Guild Wars 2

Cantha Themed raiding video. Enjoy!!

Bromance of the Three Kingdoms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX3B2iGRm5k

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

Now that Zhaitan is out of the way, and that Lion’s Arch is to be rebuilty eventually, shouln’t also some Canthan refugees start popping here and there, and set shop in LA?

Lion’s Arch could use a bit of the “Labyrinth City” feel Kaineng had here and there.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Now that Zhaitan is out of the way, and that Lion’s Arch is to be rebuilty eventually, shouln’t also some Canthan refugees start popping here and there, and set shop in LA?

Lion’s Arch could use a bit of the “Labyrinth City” feel Kaineng had here and there.

You already have Canthan descendants/refugees in DR due to some of the people not agreeing with their Emperor’s decree.

Where is Cantha Colin? we are still waiting.

blakdoxa.7520:

[…]

You already have Canthan descendants/refugees in DR due to some of the people not agreeing with their Emperor’s decree.

But they are not building anything Canthan-like anywhere. They may as well be Ascalonian.

There has to be makeshift houses Kaineng style.

I miss Cantha and am dying to see what it looks like now and how it has been. When will we get to return to a lot of people’s favorite continent?

My time with GW2 is ruined if Cantha isn’t in the game I played factions more then anything and its the reason i play thief now (formally known as Assassin) I’ll read more on this and edit…

Obsidian.1328:

When was this an issue in GW1? When were the public outcries from cities like Osaka and Shanghai?

I don’t think ANY part of Guild Wars 1 was released in China.

And I recall Factions being by far the lowest selling of the GW1 games in Korea by a pretty wide margin (though I couldn’t tell you where I saw that).

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

Well, picture it this way…

You’re trying to sell a game to urban kids in Los Angeles featuring a city called Paradise, featuring 1950’s architecture from Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, complete with rebel flags waving then saying, “That’s not the South from the Segregation era! That’s Paradise!!!”

I don’t think your target audience would buy it, either metaphorically or literally. Just sayin’.

And yes, I know that it’s not a direct analogy… but it’s the best that I can think of for American players that really captures the sort of animosity that can exist between “Asian” cultures.

I’m just thinking with them trying to push GW2 hard into China that someone at NCSoft decided it was a potential powder keg not worth lighting.

I just want playable Tengu so bad… they need to join the roster already.

chemiclord.3978:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

Well, picture it this way…

You’re trying to sell a game to urban kids in Los Angeles featuring a city called Paradise, featuring 1950’s architecture from Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, complete with rebel flags waving then saying, “That’s not the South from the Segregation era! That’s Paradise!!!”

I don’t think your target audience would buy it, either metaphorically or literally. Just sayin’.

And yes, I know that it’s not a direct analogy… but it’s the best that I can think of for American players that really captures the sort of animosity that can exist between “Asian” cultures.

I’m just thinking with them trying to push GW2 hard into China that someone at NCSoft decided it was a potential powder keg not worth lighting.

Did Cantha have any direct representations of something as unique and telling as a flag? Serious question, as I played Factions as a kid and don’t remember.

But as somebody who’s lived their whole life in the deep South (and I’d go as far as to say I identify with it), I would not be anywhere near offended with “Paradise” IF it didn’t have the flag. Be an obvious play on the region, but as long as there aren’t literal copies of things like flags or State names, I’d buy it.

Cantha was what brought me to the original Guild Wars and remained my favorite of the GW1 series. I would be super excited to see it again. I am not fully aware of the political tensions in Asia at the moment but I believe they can find an architecture theme that won’t be a problem but still hold the Factions style.

My prediction is that as the dragon that Scarlet awoke begins destroying Tyria, people will find a way to reconnect with Cantha and send refugees there from all the races. All the time we were away the Luxons and Kurzicks have been fighting but then find all of our races to be threats to their lands. We work with a remnant of the Luxons/Kurzicks that see us as people trying to help the refugees and begin building a temporary camp for the Tyrian people. Interesting plot ensues.

chemiclord.3978:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

Well, picture it this way…

You’re trying to sell a game to urban kids in Los Angeles featuring a city called Paradise, featuring 1950’s architecture from Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, complete with rebel flags waving then saying, “That’s not the South from the Segregation era! That’s Paradise!!!”

I don’t think your target audience would buy it, either metaphorically or literally. Just sayin’.

And yes, I know that it’s not a direct analogy… but it’s the best that I can think of for American players that really captures the sort of animosity that can exist between “Asian” cultures.

I’m just thinking with them trying to push GW2 hard into China that someone at NCSoft decided it was a potential powder keg not worth lighting.

I don’t know, I thought Bioshock: Infinite sold pretty well?

I never got to see the Canthan district in Divinity’s Reach :< Disappointing that negative reviews ruin a beautiful looking area from the ~one~ screen I’ve seen. Hope it will be brought back…

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

You, my friend, said in three lines everything that has to be said.

For all those who come and complain about weird cultural mixes and political incoherences, please don’t come and play Guild Wars 1 – nor even the second one; go make politics; go fight injustice and segregation. You might find satisfaction there, and maybe you’ll make a difference. Because you don’t seem to understand what a game is. This is no genuine world – historical – map, this is a game; it’s a form of art expressing lots of things that touch people mostly in a good way around the world – I say mostly because going out in order to slaughter giant boars isn’t really a good thing (but that’s another debate). It’s not about genuine gods and real frontiers, but about good – or at least interesting – cultural things picked up here and there and put together – in a way – to make something wonderful. I’d say it’s a dream of what the world could be without all these wars and misunderstandings -> alliances and unifications. And you are comming on this forum to tell ANet to keep their game realistic? to remove hope? to delete good and rich gaming ideas and to keep going with insane realistic clichés because some approximative historical conflicts happen sometimes? That doesn’t make any sense. Moreover, I never heard German people come and complain because some of the architecture in the game kind of mached theirs, but that it wasn’t respectfull because of some Polish décorations who were also scattered in some places. And the reason is not because they don’t love – or know – their culture, but because this is a game and everybody comes here to enjoy it and its fantasy. Fantasy. Not reality. I for myself was born Romanian, and frankly, I don’t care if they take Romanian architecture, historical inspiration or other interesting stuff for the game in order to mix them up with some Turkish or Hungarian material, because I know nothing bad is intended. ANet has some skilled artists working with raw materials and making their own world from their imagination and photographic memories. Nothing more, nothing less. No hatred. No harm intended. Fantasy game. Not real world. For those that still don’t get that, please… go make politics; you’ll do great. But let us people play… let us people dream…!

Bogdanus Magnus.8143:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

You, my friend, said in three lines everything that has to be said.

For all those who come and complain about weird cultural mixes and political incoherences, please don’t come and play Guild Wars 1 – nor even the second one; go make politics; go fight injustice and segregation. You might find satisfaction there, and maybe you’ll make a difference. Because you don’t seem to understand what a game is. This is no genuine world – historical – map, this is a game; it’s a form of art expressing lots of things that touch people mostly in a good way around the world – I say mostly because going out in order to slaughter giant boars isn’t really a good thing (but that’s another debate). It’s not about genuine gods and real frontiers, but about good – or at least interesting – cultural things picked up here and there and put together – in a way – to make something wonderful. I’d say it’s a dream of what the world could be without all these wars and misunderstandings -> alliances and unifications. And you are comming on this forum to tell ANet to keep their game realistic? to remove hope? to delete good and rich gaming ideas and to keep going with insane realistic clichés because some approximative historical conflicts happen sometimes? That doesn’t make any sense. Moreover, I never heard German people come and complain because some of the architecture in the game kind of mached theirs, but that it wasn’t respectfull because of some Polish décorations who were also scattered in some places. And the reason is not because they don’t love – or know – their culture, but because this is a game and everybody comes here to enjoy it and its fantasy. Fantasy. Not reality. I for myself was born Romanian, and frankly, I don’t care if they take Romanian architecture, historical inspiration or other interesting stuff for the game in order to mix them up with some Turkish or Hungarian material, because I know nothing bad is intended. ANet has some skilled artists working with raw materials and making their own world from their imagination and photographic memories. Nothing more, nothing less. No hatred. No harm intended. Fantasy game. Not real world. For those that still don’t get that, please… go make politics; you’ll do great. But let us people play… let us people dream…!

I know you really want to believe that a game is a just a game but, as others have pointed out, games are a medium (like many others) that naturally elicit a multitude of responses that go well beyond just fun. Not only that, when you build a fantasy world, as GW2 is, developers are consciously and unconsciously bringing real world experiences and bias into their presentation of said world. As just one example, you can’t ignore how Anet intentionally crafted their male and female characters and outfits to try and minimize the “females are primarily eye-candy” issues prevalent in a lot of mmos. It’s not an issue that personally affects everyone but there are people whose experience are definitely affected by it. To not minimize this complaint is not a “default” route in development because it’s just a game, it is a choice.

My point being, your culture and world view is probably very different from those who would complain about the presentation of Cantha. You probably shouldn’t use your own point of view as proof that only unreasonable people complain about the issues we are discussing. That and games are much more than you give them credit for. You and many others are welcome to experience the game as just a game but there are entire schools of thought devoted to explaining how the human experience colors almost everything we do and how that is significant. Certainly, the very fact that we are having this discussion at all lends some credence to that notion.

Bogdanus Magnus.8143:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

You, my friend, said in three lines everything that has to be said.

If someone made an obvious FANTASY setting where Mice-people in their quest for racial purity started marching Cat-people into ovens, no one is going to say “what a novel fantasy setting you’ve come up with.” If anything the very first post on that game’s boards is going to be “You cast the Jews as Cats??!? And somehow its the Jews’ own fault they get put in ovens now because they used to hunt the Mice-people?!!? Are you insane?”

No argument of “but its obviously a fantasy setting” will mean jack squat.

That you don’t understand the minefield that Cantha tramples through is pretty much the EXACT reason why the game shouldn’t go there. There are hot-buttons you just don’t push in a mainstream game. Its ignorance of the context those “fantasy elements” are drawing on that creates the problem in the first place.

Am i the only one who doesn’t care one bit about Cantha or any world expansions until the game is running as it should?

#fixstuffbeforeaddingstuff

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

I totally understand why they would be offended. It would be like having various types of various Western Cultures, like mixing Norse, Greek, Roman, and Celtic Mythologies/Stories and Influences in Tyria. That would be very offensive to me and my Western Culture. Oh WAIT, now I’m OFFENDED!

OMG this game has english text I am offended! Seriously, these days everyone is offended by something for no logical reason. Funny how people get offended and don’t do anything about it or cry to some official to solve the problem and make a few laws.

Guild Wars 2 is already a middle finger to various Western cultures yet there is barely an incident of offense. The fact that Christianity/Islam/Judaism does not exist in this game probably offends some religious type people because Tyria has other gods. Do these religious people even play the game???? I doubt it and yet they aren’t trying to stop anyone else from having fun playing a game.

I think Westerners are more worried about the offensiveness of Cantha than the so called Asian countries would be.

GW1 has Cantha…. yet Cantha still exists in GW1 despite the cultural mixing. It is obvious that Asia doesn’t give a crap because it is simply a game. They can ban it in Asian countries if they really wanted to but they won’t. If you think that Asian cultures would start a war just because little old GW2 had Cantha in it you have no idea what you are talking about.

Sales would probably skyrocket if Cantha was added.

How about we have Anet make a poll and send it out to every citizen of every country in Asia to see if they would play GW2 if it had Cantha? See how stupid that sounds?

Still waiting for a dev reply after 2000 posts.

As someone of East-Asian descent, I’d like to say I’m not at all offended by having our oriental cultured mixed.

I’m fully aware that the culture you see in Cantha is technically Canthan culture. Just think, even in the real world, China, Japan and Korea and other East-Asian cultures share similar aesthetics in art, so it really shouldn’t be too earth-shattering to see familar elements from each culture sitting harmoniously side-by-side.

That aside, I’m proud that something of our cultures was considered great enough to be represented in a game. However, I’d advise the people at ANet to be very, very careful about the name of the person sitting on the Imperial throne. After all, we don’t want to have somebody saying that the particular ruler is a representation of one particular culture, do we? Best to use something that sounds similar to, but not actually any real name.

Cantha or no Cantha, there are too few level 80 zones in the game.

I think it’s time to reveal some of that big * map.

No offense but there are reasons to this. In contrary to most parts in Europe, Asia still struggles to come to terms with the past. I assume I get infracted if I speak it out, since you can’t even tell facts here as they will be rated as politically incorrect, but many know the ‘difficulties’ between China, Korea and Japan. So I won’t start with that.

As open minded Westerns we struggle to understand that, be cause we learend tolerance and try to understand each other. Huge parts of the world unfortunately, don’t work like this and therefore we have results like this: mixing different cultures is offensive for people living in those different cultures.

They finally should learn to do something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergangenheitsbew%C3%A4ltigung

About the topic itself: I don’t like the flimy and secretive attitude of the company. I can imagine that Anet would or at least intended to make a Canthan expansion/campaing but NCSoft didn’t allow it. The long and big silcence just shows how they won’t risk the reveal that they (Anet/NCSoft) aren’t in harmony. It’s the biggest issue I have with the company. They are anything else than transparent. Transparency is something a community wants and expects. Unfortunately, only independent studios have the spirit of old days.

Lol Proto, I guess I just really want to see Cantha back again.

You have to believe folks! XD

Although I wonder if GW2 might actually be a good vehicle to get other East Asian cultures to learn more about each other? I mean, if we can see how virtual Canthans (not counting the Luxons and Kurzicks) get along harmoniously, we might actually start to subconsciously become less xenophobic. Won’t alienating players from different East Asian cultures actually widen the gap even more?

Ah, what I would give to explore Shing Jea Island’s countryside and snowy mountain range once more, to see the remnants of GW1’s Cantha in GW2. Factions was my first entry into the GW universe, and so Cantha will always hold a special place in my heart. If there are still any conflicts between NCSOFT and ArenaNet regarding including Cantha in GW2, I hope they’ll be resolved soon so that we can return to this important landmark in Tyria.

Nick.6972:

Still waiting for a dev reply after 2000 posts.

Seriously? Why?

Did you not see the “Cantha?” interview?

I think the standard for ABSOLUTE SILENCE on the topic has been well established.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

OMG this game has english text I am offended! Seriously, these days everyone is offended by something for no logical reason. Funny how people get offended and don’t do anything about it or cry to some official to solve the problem and make a few laws.

Guild Wars 2 is already a middle finger to various Western cultures yet there is barely an incident of offense. The fact that Christianity/Islam/Judaism does not exist in this game probably offends some religious type people because Tyria has other gods. Do these religious people even play the game???? I doubt it and yet they aren’t trying to stop anyone else from having fun playing a game.

I think Westerners are more worried about the offensiveness of Cantha than the so called Asian countries would be.

GW1 has Cantha…. yet Cantha still exists in GW1 despite the cultural mixing. It is obvious that Asia doesn’t give a crap because it is simply a game. They can ban it in Asian countries if they really wanted to but they won’t. If you think that Asian cultures would start a war just because little old GW2 had Cantha in it you have no idea what you are talking about.

Sales would probably skyrocket if Cantha was added.

How about we have Anet make a poll and send it out to every citizen of every country in Asia to see if they would play GW2 if it had Cantha? See how stupid that sounds?

Erm, should I point out all of the outcry against Jory and Kasmeer based on religious/cultural objections? I bet you some of these same people feel that the Cantha outcry is ridiculous without a moment of self-reflection. More people are a part of the “I object!” club and they just don’t know it.

That aside, your question about religious indignation in real life preventing people from playing games the way they want lacks…experience. Do you remember when conservative groups blasted SWTOR for having homosexual relationships in game and called for boycotting? Yeah. People can take issue with anything about a game they choose for better or worse. It’s up to the developers to pick and choose their battles and the presentation of Cantha certainly appears to be a point of contention to an important group of people.

chemiclord.3978:

Obsidian.1328:

When was this an issue in GW1? When were the public outcries from cities like Osaka and Shanghai?

I don’t think ANY part of Guild Wars 1 was released in China.

And I recall Factions being by far the lowest selling of the GW1 games in Korea by a pretty wide margin (though I couldn’t tell you where I saw that).

You’re going to need to cite links for this.

I’m not sure why ANet can’t bring Cantha back carefully. The Bazaar of the Four Winds had that sort of theme – it might just work.

nightwulf.1986:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

OMG this game has english text I am offended! Seriously, these days everyone is offended by something for no logical reason. Funny how people get offended and don’t do anything about it or cry to some official to solve the problem and make a few laws.

Guild Wars 2 is already a middle finger to various Western cultures yet there is barely an incident of offense. The fact that Christianity/Islam/Judaism does not exist in this game probably offends some religious type people because Tyria has other gods. Do these religious people even play the game???? I doubt it and yet they aren’t trying to stop anyone else from having fun playing a game.

I think Westerners are more worried about the offensiveness of Cantha than the so called Asian countries would be.

GW1 has Cantha…. yet Cantha still exists in GW1 despite the cultural mixing. It is obvious that Asia doesn’t give a crap because it is simply a game. They can ban it in Asian countries if they really wanted to but they won’t. If you think that Asian cultures would start a war just because little old GW2 had Cantha in it you have no idea what you are talking about.

Sales would probably skyrocket if Cantha was added.

How about we have Anet make a poll and send it out to every citizen of every country in Asia to see if they would play GW2 if it had Cantha? See how stupid that sounds?

Erm, should I point out all of the outcry against Jory and Kasmeer based on religious/cultural objections? I bet you some of these same people feel that the Cantha outcry is ridiculous without a moment of self-reflection. More people are a part of the “I object!” club and they just don’t know it.

That aside, your question about religious indignation in real life preventing people from playing games the way they want lacks…experience. Do you remember when conservative groups blasted SWTOR for having homosexual relationships in game and called for boycotting? Yeah. People can take issue with anything about a game they choose for better or worse. It’s up to the developers to pick and choose their battles and the presentation of Cantha certainly appears to be a point of contention to an important group of people.

The outcry you cite against KasJory is different, though. If it was bisexuals/lesbians kittened off with GW2’s portrayal of their lifestyle, then it’d be similar (I have seen this critique by this faction, as a side note).

You started comparing religious reactions against homosexuality in video games when the more apt analogies to look at are religious reactions against religions in video games or homosexual reactions to homosexuals in video games. Female reactions against females in video games, Western reactions to Western portrayals in video games. I think that’s what Chewables was getting at.

Every group is going to find a fault with how their pet topic gets translated into fantasy/video games.

Opinion Time: That’s no reason to not even attempt inclusion. Like, imagine if I, as a feminist, was all, “well that’s not really how I would imagine any of my lady friends would react in this particular situation/all the women in this game are basically the same interchangeable person” and the developer’s response was to remove women from the game/make them an overwhelming minority in all areas. That’s really no solution at all to my mind.

More on Topic: What got me about Cantha and Elona in GW1 is that they have their own sub-regions, with sub-cultures and sub-styles in architecture, dress, etc. It’s not like “This is the Eastern Asian area! This whole continent is just ~Asia~ have fun as it all blends into one blur” it’s like “Here is a complex culture! Have fun immersing yourself in each unique facet.” The Nightfall storyline felt especially strong in terms of showing differing governments of each region and having them actively play in to the storyline (ugh Morghan let me hug you) beyond “these two factions fight, so make peace.”

nightwulf.1986:

Erm, should I point out all of the outcry against Jory and Kasmeer based on religious/cultural objections? I bet you some of these same people feel that the Cantha outcry is ridiculous without a moment of self-reflection. More people are a part of the “I object!” club and they just don’t know it.

I don’t recall any outcry with that. Nor with Caithe and Faolain. This is actually one thing ANet did right.

That aside, your question about religious indignation in real life preventing people from playing games the way they want lacks…experience. Do you remember when conservative groups blasted SWTOR for having homosexual relationships in game and called for boycotting? Yeah. People can take issue with anything about a game they choose for better or worse. It’s up to the developers to pick and choose their battles and the presentation of Cantha certainly appears to be a point of contention to an important group of people.

The thing is, it wasn’t a point of contention back in GW1. Cantha is less a Korean/Japanese/Chinese mix, and more a world unto itself which borrows some thematic elements from many different Eastern cultures. I know for a fact the devs back then purposely tried to not make it seem like it represented any particular culture. NCSoft isn’t backing down from this for any moral or respectful reasons, they are doing it because they think it will hurt sales. That’s really the only reason. How can you get behind that?

the only political corrected way is to make cantha in only one country’s style, cantha is obviously more to the side of china so making it like china would be the best for all.
Anet doesn’t need to keep in mind the cultural differences (although they do need to design everything in only chinese architecture) and NCsoft doesn’t get in political problems.

With the Chinese release of the game I think it’s time for Cantha to emerge again.

-Vys

kimeekat.2548:

The outcry you cite against KasJory is different, though. If it was bisexuals/lesbians kittened off with GW2’s portrayal of their lifestyle, then it’d be similar (I have seen this critique by this faction, as a side note).

You started comparing religious reactions against homosexuality in video games when the more apt analogies to look at are religious reactions against religions in video games or homosexual reactions to homosexuals in video games. Female reactions against females in video games, Western reactions to Western portrayals in video games. I think that’s what Chewables was getting at.

Every group is going to find a fault with how their pet topic gets translated into fantasy/video games.

Opinion Time: That’s no reason to not even attempt inclusion. Like, imagine if I, as a feminist, was all, “well that’s not really how I would imagine any of my lady friends would react in this particular situation/all the women in this game are basically the same interchangeable person” and the developer’s response was to remove women from the game/make them an overwhelming minority in all areas. That’s really no solution at all to my mind.

More on Topic: What got me about Cantha and Elona in GW1 is that they have their own sub-regions, with sub-cultures and sub-styles in architecture, dress, etc. It’s not like “This is the Eastern Asian area! This whole continent is just ~Asia~ have fun as it all blends into one blur” it’s like “Here is a complex culture! Have fun immersing yourself in each unique facet.” The Nightfall storyline felt especially strong in terms of showing differing governments of each region and having them actively play in to the storyline (ugh Morghan let me hug you) beyond “these two factions fight, so make peace.”

The point I was getting at is that certain groups of people want GW2 to reflect their own religious/cultural perspective with regard to sexuality and relationships when it comes into conflict with their closely held beliefs. The game presents fictional relationships in a fictional world and yet people still feel incensed because it strikes close to home. Make sense? It’s not the same as the criticism being leveled against the presentation of Cantha but it is in the same vein. I don’t think the direct comparison you think I should be making is necessary to drive home the point that people bring their world views into the land of make believe and that can have a real impact on someone’s experience of that fictional world. I was just trying to give people some perspective since there was talk that our modern western world doesn’t run into similar criticisms of fiction. As for how Anet should handle that criticism, it’s complicated I think. I’m pretty sure they can push whatever message they want on the subject but I don’t believe that backing down is necessarily a sign of weakness.

It’s not often I post on the forums or ever, I tend to have a very blunt opinion and once people are offended they don’t use logic or common sense but here goes. This is directed at the people complaining on the behalf of us “foreigners.”

Most of the people that seem to get offended by the concept of Cantha on these forums are keyboard warriors that feel the need to social justice for other people. Stop it.

Do you think the every eastern country, every eastern person is so backwards, so stupid that they don’t know what to be offended over? You think we need -you- to fight for us? We need you to save the day? No? Good.

Nothing I’ve found is more offensive than being patronized like that.

Do you want to know what will get Cantha canceled? People moaning on the forums for a culture they don’t even understand, how many of the complainers speak fluent Mandarin? How many of them even know how to use chop sticks or have ever visited any of China’s provinces?

Sure there might be vocal minority of people from eastern cultures that are overly sensitive to westerners, but you know what? The only people in my home country I know that might even be slightly offended are hardcore nationalists that are racist bigots themselves. They wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire.

—
Anyways, that aside.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Blizzard-WoW-China-MoP-Pandaria,17423.html

^ Was approved by the Chinese government, the biggest cache of poorly done eastern stereotypes that mixes Chinese themes to create the Pandaren, basically what the uneducated think China is.

Cantha had a lot more class than that, we didn’t see any goofy stereotypes, anything ridiculous and yes I know the lore of the Emperor. It really isn’t that bad.

pixiedancer.1526:

It’s not often I post on the forums or ever, I tend to have a very blunt opinion and once people are offended they don’t use logic or common sense but here goes. This is directed at the people complaining on the behalf of us “foreigners.”

Most of the people that seem to get offended by the concept of Cantha on these forums are keyboard warriors that feel the need to social justice for other people. Stop it.

Do you think the every eastern country, every eastern person is so backwards, so stupid that they don’t know what to be offended over? You think we need -you- to fight for us? We need you to save the day? No? Good.

Nothing I’ve found is more offensive than being patronized like that.

Do you want to know what will get Cantha canceled? People moaning on the forums for a culture they don’t even understand, how many of the complainers speak fluent Mandarin? How many of them even know how to use chop sticks or have ever visited any of China’s provinces?

Sure there might be vocal minority of people from eastern cultures that are overly sensitive to westerners, but you know what? The only people in my home country I know that might even be slightly offended are hardcore nationalists that are racist bigots themselves. They wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire.

—
Anyways, that aside.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Blizzard-WoW-China-MoP-Pandaria,17423.html

^ Was approved by the Chinese government, the biggest cache of poorly done eastern stereotypes that mixes Chinese themes to create the Pandaren, basically what the uneducated think China is.

Cantha had a lot more class than that, we didn’t see any goofy stereotypes, anything ridiculous and yes I know the lore of the Emperor. It really isn’t that bad.

+1 for this. people who patronize others is like how America throws themselves into a war they have no business getting into. It screws things up even worse.

Nike.2631:

Bogdanus Magnus.8143:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I don’t get the offense of mixing different Asian cultures to achieve an entirely new one. Cantha is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. It’s Cantha. The sooner NCSoft comes to accept it as it’s own culture within a fantasy world, the sooner development can begin on it. ^^

You, my friend, said in three lines everything that has to be said.

If someone made an obvious FANTASY setting where Mice-people in their quest for racial purity started marching Cat-people into ovens, no one is going to say “what a novel fantasy setting you’ve come up with.” If anything the very first post on that game’s boards is going to be “You cast the Jews as Cats??!? And somehow its the Jews’ own fault they get put in ovens now because they used to hunt the Mice-people?!!? Are you insane?”

No argument of “but its obviously a fantasy setting” will mean jack squat.

That you don’t understand the minefield that Cantha tramples through is pretty much the EXACT reason why the game shouldn’t go there. There are hot-buttons you just don’t push in a mainstream game. Its ignorance of the context those “fantasy elements” are drawing on that creates the problem in the first place.

they have already done this in GW2 with the moletariate. And it isnt handled nearly as well as cantha was.
First of canthans werent demi humans, second of all Cantha had less in common with any one group.

Regardless, the truth is i think NCsoft just didnt want it being to similar marketing wise to blade and soul. China is the big money, and they dont want to take from their own market too much.

The whole political thing is pretty fake, games and fiction borrows and reworks reality all the time. In fact it is probably more the case than not. Asian companies have been making European settings in their games for years, mingling norse /olympic/ pagan /indian almost everything in game whenever they want. I also dont think GW ever had a huge outcry of political waves.

Makes more sense its a money and marketing thing.

Obsidian.1328:

The thing is, it wasn’t a point of contention back in GW1. Cantha is less a Korean/Japanese/Chinese mix, and more a world unto itself which borrows some thematic elements from many different Eastern cultures. I know for a fact the devs back then purposely tried to not make it seem like it represented any particular culture. NCSoft isn’t backing down from this for any moral or respectful reasons, they are doing it because they think it will hurt sales. That’s really the only reason. How can you get behind that?

Oh, I can GUARANTEE you that’s the reason. Someone at NCSoft decided it was a potential powder keg, and didn’t want to see it lit. Whether or not it was a legitimate worry (I think it’s more legitimate than the fans want to believe, but less of a problem than NCSoft thinks it is), is largely irrelevant.

Nonetheless, Arena.net’s hands are tied here. They can’t “stand their ground.” They can’t “insist” that NCSoft publish or support a Canthan expansion or Living Story content. NCSoft holds ALL the power here. Arena.net does what they say, or Arena.net’s games do not get published.

So if NCSoft says “No Cantha”, that means “No Cantha”, no matter how much fans demand it.

My suspicion is that NCSoft saw the Canthan-themed content, threw it in the trashbin, and said, “No. Start over.” Depending on how far along Arena.net had been in development of Canthan content, that can be a LOT of stuff to remake. Arena.net likely can’t say anything in regards to Canthan content because NCSoft hasn’t approved any of it yet.

Why did NCSoft approve of it whole hog in GW1 then? It doesn’t make sense.

They made a unique version of the game for China. Why not make a unique expansion for Koreans and everyone else can get what they want? If anything, I find it more racist that they can’t dare have their culture next to or borrow from a Chinese one, in the same game. You think they don’t slander our ways of life?

Zeivu.3615:

They made a unique version of the game for China. Why not make a unique expansion for Koreans and everyone else can get what they want? If anything, I find it more racist that they can’t dare have their culture next to or borrow from a Chinese one, in the same game. You think they don’t slander our ways of life?

The Chinese version of GW2 isn’t unique – it’s almost identical to our version…

If it’s a NCSoft cap, why not tell everyone, then? It takes less than 5 minutes to do a press note that says “NCSoft has decided, given that Cantha is an Asian-themed fantasy continent in a fantasy world, to ban all Cantha content from Guild Wars 2 to avoid furious masses to explode in rage, because as far as we can tell, never, ever, has an asian-themed fantasy world being produced in the entire world, including all Asian countries”.

And then they put a list of previous fantasy worlds with Asian themes that have been causing political disruption, havoc, chaos, destruction and wars, with some graphs of the disruption they caused, like “WoW, bamboo forests, pandas: 67% of non-asian population was killed on streets, wow sales declined because former players were killed, the company was sold to facebook”, “GW1, when Factions was released, Chinese population assaulted western companies, all ninjas were killed at sight, Chinese government reverted from monarchy to communism, NCSoft executives were executed in a generic asian-themed city and company was sold to apple” and all the terrible, horrible things that happened every time that some asian influence is propagated to videogames.

Of course and what NCsoft calls “Asian” is basically Aion or Tera.
As a japanese, I’m a little flustered.

Well, I’m sure we can still hope. According to this page: http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/guild-returning-cantha-elona.html

ANet isn’t ruling out adding Cantha and Elona from their Living World plans (which is an awesome thought, by the way, because it’s free). And if Gamerzines and Massively are aware of the length of this thread, I’m pretty sure ANet is too.

They probably have other big things on their plate right now, like polishing the Feature Pack update based on forum comments (I hope).

That said, I think most of us are just dying from anticipation about whether our favourite lands are going to be explorable again.

What could make NCSOFT allow Cantha to still exist and everyone here be happy, is have the nation/continent of Cantha have 5 regions in it, 3 for each nationality in the real world (no more architecture mixing) with their own unique architecture and have the Luxons and Kurzick’s homelands still (they may be defeated by Emp. Usoku, but might still have their culture intact). Many one player RPGs did this with cultures that mimicked real life ones. Golden Sun series in particular (for one player RPGs) and Ragnarok Online as well as a good example for a MMORPG. Look them up!

So with this new idea, you’d have a Chinese styled sub region, a Korean-styled sub region, and a Japnese-styled sub region. Also it will not be one ruler anymore, but three rulers for each region all in a equal standing of government. Like a triarchy and yet backed by a ministry like Kryta that limits their power and voices the peoples needs to them from each of the 5 regions.

Everyone is happy and gets their own special snowflake region and no more issues with mixed culture or architecture. NCSOFT is happy, ANET is happy, we are happy, and everyone in the real world is happy.

Yeah I’m being a bit devil’s advocate and cynical here and such. Segregation won’t solve this, but might have to work.

On a side note… you don’t see anyone up in arms about Kodan… which are a mix of Asian architecture with some buddhist/taoist principles… it seems ANET has done what NCSOFT said not to do with Cantha yet again. So are we calling the kettle black way too soon?

So we get Kodan as a npc race/culture and not Cantha (with big hole in the ground + a one time only arena that will never be used again maybe)? I smell Hypocrisy.

Also yesterday, I saw over 20 Canthan-like women in game; in Gendarrian Fields Vigil Refugee Camp alone, all players, using Asian styled faces in support of Cantha knowingly or unknowingly (some of which had no idea what Cantha was until I told them vaguely as its a region based on Asian culture and people IRL, which is really teh wrong way of going about this.)

The support is there and there are others that have no idea what Cantha is, but like that we have Asian faces/skin types to use. Without Cantha, that character creation diversity wouldn’t exist and furthermore, if NCSOFT/ANET didn’t want Cantha or Asians/Asian influence in GW2, we’d not be able to make humans of that ethnicity on the creation tools in game.

AND PLEASE READ MY POSTS! I always have good insights and knowledgable and relevant posts on stuff here.

Heraldusluminare.2946:

That said, I think most of us are just dying from anticipation about whether our favourite lands are going to be explorable again.

Pretty much this. And it doesn’t help that the living story has somewhat felt like a delay for more fulfilling, permanent content. Exploring the Maguuma in LS2 might satiate this anticipation, but I’m still hopeful that we’ll hear more concrete, official info about NCSOFT’s and ArenaNet’s stances on Cantha.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

So with this new idea, you’d have a Chinese styled sub region, a Korean-styled sub region, and a Japnese-styled sub region. Also it will not be one ruler anymore, but three rulers for each region all in a equal standing of government. Like a triarchy and yet backed by a ministry like Kryta that limits their power and voices the peoples needs to them from each of the 5 regions.

Assuming NCSOFT is currently against their implementing Cantha in GW2, it would be so painfully obvious that they’re altering the lore to appease NCSOFT if they went this route, since it’s such a departure from Usoku’s [recently forced] unification of the Kurzicks and Luxon under the Empire. Not trying to knock your idea, I’m just hoping for the best— that ArenaNet can incorporate their ideas for Cantha in the game.

Official word would be nice, though, on NCSOFT’s current impact on incorporating Cantha into GW2.

DEAR NCSOFT AND ANET! MAKE CANTHA HAPPEN! THANK YOU!

Didn’t ncsoft of anet when factions was released?