Kinda Silly that...

Anyone thought it's kinda weird that the 20-30 or so heroes the world had, (even more counting henchies) could easily have crushed palawa, stopped the Charr, and save their respective faction with time to spare? I mean what are Undead when compared to Menzies, Nazi Emperors compared to Urgoz HM or Deep HM, and Charr compared to Titans?

I mean, granted. Orr was unpreventable as well as the rising of the dragons. But the rest should have been child's play.

Yep.

It's especially annoying that Ascalon falls while we're still alive.

Exactly. My primary character is from Ascalon and has crushed gods, demons, zombies, and the worst evils from the hellfires of the earth. Not to mention vanquishing Diessa, Draggons gullet, and the Breach. The Charr invaders probably weren't as powerful as what I faced. hell gimme a bonder and a spellbreaker monk for adelbern, dump him in front of ascalon city gate, and I probably could have won the battle. Maybe a p/mo for good measure.

QFT. At least wait until our characters are dead, damn it!

While I had the same response at first, looking at the dates, it does make sense.

The first of the disasters for humanity, the fall of Ascalon, happens 30 years after GWEN, which is in turn six years after the Searing. Assuming the average character starts adventuring at 18, Ascalonians would 56 at the time - still able to fight, maybe, but certainly past their prime. Canthans would be 54, and Elonians would be 51.

Emperor Usoku's tyrannism (is that a word? If not, I just made it up) started in 1127. By contrast, the Searing occured, from memory, in 1072. So that's 55 years after the Searing... Ascalonians would be reaching their 75th birthday, and the youngest, the Elonians, are around 70. Even by the standards of modern medicine, you'd be expecting them to have started dying of old age by this time, let alone remaining in fighting form.

Palawa Joko, on the other hand: It says "within sixty years of Kormir's ascension". Let's translate that as 60 years after the Searing... even the Elonians have reached the average lifespan according to modern medicine, so it's probably safe to say that around half of them have died of old age if we assume that magical healing is approximately as effective at modern medicine.

It looks to me like Palawa has essentially done what I predicted he'd do in an earlier thread - lie low and pretend to be a good neighbour (possibly even to the point of helping to defend against other threats to Kourna and Vabbi) until the current crop of heroes were too old to stop him, and then strike.

Good point Draxynnic. Plus as a warrior, I doubt my prime is much longer than EOTN. Think about professional sports players in contact sports. Their careers generally end pretty quickly. If an injury didnt get me, there would come a time where I just couldn't support my armor/shield/weapon. Sad, but true.

At 56 I highly doubt the ability to go toe to toe with a 20 year old (or the equivalent age) Charr.

We were off with Rurik dancing on Vatlaaw's corpse, rather than out killing the Charr.

But all games are this way, the armies fail and the main character(s) can take on everything.

We should still try to defend our lands. It seems, the way things are written, that several mini apocalypses occured over night between GW1 and 2, and we didn't do anything about them.

draxynnic, your point about Joko, I couldn't agree with it more. Wait until the current heroes turn old - especially since it feels like we're the only heroes, and nobody before or after us (aside from our GW2 chars, that is ) have the slightest chance of doing anything to help the world.

I think draxynnic pretty much nailed it, but there's another thing.... All the heroes are really spread out. The world may have 20-30 major heroes, but if they try to prevent everything bad from happening, then they would have to spread out across Kryta, Ascalon, the Far Shiverpeaks, Istan, Kourna, and all across Kaineng City leaving only 4-5 heroes in each general area. Each of those general areas is rather large, so the heroes would be spread very thin, indeed. That combined with their age and being well past their prime does not make for a very powerful league of heroes.

Rather, think of it this way. If our heroes weren't around at all during those years, things might have turned out much worse much faster. Or perhaps the heroes were busy delaying the other dragons from awakening as well or saving the world from some other major disaster that the rest of the world would never learn about. Perhaps most of our heroes even journeyed to the far east of Tyria in search of new lands and new peoples during some of these disasters and by the time they returned the situation was too bad for them to redeem it.

Lots of things could have happened, but I suspect a great deal of the missing in-between story will be told within GW2. After all, much of human history has been lost by the time GW2 begins, so I think one of our tasks will be to recover some of that lost history.

Indeed. GW2 has tossed us humans aside like rotten cabbage.

But the SUNSPEARS! In Elona, the Order and the Sunspears should be able to fight Palawa to a standstill.

And the headmasters of Shing Jea were brilliant and powerful. Hell a good number of the Henchies were them. Not to mention the Canthan Guilds. And that doesn't even include the Factions.

And in Tyria... The Ebon Vanguard? Did they just vanish? The lionguard? Combined with the Ascalon armies, I believe they could have stopped if not beaten the Charr. And I find it hard to believe that the mighty Forgotten and their constructs would have bent easily to Palawa. Afterall, they are an extraordinarily powerful, magical race.

30/3 = 10 heroes not counting henchies each. Maybe a disproportionate amount in favor of Tyria and Elona, with more henchie heroes in Cantha.

That one at least can be fairly easily explained: The Forgotten, at least those in or near Palawa's territory, got virtually wiped out by the Margonites. We don't know how those to the north fared, but it seems reasonable that if they didn't go to help their cousins to the south they had a darn good reason not to. I'd guess they simply didn't have the numbers to offer Palawa any significant resistance, and any survivors probably just laid low in order to pick a more important fight.

Keep in mind that it was humanity that overthrew the order the Forgotten were originally brought to Tyria to preserve - they probably don't figure they owe humanity anything. Heck, they may even have petitioned the gods that they weren't even remotely able to fulfill their roles any more and asked if they could just go home...

Well, the reason the Searing happened was because the Ascalonian army was stretched thin after the Guild Wars. Read the manual

"For many generations the Sun Spear were the guardians of peace and justice in Elona. Before the dark times, before the return of Palawa Joko. A young Sun Spear named Koss Z. Jenkins III, helped Joko hunt down and destroy the Sun Spear." - Morgahn Jr

Lol, I would laugh so hard if it really turn out like that. As for the Order of whisper, their pve only skills won't work on the undead so they ran away and hide.

Who wants to save nations when we can be at the Battle Isle shouting '4k for cyber partner' or in Lion's Arch spamming 'WTS ectos 5k'

The Battle Isles went kaboom.

Lion's Arch is still there, though.

It will be interesting seeing these post-apocalyptic versions of old GW areas though. Kind of like how it was neat seeing how similar Old Ascalon and <that explorable area in pre-searing with Ashford Village> were.

God...I've forgotten the name of that area. What is wrong with me?

Nothing's wrong with you.. I had to google it myself! Doh!

but then again its kinda silly that there are thousands of players, why cant they all take palowa on at once. its a game..just accept it as it is.

i think that the heros just become too old. there would be no point in ressing after it had died because they would still feel like crap.

Haha, tens of thousands of geriatric heroes, too weak to lift their Brute Swords, standing on the Great Northern Wall watching the Charr come charging.

Adelburn has the right idea there, when you're old, use an FDS cos its all lightsabrey.

I think the Sunspears all became reconstruction workers, and were caught offguard by Palawa Joko, as they were rebuilding the mosaic in the Garden of Sebohin.

"What? You mean <insert Character Name> did not kill Palawa Joko when he/she had the chance?!?!"

Agreed. If a mere human can
1) save the world four times over
2) destroy an army of titans
3) send a tormented soul back to the Mists
4) kill a god (and his 5 most devout followers [Mallyx, Dreadspawn, Jadoth, The Fury, and The Grater Darkness])
5) save the whole world from a raging fiery end
6) and much more, why could he or she not simply gather their friends, pounce all over the charr to keep Ascalon, walk over the Mantle in Kryta, annihilate the destroyers, and save the world several more times?

It makes no sense that a person could accomplish so much in 8 years (Story wise, not real life.), and yet, others of their quality, maybe even greater, let the world down. Were the millions of truly "chosen", but the world in 250 years is SoL with no true heroes?

As ridiculous as it seems, it's what needs to happen to set the story. I don't like it, but it'll come out for the better, I hope.

It like a balance For all the good we do something evil must going to balance it out