Guild Wars 2

This “fix” hurts the game in very demonstrable ways. Let’s say I pick up an item my character can’t use. As Guild Wars 2 is very aesthetically focused, if I want to sell this item, I need to be able to see what it looks like. The skin of an item absolutely affects its value.

Armor of the same type already causes graphical errors.

This change was made at a terribly inconvenient time for me as I’ve been wanting to roll an asura character lately but didn’t know which armor class I best like the look of on the snarky little geniuses. Now, to preview that armor in the Heart of the Mists, I have to take three different characters through the tutorial? Blegh.

Also, this change does hurt the game in demonstrable ways. As Guild Wars 2 is aesthetically focused, if I pick up an exotic item, I need to be able to preview it to help determine its price. The skin of item absolutely affects its value.

BrunoBRS.5178:

^ i’ll tell you how much of primordus’ power was used on rata sum:

none.

you know why? because the moment primordus awoke, if rata sum was fueled by him, the city would’ve crumbled and broken into pieces.

remember that magic in this game is like gasoline. you can’t obtain it and just keep it. you’re constantly spending it, and if the source ends, the magic stops working. that’s why once the destroyers started appearing on the central transfer chamber, the asuras designed a new asura gate system that did NOT need that power from primordus.

Oh, my bad. I’m not quite up to snuff on GW1 lore as I’d like to be.

and one more thing: humans came to tyria from south of cantha. the elder dragons are in tyria. the humans, and their gods, sailed from cantha and elona towards tyria, and settled there. that piece of lore matches not only human lore, but charr lore too, so unless they’re both lying, the gods were gods before the dragons were even a thing.

That’s a pretty strong counterpoint, although I would say that this doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of harnessing of some sleepy dragon power to become as great as gods when they arrived. Before arriving in Tyria, they could have just been a bunch of pretty important/powerful dudes.

This rise of the elder dragons coincides with the disappearance of horses.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

SFtheWolf.5179:

Maybe the one time world changing event in Lost Shores is actually the Mad King breaking back out of his seal.

Everyone is forced to play a game of Mad King Says where he tells us to correctly pronounce the word “claw”.

The loser gets torn limb from limb, whoever that is.

Ahaha!

Or, better yet….

“Mad King Says….display emotion! Any sort of emotion! Happy, sad, I don’t care, just show me that my subjects have passion!”

Trahearne is then turned into a pumpkin.

HERO.2057:

Let’s brake this word so people don’t say foolish things.
Homosexuality -> h(o)m(o) + Sexual
h(o)m(o) -> H(o)m(o) sapiens -> Humans
Sexual -> Sex

Egads! Etymology abuse! Quick, to Wikipedia! (fixed the ’o’s so everyone’s clear we’re not talking about adolescent feline sexuality).

The “h(o)m(o)” part of “H(o)m(o) Sapien” comes from the genus of great ape. This is derived from the Latin word for man, h(o)m(o).

If one were to use this logic, then homosexuality would be the romantic or sexual attraction to humans and the species closely related to them. Obviously, this is not the case.

The “h(o)m(o)” in “homosexuality” comes from a Greek prefix meaning “the same.”

Wikipedia:

The word homosexual is a Greek and Latin hybrid with the first element derived from Greek h(o)m(o)s, ‘same’ (not related to the Latin h(o)m(o), ‘man’, as in H(o)m(o) sapiens), thus connoting sexual acts and affections between members of the same sex…

(Emphasis and dumb filter edits mine).

The more you know. That little fun language exercise aside, to respond to your actual point:

As sylvari have both sex and gender in addition to romantic attractions and interactions, sylvari can indeed be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, etc,etc.

While I don’t personally entirely agree with the theory, I’ma play devil’s advocate here.

BrunoBRS.5178:

so what you’re saying is that they sapped that power, then they traded it around like it was some card game?

This is sort of what the Asura did. Who knows how much of Primordus’ power was used to construct/float Rata Sum?

and my other point stands. the human gods first walked into tyria after the dragons had been put to sleep, and when they got here, they were already gods.

That’s just what the Humans say. And ArenaNet has, on more than one occasion, shown that Tyrian history is not immune to cultural biases changing how the story is told.

Kormir didn’t really seem to inherit the water thing from Abaddon’s secretive DSD powers.
Lyssa does match up decently well with Kralkatorrik, however.
That said, this proposal seems to be jumping to some pretty big conclusions.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

As I understand it, gender only counts for reproductive purposes. But the Sylvari don’t reproduce sexually. So gender doesn’t count for them.

Gender is the social construct, which sylvari most definitely have. “Guys” and “girls” dress differently, and sylvari will refer to other sylvari “men” and “women” as “he” or “she.”

Sex is the bilogical/physical differences between males and females. We don’t know a whole lot about sylvari biology apart from it being plant parts magically imitating humans to some degree because magic with more magical magic stuff. Physically, however, they are divided, with some having strictly male parts, and others having strictly female parts. While sylvari don’t reproduce through sexual intercourse, they can take part in it for pleasure, much as humans can with proper protection.

Sylvari have both gender and sex, even though they do not reproduce sexually.

How are homosexual relationships presented for the other races ?
Because I haven’t noticed any. Then again, I haven’t been looking, so I can easily miss them.

I haven’t seen any for Norn or Charr. Asura I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to (I often have voice acting turned off thanks to Trahearne), and it’s kind of hard to tell for them. As for humans, I’m fairly certain I’ve seen at least one Male/Male human NPC couple around somewhere, but I can’t remember exactly and could just be remembering wrong.

BrunoBRS.5178:

there’s a quote from ree somewhere where she states other races have no particular issues with homossexuality.

I do remember this, from some convention panel of some sort. I feel this could be better portrayed (especially around the various cities’ taverns), but romance isn’t really touched upon a whole bunch in-game.

I’m almost completely certain that the black on the Order of Whispers Armor is abyss. I’ve been trying to replicate that color with other, cheaper dark dyes but nothing really seems to work on leather. :|

Practitioners of the dark arts, necromancers summon the dead, wield the power of lost souls, and literally suck the life force from the enemy. Necromancers feed on life force, which they can use to bring allies back from the brink or cheat death itself.

I’d interpret this as necromancers utilize drained “life force” to make magical constructs using organic materials, or use magic to create bodies for summoned/contracted “lost souls” to inhabit.

castlemanic.3198:

The problem with having homosexual characters in a race that can breed is the issue of war, and how it’s surrounding every race. If more and more people decided they were homosexual, the rate of birth would decrease immensely.

That said, a war effort of breeding children could be made so as to keep each race’s population swelling, that would enable homosexual relations to exist without putting an entire race at risk of extinction.

Homosexuals as portrayed in game (where relationships are portrayed) are still a minority, and I don’t think any race is in such dire straits that it should become a concern. Even so, you give an answer to that problem there. The other races could probably implement something similar to charr’s fahrars to help with such a breeding initiative.

Garenthal.1480:

I just wish we had a major male lore figure turn out to be homosexual to balance things out. Is it too much to hope for Logan to realise Jennah is playing him like a harp and to decide to embrace one of his Seraph soldiers? ;)

Caithe
I have a dumb, skimmed the post and missed the “male” bit. Eh, I don’t see why we need a major male gay character to “balance” things out. I think it’d be far more interesting to see a major transsexual character.

brokenserenity.4638:

sylvari dont have real genders though so it’s not like it counts really.

Yes, they do. And I’d say it does “count,” for whatever it’s supposed to “count” for.

manwiththemachinegun.6873:

I’m really at a total loss as to how Trahearne has been hyped into this horrible character that somehow ruins the accomplishments of the player.

That wasn’t my experience at all, even as a human guardian.

Care to relate what your experience was?

My experience relied heavily on headcanon, but I quite enjoyed the story, when all’s said and done. There are infinitely more silly and stupid moments than there are genuine moments, but the whole thing felt all in good fun (minus a few moments when everyone else praised Trahearne a little too much).

The good writing in the game isn’t to be found anywhere near the Personal Story or the Dungeons. I just kept that in mind and had fun.

They decided to take all of the horses and go somewhere where they could live in peace and harmony.

The Personal Story is NOT the place to find the good writing in Tyria. The strongest stories in Guild Wars 2 are the little hidden gems… (for those curious, the other dialogue tree just mentions her wondering to herself if she can make it as a refugee in Kryta, if I recall correctly.)

In defense of Caltrops:

Caltrops is an area of AoE slow and bleeding. These bleed stacks don’t do a whole lot on their own, but if you add to them with Death Blossom or Cluster Bomb Detonation, the stacks start to add up. In condition-oriented builds, this is awesome.

You mentioned you often run with an Elementalist, so I imagine that you probably have some slows available most of the time. I usually don’t, and having a full area where enemies are always Crippled is fantastic support in solo and group PvE settings.

Perhaps the Charr (and, by extent, the Flame Legion) did something with their souls/bodies, just to be safe from possible priests of Grenth and the like? shrugs

It’s a good question.

For those (read: all of everybody) who have problems with Trahearne’s English robot voice, I highly recommend changing the audio to German. His German language VA is much, much better.