Guild Wars 2

After playing through the game I have determined quaggans as a species have a terrible life and are wholly unsuited for survival in GW2.

As such I feel the humane thing to do would be to euthanize them. Its only a matter of time anyway.

Personally I blame the Black Lion Trading Co.’s questionable procurement of quaggan backpack materials (i.e. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Quaggan_Backpack.jpg) for the decline in their numbers myself.

To be honest, I never understood quaggan hate. I get that their voices and speech habits might be irritating to some, but aside from their pacifism there’s nothing that marks them as any more out of place than, say, the skritt- and said pacifism is on the decline anyway, as we see individuals and communities embracing proactive defense and their rage forms.

I think that their culture is entering a period of forced change, but I do not believe that they are a doomed race, barring unforeseeable circumstances such as a krait campaign of genocide or a karka population explosion.

CureForLiving.5360:

Personally I blame the Black Lion Trading Co.’s questionable procurement of quaggan backpack materials (i.e. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Quaggan_Backpack.jpg) for the decline in their numbers myself.

Those are as adorable as Quaggans themselves.

@Aaron, to a lot of people they are fat and ugly and yeah their speech is ridiculously irritating. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m not American, but hearing al lot of the lesser races sound so distinctly human/American is grating – they just look like they shouldn’t sound ‘human’ and I’m not really sure I can explain/quantify it better than that :S (specifically the Quaggan and Grawl). Their voice is not creature like, they just sound like people trying and failing to put on a funny voice, it kind of speaks to the unfortunately lighthearted tone of GW2. Skritt on the other hand are just remarkable adorable and we should eradicate the Quaggan and genetically engineer aquatic Skritt to take their place.

@Foxx I’m with you on the grawl. I miss the glory days of the guttural “WE RA RA!” Now, most of them sound as if they’re terrified of their own shadows.

I don’t mind the quaggan, and they were actually the first race I chose to help in my various personal story progressions. They are progressing nicely into gaining a spine, and the angry quaggan are certainly less cute than they are in passive form. I was definitely surprised when they showed up in Orr and helped me. They do tend to get everywhere, though, and seem to be the new mascots of the game after the charr plushies. Maybe we just need to find more skritt and hylek and grawl to be civilized. I kind of miss the hylek hanging out in Lion’s Arch’s sewers, even if they were mostly decoration. Why couldn’t it have been a drunk hylek that hung out in Prosperity than a quaggan lush?

sirian.4981:

After playing through the game I have determined quaggans as a species have a terrible life and are wholly unsuited for survival in GW2.

As such I feel the humane thing to do would be to euthanize them. Its only a matter of time anyway.

1/10

And you only get 1 because some people seem to take you seriously.

Quite pathetic really.

Bring Stability, or those Quaggans will all just spam stunlock on you until you die.

contrary to popular belief, quaggans are surprisingly sturdy creatures. You can find their villages located from ice-cold shiverpeak lakes to orrian sea. Heck, I still trying to figure out how one of them (RETURN MAH GOLD DROOOOLBURT!!!) managed to travel all the way to Prosperity town at drytop without turning into a mummy

@Aaron: My dislike for the quaggan actually stems from the over-cutifying the race, and how they seem to get highlighted so much more out of any other minor race simply because they’re “cuter”. They’re always on the receiving end, despite the fact that they have the ability to be total brutes, and yet said ability is never looked upon.

It’s a similar dislike to asura and sylvari being the central focus of plot progressions and storylines (often respectively).

FlamingFoxx.1305:

they just look like they shouldn’t sound ‘human’ and I’m not really sure I can explain/quantify it better than that :S (specifically the Quaggan and Grawl). Their voice is not creature like, they just sound like people trying and failing to put on a funny voice, it kind of speaks to the unfortunately lighthearted tone of GW2.

For races that look like they shouldn’t sound human, I think the Hylek suffers from that much more than the Quaggan or Grawl do. Given the sheer size of their mouth, throat, and possibly their vocal cords, I think they voices should be much much lower in pitch.

Not to mention how they mouths only just barely opens and closes when they talk. It’s a miracle that they can vocalize the “b”, “p”, and “v” sounds.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Aaron: My dislike for the quaggan actually stems from the over-cutifying the race, and how they seem to get highlighted so much more out of any other minor race simply because they’re “cuter”.

I reckon we see Skritt the most out of any minor races. Quaggan probably rate second, probably because you never see bad ones.

When I said the similar stuff about the Quaggan over a year ago people called me a hater. But now it seems to slowly sink in how annoying those “cute” races really are.

Woah, woah, woah, WAIT. We can’t euthanize the Quaggans! That’s wrong!

Fellow Lore-hounds, I am disappointed.

…we should hand the entire race to the krait for negotiation talks instead! Less Quaggans to annoy passing by adventurers, more resources freed up for other stuff and a temporary treaty with the krait which means less causalities on our side!

(Cough, cough okay but for real. The first Quaggan was cute. The second Quaggan was cute. The 50th Quaggan was cute. The 100th maybe. After the 5000 “Quaggan can’t do this alooone!” I just want to kick them across the ocean. And the whole ‘quaggans are cute and helpless’ thing being overdone adds to it.
Also their voices peeve me freaking a whole lot. A lot of them sound like someone was given the instruction ‘try to sound as moronic, sleep-deprived and pathetic as possible’. <_>

The only Quaggan I still like is Shashoo. Unlike the others she had some character development. And unlike those annoying quaggans HER VOICE IS THE CUTEST <3)

Erukk.1408:

Not to mention how they mouths only just barely opens and closes when they talk. It’s a miracle that they can vocalize the “b”, “p”, and “v” sounds.

This is an issue of mechanics. Most-if-not-all non-playable races have barely noticeable jaw flapping. Tengu, dredge, hylek, grawl, quaggan, skritt. I’m sure ogre, jotun, and kodan too.

Wanderer.3248:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Aaron: My dislike for the quaggan actually stems from the over-cutifying the race, and how they seem to get highlighted so much more out of any other minor race simply because they’re “cuter”.

I reckon we see Skritt the most out of any minor races. Quaggan probably rate second, probably because you never see bad ones.

I meant in story focus.

How many skritt are relevant to the various plots? Compared to quaggans?

You don’t have skritt/grawl/hylek/ogre versions of Bloomaloo and Penelopee. And most skritt/grawl/hylek/ogre in-game are very minor in presence, while the quaggan presence is much more highlighted in the various events and ambient dialogue.

I would argue that hylek have a bigger story focus than skritt do – albeit barely. But quaggan have bigger than both.

I believe the quaggans were meant to be the equivalent of Warcraft’s Murlocks.

The thing is, while Murloc is a mascott of WoW it’s mostly just that. Sure, they return frequently as your enemies but they were never a part of some bigger plot. They’re famous of their specific sound (“Mrrgglllrll…”) and that they were usually huge pain in the kitten quite a while ago when leveling, because they tend to aggro in groups and approach you as a blob, same like SFR.

Now about Quaggans – the concept was nice. There’s some kind of fat Kanye West fish which is peaceful most of the time, but can turn into brute berserker when angry.

But as it’s been already stated, they’re waaay too one-sided. Quaggans are literally being portrayed as Tyria’s biggest fat “pus**es” – they’re just a useless mascott we’re carrying around for whatever reason. And, worst of all, they’re constantly involved in every single main story, together with Asura and Sylvari.

They really need to show the “other” side, get some claw. And we need more involvement of other “lesser” races like Ogres, Krait, Grawl, Hylek etc.

We don’t see much story focus on quaggans, really- the problem is, I think, that the individuals we do focus on without fail seem out of place. Bloomaloo and Penelopee are recurring offenders, but we also have Kookoochoo and Drooburt, who were both placed in conspicuous locations, were the only quaggan on their given map, and were both absolutely absurd, without even an attempt to explain why a quaggan went out to the middle of an arid waste to beg, or why a juvenile quaggan was allowed to stage his own circus performance at the shadiest gathering of sellers and buyers outside of Lion’s Arch.

Now, I’ve got no problem with using them as mascots (instances along the lines of the Halloween trick-o-treaters), and any one of the above NPCs probably would have by themselves just been some lighthearted humor. But all of them together, with no serious or even truly quaggan-like quaggans to balance them out, plus the mascot thing, plus the fact that no other lesser race has gotten even half of the screentime these clowns have… I think the underlying issue being expressed in this thread is that the joke has been run into the ground, and it’s taken the community’s opinion of the quaggans with it. The preexisting quaggan haters, of course, have been waiting down there this whole time to welcome us with open arms.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

The preexisting quaggan haters, of course, have been waiting down there this whole time to welcome us with open arms.

Welcome to the pit! Beer is in the fridge and we have some nachos with salsa waiting on the table.

Just to quickly touch on the other races…

Ogres: Not too surprised we don’t see more of them. They are explicitly only on the eastern edge of Ascalon, generally in the mountains. Outside of map completion or racial sympathy (from only 2 of the 5 major races), there’s almost never an occasion to meet with them. They don’t seem to stray, either.

Grawl: These guys seem similarly confined to the Shiverpeaks, but at least they have been seen other places. I haven’t played their racial sympathy event yet, so I don’t really know their good. As one charr put it, “they’re savage, mean and fanatical”. Build a totem to it, and they’ll probably worship it. Seems far too weak-willed for my liking.

Hylek: These guys seem to be in a prime position to do something. They seem to be the best alchemists in the realm, and at least 2 of the 6 tribes are friendly. There’s even Amoxtli in Dry Top, who has joined the Priory. I could almost seem them as a playable race, although getting armor for those guys would be… difficult to say the least.

Skritt: These guys are probably the most inconsistent of the bunch. Sometimes, these guys are friendly, sometimes they’re hostile; sometimes they are both in the same map! We know they can be intelligent, but singled out, they can be quite dumb. Probably the only consistent thing we know about their motivations is they like shinies, and will hoard anything they think might be useful. What a bunch of pack rats.

Quaggan: The one thing really missing from these guys is a hostile faction. Every other race, of the 4 mentioned above and the 5 playable ones, has one branch that is hostile and ready to attack outsiders. I understand that quaggan are generally considered peaceful, but we also know they can get enraged and become bad mother-puppies. I’d like to see one village somewhere of quaggan who are nothing but raged quaggans, perhaps out of control and attacking us on sight.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Aaron: My dislike for the quaggan actually stems from the over-cutifying the race, and how they seem to get highlighted so much more out of any other minor race simply because they’re “cuter”.

This is pretty much why I hate them.
I’m tired of seeing them everywhere just for the sake of bringing some cuteness where it’s not relevant at all. Plus, yeah, Arenanet seems to forget that they can be total brutes when transforming.
This, and their annoying voice acting.

I just can’t help myself. Whenever I see a Quaggan, I want to kick it. It is as if my boots are naturally attracted by their pher-annoy-omones.

Rognik.2579:

Quaggan: The one thing really missing from these guys is a hostile faction. Every other race, of the 4 mentioned above and the 5 playable ones, has one branch that is hostile and ready to attack outsiders. I understand that quaggan are generally considered peaceful, but we also know they can get enraged and become bad mother-puppies. I’d like to see one village somewhere of quaggan who are nothing but raged quaggans, perhaps out of control and attacking us on sight.

Would be an interesting twist when we either go way North or way South into the sea and find that there are enclaves of warrior like Quaggan who’ve turned themselves into veritable Spartan societies in order to survive. Actually, ANet pls do this. Pls pls pls do it.