Guild Wars 2

I agree with colanah. While it’s wonderful to see Elona, or to be fair a far northern extent of it, a major feature of the narrative is the refugees. And I will simply finish that point with screenshots.
Vabbi, Kourna and Istan in that order.

I quite like what the general concept it. I also VERY much would like to see the previews on MALE and female. The female version of the light armor doesn’t appeal at all to me for example, while I am constantly praised, whispered, and personally delighted with how the male chest and boots look when used with other pieces.

Fishing is something that some players would love. My husband in WoW, for reasons I cannot explain and don’t really share, spent HOURS just chilling out fishing ingame. I don’t think his character even cooked.
And in GW2, it proved ultimately a dealbreaker for him. He just likes to sit and chill out in a game and fish.
So what does it bring? New craftables for Hunstman/Artificers. New recipes for Chefs. Perhaps alternate sources for certain things like Glacial Lodestones or whatever else. Nodes much like fishing in many other MMOs.
The utility is only limited by the developers’ creativity.
I can only say that for me, while I wouldn’t have the patience to fish, it would probably allow for hours of obscure pleasure for my spouse and his inactive account dusted off and played again.

.. now ask me about usable chairs, streaky silvered hair for humans, or more Elonian hairstyles, and my excitement is a whole other thing.
But fishing is no question important for some.

GOOD female human styles that work with Elonian characters.
Beaded braids.
Dreadlocks.
Varesh Ossa ingame and on cover art was spectacular as an aesthetic. Those braids and beads would be to DIE for.

Two toned hairs for humans of either gender! Silver streaks at temples, white locks..

I mean, really, there are SO many incredible hairs from GW1 that I would vastly prefer to getting rehashed norn hair.

Hi all!
So I’m something of a technoob, but I ran the diagnostic as GW2 suggested, and as with many others on the forum, I too seem to be having trouble in Frankfurt.
5 17ms 3/ 50 = 6% 0/ 50 = 0% tcore3-toronto63_2-4-0-1.net.bell.ca [64.230.101.120]
0/ 50 = 0% |
6 17ms 3/ 50 = 6% 0/ 50 = 0% tcore3-torontoxn_HundredGigE0-8-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.50.7]
0/ 50 = 0% |
7 16ms 3/ 50 = 6% 0/ 50 = 0% bx1-torontoxn_et1-0-0.net.bell.ca [64.230.97.157]
0/ 50 = 0% |
8 23ms 3/ 50 = 6% 0/ 50 = 0% xe-8-1-0.edge1.Toronto2.Level3.net [4.59.181.1]
11/ 50 = 22% |
9 —- 50/ 50 =100% 36/ 50 = 72% ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
0/ 50 = 0% |
10 —- 50/ 50 =100% 36/ 50 = 72% ae-3-80.edge7.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.69.154.139]
0/ 50 = 0% |
11 111ms 14/ 50 = 28% 0/ 50 = 0% 195.16.162.186
1/ 50 = 2% |
12 —- 50/ 50 =100% 35/ 50 = 70% 206-127-157-94.ncsoft.com [206.127.157.94]
0/ 50 = 0% |
13 113ms 15/ 50 = 30% 0/ 50 = 0% 206-127-158-1.ncsoft.com [206.127.158.1]

The odd thing is that I live in Ontario, NA servers, so forgive my stupid but is this a node NAME or is my signal actually jumping to Europe before bouncing back to the west coast of North America?
Also how on earth do I fix this?
I normally have no trouble, and last night in raids I was being bounced and DCed repeatedly, with normal ping of around 30-50 suddenly spiking to 1700-2000 causing me to be forced out of the instance.
Do i call Bell?
Do I wait?
What do you, the community, recommend?

I wanted to step up and say THANK YOU!
This is without any doubt the MOST fun I’ve had in a legendary to date. I’m loving this!

I am absolutely in love with the dreads for male humans. Not super thrilled with female hairs but not unhappy. The male styles are great though!! Finally a good not ovely long hyper-styled mohawk, and with great patterns in the sides, and the dreads.. omg the dreads..
/gleefoots.
Can we get women dreads pleeeaaase?

This I fully all agree with. I was thinking monkey form staff would be pretty epic and appropriate.
Drunken staff maybe? Hm.
I guess my point is that there are some great forms in gungfu which employ staff and have some of the same whirls.
I would like to see some more martial feeling in the new physical skills and staff, yes. Though Vault feels great!

: Crane staff

: Monkey staff

: Drunken staff

There are easily found videos of both gungfu and taichi forms for Mantis, Tiger, Seven Star sets which might help smooth out animations

Unlike all the other elites, dardevil made me think of ways to integrate it with other weapons, and it felt like it meshed phenomenally with the other trait lines.

I have to disagree a little, but that’s because I love the flavour and flow of the elite. I didn’t expect to, but the way it feels to play this elite specialization is incredibly enjoyable to me in a way that no other elite thus far has been.
It can certainly be tweaked and smoothed, but it’s crazy fun for me at least!

I love it. You found the perfect balance between humour and horror.

Bringing back characters in callbacks from PS was inspired, and the returning Diarmid-zombie was chilling. I think a little more discussion or a click-through reaction from Occam would be even more powerful there, but as it stands, it’s solid.
Lord Faren the swordmaster.. oh my god I loved that. I was laughing myself silly! The only thing that would have made it better was if his speedo had become a leopard print or something.

Bravo!!
The zone is much more fluid, the progression much more intuitive, and the story very engaging.

With my son at daycare, I could finally turn up the effects without eliciting a small child ragefest at not getting to sing along to his own music.
I blew my Howler.
I stared.

Seriously, I’m a big ANet fangirl and I’m shaking my head.
It’s just a buzz.
It’s a nasty buzzy thing, not the sonorous extended tone that we’d expect emerging from a warhorn.
Please sample/replicate the Battle for Pelennor fields in LoTR and give us THAT.

Not this.. this.. whatever it is. Fart suggests amplitude or SOUND. Not a bzzzzt.

Ahh good to know. Very similar to ESO then.
Thanks!

In Guild Wars 1, there was a fantastic feature: alliance chat. You could be in a variety of allied guilds, have guild-only conversations, and more broadly speak among a bunch of guilds in alliance chat.
I know they’re intending to tweak some guildchat features come HoT – does anyone know if this means that something like alliance chat, or hopefully even alliance chat might return?

In addition to dreadlocks, which seem to be a cross-gender longing for most of us human players (seriously, charr and asura are massively hogging the dreads.), I’ll also throw in for long styles.
I have a Luxon-descended Krytan whom I’ve modeled after Tuvan and Mongolian faces and styles. It drives me nuts, I fully and freely admit, that whenever my toddler is rocking out to “Huun Huur Tu” (his preferred throat singing band. Don’t ask. If it makes kids sleep you listen to anything. ANYTHING.), one of the singers has almost got my guy’s hair. The sleeked back short topknot style? Except his is this awesome long braid of black hair tied off high with it shaved on either side. It looks great. My guy’s look wimpy in comparison.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/i0djHJBAP3U/maxresdefault.jpg
That guy. The hair streams down his back in a braid. One of his other bandmates also has long braided hair and it looks great.
So dreads, and some LONG styles, preferably braided, messy, ponytailed in some way.
.. and more than one colour channel. Give me some silver pleeeaaase.

So I was running the Dry Top event train recently, and got a closeup on Haze. And he has a really neat, very Canthan face that remains locked to the players. You see it a lot actually. It’s on priest NPCs, it’s on a lot of Zephyrites, it’s on NPCs in Divinity’s Reach.
It’s a really well done Canthan face.
Could we get that please? Please please?
(and two toned hair that allows me to finally give my mesmer his silvery streaks at the temples.)
Haze’s face seems to change, and all zephyrites have the same face and hair combinations, which vary. The face in question is on the short hair and appears on the NPC in the following screenie:

GW1 had incredible hairstyles. They varied by profession and by expansion. They included dreads, myriad braids, wild hairstyles with incredible ornaments like spiders or clawtips, and lovely long options.
The dervish especially.. WOW.

Dreads, dreads dreads oh gods yes dreads.
I created art of my elementalist with the dreads I wish he had, and I still seriously would like graying/silver-templed male hair styles.
Plus any David Eddings fan would like a Polgara-streak on girls so it cuts both genders!

Edit: Now it worked! I logged into my GW1 account and then back into GW2 and woot!

The HoM is still disabled for me. Suggestions?

I wonder if they could do two-tone facial hair too.
I mean, the look I’d dream of for my mesmer would be as follows. Having the grizzled salt-n-pepper look would just look incredible in my opinion.

I’ll totally trade you long flowing hair for dreads. You guys have so many dreads.

I wait with bated breath every time a new hairstyle/makeover patch comes.
I’m just going to mention this because anecdotally, there are SO many players who’d go nuts over the following..

-long dreads on human men. None of this wtfgolfball afro – give us a few more really amazing styles suitable to an Elonian. Long dreads, Koss hair, thin dreads, beaded dreads, cornrows.. the list goes on. I know already that adding GOOD dreads to humans would net you a boost in gem buying.
-a LONG ponytail on a male human. All of the anime crowd would go wild. I’d be fairly cheery. I have an Elric thing, I admit it, and having my revenant come with nearly waist-long milk-white sorcerer style hair would be frankly fabulous.
(https://41.media.tumblr.com/695ef3c10f232f7ac4ae8223888abfb0/tumblr_n6njdp0sLV1s2si4lo1_540.jpg cause everyone loves the original badarse albino, c’mon!)

- I don’t know if anyone else would crave this one, but one I’ve been yammering about since 2012 beta is a two-tone hair colour. Silver streaked temples, specifically. Giving my forty-something mesmer some indication of his age without going all gray would be so SO nice. That salt and pepper look, or distinguished grey accents to go with the lovely faces you’ve given us.. I’m sure others could make it young and punk or whatever else if you let us select the second hair colour. Make it like a hair ornament or something?

But really. Good dreads for humans. Please please please please? I’m not begging for bantu knots or similar epic hairstyles. Non-Elonians could rock better dreads too. Heck, right now Asura and charr have better dreads than humans!

http://www.africanamericanhairstylestrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Dreadlock-Styles-For-Black-Men-Design-Pictures-003.jpg
http://wavygirlhair.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/f0ccc__Men-with-Locs.jpg

Lurinna.4306:

I think it’s kind of tacky when players try to create a in-universe explanation for Kryta’s whitewashing.

It was done because it sells. Which is gross, but the best thing to do is to leave it at that. Saying, “All the black people turned white because magic!” makes it a zillion times worse.

Yeah.
And it honestly annoys me. GW1 was stellar in SO many ways because the ethnic diversity was represented in a way that didn’t simply blindly conform to “all fantasy is generic white European fantasy” stuff. At the end of Nightfall, I belatedly realized that everyone, hero and villain, had been a well thought out extremely well made African. They ranged from looking Moroccan to looking Somalian to looking like any of the nomadic people along the southern edge of the Sahara. They weren’t servile, thuggish, or uniformly ‘good.’ They were complex, nuanced, and as capable of greatness as evil.
In short, it was probably the best ingame mass market representation of PoC I’ve ever seen. Even TES’s Redguards don’t offer that level of nuance.

So seeing the whitewashing of humanity in GW2 pretty brazenly to attract the safe crowd.. is sad. It’s definitely my biggest annoyance.

edit: though the fact that one CAN make a very African-looking character is a plus. I won’t lie. Still, getting more hairstyles that allow PoC to be represented, and more skin tone varieties than.. what is it.. 6 shades total darker beyond ‘Caramel’ against something like 12 or so of ‘white’?.. that’d be nice. Darken the NPCs juust a smidge, ANet, and give us a bit more variety.
Or tell us you’re saving that for Elona and let us be giddy and happy.

.. I still find the mysterious whitening of the tattooed Krytans irksome.

It’s not gamebreaking but it IS disconcerting. Upon character creation, my character zooms in and drops down so that rather than the old ‘head and bust’ view, it’s ONLY head, and seems below where it ought to be.
The total makeover kit by contrast shows the position I’m used to:

By the same token though, the exodus out of Ascalon was the forces who went with Rurik, and they were hit fairly hard as they crossed the Shiverpeaks. I guess I keep not seeing how Ascalonian trumps both pre-existing krytan and the addition of Elonians more recently. It seems off to me. I celebrate how culturally diverse and incredibly well written GW1 was. GW2 just seems a little bit to cater to the ‘safe’ gaming perspective of ‘fantasy white humans’ is all.

Someone more lore-immersed than me could correct me, but my understanding was that as Joko’s forces spread through Elona, everyone was fleeing fast. So you’d have a massive influx of whole civilian populations trying to flee an undead army in a series of state by state migrations over the past century, all of whom were fantasy-African.

Cantha I don’t honestly know, but I frankly don’t know if it’s as relevant really to the whitening of gw2 – Kurzicks were so monochromatic that it’d not have been an issue, and Luxons I don’t know in terms of whether they’d have left.
I guess my point is even without cantha, you have the Krytans, who look like this tattooed fellow in GW1 below, to the right of my henchie.

To which is added Ascalonians, after which waves of Elonians join them – I’ve got a screenie here of Sunspears and then Margid the Sly. (Can we has her hair pleeeeeeze?)

.. I just don’t see your average modern Krytan being so pale.

The overly pale skins of humans in Kryta.
Sorry, but it does bother me.
Krytans in GW1 were darker skinned, with tattoos aplenty, and sometimes even tight-braided hair.
Elonians reflect various sahelian African cultures. (and superbly, oh MAN superbly)
Canthans reflect both heavily bodypainted central Asians and a more Eastern vibe.

Given the admixture, and the chronology of the various waves of migration, it just always bothers me how pale-skinned modern Krytans are. If I have my timeline right, it’s Kryta + Ascalon, to which Cantha’s refugees get added, and then waves of Elonian migrants arrive as Joko conquers each state, ending perhaps fifty years ago.

If you want to use African names, you can always use
http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/resources/slaves.faces
It’s a scholarly website tracing the known names of Africans who entered the trans-Atlantic slave trade from 1550-1890 or thereabouts. There are over 90,000 records, so likely you can find something that feels right. I use names from similar sources for my own Elonians because they don’t limit me to a given ethnic group or belief system generally.
In short, authentic African names with enough age to not be specific to a postcolonial environment likely affected by European culture.
<— cultural historian who studies West Africa here ^.^
Hope that helps!

For my own part, my necromancer character, descended from my gw1 ritualist, has been trying to find better ways to bind forces than simply forming flesh into constructs. For a long time I rped as a Spectral Knight spec of necro both in how I traited him and how I played him. Right now, his necro self has been identity repaired, and his name saved in anticipation of the new profession.
You see, he finally succeeded – he called up Shi Xun, my ritualist, his ancestor, who is making impish suggestions for better ways to do things to Isambard.
In short? I’ll be rping as a modern version of a ritualist.
Because I loved that profession.

Thanks all! I appreciate the suggestions and explanations about Inventions trait line

So to preface this, I’ve HAD an engi since fall 2012. And honestly, I have never been able to wrap my head around the playstyle.
I ground to 80, I’ve tried a variety of specs and playstyles, and it’s never natural or fun for me. I just don’t seem to like the gadgets much.
But I like turrets less, as a note.

What I’d like is a spec that’s fun for playing solo PvE at 80, so I can participate in maps in a fairly casual way. When I’m home, I’m working, or wrangling a toddler who demands my attention. Which means I simply don’t have the time or focus to PvP or dungeon like I used to. /sigh
/endpreface

I like the trait Power Shoes. With a mesmer main, I adore having a static, permanent speed boost like that, as I do with all my other 80s that have signets to do the same. I kind of don’t like having to pop a hobosack on and off to speed up, you know?
That said.
Is it even remotely viable?
Is Inventions? I’ve noticed almost every spec posted avoids it like the plague.

So question 1 – Power shoes? Never?
Question 2 – Inventions ever?
Question 3 – is it possible to get a solo PvE farming/fun build that isn’t squishy, does reasonable damage, and relies on a single kit/weapon much of the time? (FT maybe? Rifle?) Any character I get to play is played with toddler asleep on my lap, so lots of keymashing is fairly implausible lest it wake him.
Thanks for any advice you can give me!

Akidu looks great, Tamlin!

Sadly, humans are humans. And there are, for whatever reason, many more who fetishize youth than there are old age. I think for most of us who’d enjoy an older character, it’s not into crone land most are talking about, but elements of grizzled middle age.
The problem really is that anyone who’s been on the internet for any reasonable time and been bored, or read tvtropes, or delved into 4chan, or anything else, is aware that bored gamers and the ability to create adolescent characters becomes a bad thing faster than anyone would want.
Human history is filled with examples of terrible things happening to exploited younger folks, and many less happening to those past their reproductively active years. Just how it is.

.. this is great, exciting news! HUGE kudos to Anet for giving us an update, making the right choice, and taking the time to perhaps go back and use some of the things they’ve been excelling at in LS2 to improve bland or odd steps in the PS.
I ran through every permutation of the PS on my first few characters, loving how each variation interwove to explain things. The Apatia thing explained where the orb came from, Tonn the bombs, and so on. I remember going head over heels fangirl when Tonn’s wife didn’t forgive my character.. what a gorgeous, beautiful, superb decision for the writers to make!!
I’m married, and you know what? Some one time being saved by someone doesn’t outweigh – couldn’t – the loss of my spouse. By NOT taking the easy, Disney, everyone happy path, ANet cemented my enthusiasm.
So with that in mind.. if you do go back and revise or rethink things.. please, PLEASE keep that hard hitting power. Don’t give us the easy outs. Give us moral quagmires and emotional traumas, because they make a storyline vibrant and real. You guys know this.
It shouldn’t matter that it wasn’t our character’s active decision to do harm – harm happened, and our character being held to account is excellent. My only mourning after the Greatest Fear was, after seeing all 3 options (though I never got ALL the branches afterward. The one where I chased Syska down and ended up in a field frantically butchering animals and believing they were Flame Legion even though I KNEW I was being mind-controlled… kitten , that one gave me such shivers of epic awesome!).. I mourned not having more powerful moments like those in the rest of the story.
If you do revamp things, never ever, PLEASE never ever.. give us the pretty flowers and unicorns option.

Older humans absolutely. Silvering temples, streaks of graying hair, yes please.
As a roleplayer, I’ve seen guilds of slaves in this game. I’ve seen worse.
Giving some players the option to roleplay adolescent girls purely to be in degrading situations, or exploitative ones, is not a place I think most would enthusiastically say ANet should go.
And let’s please be cynical and realistic enough to appreciate that if the ability to do it was there, that is PRECISELY what would happen.
Rule 34.

The original title was ‘ethnic’, not Canthan/Elonian. Bluntly, I was mostly really enthused about seeing characters that push the limits of the sliders in an effort to respectfully and beautifully capture the gw1 vibe. I vacillated on using ‘ethnic’, and I still almost would prefer it if it didn’t carry a negative connotation. I’d love to see a gorgeous Krytan character made to strongly nod to the gw1 flavour of that nation.
I came from a mmo where the only human options really were ‘generic white fantasy hero/heroine’, and one of the biggest things I love about this game is that you really CAN show characters drawn from other ethnicities in our world, in order to reflect the ingame lore nations like Kryta, the three nations of Cantha etc.
:)
Also ‘she’ for making the statement. female player I just often play guys.

Edit: Tach and Drev, those are gorgeous characters!
And adding a screenie of an old gw1 Krytan to demonstrate what I mean about them – they were certainly not ‘white’ in gw1 that I’d say
Seeing players who’ve really attempted to reflect the nuances of the old gw1 nations is such a thrill for me to see.

And some gw1 flavour.. a Luxon and my beloved ritualist Shi Xun, he of the whimsical wry humour and attunement with spirits.

My duo of Luxon-descended Krytans of Canthan blood here:
I largely derive their look from faces of the Mongolian steppes.
Boerte Khenbish, and my engi, Temujiin Ganbaatar in outfits and actual gear.

Heh, I so wish we could have Koss’s hair! Or Margid’s..
I do love to see what people are able to do with the creator even with limited base faces for Elonian or canthan characters. It’s amazing how well some slider tweaks can make a gorgeous character.

I have such a hard time deciding on any one character.. >.< I’m torn between my absolute two favourites though. My 2nd generation Krytan of Istani descent, whose gear is meant to remind me of the feathery paragon look in gw1, and my Canthan of Luxon descent, whose aesthetic is totally from central Asian steppes.
I seriously log on and just find myself beaming in joy at them both.

… I’d like to have Elona… /small voice from corner.
Like would wildly love to have it. Like sit in Nightfall even now enjoying the look and music.

I agree you have a point, but there are few other ways to describe it. “Post your Canthan/Elonan characters” perhaps?
For me, one of the great joys in GW is that you aren’t locked into playing ‘standard white fantasy hero/heroine of European descent’ as in so many other traditional MMOs. Nightfall was jawdroppingly inclusive, and Factions brought some fabulous new aesthetics.
I was inspired in large part by a player commenting on ideas for character creation improvements which would allow for more Asian and African faces. That thread wasn’t really the place for it, but it made me want to share what I’ve been able to do, and invite others to show their own characters in turn.

Being able to create characters that portray non-white faces in believable ways matters a lot to me, which is why when I see another player with a stunning character that engages with that, I stop and whisper them. As I’ve in turn been whispered by players of African descent who cheer on my Elonian characters.
I do tend to see people more willing to represent Canthans ingame, though they’re usually decidedly East Asian in both look and name. I feel that the Luxons derive a lot of their culture from the nomadic people of the Mongolian steppes, which is why I looked there for inspiration for my own Canthan characters.
I do get your point and will try to retitle the thread to more accurately represent my intention – which is to celebrate the diversity possible in this game.
I’d love to see other characters people are proud of and love who capture a specific aesthetic not usually available in most MMOs.
:) Hope that clarifies!

If, like me, you enjoy and admire the daring character creators who can capture an aesthetic in their characters that isn’t the usual one, post what you have!
I study West African culture professionally, and am an ardent fan of things central and East Asian, so of course, my characters in this game had to reflect as nuanced and accurate a representation as I could manage to get.
So for my Canthan duo, I sought to capture not a typical Japanese or even Chinese aesthetic, but a Mongolian look. I did this mostly because I’ve always felt that the Luxons really draw from that nomadic vibe – though the world of GW2 doesn’t allow for the elaborate shamanistic body ornamentation of the Jade Sea, alas!

For my Istani, I went for a look I drew from Yorubaland in Nigeria. The two Kournan men I made were drawn from Wolof and Hausa faces. I love them all and am proud of each, though I have my Ascalonian, Krytan, and nonhuman characters too.
I tried to get a gw1 paragon’s feathery look on the Istani (who is easily my favourite character), while my necromancer Kournan is built around the Grenth backpiece in his colourscheme. My blind Kournan devotee of Balthazar is, of course, as fiery as I can make him – I kept thinking of the Kournan priests at resurrection shrines in GW1.

These are the ones I get complimented on, enthused at over, and as I myself always praise other players who’ve attempted and usually gorgeously captured their own non stereotypical humans, I thought I’d start a share thread dedicated to celebrating the diversity possible in this game! (with an eye to getting even more base faces we can tweak into unique neat concepts )

I adore it. I’m frankly torn about which better suits my Mongolian-inspired character, but this outfit is stunning. STUNNING.
For my female Mongolian-inspired character, again, this is some amazing, gorgeous formalwear. DO like.

I’d like a layer added at creation to allow for silvering hair on any race/gender. For males, silver at the temples, for charr on the muzzle, for females perhaps a streak. I like playing older characters who aren’t yet old, but show their middle years. (Prince mehtu the Wise from gw1 is an example of this)

For hairstyles, yes please, more African/Asian faces.
I’ve done my very best and I LOVE my Mongolian and Wolof based faces, but some more would be nice.

More importantly though, HAIR. The stunning beaded braids, long tied/knotted dreads or braids from GW1 are deeply longed for by me and many of my guildies. A piece of art I’ve been working on which began with screenies worked over to reflect how I’d like their hair to be suggests what I mean. Adding beadwork, rings and ornaments into dreads.. yeah. PLEASE.
I added Varesh-inspired beaded braids to the leftmost, my guardian, turned my ele’s mohawk into a dread-mohawk, added beads and rings to my guildie’s warrior.

Tattoo/scarification options would also be amaaaaazing.

edit: added some gw1 screencaps to show what I’d love so much to see.

I have a slightly different experience than the OP but share her love of this game and her sense of comfort in it.
I don’t live IN Guild wars2, and that’s actually why I love it SO much.
Since we’re sharing… I used to live in another game when I was younger and unemployed. And I won’t regret the great times I had there.
But today, now, I’m a 34 yr old student about to defend her PhD early summer. I have a fourteen month old son who’s home with me about half the week (thank everything for daycare the other half or I’d get nothing done ever!)
I can’t afford to have a game that DEMANDS my presence.
I can’t afford to have a game that yanks a monthly subscription out of my pocket and makes me feel like I need to justify that price by being online constantly.
I can’t afford to be informed that in order to contribute, I MUST grind levels, gear, materials, etc etc.
I can’t afford to raid for eight-ten hours a week.

And I don’t have to. Not here. I have this incredible, beautiful wonderland I can log onto WHENEVER I PLEASE.. and forget about the various stresses in my life. I can roleplay, or re-dye my armor, or elect to PvP.. and there is absolutely no demand that I HAVE to do it. Paradoxically, it makes me feel so very happy and at home in this game that it’s my choice.
The community really is gorgeous, also. I couldn’t believe it one day in PvP when someone I’d just stomped said cheerfully that I’d done really well but she’d “be right back”. I’d never realized we could talk to our foes. The other games I’ve played assumed that trolling and incivility were guaranteed, so I had just assumed the same. What a joy to learn otherwise!

This is a stunning game with empowering and diverse stories and characters. It’s got a lovely community, and there is no pressure to meet a time-demand at any point. Yes, I have a lot of max level fully ascended characters, but I CHOSE to have them. (late pregnancy is a time of incredible boredom and a need for escapism, yes)
So while I am not in the same position as many posting (and wish them all strength), I join my voices to theirs in celebrating this fabulous game.

A few small things I’d adore seeing that don’t quite make it into big announcements, so asking just in case!
Fishing – can we has it?
Rare pets worth seeking out for rangers specialized into that.. possible? Plausible?

I noticed the revenent had tattoos in the artwork on the new site – will there be new ink-like armours possibly? I LOVED Monk and Rit armours in GW1.. been praying for those or something like them for some time now!

Master Togo and Mhenlo for sure.. Cynn for the crazy jealouses. Probably any of the gw1 henchies would be great!

Oh man, you lured me into a reply.
It’ll be lengthy, since I quit WoW due to story after being a seven year fangirl. (and prior if you count the RTS, and I do)
Yes, GW has a VASTLY better story that the mmo WoW. The RTS Warcraft was frankly excellent, but it took a nosedive in its online incarnation. To split up my problems with it (and again, I was a massive lorenerd):

• The ingame lore changes and retcons and representations:
  -Orcs by the end of Frozen Throne were on a path to redemption with shamanism and rejection of demonic fel energies. In WoW, we suddenly had pandering to the fans, the inclusion of the Forsaken without warning, and orc warlocks despite their clear disbarment from the Horde.
  -Night elves in the RTS were a strong race of matriarchal types, and sufficiently scary to warrant being a faction on par with Horde and Alliance alike. From nocturnal xenophobic amazons, they developed an inane idle animation in the mmo, and were gutted expansion after expansion, with territory constantly lost and the Cenarion Circle looking elsewhere. That drove me nuts.
  -Burning Crusade was whack, storywise. Suddenly Illidan, suddenly crazy, killable. At the end of TFT he was something of an anti-villain, and was actually interesting and compelling. By Black temple, he was muttering to himself and wearing his undies on his head in effect. The introduction of the blood elves to the same people who largely leveled their homeland was very forced, and clearly designed to address player imbalance in representation. In the 2nd War, the orcs burnt Quel’thelas such that Anasterian rejected humanity due to thinking the orcs got off too lightly in internment camps, and that humanity didn’t help the queldorei enough against the orcs.
  -The draenei were… an odd injection. And very poorly implemented at that. Once caught int their lore oops publicly, Blizzard ran as fast from Draenei lore as they could for years, which wasn’t exactly fair.

• Story failures.
  -Me’dan. Oh gods Me’dan. Why?
  -The whole Rhonin atrocity. An army of dinosaurs. Really? REALLY?
  -Varian Wrynn being split in two cause rage, then killing Onyxia cause leet, and so on and so on. Come on, that stuff was terrible.
  -Staghelm hated Malfurion evidently, and had been driven mad. Okay. So at his hated rival’s wedding to the high priestess he likewise despises, does Staghelm, you know, attack the person he’s obsessively loathed? No? No. he attacks some nobody orc he’s never met, because Metzen needed to interject his rl issues into the game apparently, leading to that unspeakably bad 4.2 quest arc involving us putting Thrall back together despite him badmouthing Alliance. As an Alliance player, that was really annoying.
  -Cenarius being cool with orcs despite the events of WC3.
  -Thrall being a blind moron or totally evil for years in ignoring the evidence under his nose that the Forsaken would do things like unleashing the blight.

I could go on.

In guild wars, we have a really well done strong story from the first game which involves betrayal, sorrow, and antihero-ing. We lose a prince and put him down again after being tricked by Khilbron. The Afflicted storyline was actually really well done, albeit with terribad voice acting. GW has consistently offered diverse, interesting stories with compelling bad guys, strong but flawed heroes and heroines, and no embarrassing racial stereotypes. Trolls were embarrassing, as were goblins, and I got utterly tired of the ‘All Orcs, All the Time’ mode of storytelling I saw in WoW.
So yes. I will defend GW’s brilliant writing without any question.