Guild Wars 2

Both in our world and in Tyria, a person who raises dead bodies is a necromancer, and person who designs technology is an engineer. There aren’t really other words in the English language to convey those concepts. But what about professions where it’s less clear cut?

Within the fictional universe of the game, would an average joe distinguish a Warrior from a Guardian or a Thief who maybe just left his plate armor at home, or would they all be considered different types of “warriors”? Would a stealthy person who carried two daggers still be called a Thief even if they were a law-abiding citizen?

Maybe the answer to this is obvious to those of you who played GW1 or read the novel, but having only played GW2 it’s not clear to me.

I’d say that the light armour, magic-user professions are definitely recognised in lore. Queen Jennah is specifically referred to as a mesmer in one of the novels, and that, necromancy and elemental magic are identifiable schools of magic. Warrior is an extremely broad category and I’ve never felt comfortable using it as if it were a thing in lore. Guardian…might be recognised, again as a specific school of magic. A fighter who knows certain protective/purifying magic.

Engineer makes sense as a label, especially since the profession sort of originates with charr technology so they probably got to name it haha. Ranger is another broad category but might be recognised as a name for hunters/animal-tamers/wanderers/scouts/etc. People who go out into the wilderness on their own. Finally thief… the most problematic in my opinion. I doubt every ‘thief’ type would call themselves a thief. They might know thieves’ skills, but thief is a way of making a living and they don’t all necessarily do that (noble-born human thieves?).

Can’t give you a definite lore answer but TL;DR: magical classes are probably recognised in lore but for the others I don’t think so necessarily.

Edge of Destiny names the Mesmer like Curuniel said, so it might name the others there. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I feel like Guardian=Logan was referenced in there

It was said in an interview that most thieves profession wise prefer other names – scout being the most common among military usage. Since that’s their primary purpose, with stealth and all.

I think it was the same interview, which was asking about the professions of characters in Ghosts of Ascalon, in which it was said that the magic-using professions are outright identifiable and that’s why the novel identifies Killeen as a necromancer and mentions mesmers and elementalists alongside necromancers (at the time, guardian was still unrevealed and Edge of Destiny which called Logan’s magic “guardian magic” once was not yet released), but other professions are not easily identifiable since fighting styles of any particular profession changes a lot.

Rangers and thieves also use magic, and they’d be identified through such, though since they’re not as keen on magic as the scholar professions they wouldn’t be as easily identifiable – and again, thief is more of a mechanical term than a lore one (scout’s probably the closest thing to a lore term for such a profession, though overall it doesn’t seem to have a single one – scout, spy, thief, assassin, etc. all can mean either the actual act of scouting, spying, etc. or the magical-physical-mix profession that focuses on stealth).

Thanks, everyone. Those answers seem logical. It’s good to know, should I ever decide to RP.