Guild Wars 2

My guild had a argument over which is the smartest or closest to the main races of Tyria.

Skritt function like a human or charr in a large enough scratch, so I voted skritt, but what do you guys think?

Define what wouldn’t count as “main races” – because I’d say the races like kodan, krait, largos, and tengu all surpass the outright called “minor races” (skritt, ogre, hylek, grawl, quaggan), and except for the jotun’s fall are still beneath the “elder races” (jotun, mursaat, seer, forgotten, dwarf).

As Konig says.

We’ve essentially got three categories of NPC races:

You have the elder races – jotun, mursaat, seers, forgotten, dwarves. Each of these was powerful in their prime, with all but the dwarves (and arguably even those in a different way) being at least as knowledgeable and powerful magically as the asura now. Today, however, all of their civilisations are presumed destroyed on Tyria, with the thoroughly degraded jotun being the only one we see in number.

You then have a group of races that appear to be roughly on par with the playable races in knowledge, culture, and power. These include the kodan, krait, tengu, centaurs, dredge, and probably largos (I say ‘probably’ because we’ve never seen a largos home).

You then have the ‘minor’ races – mostly the racial sympathy options. Races like the harpies and skale (shown to be sapient in Nightfall, albeit only barely) probably also classify, but no one has sympathy for them.

If we assume we’re referring to races on the level of the sympathy choice races… it is an interesting question. Skritt have the greatest potential for genius, but rarely maintain it. Ogres and hylek both have areas where they exceed the playable races in skill (animal husbandry and alchemy respectively) but are well behind in everything else.

If I had to guess, though, I would probably say quaggan. Quaggan architecture and culture, on the whole, seems to be on a similar level to that of humans, sylvari and norn. Their status as a minor power seems to be the result of the destruction of their civilisation and that they’ve been scattered and unable to establish a replacement homeland, not that they’re inherently less advanced than the playable races as the other minor races seem to be.

I agree with drax, but I think skritt will be the next race to become “developed.”

The quaggans were broken, politically, culturally, and geographically- they even think their deity was killed. That, combined with their adherence to pacifistic principles, bodes ill for their chances of re-establishing themselves in Tyria as it currently is. The quaggan race is staring down extinction- though it may be possible that there are quaggans elsewhere who may be faring better.

The skritt, on the other hand, demonstrate much promise in Skrittsburgh. Despite the high turnover rate in their leadership and the multiple hostile factions preying on them, they’ve still managed to maintain their numbers and, by extension, intelligence and ability to develop culturally.

This isnt really clear cut. We certainly see the potential of the Skritt in Skrittsburgh and get a sense of what they can become. Skrittsburgh actually lead me to respect the Skritt as a race.

The Skritt are developing quickly but really, probably have the furthest to go.

The Hylek have found their place in the world through alchemy to the point where they are highly sought after by the ‘major’ races for their skills and knowledge.

The Ogre are an old race and I dont see them developing much at the moment.

The Grawl are being left behind really.

The Quaggan are and interesting case. Like the Skritt they have quite a bit of potential. Quaggan face to major hurdles. First is how scattered and divided they are. As individual tribes there is always a limit to how fast and far they can develop. We also dont know much about inter tribal communication and deplomacy for Quaggan. For the Quaggan to become a ‘major’ force they would need to group up more at least by open communitation between tribes.

The second is their habit of being extremely passive. It means they always avoid threats and always run away hoping others will protect them. This part I found pretty interesting as playing through the personal story and the open world. We see quite a few quaggan questioning the habit of running away. We see a few cases where quaggan are openly saying that some times its ok to get angry. We even see a quaggan who embraces his agressive side and still keeps a sense of control.

Like the Skritt in Skrittsburgh, if the Quaggan can overcome these obsticles they could become far stronger as a race. Quaggan already have very strong magic, many valuable skills and their weakness is combat is a lack of will to fight rather than a lack of capacity.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Define what wouldn’t count as “main races” – because I’d say the races like kodan, krait, largos, and tengu all surpass the outright called “minor races” (skritt, ogre, hylek, grawl, quaggan), and except for the jotun’s fall are still beneath the “elder races” (jotun, mursaat, seer, forgotten, dwarf).

I don’t understand how the krait are one of the “main races” – is this something from GW1? My impression as of right now is that the Hylek have more culture going on by far.

The krait are probably the least civilised as a group, but they do seem to have a cohesive and widespread culture that controls a lot of territory and represents a significant threat to minor and even major races bordering their territory.

Funny because I originally hated the skritt as following an asura persona but the more and more I see them I grow to love them!!!
With that said I think of the races we are considering(racial sympathy and the like) that skritt and quaggan as many have said, have the utmost potential!
The skrit already have skritsburgh which is a growing city and would be even better if they didn’t have so many threats(hhhmm similar to the big races) such as destroyers nightmare/bandit/inquest alliance and random hostile wildlife like bats and such! I think if they could even just remove the destroyer threat they would be much safer in the city at least and be able to thrive and hopefully maintain a king! This would let them grow and gather more skritt to the city making them smarter and safer! Their is also a skrit city out in timberline falls called either new skritsburgh or skritistan I can’t quite remember but it is also of decent size and development!
As for the quaggan I think everyone else summed it up well that they need organization and a bit more tenacity to fight, if they could gather up in say LA maybe where some already are they could make a decent community and home. Also some quaggan I found in frostbite sound were training for the quaggan games which shows their society reached entertainment and sport levels which is quite impressive and also showing some change toward more accepted fighting!
Of all NPC races tengu are def most advanced idk how people forgot them and than the kodan, problem for kodan though is they were slaughtered worse than the norn it seems and are still heavily struggling(ex honor of the waves dungeon)

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Define what wouldn’t count as “main races” – because I’d say the races like kodan, krait, largos, and tengu all surpass the outright called “minor races” (skritt, ogre, hylek, grawl, quaggan), and except for the jotun’s fall are still beneath the “elder races” (jotun, mursaat, seer, forgotten, dwarf).

I don’t understand how the krait are one of the “main races” – is this something from GW1? My impression as of right now is that the Hylek have more culture going on by far.

That was actually my point. The krait, tengu, etc. aren’t often considered a “main race” but they hold the culture, intelligence, tradition, numbers, and magic to put them on par with the five playable races – just as the kodan, tengu, and centaur do as well, with a possible largos should we ever see more of their population.

The krait aren’t a “main race” by most players’ standards, but at the same time they’re equivalent to them.

Although I agree with all the points made with regards to the Skritt, I think that the Hylek don’t receive enough love in this thread. True, their main accomplishment is the almost perfect way they control and know about natural resources to apply to their alchemy practises. However they also display a pretty fundamental, albeit crude in its implementation, understanding of engineering as displayed by the catapults/cannons they have built throughout some of their settlements.

Like Skritt they also breed quickly, can adapt to many circumstances in terms of climate (although being amphibians they’d be dependent on water sources and moderate to high temperature areas at least for the moment), are able to craft solid armour and weapons and have the added bonus of being intelligent at the individual level. I think the Hylek’s major drawback at present is that they are a tribal people, held back by the superstitions and beliefs that go with a small tribal community. A typical example of this is the personal storyline of the Durmand Priory where a Hylek high priestess denies the obvious facts because she’s blinded by faith in the Sun and plays a significant role that almost leads to the destruction of the tribe the player is visiting.

There’s the superstitious bit… But even more important, the hylek tribes have a tendency to war with each other when there’s a dispute over territory or resources. Sparkfly Fen is the sole exception, and it remains to be seen if that peaceful accord can last without the risen forcing it on them.

An asura npc asks why the hylek don’t just all get work together to get along and the hylek responds with a question of whether all asura krewes get along. The asura says “point taken”. But the hylek seem to get along fine with each other within their own individual communities. It’s only rival communities they may have an issue with but that’s no different from any other playable species.

The hylek do have smaller communities that are united and work together, however – but on the other hand, that’s where everyone starts.

I was considering the hylek myself, and of the five they’re probably in the top three, but between the hylek and quaggan I think the quaggan have been more civilised, and probably require less of a step to get up to a similar level to the playable races. Hylek certainly have a lot of potential to get there, though, if the accord in Sparkfly can grow into full hylek nation – something that possibly does have more chance of happening than a quaggan recovery. (However, this would be more a case of building up from a lower point, while the quaggan feel like they had a culture on the level of the playable races and were then scattered.)

“Despite all of these outside dangers, perhaps the biggest threat to any hylek tribe is when a rival tribe moves into their territory. Such an incursion often leads to an all-out war until one tribe wipes the other from existence.” That’s from the hylek lore blog post. Doesn’t sound much like the behavior of asuran krewes, nor of any division of any playable race excepting only the villainous factions.

A major component of the success of the playable races is that they possess a cohesive culture and a unified identity. A norn identifies as a norn, and usually proudly. A hylek identifies as Tagotl, or Occuintl, or Dengatl, and considers the distinction more important than their shared identity as hylek (which itself was just another tribe. It was outsiders who applied the term to the race as a whole.)

EDIT: Of the five, though, I still put hylek as second, in terms of both current development and potential for future advancement. I just don’t feel there’s much of a chance of them uniting on a global (or continental, anyway) scale.

Okay, so here’s how I would “rank” them, just based on impression playing GW2. (I’ve only done 3 out of the 5 racial explorer stories so far, though.)

1. Kodan + player races (+ Tengu + Largos)
2. Quaggan + Hylek
3. Skritt
4. Krait
5. Ogres + Grawl

Tengu and Largos in brackets because I haven’t seen enough of them to rank them adequately; I’ve seen hints that they are sophisticated cultures but I couldn’t put them into any sort order right now.

I find it’s a shame that the Krait are reduced to 100% villains who are aggressive ALL the time, as this sort of denies us as players and insights into their culture. From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t place them above Quaggans or Hylek, or even the Skritt. There may be more to them, but there’s currently no player access to that sort of experience.

Thinking on it, here’s my take on each of the minor races:

Grawl: Are basically the cavemen of Guild Wars, having shown little advancement since GW1. To be fair to the grawl, though, they’ve basically been marginalised by more powerful races such as charr, humans, dwarves and norn throughout known history – they’ve never had an opportunity to form a nation or an advanced culture.

Hylek: Probably the race for which the term ‘developing’ best fits. Their structures and technology are not as advanced as the major races, but they’re a huge step up from what we saw in GW1 two and a half centuries ago, and we see the beginnings of what could become a hylek nation in Sparkfly Fen.

Ogres: While you have to respect and envy their animal training abilities, otherwise ogres are really a bit pathetic. They try to lord it over the playable races on the basis of their claims of being an ‘old race’, but while they’ve done better than the jotun, what we see as the products of that age is a race that lives in caves and crude huts displays technology not much more advanced than the grawl, and shows little evidence of social organisation above the kraal level (alliances between kraals at most). Their claims of age just make this worse – a young race might be at this state because it hasn’t had the opportunity to develop yet, but when a race claims to be older than the civilised races, its own lack of civilisation must be explained by lack of ability… or willful choice.

Quaggan: Had a civilisation on a similar order to what the playable races had now, but were scattered. If Divinity’s Reach or Hoelbrak were to be destroyed, humans or norn respectively would probably be in a similar situation to how we see the quaggans.

Skritt: A bit of a wild card. Theoretically have the potential to be the smartest of all, but even large scratches are content to live mostly as scavengers. What holds the skritt back is a mix of their low intelligence as individuals and an aversion to work. Skritt were described in the lore post as hedonistic and living for today without thinking much about tomorrow, even as large communities.

Skritt can probably be considered the ultimate democracy, with all the associated flaws. If you think democratic governments are held back – especially when it comes to short-term pain for long-term gain decisions – by the need to keep winning elections every few years, imagine what it would be like for the skritt where basically every decision is an election, and where the skritt as a race make humans look positively fond of short-term pain. They can manage small sacrifices for a benefit in weeks or months, but by my observation the skritt as a race just don’t have the capacity for the long-term planning to build a civilisation on the level of the major races. Harsh as it may seem, I’d be inclined to say the Skrittsburg may actually represent the limit of what skritt can achieve without a fundamental shift in their psychology.

EDIT: @Pixelpumpkin: On the krait… it really depends on what your yardstick of ‘civilisation’ is. Their towers are crude, but impressive nonetheless… however, on a strictly technological sense, they do appear to be behind quaggans and hylek. On the other hand, what we see was probably what was raised on pretty short order by krait that are as much refugees as the other underwater races – they might be capable of more given the opportunity to fully establish themselves.

What puts the krait at a higher level, though, is their degree of cohesiveness as a race. One of the late-game story arcs make it quite clear that the krait of Nonmoa Lake and the Mire Sea cooperate with one another, and implies that there are (or were) more settlements with which they cooperated, possibly including Stygian Deeps, Wrathwave Deeps, and possibly more we haven’t identified in the Sea of Elon. Similarly, the krait in Viathan and Caledon feel more like single communities that have laid claim to the entire underwater region in which they dwell, as opposed to the quaggans and hylek that are usually restricted to small villages struggling to hold out against the krait.

So, if you mean purely in terms of cultural advancement – I would agree that the quaggans and hylek, maybe even the skritt, are more culturally advanced than the krait, but the krait are more culturally unified and powerful than any of the minor races. As a comparison, most of the charr structures we saw in Guild Wars 1 were ramshackle affairs at a similar level of engineering to the krait in Guild Wars 2, certainly well below what we saw from the Ascalonians… and we know how that conflict ended.

I find it strange that nobody mentioned the Dredge. To me they should be counted as one of the “greater” races. They seem to have a complex political structure (rebellions, alliances like the Molten Alliance etc.). They are also technologically advanced and inclined to expanding their territory. If you take the Molten Alliance as an example it clearly shows that the Dredge are capable of creating “new” technologies.

I think we need to be more clear in how we define “smartest”. Does it mean the race with the most cultured civilization, or perhaps the most technologically/magically advanced? Could we define it as being the race that is currently developing the fastest along all of those avenues?

That’s a good point about the Dredge. I completely forgot about them.

Now I feel compelled to add Centaurs to the list.

Everyone probably forgot because we are tired of seeing them at this point :p but they are an interesting and still developing group

If you read the third post Drax placed the Dredge in line with the “near playable race level” along with the Krait and Centaurs, which I personally agreed with based on their numbers, technology, and the fact that they have a political system (however corrupt).

Daylight makes a very good point about the Dredge, and I must confess I forget about them completely as well (which is true blasphemy as I like them a lot as a race).

They have a lot of pros:
- They are with many already and have a proper leadership structure.
- Capable of advanced technology (metallurgy, drilling operations, smelting plants etc enabling them to build warmachines and weapons)
- Intelligence at the personal level (varies a bit but they clearly have individuals who are capable of rational, longterm planning)
- They live underground so there’s plenty of room for them to expand their settlements without anyone noticing them or wanting to rival over living space.

They also have downsides however:
- Their society seems to follow a strict hierarchy, with little room for personal development (unless you count all the rebellions that are caused by this).
- The constant rebellions that take place, so the inner fighting, rather than uniting against the outside world much like Russia and the installation of the communist system after the russian revolution, of which the Dredge nation very clearly is a representation.
- Their desire to conquer the surface world, even though their physiology isn’t suited for living above ground, which causes them to spend many lives and resources that could be put to better use in expanding their nation. Then again knowing the Dredge they’ll probably in the end find some technology to compensate for this.

So yeah, in many ways the Dredge would have to be number 1 on our list in my opinion.

Only if you consider the dredge a developing race instead of a race that’s pretty much matching the level of accomplishment of the other playable races.

Ehh. What have the Norn and other playable races accomplished that the Dredge have yet to do? The only difference between the Dredge and the playable races is that the Dredge, as a society, have no desire to ally with the playable races. But the way for that possibility is already open with the rebellion.

I agree. I was just stating that I wouldn’t consider them for the “which is the best developing race” scenario because they are far beyond a developing race.

Ah, I gotcha now.

Personally, I’ve always divided the races into 5 groups: the “major” or playable races (asura, charr, humans, norn, sylvari), the isolationists (kodan, largos, tengu), the xenophobes (centaurs, dredge, krait), the “lesser” or tribal races (grawl, hylek, jotun, ogres, quaggan, skritt), and the monstrous races (ettins, harpies, trolls). It doesn’t really work to try to squeeze them all into “developed” or “developing”, because there is too much of a difference between the circumstances of the playable races and the isolationists and xenophobes. Dredge, krait, tengu, etc., are the equals of the playable races on a strict one-to-one basis, but they all stand alone, whereas the five playable races are an interwoven community. Cultural, technological, and magical exchange has caused each to strengthen the others, and stimulated growth and development in those fields (the spread of the engineer is a perfect example of this.) The other races don’t have this advantage, and so you have races that are specialized, even possibly stagnant to a degree. The dredge, for instance, have developed excellent mining and sonic technology, but not much else. The centaurs have fearsome mastery over earth magic, but still use crude catapults while the major races have progressed to cannons. They’re certainly farther along than the skritt or hylek, but they aren’t the equal of the playable races.

Fair enough, but based on your opinion I would put the Kodan, Largos, Tengu, Centaurs, Dredge and Krait on the same level just slightly below the level of the playable races because of the playable race’s cooperation. I mean we do have many of these helping out the pact, but there hasn’t been much trade off between them that we’ve seen. Still, with this, I wouldn’t consider them to be developing races.

Agreed. I’d put the tribals at “developing” (you never know, there may be hope for the jotun yet), and the ettins, harpies, and trolls at “hopeless”.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say the Jotun are going very far in GW2, but should 250 years pass and GW3 come out… Who knows? :P

Jotun don’t really fit into any of those categories – with those groupings, I’d make a sixth category (“fallen races”) for the jotun. You could then argue whether this applies to the other elder races, or whether there should be seperate categories for ‘elder but still civilised’ and ‘fallen’.

One could probably also put skale, skelk, and karka in the ‘monstrous’ category, Mind you, there possibly is a minor distinction between skelks and ettins that can be cooperated with on rare (but no rarer than, say, frogmen in EOTN) occasions versus universally hostile races like trolls.

Jotun are distinguished by their history, to be sure, but aside from that there is nothing separating them from the other members of that category. They all are fractured politically, the territory of any given tribe is confined to the immediate area, and there is minor but significant cultural differences between the tribes (for instance, in the personal storyline a tribe of jotun has been converted to Jormag worship and allied itself with the Sons of Svanir.) The jotun of today maintain no vestiges of their former power, and we don’t know for certain that the other tribals haven’t also fallen, so I feel their placement is justified.

The karka feel more like particularly clever animals to me than anything of actual intelligence. The only things that indicate otherwise are a handful of comments by developers and the circumstantial evidence of where they made landfall for their attacks. Skale intelligence, to the extent of my knowledge, is argued from the Istani skale and one less-than-clear answer in an interview- nothing in GW2, or GW1 outside Istan indicate any degree of culture. I haven’t heard any arguments for skelk, but now you’ve piqued my curiosity.

I agree the distinction could be made, but I do not feel it would be meaningful. One tribe of ettins and one or two individuals elsewhere versus the dozens of other communities in the game is an aberration, as is the single known friendly troll.

This is really interesting because it mirrors the problems we have categorizing real animals and people into classifications.

As for the trolls ettin and troll, the culture of displaying the higher functions may be an aberration but those aberations indicate the possibility for them all to do it but their “nature” (Which could refer to nature or nurture) makes it unlikely. So maybe they need a further subcategory of species that could and have shown signs but aren’t quite there yet. or, maybe we decide that the classifications are based solely on what tends to be displayed and one can’t jump a classification until the majority do. But then we’d have to agree on classifications first.

Like I said, the difficulty mirrors what the RL scientific community has already gone through and what they still tend to revisit as we discover new things.

Agreed. And as in taxonomy, the divisions are bound to be at least a little arbitrary.

That said, I wouldn’t say that the friendly troll and ettins are more cultured. They simply, for whatever reason, lack the impulse to savagely attack other races. That doesn’t mean they’re any more intelligent or cultured or even peaceful, just that they happen not to try to kill the character.

That’s a good point. Just because those ettin and troll interact with us doesn’t mean they aren’t ettin and troll like in every other aspect.

I’d say there is a distinction between the jotun and the racial sympathy races, actually – the sympathy races are all sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, while the (living) jotun are almost invariably enemies. There’s hope that each of the other races can be absorbed into the greater community, but for the foreseeable future the jotun seem likely to simply continue blindly attacking anything foreign that nears their territories. If you don’t want to give them a more fitting category, then if anything they’re actually a better fit with the monstrous races given their degree of degeneration.

I also raise a mental eyebrow at describing quaggans as ‘tribal’. If you look at the material on quaggans, they had a nation… once. Probably two, in fact. What we see now are the scattered refugee villages of a nation destroyed by its enemies, not a tribalistic culture.

On the skelk – there is an event in Diessa where the charr have trained skelk to collect lumber. Mind you, this could be more an indication of ‘smart animal’ than ‘sapient’, but it does show a certain capacity to learn advanced tasks at least.

They’ve trained the skelk to fetch sticks. I wouldn’t say that puts the skelk at the level of a race.

They HAD a nation, but no longer. Not all of these races follow a strictly linear upwards progression. The quaggans, jotun, and probably skritt (and humans in some ways, and possibly asura, and possibly krait, and, according to legend, the harpies) are all currently at a less powerful or advanced status than their civilizations were at sometime in the past.

As for the sometimes friends, sometimes enemies: quaggans are invariably friends, and grawl and ogres are (also) only friendly when placed under extreme duress by outside forces that threaten their continued existence (or, in a couple of cases with the grawl, they are induced into worshiping a deity that makes them play nice.)

Edit: I do apologize for the slant of this reply. It is not my intent to be argumentative- I personally just try to stay away from categories that only contain a single member.

There are friendly ogres in Iron Marches that don’t seem to be that much more under duress than others. Grawl, maybe, but there’s still a lot of friendly villages in Fireheart – it’s just that there are also reasons for that.

On the quaggans – my point is that they aren’t really ‘tribal’. They’re of the same level in power as the other sympathy races, yes, but they’re not organised in tribes. In fact, neighbouring quaggan villages regard each other as neighbours who are also quaggans, not another tribe, and the leaders of those villages confer with one another on topics of common interest. They still largely see themselves as being part of the larger quaggan nation, it’s just that that nation has been scattered and not all villages are in contact with one another. That’s a far cry from hylek, ogres and grawl, where a neighbouring village is just as likely to be a hostile tribe as a friendly one.

Basically, most of the minor races see themselves as being members of their tribe first, and members of their race second if at all. Quaggans see themselves as being quaggans first, and then inhabitants of whatever village they’re part of second.

Basically, the quaggans have a much greater degree of racial identity than any of the sympathy races with the possible exception of skritt. What’s keeping the quaggans down is their lack of aggression – if they were willing to fight for it they probably could carve out a new nation for themselves, but by and large they aren’t.

The historical reason and perhaps even mindset maybe be different, but the current political reality of the quaggans is the same- scattered, autonomous, insular villages that do not answer to a higher political or religious authority. That is all that I mean by putting them in a “tribal” category. While they are in theory willing to coordinate between villages, in practice there are only two instances where villages are close enough to accomplish this- and in one of those there is an emerging cultural split between the villages.

Actually, we do have mentions in the quaggan blog post (now removed, but the original text can be found here) that the quaggan varonos do work together and the race remains interconnected, including the quaggans around Kryta having formed an alliance with Jennah as a group. (Although, interestingly, we don’t see a lot of that ingame, since the only direct Seraph-quaggan cooperation we see is Nightguard Beach, and the quaggans there are, IIRC, acting against the Koofooloo varonos’s wishes – I suspect there might be more quaggan villages in the currently unexplorable lakes around Divinity’s Reach).

Where is the cultural split you speak of? I know there’s a friendly rivalry between the quaggans engaging in the Quaggan Games in Frostgorge, but that’s more like the UK and Australia over cricket than anything that they’re likely to ever go to war over.

Well, Aaron, you have to remember that you places the playable races a step ahead of the more isolationist groups which sit at the level of playable because of their willingness to cooperate between each other. I would say in the same instance, this would give the Quaggan at least some kind of advantage to the other tribals.

Eh, I’d still categorize quaggan as tribal myself just because we see Native American nations that were comprised of a bunch of tribes that identified with each other as the same people and stayed interconnected yet were insulated into tribal societies to comprise Native American nations. It’s just that the quaggan would have an (*) by them with additional info to describe how they recently became tribal. Much the same way modern western society could become tribal after a major cataclysmic event.