Lore question: are human gods truly that useless?

StingKing456 · 2021-11-14T14:58:04+00:00

Brings humanity into Tyria

Gives them magic and then fucks everything up

Refuses to elaborate

Leaves

Tulki · 2021-11-14T11:47:36+00:00

They fucked up with Abaddon and magic, so decided to leave. Then they relised the dragons might still be able to reach their realms if they stayed in contact with Tyria (Kralk does exactly this) so they “leave” again. To where, or how it’s beyond the reach of dragons we still don’t know. (This is very much the same thing a certain maligned ancient race did, who also ironically pretended to be human gods - so what exactly makes the gods any better than Mursaat at this point?).

But yes, they’re pretty useless and their constant infighting has done nothing but mess things up for Tyria.

They’re just faulty cogs in the eternal alchemy, nothing more.

LITF · 2021-11-14T15:13:38+00:00

I actually didn’t mind Kormir in the first Guild Wars, but the way she is presented in GW2 is just absurd.

She’s been a god for like 200 years, a drop in the ocean compared to the others, and all she does in that time is builds a following for herself and sticks around just long enough to chastise us asking for help. She then leaves as if she has no concept of what being a mortal is like or what stupid conditions the Gods have thrown upon us, or the situations they left us in (Dhuum, Balthazar, the Elder Dragons).

Like, nothing. She doesn’t even bother procuring a powerful blessing or relic to help us stop Balthazar, a bloodthirsty force that she had a hand in creating by removing him from the pantheon. Literally can’t even give us directions. It’s kind of insulting that the characters for some reason thank her for the useless interaction, and the departure is hilariously cowardly. Were the writers playing a joke on us doubling down?

KablamoBoom · 2021-11-14T12:41:10+00:00

Balthazar was gonna kill Kralk and almost did--if not for those meddling kids and their damned dog!

Kossage · 2021-11-14T22:48:55+00:00

The gods are not useless at all. In fact, Dwayna and Melandru both promoted peaceful coexistence in Tyria but their wisdom was not heeded. The gods have both a good and darker side to them as you would see e.g. in the Finnish and Greek pantheons among others, and their big flaw is that they misjudged humans' and other races' greed which led to many tragedies (e.g. the Ancient Weapon leveling a city, the misuse of the Foefire ritual, the gifting of magic causing terrible wars out of greed, the war between Margonite and Forgotten zealots, subjugation and extermination of nonhuman races etc).

Ultimately the gods came to realize that they had to stop meddling with humanity's affairs as in many ways human overreliance on gods was a bad thing and every act of helping had both a positive and a negative side. We know that gods deeply cared for their followers as can be seen with e.g. Lyssa's heartwrenching story of being forced to leave the village of Wren where she had lived for some time and join the other gods in Arah while she shed many tears along the way, or the tragic relationship between Dwayna and Malchor that drove the latter insane. Devs have even pointed out that gods are basically parents who realized they had to let their kids go and live their own lifes which, along with finally finding Abaddon's replacement, was their reason for distancing themselves from Tyria.

However, what the gods did "wrong" in my opinion was not leaving crucial information to their followers about why they had to leave and to give instructions on how to handle the rise of the Elder Dragons that they knew was imminent as per the intel their Forgotten servants had gathered thousands of years ago (as per the elder race alliance with dwarves, jotun, mursaat, and Seers). When the gods left deeper into the Mists (as a kind of second exodus) sometime after GW1, they didn't bother informing their followers about their intentions, or then those followers seemed to misunderstand the gods' decision. This led to unfortunate tragedies such as Desmina growing bitter over Grenth "fleeing", Freezie getting heartbroken over Dwayna abandoning him, and druids starting to panic when Melandru no longer answered their prayers among other things.

I can totally buy gods not wanting to interfere with Balthazar as most of the gods remained unaware that he had broken free (as they had already departed deeper into the Mists by the time Balthy began his rampage), and that they didn't want to risk wiping out all life in a clash with the Elder Dragons even though they would've likely won due to acting as a team.

What makes little sense to me, however, is why Kormir was so needlessly cryptic in her interactions with the Commander's party: she vaguely guided the group in the right direction (answers found in the desert without elaborating on the goal being Kesho) and that they already had what it took to take down Balthy (without her never flat out stating that Sohothin was that key all along as elaborated by one of the writers on reddit later on). I can buy this cryptic attitude, however, if Abaddon and his predecessor's remnants (that exist within Kormir) were already negatively influencing Kormir without her necessarily realizing it or even if she was fully aware of it and being deliberately vague so events would play out as she desired; after all, the optional achievement even calls her the Goddess of Secrets mirroring fallen Abaddon's title. There is even the mad souls' prophecy which states that Kormir will one day finish the work Abaddon (and presumably his predecessor) began and cause the downfall of the gods...whether as a flat-out villain succumbing to madness/Torment or as an antihero trying to save the realms from the other gods (in case they end up succumbing to Torment instead) remains to be seen.

"A new god is born! A god that will destroy the others and bring about the end of the world! The cycle begins again!"
"Kormir. How brave you were to join us in the Realm of Torment. How mad you were to choose to never leave."
"When you walk dark paths, you open your mind to nightmare. Poor Kormir, poor sad goddess raised up to the stars, cursed to see only infinite blackness between them...." (Source)

More importantly, Season 4 and especially The Icebrood Saga proved (via the Aurene/Kralk prophecy and the Jormag/Primordus/Chosen Norn prophecy) that prophecies are not as the Pale Tree thought (that we can change the outcome with our choices); instead, prophecies are predestined and unavoidable (Aurene couldn't avoid her fate no matter what, and neither could Primordus and Jormag), so we're all pawns of prophecies and free choice doesn't really exist per se despite Kasmeer trying to reassure Braham to embrace his path with his choices.

Kormir's journal troublingly reveals that not only is the gods' focus greater than Tyria (as they have responsibilities elsewhere, which might tie to the potential existence of god-killers threatening the realms of the Mists as teased in GW2 anniversary art book's Xotecha lore) but that Tyria's destruction is inevitable, in other words it appears to have been prophesied long ago. And as we can see with the Kralk and Primormag prophecies, there's nothing we can do to change what the greater cosmic "machine of fate" (or a grand cosmic architect or whatever is the true source of all the prophecies) has dictated long ago.

Knowledge is a protean thing, ever growing and expanding. My librarians work ceaselessly to record it all and keep it in order. As the living record of everything that ever was, we can do no less.
The end of my time here approaches, and I find my thoughts straying. Perhaps Lyssa was right to mock me for lingering behind.
The destruction of Tyria is inevitable, yet there is a part of me that still remembers what it was like to be mortal—what it is to hope.
I hate to leave my homeland, my people, and my memories behind. But I am no longer a Spearmarshal, no longer a citizen of Elona...no longer human. And my responsibilities extend far beyond this world. (Source)

Perhaps Kormir learned this information from Abaddon or his predecessor's memories (as, according to Orrian history scrolls, only Abaddon remembered what happened in the Mists prior to gods' and humanity's arrival on Tyria) and realized that we can't fight fate. In other words, this might explain Glint's worried thoughts in "Crystalline Memories" about why the gods are keeping her in the dark regarding her Legacy project if the gods knew that her Legacy project of replacing the current Elder Dragon balancers with more benevolent entities is only a temporary solution to stall the inevitable.

Glint: The Forgotten told me much, but not everything... What did they tell the Six? What do the gods know that I do not?
Glint: So much is unclear, but I'm out of time. I must keep my faith, and hope that my children will carry on my legacy. (Source)

If the gods return to Tyria, I hope the writers will answer why the gods kept both Glint and their human, druid, spiritual etc. followers in the dark all this time. The existence of the Scroll/Tome of the Five True Gods (which contained information about the six Elder Dragons) wasn't enough, especially if it was only discovered recently during the Zhaitan campaign. Is the gods' silence related to the fact that they don't want to give false hope when Tyria's destruction looms near according to the cosmic prophecy? Even if so, the gods have a lot of explaining to do, and I hope the writing can salvage the confusing rewrites of PoF story (we can e.g. hear variant lines for Balthazar and Kormir in the PoF and S4Ep1 trailers, respectively).

I've not been a fan of witnessing a growing faction among devs just treating gods as inconsequential or as targets waiting to be killed (e.g.one dev's desire to let us go hunt down the gods for abandoning us even though we have historical evidence of the Six Gods doing just as much good for Tyria as any force). I don't mind the writers showing the gods to be flawed as such is also the case for pretty much each IRL pantheon, but I'd prefer a more nuanced take than just a simple "old gods bad, Aurene good" narrative.

I do wonder if the prophecies about Tyria's destruction and Kormir causing the deaths of the gods will be elaborated on or if such grim outcomes can yet be averted if we find the cosmic "machine of fate" or the grand architect dictating prophecies (Koda?) and managed to change our destiny...hopefully for the better rather than remaining as pawns of prophecies forevermore. :)

SnowyHere · 2021-11-14T20:13:03+00:00

There are hints that Lyssa bamboozled all the other gods and stayed on Tyria while they think she left with them so.. we can still have some gods story in the future.

Not to mention that the other gods left Tyria to look for a new home for us.

Overall gods are not more or less useless than Spirits of the Wild, Asuras [and their Eternal Alchemy when they decided to boost Jormag], Charr with their Civil Wars and warmonger nature or Sylvari that came from ED. Everyone is flawed.

Lucyller · 2021-11-14T11:45:39+00:00

God weren't useless centuries ago, but they understood each time they tried to help humans, they were just f'king it up more and more.

With time, they just decided to stop intervening and leave. The decitions was taken before gw2 and kormir was just the last one to leave, giving a little bit of information to the commander.

During gw1 the gods (shrine) were also how you could keep dying without actually dying.

There still seems to be a lot of following among the humans despite all of the above, or am I wrong?

There's also a lot of following on the IRL gods, even without much proof for the last 2000 years.

And compared to us, they know the gods exist and "could" do something at any moment.

edit: as the others mentionned, the gods are also made of magic and dragons consume magic. It was a losing war for them and was better to let the humans do it.

serow081reddit · 2021-11-14T11:45:57+00:00

Aren't they equal in power to the elder dragons? And intentionally stopped fighting the dragons because the fallout was destroying the whole continent?

random_english_guy · 2021-11-14T19:15:28+00:00

I always considered Abaddon the most useful before he was imprisoned and driven insane, since then they are just people watching puppies in the windows going "oh that's nice" but mostly ignoring them and not giving them a better life.

Storyteller_Valar · 2021-11-15T11:37:15+00:00

They are not useless, they are evil. When we solve the Dragon Crisis, they will come back and try to rule again. Mark my words.

jhorry · 2021-11-14T16:51:29+00:00

Technically speaking, outside of Engineers, every single profession would not exist at their current power, without the original gift of magic from the Gods.

That said, this gift is also what heavily fucked over humanity and many other races as well due to the Blood War, the Searing, and imbalances of magic that awoke the dragon cycle early and far more frequently.

The gods are like Bender in that episode of Futurama. If he did too much or too little help, or intervened too often, it always had horrible consequences for his people.

If you view their actio s solely from their perspective:

Abadon was their leader. He wanted for some reason to give mortals more power, and did so without really getting consent from the other gods. Went behind everyone's back and did this with the charr and caused the Searing and Foefire and sinking of Orr.

Fighting Abbadon directly cost Tyria greatly.

They sealed him away.

You can blame all the gods, sure, but ultimately it was strictly Abbadon.

So the gods simply acted as power suppliers for their believes and little more going forward, even to eventually deal with Abbadon.

Doing anything more risked significant consequences.

Fast forward to GW2 and it is the same situation.

If they directly intervened with the dragons, it puts Tyria at more risk.

Most of the gods did not wish to do this, but Balthazar did. So they sealed him away before it could be Abbadon 2.0.

It is literally RYTLOCK'S fault for releasing him, even if unintentionally.

Everything in PoF boils down to that.

If the gods directly intervened they could cause more collateral damage, or worse, if consumed by Kralkatorik, would have ended the entire GW2 universe.

We saw how juiced up Kralkatorik became with just a slightly recharged God could be.

If they had remained in their realms, Kralk could have consumed them.

Knowing they posed a greater risk to everyone by remaining or providing aid, leaving and trusting Tyrians to save their own world was the right choice.

I hope we get further developments in EoD.

We still do not know what the gods and humans fled from to cause them to immigrate to Tyria, and if thay is perhaps where they returned to.

We don't know WHY Balthazar NEEDED that draconian power or wished to war the dragons, and was fine sacrificing Tyria to accomplish this.

My hunch is that what ever caused the initial migration I'd very powerful. The gods at their current power are incapable of facing what ever the situation is back on their home world. Balthazar and perhaps even Abbadon see Ed to want power to DO something with it.

silverniterequiem · 2021-11-14T13:01:49+00:00

long story short with the gods doing anything above lightly breathing is this: have you ever used the entire US nuclear arsenal to kill a singular housefly? the ONLY god that seems to be able to not cause a cataclysm by just existing is lyssa, and even then she may just be talking through illusions of her. the last time they did anything, they ended up turning an ocean into the crystal goddamn desert.

kainneabsolute · 2021-11-14T21:05:55+00:00

It is like the Titans vs the Old Gods in WoW. When the Titans destroyed an Old God thry damaged thr planet a lot. Thus they discarded direct intervention...however...the Titans created servants to keep intervening. Did the the Gods of Gw2 did something similar? The dragons are clever enough to use champions...

mandala30 · 2021-11-15T01:44:28+00:00

My educated guess at this point is that they can’t really use magic in Tyria without consequences. There’s just too much magic and they can’t afford to put any more into the system. I think EoD will be somewhat of a climate change allegory, so to fix the dragon cycle we have to find new ways to store the magic, similar to the bloodstones. The gods seem useless because they decided at some point they had to stop pumping magic into the world. Balthazar clearly didn’t get the memo, but I’m sure Kormir wasn’t keen on dumping all her magic along with Balthazar’s into Tyria, so she told us to fix it.

Dragonstorm was a huge no no, so we’re going to have to solve whatever magical crisis is in store because we lost all that magic.

Varorson · 2021-11-15T16:52:11+00:00

It is less that they are useless, and more that in the ancient history of the world the Six Gods came to realize that when they take direct action, they fuck shit up bad because of how powerful they are.

There's plenty of lore of them doing good things, for example Dwayna had helped set up monasteries and charities in Cantha, while Melandru had regrown desolate landscapes through terraforming, but none of these are combative. Because they can't help but bring a nuke at the bare minimum to a gunfire.

The first and last time they fought directly, they accidentally turned the Crystal Sea and its verdant jungle coast into a desert and toxic wasteland respectively. Ever since then, they feared taking any combative action in the world where their powers causes mass destruction. It's hard to save a nation when your weakest weapon is an H-Bomb and the enemy is on the nation's border.

For Kormir specifically, though her help ended up being useless in the longrun, she had provided blessings to the Sunspears fighting Joko. While Joko won in this end, this helped keep Sun's Refuge secret from Joko's forces and allowed the Sunspears to survive in the end; Tahlkora was also immune to Joko's control, and Koss capable of resisting his commands if only a little. All of this ended up being a huge boon to the Sunspear's survival until GW2 - without Kormir, the Sunspears would have been thoroughly wiped out between the two games. So not entirely useless. And her blessings on Sun's Refuge ended up helping Aurene, the Commander, and Elonians survive Kralkatorrik's assaults during Season 4.

Gunnho · 2021-11-14T18:41:54+00:00

theyre no different to irl gods then, supposed to be all powerful, have done fuckall for the planet in the history of man. most notable theyve done is destroyed cities drowned the planet once.

MemoriesMu · 2021-11-14T15:14:51+00:00

Gods that don't do anything? Sounds better than destroying 99% of humanity with a tsunami and killing thousands of people during wars.

Astral_Poring · 2021-11-14T14:56:08+00:00

They used to be very, very important in the past, with their every intervention having very visible consequences. For example, the whole Charr-Human war was a showcase of who had divine blessing at the moment. When Humans were operating under Balthazar's guidance, and utilizing divine magic against Charr, they managed to defeat them at their leasure, pushing very deeply into Charr teritories. Even when gods stopped giving more direct help and stood back, Charr still weren't strong enough to retaliate. It was only after Abaddon lend Charrs a helping hand and a magic of their own that they managed to push Humanity back. And then unleash the Searing, which was also powered by divine magic.

It was only after that, in GW2, that devs decided to completely write the gods out of the narrative.

So, it's not that human gods are useless. It's that Anet devs don't like them and thus started to intentionally downplay their powers and influence, in order to make them irrelevant.

Hellindium · 2021-11-14T11:50:28+00:00

They don't want to get 'involved' in affairs of Tyrians but occasionally helped (If I remember correctly).

Gods had an interesting lore but it seems like the devs have not built up a lot on their story other than Balthazar.

I don't know what to really think. I mean 2 elder dragons died like chumps. Gods have been mostly silent (there's no replacement for Balthazar but Dhumm was replaced through nepotism). As far as I remember they didn't interact when when Kralk invaded their realms.

I feel they are useless.

CrescentDusk · 2021-11-14T17:03:12+00:00

In GW2 they pushed hard for their multicultural Benetton ad specifically their favorite race (charr).

So all human centric storylines had to be expunged to give protagonism to their precious charr. The charr even cannibalized the norn storyline with Jormag. The sons of svanir discarded for some uber powerful charr instead.

Norn completely sideliner after the Bjora Marches. Asurans and dwarves eclipsed out of Primordus.

All so we could have some charr family drama.

Raknel · 2021-11-14T15:28:18+00:00

They need to be useless because the entire GW1 lore was built around the human gods but then Anet said "fuck it, we'll add more playable races" so now they've decided to put all the GW1 lore throgh an industrial shredder to prop up the other races. Gods were the first to be sacrificed for that.

Careless_Wait8620 · 2021-11-14T17:10:33+00:00

From what I felt in the story , the only god that helped but not even directly was grent , because he had great followers. A lot of missions included grent followers that saved the day! Other gods mainly acted against us… lyssa and her fucking mirror , balthasar(duh!) , the tree-boy druids in draconis mons kinda helped , but were also assholes and they then asked me for 18,000 rune stones so -5points for Melandru? Don’t even remember what god they were with… And yeah , kormir was in her room, eating chips while watching us and doing nothing… she was even late when the other gods left.

Note: Make the titans great again!!!

Guildwars1996 · 2021-11-14T11:46:28+00:00

No they aren't useless

ComfyFrog · 2021-11-14T18:41:00+00:00

Read your post again, but now instead of gw2 gods think of real life. Should make sense now, especially your last question.

There still seems to be a lot of following among the humans despite all of the above, or am I wrong?

Eveeeeeeee · 2021-11-14T18:03:33+00:00

The gods aren't useless. The story is now turning in their direction, revealing why they have hidden themselves from the mortal races. They aren't just concerned for humans, they embrace all of the races and aid them all utilizing clandestine techniques.

Sankyu39Every1 · 2021-11-14T22:30:19+00:00

Yes human gods are useless for Tyria as a whole.

Why do they still pray although they do nothing...? "It's called faith."

Kipados · 2021-11-14T17:14:48+00:00

The meta explanation is that when the decision was made to let you play as five major races in GW2, human supremacy needed to end.

The ingame explanation is that the gods, who are so absurdly powerful that their true form blinds mortals, they’re usually occupied with bigger affairs than the world (various wars between them and their kin in the Mists), and they run on bonkers god logic (like Grenth being mad at his mom for trying to end winter every year), decided to not blow up the world in all out warfare with the dragons. So they left us to defend ourselves until they find a new world for their human followers instead of killing us all immediately. It’s also entirely possible that they know killing the dragons would end the world anyway even if they did it carefully.

Starseedwarrior · 2021-11-14T19:41:49+00:00

You gotta remember they make short cuts to lore there is no point in taking it to seriously the point of gw is wars as in the excuse to create lore struggle and conflicts to explain the massive amount of world events.

mgm50 · 2021-11-14T23:23:05+00:00

To be fair, they kind of had to be toned down from GW1 in order for the Spirits of Norns and Asuran/Charr technological prowess matching human capability. If they kept intervening humans kind of should have more of an upper hand.

About them leaving: their realms still remain (if it was even "their realms"... maybe they just found or conquered parts of the Mists) and will probably be taken/fall apart in time, e.g Kormir's library will likely succumb to torment and the Underworld is ruled by Desmina as per raid wing 5. Balthazar's realm might be ruled by Menzies if that one is still alive, and so on for the unknown fates of other realms - the point here is that their presence doesn't change access to their realm's magic.

Their prayers and temples also function in the same manner - as in not functioning that much (lol). I might have to check on Divinity's Reach dialogues again but I recall they were already pretty absent in relation to GW1 (shrine resurrection and direct blessings were a thing). This would not change things like shrines enabling teleportation if it just channels magic from their realm for instance. As for people still praying for them...well, this happens with our own absent ones, no names to be mentioned on this post :P what I mean is, they're certainly not useless from the cultural and faith point of view, even if they disappear forever.

And finally I am convinced Abbadon had the foresight to realize humans would contribute to the end of the dragon cycle and still wait for him to yet appear or be referred to somewhere down the line because this cheap behind curtains reveal is pretty much his role on lore

Klepshydra · 2021-11-15T05:53:53+00:00

Gods being gods. Even in our world there was/is no interaction with humans.

Kalavier · 2021-11-15T11:24:14+00:00

Kormir being useless in GW1 is a funny statement considering that she was BLIND for most of it.

As for the gods, they aren't useless. They simply stopped stepping in personally to fix everybopdy's shit. It's why i laugh at people screaming about Kormir not getting involved in GW2, because... in GW1 the most involvement the gods actually had was Dwayna grabbing a dwarf's soul before he died, and.... them giving a pep talk to the heroes before Abaddon.

In GW1 and GW2 the gods are real, and powerful creatures. But they chose not to get involved personally after Abaddon. For relevant information, the crystal desert used to be the crystal sea.

Until they had their smack down with Abaddon, which ruined the entire landscape. They started letting humans make (and fix) their own problems then. They left because they feared trying to fight the dragons would result in massive damage to the planet, also the fact they are beings made up of magic facing monsters who eat magic. Some theories from in game stuff has that they actually were seeking a new planet to claim, and bring humans with them again.

TheReaperAbides · 2021-11-15T13:34:59+00:00

Considering that a large part of GW1 was dedicated to curbstomping a god, and canonically (afaik) GW1 characters are a fair bit weaker than GW2 characters.. Yeaaah.

They didn't do too much in GW1 either, other than exist, give us neat little buffs, and in the case of two gods open their realms for us to raid for loot.

As for revering them.. Norn revere their own form of gods, the spirits of the wild, Asura revere the Alchemy, and a huge plot point of Charr lore is that "there are no gods for the Charr" .

MayaSanguine · 2021-11-16T00:51:20+00:00

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

The Gods helped as much as they could with Humans initially. Obviously they were shephered from another realm (a lore tidbit a lot of people forget!) and that Balthazar had to "cleanse" Orr before it could be properly habitable; given that animals like gorillas seem to be native to the continent, much of it was probably harsh and uninhabitable jungle before the Gods pulled a Tiber Septim all over it.

And they then decided, for whatever reason, that Humans should have magic, too.

Bad decision, obviously.

Perhaps the Gods saw that the more they tried to help, the worse they made things for their worshippers. Or perhaps they learned some unknowable truth that prompted their leave to the Mists and away from the affairs of Tyria. Whatever the real reason is, they're gone...but humanity has barely noticed, apart from perhaps the Gods' most fervent believers and those most attuned to them.

But the funny thing, faith in a thing is oftentimes a good of a substitute for—if not outright better than—the real thing.

The Temples will still have their priesthood and their followers. The Gods will still be worshipped. But the faith in them will be what drives the strength of their respective magics; Necromancers honoring their contracts with Grenth will be just as potent as Necromancers who don't believe, or as potent as the Necromancers of races without a direct parallel to Grenth. Menders following Dwayna will still have their healing magics work to the touch.

The only truly fervent worshippers thrown under the bus with this whole affair would be the Zaishen Order, but...well...yeah.

So...yeah, they're pretty damn useless. They also locked up one of their own without any knowable reason on our end of things, the Gods clearly have family and bloodlines (e.g. Menzies for Balthazar, "Dwayna's father" as one of the encounterable beings for the scrapped Guild Wars: Utopia expansion for GW1), and that they're not even native to the realm of Tyria in the first place.

There's a lot of loose threads with regards to the mystery of the Gods, especially compared to the beings/concepts the other major races worship/revere. (Which is to say, we know more about the Spirits of the Wild, the Eternal Alchemy, the Titans, and the Pale Tree/Mother than we know about the Human Gods.....)

Guildwars2

Welcome!

Subreddit Wiki

Please do not

Nightmode

Content Filters

Related Subreddits

Community tools

Builds

MODERATORS