Guild Wars 2

This is something I’ve been curious about for a while, and this seemed a good place to ask. In games where it is purely a cosmetic choice (so anything but The Elder Scrolls I think) do you tend to create human characters with a skin colour similar to your own, a different one or does it vary?

For me with my main characters the most important thing is that it fits the lore. For example in GW1 my Prophecies character was white, my Factions character was asian and my Nightfall character was black. My GW2 character is as close to a middle ground as I could find because she’s supposed to be descended from all 3 and a bunch of other people from all over.

With my other characters it’s more down to asthetics, I tend to have a mental image of them before I create them and I pick whatever fits that.

But I have to admit I do tend to think of my own skin colour as a kind of default and anything else as a change from that, so I’m probably more likely to make them look like me than not. Same way I tend to end up with more female characters than male.

I’m curious about how other people go about it though. Is it something you put a lot of thought into? Do you tend to stick to one end of the spectrum or vary it? And if you know, how do you decide?

Morenin, my male noble human warrior, is a remake from two other games where he was a half elf of dark elf descent, and thus had really dark skin. So, I gave GW2 Morenin the closest to his usual coloring I could. Totally nowhere near my Irish blooded complexion. (Then I found out that he should have been Elonan descent rather than Ascolonan… Apparently one of the last refugees through the Desert Gate married someone in Ebonhawke.) When making a totally new character, I’d start with whatever appearance was appropriate to the story I was trying to tell, and work from there.

Anytime I make any character, I base their appearance around who I think they are. A character won’t click with me unless I have an idea of them as a person, with an appearance that matches. Because of this, I have a large mix of various genders, skin colors, races, etc, although most of my characters are the gender opposite mine.

It varies. I usually create my characters to suit the culture/theme of the game they are in. Thus, for Prophecies, I created 3 Caucasian characters since Ascalon is a European-themed kingdom. For Factions, I created an Asian character with an Asian name. For Nightfall, I created an African character with an Egyptian name, since Istan seemed to draw upon Egyptian influences.

My Elementalist and I are both tall white guys with dark hair (going a little gray), blue eyes and beards. I didn’t specifically intend him to be a self-insert, but when I realized that’s what was looking good to me during character creation, I didn’t try to stop it either.

My other Human is based on my favorite City of Heroes character, who was female and mixed Japanese and Hawaiian. She’s the character who I tried the least to integrate into the GW2 Lore because it was more important to me that she be preserved in some way while her game of origin was being scuttled. I guess she’s mostly Canthan or something? Is there even a rough analogue to Polynesians in Tyria?

The contrast between my GW2 main character and my last MMO’s main character shows, I think, that the Elementalist’s similarities to myself are largely coincidental. I’d have made a more diverse cast of humans, but only having one Voice option for each gender drove me out into the other races, where normally I focus pretty heavily on Humans in fantasy MMOs.

Human characters I make in games always end up looking Arabian or African. GW2 is no exception with my characters all claiming descent from Vabbi and Istan.

My RL ancestry is Celtic/Nordic. Go figure haha.