Guild Wars 2

FlamingFoxx.1305:

CETheLucid.3964:

FlamingFoxx.1305:

The only human who has become a God is Kormir – and she isn’t leading humanity. The rest of the Gods are NOT humans, they come from somewhere else in the mists.

That’s debatable.

The case might be made that Grenth was a half-god, the illegitimate son of Dwayna and Malchor, who cemented his position as a full fledged god of death by overthrowing the former death god Dhuum.

The fact that they could have reproduced may prove the human gods have a mortal origin…. save for Melandru, who seems to be a more ancient and native Tyrian god… though she also has a human likeness.

But he was a half god… Not a human. Also he is not the illegitimate son of Dwayna and Malchor, he’s just their son.

The fact that they can reproduce says absolutely NOTHING about them having a mortal origin. Gods throughout real world myths and legends have been able to reproduce with themselves and with humanity – they’re gods after all so they could probably reproduce with anything.

It’s pretty popular theory that the gods, whilst gods to humanity, are really just powerful beings. We know that they came from somewhere in the Mists and we know that they didn’t create Tyria – so they’re gods in the sense of being extremely powerful – but no in the sense of creating the world.

I seem to remember Dwayna and Bathazar being something of an item. That might not be true though and I’m just weird.

That would just mean Dwayna took a fancy to Malchor’s… devotion, and summarily left the dude blind and heartbroken.

But yeah.

Unless Dwayna just magically materialized Grenth… there’s something to the idea that for whatever reason, humans and their gods are… compatible with one and other.

Kormir furthers that train of thought in that she was once mortal.

Pretty sure there’s no mention anywhere of anything going on between Dwayna and Balthazar xD.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Pretty sure there’s no mention anywhere of anything going on between Dwayna and Balthazar xD.

Fuzzy memory from 8+ years or so ago ain’t all that reliable. Just something that’s in the old noggin’.

A thousand pardons, Grenth. Hope you and your dad had a pleasant reunion.

All the other races except for maybe norn are a waste of development time in my opinion.

Story or not, i ain’t playin a furry, a tree person or a rat.

Though on the flip side, it adds diversity to the overall game giving a lot more flare to the game.

Also this game is South Korean made like the original GW (NCSoft) and Korean Game Developers often have a great art style for both armor/clothing and character models for both male and female, which this game shows, you can make a masculine battle vet middle aged guy to a 20 something pretty boy spell swordsmen, to a cold cool lady knight to a cute mage girl.

The point is, a lot of gamers like being good lookin’ characters, be it a guy or girl. Everything else is a minority. Shallow but true lol.

Leshain.6720:

All the other races except for maybe norn are a waste of development time in my opinion.

Story or not, i ain’t playin a furry, a tree person or a rat.

Though on the flip side, it adds diversity to the overall game giving a lot more flare to the game.

Also this game is South Korean made like the original GW (NCSoft) and Korean Game Developers often have a great art style for both armor/clothing and character models for both male and female, which this game shows, you can make a masculine battle vet middle aged guy to a 20 something pretty boy spell swordsmen, to a cold cool lady knight to a cute mage girl.

The point is, a lot of gamers like being good lookin’ characters, be it a guy or girl. Everything else is a minority. Shallow but true lol.

The game is NOT South Korean made. NCSoft is a Korean owned company – but the developers of GW1 and GW2 are Arenanet, and they are a North American company. Everything in this game is North American – the art style, the development, the story. Everything.

Would choose Sylvari if it was an Elf like race, instead of a flower with hands and legs. :|
That’s what I did like in TERA – races there are amazing.

As others have said before, I really think it has a lot to do with sizes and the fact that the alternative races are just too far from what a human looks like. Norns are enormous, Charr look like utter monsters, Asura are tiny Dobby-looking creatures and the Sylvari, in my opinion, just look like something out of a children’s cartoon.

Couple of things they could have done that I genuinely think would eradicate the vastly disproportionate differences in player distribution:
- Norn made shorter. Making them on average just a foot above a human would be enough to make them appear distinct and imposing but not look like giants.
- Charr made more straight-backed and given ‘softer’ features, not any less ugly, just features that don’t make them quite so alien. In other words, just a tiny step closer to resembling humanoids.
- Asura raised a few inches, body width decreased in favour of being slightly taller but still not tall as tall as a human.
- Sylvari given more natural colours and less cartoonish faces/hairstyles.

Now, this is just my opinion, but the common denominator here is to make all the alternative races move one step closer to humans – because let’s face it, we are humans ourselves and not all of us can relate to being twice or thrice the height of other humans or having horns larger than a human’s limbs. If ArenaNet had done that from the beginning, I don’t think they would be facing this problem anywhere near the scale on which they are observing it now.

I like how Arenanet has done the races. I get really tired of all of the MMO-clones where every single race is just a slightly altered human. I know that it makes it easier for people to relate to, but it isn’t creative at all and it isn’t realistic. (Not to say that fantasy is realistic, but if you’re going to have multiple intelligent races the chances are they are not all going to look like humans… Evolution doesn’t work that way)

I generally play Asura, but I think the race bias actually has to do with the apparent lack of care for armors and such that aren’t human. I mean, look at the halo/horn debacle. It can’t have been tested on an Asura and still pass QA. If it did, then, well, get new QA. lol

Anyway I think it’s sad so many people choose to main human. At least from my RP standpoint, the other races have super rich back stories in comparison.

I would like to use Norn transformations.
I would like to have Sylvary “armor-skin”
I would like to be some kind of Hybrid

I play other races as well, but humans will remain my favourite in GW universe for couple of reasons:

- 6 years of GW1 with only humans as playable race
- fit every class (I can’t really make certain race/class combination because it just doesn’t make sense to me)
- clipping issues with horns, tails, shoulders of other races
- really weird posture of male norns (Quasimodo perhaps)
- I can’t play dwarf!!

All in all it’s really weird for me, because GW is probably the only game where I actually play human characters, except D&D’s tiefling, who is sort of human

Hey Devs, hey, hey! If you want people to enjoy playing as Asura and Charr more, make them actually look good instead of clipping with everything!

Yaj.5973:

The story: While eventually the story is all the same. the first few personal story are actually race specific.
Human: I like their story, it feels engaging and tells a story. of my humans, their backgrounds are; a streetrat who lost her parents at birth, a commoner who lost her sister, and a noble who wanted to try other things (circus to be exact). it paints a picture.

sylvari: it somewhat painted a picture. the white stag and the black knight as personifications of other things.

asura: Did not really like their story.

Charr: Was decent, but ultimately i was dissapointed cause the warband was never mentioned again and neither was the other things.

Norn: Although they were drunks in GW1, I remember them being fierce warriors in the cold weather often communing with forest spirits. Every thing in gw2 just keeps referencing the drunkards. Nothing about heroism like Jora. Nothing like a tragic backstory of Svanir the Nornbear. (so this one is more nostalgia than actual story).

Human story was good, though I’ve yet to do the streetrat one.

Sylvari I’ve admittedly have to beat the other ones (I’ve done the green knight, and Malyck path, but got white stag up next, never did the order section of theirs). Was different but okay.

Asura I’ve yet to get past the first part, but that’s from a lack of playing him and not interest.

Charr, I agree with. The Warband took a backseat during the order parts (Though Reeva appeared often) and then the “Pick an order permanently and leave your warband behind” was bleh, but I think that’s my personal response to the wording of it.

Norn… disagree. My guardian did the “Lost horn” path and it hardly referenced the ‘drunkards’ and such. Neither did the Rival line with the tournament fight(my ranger did that). The depiction I’ve seen doesn’t paint them in much a different light. Great, fierce hunters and warriors who at the same time love life, beer, and company.

Aquila.5142:

Couple of things they could have done that I genuinely think would eradicate the vastly disproportionate differences in player distribution:
- Norn made shorter. Making them on average just a foot above a human would be enough to make them appear distinct and imposing but not look like giants.
- Charr made more straight-backed and given ‘softer’ features, not any less ugly, just features that don’t make them quite so alien. In other words, just a tiny step closer to resembling humanoids.
- Asura raised a few inches, body width decreased in favour of being slightly taller but still not tall as tall as a human.
- Sylvari given more natural colours and less cartoonish faces/hairstyles.

So basically, go WoW and have almost all the races be like humans with slightly changed differences. (Or other MMOs or settings).

No thank you. I’ll take my Charr who more resemble big cats then humans over worgen with very obvious human traits in a werewolf form. I’ll take my clearly non-human Asura over “super tiny human” gnomes.

I’ll take the giant norn with great feats over somebody “slightly taller” then most humans. Let the ‘giants’ be GIANT. not a mere foot taller.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I like how Arenanet has done the races. I get really tired of all of the MMO-clones where every single race is just a slightly altered human. I know that it makes it easier for people to relate to, but it isn’t creative at all and it isn’t realistic. (Not to say that fantasy is realistic, but if you’re going to have multiple intelligent races the chances are they are not all going to look like humans… Evolution doesn’t work that way)

Indeed. You don’t get human, human with skin pattern, human with facial ridges, etc (Aka, Star Trek and it’s vast number of races which = human with one detail changed).

In GW, the various races actually are different, and hardly can be placed as “Hey, that’s a human with x changed.”

My favorite race is charr by far, but why would I use a charr with their stretched and ugly armor skins when I can use a human and know that their armors got a lot a work put into it instead of a stretched out model?

Most of my characters are descendants of my GW characters – so human – sorry quite difficult to make a plant descendant of human – norn would be possible my characters in gw1 was to big for even trying with asura and I’m quite sure that humans are not “compatible” with overgrown cats……

and atm the only character on my account that is not human is my asuran engineer – at first idea he was supposed to be a charr but I’ve decided that I like asuran technobuble more interesting than anything that char could give me.

had for a time also norn female but that was char of my sister not exacly mine so…. :P

and actually tbh only “logical” reason for that is as I said – being descendants of my gw1 characters – If I had more character slots I’d propably create norn warrior, char engineer and probably sylvari necro? just for the heck of it :P

To this day, I still don’t play humans. I’ve played around with character creation, but at the end of the day, the whitewashing makes me sad and I go back to my sylvari and asura. I’d be all for humans if there were more diversity.

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

To this day, I still don’t play humans. I’ve played around with character creation, but at the end of the day, the whitewashing makes me sad and I go back to my sylvari and asura. I’d be all for humans if there were more diversity.

There is so much wrong with that paragraph I dare not take the time.

bullyrook.2165:

Raeysa Penrose.8450:

To this day, I still don’t play humans. I’ve played around with character creation, but at the end of the day, the whitewashing makes me sad and I go back to my sylvari and asura. I’d be all for humans if there were more diversity.

There is so much wrong with that paragraph I dare not take the time.

Please do. If I’m wrong (which I probably am, since that was rather emotional post on my part), I’d like to be corrected.

If the voiceacting for humans didn’t make them sound like teenagers and we had some more “serious” faces rather than Conchita Wurst for males and baby doll for females, I would play as a human with couple characters. But hey, humans in this game look horrible and the only two reasons I can think of for playing the human are either that all armors are made just for them or players like baby doll females. I’d rather like to stare at girls irl. And if it’s just a sentiment from GW1, I can understand.

But I liked the Ascalonians, not Krytans. So I roll with Master Race.
The Charr

They sound like teenagers? Not to me. The male voice fit when I had an older looking Male thief…

I find the female voice unfitting for some of the younger/more innocent looking faces as well, while it works on the more serious ones.

There are serious female human faces. There are a LOT of armors that aren’t revealing…

I think one of the biggest problems I have with the humans is that they have American accents. It detracts from the immersion. But I guess most Americans, who comprise most of the player base, don’t have a problem with it?

I strictly play humans as I dislike the other races. Always have regardless of the game. Call me racist, I don’t care. Only have 6 characters, 5 female, 1 male and all of them have serious faces and I find the voice acting pretty kitten good for them. Don’t mind it at all.
Humans just look so much better in anything and clearly anet knows this too as all the armor and weapons are modeled for humans first.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

I think one of the biggest problems I have with the humans is that they have American accents. It detracts from the immersion. But I guess most Americans, who comprise most of the player base, don’t have a problem with it?

I am not american but i kinda like the fact that Human have a american accent and Sylvary a british one. Makes it more distinct.

Honestly, I have no idea why I find humans so…..boring.

It’s like, I’ll get to 40 on a human mesmer………then suddenly go “why be a human when I can glow at night?” and next thing I know I have a level 80 sylvari mesmer.

It just makes me sad how bad certain armor sets look on non-humans, that I feel is a major contributing factor to the amount of human characters.

Thankfully though at least sylvari female tier 3 med laughs at anything a human can wear, but still.

I like how humans look. I rarely play more animalistic races in any game (not to mention that I’m still bitter about the Searing). The Sylvari largely bore me and the Asura come off like casually genocidal kittens in even their most offhand comments.
In spite of this I do like how Charr look, though I just don’t bond with them and I have to bond with a character to play it long-term.
Norn I like just fine, other than their ham-fisted obsession with ‘boasting.’

From a lore point of view, yeah asura and charr are enjoyable races. Most seasoned players will however pick a race based on aethestics ( horizontal gear progression) , every single skin/armor piece is designed for humans.

Charrs have only limited options ( clipping issues), their navigation is horrible ( try a jumping puzzle), and some animations including the way they walk are ridiculous.

Norns simply have less clipping issuess. At the same time they can use huge weapons. Females look particulary good, males also look better than most races.

Sylvari: Again its so difficult to get a decent looking sylvari.

Asura: Great animations, funny fellahs, however armor can look ridiculous and their great swords are smaller than charr or norn daggers.

My point is pretty obvious, if you design a game around humans, camera angles are more natural, better looks, more armor options, etc you should not be surprised players will choose the race you put most effort in.

Rolled Human because master race.
All Glory be to Adelbern and Doric!

Also because I am human, hell I even look like myself, hell even my name is my name… Man, escapism at it’s best.

Meh, before I took a long break from this game, I liked norn the best. After a 6 month break, I like charr the best and that’s what I play. I find that I always have a hard time playing a human in any mmo (when I have a choice to be something else).