Guild Wars 2

Meh, the old Charr would burn anyone for gits and shiggles. The modern Charr are grossly artificial. I’d rather not dig up this dead-horse argument again, but I refuse to buy into the “reinvented” Charr the same way I refuse to buy into the “reinvented” crazy Adelbern. They were both done for the same reason: to market a new playable race. Not for continuity, not for additional lore, and not for some “long-hidden storyline that is only now unfolding.” It was done to bring in more consumers(money).

Ever wonder why ANet chose such a long time(250 years) between the games? Because if they didn’t none of this “engineering Charr” stuff would be believable. You’re pretty much right about humans and Charr being two apex predators, the real difference between them is one is civilized and the other is savage. Modern lore notwithstanding.

ANet isn’t trying to continue this great Tyrian fantasy experience, the’re trying to reinvent it. It’s evident in both the decisions they made with the games’ story and mechanics, as well as decisions they are making post-release. And so far they are succeeding in it. Anyone who thinks GW2 is a legitimate spiritual successor to GW1 should have their head examined. The Charr are just one of the most obvious representations of this change, and thusly get called out on it a lot.

I’ll troll about anything I find disingenuous or backhanded in relation to the lore of first game, precisely because ANet said the lore was one of the few things they promised to honor. Finding every available ambiguous loophole or omission in the story to perpetuate a radically different narrative isn’t “staying true” to the Tyria of GW1. It’s intellectual highway robbery.

To stay on topic…yeah, kinda sucks for those ghosts.

I take a different approach to the art of story telling but we’ve had that discussion Modern charr aren’t their ancestors. Label that as artificial if you like but it actually makes the case against harboring the same resentment against GW2 charr as GW1. But on the “civilized” bit, humans skinned their enemies and wore their flesh into battle. So I guess you’d really need to specify what exactly you mean by “civilized”. :-P

edit: to fuel your “not the spiritual successor” stance, I did come across this: “Science, both magical and technological, has advanced beyond that used in the original Guild Wars. While Guild Wars 2 is still a fantasy-based world of high magic, it now also has a unique feel of technology mixed in, brought about by a natural progression of research and development.” http://www.guildmag.com/guildmag-issue-1-qa-with-ree-soesbee

We skin cattle and wear their flesh for a fashion statement. I don’t see all that much difference between them I guess.

Interesting quote, never seen that one before. It pretty much sums up a lot of what I’m talking about though. My point is, if GW1 lore was so well-received and the game in general had such a loyal following, why bring in technology in the first place? Too many people ask what the new content is, and not enough ask why the new content is even here. They had to have a reason to do it. Aside from some personal creativity, it’s my belief that the addition of the 4 new playable races(along with some over-zealous moral underpinnings) is the main reason they did so.

I do know for a fact that having non-human playable races was always at least in the back of the dev’s minds, even during Prophesies. At the time they didn’t know if it would be very successful and wanted to fully develop one culture(human) instead of partially developing many. It could have really watered down the story of GW1…kind of like it is in GW2 to be honest. :/

Personally, I think the new staff both a) didn’t realize what a good thing they had going with how GW1 was playing out being all “human-centric” and b) had a lot of pressure from NCsoft to both produce a cash cow, and stay away from any references to real-world cultures that “might” be offensive in the slightest. Not sure what the fuss was about though, I don’t remember any problem with that sort of thing in GW1.

“…natural progression of research and development” -I find that part comical seeing as the human and Norn cultures look almost exactly the same tech-wise as they did in GW1. And the Asura have barely advanced. Yeah, yeah, the “athiests make better scientists” argument is whack. There’s very little “natural” about the tech progression in this game.

Guild Wars was such an imaginative and unique world. Sure, it wasn’t the only one to go all “human-centric.” But is was one of the very few that pulled it off well. And it even managed to do that while diverging from so many classic D&D-style fantasy tropes and forging it’s own path. Aside from the lore, the combat system(antiquated engine aside) and skill/class customization were strokes of genius. GW2 may not have a true trinity(still better to have a guardian in dungeons though), or a huge gear-grind, but its heart and soul sold itself out to “mainstream mmo’s” years ago.

Obsidian.1328:

[snip]
To stay on topic…yeah, kinda sucks for those ghosts.

I think ANet knew what they were doing with the ghosts would upset some players. They were aware that the ghost thing would touch on some nerves. This is why they had Gwen be at Ebonhawke at the time of the Foefire, since they knew making players fight against her as a Ghost would probably upset quite a few.

I know people like Kasha, Nente, Vassar, etc. were not major characters in the game, but I still have a perma pre-searing character (ranger nontheless) who has been taught by some of these people. It’s kind of upsetting to have them be killed by what I consider to be one of the distant relatives of my character in pre-searing.

ZenonSeth

Heh, I had never thought of that possibility. I can see how that might be weird for peeps. I was more a “Devona” person than a “Gwen” person though.

Yeah…by forcing this ghost predicament on GW1 players, they kind of struck a touchy cord. The Charr just happen to be intimately tied to the birthplace of many GW1 players. First impressions tend to stay with you for a long time, it’s unfortunate that ANet didn’t see this particular situation as too much of a problem. Or maybe they did and thought a healthy dose of controversy would be a good thing. I just think they think bringing in new believers into the fold trumps placating old vets any day. Am I wrong?

Obsidian.1328:

@Zaxares
Historically all Charr were on the same page when it came to killing humans, it didn’t take any convincing from the Titan’s to blitz Ascalon. Using the Flame Legion as a scapegoat(and taking a lot of the blame away from ordinary Charr) was an invention of the GW2 writers.

Oh, definitely. The Charr in GW1 were chomping at the bit to kick the humans out of Ascalon and would certainly have massacred or enslaved everybody in the city if they could. Still, I expect the whole Althea immolation thing was more of a ceremonial sacrifice thing for the Flame Legion than something the other Legions engaged in. Remember, we do encounter some captive Ascalonians in GW1 that were slaves of the Charr for more than 2 years. If the Charr really were all about killing their captives slowly and gruesomely, those slaves would never have lived that long.

Again, I stress that I’m not defending the Charr in GW1. They were brutal, barbaric savages that slaughtered and destroyed on a massive scale. (Heck, I don’t even trust Pyre Fierceshot; my characters would have challenged him and his Warband to a fight to the death as soon as our temporary alliance was over.) I’m just saying that times change, and the Charr of today are not the Charr of the past. I can understand why veterans of GW1 hate the Charr, but hating modern Charr for their history is unfair and unjustified.

ZenonSeth.5739:

I know people like Kasha, Nente, Vassar, etc. were not major characters in the game, but I still have a perma pre-searing character (ranger nontheless) who has been taught by some of these people. It’s kind of upsetting to have them be killed by what I consider to be one of the distant relatives of my character in pre-searing.

Yeah, I always get a bit sad when I have to put down ghosts like Captain Calhaan or Farah Cappo in events. (Except Horace. That kittener can go rot in the Domain of Anguish. Him and his stupid ROCKS! :P) I wish there were some way for us to help them to move on, rather than hang around forever, frozen in time and forced to constantly relive an endless war.

Zaxares.5419:

I wish there were some way for us to help them to move on, rather than hang around forever, frozen in time and forced to constantly relive an endless war.

Ghostbore technology. You’re welcome ;P

Dustfinger.9510:

Zaxares.5419:

I wish there were some way for us to help them to move on, rather than hang around forever, frozen in time and forced to constantly relive an endless war.

Ghostbore technology. You’re welcome ;P

No no no. You have the wrong approach.

There’s a little known dynamic event that occurs in the Shattered Keep in Sparkfly Fen that involves an Asura named Scholar Yorix.

It seems Yorix has invented a machine that can free ghosts from their ghostly confines (such as that of pirates to kill everyone who approaches their treasure).
The DE has 2 parts – escort and protect. After you escort him down to meet Veteran Captain Ferrine, who he then proceeds to test his machine on, and successfully frees her, which makes her become friendly and she then proceeds to fight the risen on behalf of the Priory.

When a friend and I ran into this event, we were half expecting Yorix to free all the ghosts, and for him to lead an army of ghosts against the risen on the beach (this was going on roughly at the same time as the nearby Ash Horizon event) – much ala LotR style ghost army.

Sadly, it’s only one ghost being freed, but I think this gives us hope in freeing the ghosts in Ascalon. Hopefully Yorix will become a major part in the future events there (I’m looking at you ANet)

Nice. That’s two permanent solutions to the “ghost problem” and it opens the way for a possible new playable race that has ties to our GW1 characters.

Obsidian.1328:

We skin cattle and wear their flesh for a fashion statement. I don’t see all that much difference between them I guess.

I’ll bite. One is sentient. The other is not.

We don’t own that moral high ground. Humans can and have proven to be just as savage as the charr.

There are cases of humans skinning other humans and making shoes of them, let alone armor made of charr.

*CET

Oh I don’t think GW1 humans are morally superior to everyone, only that they were the ones chosen by the authors to populate the world of Tyria…and to be seen as the single civilized race of importance. Whether or not ANet had always thought about adding other races is irrelevant when discussing humanities contextual role as the only protagonist in the the GW1 story.

The Charr had originally been written as the “big bad guys” so there was no need to derive any empathy towards them as civilized folk. They were savages that would kill you at first sight, just like the Grawl and Ogres would. Wearing Charr armor back then would be just the same to me as wearing a harpy claw around your neck or something.

Now if one wants to rewrite a primary antagonist into a primary protagonist…you better be very careful in how you do that. In my opinion, they did a lousy job of it. Both in how artificially advanced the Charr were written, as well as how poorly the humans were made to look because of it. I find it insanely disrespectful that humans are made out to be the bad guys in the whole Ascalon fiasco. Villifying one race in order to elevate another is not the right thing to do.

It’s difficult comparing fantasy game races to real life since humans are currently the only sentient species on Earth. Instead of the black and white separation that makes in real life, fantasy races have a giant grey area in terms of sentience. It just depends on how they were written. Legolas and Gimli had a game of Who can kill the most orcs!, but I doubt you’ll find anyone lamenting the atrocities committed against the orcs of Middle-earth by evil humans. -_-

I would actually say that the Centaurs and Tengu of GW1 presented a much better case for “playerhood” than the Charr did. They were minor antagonists at best, and didn’t have such a huge negative connotation attached to them. Not sure why these obvious choices were bypassed in favor of a race that was bound to create some major conflicts with the GW1 playerbase, not to mention storyline.

If we look at your example with the black and white separation in RL, we see historically that some races were actually considered more animal than human. This perspective allowed the exact thought of it being okay to treat them as animals and not as civilized folk. When science finally caught up to social outlook, we see that no matter what the social outlook of the time, the actual truth is we committed atrocities to sentient beings. Even while some of those sentient beings that we thought were animals were also attacking us.

So, I can forgive A-Net for expanding their Tyrian universal outlook to focus on other races. To be angry with A-net for the sin of telling us that humanity did make mistakes that they thought were justified at the time does seem to hint at a desire for humanity to hold the moral highground.

Eh…human races and game races aren’t the same thing, you can’t really equate the two. Humans are the only sentient species on Earth, I didn’t say race. Humans never treated other sentient species as animals because there are none. We’ve treated humans like animals, and animals like animals, and even animals like humans lol.

If anything, it’s a misnomer to call dwarves, elves, etc. races at all. They are entirely different species, not a different race, if we look at it through RL eyes…which was sorta my point there.

At any rate, I’m not angry at ANet at all for saying humans sinned or whatever, of course they did. It’s the way in which they wrote it that is a problem. Heck even I could come up with a more believable and legitimate storyline for GW2 that had the Charr coming into their own(which ironically I think it is their ultimate destiny in Tyria to surpass humans). But the lopsided and irresponsible way in which they did it was way off the mark.

There are no races among humans IRL. Just us.

In the Guild Wars universe, the word has a legitimate use in differentiating the various sentient beings.

Obsidian.1328:

Humans are the only sentient species on Earth, I didn’t say race. Humans never treated other sentient species as animals because there are none.

I think you’re confusing the terms “sentience” and “sapience”. Sentience refers to the ability to feel, perceive and be conscious. By that definition, all animals on Earth are sentient, because they feel pain and pleasure, can react to stimuli, and can act independently of their environment. Even plants can perhaps be considered sentient, as plants have been proven to react to stimuli and possibly even communicate with other plants. (In one experiment, a tree in one enclosure was attacked by a pest beetle, and it released an alarm/distress pheromone into the air. Nearby trees that detected the pheromone started preparing defenses against that specific species of beetle, even if no beetles had been introduced into their enclosure.)

Sapience is the ability to think, to reason, to act with judgment and forethought with regards to future consequences for their actions. Humans demonstrate this ability in all members of our species, although some people (including myself) argue that some species of animals are also sapient considering they have the ability to solve problems and base their decisions on past experience and learning. (Sapience is different from intelligence; within a sapient species like humans, you will get individuals with varying levels of intelligence. Thus, people in my group believe that animals are also sapient; it’s just that most animal species lack the intelligence to think very far into the future or solve complex problems.)

CET

Ehh…race has a definitive historical and social context here. The word’s meaning exists in real life and in games…they just mean different things in each. We were talking about game races, you switched to RL race examples(which isn’t the same thing), then called me out on saying races don’t exist in the first place. dot dot dot

Zaxares

I was using a more philosophical definition. I didn’t mean merely the ability to feel or perceive, but also self-awareness and the ability to reason subjectively, which actually includes sapience. So no, I wasn’t confusing sapience with sentience.

CETheLucid.3964:

There are no races among humans IRL. Just us.

In the Guild Wars universe, the word has a legitimate use in differentiating the various sentient beings.

The term “race” in real life can refer to (amongst other things) the biological classification of plant and animal life, where it classifies small genetic variations of the same species (this is not applicable to humans, as far as I know).

It can also refer, as its most commonly used when talking about humans, about the social, ethnic, geographic and/or genetic background of a certain group of humans (i.e. Caucasians, African-descendants, Middle-Eastern, Asian, etc)

Both of these uses is completely valid in real life, and neither refers to anything outside the ‘species’ to which it refers.

In fantasy, ‘race’ in my opinion is a very badly misused word – it should be called Species. Especially in the GW2 universe – because, you see, the definition of a ‘species’ is the ability to procreate with each other (hence why all humans on Earth are the same species). Since it has been confirmed by Word Of God that inter-species procreation is impossible in Tyria, that’s even more good reason why the Charr, Norn, Humans, Asura and Sylvari should be called “species” and not “races”.

Of course, this is just fantasy fiction, so it doesn’t make a huge difference either way.

Regarding the moral high ground:
From the point of view of the humans born in Ascalon, they had done nothing wrong to the Charr to warrant the Searing. It would of course be the same with the Charr – newly born Charr would not have any real gripe with modern day humans – no wrong was directly done to them.

It’s the perpetuation of old hatred that fueled that war, and it was stupid.
Fast forward to modern day, I don’t think any living charr or human can have a gripe with the other due to those events. However, I still feel sorry for the ghosts in Ascalon, since they’re essentially stuck in a state that won’t let them let go of the past.

Still, being human in GW1, I don’t think the player EVER did anything as horrific to the Charr as the charr did to humans in that game. Let’s face it, the Charr were MADE to be the bad guys in that game, they were made to be ‘evil’, and ANet succeeded in their portrayal in my opinion.

Now ANet wants me to forget their ‘evil’ classification of those Charr?
What’s next? They’ll label the Dragons as being only one faction of a greater whole, and thus we should be friends with them? Or the Sons of Svanir?

On one hand it’s perfectly acceptable that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are just different points of view. On the other, none of the actual gameplay even comes close to suggesting that. Every single event and story in-game will portray someone as good and someone as evil. It’s hard to think in terms of shades of gray, when the gameplay is so black and white.

Basically, I don’t blame the Charr for what’s happened to the ghosts in Ascalon – I blame ANet.

ZenonSeth

Umm…wow. You said it way better than I did. Thank you.

Only one solution to make us, GW1 Ascalon fans feel better: as the treaty progresses between Ebonhawke and the Legions, they agree on a united assault against an anemy whose defeat can make this alliance stronger.

A united assault on the flame legion, for oppressing other legions and searing Ascalon, in which this alliance reclaims Drascir for the Human,s making it the Ascalonian capital for the humans, linking it with Ebonhawke.

Or as they approach the wall, they realize that Drascir isn’t abandoned at all. Humans managed to rebuild the city after the fall of Ascaloncity, using mesmer magic to hide it from outsiders, or was moved to another phase of reality for a small time, using the Scepter Of Or.

Anyways, getting back Drascir with the traditional Ascalonian architecture, BUT NOT IN RUINS! would be great.

This could be the next living story part, connecting them with the assault on the Flame Legion.

Rednik.3809:

Dream Runner.8546:

So what? Charr ate humans and call humans “meat” – not even recognizing their accomplishments against the Titans, or even holding off the Charr out of Ascalon for 1000 years. But please, other than some cosmetic armor. Where does the humans actually demostrate their horrible nature against the Charr?

- “So, as you all can see, this man has committed the following crimes …”
- “Ah, come on, someone else did some crimes too! So i innocent! This is perfectly logical, why didn’t you see that?”

A crime is a crime, regardless of whether the offense was committed by someone else.

Since there has been no direct evidence of humans being equally evil towards the Charr. I have to conclude the Charr have a lot crimes to answer for, and my assumption of the Charr committing genocide and are warmonger’s is correct.

Let me put it another way. Does the Tengu mask demostrate the terrible experiences the Tengu have suffered?

There will be people who will defend the Charr no matter what arguments are given, although i find it a bit hard to understand. Only explanation i can come up with is a different understanding of morality, or that they just don’t apply moral standards to a game. Yet i see people go up against opinions that differ from their sympathy for the Charr. It’s just a game after all…that’s why i can tolerate the Charr in GW2. People who like the Charr should feel free to do so, but differentiate between the two games. The Charr of GW Prophecies were just monsters one had to kill, just like any other. There were no atrocities committed against them in that game.