It’s a directional light simulating the Sun. Usually in 3D games (GW2 incl.) this is implemented in a very bad way as global light that is active all the time (even when you are in the dark or in a shadow).
The reasoning is lower use of resources as a real sunlight with blocking world objects would be very GPU/CPU intensive.
Of cause, as always, there is a way to implement this in a shader and make it work perfect but its not easy to do and it won’t work on all platforms so a fallback needs to be designed also.
I guess it was just too much work for ANET.
Except, there is a directional light simulating the sun already. The problem is that the light shining on my character is independent from the light already being cast. The light shining on my character continues even when entering areas that are shaded from the sun. Canopy shadows, building shadows, and various miscellaneous shadows are cast from the regular sun as always.
The light cast on my character always comes from the right of the camera, regardless of the direction my camera is facing. As such, if I look at the front of my character the light is on my left shoulder like in the supplied image. If I turn the camera 180 degrees, the light turns as well, and the light is now cast onto my right shoulder. It’s not a directional light, like the sunlight.
If it were a directional light, it wouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve attached another picture to demonstrate.
If you notice, the light on my character is coming from the opposite direction as the light being cast by the sun. It’s also now shining on the front of the character instead of the side. The character hasn’t been moved, and is facing the same direction as before.
