Guild Wars 2

Hello guys,
when I started playing I didn’t know anything about the game and chose Asura because they looked funny. Today I regret that choice so much that I just do not want to play anymore. After 3 years of playing this game I like Norn so much more, the Animations, the Voice and co…. And I would LOVE to change my Asura to a Norn, I would buy the game again if that was necessary.
What is the reason race change is not being implemented?

Some old and newer threads for your perusal;

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/merged-Will-race-change-be-available-ever/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Race-Change-UPDATE

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Race-Change-for-gem-purchase-please

The third and middle thread have less posts and probably sum it up for you quicker.

You could simply create a new character with the race you wish to play. Ascended Gear is account bound, so you don’t have to craft it again and exotics would be easy to get.

my bad sry didn’t know that they just do not want race change

It’s not that they don’t want it. It’s just that it is tricky to do. If you change race then you would need to transfer personal story as well. Even some choices you made in the game might be race specific. I guess it would just break the game. Unless they would wipe all this jazz and leave you clean. That could work.

As others have said A-net has made a few comments on this, unfortunately to the probably not going to happen tune. I would personally LOVE a way to change races, but I do understand the reasoning behind not having it.

Artemi.1437:

You could simply create a new character with the race you wish to play. Ascended Gear is account bound, so you don’t have to craft it again and exotics would be easy to get.

While this is true, what you aren’t adding is… Map completion, LW stuff, Character birthday, crafting (not that its hard to craft), and most importantly personal inventory expansions purchased for a character.

Use your L80 Boost to create a Norn character with your Asura’s profession.

If you haven’t purchased HoT, do so; you said you would buy the game again. Or, after playing 3 years, you probably have enough ToKs to level a new character to 80 immediately. Transfer Ascended gear, and voila!, race change.

Good luck.

@Miku: Map Completion can be done again, or even much faster, if he only gets the needed waypoints. LW Stuff can also be done again, or the items are accountbound anyway (or just fluff and personal memory), he shouldn’t delete his old character, so he can still get all birthday presents and personal inventory expansions are in the tp.

So all in all you can get a race change with 2k Gems (including three inventory expansions and a new characterslot) and a bit of time. Seems like a reasonable enough deal for a feature thats gamebreaking otherwise.

Artemi.1437:

@Miku: Map Completion can be done again, or even much faster, if he only gets the needed waypoints. LW Stuff can also be done again, or the items are accountbound anyway (or just fluff and personal memory), he shouldn’t delete his old character, so he can still get all birthday presents and personal inventory expansions are in the tp.

So all in all you can get a race change with 2k Gems (including three inventory expansions and a new characterslot) and a bit of time. Seems like a reasonable enough deal for a feature thats gamebreaking otherwise.

Right, obviously all of the things could be re-done and re-purchased. That doesn’t change the fact that it would still have to be done or purchased when creating a new character. Which makes it not exactly the same thing. As I said I completely understand why it isn’t an available feature, how ever that doesn’t mean creating a new character is the same as being able to change the race with a token etc.

But for someone who said he would be willing to buy a new account in order to start over with a different race creating a new character wouldn’t be a big deal. At least you get to keep everything which is account bound that way, so it’s not like you’re starting completely from scratch.

And unless you’ve used up all 70 character slots you can even keep the original character for birthday gifts and things. (And if you do have 70 characters surely you’d have multiples of every race/profession already, and be very familiar with repeating map completion and things.)

My guess is when the OP says he would buy the game again hes eluding to being willing to pay for the ability to change the race. I’m unsure as to why someone who wants to change their race so much they would start a new account wouldn’t just create a new character.

Ah ok, I must have misunderstood.

I’ve recently run into a few people who apparently didn’t realise it was possible to make more than 1 character in this game and a few others and I was reading this topic the same way.

^^; I’m not actually sure. When I saw the thing about buying the game again I was totally lost too, so I just figured it was a way of saying the OP wouldn’t mind paying for it.

Ahh yea actually I’m really not sure what the OP means, with that part I’m just guessing.

And super glad we can make more then one character per account :P

They could possibly do something like a reincarnation stone, which would reset all player progress, level, story etc, but retain gemstore upgrades, crafting skills, map completion and birth date. So in effect you would be creating a new character but not losing some of the more tedious or expensive unlocks. Using it however would unequip all gear as you would be level 1 again, may make it clear inventory too so just store stuffs in the bank or on other characters, so if you had racial skins on your armor you would need to switch it to a neutral skin before using this item.

Here’s my idea. What if they made something like a Race Disguise available in the gem store? For example, OP would buy a Norn Race Disguise and apply that disguise to his Asura. Now his Asura looks like a Norn but is actually still an Asura. Any race-specific story missions would still be Asura. Home would still be Rata Sum.

I’m sure that’s not trivial to implement but should be a whole lot less complicated than actually changing race. Would that suffice for people who want to change race? It should if it’s purely cosmetic thing. They already have disguises in the game, just not on a game-wide scale like this would be. This might also be something that would be purchased by more people than just those who want to change race.

If race change was ever added to the gem store, it would still be easier and more fruitful to just make a new character and give it 79 tomes, or Scroll-X tomes, and then just move over your ascended armor. Exotic armor isn’t that hard to get anyway

To ArenaNet, I would pay $20 per character for this feature or the profession change feature. Thank you.

To people arguing re-rolling, it would destroy birthday and “/age” stats on characters. Most of the character I want to race/profession change has 3+ years gameplay on it. While other people don’t care about playtime on characters and are willing to settle for creating new characters, people like me do, thus I am willing to shell out hard cash for it.

voidvector.2780:

To ArenaNet, I would pay $20 per character for this feature or the profession change feature. Thank you.

US$20 = 1600 gems, just twice the cost of a new character slot. That is unlikely to make it worth ANet’s effort. It’s not just a matter of changing the character’s race; it also requires changing code which was written with the assumption that race could never change.

Players are still finding bugs related to changes in the order of the events in the personal story made for the New Player Initiative years ago. This is going to require even more work. It’s simply too big to be done just for the convenience of those who unwilling to spend less on a new character.

I’m not against the idea; I just can’t imagine how it would be a good business decision by ANet to make it happen.

I’m the opposite, I want to change my humans to asuras or Charr now.
Maybe I’ll just buy 9 character slots.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not against the idea; I just can’t imagine how it would be a good business decision by ANet to make it happen.

They implemented in WoW, and charge $25 dollars. The same arguments were made about breaking quest log, breaking story content, vs re-roll, etc.

Considering how many people use the makeover kit, it is in the same realm of business decision.

Hardcore players are not going to care, and are going to tell people to re-roll. Even if hardcore players use it they are going to pay with in-game gold. Casual players (Fashion Wars 2 players) are the ones going to be the major revenue generators of this. Mid-core players like myself are somewhere in between.

Honestly, If I get tired of a race, I just buy a new character slot and create the class on the race I want. Currently I am up to 19 Characters. Now granted they all don’t get played, but I have played the game so long I don’t have to level any of them up the traditional way. Between the level up birthday scrolls and the Tomes of Knowledge I could create another 5 right this second and they would be 80.

I honestly don’t see a purpose in what this thread is wanting. The amount of resources ANET would have to put towards this wouldn’t justify the limited market the change would create. Plus it would pull resources away from other areas of development and for me that wouldn’t be worth it.

Hjorje.9453:

I honestly don’t see a purpose in what this thread is wanting. The amount of resources ANET would have to put towards this wouldn’t justify the limited market the change would create. Plus it would pull resources away from other areas of development and for me that wouldn’t be worth it.

And such is the attitude of Guild Wars 2 community:

• Player 1: Anet is wasting time developing e-sport
• Player 2: Anet is wasting time developing raid
• Player 3: Anet is wasting time developing outfits
• Player 4: Anet is wasting time developing WvW
• Player 5: Anet is wasting time developing API
• Player 6: Anet is wasting time developing gem store functions

voidvector.2780:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not against the idea; I just can’t imagine how it would be a good business decision by ANet to make it happen.

They implemented in WoW, and charge $25 dollars. The same arguments were made about breaking quest log, breaking story content, vs re-roll, etc.

Considering how many people use the makeover kit, it is in the same realm of business decision.

Hardcore players are not going to care, and are going to tell people to re-roll. Even if hardcore players use it they are going to pay with in-game gold. Casual players (Fashion Wars 2 players) are the ones going to be the major revenue generators of this. Mid-core players like myself are somewhere in between.

But in WoW you can’t just make a new character, and have him in maxed gear and level in 5 minutes (not without paying extra for that, too)

voidvector.2780:

Hjorje.9453:

I honestly don’t see a purpose in what this thread is wanting. The amount of resources ANET would have to put towards this wouldn’t justify the limited market the change would create. Plus it would pull resources away from other areas of development and for me that wouldn’t be worth it.

And such is the attitude of Guild Wars 2 community:

• Player 1: Anet is wasting time developing e-sport
• Player 2: Anet is wasting time developing raid
• Player 3: Anet is wasting time developing outfits
• Player 4: Anet is wasting time developing WvW
• Player 5: Anet is wasting time developing API
• Player 6: Anet is wasting time developing gem store functions

Differences in priorities are found in every community; individuals want different things.

In this case, players have wishlists which can be expanded ad nauseum, while Anet needs to review things by their ROI. That dichotomy can add strain and frustration, but also needs to be respected.

voidvector.2780:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not against the idea; I just can’t imagine how it would be a good business decision by ANet to make it happen.

They implemented in WoW, and charge $25 dollars. The same arguments were made about breaking quest log, breaking story content, vs re-roll, etc.

Considering how many people use the makeover kit, it is in the same realm of business decision.

Hardcore players are not going to care, and are going to tell people to re-roll. Even if hardcore players use it they are going to pay with in-game gold. Casual players (Fashion Wars 2 players) are the ones going to be the major revenue generators of this. Mid-core players like myself are somewhere in between.

Code is written differently in each game. While WoW may have been able to find the answers to the problems they ran into while implementing race change, we have concrete evidence that race change likely won’t be possible with GW2.

The personal story is the concrete evidence. Just rearranging the steps in the story causes problems. One of my characters which had finished the entire personal story before they changed things around got affected this last go around. I had to redo like 6 chapters including the long Victory or Death mission. And this last go around was to fix some of the problems caused by the shuffling of the personal story.

voidvector.2780:

And such is the attitude of Guild Wars 2 community:

• Player 1: Anet is wasting time developing e-sport
• Player 2: Anet is wasting time developing raid
• Player 3: Anet is wasting time developing outfits
• Player 4: Anet is wasting time developing WvW
• Player 5: Anet is wasting time developing API
• Player 6: Anet is wasting time developing gem store functions

It doesn’t really do anything to help make your case to point out that people have different preferences.

Hardly anyone questions whether it would be good for the game to have the option added. The issue is: what other things could ANet do with the same resources?

The race change would be possible if the approach was different.
People that want a race change are the ones that don’t want to lose world completion and birthday progress. All the race change kit would have to do is copy that progress (and class) delete the old character and open up character creation menu to select a new character with your old play stats. Personal story starts anew, start at the level you were before you race changed etc. People are definitely willing to lose some to gain some.

Setz.9675:

The race change would be possible if the approach was different.
People that want a race change are the ones that don’t want to lose world completion and birthday progress. All the race change kit would have to do is copy that progress (and class) delete the old character and open up character creation menu to select a new character with your old play stats. Personal story starts anew, start at the level you were before you race changed etc. People are definitely willing to lose some to gain some.

But then you have design issues to deal with, because the personal story isn’t designed to be replayable, so why should people who race change get to reexperience the personal story when others can’t? What if someone chooses the same race after using the race change option, do they get to experience the personal story again but change their choices? If not, how would you change the character creation screen to accommodate for one of the races to be unplayable? What about the character naming screen that’s at the very end of the process? Do you keep that or remove it? What about a the rewards that are tied to the personal story? Do characters who get to change race get new rewards for playing the story again? If they don’t, that’s a whole lot of recoding to accommodate that design, one that wouldn’t be worth it, if they are allowed to keep personal story rewards, it can be exploited. How many times can a characters race be changed? Should it be once or many times? If the personal story would be affected, living world season 2, heart of thorns and living world season 3 stuff would also need to be reset, because your choices in the personal story, order chosen and race chose, affect dialogue in places, which means the code would have to be updated to accommodate for all of that. What about achievements tied to personal story? Are they removed or retained? If removed, do they get to keep the achievement points? If not, what happens if the reward track is lowered to the minimum, do players then have to re-earn the rewards again? If not, then you’ve given extra achievement points to someone for replaying the personal story, unless you also potentially want to remove either achievements or achievement points from the second round of personal story. Also would the player teleport to the level 1 instance for their race? Storywise, the player has to go through there in order for future things to make sense. but then you have the nightmare of dealing with potentially level 80 characters oneshotting the enemies and,the boss at the end of the instance, just as level 80s do everywhere low leveled. Its supposed to be a grand introduction for players that there are bosses that you can fight even immediately, so what happens if that experience is ruined for other players? Do you make a different zone for higher than level 1 race changers? That needs to be programmed in and designed around that to make sure that higher level characters don’t interfere with a beginning character. What about all the bugs that would arise from that? Every time you code something, bugs happen, it’s an inevitability due to the nature of coding, so you have to spend time fixing as many bugs as possible, is it worth the investment to restructure all of that and then deal with the bugs so that players can change races? How do you price it? Would there be a per limit account to the number of race changes?

There is no simple way of implementing anything, especially stuff that messes with so much of the game from a personal story point of view, even If it is more possible this way. It takes a lot to place anything in the game and it has to be worth the price of development. In my eyes, considering all the above, it’s not feasible to do a race change when the resources and development could be used in other, honestly speaking, more important elements in the game. There’s simply too low of a return from something like race change for the development costs to be worth it, and that’s an aside to all the issues that would arise from the possibility of a deployable personal story, because if its possible on race change, it should be possible for other characters too and that dives deeper into other sorts of development issues as well.

There is no good option for race changing unfortunately.

Setz.9675:

The race change would be possible if the approach was different.
People that want a race change are the ones that don’t want to lose world completion and birthday progress. All the race change kit would have to do is copy that progress (and class) delete the old character and open up character creation menu to select a new character with your old play stats. Personal story starts anew, start at the level you were before you race changed etc. People are definitely willing to lose some to gain some.

You’ve assumed that “all they have to do” is easy enough to change the cost-vs-benefit comparison. This “all you have to do” version still requires copying some details of a character (profession, leveling progress, map completion, crafting disciplines & unlocks, bag slot unlocks), but not others (/age, story progress).

It’s only easy in a theoretical sense to “copy” the details of a character; in a practical sense, there are all sorts of fields in a database entry that have dependencies that get checked as they are updated, but can’t get cross-checked when tinkered with on a field-by-field basis.

In other words, it’s not the copy & edit that is difficult, it’s the testing of those edits that is fraught with difficulty.

Illconcieved, I actually think that /age is basically the primary reason why people WANT race change, so that they get all the benefits of keeping their age and keep oncoming birthday rewards. To me, it seems that anyone who wants to race change wants to keep ALL progression except personal story progression (because that’s the only one tied to race). I still agree that it’s a massive undertaking, but if people lost /age by doing race change, there would be riots.

castlemanic.3198:

There is no good option for race changing unfortunately.

I already said it, a race change would reset all your story. It would only copy world completion and character age, character level and profession. You go on far too much about personal story rewards which are trash and can be re-obtained with a 800 gem character slot anyway.
lv1-80 personal story doesnt do a thing for LS2-HoT-LS3, my lv80 boosted chracters with 0% map completion do LS2-HoT-LS3 with zero problems. So no there won’t be updates needed there.
Giving your old progression back after the first mission is not impossible to program so more non existent problems.

Obviously race change wont be as simple as copy/paste but don’t go around saying it’s impossible when there are possibilities if you look at it in a different way. I don’t know about other players but I would pay 2k gems for a race change no problem. Instead of procrastinating race change because ‘its too much work’ it should just be done in a less conventional way. The race change option has been requested for over 4 years now, there is a huge demand for it Im sure about that.

Setz.9675:

I already said it, a race change would reset all your story. It would only copy world completion and character age, character level and profession. You go on far too much about personal story rewards which are trash and can be re-obtained with a 800 gem character slot anyway.
lv1-80 personal story doesnt do a thing for LS2-HoT-LS3, my lv80 boosted chracters with 0% map completion do LS2-HoT-LS3 with zero problems. So no there won’t be updates needed there.
Giving your old progression back after the first mission is not impossible to program so more non existent problems.

Saying “I already said it” doesn’t dismiss anything I’ve said. Issues still exist, regardless of what YOU personally believe about the rewards and such. Level 80 boosts are so different from race changes, because that character isn’t being reset. Never said any of the above was impossible, I said it wasn’t feasible, there is a very massive difference between the two.

Whether you believe anything mentioned is an issue or not, they ARE issues, objectively so. So many design decisions need to be made and that’s before even implementing the whole thing. These ‘non-issues’ are player side perspective, not developer side perspective and there’s a massive difference between the two. You can’t just say “yeah throw in race change” so casually and completely dismiss the entire design process as ‘non-issues’. Doing so is ignorant at best.

Setz.9675:

a race change would reset all your story.

I am willing to redo my 1-80 story without any reward for race change.

Excelsior.

This thread is super hilarious! “For the love of god”, people want race changes for “over 4 years now”. What’s wrong with you people picking something and then change your mind like that? And the question following up is why would Arenanet do that and why would you want to spend so much money on it? How come that your interests shifted so much you create this thread and it goes on and on? I am playing midgets since I picked Tristana as first character in League of Legends in 2010. I would never suddenly pick a Norn. Make up your mind before that. I mean, you literally changed by 180° if you go from the Maste.. from Asura to Norn, it’s the very opposite. And now you want it to be done in a blink of an eye?

Get your principles straight, man. :-)

Zedek.8932:

What’s wrong with you people picking something and then change your mind like that? .. How come that your interests shifted so much you create this thread and it goes on and on?

Cause you can’t play Fashion Wars 2 with female charr or asura. With the exception of gem store outfits and a few armor types, Anet just slapped male version onto females of those races.

My mind didn’t change, I still want to play Fashion Wars 2 on those if possible. It is just that my expectation wasn’t met.

Take for example the Cabalist, which is one of my favorite armor for female human, sylvari and norn: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cabalist_armor
The charr and asura female versions are no different from male version. I don’t like the male version of Cabalist.

EDIT: add example

Zedek.8932:

Excelsior.

This thread is super hilarious! “For the love of god”, people want race changes for “over 4 years now”. What’s wrong with you people picking something and then change your mind like that?

No need to be rude and call others “hilarious” for wanting something you don’t.

It’s an online game, picking a race and changing your mind later isn’t new, rare, or wrong. Nothing is “wrong” with people wanting to change. Haven’t you ever picked something for a while then decided you would rather do something else? People can change their minds; I for one think that’s a good thing.

Zedek.8932:

And the question following up is why would Arenanet do that and why would you want to spend so much money on it? How come that your interests shifted so much you create this thread and it goes on and on? I am playing midgets since I picked Tristana as first character in League of Legends in 2010. I would never suddenly pick a Norn. Make up your mind before that. I mean, you literally changed by 180° if you go from the Maste.. from Asura to Norn, it’s the very opposite. And now you want it to be done in a blink of an eye?

They feel like playing something different, maybe they like how a new outfit or armor looks on a different race more. Maybe they like one of the other races new hairs more then the race they started with. A game that is constantly growing and changing, especially adding customization options is bound to have people changing what they graphically appeals to them.

Just because YOU wouldn’t change what your playing doesn’t mean other players wouldn’t. That’s like saying you normally play x looking character so that’s all you ever play. Honestly I don’t think most players feel like that.

I would never want a race/profession change item for myself. I have 1 norn and 1 charr that are just parked at chests, doomed to never see any real play time. I won’t delete them since they are from launch, but don’t mind logging them in for the chest rewards and eventual birthday rewards.

As the game continues to grow, I can see the value of race/profession change items. When it was just core Tyria, I’d say sure, just create a new toon. But now there is so much more to uncover plus HP’s, Masteries, etc that there could be value in swapping your race and/or profession. Maybe it just locks the personal story, I dunno. But people change and the game changes, so a choice would be good.

But charge a bunch o’ gems for it! ;P

For you who want a race change, a few questions to figure out what the core wish/issue is:

1) What is it that you absolutely want to keep from your old character?
2) What of the above is not achieved by making a new character and keeping the old. Seeing as anything gained from birthday presents are account bound, and /age isn’t visible to others.

Edit: Of course I understand the answers will differ from player to player, I’m curious about different perspectives.

1) What is it that you absolutely want to keep from your old character?
– For me it’s bag upgrade slots. To a lesser extent map completion/hero points

2) What of the above is not achieved by making a new character and keeping the old. Seeing as anything gained from birthday presents are account bound, and /age isn’t visible to others.
– Literally both things are not carried over to a new character.

To those strongly opposed to race changes. How does it negatively impact you if other players would like the ability to change their race? (in terms of playing the game, dev resources are obviously going to be taken, but that’s the case for any change or feature addition.)

Miku.6297:

1) What is it that you absolutely want to keep from your old character?
– For me it’s bag upgrade slots. To a lesser extent map completion/hero points

2) What of the above is not achieved by making a new character and keeping the old. Seeing as anything gained from birthday presents are account bound, and /age isn’t visible to others.
– Literally both things are not carried over to a new character.

To those strongly opposed to race changes. How does it negatively impact you if other players would like the ability to change their race? (in terms of playing the game, dev resources are obviously going to be taken, but that’s the case for any change or feature addition.)

I don’t think anyone’s opposed to them adding race change. Just saying that the chances of it are near 0 due to the problems the race change would bring and the cost associated with it vs the number of people who would use it.

And very few people who ask for the race change seem to do more than just magic wand the problems away. Very few seem willing to try to find a solution to the problems race change will bring.

Seera.5916:

I don’t think anyone’s opposed to them adding race change. Just saying that the chances of it are near 0 due to the problems the race change would bring and the cost associated with it vs the number of people who would use it.

And very few people who ask for the race change seem to do more than just magic wand the problems away. Very few seem willing to try to find a solution to the problems race change will bring.

Ahh ok, are there any accurate statistics for the number of people who would use it? I changed my main race twice… and would have probably used one befor changing if the option had been present.

I don’t think anyone is trying to just magic wand problems away. Just most posters have little to no experience in what it would require to make changes like this, so simply stating the goals of said change are more logical.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

For you who want a race change, a few questions to figure out what the core wish/issue is:

1) What is it that you absolutely want to keep from your old character?
2) What of the above is not achieved by making a new character and keeping the old. Seeing as anything gained from birthday presents are account bound, and /age isn’t visible to others.

Edit: Of course I understand the answers will differ from player to player, I’m curious about different perspectives.

I think the answer I see most often is “map completion”. It’s a significant time investment that would be worth paying $10 in gems for just on time saved. Probably preserving the /age as well, since that’s tied to birthday gifts.

Setz.9675:

Obviously race change wont be as simple as copy/paste but don’t go around saying it’s impossible when there are possibilities if you look at it in a different way. I don’t know about other players but I would pay 2k gems for a race change no problem. Instead of procrastinating race change because ‘its too much work’ it should just be done in a less conventional way. The race change option has been requested for over 4 years now, there is a huge demand for it Im sure about that.

No one is saying it’s impossible. No one is saying that there’s not a demand for it. All anyone has said is that it’s not as easy as some people seem to think it is.

Copying character details is easy; what makes implementation difficult is ensuring that the partial copy doesn’t cause any issues now, next month, or during some future upgrade.

Whatever effort it requires could be applied to this QoL request or any of 65,284 other suggestions. ANet can only do a tiny fraction of those. Which should be priorities and which are simply nice ideas that will never make it to the top of the list?

There is no need for race change. If you really like this game, you will make another character with different race. I have 31 characters, they all have map completion. Ok I admit, you need to work for those another characters too, but that’s the life. We will not get anything ready on our hands anyways. We need to work for it. So guys, if you want to play another race, make another character and play it. Keep your old character and it will get all birthday presents and new characters will get them too in time.

Believe me, map completion is fun when you have done it many times. You just run in specific routes on the maps and you will get it fast. I don’t understand why people see map completion such a bogeyman in their minds. It is hard at first time, but second time you already know what to do to get it. And believe me 31st time it is still fun.

Sinope.5630:

There is no need for race change. If you really like this game, you will make another character with different race. I have 31 characters, they all have map completion. Ok I admit, you need to work for those another characters too, but that’s the life. We will not get anything ready on our hands anyways. We need to work for it. So guys, if you want to play another race, make another character and play it. Keep your old character and it will get all birthday presents and new characters will get them too in time.

Believe me, map completion is fun when you have done it many times. You just run in specific routes on the maps and you will get it fast. I don’t understand why people see map completion such a bogeyman in their minds. It is hard at first time, but second time you already know what to do to get it. And believe me 31st time it is still fun.

I like the game. That doesn’t mean I want to make another character if I wanted to change races.

I’d say that’s a matter of opinion. After the 7th time I’d really rather not do it again. What you consider fun may not be the same as what someone else does; some people enjoy map completion others don’t. Just because it’s not fun to them doesn’t mean they think of it as a bogeyman or anything of the sort. It just means it’s not an aspect of the game they enjoy.

My issue with wanting a race change at times is I would hate to have to buy the bag slots again; they aren’t cheap.

Although I can see the reasons for wanting this, too much is tied into your race…..your starting story, some later story impacts. But I do agree different races add very different flavors to the game, which is probably why I have so many alts

A lot of people point to the personal story as a reason for not getting this, but I’d just as easily take a 100% reset story with 0 rewards in exchange for being able to change my character’s races. I realize some people may find it easy to just create a new character and start over that way, but there are so many soulbound parts of the game and I’ve invested so much time into each one that it’s just not worth the effort. This would be an easy 2000 gem purchase for me.

^— Yea I would have paid 2k gems for the change, but when I was race changing was a odd situation. Started I deleted my old human mes, to remake her as a sylvari when the ORIGINAL flame kissed set came out… I got to use it for a while, then it was changed… So I got to re-start again as a human. Yes I could have just used a name change contract… However at the time I had no intention of playing both characters, so I figured it would be cheaper for me to just delete/restart then name change. A race change would have cost a little bit, but I would have been able to keep my bags and commander tag on my first mes rather then having to re-start and re-buy everything. It’s made even better that I had to re-buy twice of course xD

ANet will make the decision based on information that we do not have. In the end it will be a matter of return on investment. A race change token that takes X hours of dev resources needs to not only generate more revenue than the cost, but also more revenue than whatever else could have been produced for that cost.

I think that it might be profitable, but only ANet can possibly know. Past dev comments against the idea need to be taken with a grain of salt though as priorities and business realities do evolve over time. There have been plenty of changes to the game that contradict past dev statements.