Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So two days ago I agreed with my boyfriend that we would try this patch out in full. The only class I do not have to 80 is a Necromancer. I’ve never really given a thought to having one before. However, the mass exodus of friends from the game since patch (and having no pre-80 characters of my own) I was honestly having trouble empathizing with some of what my friends were complaining about. I decided to level a necromancer and find out. These are my thoughts of the experience.

I began by making a Sylvari. I tried to make a character I would enjoy. Unfortunately all of the female hair options, besides the pony-tail are too thinned out, so it appears as though I’m balding. As all of my other Sylvari have a ponytail this is depressing. So samey. Next came hair color. Well, I have black hair in real life. In this, my options are green and some other shades like green. Something like red is available…sorta. No black. In order to get black I must go to the gem store. If anything feels like robbery from the start it is being covertly directed to the gem store before I even begin playing.

Eventually I would go on to dye my armor… or lack there of… apparently I am supposed to be a stripper. That’s what the ‘armor’ looks like. This same armor model has remained my armor model from character-creation to level 75. Along the way this new reward system would offer me a skirt, eventually, but with condition damage when all players demand berserker. So while I do eventually acquire a skirt by level 75 it is not really useful to me in any way. This is true of all of the cultural sets as well, which only offer condition damage gear.

It should be noted that the armor given to you from level-ups (a new addition to the leveling experience post-patch) is not able to be Salvaged. I frequently found myself simply throwing it out of my bags and pressing ‘yes’ to destroy.

Gold gain is essentially-nonexistent. In fact I ended up spending money I had already acquired before creating this character in order to have any adequate gear at all. This, by the way, only while buying the cheapest possible gear.

My experiences with the early levels were brief. I 100%’d Caledon, Metrica, and Brisban (as well as capital cities) by level 23. While only having 3 skills is boring to the point of pain, it is at least brief.

I did not benefit from these 100%ing accomplishments save in transmute stones. However, as my monetary gains were not sufficient to purchase any rare (yellow) items my transmute options remained disinteresting save when I became frustrated with my stripper’s attire.

It is import that I mention that upon reaching a certain level of frustration with my appearance I finally equipped an outfit. I have been wearing it ever since. Outfits come from the gem store. Transmute stones come from the gem store. Actual colors I would want for my hair and even the hair styles I would enjoy come from the gem store. See where this is going?

I conclude, therefore, that the current experience of Guild Wars 2 is not to produce a game of any kind. Rather, the entire experience is aimed merely to send you on a quest for gold which will inevitably lead you to the gem store.

— This concludes my impressions of what a new person would understand this game is about.

Why do I conclude this? Well, from level 1 to 75 I have been pressing just three abilites (once I could have three abilities):
Button 1 dagger/dagger, Well of Corruption, and Well of Suffering. From time to time, when the monotony became overwhelming I would press F1 which gives me a second health pool which I would wait in while pressing 5 and 4 (once) while waiting for the formerly mentioned abilities to recharge. At level 40 I was given a mirror image of the F1 ability, Plague, which turns me into a ball of darkness that does persistent (tiny) damage to everything around me and reduces health to me. I use this as another wait option for my useful skills to recharge. In short, the experience from level 1 to 75 has been cycling the above abilities five abilites while primarily using just 3. Pressing button 1 is sufficient to level from most of 1 to 75 unless 3 or more creatures appear.

I suspect I will be deleting this character and starting no others. I do not see how this new patch does anything to benefit new or old players. The formerly available open world auction houses have been removed in starting zones. I am unawares as to whether or not it is true if new players cannot use the Trade Post until some later period of time, but whether not they are able to does not justify the removal of the trade posts from open world (where it is less laggy) to dense (laggy) major capitals. I will not mention where a few trade posts remain outside of capital cities in hopes that Anet will continue to overlook their removal.

You say you need to go to the gem store, but if you have another character, you surely have some achievement points. You do get a free makeover kit at every 5000 achievement points, as well as 400 gems.

As for not being able to buy rare items as you level, I’m quite confused as to why you think that’s necessary. For one thing, rare items pre patch didn’t even appear at all in the game till level 39. However, the game is completely completable in greens or even blues. I know very very few people who buy rares while leveling. This is something you’ve decided you want that you definited don’t need. It should also be mentioned that now, as you level, the game provides you rares for free, which it didn’t used to. As you get higher in level the game gives you rares for leveling. I’ve gotten at least three rare items since the patch just by leveling. That never happened before.

The new patch isn’t meant for veterans anyway, hence the term New Player Experience. It was introduced because so many people stop playing before they even get into the game.

Finally, the open world isn’t really meant to be challenging, but there are more challenging things to do in the game. If you don’t run dungeons or fractals and you don’t do jumping puzzles and you don’t do end game zones, then yes, hitting a couple of skills is enough.

As for auction houses being removed from starter zones, they’re right in the city, a couple of feet away from where they used to be. They’re not locked out for new characters, they’re just not in your face.

The idea is too take some icons off the map, because a new player doesn’t really have money to use the auction house anyway. An experienced player should know where their home city is when they start.

Friends have informed me I should also mention:

I have, at present, 100%‘d the following zones-
Caledon
Metrica
Brisban Wildlands
Kessex Hills
Queensdale
Gendarran Fields
Harathi Hinterlands
Snowden Drifts
Wayfarer Foothills
Lornar’s Pass
Dredgehaunt Cliffs
Bloodtide Coast
Timberline Falls
Sparkfly Fen

I should add, I do not believe the game itself is bad. This is important. The GAME is NOT bad.

However, all of this experience seems to suggest growing issues.
- Anet is over-focused on the Gem Store
- New player experiences are poorly designed and this recent patch did not help
- Some classes are positively awful

I’m receiving complaints that I should use more than three abilities if this is so monotonous. However, I do not feel the need to use more than three abilities if the game does not require me to. In other words, I’m not going to create a challenge where there is none.

Further, this does not say whether or not this class is good or bad. Clearly, it is an overly simple class in the basic PvE world. It is vastly better to level than the elementalist, which is unspeakably bad by all accounts and my own experiences of it. The necromancer pets I tried and found uninviting, largely getting in my way, and not particularly helpful. This should be considered a reflection on my style of play, which is efficiency. Considering I have 100%‘d half the world and reached level 75 in just 35 hours play time I’m pretty I took the fastest route.

Logic behind my efforts toward the character:
As a former player of Everquest 1, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft (beta to present), Warhammer, Star Wars: the Old Republic, Wildstar, and pretty much every other MMO to date I’m pretty comfortable with MMOs. My boyfriend even more so than me. The basic story of the MMO is always the same: until you are max level you are wasting your time. Nothing you do benefits you except the leveling process and monetary acquisition. In Guild Wars 2, monetary acquisition is about all there is going on. So your first 80 levels are just wasted time. You’re not doing anything for you. After 80 you can go back and see whatever you want, but to get started really playing you have to be 80. That’s the requisite of this game starting out.

So, in short, this has been insightful and not-particularly enjoyable. My character is absolutely ugly. I have no benefits from this, but transmute stones, and …that’s it. I hope this keeps someone else from wondering further about what the starting experience is like.

Note, there were two people playing this character. Myself and my boyfriend, taking turns swapping out just to see how fast we could do this.

As a final point:
There are things to do in Guild Wars 2 post 80. However, you have to understand pre-80 anything you are doing is a giant time-sink. It’s the same situation as level 1-20 in Guild Wars 1. They’ve extended 60 more levels in this game for the simple reason in game design called ‘content consumption’. You, as a player, must be restricted from access to content or you will get it all, then be unhappy. This is the basic theory. That is why Blizzard entertainment specifically cited content-consumption as one of the major contributors to the decline of World of Warcraft.

Unfortunately following this logic is not sufficient to maintain a contented player population. Players will want what they will want. As a friend says frequently, “People want exactly what they have, slightly better.” Thus, what is in the game already is what people want. They just want more of it (the all that is presently available) and slightly better." Obviously giving everyone everything is bad. Then you would have it and that would be that. It defines a certain kind of ‘winner takes all’ mentality or simple ‘winner mentality’. The overlooked portion of all of this is giving players non-monetary content: actual Dynamic Events rather than the currently used form that is more like Static Random Events . Though the event is random, the always occur in the game place. A dynamic event is fresh. A truly dynamic event would be a dragon that appears anywhere in the world, but only every so often, or a gang of highway man. These are things that have a global impact, but occur in a localized area. It’s rather the state of the universe that for something to occur it must be localized. At least, that would be the humanly accepted normative currently available to perception. So, while it is nice the Centaur attack Ascalon Settlement no one cares because, well they do that on a timer. I, doing anything about it, is boring after the first time. By the third time I’m doing it out of self interest alone: some kind of attempt to entertain myself. By the ten I’m doing it to farm … much like Jormag and Megadestroyer… at this point… no. I’ll pass thanks.

Wow, there’s really a lot to these posts and there’s plenty of points I agree and disagree with. Thanks for posting, this is really thorough and good.

As it’s mostly fun to complain, I’ll only mention that I’ve been playing since launch and I’ve felt my hard earned gold (or cash) feel more drained by the Gemstore as the updates have gone on, and so for the better part of a year now. I blame the gemstore and Anet/NCsoft’s increasing obsession with it for the lack of new dungeon armor and the dungeons to go with them. I feel bad when I’m asked to fork over 350 gems for hairstyles and faces that look (subjectively, I’ll admit, but they’re also objectively better-crafted) better than what I can get by creating a new character. It makes me go ‘If I want to look the way I want to, I will have /always/ have to rely on the cash shop, because my core character’s features depend on it.’, and that feels wrong. The hairstyles and faces should be available from character creation to all; I feel like I and at least a dozen other players find that paying for the convenience and the utility rather than the content is easier to swallow. Now I know NCSoft/Anet /is/ a business, but there are fair businesses, and greedy ones, it seems Anet/NCSoft gets away with the latter a little more each time under the pretense that GW2 is b2p.

I personally think your leveling experience felt bad because you actively gated yourself into playing what the majority thinks is efficient, when there are in-house builds you can make and have fun with. Of course, I go with the efficiency over fun most of the time, but they’re really not mutually exclusive. Necromancer is also a very dreadful class in PvE, I’ve rolled a couple and found no interest in the gameplay, no punch in the skills, not to mention necros have been plagued with bugs and erroneous tooltips as well as silly trait mechanics for as long as I can remember. It might have changed though, I don’t know.

You have my full support as well in terms of the dynamic events not being dynamic, though I can excuse that one because the current system has grown on me and is reliable. Still, proper dynamic events being added to the world, outside of Living Story ones (because those are still just randomly activated events contained within the same exact circle. The way I imagine a dynamic world event would be: A dragon flies overhead in Diessa Plateau, landing somewhere in the north east. Shatterer-like world event. You wouldn’t have to worry about people having trouble finding it because the information of such events would spread like wild fire due to how different they are from the rest of the world. True randomness is hard to do, and I imagine the good devs at Anet already thought of something like that and decided against it, but I’d like to see them reconsider. I remember the Beta Weekend Events where people got corrupted, or with the large scale battle royale event. That’s the kind of spark I miss from the game. It’s still there, but it’s being downplayed, and it’s hurting my enjoyment of the game to an extent. I still love it, like Eirdyne said, but I can’t help but be bothered by some of the financial and design-direction choices.

Great post, once again. Valid concerns too!

Playing a Necromancer…from level 1 to 75 I have been pressing just three abilities…

I don’t understand this as part of your review. You chose to not use other weapons or skill abilities?

But, I love this idea:

A truly dynamic event would be a dragon that appears anywhere in the world, but only every so often, or a gang of highway man. These are things that have a global impact, but occur in a localized area. It’s rather the state of the universe that for something to occur it must be localized.

It would scare new players though, using ANet’s logic.

Kuldebar.1897:

Playing a Necromancer…from level 1 to 75 I have been pressing just three abilities…

I don’t understand this as part of your review. You chose to not use other weapons or skill abilities?

As a ranger, I tend to avoid using certain skills all the time. (Longbow #4 comes to mind, as does Longbow #5, and Short Bow #3.) I do use all the abilities on the bar (save for the signets) but they’re not used all the time.

But, I love this idea:

A truly dynamic event would be a dragon that appears anywhere in the world, but only every so often, or a gang of highway man. These are things that have a global impact, but occur in a localized area. It’s rather the state of the universe that for something to occur it must be localized.

It would scare new players though, using ANet’s logic.

They tried dipping their toes in it with Modus Scelera, a guild of people sometimes popping up since October 2012. Alas, they went nowhere, probably due to people not really liking it. But “scare new players” . . .

It’s also a technical issue to develop something which can strike “anywhere at any random time”. Especially something the size of a dragon or dragon Champion like the Shatterer. It can’t, for instance, fit into some of the places in Lornar’s Pass along the sides, nor a lot of Frostgorge Sound . . .

Then there’s the trouble of scaling it, since it would have to scale to the region, and if it hit an area low enough then it would likely get burned down FAST and be “easy loot”.

And, finally, there’s the question of how many people would it annoy over basically disrupting wherever it landed and preventing progress until it went away.

I like the idea too, but “scaring new players” isn’t even the biggest issue with designing something like that.

Anet isn’t using logic. It’s an exposed nerve ending responding to pain.

The basic problem which Anet seems utterly unable to grok is that they have down-graded from the modern Standard.

My interface is IN MY FACE.

Let’s look at the problems:
- The interface has too many icons.
- – Okay… why not keep with the standard. Let me click icons I don’t want to see off. Brilliant! That’s only been around about ten years.

- New players don’t know what’s going on.
- – Press H … add user manual
— — in user manual add Sections… like Dodge, Combo Finisher, Dungeons, a list of Dungeons, Lore, Heroes of Tyria

This kind of thing has been done since Mario. Has Anet been living under a rock the last 30 years?

@Tobias Trueflight.8350

The high level attacks worked really well in TERA. The Dracoloths would descend down in a zone regardless of level and people would have to respond to the threat.

The loots were enticing so it didn’t take long for players to turnout. Unlike GW2, Tera doesn’t have down-scaling, but the event was very popular:

With the rise in players, we’ve seen a rise in dracoloths around the world of TERA. They’re too big to handle alone, so collect some friendly fighters and head out to find them. They could be anywhere—but they’re dracoloths, so they’re not exactly inconspicuous.

Corpse camping won’t work on these things, though—once they’re down, they’re down for good.

Dracoloth Sovereign Invasion: March 20–24

Location: Wouldn’t you like to know…

Kuldebar.1897:

@Tobias Trueflight.8350

The high level attacks worked really well in TERA. The Dracoloths would descend down in a zone regardless of level and people would have to respond to the threat.

The loots were enticing so it didn’t take long for players to turnout. Unlike GW2, Tera doesn’t have down-scaling, but the event was very popular:

I saw similar things during my EverQuest days, one in particular was . . . interesting. And one completely changed the game for the worse, forcing people to pretty much go around the problem area rather than use it.

I’m not sure how well it could work out, if it was anything like how Scarlet’s Invasions worked? Probably could fit with tweaking. However . . . I am not convinced it’s an idea which would have the payoff/effect people want from it.

It’s the same situation as level 1-20 in Guild Wars 1. They’ve extended 60 more levels in this game for the simple reason in game design called ‘content consumption’.

While I agree with the thrust of your post, I disagree here. In nightfall and factions 1-20 was a pleasant little tutorial. There was tons of PvE after 20. Prophecies wasn’t so bad either, but it did become a bit strained to me.

I did not mind making new characters in guild wars 1. I’ve had to force myself to level up the 4 80s that I have, and I do that mostly through WvW.

I too leveled a caracter after the patch from 1-80. And i cannot agree on some points of the op. First there was plenty of armor as rewards and altho some was not salvagable some where. As for stats ye some where the wrong stats but some you could choose the stats you want. As for making gold yes i made more money leveling up this time than before the patch. All those crafting bags you got as rewards had enough stuff in to make you a reasonable amount of gold.

Osculim.2983:

I too leveled a caracter after the patch from 1-80. And i cannot agree on some points of the op. First there was plenty of armor as rewards and altho some was not salvagable some where. As for stats ye some where the wrong stats but some you could choose the stats you want. As for making gold yes i made more money leveling up this time than before the patch. All those crafting bags you got as rewards had enough stuff in to make you a reasonable amount of gold.

You do realize that you make more money because now you have to purchase every trait individually, right?
Essentially you are being given little pouches of extra gold while they cut a hole in your wallet as compensation.

As for the Dynamic Events…

This is not a problem. The technology and entire system mechanics to do this have been around about oh… 15 years now.

It’s really, really easy to do…
- Create a zone.
- Define your aesthetics: desert, forest, whatever
- Add only minimal memory consuming objects (terrain features built of mesh)
- Announce the zone is specifically designed to expect these sorts of events
- Understand that Announcements are crucial:
Players do not mind at all if they are informed as to what a map is about. Especially if it is helping to keep their game experience interesting.
— announcements are always in two steps: “This/these zones have dragons”
— the actual formality of the event taking place… is announced… a simple roar would do…

The rest the players will take care of… as I said before… players what exactly what they already have just slightly better.

So far, Anet has taken away what we already had and it isn’t better…

So… kitten .

Further, players aren’t asking for anything except … something. IN WORLD. Dry Top was a good start. It looks like more of this is to come, but this is an opportunity… and the future is only opportunity… to ADD to your game. Following the Anet-Formula is apparently “maintain the standard and decline!”

Sure, it costs a few thousand dollars to add a zone. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is 20,000. But, I’m pretty sure some serious roleplay-oriented fan base, 3 weeks and a lot of coffee, with 3Ds Max could pop out some fantastic maps with ground breaking ideas.

The formula of this sort of ‘surprise’ content is first of all to grasp it isn’t a surprise. It’s quite structured. You inform players this sort of thing is coming. You inform them that it will be in high level zones (addressing the veterans) and mid-level zones (but easier) addressing to ‘zaz’ and ‘spectacular’ qualities of the game that snag new players and keep old ones interested.

Dry Top is an excellent beginning to this. You’ve got map that isn’t just about running forward or left or right. Up and down matter too. Worse, you aren’t sure where you are in all that.

Now, imagine something like Dry Top with the crystals and the rocks and caverns… and a dragon… not a CLEVER dragon. Not something that jumps out and everyone jumps on it. No no, this is something that jumps out… mauls the crap out of Allen or Mary… then skips off like a happy kitten into the sky. What did that accomplish? Paranoia… fear…anger… THRILL. And that… THRILL… more than anything else… WILL keep people after it. After not just the dragon… more more of that experience.

And what is the experience? The experience is knowing that this thing doesn’t just jump into a throng of waiting players like every other creature. No… this thing’s different. It randomizes what it does. It might just be out to pounce. It’s a blitz fighter today. An ambush predator. It runs up… and backs off. It hangs around… drying you crazy… and if you come toward it… it runs off! THEN! BANG… dead. Someone’s dead. Who? Where?!

How to stop it? Well… you add items. Trade post, crafted, expensive items. This one, something like this, could even be gem store worth. Something actually fun. A contraption that several players have to have and use together to snag the thing. These would be like ascended items. Hard to get. Rare. Special…

Players coordinate. Pull the thing down. Okay… it changes phase now. It not longer flies maybe. Maybe it was formerly just going berserk on anything, now it’s cautious: injured.

Another phase… the fight. It’s cornered. It can’t flee anymore. No more zone wide tricks… That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have more tricks left… and maybe those randomize a bit too…

But this is the formula… big to small. The whole zone, the local, the final. Just like a story has three parts. It shows up, you tease the emotion you want into people, you cook them in it, and then let them invert it into its own outward phase of expression.
The player satisfaction would be immense.

Anmida.4058:

Osculim.2983:

I too leveled a caracter after the patch from 1-80. And i cannot agree on some points of the op. First there was plenty of armor as rewards and altho some was not salvagable some where. As for stats ye some where the wrong stats but some you could choose the stats you want. As for making gold yes i made more money leveling up this time than before the patch. All those crafting bags you got as rewards had enough stuff in to make you a reasonable amount of gold.

You do realize that you make more money because now you have to purchase every trait individually, right?
Essentially you are being given little pouches of extra gold while they cut a hole in your wallet as compensation.

Unless you play the game to get the traits you want. In which case, it’s not that bad. But yeah, the trait system needs work…and presumably they’re working on it.

not just* a CLEVER dragon *

Vayne.8563:

Unless you play the game to get the traits you want. In which case, it’s not that bad. But yeah, the trait system needs work…and presumably they’re working on it.

After the second go, the suffering outweights the money spent… But yes, it all depends on one’s patience for idling for event time windows and the like.

To Vayne… yeah I didn’t even recognize there was a trait system. As a veteran, sure I knew, but as trying to play like a newbie …I had no idea what the trait system was. All I could find was that my sword & shield symbol at the time of my screen had this red ! .

“What’s that ! I found myself thinking server times. Then I would open it up. “Hmm, I see my skills. Hey, look, I have another twenty! Buy… buy… buy. Why is it still with that ! ….,” then I’d find the traits and think… “Hmm.. ohh I see! I have traits. Wait? How? They gated this. I have to spend absurd amounts of money and skills I don’t have! Ohhhh, I 100%’d things so I have unlocked some stuff all free like. Okay… hmm nothing good. Boring.” And close… Compared to WoW’s talent point system back in 2004 where I would have anxieties about how my Holy Priest would have Improved this or that, but not enough points for Improved Power World: Shield in another tree. In this it’s like “Hemophilia…” What? What is that? I don’t know. Okay, well, yes I do. I study things about biology, but that’s not my point. That’s not intuitive. It’s neat, I like that it forces me to think technically, but Hemophilia isn’t obviously related to Curses in any way unless you’ve read up on occultism. But all that aside… I have 3 traits unlocks? After 100%ing more than half the world. And that’s knowing what I’m doing. Yea… this system has done NOTHING to help newbies. It’s going to frustrate people no end.

And since everyone’s wondering… 3 skills or 5 … there are only 11 as necro. If you’re healing a lot you’re doing it wrong. If you are using Life Siphon a lot … it doesn’t do much damage. It’s more there as something to do when bored. It has terrible range too. Deadly Swarm casts horribly slow, does nothing for damage, and isn’t interesting to look at. Enfeebling Blood …meh. Shrugs Ya, there’s just nothing going on with the other skills worth bothering with.

Alright… at 42 hours – level 80.
-The new system provided no equipment rewards. I wasn’t expecting any, but I’m sure someone would.
- Nothing else of any interest in the new changes to mention.

I’ll go over some old things now which are suddenly strikingly obvious…
- I’ve been playing since release
- Before that I played Guild Wars 1 from Prophecies to Eye of the North
- In Guild Wars 1 I have Vabbi armor on my Dervish, dyed White. That’s like saying I have ‘the’ legendary of legendaries in Guild Wars 1. Especially since I have a green weapon (equivalent of legendaries). That character alone should say a lot to any veteran. On top of this my Ranger, two Monks, and many others also have quite good armor and weapons all around.

The amount of hours put into those characters is NOT in any way reflected with the Hall of the North system. It’s important to mention since this is how Anet continues to treat our time ~ as worthless and unacknowledged.

I have pretty much what there is to get in this game for me. 2 legendaries, ascended gear, most aetherized stuff, tons of things from the gem store…

Everything above points out that I do play the game. I do put in my time. I enjoy it. I accomplish a great deal. I have done all of the jumping puzzle. Thanks to bugs I can’t seem to complete 2 of the goggle things. Thankfully it’s not the Aetherblade jump.

So, what’s up? Where’s my gripe in all of this?

Well, as a player who has done pretty much all there is to accomplish I would say Anet goes out of its way to really blatantly not respect us. Really it goes out of its way to be rather unassumingly mocking.

The mini-skirt thing really started this. I don’t want to be a sex-item or idol. I’m not here proselytize sex or being an object of sex.

Well, alright fine. Armor is non-existent as a female sylvari. There’s hope though! I may be able to appear as some sort of belly-dancer by the end of this with a skull helmet. It’s sad and comical. But, that’s just the icing on the cake.

Underneath all of this I was speculating about other characters and whether or not Anet is even aware we are here. I would conclude, “No”.

I think that is where this summaries. Anet’s not even aware of this game. It only aware this is a product to be milked.

We shouldn’t expect anything from them. When they do communicate, they are not honest: percursor crafting… two years and still waiting. Decent armor can be found to exist, but armor that looks like it has any effort put into it… gem store.

I’m just going to go down through a list of things to see if this makes sense to anyone.

Ceremonial armor… looks better than ascended armor… except that it has a skirt.

Skirts… Let me just quickly list the armor available that is a skirt… or some kind of undergarment:
Skirts:
Ascended Armor – why do I have a banner for a loin cloth?
Ceremonial Armor
Aetherized Armor – Light & Medium
Ancestral Outfit
Braham’s Outfit
Flamekissed Light Armor
Flamewrath Heavy Armor
Incarnate Light Armor
Magitech Medium Armor
Phalanx Heavy-Armor
Profane Light Armor – I wouldn’t even wear this in the bedroom
Rampart Heavy Armor – also fits into the metal diaper catagory
Shadow Assassin – my hips are showing for no reason (this is not a form of protection but vulnerability)
Trickster’s Light-armor
Viper’s Medium Armor
Zodiac Heavy Armor
Zodiac Light Armor
Zodiac Medium Armor
ALL Cloth Armor – except Embroidered Pants
— do I need to list all cloth armor for the impact?
ALL Heavy Armor – except Armageddon Leggings & Aetherblade
— do I need to list all cloth armor for the impact?
Medium Armor is the odd-ball out… only Viper’s Legging’s is a skirt

Primeval Heavy Armor – gets its own catagory is being both a diaper and a chastity belt
______
So… I’m glad to know my options for being a sex-idol are thoroughly covered and I have no options for escape.
- This is the epitome of sexism.
- The only thing more sexist than this is Blizzard Entertainment’s treatment of female ‘heroes’ who constantly ‘require’ a male intervention for their intentions to manifest.

I think we all should also remember Scarlet… wonderful hero… who’s a villain. In world endangered by dragons Scarlet is the only person to take action.

We have Queen Jennah, who has done things in the past (as in text, on some website), but is otherwise is not active. That means it doesn’t impact male players’ mindset about women in general and reinforces that women don’t do anything in or for the world. The Pale Tree is also like this.

So, Anet’s thoroughly enmeshed in the reinforcement this patriarchal dogma and its structures. What female heroes have are token idols for wasted hope.

If you are wondering about Blizzard’s treatment of women-heroes here’s a short list:

Jaina Proudmoore < Rhonin
Tyrande Whisperwind < Malfurian
Sylvanus Windrunner < Arthus
Taretha Foxton < Blackmoore