I’ve seen a thread for new classes floating around here, so I thought it would be appropriate to make a counterpart based on new races.
By all means, post what races you’d like to see made playable, but I thought I’d open the thread by looking at the subject from a more objective point of view, setting aside personal bias, and examining how likely it is that a race would become playable.
I’ll preface this by saying I haven’t played GW1, and haven’t done much research on it, so this going to be restricted to races that already appear in GW2.
Races very unlikely to become playable
These would be the races I see as whose odds of becoming playable are just north of zero:
-Krait: between their depiction in-game, and how they were described in the Anet blog, it’s clear that the devs are pushing for the Krait to be seen as as unambiguously evil as possible. This doesn’t really jive with the whole “all the players are heroes” shtick GW2, so they’re almost certainly not becoming playable (unfortunately, as I really like their visual design).
-Any race that’s the subject of the “help the lesser races” storyline: as part of the personal story, there’s a story arc in which the player is sent to help another race, which (at least in the Priory story) are literally called “the lesser races of Tryia”. Calling them lesser races in the dialogue seems about as clear a message as you can make that those races are going to remain ancillary characters in the story, and not take center stage as a playable race. So, this excludes the ogres, grawl, skritt, hylek, and quaggan.
Races that seem somewhat unlikely
Possible, but I still doubt it will happen.
-Dredge: as far as I can tell, the dredge all seem to be part of one civilization, and that civilization seems to be uniformly untrusting and aggressive towards all other races. It’s possible that there’s another dredge civilization out there that would be more open to the idea of working with the other races, but right now I don’t see it.
Races that seem possible
This is where we get into races that seem feasible. They aren’t a slam dunk, but I could see them happening.
-Kodan: they’re friendly with the playable races, they have reason to fight the dragons, they aren’t overly pacifistic, or unintelligent, so they seem a good fit for a playable race. What gives me pause with them is whether their uniformity of appearance would be held against them. Having the character customization options of ‘polar bear’ doesn’t lead to a great deal of diversity. It’s not enough to make it impossible that they’d become playable, but it is a point against them.
-Centaurs: not Tryian centaurs, of course, that’s not going to happen. However, I have read that GW1 had centaur tribes in Elona and Cantha, whose opinions on the player races may be different from the more aggressive tribes. Assuming that having them potentially join humans in fighting other centaurs wouldn’t violate any lore I’m not aware of, and assuming they can come up with a reasonable looking swim animation for a centaur, I could see it happening.
Races likely to become playable
Still not a certain thing, bu I’d say their chances are pretty good.
-Tengu: they’ve got a city and territory that’s separated from the playable world by just a gate, they arent aggressive anywhere in the game, they say in game that they’re debating what role to take in the war against the dragons, and evidently the devs at one point had plans to make them playable at launch, although that obviously fell through. It’s hard to think of a race more likely to become playable.
-Largos: the largos are the most humanoid looking non playable race in the game, which in itself seems like a hint towards their future playability. With their home out in the ocean, it’s easy to imagine an expansion where the largos get pushed closer to land, and make the other player races aware of the existence of the DSD. They aren’t the obvious choice that the Tengu are, but I’d still say the have the next-best odds.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Thoughts?