If I’ve read the words “content drought” under your name in the comments section recently, you will be as delighted as I am to note that Guild Wars 2‘s dynamic story will finally be evolving on July 26 . The opening episode of Guild Wars 2 ‘s Living World’s third season, dubbed Out of the Shadows, has been long-awaited by eager lore nuts and promises to drench us in deeper, more detailed story than we’ve ever been given before. Although it’s not the only content that’s part of the July Update (which I hear will have a cooler name than that on launch due to the story drop) I can’t help but get excited for what’s to come, especially after writing an article on how the content drought has caused widespread apathy in the community a mere two weeks ago. The MMO gods are smiling upon me and my wishes have come true; I deeply suspected that Season Three would kick off this month but was quickly losing hope as the old perpetual calendar rolled us ever closer to August.

In this edition of Flameseeker Chronicles, I’ll share some of my Season Three predictions with you to help you rebuild the hype while we wait for the end of the month. Please be aware that spoilers lie ahead if you have not yet finished Season Two or the Heart of Thorns storylines, so get up to date before reading on if you’re worried.

The story so far

I’m going to keep this as brief as I possibly can in order to save you from dying of impatience because I’m feeling acutely aware of just how long it’s been since we last had new story content and I don’t want to keep you from the good stuff for any longer than I need to. In very broad strokes, there are three main different dynamics at play that I’m pretty much certain will affect the next Season, all of which could trigger amazing chains of events. Firstly, the surviving members of Destiny’s Edge are carrying plenty of baggage after the dragon battles: Rytlock spent a grand period of time chasing after his wayward sword in The Mists, becoming a Revenant in the process, while Logan and Zojja were held captive by Mordremoth, the plant-wielding, brain-controlling dragon of RPG nightmares.

To compound the dysfunction, the player character has also lost his or her main story guide Trahearne to Mordremoth’s corruption, and the once reliable, kind-hearted voice of reason Caithe stole Glint’s egg from your grasp in her fervour to see through her latest Wyld Hunt calling, perhaps due to the pull of the Sylvari’s dragon father himself, which has substantially diluted everyone’s trust in her. That egg, now safely wrestled away from Caithe, has been touched by the magical surge caused by the slaying of Mordremoth and is now cracking, which could spell doom or salvation for the broken, exhausted nations of Tyria, which is an immediately pressing concern for the new season to deal with.

Finally, the magic that has been cascading all over Tyria since Mordremoth was slain is not only causing disruption and feeding into the living elder dragons, but it has also condensed into a singular point of covetable power in the Maguuma Jungle bloodstone that is of great interest to the reemergent White Mantle fanatics we know from the raid story. Should they get their hands on the powerful bloodstone, The White Mantle plan on bringing back the Mursaat, making its control of utmost importance to the already depleted Tyrian races.

The brief teaser trailer

The official announcement of Season Three was to the point, to say the least, but we did get a little bit of pretty thrown into the post to keep us going for the next two weeks. The three points above are very quickly shown off in the Season Three trailer below: We see the egg being hit by power and cracking, the heroes of Tyria struggling against the odds and risking their very lives to save their homelands, and a full summary of the HoT storyline. We don’t see much at all about what’s to come, which is very typical of ArenaNet since the company is notoriously protective over its storyline.

My predictions for Season Three

The new band of Tyrian heroes — Kas, Jory, Roxy, Braham, and Taimi — will be particularly crucial in egg-watching and fighting for control over any upsurge in draconic activity caused by the leyline pulsing. Think about it: Rytlock will be busy convincing the Legions that his magic using is acceptable, Logan and Zojja need to recover, and pretty much every other oldie is dead or mistrusted. This first episode should arguably focus on the immediacy of dealing with the Glint hatchling and ascertaining the effects of the unexpected magical overspill into the vessel. I am imagining that both Taimi and Caithe will take a particular interest in the hatchling and will both seek to monopolise the care of the creature.

I can see some sort of tension brewing between the two characters: Caithe has direct experience of the cruel testing that Asuran researchers can put novel creatures through, but I doubt little Taimi will have the wisdom or tact to delicately handle the emotions this could stir up in Caithe, particularly since her Wyld Hunt seems to be tied to the egg hatchling. I hope my favourite miniature darling uses her leyline research to locate massive sapping of the magic that flows there, thus pinpointing the resting places of the other dragons. That’d be too cool for a child to accomplish, huh?

I wonder if Taimi is strong enough to cope with the hatchling should it turn out to be an evil force, and I also believe that tensions could arise between the orders and even races of Tyria should Taimi’s elders try and assume control over her Rata Novus research as they have previously been known to do with her achievements. The player character will need to balance these tensions while helping his or her friends grieve for so many lost ones that have not yet been properly mourned due to the imminent threat of Mordremoth.

I hope that we see some sort of recovery for the Pale Tree, mainly because I love her gentle ways and would miss her calming influence if I no longer interacted with her. I worry that Mordremoth may have planted some sort of seed in her that is going unseen by the Menders, however, especially since the attack on her was swift and complex. Perhaps she’ll be an entirely different character altogether when (and if) she recovers? I just hope it doesn’t become some Battlestar Galactica sort of suspicious, paranoid whodunnit in which anyone remotely linked to Sylvari or the dragon is a potentially unstable mess!

I don’t believe episode one will see any of the living dragons rising up to capitalise on the weakness of the Tyrian races: For now, I can see them all lying in wait, soaking up the excess magical power that seeped out of Mordremoth and using the surface disturbances to bolster their flocks of minions. With such far-reaching magical disturbances across all leylines, I’m left wondering whether or not the curveball at the end of this season could be the emergence of the unknown deep sea dragon who we do not yet know by name. If anything could awaken the deep sleeping elder of the sea, it’d be the destruction of two of its kin and the excess magical strength the creature could potentially gain from their deaths. Could this mysterious “S” be awoken due to Mordemoth’s lair’s proximity to the water and how many leylines ran from there?

Morale and rebuilding will play a very important role in the upcoming story: I simply don’t see how the races of Tyria could possibly be ready for tackling another dragon right now. Perhaps dealing with the egg spawn and regrouping will take up the entire Season, but I would like to see some sort of massive threat emerging to set up the next story wave, whether that is another Season or the second expansion. Perhaps things will get totally scary and multiple dragons will rise up and throttle Tyria all at once: We don’t know enough about the last dragon awakenings to say for sure that killing a few of the dragons won’t ruin the balance of The All.

Oh yeah… and I wanna know who bloody E is!

Over to you!

I want the upcoming story season to have been worth the wait as much as you do, so I’m hoping for plenty of action, beautifully written interactions between the protagonists, and about 256% more Taimi, no matter what direction the Season takes. I really want it to be so good that I feel like flying to ArenaNet’s studio and cheering for the Living World team, poms and everything, partly because I love the team and the work they put in, but mostly because us fans deserve to have that joy back. Yes, the old school cadence was crazy and unmaintainable, but that doesn’t mean to say we can cope with gaps as long as this one. I’m encouraged to hear that quarterly updates are hopefully giving way to bimonthly updates, especially now that Season Three is commencing and we’ll need new episodes fairly frequently to keep us interested.

What do you think? Have you any predictions for the next season? Will you be jumping in to log the here and now, or are you happily skipping Season Three after such a long drought? Let me know your thoughts in the comments and I’ll be sure to revisit them later on in the Season to see how accurate we all were.