Guild Wars 2

I’ve always thought it was the humans with the cute dollfaces, many people prefer Norn not just because of the bustsize but also due to the more mature faces. Not to mention there’s at least one face with actual scars, and many of the tattoos show on the face as well.

I’m glad I only see my female norn from behind. Would be awful to look at a pretty face all day. :p

Seriously though, I think more options in scarring and tattoos would address this. The faces are a little too cutsy but it’s better than being ugly.

Pariah.1457:

Not to mention there’s at least one face with actual scars, and many of the tattoos show on the face as well.

True, one face has scars. But the face in itself, it structure, stays almost perfect. Great eyes, straight nose, nice lips… to sum up, no real flaws. That’s disappointing, especially when you see how ugly an Asura can be, without any real effort !

Here is a link to the available faces.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Norn_female_faces.png

Sometimes there’s so much make-up I wonder if they plan to make a GW2 movie.

Obtena.7952:

I’m glad I only see my female norn from behind. Would be awful to look at a pretty face all day. :p

I know what you mean. How is it possible to admire the awesome scenery in GW2 with such a beacon of light in the middle of the screen ?
Ok ok, I’m gonna calm down a little bit, else my wife is gonna think I’m in some weird fetish. Too bad she isn’t a Norn though…. snap, I did it again ><

I’m seriously ok with it.

My only beef is that for some strange reason, ANet did not include all intuitive body builds. What I mean is that there are several builds that have smooth -or- muscular versions, but not the other. E.g. Norn female upper right option has no muscular version. Seems odd. Worse on the Human side where there’s a lot of mis-match, and the parallel body builds (where there are smooth / muscular versions) are not next to each other.

Odd.

Aside from the enormous racks, the norn aren’t quite as oversexualized as the human women, but they’re still disappointing nonetheless because they’re just oversized humans. They need quite a bit of work to give them a look that actually reflects their lifestyle — rugged and kickarse. The men come with that by default. Thankfully, the norn ladies at least have more faces that actually look like adults instead of jailbait (which is what I hate the most about the humans).

The forced makeup on many faces really needs to go, for both species. And a bit more maturity and scars in the faces and bulk in the bodies would be a big help, too.

I made sure to put the cuts on my Norn’s face. What actually makes me sad is to see a female Norn who has such a tiny waist that she looks like she could be broken in half by the first monster she comes across. And that the muscle definition is optional. For the plants, I can see that. But Norn are strong warriors. And even as one with light armor, it made me sad to see that the default starting armor included a lacy garter. (But was great incentive to level quickly and find more appropriate armor.) For faces, I found a serious looking face. Still attractive, but not prissy.

In fairness, this doesn’t differ from any other form of media that isn’t trying to portray realism, and its is particularly common to anything in the fantasy realm. In most visual media, the idea of unattractive means taking a highly attractive person and putting them in glasses, a sweatshirt, and maybe down playing their $400 hair cut by tying it into a bun.

I think where some players (certainly not me) have trouble is, in games, these are characters one has a hand in creating. And despite having a narrative laid out for your character through a story arc, the ownership, and a large part of the authorship, belongs to the player. Accordingly, we become more specific about what constitutes the right look of character we’re playing. And Norn are supposed to be a big rugged sort, so I can see that view point.

Then again, I played Tera Online prior to this game. The Elementalist’s bikini armor seems like burkas in comparison to the garb over there. Even the heavy stuff.

But whatever one thinks about the looks, the voice actress portraying the female Norn PC does so with a husky confidence that fits right into character.

I disagree, i like the norn as they are..

Now the Sylvari are amazingly ugly

I think it’s entirely possible to make an “ugly” Norn women.

The major issue are the human females imho. The body shapes only range from anorexic to very thin. There is one shape I’d call remotely curvy, but somehow they thought it was a great idea to deflate its bust size to ridiculousness. I don’t need E cup, but it just looks horribly out of proportion, especially since the model doll shapes often got bigger bust. It’s silly.
The faces also range only from 12 to 20 year old.

I think the greatest problem is, that faces are always provided “as-is”. There are no different mouth or eye shapes. For women, makeup and lipcolor are “hard-coded” as well. It’s quite a customization-killer, really.
I believe body sliders would be better than pre-determined shapes as well.

Dante.1508:

I disagree, i like the norn as they are..

Now the Sylvari are amazingly ugly

Despite my title saying that they are “too” pretty, it’s not really about liking or not liking how they look. Who wouldn’t love something good-looking ? Except Birgitte Silverbow of course, but that’s another matter.
It’s more about having the opportunity to make them look “less”. Less models, more… Norn.

Btw, background question here : How old is supposed to be our character ? I guess quite young ? I mean, somewhere between 18 and 25 ?
It would be strange to ask for face lines, for example, if our character is supposed to be a young adult ^^

18 – 25 years old sounds about right in context, based on the way the characters look and snippets of dialogue here and there indicating youth. I mean, Eir Stegalkin is the wise old head at what, 27?

I’m also amused that Norn children seem to be the same size as human children. Wonder what those growing pains must feel like?

@Arsenal, I think the Norn children are around human adult height!

My Norn female characters are offended! Haven’t you looked one in the eye? Don’t they have that intimidating look to them? I love it! They look like they could stare you into the ground. Even with makeup and star tattoos. I made an ele Norn with star tattoos just for kicks and I found her in that frilly miniskirt and star tattoos still with a very determined look on her face like she could beat you up if she so desired.

Either way, I’d probably prefer a few more roughed up options, but they’re so much better well done than the human anime 12-15 year old faces, plus maybe that one to two sad 28-30 looking face that the human females have (it’s good they added options for faces for the humans, but it just seems off since they have nothing in the middle and you can make/draw a character to look older, mature, and still come off as stylish/pretty/determined rather than sad and/or tired – bags under the eyes?!).

I am not a fan of body sliders (you start having a rather disturbed looking character with too many), but customizing the makeup would’ve been a great option and of course adding some more builds. But I do love the musle on the Norn. It’s fantastic!

Lorelei.7809:

My Norn female characters are offended! Haven’t you looked one in the eye? Don’t they have that intimidating look to them? I love it! They look like they could stare you into the ground. Even with makeup and star tattoos. I made an ele Norn with star tattoos just for kicks and I found her in that frilly miniskirt and star tattoos still with a very determined look on her face like she could beat you up if she so desired.

Yep, attractive or not, they are no joke.

All I want is for that burlier body type that only NPCs can have currently to be available to player characters. I was l was watching Linnea run after that Jackalope today and thinking “Holy crap, she actually looks like a Norn.”

And don’t tell me “oh they can’t/won’t because the armor clips.” I’ve rolled a bunch of thick-bodied characters of other race/gender combinations and seen a whole lot of armor clipping, so I have a really hard time believing it’s only an issue when it comes to heftier humanoid ladies.

I’ve deleted my female Norn warrior twice now because I couldn’t deal with how ridiculously slender I was forced to make her…finally just rolled a Charr instead.

Those may be “extremely” thick in comparison to some other options, but as an absolute description, no way. I hope that Charlie is being sarcastic about the “any thicker” comment.

I wasn’t being sarcastic at all.

Sorry mate, but she’s not “extremely” thick at all. At the very least she can be regarded as sturdy. And considering the Norn life style, I would prefer her to be sturdier, rather than looking like a giant toothpick.

But hey, we’re getting on the territory of personal tastes and wishes here. That’s completely normal that not everyone share the same idea on how thick a Norn must be. For me, I would just say that I would gladly welcome more customization options.

I love the look of Norn females. I have a hard time not making one when I roll alts. They are strong with out being overdone, attractive and feminine looking imo. If you want feminine looking body builders roll a male human with long hair. Lifestyle can only change so much. A female build is a female build, that is the way their genes are. There is already some well muscled body types in the game for female Norn as well unless were talking steroid physique which is not at all natural and wouldn’t fit into a fantasy game.

Anybody notice most of the ‘Local’ Norn female un-select-able body type? The thickest select-able body type has nothing on that waistline.

The term is voluptuous :-)

Charlie.1726:

I hope sarcasmosaur was being sarcastic.

If not, have you even looked at the body types available?

There are two extremely thick bodies. They’re built like barrels. Any thicker and they’d probably need one of those mobility scooters.

Just look at those…

Any thicker? The Norn men are easily twice that thick and get around just fine, thanks.

That’s the crux of the issue, there. There’s this unspoken rule when it comes to fantasy, especially video game, art, where females must be considered conventionally attractive by the fans or there’d be an explosion of complaining. You see this in “that other MMO” with races like orcs, trolls, and draenei, whose females look so bizarrely different from their males solely to add sex appeal. Men are allowed to be ugly. Women are not. Welcome to the double-standards of today’s society.

Guild Wars 2 managed to dodge this for the most part, especially with the Charr and the Asura. The Norn didn’t get so lucky, probably because they are closer to human overall.

Huh, I’m sure my character has different scars (referring to the wiki link above) – will have to check tonight.

They are always symmetric though, which makes them somewhat “beautiful”.

Edit to above – no, my mistake, it’s those scars, I just hardly see them because of mask and tats.

Here’s what amuses me. Prior to this game, I played a certain struggling MMO set in the present day, full of secret societies and a Lovecraftian influence. Dig around the forums there and you will find the number one complaint about the character creator was:

Can’t make characters attractive enough.

Its true. In most games when they look at polls the most played characters tend to be the more humanoid ones and with the females the more attractive body and face types. this was true in FF11 as well as League of Legends. Someone complained in LoL about not enough grotesque characters and they said their metrics show that people played hot female characters the most.

The largest section of the demographic is usually 18-35 males so appealing to that group with hot chicks makes the most sense businesswise. Like arsenal said, on the off chance your game doesn’t have attractive females, people complain. I have a feeling that if Sylvari had been created as traditional hot elves instead of tree beings, they would have double the people playing them on a side note.

As the proud player of a femnorn warrior I both agree and disagree. Yes, it’s very easy to make a pretty norn. But it’s also rather easy to make an extremely butch one. My point however is that good looks aren’t mutually exclusive with savage looks. The point of norn is that they’re rough and barbaric in appearance, and I think my lean-as-hell warrior pulls that off perfectly fine.

My own warrior’s attached:

Eain.7825:

As the proud player of a femnorn warrior I both agree and disagree. Yes, it’s very easy to make a pretty norn. But it’s also rather easy to make an extremely butch one. My point however is that good looks aren’t mutually exclusive with savage looks. The point of norn is that they’re rough and barbaric in appearance, and I think my lean-as-hell warrior pulls that off perfectly fine.

My own warrior’s attached:

Here is mine

Grakor.3450:

Any thicker? The Norn men are easily twice that thick and get around just fine, thanks.

Yeah, I’d love to have the sturdier norn bodytypes available for human women, who really are terribly scrawny, and have norn women who actually resemble their men more than they resemble overgrown humans. Mind, the norn men are a bit too “steroid hulk” for my liking — but if the designers want a species to look like that, they should go the whole way.

It would be nice to have more scars options. Otherwise you can adjust your facial details to utter ugly if you wish.

A side note, Scandavanian women are smoking hot, just saying :P

If I am going to spend hours, days, weeks, months killing monsters, being a hero, I am going to be a hot babe while I am doing it.

I want my screen to be looking good.

Dolphin.7952:

If I am going to spend hours, days, weeks, months killing monsters, being a hero, I am going to be a hot babe while I am doing it.

I want my screen to be looking good.

Hahah couldn’t have said it better!

I kind of agree with the OP, but not so much in terms of attractiveness. My main beef is that the body shape of human females and Norn females is so similar. You can tell at a glance whether or not a particular male PC is human or Norn, but it’s not as easy to tell whether you’re looking at a particularly short Norn female, or a particularly tall human female. I’d rather that they’d made Norn females broader, with the same general proportions as the men. It looks really weird when you stand Norn men and women next to each other, especially when you stand human men and women next to each other and compare the two pairs.

You can have broad Norn female, just very few choose that. When folks chose Norn males, they always picked the broadest and biggest, oddly enough.

Zaxares.5419:

I kind of agree with the OP, but not so much in terms of attractiveness. My main beef is that the body shape of human females and Norn females is so similar. You can tell at a glance whether or not a particular male PC is human or Norn, but it’s not as easy to tell whether you’re looking at a particularly short Norn female, or a particularly tall human female. I’d rather that they’d made Norn females broader, with the same general proportions as the men. It looks really weird when you stand Norn men and women next to each other, especially when you stand human men and women next to each other and compare the two pairs.

Imho, if they gave Norn females the same build of males no one would have played them. I get shivers at the thought.

I like how beautiful the Norn woman are. The human women all look like 12 year old anime rejects.

Norn are real women.

The largest section of the demographic is usually 18-35 males so appealing to that group with hot chicks makes the most sense businesswise. Like arsenal said, on the off chance your game doesn’t have attractive females, people complain.

But they had the opportunity to cater for all groups, and they didn’t. Why do we have so many available body shapes, only for them to differ by such miniscule amounts?

Look, I’m an 18-35 male. I probably would have picked a relatively slim build, regardless of how stupidly unrealistic it is (do you realise how massive your arms have to be to use a wooden longbow effectively?). But why shouldn’t there be the option for people to play hulking muscle-women if they want to?

Like one poster says above, welcome to the double standards of modern society.

And yes, the humans are worse. The available options for people wanting to play a human woman are:

1) Slender, pretty 17-year old.
2) Slender, pretty 17-year old after horrific cosmetic surgery accident.

psyt.9415:

Lifestyle can only change so much. A female build is a female build, that is the way their genes are.

’Scuse me, matey:

http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20120805&t=2&i=638788836&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBRE8741M0M00

Charlie.1726:

I hope sarcasmosaur was being sarcastic.

If not, have you even looked at the body types available?

There are two extremely thick bodies. They’re built like barrels. Any thicker and they’d probably need one of those mobility scooters.

Just look at those…

Built like barrels? Mobility scooters? Are you blind, or have you just never seen women before? Those are what well-muscled, slender athletes look like. I hate to break it to you, but the skinny body types are only found in about 5% of physically fit women.
THIS is “almost in need of mobility scooters”

Let us assume Norn’s ( Nords ) are modeled after the Viking and Scandinavian peoples, it does at the very least visually appear that way in game …

“Vikings were right b@stards when they kitten pillaged, and terrorized neighboring countries. One of the spoils of war they brought back to Scandinavia was women. But not just any women, HOT women. They wouldn’t start a family with an ugly wench if they could help it. These guys didn’t want to just settle for anything back home when all they had to do was sail up and down Western Europe’s coastline looking for the fittest birds to take back with them. In today’s world, men eye up women all the time thinking to themselves, I’d like to have that. Vikings didn’t think that, they actually did that.

The reason Scandinavian Women are so beautiful is because the Vikings brought back and bred with the most beautiful women in the world. Essentially, they created a spectacular super race of fit blue-eyed blondes. According to my Swedish friend Dr. Rim, it’s Darwinism at its finest: now that the Scandinavians were fitter than the rest of the world, they didn’t want to lose their edge over other countries; ugly genes simply died out because no one wanted to mate with the unattractive ones."

Also note “cold is a preservative” etc etc … read the following article, take it with a grain of salt but it is something to think about.

http://flaggingheadquarters.com/2011/01/11/scandinavian-women-are-number-one/

Witnezz – ‘hot women’ in Viking times were rather different to what they are today. Like many cultures (including modern Brazilian culture), they liked their women curvy. It’s got nothing to do with the Scandinavian pornstars you’ve been ogling.

Honestly, I find the attitude of you and others here someone narrow-minded and crude. There are numerous female athletes with much thicker, more muscular builds than the two thickest available Norn bodies. See my link above. You picked a pole-vaulter for crying out loud – what’s that got to do with the GW2 professions? Try looking at athletes who are built for throwing or lifting heavy objects – the closest equivalent we have to the types of people who would wield heavy metal swords and armour. Show me a world class weightlifter or hammer-thrower who looks like a Barbie doll.

Also, check out the calf muscles on any woman who is a serious walker or long distance runner, or even a cyclist. They’re effing massive. Now compare that to your ‘thickest available build’ pictures above.

Fine, it’s an unrealistic game. But there should be a much wider range of available body types. What’s the point in eight different frames that barely differ in any meaningful way? Give us the option of bulkier, older, top or bottom heavy women.

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Erika Elfwenkrona, but if your mind immediately goes for Scandinavian pornstars more power to ya.

Awsome how you took that entire post out of context and then had the audacity to berate every poster in this thread, what are you? A reporter or something?

Witnezz”

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of Erika Elfwenkrona, but if your mind immediately goes for Scandinavian pornstars more power to ya.

So an underwear model. About as relevant as a pornstar, no?

I’m not taking your post out of context. You tried to argue, albeit in a tongue and cheek manner, that Norn women shouldn’t be bulky because they’re modelled after Viking society. That doesn’t make any sense, for the reasons I’ve explained.

Neferteri.7342:

I made sure to put the cuts on my Norn’s face. What actually makes me sad is to see a female Norn who has such a tiny waist that she looks like she could be broken in half by the first monster she comes across. And that the muscle definition is optional. For the plants, I can see that. But Norn are strong warriors. And even as one with light armor, it made me sad to see that the default starting armor included a lacy garter. (But was great incentive to level quickly and find more appropriate armor.) For faces, I found a serious looking face. Still attractive, but not prissy.

Yea, at level 17 for a thief I’m already looking at the future of armor. I’m in level 10 crafted leather and thinking “Well this is the most modest armor I’m going to find in the game from here on out.” I’m going to have to work hard to try and find my thief proper armor and not some fantasy set that covers next to nothing (seriously what thief in their right mind will wear armor with their gut exposed? You’re just asking for a quick eviscerate.) I heard something about armor skins in this game right?

@Focksbot.6798 (because reply isn’t working right now)

Read what charlie posted above your posts, i completely agree with what he said on there. Also you are the one being narrow-minded here, it almost seems like you don’t want slim characters and find it “crude” that other people do, lastly athletes aren’t all extremely buffed up and a lot of them are slim toned depending on what sport they do.

There is a huge difference between “slim toned” and “underfed and scrawny”. Granted, the norn women aren’t as bad as the humans, but that’s kitten with faint praise, really. They should look more like their men: thick, tough and strong. Not like slightly taller humans with huge racks.

A thin little scrap of any species just isn’t credible as a heavy-duty adventurer, even if they’re not swinging a greatsword around. It becomes even less credible when that person is from a species renowned for their physical fortitude and a culture obsessed with proving one’s strength and forging one’s legend.

I could live with the scrawny little girl options if at least all species had options for strong and tough (and mature- and older-looking) warrior-types too. Only the charr really have that, sadly.

Chadramar.8156:

There is a huge difference between “slim toned” and “underfed and scrawny”. Granted, the norn women aren’t as bad as the humans, but that’s kitten with faint praise, really. They should look more like their men: thick, tough and strong. Not like slightly taller humans with huge racks.

A thin little scrap of any species just isn’t credible as a heavy-duty adventurer, even if they’re not swinging a greatsword around. It becomes even less credible when that person is from a species renowned for their physical fortitude and a culture obsessed with proving one’s strength and forging one’s legend.

I could live with the scrawny little girl options if at least all species had options for strong and tough (and mature- and older-looking) warrior-types too. Only the charr really have that, sadly.

Yes, I agree that there should be more variety for other species but imo the norn already have bigger options when you compare it to the others. Also the whole talk of what norn “should” look like really isn’t up to you but up to a-net.

in my most humble opinion, i’m in agreement here with the norn faces.. but man, the human ones are way worse. When I first rolled a human female toon, the first red light that went up was wondering just how much pedofuel that Anet was offering.

The Norn females are only slightly better off in that category. Still, the Norn Females have also adult looking faces as well. I also considered that Norn Male faces were not as rugged as I would have liked. So many of them are more biker-ish then viking. The faces also seem to not match their voices. I’d rather have the Vigil Warmaster’s voice for my male Norns.

I also, for the sake of my own perceptions, reloaded Skyrim for a moment to compare Norns versus Nords. I gotta admit that the Nords from Skyrim seem far more manly and less cartoony. This is just my own opinion, however.

I want my Norn wench to have a ghetto bootie! As its stands now though they are still nice.

Overall i think that ALL races need more face options (alot look so much alike) and hairstyles, but think that could come with gem purchases further down the road.