Why do you think the older tomestones were depeciated?

[Morningstar1337]

I make this thread to ask...

• if the Cycling out of tomestones is "Canon" or not
• And if so, why were every tomestone category but Poetics cycled out, lorewise?

For me I think its because poetry and art was so huge in Allag that there is more of it per volume than there were other topic and that some overlapped with the other tome types. While aslo being a more popular subject tor Rowena's patrons compared to the niche topics of Philosophy, Soldierly, Law and especially Esoterics.

[Enkidoh]

There is no real lore reason but just pragmatism - it's a currency connected to high level gear so by cycling the currency keeps players doing new content to get the 'new shinies' (which results in the old tomes being devalued accordingly and thus removed).

Poetics tomestones however are used for several different types of content that remain static so hence the currency remained intact (such as items needed for the ARR relic upgrading quest).

There's no actual lore behind it, anything mentioned by the npcs are just padding to make it interesting.

[Sylve]

There's no actual lore behind it, anything mentioned by the npcs are just padding to make it interesting.

I like to think of it as market supply/demand. The more we supply to Rowena, the less demand there is for that Tomestone and thus less profitable.
So Rowena switches to a new Tomestone to keep profits rolling lol.

[Vyrerus]

Definitely no real lore reason behind tomestones. Only reason everything in past expansions default to Poetics is to make acquisition of items easier on newbies, and because Poetics were the first tomestone to be treated in this fashion.

My personal take on it is that Rowena's clientele is just Rowena herself, in regards to tomestones, and that's she secretly amassing knowledge in concert with some dubious Sharlayan entrepreneur, related to the Forum. Together they plot world domination! *twirls moustache, evilly.*

[Iscah]

At this point we're finding tomes in the pre-Allagan ruins of another world, so I think any lore justification for them has gone out the window.

[TitaniumVulpes]

I thought I saw somewhere that the reason most tomestones depreciate was because there's only so much information to be gleaned from them before there's just no new, say, esoteric knowledge to be had. But Poetics don't really have information, it's just art, so while it holds a different kind of value from other tomestones, that value doesn't depreciate no matter how many new poems you find. 500 algebra books don't have the variety of 500 novels. But I can't remember if this was an Official Lore Reason or just an idea someone else made up.

[TheMightyMollusk]

At this point we're finding tomes in the pre-Allagan ruins of another world, so I think any lore justification for them has gone out the window.

They fell out of the Tower while traveling through the Rift and got thrown through time and space. We'll be finding them on every shard now.

[Zohar_Lahar]

Poetics has probably all the Third Astral Era literature, artbooks, movies, video games, Internet archives, pornography, fan art, doujins, etc. So that probably has more lasting power than Allagan military records, receipts, and legal documents.

[Draginhikari]

Generally, it's just comments by the exchange that Rowena just says there not 'worth it anymore' suggesting they some of them lose value over time. Frankly, the whole tomestone system is more a gameplay thing. The Tomestones themselves lore wise just kind of exist to explain what they are and why anyone would want hundreds of the damn things. The actual names of the tomestones are more just a way for us as players to mentally separate them into patterns we can follow as we progress over time without resorting to generic sound names like Allagan Tomestone I and II or something like that.