountainous parts and (of course) areas filled with.. sand. In my mind, this is actually what the Desolation might be. These two types might be the most important ones for the Elonian areas. There's also salt flats and cold deserts and something called a 'rainshadow' desert, which I'll come back to later. Now, the devs are poorly describing Elona as a desert. You're very right on the point of the Elon river bringing fertility to the land, as well as there are other influences, such as rainfall etc., as can be seen in Kourna and Istan in GW1, where lush areas actually DO exist. Therefore, Savannah's and Steppe's are actually key components to Elona as well. They are semi-arid, thus not a desert... So why the shit does this matter? Well, worldbuilding is important and if you're not doing it right and just create spaces on the fly, inconsistencies are bound to happen. This also flows into my theory as to how the Crystal Desert was formed. What if, during the conflict between the Six, Melandru made the landmass that is Elona (or the piece of crust at least) move towards the Krytan landmass? It would've made the Crystal Sea rise, and in term, cause it to evaporate. There's also the matter of mountains around the desert, which cannot just be formed randomly. While magic is a feeble matter in this and can explain the unexplained, I think movement of the world would have had something to do with this. Then, the deserts appearance can be explained due to the lack of rainfall, caused by the mountains - stopping rainy clouds in their tracks- causing rain to fall before hitting the desert. Well, I guess that's all I can think of right now. TLDR: Devs handle definition of deserts poorly and I have a theory about the desert.

anyone else think WP sounds like DanTDM? i have kids that watch Dan all the time, so im always hearing him. and to me, WP sound just like him. so i've had this head cannon that WP is some side channel of Dans lol

1:39 Did you see Turkey Flag?

Hey WP, if the crystal sea was destroyed during the battle and not after due to his power receding, do you think it could perhaps be the other way around? Maybe the gods had to deprive him of his power in order to bind him. What's an ancient spell that could perhaps be used to dry up some water and leaves crystals behind? Godly Proto-searing?! Also isn't there something that says humans arrived in Ascalon first? Or was that retconned?

yo, can we talk about what WP says at 20:10. This is the exact reason I have so much trouble getting into GW2s story. I want to care and this video reminded me of that but goddamn does Anet make it hard. It must suck even more for WP, being so invested in this games lore, it seems like the story writers are incompetent and they're going to write something boring and 'kidish' or poorly thought out and full of plot holes.

Don't we fight alongside Turai Ossa's spirit in the basement of the Priory when we do some research in LWS2? Edit: Why is 1328 Mordremoth relevant? He is on the far side of Tyria and his energy was absorbed mostly by Primordus and Jormag. What about Zaithan's death in 1325? Zaithan is way closer to Kralkatorrik than Mordremoth, yet Mordremoth is still more relevant? Dafuq?

Kourna is a desert region. Look up African geography. Look up USA deserts as well. The Sahara is an outlier.

You're really too picky about the word desert. A desert doesn't need to have dunes to be a desert, it just need to be very dry. It can also have vegetation that evolved in a way to survive in this environment, it could also be a Semi-Desert which isn't as dry as a desert and thus can easily have more vegetation.

I'm surprised you didn't know the Crystal Sea became a desert as a direct result of the war between the gods in the area. If I recall correctly, it was because the clash raised the elevation of the land itself.

"only one viable target left." Steve... they forgot Steve... *sigh*

Let's hope we don't have 200 years of Civil War after the Covid-19 pandemic. 😐

I wish I could complete gw1 but as a casual player he campaign is VERY difficult and lengthy and punishing (no checkpoints)

tatoLore

Abaddon did nothing wrong.

First

You know what would be good in my opinion? Balthazar kills Kralkatorrik, absorbs it's power and the world of Tyria will fall. Balthazar would go rampage on Divinity's Reach and for that, the gods would come back and with all the help, we kill Balthazar. Rytlock will become the God of War. :D sorry it's a story we never ever going to get, but it'll be interesting :D