(08-12-2013, 01:31 AM)Kage Wrote: [ -> ]I will toss this out. Sadly I don't have the links as you do Maulbane, but many swords are the primitive stone ones. But that doesn't mean katana's made from a complicated process of folding steel aren't possible, or extremely expensive. Asides, in a world wracked by war, wouldn't you think Gnomes -and- goblins would make these weapons as cheap as possible for the sake of soldiers? (Well, maybe just the gnomes..)
Nej! The vast majority of swords are like the
gladius-style shortsword or various styles like like the basic cutlass, rapier, longsword and falchion models, which most green and blue items are based on. I do know what you're talking about with the primitive sword, though, but I think that model's mostly used with trolls and poorer Human groups.
I'm not gonna derail the points with too much IRL logic-making because real-life reasoning can only play so much into a world that, well, the writers don't really give much respect to a lot of the time. There are katanas in WoW, but I assume they're far cheaper here than they'd have been in the land of the rising sun - since one of the strongest reasons their swords were so thoroughly folded was to counteract the poor quality of their raw steel (of course, the other benefits in themselves were worth it)
But I think the problem here is that people are viewing guns as something normal, when we've got no reason to believe they've existed since even the first war - there were flying machines (unarmed, though - no AA machine guns) and submarines in the second war, though, so we can only guess (as hard as it is to guess from gameplay alone) as to when guns actually came around. The RPG does give some insight, but, like almost everything, it's been decanonised. Despite that I'mma quote it.
Quote:Firearms are a relatively new dwarven invention. Despite the dangers of dealing with volatile explosives, dwarves are fascinated by the possibilities.
Quote:Despite the more "advanced" names used for many of the guns in-game, they are irrelevant and still belong to the three gun groups below.
Which is followed by the Blunderbuss, Flintlock pistol and Long Rifle, all three of which I'd like to think fall in line with my musings on guns! Then again, decanonised, so.
The point stands, at any rate, that guns are new - swordsmithing and metallurgy both have been around for... Well, Elves were making swords something like ten thousand years ago, so it's a tossup between an odd... Twenty-five years or so for guns and 10,000+ to get swords as cutty as possible. I'd say at this point, swordsmithing is as perfect as it can get (ignoring silly enchantments and infusing it with the blood of the bunny-queen Hoppsies to give it +310 grass-chewing), whereas guns are, well, new, despite what a lot of epic/legendary gun items would try and tell you.
As far as Gnomes go, I don't really believe they're the best people to go for guns, either - they're in their best element when they're experimenting, rather than the more metal-and-wood based art of gun-making. They're the people that I expect to have crazy guns, but even then I don't think we're at the point of handheld machine guns and modern-era sniper rifles - probably variations of existing guns, like the Gnomish Special Forces' pistols that they carried around during the guild's heyday, or new ideas for projectiles/firin' mechanisms. Goblins... I'm sure they've got tech up their sleeves, but it'd be hidden deep within the Trade Princes' vaults. I can only assume their gun exports cost a hell of a lot of money.