Guild Wars 2

Long ago, we started with a dream.
A dream to encapsulate the joy that is Lord Faren’s fighting coiffure.
The two of us banded together on a quest to study this character and bring him to the world in a light that must be explored, a light that shines only on his handsome features.
We present to you one of the many fruits of our labour, the Lord Faren Archive.

As the other disciple studying Farenology, it’s my honour to provide you all with a link to a compilation of screenshots accompanied by witty commentary of the always-fancy Lord Faren, put together by the Fanciest Cat herself, Sam. Since she does not have a forum account, mine will suffice.

Here is the link to the post on her tumblr blog.

Should you have any questions about Lord Faren, we are here to answer all of them. Nothing will go under our radar.

Nothing.

There’s more to body types than bust and hips—to me what really made all of the body types extremely similar (and lacking…) was that everyone had the same torso/leg ratio. The legs are all long and slender, even if they can be bulked up slightly. I like what we’ve got but I still think a bit more variety wouldn’t hurt..

A bump for an EXTREMELY important post!
I really want to provide helpful criticism or just some sort of general construction that could help improve this idea, but I can’t. I can’t because it’s amazing already and I’m overwhelmed! I’ve never felt so excited from reading about something that is only an idea. And yet…I’m also so disappointed that I could, quite literally, cry because this isn’t already the plan for how GW2 is to continue its story.

I am desperately hoping and praying that something good comes out of your suggestion, that it is read and carefully thought about and discussed and taken into consideration, because it’s full of good ideas. You touch up on old lore, ensuring that the core themes of gw2 are not left untouched. There’s plenty of room for character growth—YOUR character’s growth, even!—and you even brush up on letting your character move on past just the orders storylines and working towards things like the Seraph and fighting the Nightmare and just. wow.

Really good job all around. I checked out a few other posts of yours and you really know what you’re talking about. Please continue to do so!!!

These responses are cracking me up. I’m glad to know that the existence of horses is debatable on more ends than just mine.
On the topic of invisible creatures, do gorillas exist outside of corrupted risen gorillas? Are they out in Maguuma? In Cantha?

I love the Tengu and I would love to see more of them. I also love the Kodan…they are my top two for right now. (Actually, I am also head-over-heels over the Skritt, but I don’t see them as being playable because you would be incredibly stupid. Poor Skritt.)

If I had to choose, I would say Tengu. I don’t see undead as an option for the reasons listed in the thread but oh man. Nobody can feel my love for the Tengu as much as I do.

I have a blue sylavri elementalist and a purple sylvari mesmer. My thief is very dark. I’m an artist, so I work with colour a lot and it’s one of my favourite things to do. For me, persay, I don’t feel locked into a set colour so much as I just really like one set scheme with them.

If you want to get into some nitty-gritty art instruction, look into basic colour theory. For example, let’s look at the colour red on the wheel. The closest colours to it are orange and purple. These colours will automatically look good with red. If you want a bolder scheme with red, look on the opposite side of the wheel and you’ll find greens and teals. This is a complimentary scheme, and each colour will bring out the other. A triad scheme involves three colours on opposite sides of the wheel. This would be in this example red, green, and purple. All of these colours, when used in the correct shades, can give you great results for a red sylvari if you do not want them to wear red. And the correct shades part is really important. To start, it may be easier to stay away from bright playground colours and to lean on colours of that hue but not of that saturation.
So, yes, it’s more than possible to give your sylvari clothes that do not match their skintone that still look great! You will not have to feel ‘locked in’ so long as you practice and play with dyes. Once you get really good at it, you can throw a whole bunch of colours at your sylvari and still get gorgeous results.
http://imgur.com/a/2rYrj is a photoset of my elementalist in her regular scheme and then in purples. Excuse my calculator graphics!

Personally I’m not a fan of “gendered” armor in the first place.
A slightly prettier version of asuran armor wouldn’t hurt, though, but I’d rather it was still spread out across both of them.

Narsil.6579:

thats Caithe lol hahaha she uses daggers and clearly has boobs, no man has bobs.. that perky and size wise

I have been laughing for hours at this post. I don’t know why.

In any case, I doubt it’s Caithe’s daughter as has been suggested (Sylvari cannot have babies). But who knows! Maybe it is Queen Jennah in a mesmer disguise. The world is mysterious.

+1 from me.
When sylvari throw parties, do you think that they say they’ll have a chloroblast?

Gonna ignore where the thread went:
I don’t think Krytans care much about that kind of thing. In the human noble storyline, you can accompany Countess Anise as her date to Minister Wi’s party…as either sex. People at the party will take note, one of them will ask if she should dye her hair red (i.e. to be attractive to you.) Plus, your best friend Lord Faren flirts with your character a bit regardless of gender, and at the same aforementioned party there is a girl who seems to be a…big fan of you. Again, regardless of gender.
(I only know so much about the party because I’ve played through it at least three separate times.)
There’s plenty of evidence that humans literally do not care about it, and why should they? On a meta level, I don’t see why it should even be an issue in a fantasy world. They’ve (and especially in the case of GW2) got bigger things to care about other than who kisses who, like the constant threat of their world ending.

One of the many criticisms I’ve seen regarding the personal story is that you don’t get attached to any of the characters, and for the most part, I agree. There are a few characters who I would take a liking towards, but once they disappeared out of my sight to never be brought up again, I felt extraordinarily disappointed.

Now, playing through the game, especially on my first and main character, I loved my personal story. Yes, it has its wide multitude of flaws, but I liked it because it was a breath of fresh air from what felt simply like grinding. I like a bit of a roleplay aspect to my games, so I spent my time levelling my character in order to level up and become high enough to do my story without dying too often. As I scaled up the level ladder, I found more things to do, and therefore didn’t dabble in my story as much (although it was still a major overarching theme for me and I did return to it as often as possible, since I still found it enjoyable). Now, at level 80 and with the very final step left to do, I find myself procrastinating. Not because I don’t want to do it, but because the final step is a dungeon, when I have done most of my story entirely alone. This part of the design, like you mentioned, is pretty terrible; I can see why they did it, of course—it was to make the final step of your story more interesting, more involved even—but when the entirety of the story was solo missions without a hint of needing another person, it comes off as a harsh surprise.

I disagree with what you have put forth, though, as I greatly enjoy the freedom I have to pick the way of which I move forth in the story. What I have always thought would be better, if not perhaps more costly and confusing, but that’s what happens when you really mess up personal stories, is if Anet decided to instead change it for future characters, and perhaps make it so that you can replay your story as such through your old character. Of course that is a bit much, but I think that it would be better because you are not constricted to one set linear plot, and you also still get to do a story that you enjoy, if not on a new, different character.

One of my thoughts during the personal story was that I hoped to have my character make some friends and real relationships (not necessarily romantic ones) through the plot. That didn’t happen, aside from my order mentor, but we all know what happens to them. Maybe a solution to this would be to introduce instanced (if necessary) side-stories that can be completed by interacting with certain NPCs you encounter during your story, kind of like side-quests, except that they are tailored to the choices you have made during your story. And you would be able to have different outcomes depending on what you do during the story: perhaps you could end up making or breaking friendships through this.

Just a few thoughts. I never did a lot of roleplay, but when I did indulge in it I’ve had a lot of fun, and I enjoy having a heavy roleplaying aspect in games that I play. That’s probably my main source of disappointment for the personal story in GW2: it promised a roleplaying aspect that was there, but missed being successful by such a large margin that I wonder why it was implemented at all.

“Prove the sun shines through you! Face me as another form!”

May the Six never let me hear that line again.

Gosh, I had so many gripes about the personal story. After playing through it once I’m already pretty sick of it. The only new, interesting parts of it come shining through when you first start leveling a character, because that first ‘arc’ was, in my opinion, far more engrossing and investing than the rest of the story.

What I am a little upset about is that, as a heroic character, I was never allowed to falter. I was never allowed to have fears or doubts or really go through any sort of a dark time. When I played through on a sylvari alt and met Waine, I was kind of hoping I’d get a chance to take a look at that nightmare court business. He was so friendly about it, I thought I’d have an interesting friend. Instead, we ended up wiping him off the face of Tyria. I never once wanted to really turn entirely to the ‘dark side’, because I knew arenanet’s vision was to have a heroic character. But I did want to have a chance to explore the option of delving into it, perhaps only later to realize how wrong it is. There was a lot of potential that was left behind in my cliché hero. I would’ve liked an opportunity to have my character grow, after all—right now, they’re all inhumanely fearless, ready to take up any challenge, no matter what happens.

I liked having characters where it felt like they were actually interested in my existence, where I had an impact on the smaller lives of people. I realize that the plot of GW2 is about Zhaitain, and perhaps arenanet was striving for a more ‘realistic’ approach to his defeat in the way the storyline was handled. That is, you were another soldier, and this part of your life wasn’t about you, it was about the dragon. Except that all my would-be friends died before I knew about them, I met extremely interesting characters only to never have contact with them again, and at many times the potential for a really heartwrenching scene was ruined with the speed at which things were handled and the way my character reacted to them. I mean, come on. This poor little asura loses her husband and really hates me, and my character handles it by going ‘well ok just have this thing and bye’. She even acted like it was painful when she later explained the incident to Trahearne. In reality, she barely flinched. I suppose that’s what happens when she wasn’t even attached to the guy in the first place; she just did what she was told and let him blow up.

I was always fighting hordes of Risen that weren’t really doing anything other than being obstacles, yet they were the main focus of many storyline missions. And who could forget the well-loved Priory Scholar, or Vigil Crusader? I have many fond memories of Whispers Agent and Whispers Agent and also Priory Scholar. (sarcasm).The NPCs that followed me around weren’t useless, per se, but I really could have done some of them without them. I felt bad for them, you know—they were just these little side characters that were like, ‘Alright, this person is doing something, so I guess we should help them.’ At least most of the time they rez’d themselves when I beat up their bullies. I would have loved for them to stay with me if they were capable of actually dealing damage. Generally, they were helpful with deterring aggro, and that is the end of their use.

Why am I looking forward to another personal storyline? Because there is so much that can happen after Zhaitan’s defeat. There is so much that can happen that does not require me to be another (albeit much more powerful) soldier on the front lines. I might be able to go back and actually talk to the people I was good friends with back home, or perhaps something entirely new altogether. I don’t know if there will ever be another addition to the personal storyline, and honestly the best improvement to the current storyline would be to scrap it and start over, but I stress my point: my favourite part of games is the story! I don’t like playing games where there is none, or where it falls apart quickly. And I am a bit disappointed going through the personal story, since it was always my main motivation throughout the game.

*Please, please, pleaaaaaase somehow allow the characters to appear OUTSIDE of the PS. Once, I was exploring, and some punk thought it would be funny to tell me that Tybalt’s waiting for me. That was very memorable and I wish there were more details like that. Better yet, having entire stories around characters would be awesome—but I mentioned that in another thread.

*So much of the PS does not feel personal, because I am only a part of a horde of people that want to kill a dragon after a time. The PS remains the same for everyone after the Orders arc, with perhaps a few minor tweaks I suppose. Why was I even called Commander? I might as well have changed my name to Orders Agent and joined the club. Yes, I made vital decisions, but they certainly didn’t feel that way.

Please share your opinions. Thank you for reading this text wall.