Guild Wars 2

So anyway, I’ve always loved small characters in MMORPGs, be it hobbits, ratonga, asura or those weird three-in-one furballs from Allods Online. And since we only have five character slots in GW2 by default, all my four characters are asura (saving the last for the revenant.) The question is… is this a smart thing to do? Or would it be better to spice things up a bit?

I know I can easily hop into Lion’s Arc and go to a different starting area, so that’s not an issue. I guess the real issue is the personal story. If I have three characters, I can pick one for each story (infinity ball, golem and teleporter). But what about the fourth one? If I have two who both picked infinity ball, will they get the same story? Or at least, I know I can pick some missions (go after the Inquest or the councelor), but how different will the story play out? Are these choices only small choices, or do they have a large impact later?

The same goes for the other races, in a way. I loved Sacred 1 and 2, especially as every class had their own starting areas. However, after a short while, they all ended up on the same path. Same with Dragon Age: Origins. The starting areas were fun, but they ended too quickly, making most of the game the same for everyone. Is that the case here? I haven’t played that long, but I do remember my asura going to Lion’s Arc and finishing up the initial story-arc shortly after the game was released. So I guess I’m saking if the person story continue through the whole game, or are they just starting stories that’ll lead into a common story for every race?

You might like to try the personal stories of all races. They do open up the world for you. Also, Sylvari have some little differences in the LS content and will have some more in HoT.

Other than for flavor, your character’s race does not matter.

Hm… thanks. I guess I’ll try a Sylvan, then. If I hate it, I’ll just delete it. No harm done.

If you care at all about achievement points, you get some by going through each race’s personal story. You don’t need to get all 3 parts of it, just taking one of each race through the first few tiers of personal story will cover them.

Actually, no, I don’t care about achivement points. Or I would, if there was any point to them. Maybe buy stuff in an achivement shop, or something. But as long as they are just for display, I don’t care about them.

Iif you don’t care about achievement points, then the next question would be, do you care about seeing the other race’s story lines.

If yes, you can create a char of one race, level it up to the point where the story lines of all races merge together, then either keep it you decide you like that char or delete and make one from another race and do that story line.

You can always just make a race and play it a few days, see if you like it. Sometimes the animations of one race is really good. I have a female Norn warrior, for example, but I made a Charr warrior on an alt account and I was surprised to find out I like the animations much better. The combat feels much more immediate to me on the Charr than the Norn, possibly because of the height difference.

I’ll warn you that yes, all the various story paths will in the end lead to the same point. The first 20 levels are the most distinct. Then you get a choice of three more paths, and any of those you take will lead to a choice of three more. Thereafter there are occasional parallel tracks of story that converge to a point.

However, there are enough variations that you won’t see every version of every step with just three characters. As an altoholic I have managed to see almost everything; I’d have to make one more asura, two more charr, and one more norn to see the rest of the racial stuff. And that’s with 14 80’s, many of them done with PS.

I don’t know how much you want to avoid spoilers. You might want to check the sticky at the top of General about Personal Story Restoration. Right now some later chapters have been badly cut up, and that’s getting fixed in another month or so. The sticky lists the intended order of steps. Also, a huge tech change is coming with the fix: a lot of PS scenes take place in places that don’t look the same any more, notably Lion’s Arch. If you get a PS step that says to go to LA, you may want to wait.

Why? Since launch, instanced PS steps have used current game terrain. It’s rather jarring to attend a quiet meeting of friends in the middle of flaming ruins. When the fix is live, you’ll see the terrain as of the time when the PS is set. So that will be your chance to see LA like it used to be before Scarlet nuked it.

edit: In that final set of three I mentioned, your race determines the exact set of choices you get. As an asura you might not be able to study the same thing a human would, for example.

I took your advice last night, and started a Human Thief and Sylvan Warrior. And honestly, I’m surprised how much fun they are. Take the camera, for instance. With my asura, the camera was placed front and center. I don’t like that with the bigger races, as they block too much of the screen. But instead, I moved the camera, so the character is close and to the left of the screen, pretty much like they are in Fallout 3/New Vegas, and games like that. Strangely, it made it feel like a whole new game.

The gameplay is a lot of fun too, and as my human thief is a huntsman, I could finally find a use for the 130+ wooden logs I had stacked up. :p She’s level 10 right now (not started the story yet, though), so I’ll get into the sylvan today and get her up to level 10 as well. But if she’s as fun as the rest, I might as well get more character slots. Oh, well. :p

BattleCat.2098:

Actually, no, I don’t care about achivement points. Or I would, if there was any point to them. Maybe buy stuff in an achivement shop, or something. But as long as they are just for display, I don’t care about them.

It wasn’t until recently that I’ve started to care about AP. Yeah sure you get a reward chest every 500 points but the rewards are not all that great. Now that I am within 200 points of my 10,000 chest I’m looking forward to getting the 30 gold, 400 gems, laurels and other stuff.

I made sure I had at least 1 of every race so I could experience the stories and for the AP. I also made sure I choose each of the 3 orders. When you get to level 30 of the personal story the 5 race stories merge into 3 stories, 1 for each of the orders. At some point you can buy the armors specific to your order for your character, so you might want to see how your character looks in each before choosing the order. I chose the order based on profession and personality more and have only bought one set of armor based on their order.

I also have at least 1 of every profession. I was surprised that I like some of them when I didn’t expect to.

Keep in mind as well that if you buy the armor from your order, the skin gets put in your wardrobe, so characters in the Vigil can access Order of Whispers armor, and so on, as long as you have a character in that order to buy the armor.

MasterJediSoda.5926:

Keep in mind as well that if you buy the armor from your order, the skin gets put in your wardrobe, so characters in the Vigil can access Order of Whispers armor, and so on, as long as you have a character in that order to buy the armor.

Thanks, I hadn’t noticed. I bought the priory robes for my main mesmer and haven’t really wanted to put them on another character. But I’ve been looking for a more believable melee armor for my mesmers since that’s how I play them at least half the time, if not more. I’ll check out the vigil and whisper armor to see if I can’t use some of them.

Thanks, guys. You’re really helpful. I think my current plan is to keep my level 24 asura engineer, my level 20 asura necromancer and either the sylph or human. Or both. I also have a charr guardian, but I’m not quite sure about that one yet. I’m not fond of the charr running on all four, so maybe I’ll make one of the last race instead, to see what they are like. Or just stick to the four characters I already have. Decision, decisions… lol.

BattleCat.2098:

Thanks, guys. You’re really helpful. I think my current plan is to keep my level 24 asura engineer, my level 20 asura necromancer and either the sylph or human. Or both. I also have a charr guardian, but I’m not quite sure about that one yet. I’m not fond of the charr running on all four, so maybe I’ll make one of the last race instead, to see what they are like. Or just stick to the four characters I already have. Decision, decisions… lol.

I right there with you. I made a female Charr engineer which worked out great. An engineer can switch between kits to get a 33% increase in speed. There is no cool down so can keep switching between kits giving basically a 100% up time for the speed boost. When the Charr get a speed boost their run animation is upright on the hind legs, not hopping along.

I decided to ditch the Charr, and went for a Norn instead. A Guardian, though I’ll be using a Greatsword. I like this race a lot more than the Charr, so I’ll stick to that as my alt. That means a Norn Guardian and Asura Necromancer (without pets) as alts, and the Human Thief, Sylph Warrior and Asura Engineer as my mains. Until I buy more character slots, anyway. We all know I’ll do that soon enough. I need a dictionary to learn the meaning of dicipline, lol.

Don’t forget you can get additional character slots with in-game gold, a lvl 80 will help greatly with that.
After that bank tabs are helpful, individual bag slots are not worth it unless you play one char exclusively/most of the time or have all the other upgrades you want to get.

In the end, go with what you find fun ^.^

I got another character slot, and decided to just give the Charr a fair chance. So I made a Guardian, and the initial armor was ugly as heck, as usual. But I tried a couple of outfits, and most of them were rather boring or just plain ugly. Buuuuut… the Pirate Captain outfit looks really, really good on a Charr, especially after being dyed a bit. (note: really wish the hat could be dyed seperately, instead of being the same color as the pants.)

The running is annoying, but I mapped Sheat/Unsheat weapon to Ctrl + S, so it’s easy to draw the weapon whenever I want. This makes me run on two feet rather than four, and I don’t seem to run slower because of it. That’s both the looks and running taken care off. Of course, always using the Pirate Captain outfit can get old quickly, so I do need to spice things up with proper armor eventually. Still, this was much better than I expected it to be. No idea how long the Charr will remain fun, and I doubt it’ll be my main. But for now, it’s much better than I expected, so I will keep givinig it a fair chance. As long as I’m having fun with it, it’ll stay my main. Fingers crossed it can stay fun for a long time.