Guild Wars 2

I have a quick question for any Devs who were involved with the writing and creature design on Heart of Thorns.

Was the Chak in game loosely inspired by the race of chak for TSR’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons module ‘the Needle’, which was written by Frank Mentzer and published in the late 80’s?
Your chak are intelligent/semi-intelligent insectoids, Mentzer’s were highly intelligent (if somewhat silly) arachnids. Both adventures take place in a hostile and foreign jungle. Beyond that the similarities pretty much end.

I ask because that D&D module was the first pen and paper role playing game that set me on my (long) path of table top and later video gaming. Seeing char on my computer screen brought back a few good memories. I was just wondering if this was a happy coincidence, or a developers homage to pen and paper gaming.

At first I thought the Chak were some kind of land-based cousin to the Karka.

They remind me of the spidren from borderlands