Talk:Magic

Occultism & Magic

This [1] is some miscellaneous words about magic & occultism elements in MMORPG's --ICBM 16:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I fail to see the relevance to GW2. And didn't you put this up somewhere else before? Konig/talk 17:38, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

No he didn't post this anywhere else as far as I know. I briefly checked up his contributions. But chances are high that someone posted something similar to this.

Anyway if this doesn't go against the wiki rules just ignore it, and if it does tag it for deletion. That would be my advice on this, because discussions about this topic are usually really unhealthy. - Yandere 18:08, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

And when there came to them a messenger from Allah (Muhammad) confirming it was with them, threw a party for those who received the Scripture away the Book of Allah behind their backs as if they did not know! They followed what Shayaateen (devils) gave out (falsely of the magic) in the lifetime of Sulayman (Solomon). Sulayman did not believe, but Shayaateen (devils) thought, teaching men magic and such things as came down at Babylon to the two angels, Harut and Marut, but neither of these two (angels) taught anyone (such things) till they had said, "We are only for trial, so do not (by learning this magic from us)." And from these (angels) people learn that by which they cause separation between man and his wife, but they could not harm anyone except by Allah's permission. And they learn that which harms them and profits them not. And indeed they knew that the buyers of it (magic) would have no share in the Hereafter. And how bad indeed was that for which they sold their ownselves, if they only knew. (Al-Baqarah 2:101-102) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ICBM (talk • contribs).

Sources and Credibility

So after reading this article, which is much longer than its GW1 counterpart (which made me suspicious in the first place), I noticed that there's information that doesn't appear anywhere else here: (a large chunk of the History part, for instance). As such, until we get credible sources, I'll stamp it with Unreferenced and Citations Needed (or the closest equivalent, as I can't seem to get it to work). Uraziel 16:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Thruln

Editing the last section as it's most likely biased from the NPC's perspective and a people with verbal storytelling tradition and such a proud history (and being stuck in that pride) so it doesn't sound like hard facts. We only have Thruln's word for it, after all, and subjective information is nothing but speculation. Furthermore, he himself discredits what he has said: there have been gaps between storytellers, so who knows what's been lost/changed between one teller from another. Uraziel (talk) 21:34, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

McCoy

Putting this on top because it needs to be discussed. Though the interview is a month old by now, the people over on the official forums still make some excellent points regarding this rather large retcon. So the question is as follows: should we effectively remove the Bloodstone portion as, according to McCoy, it's "not in style" anymore to use it (and maybe move it to the History section since it's part of the past and not contemporary to characters in GW2) and work her new lore into the article? Or, and this is what I am in favour for: we don't, and hold off until we get some more information from Jeff or Ree that doesn't contradict previously established lore and handwaving the importance of dividing the Bloodstones? ... "Dogma", yeah right. Uraziel (talk) 00:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, in that same thread you linked, we got a comment from Regina saying that Jeff and Ree agree with what was said. Greatly sad. Konig 00:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... well, I better get on it. It's gonna take a day or two to work it in without making it sound like "but then SHE said...", but I'll do my best. Uraziel (talk) 16:38, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

There's quite a few errors in the article even when ignoring the interview (it takes Thrulnn the Lost as objective fact rather than using him as the subjective source he is - among a select few other things; something I'm unfond of but isn't necessarily wrong is the distinction of attributes - something shown only as mechanical thus far - as its own kind of magic). I was intending to get to it but recently forgot. x) Konig 17:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Uff, one thing at a time:) I thought I fixed the Thruln business... I'll add some words on that. Uraziel (talk) 17:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, maybe. I hadn't really read the article lately - last time I did honestly was when Relyck removed the rewrite tag when the article still needed fixing. Konig 17:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

There, done. It's not... not as seamless as I want it to be, but without actually removing the Bloodstone section (which I don't want to, as it is a major part of magic's history and the source of the Nightfall campaign), I can't do much more to work in this interview. I know it got a bit vague towards the end, though. Uraziel (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

that's kind of a cheap shot. If you thought removing the tag was wrong, you should have brought up the issue then. Blaming the issue on tag removal now is superfluous.--Relyk ~ talk < 18:30, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

You do realize that I was banned and thus could not bring up the issue then, right? And I wasn't really blaming the issue of tag removal but denoting that was the last time I saw the article. Konig 21:15, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Moving this to the bottom- wiki talk pages should proceed from oldest to most recent. When people go to a talk page they expect the most recently created section to be at the bottom. Seeing the most recent edits at the top of the page confused me a lot until I saw you'd put it there intentionally. 21:22, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) My vote is to put everything we know about "pre-retcon" magic on gw1:Magic, and scrap nearly everything in this article about Abaddon and the sundering of the Bloodstones. If we make it clear in the notes there was a retcon (without sounding too aggrieved, please) and use {{gww}}, that article will have all the information lost on this article and we won't be stuck trying to awkwardly reconcile two entirely incompatible versions of lore. --Santax (talk · contribs) 09:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Issue with your suggestion is that the interview doesn't really negate the old lore, and by old lore I include the Arab path which makes no sense to include on GWW. Konig 18:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

You're both right, really. Santax' course of action is the most logical one and most likely the one we will eventually have to take, unless we get some clarification from someone else. The problem, in an abridged version, is that McCoy's new information means that the Bloodstones doesn't matter anymore (if they ever did). Anyone can wield all four schools and bring about such terrible events as last time and Abaddon's actions were pointless... sigh. Honestly, I just don't know at this point. Uraziel 22:24, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Not entirely true. There is one way that the Bloodstones mattered but not modernly - in at least two possible ways: 1) since the Exodus and GW2 the natural world's magic had increased to the point where Bloodstone-magic became a lesser enough percentage of the world's magic that the schools began melding, or 2) that after release from the bloodstones the magic mingles with the ambient magic over time and with each other, thus directly from the bloodstones they are limited to the schools and if enough of it is used up they are as well, but if magic is not used up at a fast enough rate the magic mingles and thus the school's restrictions lower.

It's not an absolute contradiction as folks - myself included at first until after careful revisiting my revisit - make it out to be, but Angel does nothing to show that it isn't a contradiction, which is what really led to it. There are many ways to make it work as is, and I wouldn't doubt that they did. But in traditional ArenaNet fashion of telling some-but-not-all of the story, Angel ended up telling the wrong "some" and we took it as "all" since it feels like the some contradicts and retcons. But in reality, it is possible to make Angel's words without a contradiction. It's just too much of a guessing game to really feel certain. I'm out of town until Monday and thus on my laptop until then. I'll try to get a revision in then if I cannot while on my laptop. I think I have a solution to this issue but requires a full 100% rewrite (and not like Santax's suggestion in the /temp article which has irrelevant images and an IMO silly introduction ("lifeblood of GW2"? Tell that to Scarlet and all the tech we have been getting as plot devices!). Konig 04:25, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem with the ways you list the Bloodstone mattering is they come from following the rules we have been presented with thus far to their logical conclusion, which is fine, but as you said yourself, we don't know the full story, and so to make extensive inferences based on that information means that those inferences are speculative in nature, and for that reason I feel they'd be a very shaky foundation for what is actually a very important article.

But you are right to say that we have overestimated the extent of this retcon. The way I read it, the main thing that has actually changed is that the link between the Bloodstones and the schools of magic has been removed, and if we change all references to "magic being split into four discrete schools" into a slightly more nebulous "magic having its power reduced by the splitting of the Bloodstone", a lot of the work is done for us. These changes are a retcon since GW1, certainly, but things like the Arah path are not contradicted at all - I'm sure the nature of magic was nailed down before GW2's release, and so there is without a doubt a way to make all the stuff we know about magic since the release of GW2 internally consistent. We just need to be very careful to make sure we understand what's actually changed before we make huge revisions. --Santax (talk · contribs) 09:10, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, I was indeed speculating above, but I had absolutely no intention to include those possibilities on the article. I was just explaining why folks shouldn't be so fast to scream "bloody murder!" (aka "retcon!"). Secondly, I think you shouldn't be so fast to use the word retcon, Santax. You use it almost in everything. While it may be that things were retconned from a development standpoint, we cannot be certain and ArenaNet has - thus far, this Angel interview being the worst example - been very careful to not have old lore just simply "not exist" but rather that it is subjective truths. Which is a continued failpoint in your lore articles - you take any newer piece of lore, no matter how questionable, as a new fact rather than a questionable source of another opinion. Thirdly, I think you severely jumped the gun with your draft. But whatever. I can already see the path your edits will go if I don't just say "fuck it, good-bye" right now. So... Fuck it, good-bye. I'm too damn tired of trying working around your inconsistent way of "improving" articles. And I barely have had to do so since your edits. Konig 13:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Konig and Santax, can I please ask you not to turn this into something personal? Keep it civil, keep it on topic and above all, don't get into fights. Now I see that Santax has rewritten a lot of the article and included new pictures (are we sure it's ley-lines on the globe? and the Colossus? Isn't he more of the Mists than the magic of Tyria?), I notice that a lot of the original still survives: some part of me is happy at that, at least. I would however, propose that we DO NOT COPY AND PASTE from the article or word it so closely that it might as well have been. I notice this throughout the rewritten parts, and that is not what a wiki is about: if you want quotes, you quote.

And yes, some of us, myself included, were a bit quick to shout at McCoy (sorry, ms McCoy). Uraziel 21:25, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Just posting a note here - I rewrote the history section to show the "false" histories and the "true" histories, in a similar fashion as to Foefire, so that people have all the facts and not just the most recent ones. After all, who's to say that those scholars in Arah explorable aren't as wrong as human written record? Konig 19:26, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Weapon-focuses

In Sea of Sorrows, it is said that magic cannot be done without a weapon-focus (such as Verahd's staff or Macha's scepter, based on context). Dunno how to put it to the text though. Any other sources about this exist? Mediggo (talk) 19:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

"will look through "Practices and nature" later - on skim I see no mention of lore from SoS" [2] That was part of what I meant there, incidentally enough. When I get time between keeping my brain function between 3 hours of daily sleep and NaNoWriMo, I'll be adding that in. I don't think any other sources of it exist, though, beyond GW1 spellcaster weapons utilizing magic balls and (I think?) giving energy - which I think is also where the mention of runes woven into armor to give Verahd more magic comes from as well (gw1 spellcaster stuff giving energy, that is). Konig 04:51, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Of Magic - Let's get things properly communicated before rewriting

→ moved from User talk:Santax

"history section is inaccurate, we know more about the bloodstones and how magic was distributed from https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Angel-McCoy-Interview/page/3#post2821776. also the opening - magic is conserved, unlike what gorr thinks"
What is inaccurate of it? The Human Records section is for the GW1 portrayal which is loosely kept still as shown through NPCs like Samuel Cuttler; Jotun Records is Thrulnn the Lost's view - these are meant to be inaccurate from the objective view, because it is how people in Tyria view magic (much like how the Foefire article is written - with the human records and charr records both denoted). Priory discoveries is thus the "truths". The only thing that response really gives in that the gods released magic over a period oft ime and that all six gods were involved, which is shown in the Priory Discoveries section as "In the centuries leading up to the Exodus of the Gods, all of the Six Gods had felt it was safe to return magic to the world,". So what, pray tell, is it that's "inaccurate"?
On the second bit - we actually don't know that all magic is conserved. We don't know if the amount of magic that the Elder Dragons release is the same as what they consumed - similarly, we still don't know if magic truly is finite like Gorr claims (which wouldn't be contradicted to your comment in the edit summary, as he doesn't discuss magic conservation after being consumed by the dragons, but the total amount of magic in the world not being infinite). We only know that the level of magic decreases when the Elder Dragons are awake because they consume it, and when they hibernate they exude it. That first line is also not incorrect, because it does not talk about being conserved or not - this is, in fact, a topic for the Elder Dragon section, and is also covered there already, actually.
So where's these "inaccuracies" because I do not see them. Konig 00:15, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

First of all I wanted to say I'm glad we've done this. The foundation of human discourse may very well be misunderstanding, but when you're writing a wiki we should try to avoid that, especially when there's such a history of poor communication between us.

Although it's true to say we don't know for sure, magic probably is conserved and Gorr was just mistaken (or assuming it was unrecoverable) when he said that it isn't, since his model does not at all account for magic sweating back out into the world from the Elder Dragons (which if I recall correctly, we only know due to word of god). Unless you really think that Elder Dragons do something to magic to somehow remove it from the universe (and nothing has ever suggested that they do, not to mention the fact that their rise has happened multiple times), then the article should reflect that on balance, it probably is conserved (doesn't have to state it definitively), or we'd be doing a disservice. We should also probably note somewhere that we have no idea how magic interacts with the Mists (but not in the lead, since it isn't an important point).

In either event, the sentence "magic is known to be a finite resource", which is not the conventional view on things in-universe (as shown by Gorr's dialogue in A Bold New Theory), could potentially mislead people into believing that magic is not conserved. My suggestion would be to sidestep the issue entirely and change the wording to basically be as close to Angel Leigh McCoy's in this interview. It works alright as writing, and more importantly, was written by someone with access to lore that we don't have, so it could have hidden meaning or subtleties that we can't yet understand, but would destroy by rewriting. So the open would read something like, well

“

Magic is the lifeblood of Tyria. The entire world is infused with it, and it flows through everything via ley lines that criss-cross the planet. The natural role of the dragons is to keep this magic balanced. From time to time, in the long history of the world, the dragons have awoken and begun to draw the world’s magic into themselves, reducing the level of magic flowing through the ley lines.

"Magic is the lifeblood of Tyria" works way better than the current "Magic is a still-unclear force of nature in the world of Tyria". We're opening a lengthy article in a way that says "we have no idea what this is", and moreover says it badly. The "lifeblood" of Tyria is the first thing a writer, the person who decides exactly how magic works, would say when asked to explain magic, so I think we should use that as well. Is it ambiguous? Sure. Is magic somehow integral to the functioning of Tyria? Would the world wither and die without it? We don't know, but we don't have to because by using Angel's wording, we are inserting as little interpretation of our own as possible. And that's how we stop disputes like this from happening (at least when something is unclear enough that it requires interpretation), right? Next, it mentions ley lines, which were previously removed from the lead section but wouldn't you know it, later became massively important in the story (and this is what I'm saying, even by choosing what needs to go into the lead and what can be left to other sections, we are making a judgement on how important something is and we should try to avoid doing that whenever possible), and then it mentions the Elder Dragons (which are, you know, what the game is about) and how magic relates to them.

Looking again the history section looks, it looks fine in terms of accuracy, but is structured weirdly and could flow a lot better. At the very least it should be chronological, only splitting up into sections at the point of divergence (when the gods started handing magic out like ice cream, perhaps). But I'm not sure that's necessary - the jotun version of history, for example is relatively very small, and the only bit we're really uncertain of is the sentence "He also claims that the jotun and the norn races were once favored by the gods, and from them they received the gift of magic and technology. With this gift, their empire became vast and powerful. However, the Six grew to feel threatened by the giant races and rescinded their gift and instead granted it to the then-primitive humans". This could easily be integrated into another section, prefixed by something like "According to Thrulnn the Lost...". The rest is backed up by The Savage Pride of the Jotun. As for the human version of the history of magic, some of it (particularly the bits that are wrong) is irrelevant to a discussion on the history of modern magic. The bits that are interesting and give us some insight into current magic, such as the fact that Ritualists had ancestor worship as a form of magic before the gods unsealed the Bloodstones, and the fact that humans arrived in Tyria with little (but some) magic, should be kept, as can the sundering of the Bloodstones and Abaddon's war with the other gods (because as far as we know, that's how it actually happened). With all those bits accounted for, there's not actually much left, and then like that of the jotun, there isn't really enough to justify having a subsection on the human version of history.

Question: what else do you think we need in this article? We have the "Nature and practice" section, but I'm thinking that should be split up into two sections namely "Nature" (or "Description", or something similar) and "Practice", which would discuss its use by professions and the attitudes of the various races. We also now have Category:Magic, which contains things that are not even mentioned on this article. --Santax (talk · contribs) 19:00, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

"magic probably is conserved and Gorr was just mistaken (or assuming it was unrecoverable)" And right here is the issue. "probably" - speculation. The wiki is about facts and no fact points to it being conserved; speculation is to be kept off the wiki.

But as to dragons sweating magic back out; we know from GW1 too, though not explicitly stated for all Elder Dragons, and what I would argue is that because magic is energy, and movement (as well as generation of heat, breathing, etc.) consumes energy then the magic, the only source of energy for Elder Dragons, logically cannot be all expelled into the world - some of it has to be consumed in the movement and body heat of the dragons just like how all the energy you get from eating food and drinking doesn't all expel perfectly in your sweat, urine, and feces - you use some up in your actual daily activities, regardless of what they are. It would be, in fact, completely odd to believe that magic remains at a perfectly stable state but simply moves from point A (the world) to point B (inside the dragons). There's really nothing to say one way or another - to claim one side and disregard the other is pure speculation. And mentioning two sides but not the third or fourth which no doubt exist is further speculation. It is best to leave it unknown whether the level of magic is static of fluctuating beyond movement between dragon and world. So I would disagree, magic probably is not conserved. But since we cannot prove it one way or another, we cannot mention it one way or another until we can prove it - or we have NCPs claiming one way or the other. The safest way to bring this into the article is to say something along the lines of "many believe magic to be infinite, but Gorr has claimed that it is not and shown that Elder Dragons consume magic; however, Gorr's draco-whatever theory only attributes to half of the situation as Elder Dragon not only consume magic while awake but expel it while in hibernation. Whether the level of magic on a whole raises or lowers beyond moving between the world and within the Elder Dragons is unknown." Something like that is by far the least speculative route (that I can think of).

Even so though, conservation doesn't negate finite or infinite amounts - so the line you bring up as an issue is a different matter completely. A resource could be infinite and conserved - or a finite resource and conserved. In fact, conservation implies a finite resource if it continues to be usable - which magic is. So again, you're basically arguing "because 1+1=2, ABC is not the order of the alphabet." Arguing there's a contradiction when there is not.

In the end, however, it has always been practice to "follow what is said until otherwise told." And what we're told is that magic is a finite resource - we really have no clue what would happen when the Elder Dragons die. Will magic rise? Will it remain stable? Will it decrease (would be odd, but possible).

As for using Angel's wording. There's two issues I have with quoting even devs word for word unless they're responding directly by looking at their internal lore bible.

1. To quote Angel McCoy, "from time to time, you will find me or someone else on the team making a mistake" [3]. Even developers can get it wrong - can, have, and do even. I know a couple interviews even offhand where they have. While I'd hold a "what we're told is the case until told otherwise", I'm highly hesitant with ambiguous wordings. If it were obvious that we're quoting a developer verbatim such as the {{quotation}} template, then I'd be less against it.
2. Too many interpretations. While it may be best to leave interpretations up to the reader, as a wiki - and a popular one - it can result in a) someone rewriting to make it "more clear" and ending up doing something completely off the edge, or b) people will call it as fact when it's an issue of interpretation, resulting in the same issue we get when we put speculation (such as saying magic is conserved) on the wiki, resulting in someone else rewriting to make it clear that we do not know what's meant.

As such, it's best to leave it less ambiguous and more clear of what we do and do not know. Leave no room for misunderstanding the wording of the wiki - as you said in the beginning, miscommunication is something the wiki should avoid; ergo, wording that is open to multiple interpretations or misunderstandings, and therefore miscommunication, should be avoided.

And I would argue that leaving it "for reader's interpretation" in fact creates disputes - maybe not on the wiki, maybe so on the wiki, but either way they're created. And the wiki is to avoid disputes, hence the rule of no speculation.

Next, reorganizating. In general, I don't care much about how this is done so long as the facts remain the same. But I'd disagree with you on the history section - splitting it into sections only at the divergences would be massively confusing to me - especially since this isn't a flowchart here! What about after covering the divergences? We'll have "one situation" again, so we just leave it to the previous divergence section? Make a new section? This sounds overly convoluted. How it is done is fine, IMO. It is chronological - you get the chronology of human history, the chronology of jotun history, then the chronology of "corrections/accurate" history.

I disagree that some of the human history is "irrelevant". This is how even some modern humans view magic, so it should stay. And it isn't like the four schools are fully irrelevant - while Angel did say that they've fallen out of practice, they did hold sway over magic and its history and change over the centuries. I would argue that it is all relevant. Konig 20:53, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Scarlet is "probably" a sylvari and not a quaggan in a sylvari suit, but you don't require a dev quote before we can put that on her article. It's implicit. Now, your approach here is inconsistent, first you say that we should leave the question of whether or not magic is conserved completely unaddressed, presumably so people can make up their own minds, and next you state your discomfort for using a developer quote verbatim in case people interpret it, in your view, incorrectly ("leaving it "for reader's interpretation" in fact creates disputes - maybe not on the wiki, maybe so on the wiki, but either way they're created"). The point of the wiki isn't to avoid arguments on the lore forums, it's to document the game. To answer your point about developers occasionally making mistakes, yes, of course they do, everyone does, but we shouldn't assume that they are mistaken until proven otherwise (and how would you even prove that, without looking at their internal lore bible yourself?). We're happy to reference developer quotes and use them as the basis for articles (in doing so, adding our own interpretation to the wiki), how is this worse? Besides, in this case, the interview had received a thumbs-up from Bobby Stein, Ree Soesbee, Jeff Grubb, and Scott McGough before being sent off.

By the way, on the question of whether or not magic is conserved, your comparison to conservation of energy is a bad one, not because "energy" in the real world is dissimilar to magic in the GW-universe (actually the Seventh Law of Maginamics would suggest they work in a similar way), but because energy, globally, is conserved. Energy never really gets "used up" at all when you eat, drink, exercise, and go to the toilet - it just gets converted into different kinds of energy, like thermal or chemical, through processes like friction and digestion. And as to whether conservation negates finite or infinite amounts, it wasn't me who actually made that connection, it was Professor Gorr himself in A Bold New Theory. "The Seventh Law of Maginamics posits that magical energy cannot be destroyed. Today I will prove that magic is a limited resource like water, ore, or timber." - this only makes sense if Gorr believes that Elder Dragons destroy the magic once consumed, or that the magic is otherwise unrecoverable once consumed (if the Elder Dragons couldn't be killed, and didn't bleed it back out, this would work). But this is just an in-universe theory, and we have multiple accounts of word of god which contradicts this, as well as, as you say, the examples of Primordus and Zhaitan.

Splitting the history section at the divergences was just a proposal that would be somewhat better than the current structure (although still massively flawed), actually the structure I would favour would be several chronological sections, or one single section, either way telling a single story chronologically, noting the differences between different accounts when necessary. As the article stands, it tells the same story three times from different perspectives, but each perspective does not differ enough to warrant that (which I explained in my previous response). Especially since we know which version is "correct". --Santax (talk · contribs) 23:04, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Bloodstone creation

on the gw2 wiki "During the last rise of the Elder Dragons, the Seers, not wanting to see all the magic of the world consumed, created the first Bloodstone, sealing within it all the magical energies of the world that had yet to be corrupted."

on the gw1 wiki "King Doric, traveled to Arah to seek audience with the gods and begged at their feet for their compassion and to take back their gift of magic. The gods heard his plea and created the bloodstone, which limited the use of magic that the races could use, and then split it into five portions that represent the four schools of magic and a keystone "69.178.112.95 08:34, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

GWW does not include GW2 lore. The origins of the Bloodstone was retconned between games via 'false history'. Konig (talk) 13:37, 18 October 2016 (UTC)