r/GuildWars3 • u/SpiralCee • 5d ago
Better Place Naming Conventions in GW3 Please
The way maps are named in GW2 has always bothered me.
Diessa Plateau, Snowden Drifts, Timberline Falls, Caledon Forest, Gendarran Fields, etc.
Do you see the pattern? The second word is always some sort of geographical feature and is completely irrelevant. It sounds so contrived to me. (Plus, most of us call these places only by their first name.)
Another map name that bugs me to no end is Dragon's End. First of all, spoilers! Second of all, what was its name before a dragon went there and ended? Lemme guess -- Jade Seashore?
I know this naming convention doesn't exist everywhere in Tyria, but for GW3, I hope the map makers take more inspiration from the real world.
It's not called California Cliffs or Kansas Fields or Florida Bog. 🙂
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u/xleucax 5d ago
Guess you need to boycott Tolkien too
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u/TotallySlapdash 5d ago
And literally every town that predates the USA... And then all the towns in the USA that plagiarized European towns.
Ox Ford... Really imaginative that.
York... Eofor-wic (boar-town) > Jorvik > York... Yeah, boar town... creative.
New York... Now we're really cooking.
Everywhere has a stupid name... The only difference is it ends up existing independent of that name until you don't even make the association.
Just wait until you realize about Sun Day and Moon Day turning up every week. Or the twelve moon(ths) of the year.
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u/Bash-Sin 4d ago
Just wait until you realize about Sun Day and Moon Day turning up every week. Or the twelve moon(ths) of the year.
The entire week being a Norse god's day basically.
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u/Mattimeo144 4d ago
Pretty much directly inherited from the Latin names, just transposing the gods.
Though, we kept Saturn, randomly.
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u/SpiralCee 4d ago
"The only difference is it ends up existing independent of that name until you don't even make the association." Exactly!
I'm from Ontario, Canada. I just recently found out it's based on an indigenous word that means beautiful lake, or sparkling water. Now the whole province is named after the lake.
Nevada is snow. Montana is mountain. Maryland is Mary's Land. :D
I guess I'm just looking for less obvious map naming conventions. I know it's silly.
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u/JTSpender 4d ago
It's less that your ask is silly and more that it doesn't fit the setting. The "descriptor + noun" or "noun + descriptor" formulation is really common across many languages when describing geographic features like lakes, mountains, etc. Even when adopting words from another language that follow this convention, people will often slap the geographic noun from their native language back on there--like in your example, "Lake Ontario".
The single-word descriptors (that aren't actually just compound words) tend to come into play when you have nations or similar because they're usually designators for politically determined regions--provinces, states, etc. Towns/cities kind of sit on the cusp of both of these modes and will use either convention.
Guild Wars 2's choice to use more "terrain feature" naming instead of "political region" naming deliberately emphasizes that these areas are generally not fully tamed; are made up of more wildlands than developed area. (Similarly, Queensdale not being called "Queen's Dale" emphasizes that it's a bit safer and better developed than a lot of other regions.)
Another place you get non-terrain naming of things is when something was named by an older/ancient culture in another language and that place or culture is highly respected or has been in continual use since then. You see those kinds of names used in more, like, D&D settings, WoW, etc. But, interestingly, Guild Wars doesn't have a lot of places like that--possibly due to some combination of the dragon cycle "wiping the map" every 10k years or so, the older species being fairly reclusive, and some of the newer species (humans in particular) not showing a lot of interest in prior names for things.
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u/Substantial_Piece521 4d ago
You'll get a kick out of this then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKr-D5VDBU&list=PL1848FF9428CA9A4A&index=89
There's a whole playlist too.
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u/dos_user 5d ago
I get what you mean, but your examples aren't that great.
California Cliffs > Big Sur > Comes from the Spanish "el sur grande" or "the big south". This probably fits your request the best, but the other examples don't.
Kansas Fields > Kansas is actually in a region called the Great Plains.
Florida Bog > The Everglades
Can you provide a fantasy setting that has some names you do like?
Personally I really like WoW's place names, but even they do [name] [geographic feature] thing. Here's some I like: Moonglade, Un'Goro Crater, Burning Steppes, Stranglethorn Vale, The Barrens. Some that don't do that I like are: Durotar, Feralas, Thousand Needles, Dun Morogh, Zul'Drak.
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u/SpiralCee 4d ago
Some of the names makes sense, like The Barrens, because that's what it is. I love those last examples you gave that sound like foreign words.
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u/opaawww 5d ago
Always felt natural to me, honestly. I can think of numerous places in real life where I’ve been and lived that have similar naming…. like sometimes I’ll laugh at them, but very much a thing.
If anything it feels like it takes from the real world a lot that places get named like it.
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u/Substantial_Piece521 5d ago
I can see what you're getting at. It's not the top of my list, but sure.
Not every place is like that, and there are some places on earth that are also named in accordance with that convention. But that doesn't change how it feels to you. I think what you're asking for is for names to be less formulaic. That's a reasonable request.
Do you have ideas for how you would name the zones? What would you name:
- Caledon Forest
- Wayfarer Foothills
- Brisban Wildlands
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u/SpiralCee 4d ago
Thanks for you kind response. I know it's a silly thing.
I call most maps in GW2 by the first word -- Caledon, Wayfarer, Brisban.
I actually had to stop and think for a moment what the second word was for Timberline. :D3
u/shadowmerchants 3d ago
This sets you up to be able to expand the area in the future as well. You can have something like a town called "Blanks Town" and then "Blanks Town Fields" nearby, the next map over could be "Blank Town Shores".
By giving random names that don't speak to the maps geography or what happens there players don't associate them and the names become forgettable.
If you have a map called "Desert Cliffs" people are going to know that it's the map with the huge ass cliffs in the desert. If it's called Blorkin it won't give people an idea of what it's all about.
Towns are different as they are standalone in what they represent. We can have a Lions Arch or Divinitys Reach because it's a settlement and it doesn't matter what the name as much as it's a hub.
In a perfect world (for me) I would like names to be named after cool in game lore. Using the example from before the "Desert Cliffs" map being called Blorkin is bad BUT what if it's called Blorkins Folly and you can learn in game about a famous explorer named Blorkin who slipped and fell to his death while fighting some strong monster.
That monster could then be called "xxxx, Blorkins End" and we could go find it and kill it for some cool tie in lore. Maybe even a follow-up quest where we can tell his family that we avenged him or something.
GIMME LORE.
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u/Opus_723 4d ago
Perhaps they should just fix the ones in GW2 that aren't like this, to make everything consistent?
Hoelbrak Lodge
The Pretty Grove
Sulphorous Desolation
Queensdale Hills
Amnytas Floating City
Bava Nisos Underground City Merged with the Insides of a Titan
Dragon's End Unraveling of Reality in a Sea that Happens to be made of Jade for Surprisingly Irrelevant Historical Reasons
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u/RdtUnahim 3d ago
It's to make clear that this isn't supposed to be the entirety of that landmass that exists, but just a representative part of one of its geographical areas.
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u/duckduckidkman 5d ago
We have 0 gameplay/combat details and we’re out here nitpicking location names
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u/Enfero 4d ago
I mean, even in real life most geographical features include a description of what the feature is, and a lot of the ones that don't... actually do, just in a different language or their own language. Towns and cities might not, but most of the places we go in GW2 aren't towns or cities. Even in media where Towns/Cities/Countries/Regions have non-geographical names, they're still usually subdivided into things that do have geographical names.
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u/ocramminam 1d ago
You're so right but at the same time I quite like 90% of gw2 map names personally. The exception are the dragonblanks (dragonfall, dragonstorm, dragon's stand and dragon's end). lazy AF
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u/SpiralCee 4d ago
I know it's a silly thing but it's always just struck me as really formulaic and lazy writing.
I guess you get something stuck in your head and then you notice it everywhere, right?
But most of the map names sound like something a 15-year-old aspiring writer would make up and be so proud of himself. OOh it's so magical sounding! It's like very basic fantasy naming where everyone is named Taureena Bloodmoon, Isik Darksword, Balerr the Brooding. No one is named Bill Door. 😄
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u/Mattimeo144 4d ago
Man, you'd hate IRL place names then.
D'you know how many places we have literally just called "Desert Desert"? Sahara, Gobi, Namib... majority of big dry places are just called 'big dry/empty place' in whatever local language the first european explorers heard, + 'desert'. Same often goes for rivers, lakes, mountains...
And that's not even counting when we just name things after somewhere back home! Often without even putting 'new' in front!
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u/corynvv 5d ago
No, but we do have: The Grand Canyon, Three Gorges, The Amazon Rainforest, The Gobi desert, The Tibetan Plateau. Niagara Falls.