124262-fantasy-and-sci-fi-in-wildstar

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This subject started in today's MC thread, but I thought it could generate better discussion for the devs with its own home (especially since the MC thread will be locked tomorrow).
 
So... Wildstar is ostensibly a science-fiction game. But after playing a short while I think it's clear to everyone that the game draws from a few different genres. Fantasy, cyberpunk, western, steampunk, all contribute to the look and feel of the game. This isn't unusual, WoW was basically a high fantasy with steampunk elements, and it seems popular entertainment is becoming increasingly hybridized.
 
Now, from my view this is a good thing, as it's usually not good to be too conventional or abide by one set of parameters.  But I'd like to see more sci-fi from Wildstar, particularly in terms of world story arc, dungeons, adventures, and expeditions. Right now I feel like most gameplay content at level 50 is more like fantasy with a shot of sci-fi. Shiphands seem like an exception, and though I haven't seen raids, they at least sound techy. :P
 
What do others think? Assuming most of us are at least OK with the current direction, do you have a preference for fantasy or sci-fi (or others) for the future? Did you get more or less sci-fi than expected? Is there an area of the game you'd most like to see tuned in one direction?
 
 
 	
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This subject started in today's MC thread, but I thought it could generate better discussion for the devs with its own home (especially since the MC thread will be locked tomorrow).
 
So... Wildstar is ostensibly a science-fiction game. But after playing a short while I think it's clear to everyone that the game draws from a few different genres. Fantasy, cyberpunk, western, steampunk, all contribute to the look and feel of the game. This isn't unusual, WoW was basically a high fantasy with steampunk elements, and it seems popular entertainment is becoming increasingly hybridized.
 
Now, from my view this is a good thing, as it's usually not good to be too conventional or abide by one set of parameters.  But I'd like to see more sci-fi from Wildstar, particularly in terms of world story arc, dungeons, adventures, and expeditions. Right now I feel like most gameplay content at level 50 is more like fantasy with a shot of sci-fi. Shiphands seem like an exception, and though I haven't seen raids, they at least sound techy. :P
 
What do others think? Assuming most of us are at least OK with the current direction, do you have a preference for fantasy or sci-fi (or others) for the future? Did you get more or less sci-fi than expected? Is there an area of the game you'd most like to see tuned in one direction?
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Genetic Archives is very much biotech horror SF and continues the thread of the perfection goal of the Entity.  I think that one is safely in the SF category.
 
I've not been into Datascape personally (we're in GA) but based on OmniCORE's storyline, I think you can put that firmly into a sort of cyberpunk theme and safely in the SF category.
 
As far as leveling up, I felt pretty much like it's all science fiction after a fashion.  Dealing with alien cultures (Lopp, Protostar, etc), Eldan lore and exposition, shiphands, climactic experiments, space marines, etc.
 
Now... SF as a genre is pretty freakin' huge.  And Wildstar is definitely not hard SF.  This is SF in the old standard of 50's B-movie monsterpics, Star Trek "hey if we use jargon, it'll sound sciency but is actually wholly improbable", and so forth.  And that's okay.  Personally I'm happy to get away from gnomes and dwarves, orcs and elves, even if it's only on the surface and we've got chua and granok, draken and aurin (roughly by type).
 
Where I"d like to see more technology would be maybe weaponry and classes.  Warriors?  All I can see is the woosh really as they swing a sword around.  Where's the cool sizzle of the plasma edge?  Vibroblades?  Nanite based chainsaws?  Engineers... seriously.  WHERE'S THE !@#$ FLAMETHROWER ALREADY??  And the list goes on.  Espers, we really need to work on that one too.  Spellslingers are great except maybe the word "spell", the gun part is fantastic.
 
The line between soft SF and fantasy is really personal and may just be personal tolerance.  
 
If you want to get veyr deconstructionist though, I think you'd have to dig into the actual storylines.  The best SF is a vehicle for discussing the human condition today.  The Drusera question (which I'm not adding specifics to because of spoilers).  The little council that's held by all the members of the Exiles (and I assume there's something similar for Dominion) is quite telling.  It was NOT a unanimous decision.  The Eldan themselves can be a posterchild for the "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" aphorism.  The alien planet homesteading is law of the frontier ethics that go back to Westerns.  How do being organize themselves societally and cope with aspects that are detrimental to the group versus the individual.
 
So... I'll just mirror this back to Esper14.  What do YOU think is SF?
 
(EDIT: and a personal note, thank you for asking a fun question.  I have personally kept my involvement with the forums minimal of late due to the concern trolls that corrupt nearly every thread.)	
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			When it comes to reading, I don't like straight Sci-Fi genre.  I prefer fantasy, urban fantasy, mystery, horror.  I'd rather watch Sci-Fi movies and tv, and play some Sci-Fi games(ok, this and SWTOR are the only Sci-Fi games I've played :P).  I actually don't mind genres getting all mixed up, I think it makes for awesome, fun and interesting reading :D	
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So... I'll just mirror this back to Esper14.  What do YOU think is SF?
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So I guess what I want more from Wildstar, in terms of sci-fi, is visual/thematic stuff. More dark cities, big holoscreens, glowing lasers, gleaming metals, etc. For story, like strain and all that, I'm really not sure what they could do if the game is intended to be fun and not depressing. ^_^
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I guess it really just comes down to Wildstar's identity, which has a good dose of humour and fun. Mass Effect is my favourite sci-fi game, visually, setting, characters, but it's meant to be highly dramatic.
 
For MMOs, SWTOR is the only example I can think of. I definitely got a stronger sci-fi vibe from that game, but again, it takes itself seriously (sometimes to a fault... ~insert melodrama~...) Some of the cities were awesome though, Wildstar has an epicness to its natural beauty, but the density of the urban SWTOR content was a great experience, felt real and gritty. That would have a lot to do with the worlds being long inhabited though, as someone pointed out Nexus isn't quite like that.
 
And that's the fun part of housing — everyone gets to play with Nexus' identity. :D	
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			I think the potential is there, but we'll just have to see.  There's a lot of room for some drama as well as side helpings of goofy.  	
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Some people have tried to explain the magic with Clarke's Third Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) to account for the magic in the game, but the magic in the game can't do anything that technology can't do, so there's no reason to call it magic unless it's actually something different from advanced technology. I would say the Eldan technology would fit the description of Clarke's "magic as advanced technology", but the sorcery that Spellslingers use is "just plain magic". Also, Clarke's Three Laws are about the real world, not a binding definition of what magic is in Science Fiction, so there's not really a need to try to explain WildStar's magic in scientific terms:
 
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1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
 
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Some people have tried to explain the magic with Clarke's Third Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic) to account for the magic in the game, but the magic in the game can't do anything that technology can't do, so there's no reason to call it magic unless it's actually something different from advanced technology. I would say the Eldan technology would fit the description of Clarke's "magic as advanced technology", but the sorcery that Spellslingers use is "just plain magic". Also, Clarke's Three Laws are about the real world, not a binding definition of what magic is in Science Fiction, so there's not really a need to try to explain WildStar's magic in scientific terms:
 
 
WildStar is unabashedly a Science Fiction/Fantasy hybrid, which gives it a lot of leeway as far as developing fun content goes.
 
Personally, though, I think the trope of the the endgame being dominated by corruption, where the creatures and landscape are warped by contagion, undead, twisted magic or dark force energy is overdone, and I'd really like to see some more traditional science fiction content, like having the factions invade one another's arcships, or other content off-planet.
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The only bit that throws me about the presence of magic in the game, is that, from what I've seen of it, it only exists for the Spellslinger class, and even then apparently purely because "space wizard cowboy" is cooler than just "space cowboy".
 
Seriously, even the Stalker's invisibility is explained-away as nanotech cloaking and such, so why suddenly have the Spellslingers use "Void Magic" and "Sigils" rather than calling it something like "Forcefield Manipulation" and "Eldan Data Matrixes" or something, or even take a page from Mass Effect's playbook when they made "biotics" and just refer to it as a kind of psionics...
 
(Frankly, if ANY class has a playstyle/abilities befitting the term "magic", it's Espers, not Spellslingers.)
 
It stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, and is just really kinda grating in an otherwise awesome sci-fi setting to have this one solitary and arguably-unnecessary magical aspect... like if you were reading the Harry Potter books and his final confrontation with Voldemort suddenly ended with an unexplained and unremarkable-to-other-characters Gundam battle.
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It stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, and is just really kinda grating in an otherwise awesome sci-fi setting to have this one solitary and arguably-unnecessary magical aspect... like if you were reading the Harry Potter books and his final confrontation with Voldemort suddenly ended with an unexplained and unremarkable-to-other-characters Gundam battle.
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So much this ("sore thumb").  To avoid the anaphylactic shock from the allergy I've developed to Swords & Sorcery games in my head I redefine Spellslingers as psionically active individuals that require certain totems (runes and sigils) to function.
 
 
please make it stop...
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			I'm curious as to how "souped-up" fantasy needs to be to become SF and how "dumbed-down" SF needs to be to become fantasy. In essence they're exactly the same thing. Where's the line? That being said, if we absolutely had to categorize WS, it would definitely land in the SF genre. There's nothing about SF that says things like magic or hugely boring swords can't exist.	
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Well, it's the only current class that has abilities couched in "magic terms," although Espers do magic damage as well, and at one stage in beta, both Espers and Spellslingers had "mana" as their class resource. There were other classes planned that didn't make it to launch (Charmer, Elementalist, Flux Reaver, Shadow Monk) There's speculation that Shadow Monk was the original name for the Stalker, but the other 3 sound like they could have been magic-using classes.
 
Also, Primal Energy is treated a lot like magic (many primal attacks do magic damage, as well). NPC races, like the Skeech, Moodies, Osun, Pell, Falkrin and Torine Sisterhood have casters who channel primal energy, and there are elementals, spirits and the rune system (which are also primal energy based, and use the same terms that are used in fantasy games for the same kinds of things). Not to mention that many of the dungeon bosses and mobs feel more like they're from fantasy than science fiction. To be honest, it seems like there's an awful lot of magic in the game.
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I'm curious as to how "souped-up" fantasy needs to be to become SF and how "dumbed-down" SF needs to be to become fantasy. In essence they're exactly the same thing. Where's the line? That being said, if we absolutely had to categorize WS, it would definitely land in the SF genre. There's nothing about SF that says things like magic or hugely boring swords can't exist.
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Not to mention that many of the dungeon bosses and mobs feel more like they're from fantasy than science fiction. To be honest, it seems like there's an awful lot of magic in the game.
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			I have a preference for fantasy. Wildstar feels like fantasy set in the future! :P	
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I don't mind it being a damage type, it's the fact that "magic" as a power thing exists only for one class, and arguably the wrong one, when the lore could easily be redefined to identify that class' abilities as some other more-sci-fi-appropriate thing.
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I didn't read the whole thread
 
..but more steampunk. that is all.	
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I've mentioned it before, and I agree, I'd love to fight through a giant city where you have no green space anywhere, just buildings and metal and smoke with flying cars and spaceships and goodness knows what else.
 
However, I feel like they excluded this specifically because we're in the Wild West of space, so all of that is missing...
 
I do want to add that I'd like to see more being in open space. i.e. shiphands lacking any windows to see into outer space is a shame, as it feels like running through metal tubes at times. I want to be able to look out and see maybe Nexus or asteroids or a ship flying by. I also think it would be amazing to see all sorts of ship traffic over Thayd/Illium (don't need great resolution, put them high enough up and it'll look just fine without eating performance).	
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			Spellslinger attacks have always reminded me of caster guns from Outlaw Star. I just wanted to add that. XD	
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(Not even going to get into Technomancers who routinely call their code jiggering "spells" and evoking real "daemons", etc.  That's a really weird crossover :-) -- fun cross over though)
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This subject started in today's MC thread, but I thought it could generate better discussion for the devs with its own home (especially since the MC thread will be locked tomorrow).
 
So... Wildstar is ostensibly a science-fiction game. But after playing a short while I think it's clear to everyone that the game draws from a few different genres. Fantasy, cyberpunk, western, steampunk, all contribute to the look and feel of the game. This isn't unusual, WoW was basically a high fantasy with steampunk elements, and it seems popular entertainment is becoming increasingly hybridized.
 
Now, from my view this is a good thing, as it's usually not good to be too conventional or abide by one set of parameters.  But I'd like to see more sci-fi from Wildstar, particularly in terms of world story arc, dungeons, adventures, and expeditions. Right now I feel like most gameplay content at level 50 is more like fantasy with a shot of sci-fi. Shiphands seem like an exception, and though I haven't seen raids, they at least sound techy. :P
 
What do others think? Assuming most of us are at least OK with the current direction, do you have a preference for fantasy or sci-fi (or others) for the future? Did you get more or less sci-fi than expected? Is there an area of the game you'd most like to see tuned in one direction?
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This is from the new Adventure? :(  So somebody cut-n-paste some techy sounding words into a Fantasy template.  It's like listening to somebody who constantly utters malapropisms.  I think my soul just withered.
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Oh no, it's been around for a very long time.  Most explicit reference I can think of right now is they showed up in Babylon 5 in 1994 in "The Geometry of Shadows" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjToVZTqCbw).
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Oh you were talking about the theme in general *stops hyperventilating* 
 
I really liked B5 -- the Ivanova gets pissed monologue at Earth's Shadow enhanced ships  is one of my favorites -- but the Technomancer concept was just poor.  Not surprising considering that they used Harlan Ellison as a creative consultant.
 
 
There's a lot I like about SR too but the magic bits of their lore always grated on me.
 
 
It is possible to achieve the "indistinguishable from magic" feel yet have a hard sci-fi basis.  I think Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels (Altered Carbon, etc.)  And the Eclipse Phase RPG's lore do a really good job of this without the handwavey bits of orcs, elves and totemic magic.
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I remember the "mage" type race from anarchy online had a rather interesting way to perform spells. The planet had been terraformed with the aid of trillions of nanites, most of them were still around in the air, water, ect. So they were really just running programs through the nanite cloud to produce effects.
I always thought that was a neat way to have magic in a space sci-fi setting.  	
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I think Wildstar even tries to touch on something a bit beyond; that technology is divinity.  There's constant reference, especially to the Dominion, about the Eldan being like gods.  In fact, the Eldan make numerous observations that some of their own members believe themselves to be like gods.  They created whole planets and whole forms of life, and lived through generations and generations of their projects.
 
Which, of course, raises the question of the eternal clockmaker that the Deists espoused a few hundred years ago.  Is divinity to be found in science and technology?  We have already, as humans here on Earth, created life forms in environments where they aren't presently aware of our existence as we observe them in tightly controlled conditions.  The Eldan seemed to want to create a being that would be a god.
 
So what is divinity?  If it's eternal life, the power over life and death, the ability to make worlds and life, were the Eldan gods in practice?
 
 
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I remember the "mage" type race from anarchy online had a rather interesting way to perform spells. The planet had been terraformed with the aid of trillions of nanites, most of them were still around in the air, water, ect. So they were really just running programs through the nanite cloud to produce effects.
I always thought that was a neat way to have magic in a space sci-fi setting.  
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That reminds me of Jack Vance's Dying Earth.  The setting is in the far-future when our sun has turned into a red giant and the Earth has experienced several apocalyptic events so science and math skillz are a bit fuzzier than they should be.  Mages would memorize complicated mathematical equations that they'd express to attempt to cause the effect they intend.  If they didn't quite get it right hilarity ensued.  Oh and because they were so complicated, using it would erase it from the mage's mind.  :blink: <_<
 
Decades of D&D stuck in that idiotic spell selection mechanic because Vance (and Gygax) thought "math is hard".
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 There's a lot I like about SR too but the magic bits of their lore always grated on me.
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i love Shadowrun.
 
i love William Gibson (read almost all his books).
 
Shadowrun is basically Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (the sprawl trilogy) mixed with "tolkienesque" magic/races thrown into the mix. (no elves and spells in Gibson's stuff).	
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Dirty Vancian spell mechanics. We had a similar problem is shadowrun for decker programs until the writers looked at Moore's law, and realized that you probably had enough storage to hold all the programs you owned. Spells per day has always been junk. I started playing warlocks in D&D just for the ability to throw a ball of fire as many times per day as I wanted. 
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i love Shadowrun.
 
i love William Gibson (read almost all his books).
 
Shadowrun is basically Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (the sprawl trilogy) mixed with "tolkienesque" magic/races thrown into the mix. (no elves and spells in Gibson's stuff).
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Have the Molly Millions song then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WVE47X57qQ
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I first got into SR from the SGenesis game, then the SNES game. I really loved everything about it and although the tech/grit/gangs were what really got me, the magic side was fun too. And the explanation seemed cool and reasonable at the time (if I remember correctly it's some kind of magical return or cycle based on a Mayan prophecy, which caused humans to mutate into orcs/etc., and allowed manipulation of magical forces once more).
 
But when I started to read Gibson and realized how much of SR was taken from his work, it was a bit shocking. I've always found this snippet from Wikipedia to be funny:
 
[shadowrun is also influenced by the writings of William Gibson (particularly Neuromancer).[6] Gibson, who gave no permission and expressed strong aversion for mixing his ideas with "spare me, *elves*,"[7] reacted as follows to its release:
 
…when I see things like Shadowrun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!' Over my dead body! But I don't have to bear any aesthetic responsibility for it. I've never earned a nickel, but I wouldn't sue them. It's a fair cop. I'm sure there are people who could sue me, if they were so inclined, for messing with their stuff. So it's just kind of amusing.[8]]
 
 
To Vic's question in the spoiler tags, divinity is probably too complex to assess in a "what makes divinity" way... but I'll try to explain my understanding, in the context you've laid out.
 
I would split the idea of god/deity into two distinct interpretations: the omnipotent kind and the 'remarkably more powerful than us' kind. In the case of the former, it wouldn't apply to a race like the Eldan because they're obviously not omnipotent (and I think the idea of omnipotence is absurd anyway). In the case of the latter, although it could apply to Eldan, I think the idea of a deity that isn't omnipotent is pointless, because in that light anything could be a deity to anything else, which causes the word to lose coherence or value.
 
Through that lens, there is no connection between science and divinity.
 
/2cents
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i love Shadowrun.
 
i love William Gibson (read almost all his books).
 
Shadowrun is basically Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive (the sprawl trilogy) mixed with "tolkienesque" magic/races thrown into the mix. (no elves and spells in Gibson's stuff).
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I think Wildstar even tries to touch on something a bit beyond; that technology is divinity.  There's constant reference, especially to the Dominion, about the Eldan being like gods.  In fact, the Eldan make numerous observations that some of their own members believe themselves to be like gods.  They created whole planets and whole forms of life, and lived through generations and generations of their projects. 
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I read Neuromancer about four years ago and it blew me away. The prose is dense, though the language was too technical/modern for me at the time (I was leaving a high fantasy obsession). Read Mona Lisa Overdrive in Fall '14, loved it, realized I was reading the last book of the trilogy... ungh!
 
I'm reading Count Zero now. Fantastic stuff. :D
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See A. C. Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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I was gonna say this yesterday. :D
 
It's not really "magic" so much as "technology so advanced that your tiny brain can not comprehend it."
 
That's one of the arguments we had back in The Day about opening up ESPer to the Mechari. People were all like "but robots don't have brains!" and I was all like "Yeah, but they have resonant crystals, specifically coded to mimic the function of a meat brain" ... so given that the Progenitors were way, way smarter than our characters, why couldn't they have programmed some Mechari to harness those "psionic wavelengths" just like a biological organism?
 
I mark the Spellslinger "spells" up to the same kind of thing. It ain't actual MAGIC. It's a science that we just don't fully understand - a set of rules that have to be followed, with the proper runes and movements, in order to activate or access the powers at hand.
 
"Magic" comes from mystical beings like gods or demons or angels. I haven't seen anything in Wildstar that makes me think that "supernatural powers" are in play - merely powers we don't or can't yet comprehend fully.
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Although they are using a variation on classical elements that are very much tied to magic and not science.   :lol:
 
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Is it though?  Not all gods throughout history were omnipotent.  Certainly, the Greek and Roman gods were very often fooled, having things hidden from sight, only being able to look down from Mount Olympus (and later other locales).  The Viking gods had a prophecy of their end, but were very clearly also not all-seeing.  There are arguments against the omnipotency of all religious figures; the universe is a petri dish.
 
But the Eldan seemed to certainly rule their own domain.  They created an entire planet and seemed to know everything that happened on it.  They monitored the evolution of the life forms they built over their existences.  They indeed, were as omnipotent as could be, only ever seeming to not know when another of their own was working on something else.  In the end, what they lacked and what got them in the end was their inability to know what each other was doing, their own limitations, and their inability to know the future.  Those aren't particularly ungodly powers.
 
So maybe divinity is relative.  Maybe modern science would have been alchemy and magic five hundred years ago, but we take it for granted now.  Hundreds of years prior, to be able to speak to someone through a mirror across the world would have made it enchanted, today we call that electricity and wifi.  To destroy cities was something that could only be done with divine power, now we can do it by splitting atoms.  It actually wasn't a thousand years ago that reading silently was thought of as an incredible, even mystical, feat.  Maybe divinity is just a relative term that seems magical and impossible to us from where we are, but once you get there is just science.
 
We certainly don't marvel at how wondrous our technological progress has been; I was born at a time when cell phones were a novelty.  I remember needing a quarter to call my mother from the mall when I needed to be picked up from a date as a kid.  I could imagine having my own cell phone one day and the technology being ubiquitous.  I did not imagine that, not two decades later, they'd be a perfectly suitable replacement for a laptop computer, with worldwide connection through a routine touch screen.  There are people alive today who were alive when that idea applied to cars, that they were novelties.
 
I suppose most times I kind of take for granted what technology like this makes possible.  If we took it back a thousand years with us, they probably would think we were gods, or at best wizards.
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That's my point though, without omnipotence, what's a god? A powerful creature? A creator? Something that manipulates lesser beings? These qualities can apply to plenty of beings (like ourselves) that are certainly not considered gods by any standard definition. So I dislike using qualities like these as indications of 'divinity' because they just lead to subjective labels, rather than ontological examinations.
 
 
The idea that what we have now would be considered magic to previous generations is neat, but that's all it is to me, harmless fun. I don't think it's useful as a way of looking at the world. Just because a cell phone would be inexplicable to a caveman doesn't make it magic. Similarly, the things that shaman and druids might have done that they considered magic, was not actually magic.
 
This requires a definition of magic though. My own would be: Something that is inexplicable and impossible. Otherwise, from a few statements made by others here, magic is just science that hasn't been explained, which doesn't add up for me. If I proclaim a hypothesis and begin testing for proof, nobody (that I know) would call it "magic" until it becomes science. Science is method. Magic is belief, and I would say, entirely symbolic like divinity.
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I was gonna say this yesterday. :D
 
It's not really "magic" so much as "technology so advanced that your tiny brain can not comprehend it."
 
That's one of the arguments we had back in The Day about opening up ESPer to the Mechari. People were all like "but robots don't have brains!" and I was all like "Yeah, but they have resonant crystals, specifically coded to mimic the function of a meat brain" ... so given that the Progenitors were way, way smarter than our characters, why couldn't they have programmed some Mechari to harness those "psionic wavelengths" just like a biological organism?
 
I mark the Spellslinger "spells" up to the same kind of thing. It ain't actual MAGIC. It's a science that we just don't fully understand - a set of rules that have to be followed, with the proper runes and movements, in order to activate or access the powers at hand.
 
"Magic" comes from mystical beings like gods or demons or angels. I haven't seen anything in Wildstar that makes me think that "supernatural powers" are in play - merely powers we don't or can't yet comprehend fully.
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See A. C. Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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That's a modern concept, though.  Remember that there was a time that Astronomy was Astrology, Chemistry was Alchemy, and there were no dividing lines between the magical and scientific.  For a thousand years people believed that geometry was the language of God.  You can see this when you see gothic cathedrals.  For the entire Rennaissance, it was thought that you could use perfect geometries to decipher the language of the heavens.  It was thought that the circle or sphere was the most heavenly of symbols, and so it was elevated high above the altar.  At first, they had a large aisle because they also had a procession to accomodate, but they later rectified this.  After Keplar's ideas about the heavens being governed by ellipses was less rejected, you see elliptical churches being built, with the altar as one "focus".
 
What's the point here? That pseudo-science existed and religion is heavily symbolic? :P
 
So magic and divine only became the "inexplicable" when we came to somewhat look down on people who held those beliefs.  
 
No, magic and divinity were always inexplicable, it's just that a lot of charlatans presented themselves as controllers/interpreters of magical/divine forces. The people in power held power over the mystical and divine and they were not obliged to 'prove' themselves true. You can paint it as condescension if you want, the reality is that their 'beliefs' never amounted to anything tangible. I have no more reason to trust a priest or ancient magic user than I do to trust a cold-reader doing an "I can help you!" tv show. I wouldn't claim they're absolutely wrong, so I don't think modern religious believers are 'crazy' or anything. But I would state that they have no claim to truth until truth has been shown. That's often how reasonable exchanges work.
 
However, you'll notice something about "magic" as it's written.  It's science.  It's completely explainable in its own context when it's written.
 
I think you're abusing the idea of science here. Science is the scientific method— simply having a method does not make something scientific!
 
Alchemy was a magic that attempted to make man immortal and to turn common metals to gold.  Now that we understand more, we're actually moving towards achieving exactly these goals.  These were the definition of magic, and yet they're going to become a very plausible reality.  Which puts things in perspective.  How many magical spells are now at our disposal?
 
Alchemy wasn't considered magic it was considered scientific for its time, but in reality it and the philosophers' stone are bad science leading to few results. How can you compare that to medical science? You're claiming that because a bunch of people had the idea of becoming immortal, that somehow makes them like the medical professionals who use intensive training, complex tools, proven knowledge and vetted methods to achieve discernible results?
 
If magic is everything that is not explainable, it's all relative.  I can't explain spatial warps.  We don't know how to reliably produce them yet.  Are they therefore magic, and will lose the distinction if we ever learn to do them?  And isn't that then simply relative to our understanding of the universe and our own technological capabilities?
 
You left out a very key part of what I wrote. Magic is impossible, which makes it inexplicable. So no, just because you don't know how to explain spatial warps doesn't make them magic any more than my plumbing is magic because I can't explain the system. They are both possible, therefore, they are explicable, therefore... not magic!
 
It's food for thought that one day, if we create a universe, and that universe begets life which we observe, we would be very literally the gods we imagined.  Very much the way the Eldan seemed to struggle with the idea of divinity and godhood, their technology gave them the means to be gods to their own creations in a very literal and direct sense.  So were they, then, gods because of their great technological achievements?
 
One thousand times, no, haha. The Eldan are not gods because of technological achievements. And we're not going to be the 'gods we imagined' if we create a universe. The gods we imagined would create it with a thought, the flick of a wrist, some god mojo that is a part of their very being, no tools required. Maybe a paint brush. Because they're silly like that and don't have to abide by any of the laws of science... however, we do...
 
As an aside, the omnipotence of gods in a heavenly, rather than a view-over-their-creation-sense, isn't really that common.
 
Huhwha? I'm gonna disagree here. All of the Abhrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), which are the ones that have endured most in modern times, represent 'omnipotence of gods in a heavenly way'. They're not just gods because they supposedly created us and look over us like parents. They perform miracles, which are not acts of science. That also extends to Buddhism and probably a lot of religions that aren't from prehistory. 
 
If we create a lab culture from proteins (as we have, we have been biologically synthesizing bacteria for about four or five years now) and watch that culture grow in a petri dish under a microscope, are we also, then, divine?  We are looking into a new biological, sentient, reproducing creation, casting our eye across all they can discern and observe, and they cannot discern our presence.  Sure, it's a bacteria, not a person, but is  that us turning the divine and arcane into the mundane?
 
No! :lol:  You're asking the same question and shall receive the same answer until you can actually provide an argument for why we would be gods just because we can create a thing! This is kind of trivializing divinity and the distinctions of scientific method.
 
It's on you to tell me why simply creating bacteria, or creating any life really, is now a qualifier for godhood. Also keep in mind that we're not creating something from what appears to be nothing, as most modern deities have supposedly done. We're manipulating known matter to change its qualities, that's all, and that has been done for centuries at least (easy examples are dog breeds and plant hybrids).
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Perhaps magic is just what the denizens of the Wildstar universe call the ability to manipulate primal energies?
 
As it's been said, the "magic" in Wildstar doesn't appear to be like some super advanced unknown technology, it is simply that some people have a knack for it (or chose to study it as a discipline) while others do/did not. To me it simply seems like the Wildstar universe is more like a comic book universe in that spellslingers and espers are like mutants. Their abilities can be explained by science and technology, perhaps even replicated (sortof), but they simply have capabilities that are beyond the abilities of most people. 
 
Here though, it seems like these skills are so common that they are their own disciplines, like Biotics in Mass Effect, or the Force in Star Wars.
 
Regardless, I usually try not to press too hard into this :). As its been said, this game is very soft sci-fi, probably more fantasy in nature, and the "whys" of things are not fully explained (like the Force! We do not mention midichlorians...).
 
As another note, it seems like a lot of the explanations for things are intentionally being kept from us at this point in time by the devs, in order to allow for future content...	
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That's a modern concept, though.  Remember that there was a time that Astronomy was Astrology, Chemistry was Alchemy, and there were no dividing lines between the magical and scientific.  For a thousand years people believed that geometry was the language of God.  You can see this when you see gothic cathedrals.  For the entire Rennaissance, it was thought that you could use perfect geometries to decipher the language of the heavens.  It was thought that the circle or sphere was the most heavenly of symbols, and so it was elevated high above the altar.  At first, they had a large aisle because they also had a procession to accomodate, but they later rectified this.  After Keplar's ideas about the heavens being governed by ellipses was less rejected, you see elliptical churches being built, with the altar as one "focus".
 
What's the point here? That pseudo-science existed and religion is heavily symbolic? :P
 
So magic and divine only became the "inexplicable" when we came to somewhat look down on people who held those beliefs.  
 
No, magic and divinity were always inexplicable, it's just that a lot of charlatans presented themselves as controllers/interpreters of magical/divine forces. The people in power held power over the mystical and divine and they were not obliged to 'prove' themselves true. You can paint it as condescension if you want, the reality is that their 'beliefs' never amounted to anything tangible. I have no more reason to trust a priest or ancient magic user than I do to trust a cold-reader doing an "I can help you!" tv show. I wouldn't claim they're absolutely wrong, so I don't think modern religious believers are 'crazy' or anything. But I would state that they have no claim to truth until truth has been shown. That's often how reasonable exchanges work.
 
However, you'll notice something about "magic" as it's written.  It's science.  It's completely explainable in its own context when it's written.
 
I think you're abusing the idea of science here. Science is the scientific method— simply having a method does not make something scientific!
 
Alchemy was a magic that attempted to make man immortal and to turn common metals to gold.  Now that we understand more, we're actually moving towards achieving exactly these goals.  These were the definition of magic, and yet they're going to become a very plausible reality.  Which puts things in perspective.  How many magical spells are now at our disposal?
 
Alchemy wasn't considered magic it was considered scientific for its time, but in reality it and the philosophers' stone are bad science leading to few results. How can you compare that to medical science? You're claiming that because a bunch of people had the idea of becoming immortal, that somehow makes them like the medical professionals who use intensive training, complex tools, proven knowledge and vetted methods to achieve discernible results?
 
If magic is everything that is not explainable, it's all relative.  I can't explain spatial warps.  We don't know how to reliably produce them yet.  Are they therefore magic, and will lose the distinction if we ever learn to do them?  And isn't that then simply relative to our understanding of the universe and our own technological capabilities?
 
You left out a very key part of what I wrote. Magic is impossible, which makes it inexplicable. So no, just because you don't know how to explain spatial warps doesn't make them magic any more than my plumbing is magic because I can't explain the system. They are both possible, therefore, they are explicable, therefore... not magic!
 
It's food for thought that one day, if we create a universe, and that universe begets life which we observe, we would be very literally the gods we imagined.  Very much the way the Eldan seemed to struggle with the idea of divinity and godhood, their technology gave them the means to be gods to their own creations in a very literal and direct sense.  So were they, then, gods because of their great technological achievements?
 
One thousand times, no, haha. The Eldan are not gods because of technological achievements. And we're not going to be the 'gods we imagined' if we create a universe. The gods we imagined would create it with a thought, the flick of a wrist, some god mojo that is a part of their very being, no tools required. Maybe a paint brush. Because they're silly like that and don't have to abide by any of the laws of science... however, we do...
 
As an aside, the omnipotence of gods in a heavenly, rather than a view-over-their-creation-sense, isn't really that common.
 
Huhwha? I'm gonna disagree here. All of the Abhrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), which are the ones that have endured most in modern times, represent 'omnipotence of gods in a heavenly way'. They're not just gods because they supposedly created us and look over us like parents. They perform miracles, which are not acts of science. That also extends to Buddhism and probably a lot of religions that aren't from prehistory. 
 
If we create a lab culture from proteins (as we have, we have been biologically synthesizing bacteria for about four or five years now) and watch that culture grow in a petri dish under a microscope, are we also, then, divine?  We are looking into a new biological, sentient, reproducing creation, casting our eye across all they can discern and observe, and they cannot discern our presence.  Sure, it's a bacteria, not a person, but is  that us turning the divine and arcane into the mundane?
 
No! :lol:  You're asking the same question and shall receive the same answer until you can actually provide an argument for why we would be gods just because we can create a thing! This is kind of trivializing divinity and the distinctions of scientific method.
 
It's on you to tell me why simply creating bacteria, or creating any life really, is now a qualifier for godhood. Also keep in mind that we're not creating something from what appears to be nothing, as most modern deities have supposedly done. We're manipulating known matter to change its qualities, that's all, and that has been done for centuries at least (easy examples are dog breeds and plant hybrids).
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