Guild Wars 2

^ that

[Also, Anet has stated that canonically Charr metal working is the highest, exceeding even that of the dwarves]

Also note that the Charr have come a long way technologically in such a short time – whereas the Asura have actually regressed in some areas (Asura tech from over two centuries ago surprised even a modern Asura; go to metrica & do the gate repair event). However, this actually can be seen as pointing to flaws in Asura social structure (ie, the crippling competition that exists between Krewes).

Still, the Charr are by and large real engineers – even if they may not posses the raw computational intellect the Asura seem to have, they do have boatloads more common sense. Only a handful really get into the ‘FOR SCIENCE!’ zone like the majority of Asura do (such as the cattlepult inventor, though thats really more of a hobby project IIRC, and the worst it does is anger harpies when a cow falls in their nests, whereas when a critical bit of Asura infrastructure failed, it ripped a hole in reality.).

Also re: magic usage – the Charr have a social aversion to it, specifically it arose ever since the shaman leaders were overthrown. Just look at the flame legion who still embrace the use of magic. The Charr DO have a lot of magical potential, they really do just choose not to use it.

While it may be hard to determine raw intelligence (especially because there can be so very many different metrics, and its hard to say that you can have even a single metric), when it comes to common sense – the Charr top the charts.

The Asura have way too much FOR SCIENCE! In fact, I’ve even seen one yell that.
The Sylvari are currently too naive and young to really know any better.
The Skritt can surpass the Asura if you get enough of them in one scratch, but even then, it will take them a while to pass the For Science! phase. (Running into a similar problem like the Sylvari).
The Dredge are an interesting case. They certainly seem to be technologically capable, having developed sonic weaponry and even radio communications (putting them in line with the Asura and Charr on that level), however nothing is shown of their actual engineering methods afaik. The handful of Dredge tanks seen show a lot of design flaws – in fact, they are comparable to WW1 german tanks (NOT WW2 – those would have been actually rather great designs… if they weren’t so astonishingly uneconomical) – big, blocky, low-riding things that barely clear the ground. To add to it, they have rather poor workmanship. Its a wonder they don’t tear themselves apart upon attempting to move around – heck, a wonder they can actually move around at all without getting stuck on a boulder taller than an asura. Still it doesn’t actually give an insight into the engineering methods…
Humans don’t seem to be doing all that much inventing – some, but nothing compared to the Asura, Charr, Dredge or Skritt. Much of their fancier stuff was given to them anyways IIRC.
Norn? Well, they aren’t much into R&D, and we’ll leave it at that.

in my few Norn and Sylvari are beter
becouse on 1 simple reason they dont need machines to win a war

they are 1 with nature
also both are very calm they dont let there emtions get in there way

charr is a hot head
humans we all no to many emotions
and azura think they no all

and i find Eir is 1 of the best fighters she calm and she also a tactician

but thats how i see it ^^

What War are the Norn and Sylvari Winning? Norn Engineering and Sylvari Tech Airship and magical dragon lazers? Nope, dont remember that.

I find it really strange from a design perspective. Playable races should all have either advantages and disadvantages (take the general Norns brawn over brains for example) or simply different personalities.
The Asura have the intelligent (and/or mad) doctor/egoistic Mr Iknoweverything niche (Often used by gnomes or dwarfs in other games)
The Norn have the brave berserk niche (Often used by dwarfs and orcs in other games)
The Sylvari have the noble nature lover niche (Often used by elves or humans in other games)
The Charr have the beast niche (Tauren, orcs and the wolfy thing in WoW for example)
They do also have three different niches depending on their legion; The commander, the ninja and the inventor. Although the Charr are usually specialized in one of these branches, they still become something of a Mary Sue. They are the strongest race, the are the most agile race and they are the most intelligent race.
Now let’s compare this to the humans…
From what we have seen of the humans they are as dumb and clumsy as the Norn, if not worse, and without the advantage of strength. They took the interesting Guild Wars 1 human removed all their depth and advantages.
It’s always the humans that ask the dumb questions in the cities and it’s always the humans that needs rescue. They are meant to be noble, but they come nowhere near the Sylvari when it comes to good intentions. Even when it comes to the humans own history they need a Sylvari to tell them about it. They are the weakest race, the clumsiest race (If you take a look at the Asuras animations I doubt they are weak or clumsy, which was supposed to be their disadvantage) and they are the dumbest race.
Couldn’t they at least have taken ONE of the Charrs four niches and given it to the humans to make them unique for once? I don’t really see the reason why the Charr should be stronger, more agile and smarter than the humans (or any of the other races for that matter).

I’m very sorry for this confusing and messy post…

Humans are weak and fragile. But Norn are the strongest.

Asura NPC:

Asura A: “Now to flex our muscle.”
Asura B: “We have muscle!?”
Asura A: chuckle “Mental muscle”

Charr MAY be more agile than humans, or they may not be. Just becasue they have legions dedicated to muscle, stealth and invention doesn’t mean they are the best of each out of everybody. It’d be like humans having an assasin guild then saying humans are the most stealthy just becasue they have a group dedicated to it.

really, charr have taken the humans role in most other games of being the dominant race. But they aren’t the best at everything. they are like duct tape, good at everything, not the best.

@Dustfinger

That implies they aren’t the best at non-magical technology. Which they clearly are.

To me, that makes them the smartest race by my real world standards. They don’t wave a wand and get a sandwich (asura), they actually have to go and gather the ingredients, figure out which ingredients taste good together, and then put together the sandwich.

This is the same for golems versus tanks. There’s a lot of deus ex machina wand-waving involved in golems. But tanks are based upon mining resources, refining them, R&D involving them, putting together prototypes, creating factories for mass production, and then mass producing via hand and machine.

We don’t wave wands in reality for anything. There is no sudo make me a sandwich in reality, which is what defines the asura. So, again, by my real world standards? The charr are the smartest due to their technology.

The charr make their own damn sandwiches.

Let me put this in another way.

If a god turned up on our doorstep tomorrow, and offered humanity the chance to handwave things into existence if they universally adopted his eternal alchemy philosophy…

Would you accept it? Half of the world might, half might not. I would personally disown the ones that did. Sure, it would make things easier, but it would also take away our cultural and technological distinctiveness – we would basically be the borg. This is why there’s a lot more craziness between styles of charr invention than there are between asura inventions (which look very aesthetically samey).

Personally, I put value within exploring and understanding the Universe; Which is science and the doctrines of education thereof. Every person should strive to have a basic understanding of the world, of physics, and of their body, of biology, and so on. The fact of the matter is is that those who adopted the god’s eternal alchemy and wand-waving would be screwed if the god ever disappeared.

If magic ever disappeared from Tyria, the charr wouldn’t notice, the asura would be screwed.

What defines the charr as the smartest race is the same thing that defines the geth as one of the smarter races in Mass Effect: They don’t want the technological and cultural distinctiveness of other races thrust down their throat, they don’t want to be forced to adopt that. They want to find their own. The charr are the same way. It’s a long road, but if you take your own path, it’s your own feet that got you there.

It’s a matter of whether you want to walk or be carried.

The charr are smart enough to walk.

The asura are complacent enough to be carried.

@Dustfinger

That implies they aren’t the best at non-magical technology. Which they clearly are.

I guess it would imply that but in this case, i was just lumping technology and invention together. if we are going to be that specific they are also the best at everything else specific to charr like having claws, warbands, organized miltitary, etc. :p

On a side note, asura do put in alot of work to get their technology. it’s magitech, not just handwaving magic. Alot of research and materials and hours go into their magitech. that’s what their cultural system is based on, krewes.

AuldWolf.7598:

The way I look at it is this.

80% of charr inventions are successful according to what we see in the game.

20% of asura inventions are successful according to what we see in the game.

It speaks for itself.

Well sort of….

The vast majority of Charr inventions are designed to kill / maim / hurt things. This like you say tends to work.

If the Asura invention is designed to kill / maim / hurt things or not, this usually seems to happen anyway, especially if it is unsuccessful.

So if we are talking purely on the Violence outcome of the invention, I would say it’s probably a tie between the two races.

(This from a Norn perspective between beers).

Charr are good at what they do, but that’s the only thing they do so it limits the race severely.

Asura on the other hand are generalist who tinker with all manners of things and while this leads to a lesser success-rate, they are in my opinion far “smarter” than Charr because they aren’t as simple-minded and are highly inquisitive.

@Oglaf

That’s like saying that us humans are good at what we do, but only that. And thus we’re limited because we’re good at what we do.

Oh fallacies.

Come back and talk to me when the asura have figured out electricity without the use of hand-waving deus ex machina. Meanwhile, there’s a charr figuring out electricity at the Black Citadel, doing it the same way us real world folk would.

That’s what the charr are: An in-game parallel to real world human ingenuity. They don’t rely on deus ex machina to get their sandwiches (as I mentioned prior). And this is why they’re clearly the smartest race.

That’s like saying that if I were to meet a gnome who could summon a sandwich out of mid air using deus ex machina, I should accept him as being a smarter being than the person who could figure out how to make their own sandwich. The charr make their own sandwiches, the asura rely on deus ex machina for their sandwiches.

The asura are just artefacts of deus ex machina and nothing more.

The charr symbolise real world ingenuity.

That’s not at all what I am saying, no.

The Asura have no qualms about building technology that replaces themselves in many capacities, overcoming their inadequacies. Golems in particular are an example of this, they have a life of their own. Walk around Rata Sum and you can hear the NPCs talking about how they’re worried what will happen if the Golems ever gain sapience.

In some ways, the Asura are being surpassed by the technologies they’re producing, and many of the technologies have little practical use. It’s innovation for innovation’s sake, because their society prizes it so highly. They value iterative design and rapid prototyping, but they’re often reckless and divided. They’re losing control of the technologies that distinguished them. Asuran gate and waypoint technology is incredibly innovative and widespread, but others are starting to figure it out out of necessity. They’ve overplayed their hand.

The Charr, meanwhile, have never let any of their technologies run away from them if they can help it. Charr iron is insanely difficult to get a hold of. They put their Asura gate on a bridge with explosives because they don’t trust the thing. They take great pains when developing technologies to ensure that they maintain control over them, and that they have practical application.

To put it another way, Asuran R&D is theoretical and scattered, whereas Charr R&D is practical and focused. Asura encounters a problem, one Krewe works on it while the rest self-importantly focus on their own projects, one Krewe eventually solves the problem. Charr encounters a problem, the Charr have no qualms about putting half a dozen Warbands working on it, and they’re not as prideful as the Asura. They don’t build robots to run the scrapyard, they do what needs doing.

The Asurans tend to focus on in-house technology, but I recall hearing a Charr NPC in the Black Citadel talking about where they got their tech; they didn’t care who had an idea, so long as it was good. Ghostbore cannons from my engineer story? Developed from prototype and deployed to the field on an industrial scale inside a few weeks. Let’s see the Asura get that kind of coordination together.

What’s dangerous about Charr is not the technologies they develop or use, which are themselves often extraordinary, but the philosophy from which they are developed and deployed.

The Asura may be smarter, but I would argue that the Charr are wiser.

All of this still ignores the simple fact that the asura are artefacts of deus ex machina rather than self-made.

I’ll boil it down to even simpler terms: Who’s more worthy in your eyes? The rich kid who was given everything, pampered, and throws a wobbly the moment the world doesn’t work his way; Or the self-made man who worked to get where he was?

The asura are the former, the charr are the later.

The asura rely on the deus ex machina of magic. Nothing will ever change that fact; They can simply hand-wave whatever they want into existence. AI? Who needs to develop AI? A little bit of plotholeum-laden hand-wavery will solve that problem! They’re not really anything, that’s the issue.

Now the charr have entirely eschewed magic in favour of being self-made. If a charr wants something, they don’t just wave a magic wand. They don’t throw a tantrum when they can’t wave a magic wand. Instead, they make it. They make it. Not magic; not plot power; not deus ex machina; not the eternal alchemy; none of that. It’s simple, basic, pure ingenuity.

You know, the kind of stuff that we used to put a man in space. Would putting a guy in space have been even a tenth of the achievement if we’d waved a wand to make a rocket fly?

I had to put that in italics just to draw attention to it, to drive the point home.

The asura are barely aware creatures who’re pampered by the existence of magic. They desire, magic provides, there’s not a single asura who’s ever had to or chosen to work for anything in his or her life. Everything has been delivered to them on a silver platter, just like that rich kid. They don’t need to be smart, or clever, or logical, or ingenious… all they need is the ability to wave a hand.

So asking me to think of the asura as smart is like asking me to think of a pampered rich kid as smart.

Asking me to think of the charr as smart is like asking me to think of those who put people in space as smart.

The former? Hahahaha… no. The latter? Very much yes.

I’m sorry, but the asura are barely beyond instinct. They desire, they get. They don’t have to think about it or even act. The moment they try to do something for themselves rather than being totally dependent on deus ex machina… well, then we might have something to talk about.

If that’s not enough, let’s do this from a roleplaying standpoint.

The asura waves his hand, and the air lights up. “I wibblegaffed the splaif to increase the iridescent levels of gloop in the air,” the asura rambles, hoping no one would be smart enough to realise that basically he hasn’t got a clue how magic does what it does. But he waves a hand and it works. Like magic!

The charr is working on her helicopter. She’s just figuring out the basics of how one might work and might say something like this: “Ah, yes. I’ve been working on that problem. I found that if both sets of blades are both spinning clockwise, it’ll cause the rotary motion to transfer to the body itself… with interesting results. They have to be spinning in opposite directions for that effect to cancel out whilst allowing for lift, something to do with the forces of thrust involved…”

And that’s it, really.

I see a lot of Asura bashing going on in this thread.

However, I haven’t seen anything relating to the fact that Asura technology is not only magical in nature; which seems to be the entire argument to why Charr would be apparently smarter, because an Asura’s technology is magical.

Magically powered? Yes. But clearly, the devices the Asura create, such as Golems, Waypoints, Gates, and pretty much everything else clearly has real working mechanics for it to even function. Take golems for example, one of the first heart quests you do in Metrica province has you fixing Golems by messing with various inter-workings of their machinery; however, if you were to do this as any race but the Asura; including the Charr, it seems like insanity and you resort to “Pushing a big button and hoping for the best”.

There also appears to be a vast and complicated inter-working to the understanding of magic in general; something only the Asura seem to get. This is pure intellect. The argument of Charr being smarter because they use real physical materials to make their creations doesn’t work if the Asura are just as knowledgeable about magic as the Charr are about steel.

The ability to create things is only one part of intellect, but it’s basically the only thing most people here are scaling the intellect of the two races on.

The Asura are far more experimental in their designs, a sign of higher intellect. Where; as mentioned, a Charr generally has a problem, and solves it with an invention. This is a single-minded, yet logical way of thinking.

An Asura on the other hand would try many different prototypes and methods to solve the problem, improve them, and then end up creating a couple dozen inventions that solve multiple problems they didn’t even make the device for in the first place.

This isn’t to say the Asura are by any means efficient; far from it. As mentioned by others, they are terribly conflicted among themselves. So yes, the Charr are clearly a more organized and efficient race; but are they more intelligent? I have a hard time saying they are.

Asura still excel over them in various signs of intellect, regardless of many of their inventions being flops. They simply have more of an imagination, they understand their craft better than a Charr understands his, and appear to be much better at learning and retaining information.

To be honest, I always thought the Charr and Asura WERE the smartest. Probably because I liked them the most.
Charr invented GUNS. That in itself is an amazing achievement. Then they made ‘nades and tanks and such.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Having thrown out most of their mages, and being in three wars (humans, Ghosts, and Flame Legion), they needed something to keep them up to the task.

Indeed, in our own history, an amazing amount of technological progress has come from wartime efforts. The Charr industrial revolution is an example of this exact thing.

So, it begs the question: Would humans have been able to invent firearms, if Charr had not? I would say “eventually”. The humans of Ebonhawke surely felt the same necessity the Charr had, for although they had fewer enemies, they also were quite isolated. However, they may not have had the materials nearby to facilitate discoveries along these lines, and certainly they would have to be looking outside the box for answers to have something like that happen. It would have, eventually, but that could be some time in coming. Assuming they lasted that long.

Then there’s the Asura. They would certainly have developed… firearm-like weaponry. Projectile weapons more accurate and much more powerful than simple bows. But the Asura would likely have invented something that would get the results of a firearm, without gunpowder technology – they would look for ways of utilizing magic, I am sure. It would probably look more or less like a gun, but that’s simply because form follows function.

The Norn? They would never look for anything like that. A weapon that can drop an enemy from a hundred paces? Not very Nornlike. Oh, sure they have bows – but it takes strength to pull a bowstring, and skill to bring an enemy down in one shot. A gun…. while not totally devoid of the need for some strength and more skill, it still takes less of each than a bow, at least for such simple firearms as we are discussing.

And the Sylvari? They are too new. They are being taught by the Dream, true, but most of what they use are Sylvari-crafted variants of things that already exist. They would need more time to be established as a race, and to experience the world directly, before they bring innovations to the table.

But in the end… it WAS the Charr. Not the Asura, who would have come up with something similar, probably by accident. Not the Humans, who had decent odds of eventually making the discovery, provided they had access to the required materials. It was the Charr.

Still. I’ve gone rather far afield, wanting to comment on the gun situation. This thread isn’t about that. It’s about comparative racial intelligence. I think I’ll just take a post break and collect my thoughts for a moment; this one’s running long anyway.

OK, now where was I, again? Oh, right. “Comparative racial intelligence.”

Well, we’ll start with the Asura, as would be obvious. The Asura are certainly the most intelligent. For whatever reasons, they as a race assiduously developed along the lines of intellectual pursuits. Perhaps because of their subterranean origins, and the need – yes, there’s that necessity again – to use their heads to deal with other denizens down there, as well as to deal with life under the earth itself. However it came about, they are basically a race of scientists – both pure and applied. Some Asura will research just to see what they find out. Most, of course, will research to solve a problem.

That last bit is very evident, even in GW1. When they come across an obstacle, problem, dilemma, or even just a need or want, their first impulse is to research a way to solve/fix/resolve the issue (unless such a way already exists and is known to them, anyway). They decide what they want to do, and try to invent something that will do it. (Whether it can BE done or not – the Bounty NPCs in one zone wanted to invent a device to “lower the sky” because the Asura – only recently forced to the surface – were used to close ceilings.)

Along the way, Asura often do get sidetracked, as said above, and can discover or invent something else by accident, or find that what they did event doesn’t do what they wanted, but does do something else, and that’s close enough for them. It’s a rather curious cultural attitude, but it works for them.

With all the researching, inventing, brainstorming, and everything else, the Asura have come to understand a lot about many things. Indeed, their belief in the Eternal Alchemy is intrinsically knowledge-oriented – the universe is governed by an equation, and the more of that equation they can learn, the more control they have over the world around them. Completely aside from their habit of “inventing to solve anything” (which is perhaps, itself, derived from their beliefs), this has driven the Asura to be scholars.

The Charr…. they are all about practical applications. In this specific area, they certainly would seem like the next most intelligent after the Asura. The Charr are very orderly, pragmatic, logical, and down-to-earth. Pure intellectual pursuits – learning for the sake of knowledge itself – is not something they prioritize (as a race! The fact that there are Charr in the Priory proves that some DO break the mold). And as said above, they take a logical and methodical approach to their research – while an Asura’s research can go off on tangents, a Charr would stick with the task he was working on, reasoning out things that will work, and setting aside things that don’t.

Also, their inventions, you might notice, are all utilitarian. Innovations for purposes of leisure are unheard of among the Charr, and innovations of convenience are used only to increase efficiency, not to endorse laziness.

Next, we come to the humans. On the whole, as a race, I would say that humans are the OVERALL second most intelligent of the races. Charr excel in applying their brains to solve problems, but humans DO exercise their brains just for the exercise. They surely have the most skill in artistic pursuits, although the Sylvari have natural inclinations towards beauty and will likely outstrip humans in due time. They do have their own practical sciences and inventions – until the Charr went industrial, the humans were more technologically advanced by far. And then there is the fact that humans do engage in “pure sciences”. Understanding why things are has led them to fill several libraries in all three of GW1’s lands, and Nightfall even has the Astralarium, a place for the study of astronomy, which surely is the least pragmatic/practical of the sciences. (The Charr are unlikely to look up at the stars and wonder what’s out there.)

Also, consider that they’re smart enough that, when Charr did start using guns, and they managed to get one, they were able to understand enough of the necessary principles to make their own. Simple mimicry would not suffice, you see – especially since the humans would want to find advantage. They had to understand what they were dealing with if they wanted to even TRY to improve on it. And there is an ingenuity in that, too – the ability to analyze something someone else invented, understand not only how it works, but why it works, and then apply that understanding to take it further.

(Post Limit)

Lastly, there is the fact that the gods went silent. While the gods walked among humans, humans had no drive to better themselves – they saw no need to. They were taken care of. When the gods physically left, that changed, but they were still there, just out of our reach, but close enough to support us. Humans did make progress in that time, but still knew they had tangible assistance from their gods. Until the Elder Dragons rose, and the Six Gods went silent. Then, humans were on their own, and in a bad situation. There is still room for humans to grow, and now they basically have to, between new threats AND a loss of primacy as other races moved in.

So, yeah. At the moment, I would rank them Asura > Human > Charr. But the Charr are closing that gap well. Even though most of them ignore the abstract, their rapid industrialization will give them better and better tools to springboard into newer territory – and all their practice in applied sciences will serve their occasional scholars well, honing their mind. The Charr could certainly pass humans, in this regard, unless humans work to keep up.

As for the other two…

Again, I must point out that the Sylvari are “too new”. We really cannot gauge them yet. We know that they are surely no intellectual slouch, and they are taught many things before they are even born. Plus, they seek to experience as much as possible, including knowledge. In this last regard, they are like real children, always questioning and wondering and wanting to know more. They certainly have the greatest capacity for growth, but in what direction will they choose to grow? This, we have no idea of.

And last, the Norn. They are in fifth place, but that doesn’t mean they’re idiots. They have lived in a harsh land, and survival was indeed for the fittest. This has instilled a cultural emphasis on strength, hardiness, and skill. They learn enough to get by, which sometimes is enough to surprise people of other races, but their lifestyle has never put any emphasis on “higher education”. Once they learn the basics, the world becomes their teacher. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake has no place in their lifestyle, and inventions are for races who need the help – if a Norn wants to do something, he does it with his own strength; any tools or weapons they add to that are simple, nonmechanical things – tools which only move because you are directly moving them.

250 years of mingling has broken some barriers, between all of these races. (Well, only 25, for the Sylvari.) But each race preserves its cultural identity. Maybe the Norn have come to see that pistols and rifles can be useful, especially with more durable enemies such as Icebrood, or Branded. Maybe some Asura might see some insights in the way the Sylvari seem able to make just about anything from plant matter – surely something useful as Asura live in a jungle, and plant matter is everywhere. You can’t mingle with others for that long without picking up SOME things.

But that’s another discussion altogether, and I’m starting to ramble again. Bad habit of mine, and the late hour surely isn’t helping. At least this time, I said what I came to say, about my own assessment of the playable races’ intelligence.

I still don’t see how anyone would rank the asura over the charr.

By real world standards, the charr are clearly the smartest race. This argument is basically ingenuity versus deus ex machina. Ingenuity makes a person smart, whereas deus ex machina makes them lucky.

To me, it’s like asking: Who’s smarter, Tinkerbell or Leonardo da Vinci?

And you have some people quite unironically replying with Tinkerbell. And I’m just sitting here thinking… really people, really? Good grief. So I guess our own ingenuity and our ability to put a person in space without deus ex machina means jack all, since real world humanity would be less intelligent than the asura.

This topic hurts my brain.

I’m sorry people, but no, Tinkerbell is not smarter than Leonardo da Vinci. If you think that, then you need to re-evaluate things. Look at your life and choices.

But I doubt that my words will stop anyone from voting for Tinkerbell, since this essentially amounts to a popularity contest, rather than who’s smartest, doesn’t it? Gnomes are cute when they giggle, I like them better, so they’re smarter than real world scientists.

/twitch

You know; This is what’s wrong with politics. People vote for the person they find more charismatic most of the time, rather than voting on their actual policies. That’s why my country (the UK) is in the state it currently is. I wish people would actually consider what they’re voting on, here.

Because, really, we have people in this thread who’re saying that being able to sprinkle deus ex machina-laden pixie dust makes you smarter than having a doctorate in physics. And that’s ow, stoppit.

At this point I’m just starting to think that people are doing this just to see how much of a rise they can get out of me, just for laughs. Okay guys, joke’s over. Can we please now stop saying that Harry Potter is smarter than Stephen Hawking because magic? Seriously, if you keep this up, I’m going to end up weeping over how ludicrous this is.

@AuldWolf, the deus ex machina thing is a really bad argument. We are comparing the intellect of two IMAGINARY races. Two races of people who DO NOT EXIST. In a FANTASY game. Who cares if the Charr’s technology is actually real? It doesn’t matter, when it comes to intelligence, the Asura know just as much if not more than the Charr.

It’s not even really a popularity contest, I’m pretty sure Humans are still the most popular, followed by Sylvari.

TL;DR: You’re being incredibly close minded.

Also the Harry Potter/Stephen Hawking comment was cute, but is Harry Potter for knowing how to use magic? No. Is dumbledore smarter than Hawking for knowing kitten near everything about magic? Possibly. ;p

With how you argue, I’d suggest this post is nothing but comparing Tony the Tiger to a Mogwai after he’s gotten wet.

So the counter argument is…

That because I don’t poop rainbows, and because I won’t accept that magic has some innately inherent (yet entirely unprovable) element of creativity/imagination rather than being mere deus ex machina, I’m closed-minded? And therefore wrong?

So if I think that Stephen Hawking is smarter than Harry Potter, and that Harry’s magic doesn’t automatically make him a genius, I’m a closed-minded poopy head and utterly wrong faced? Okay. So where’s the argument, here?

I get that you’re throwing your toys out of the pram, but other than calling me closed-minded, I don’t see any argument against why the asura are nothing more than instinctive creatures of deus ex machina. And I don’t see any argument as to why Harry Potter is “magically” (heh) smarter than Stephen Hawking.

And no, sorry, I’m not going to poop rainbows just to see your point of view. I’m a realist. And by real world standards the asura just aren’t very bright. They rely on deus ex machina to do everything for them. Whilst the charr rely on good old real world ingenuity. Their own two-hands and their collective ingenuity created everything they have.

If an asura wants a brain for their robot, they wish it into existence with the powers of rainbows and sunshine.

If a charr wants tracks for their tank, they build them, just as we would in this real world of ours.

The charr are still the smartest race. Admittedly, none of the races are incredibly intelligent in the world of Tyria, but of the ones on offer, the charr show the most promise going forward.

Really, if you want to win this argument, you have to explain to me in no uncertain terms why Harry Potter (or Dumbledore) is more of a genius than Stephen Hawking. That’s all it comes down to. Magic vs Ingenuity. Go on. I’m listening.

Try to do it without resorting to insults which embarrass us both, this time. Oh, and if it’s not too much to ask, let’s refrain from further bouts of “Oh won’t you please set aside your reason with me? Poop rainbows! Imagiiine, and belieeeeve that my favourite race is the smartest. If you have imaginaaaation you can belieeeeve.” if that’s okay? I really hope it is because I want to be able to take your opinions more seriously than I can take those of a Creationist.

That’s what the asura remind me, to be honest. Creationist deus ex machina rubbish. And apparently I’m supposed to poop rainbows and just take this into my heart. :I

If an asura wants a brain for their robot, they wish it into existence with the powers of rainbows and sunshine.

This is an example of the fallacy. The asura don’t wish it into existence with ‘magic’. They go to school to learn how magic works. The basic principles of how it operates. Then they go to more advanced school to increase their knowlege. After years of studying they incorporate that knowlege into magitech. so there is an actual method to hpow they make things, just like the charr have.

@AuldWolf, now you’re just being childish.

I think I read the line “poop rainbows” like 6 times. Very unoriginal.

And as Dust said, they do not wish anything into existence. That is not how magic works within the game. They actually do use some mechanics, but maybe you just don’t pay attention to anything lore-related about races that aren’t your beloved Charr.

And while it’s cute you think my favorite race is the Asura, that would be incorrect.
It’s actually the Sylvari, and they eventually will outsmart your kitty cats too. :p

Ooookay I think we all need to take a step back and breathe as this has gone from a debate of which race is smarter to a rant on whether technology is better than magic and vice versa. Which as anyone will know is a very apples and oranges debate as its hard if not impossible to compare the two effectivly and it can be said that learning how to cast the so called deus ex machina can be as hard as figuring out how to build a device to do the same job and then building it without the aid of magic.

As I’ve posted previously I see Asura and Charr more as equals in intelligence, they just have differant stances and means of utilising their intellects.

Though as for all Charr not being lazy… I think I’ve caught more Charr npc’s taking naps under bridges or wherever they think they can find thats out of sight of their commanders than any other race… so yeah it seems some have mastered the art of slacking off X3

OTGBionicArm.2417:

I’d suggest this post is nothing but comparing Tony the Tiger to a Mogwai after he’s gotten wet.

Has the mogwai eaten after midnight? becasue that may be a factor :P

Actually, I would think that the Charr are the most intelligent race when it comes to practicallity, whereas Asura have it when it comes to theoretics.
I mean, how many giant war machines that spit fire and death and lead at an enemy have you seen at an Asura encampment? All i see there are golems that break down and cause uprisings all the time.

I think the asura are the most intelligent race in most aspects. The Char seems to have much knowledge in using metal and killing(they are carnivores). They are not more intelligent than Norn, Silvarie or Human. Every race has it own culture it own style in building and living. If you want to build a city Hoel Brak you need to know about the movement of extrem large wooden blanks during temperature changes. If you want to build a heavy city like the humans one you need to know much about geography and stones. Of course the char have tanks. But I can´t remind an invention that makes their land as beautifuly as it was in humans hand. But of course the Black Citadel looks impressive because it is made of metal and metal and ehm just metal.

I remember the scene where the OP got the idea for this thread from. To clarify: the original question the asura was talking about is which race was most relevant to the Eternal Alchemy. They postulated that the answer to that would hinge on something that you could call brains:brawns ratio. So they measured the mass of the brain and compared it to overall body mass. As I see it this theory is utter bullkitten, but if charr as the heaviest race rank second on that list this means in any case that their brains are frikkin huge.

So, since that list is now out of the way we can concentrate on things that we can actually see in the game: each of the races seems really adept at the things their members are dedicated to except for humans who do not seem to be really dedicated to anything special (unless you count religious fervor) but appear to shine as catalysts or “the ones filling the blanks” (so, if you want to connect asuran and charr technology leave it to the humans to figure it out although they are inferior to both in their respective specialties).

I think the impression that asura are more intelligent than the other races is false (although they would certainly disagree) but understandable since they focus on technology that preferably does something outlandish, but they seem to be unable to reproduce things other races have already achieved. For example, levitation seems to be something they do almost casually judging by the amount of hovering things you see anywhere near them, but if you actually want something to fly to another location (and preferably bomb the kitten out of anything there) you get yourself some charr engineers and their choppers.

As a result, if we want to discuss which race is “smartest” we can only speculate unless the question is which race has the “smartest” technology, in which case charr and asura are probably tied for 1st place with the sylvari as a wild card (since we really do not know the limits of their ability to reproduce other races’ technologies “florally”).

Charr 2nd smartest? LOL No.

Only a few charr are that smart – Never forget Everything for the “legion”
Meaning any invention is attributed to the Legion as a whole.

Charr have inventors that SET the standard. Most of you all forgotten that most charr are beastial by nature.

Imo, there just up there with norn on the intellect level – Stupid as Kitten.

Dont get me started on the asura.

beastial and inventive are not mutualy exclusive. The iron legion storyline doesn’t give anything to indicate that your characters inventive nature is beyond the norm. they actually treat it pretty non-challantly.

Ghostbore weoponry:
-I read something about your idea
-go get the plans
-feel free to use my work table
-test fire
-field test
-how we going to implement the technology?
-even though it can change the entire paradime we only have reascources for one design so feel free to choose yourself.

This mostly seems pretty standard and run of the mill. They never indicate the invention is out of the ordinary. Only what the invention does.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

In Diessa Plateau, there’s a couple Charr launching cows in the direction of a harpy nest.

It’s safe to conclude that not all Charr are all that smart. The same can be said of the Asurans as well.

During Medieval Times, launching cows was a early form of chemical warfare. Cows fly, land, explode, and spread disease. Siege warfare is cool.

AuldWolf,here’s the problem with your “argument”(hard to call it that cause you’re mostly saying your opinions to everyone and noone,as opposed to replying to other people’s statements with intelligent responses):

In-game and out of the game(books,developer word-of-god),Asura technology is explicitly described as being NOT deus ex machina at all.

If you spend some time doing some of the Asura-based hearts and events,you’ll find them describing their technology as just that – technology,just powered by magical energy of some sort that could be substituted with plasma or nuclear energy and wouldn’t be any different,really.
You’re not exactly looking at what “magic” means in this game’s world correctly.

The thing is, AuldWolf, you’re taking applied science as the sole measure of intellect. Bu this measure, you would say an engineer is smarter than a researcher, because the engineer makes things.

Asura are – by and large – researchers. (They do invent, as I explained earlier, but not always practically.) The Asura want to understand how the world works. Their “Eternal Alchemy” religion is essentially the core mandate of all science, transformed into a faith. Science – our real-world science – is built on increasing our understanding of all things – ourselves, our world, the universe, and anything and everything within it.

The Asura’s Eternal Alchemy? They believe that the universe is governed by a grand equation, which they constantly try to understand. They learn everything they can about everything they come across, in an effort to fit it into that equation – An Asura named Kerrsh, in GW1, even tried to understand the human gods’ place in this Eternal Alchemy!

To dismiss the Asuras’ pursuit of knowledge as “deus ex machina” and not true intellect is to dismiss everything we have ever learned about our own world.

Charr are the best engineers in Tyria. (That is, the overall discipline of engineering, NOT the character profession.) They understand enough about the relevant sciences to be able to build practical things that will make them more efficient – usually, but not always, in a military context. This makes them intelligent…. but it does not INHERENTLY mean they are the MOST intelligent! To the Charr, intelligence is a tool to be used. To the Charr, the brain is a muscle to wield that tool. But, like all tools, it is used for a purpose.

To the Asura, increasing their store of knowledge and understanding is a desirable goal, in and of itself. The more they understand about the world, the more they can do with that understanding, so it DOES result in some practical applications… but the distinction is that the Asura prioritize the knowledge over the applications.

(As for this side debate over magic – in the world of Tyria, magic DOES exist. Charr and Asura alike can agree on this. You cannot dismiss it as irrelevant just because it doesn’t exist in OUR world. Although, even with magic, the Asura take a scientific approach – after all, even magical forces have to fit in their Eternal Alchemy, somewhere. And the Charr give it their usual practical approach – magic is just another tool.)

Shiren.9532:

I’ve always thought the asura were written to think they were smart, but the way they come across (or are written) they seem no different from anyone else. The same for the charr. The only race which seems mostly less intelligent than other races are the norn. The asura seem like a lot of hot air.

I’ve never found the charr to be more intelligent than other races.

I have seen no indication the Norn are less intelligent. They don’t show much racial chauvanism, so they don’t claim to be smarter than other races.

There are differences in the priorities of the various races. Given Zojja’s quote about the Snaff prize (Statics storyline) and embarassment of the Arcane Council being worse than murdering some of them, it is clear the Asura do not place a high premium on safety. Therefore, if you judge intellect based at all on concern for safety (i.e., not being “Too Stupid to Live”), Asura and Norn would be at the bottom, Sylvari in the middle and Charr and Human the smartest.

Much of what would be required to judge their intelligence is not covered in the game.

IRL, judging intellect is a LOT trickier than most people think. Some examples:

If an animal is able to judge and remember distances and angles well, he is smarter than other animals, right? Well, no. That is what we call “habit learning” in neuroscience, and if you lesion a rat’s hippocampus it becomes better at habit learning. This is because brain areas actually compete with each other, and the hippocampus does spatial learning but not habit learning. Therefore, basing a test on one type of learning alone means severe, crippling brain damage makes the animal smarter…

Everyone knows memory declines with age on average, right? Well, it turns out that is based on what kind of test you do and what time of day you test. Older people are worse at learning random strings of words in the afternoon, but just as good in the early morning. However, suppose you designed a test to review lists of prices of groceries from several stores for a few minutes, take those lists away and give them a grocery shopping list. Ask them which store they should go to for the best prices. Older people out perform younger people even though this is clearly a memory test.

Little kids are geniuses at learning languages, but not so smart at learning to avoid danger. So, is the 6 year old a genius because he can pick up a new language super fast, or a fool because you need to constantly watch him to keep him from doing something he is told over and over again is dangerous and only seems to learn if he is injured?

AuldWolf.7598:

@Dustfinger

That implies they aren’t the best at non-magical technology. Which they clearly are.

Charr tehcnology is not real world and definitely not non-magical. I have looked at the designs. Every machine where you can see its mechnisms would not perform IRL. The chopper is particularly comically bad in design in every aspect and would likely tear itself to pieces in seconds. Either Tyrian physics is different and/or they use magic to make those contraptions work.

The conversation you are talking about has nothing to do with how smart each race was. They were talking about the size of the brain compared to the size of the body

Statistically speaking charr are less likely to blow themselves up with there own prototype weapons, or create homicidal robots/biological disasters/insane giant creatures/giant dragon minions/etc. So statistically speaking I think we can say charr are better

yeah have to agree the charr make things that don’t try to kill you the asura try not to but fail horribly do to the facts most of their experiments produce an insane killing macine of some sort

Beer!!!

I’d like to measure all of your so called intelligence in the honored Great Norn AleMoot!

To all Charr, please leave your explosives at the far side of Hoelbrak and your lighters at the other end.

To all Asura, please be reminded that replacing your blood with beer will not produce the similar effects of actual drinking.

We promise you that this research will yield exciting and unforgettable results!

For the Bear!

I personally do not thing that the char are as intelligent this thread is giving them credit for. The whole of the charr culture is specialized for war and research those things( guns tanks etc) but I have seen very little non war advancement from them. As a society they sort them selfs into glorified tribal system. As a culture they have just accepted gender equality ( from what I can tell social equality is the norm for everyone else) and I have not seen any art from the charr beside the art of war.

In sum militarily they may have more toys to play whith but 2rd most intelligent i donor think so

Just my opinion

Charr became inventors because their society’s rejection of magical dependency required engineering and industrialism to be competitive. This does not make charr smarter than the humans or asura. Humans and asuran intelligence is typically more geared towards magical scholasticism. The personal story makes it clear that the flying zeppelins were designed by a combined effort of asura, charr, AND human engineering.

I just want to point out that technology does not equal intelligence, necessarily. For example, humans have been as smart as they are currently for the past 30,000 years, at least. Saying tech = intellect implies that, say, modern tribal people aren’t as intelligent as westerners, who rely heavily on technology and invent a lot of it. It’s a bad implication and it’s just plain wrong on top of it.

I really think all the races were designed to be of equal or very near equal intelligence, they’re just smart in different areas. Imagine putting an Asura (with no tech) and a Norn out in the middle of a snowy forest at night that’s full of wurms, and neither has anything but a knife – we’ll ignore body mass and temperature for this. Who would survive the longest? Obviously, the Norn, because they’ve learned to. Their intelligence is geared toward surivival, the lay of the land, how to fight.

And on the reverse, handing a Norn a piece of Asura tech could have some disastrous consequences because they don’t know how to work it – but if you showed them how, they could learn. It just doesn’t interest them.

disclaimer: I don’t really care for Norn, I just think they got the short end of the stick in this thread.

Let me throw in my couple of coins.

I think one of the ways to describe relative smartiness of Tyria’s races is to predict to what type of civilization each race would progress.

Let’s begin with the Charr.
In present in-game epoch they’re an industrial age civilization. They have a steam powered technology and moving towards using electricity widely. That’s the real world humanity’s 19th century equivalent.
Interesting thing is that by design the Charr are a mixture of steppe civilization archetype (which are generally described as nomadic and barbaric) and the Roman Empire. Here lies the flaw. On one side the Charr are quite an centralized formation comparing to other Tyria’s races. On the other side their unity is based on military solely.
For an empire to be like Roman it is needed to be cosmopolitical. In Roman Empire there was a culture strong enough to have an influence upon many of modern cultures. And that culture was something being apart of military machine of Rome.

So, imagine 150 years have passed. Leaving Elder Dragons apart, it is very likely the Charr society will face some devastating internal conflicts. Like WW1 and WW2.
In 1475 AE we probably can see fully electricified urbanistic civilization. Just like modern humanity. The Charr probably have invented nuclear weapon and simple computers. And they’re attempting to space travel.

The Asura, on other hand, have scientific style of modern humanity right now, in 1325 AE. The whole asuran science is like mathematics of modern humanity which has a little related to actual world’s problems. I mean those high-end maximum abstract mathematics like algebraic geometry, theory of categories and so on.
The Charr are “science for the sake of real, working and useful things”. The Asura are “science for science”.
Probably, the Asura are going to invent some really advanced cybernetics. In 1475 AE they may have magic-based kins to quantum computers.
Probably, the Asura are going to invent some magic-based spacecraft. I think antigravitation is a child trick for experienced krewe. If only that krewe would become interested in antigravitation.

As we can see, the Charr and the Asura would progress practically equally.
One can say that the Asura can’t handle inventions like spacecraft because such a things require an industrial power of the whole nation. I say that the Asura would invest to spacecraft industry simply out of curiosity and plain understanding of pure possible gain. They are Mad Scientists, indeed, but they aren’t unwise enough to just ignore the possibility to move their race forward.

Speaking about other races. Scientific and technological progress requires a great amount of resources. The more territory one has the more resources he has. So, for norns and humans there’s unfavourable prognosis. Even in modern (1325 AE) Tyria with scientific methodology of the Asura facing similar to real world one’s problems and the Charr building a civilization similar to real life humanity, the Norn and Tyrian humans are simply outdated.
Just like American Indians facing Spanish colonists.

The Sylvari. The most interesting thing that their whole civilization is just 25 (sic!) years old. And they’re already count as one of “Big Five”.
Give them another 25 years and… No, they won’t conquer the world like the Charr. Instead I see them studying Biology. They’re going to have very advanced knowledge in genetics.
I know I’m just dishing assumptions out of nowhere, but it seems legit by design. I think there is at least one who could understand associations I imply.
Besides of genetics, I can see the Sylvari inventing some next-gen ethics and, wider, being the prominent one in questions of Tyria’s culture.

Sorry for mistakes, I’m not a native:)

This is a fun thread.

One core argument seems to be using advancement as a basis for intelligence, though it’s not really a good way to measure things at all. One normally associates accomplishing complex tasks with high intelligence, and to some extent that’s true. But it’s not proof in of itself. To offer a simple analogy it’s much more difficult to create a mechanism than to teach someone how to use it without understanding its basic principles. If a society has a widespread knowledge base and a good educational system, then not everyone who makes use of advanced devices may necessarily be smart enough to create them.

If you want to tackle the most obvious examples, Charr and Asura, you kind of have to look at how they approach problems. I’d have to liken the tech vs magic thing to programming vs engineering in our world. The main difference is you can’t use a program in our world to create physical effects, but with magic you can. It’s particularly apt since many Asuran systems work like computers, and things like rituals and spells boil down to a series of very specific instructions that can cause things to happen in a physical world instead of a virtual one. And they don’t make any sense whatsoever unless you know what they already mean. Though a computer operates on binary language. You won’t really find anyone who can write a complicated piece of software in pure binary. You have a compiler program to do that for you. Once a society hits a certain level, those sorts of tools become common and it allows really complicated tasks to become much more simplified. To the uninitiated it still seems like it’s all deep voodoo, though.

Engineering has absolutely nothing to do with programming. The disciplines have zero overlap. How thick you need to make a gear to prevent teeth from shearing needs an entirely different approach and educational background. Java won’t help you do that if you don’t already know how. Similar to above though, people can benefit from the built-up legacy of their predecessors. Once someone figures out how big the gear needs to be, you don’t need to do it twice. You can stamp a load rating on it and make ten thousand of them. But using magic you can try to find a way around needing a gear at all. In Charr technology you can clearly see physical links between parts. Gears and shafts transmit forces. It’s all very much physical – industry without electronics. And it works just fine on vastly more complicated levels than GW2 presents. Asura devices tend to be very mystical-looking with many of their moving parts just hovering in air. They can’t possibly function without magic, and seem quite incapable of linking into physical devices like engines. Maybe there’s just nothing to be gained by trying to mash the two approaches together, which might explain why you have two advanced yet completely divergent societies.

All told, there’s no clear way to tell which approach is more difficult because both magic and technology in GW2 operate within their respective black boxes. Does it take a thousand lines of runes to make ‘Hello World’ appear in glowing letters? No idea. GW2s machines do things that don’t seem possible or practical given the state of advancement, but you don’t get to see the insides. All you see out of either of them is the result. Big boom. Teleportation, etc. The dichotomy works because at least in fantasy there’s more than one means to an end. You can move freight with an elemental towing a levitating slab or you can build a steam engine on rails.

So, uh. How’s that factor into intelligence? It doesn’t really. It was just a point against using advancement itself as the yard stick. Despite the glitter and neat-o factor, I’d wouldn’t actually rate the average Asura high on the intelligence scale. They have some neat toys but do some mind-bogglingly irresponsible things. Much of their experimentation highlights an inability to grasp many of the forces at work. You won’t convince people you know what you’re doing if the lab explodes. Though any Asura would be kitten before they’d admit that. I’m sure some of them do know what they’re doing, and their college system ensures that at least some of it gets shared so not everyone has to re-invent it. A lot of it is kept locked up though, often for selfish reasons (It’s MINE!) or because the common folk would not use it responsibly if it got out.

Charr exhibit organization and planning to a much higher degree than any of the others. Running large-scale industry is an immensely complicated affair. In fact their whole society revolves around team work and moving towards common goals rather than each individual trying to make their mark alone. But not everyone has to be a genius for the system to work. A skilled craftsman doesn’t have to be able to invent a device they’re a master at creating.

I don’t have that much to say about humans. In GW2 they seem stagnant because they’ve been on top for so long they’ve only had to ride along on inertia. At one time they were the greatest, the uncontested masters at most everything. A lot of people get upset because they’re not any more, but that sort of thing happens all the time. Descriptions of Orr seem to highlight as much or more everyday magic use than Asura. Thing is nobody stays on top forever.

Sylvari have the benefit of being able to absorb lots of information, learning what the others races have already figured out quickly. What I haven’t seen are unique advancements and creations on their part. I get it that they have a different paradigm, but as far as I can tell only in mimicry of what others are already doing. Plant mortars, plant rifles, etc. They may be too new to genuinely break out in a new direction, but learning fast is only one part of intelligence.

Norn are a victim of their cultural bravado I think. They get slapped with the dumb brute stereotype but it’s not really true. Norn are capable of strategy and tactics just as well as anyone, though culturally they seem to prefer doing things the hard way just to prove they’re tough or strong or what have you. Even the whole building cities thing is new to them. That’s not a concept that escaped them, they just never saw a reason to do so.

All in all I’d put my bets on every race’s baseline intelligence being about the same and there’s a lot of variation within it. The differences in sophistication and advancement come from cultural attitudes for the most part.

I think the Asura and Sylvari next to the Gate in Black Citadel say it very well. I don’t remember the exact wording, but they say something akin to “The Charr are strong enough to smash a wall down, intelligent enough to know when not too, and cunning enough to tear it down smashing just one brick.”

Sylvari, as much as I don’t like them, are biological masters. They can grow a turret plant that functions just as well as a Asuran or Charr turret. That shows one way of being intelligent.

All the technologies presented are facets of the same gem. Whether that gem is used to shine light more brightly on a plant to make it grow stronger, to be the core of a powerful laser weapon, or be the diamond head of a drill, it is still useful.

Also, a human might use that gem to make a beautiful ring to gain a diplomatic victory, and a Norn might use that gem to…well I don’t really know. Something shamany. Give it to Magpie and gain magical pecking powers as its Avatar.

Gosh that rambled. Anyways, point is, all the races are smart in different ways. Which is the smartest is up to your preferred methods. I like the Charr the most, in my opinion.

i think the sylvari have the greatest CAPACITY for intelligence, but haven’t actually acquired that much knowledge. After even just 2 or 3 generations though, the sylvari’s racial intelligence will surpass everyones. But as it is RIGHT NOW, they do not have that much actually knowledge for their race. I would definately call that a toss up between the charr, and asura. I would give an edge to the charr just because they seem more industrial, and capable of fueling an extended war effort.