Getting up to speed with lore

[Fhi]

Hi everyone,

I just bought Guild Wars to try it out, and it looks fun so far. My friend who introduced it to me is a roleplayer, and I may want to join her in roleplaying once I get used to the game. I know nothing about the lore though. Right now I am just randomly page hopping on the wiki, but is there a more efficient way to read up on the game's lore? Most importantly, the basic stories that every Tyrian denizen should know (like the 5 dragons).

[Karizee]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/c...n_the_massive/

Wooden Potatoes does a lot of lore videos
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...be.Up-zQt310HU

[Smitzelplix]

There are two books out right now that take place before the game, but the events in the books have lasting affects on the game. The two books are Edge of Destiny and Ghosts of Ascalon.

[Fencers]

Could also, like, play Guild Wars 1.

[Valeron]

Could also, like, play Guild Wars 1.

no one has time for that

[Forsedar]

Could also, like, play Guild Wars 1.

But... the graphics...

[Kelesti]

But... the graphics...

It's what you get for playing a Warrior? Also the effects themselves weren't that bad. Not quite the polish of a modern day MMO but a well established art style that held everything together.

Art style is worth more than just ultra-realism.

[Forsedar]

It's what you get for playing a Warrior? Also the effects themselves weren't that bad. Not quite the polish of a modern day MMO but a well established art style that held everything together.

Art style is worth more than just ultra-realism.

It was more or less a crack at the ugly obsidian legs haha. I, too, am interested in getting up to speed with lore again... though I don't feel like playing through GW1 or else I'd force myself to complete everything to get the awesome sauce titles.

[Fhi]

Ooh thanks for those links and videos. Quite a bit to keep me occupied. I ran around the world and saw people RPing in the open. This is great.

[Rhywolver]

Instead of playing GW1 for the lore, you could just play GW2. The personal story might be boring but it gives you an overview what's happening int the world of Tyria from your characters point of view NOW, and not 300 years ago.

Besides, the lore you find in GW1 isn't that important for races besides humans.

[Deleted]

You'll get a lot of lore from the zones themselves.

Things to take into account:
You've done an event. Don't run off! Stay with the npcs for 30 more seconds, many have speeches or start further events that tie a story together.
When you see 2 npcs talk, stop and read/listen, some have important lore tidbits about the world in their speech.
Talk to everyone. Seriously, I remember when I visited Lion's Arch, Arenanet had this horrible idea of putting speech bubbles for every npc, so it showed like you could talk with them all if you moused them even if they were all named Villager or Noble or whatever. And they all had the same replies... except 4 of them. 4 of them had special speech options, even if they were named just like all the other Villager or Noble or all others. And they gave me a bit of lore. But if you don't have time to speak with all the nameless npcs, at least speak to the named ones. And remember, when they're speaking, you can't speak to them, so wait for their speech to end and try to speak to them again. Same thing applies for walking.

Many speeches have actual ideas of things to do. If an asura tells you there's truffles in the forest and he'd like one... well there's truffles in the forest even if said truffles are on the other side of the map! And if you bring him/her one (no heart/event/quest) he/she will thank you and have some relevant information. Not all speeches have hints of stuff to do though. I was some time ago in Kasarang Wilds and some npc kept speaking about the evil pink moa.... so I ran around the zone like 3 times trying to find pink moas hoping there might be some interesting lore relating to something. There were no pink moas on the map.