Guild Wars 2

Kheo.2504:

I remember in the first Sylvari quest, the Green Knight one, a male Sylvari casually refers to another male as his “love” and the game desn’t make any mention of it again. I’d say they’re being pretty fair across the board, the only group they don’t have represented is the people who don’t accept LGBT, and there’s a pretty good reason for that.

Many of us do accept, we just don’t advocate. I would ask you to pick up a dictionary, but you might select a thesaurus by mistake

This is how most people react in real life when “villains” die. Remember the reaction when a certain individual who’s name starts with an O was killed (allegedly)?

Personally, feel don’t pity for Scarlet but I also don’t want to jump up and cheer that she’s dead either. She was a threat that had to be removed and she was. End of story, no primitive emotional reaction needed.

Darkbattlemage.9612:

In fact it only strengthens my belief that such matters have no place within the gaming community as regardless of the best intentions the thread devolves into a horrific flame war that must be locked by the moderators for the good of the community as a whole.

I’m hopeful that we haven’t really spiraled down that abysmal staircase yet. And I don’t think we have to, as long as we remain respectful of one another.

Tanith.5264:

(playfully points an accusing finger)

Aha, I see how it is, you’re prejudiced against mesmers!

Guilty, but for good reason. They worship a goddess of lies and deceit. They should be worshiping Grenth, like any sensible person. Because as we all know, Grenth is a symbol of truth, justice and happy pink unicorns.

See how reasonable and understanding I can be?

Including something just to include makes for preaching and poor story telling. It’s like a Christian demanding a monotheistic God be present because they want their beliefs to be represented and shown as valid… that’s just utterly ridiculous. If you’re not trying to, essentially, use media to preach your message, why aren’t you fighting for the inclusion of interracial couples in the spotlight? So it seems to me, people who want this are obviously just trying to use video games in order to preach their dogma…

If anet can finds a natural, non-forced way to include a male gay couple, sounds fine to me. That doesn’t mean we should include them just for the sake of including them… that’s just being preachy.

First cut-scene kiss in the game, and we get this. sigh I am rather disappointed. No matter, I’ll keep playing, hoping the devs remember that the individuals who like this aspect are not the only people who play this game. There are good, honest, paying customers who don’t find this favorable. I’ll just have my finger on the “skip cut-scene” button in the near future and keep praying they try telling a romance within a story I can enjoy witnessing too.

Moving on, thank goodness I can forget about all this with the next update.

I’m the most popular guy on my guild rooster….I get all the chicks.

Heraldusluminare.2946:

I think if ANet created another same-sex relationship and put it in the spotlight too soon, it’d probably spark a riot on the forums.

I personally think a well written love story is fantastic, regardless of gender. That said, I felt the slow development of Jory and Kas’ relationship was adorable. When they started holding hands, I immediately smiled inwardly and thought: “I knew something was up between those two.”

If ANet were to include a guy-guy relationship, I’d probably suggest they subtly add some side-quest implying such for players to stumble over.

Anything less than the treatment Kasmeer and Marjory got is not going to be enough to fulfil a request like this. To get the same treatment and prominence would mean we have to sit through a second relationship that has no relevance to the plot and it makes Tyria feel less like a place where you go on epic adventures and more like an episode of Glee, where inclusion and subversion are the driving forces behind the story, or at least the characters.

I’d rather we get characters that sell the conflicts in Tyria, who are plot relevant, not character’s who’s primary role in the story (beyond their initial appearance) was a romance between each other. There are so many characters in Tyria that obviously have relationships (the world reproduces after all) yet we never hear about them. It’s going to be very jarring if suddenly we spend all this time with the lesbian couple and around the corner we have the gay couple.

I’d be happy if future romances were treated the same as they were before – primarily only mentioned when they were plot relevant or minor inclusions in a character’s presence in the story. Tyria isn’t a soap opera, relationships are part of people’s lives but they don’t define the world of Tyria or why I’m interested in spending time there. Less melodrama and more story.

HumaCarrionEater.8254:

I love Kas and Jory, but they’re not exactly breaking the mold. I think conventionally attractive women in a lesbian relationship is a lot easier for most people to accept. However, what I personally would love to see is a gay male relationship in the spotlight, where neither party is a stereotype, i.e. where neither of them is expected to play ‘the woman.’ or act flamboyantly. I’d also ideally like them to be human, because I find that other species don’t really ‘count’ to the average person.

Good job Anet on inclusion so far, just another hopeful suggestion from a queer player who is desperate to see gay men in an actual romance, as opposed to portrayed negatively or in a way that’s oriented around sex.

ehmmm

Though I agree completely, I personally feel it would be kinda redundant. We have two major gay relations ships and they just happen to both be females. Adding yet another gay relationship but this time male and male (as great as that would be) would feel like cramming it down our throats, especially since Kas and Jory are pretty new to the overall story. Let’s just wait a while and let the current stories characters progress and develop first then add more relationships of this matter to present themselves.

So, now we have had TWO prominent lesbian romances:

1. Caithe and Faolin
2. Marjory and Kasmeer

And no heterosexual romances “in the spotlight,” or other species, or….
I’m not saying they don’t exist. We have the backdrop romance of Logan and the Queen, for instance, and the two cooing quaggans in the refugee camp, together since the Tower of Nightmares.

But none of them have had much spotlight. But now we have had two that seemed to get more spotlight than the rest, both lesbian romances.

To preface my own personal attitude and to hopefully deflect accusations of homophobia, I could’t care LESS what someone’s sexual proclivities are, as long as the people are all consenting adults. I’ve been friends with homosexuals, swingers, BDSMers, the list goes on and on.

But I also know that the mainstream IS heterosexual. And having now TWO lesbian romances back to back in the stories as the closest thing to a spotlight romance does now raise my eyebrow: it feels like it’s a social agenda being pushed.

I don’t like social agendas in my entertainment. I just want to be entertained, not proselytized to.

So why now two of these in a row? If the story writers were just trying to write something “different,” they could have mixed it up. Why not a romance in a different species, or in BETWEEN two species? For example, Braham and Rox!

I’d love to see a quaggan/skritt romance, just because I think it would be hysterical.

I’m just saying, it seems/feels now after two of these prominent that its a social commentary. If not, why two of these back to back? If so, well, please, we don’t need to have a social commentary shoved down our throats. Just entertain us, and if adding in romances, remember who the MAJORITY is, or at least mix it up with other romances, such as the type we would not normally see.

Norn/quaggan? Human Charr? Golem/Asura? :-D

And actually, someone else I saw posted here they felt the lesbian scenes weren’t for a social agenda but for the pandering to the “fanboy” out there, and why didn’t he get to have two men in a romance? His question, not mine, but I did find it an interesting one.

Anyway. I’m just saying. I’m interested in hetero romances, not homosexual ones… or romances that we couldnt see in the real world. Have one lesbian romance if you need it, but please remember that the majority of people ARE hetero, and we would like to have our interests “pandered” to as well.

And it doesn’t mean we are homophobic. We just happen to have our own interests in what we like.

Heck, last time I saw the two quaggans at the refugee camp, the female quaggan, on saying she hated scarlet and wished she would DIE, I thought she sounded borderline ready to transform to that Piranha Hulk state that I thought it would have been cool for her to show up ready to chew on Scarlet some!

(as a side note, I did find it interesting that Marjory appeared not lesbian, but pansexual; she appeared to flirt with anything that moved; I would have found it far more interesting if she DID flirt with just about everything, and thus took more time to get closer to Kasmeer, maybe even have some friction about it in the beginning…. and Scarlet’s crack about dating Caithe in the Aetherblade dungeon was hysterical too! )

And here I’m concerned that the politically correct crowd is going to attack me for this post… but like I said, I don’t care about people’s proclivities in general… after all, I have a “proclivity” that I’m not going to discuss here. I just think that two in a row for a game like this is a bit odd and eyebrow-raising. Next storyline, think we can steer away from a third repetition and give us something a little different?

I’d like to propose that a vendor appear after the LS finishes. He/she will accept all remaining LS items that were never used in trade for some items of little consequence. I have partial stacks of Marionette keys, I’m sure others have Tricolor key pieces, and potentially a half dozen other items from throughout the year+ LS that either never got turned in or are the unusable remains of partial stacks.

Don’t let the vendor sell anything that can’t be acquired elsewhere, but give us something to do with all these extras taking up bank space. The vendor would be proof that we’re allowed to finally “trash” stuff without repercussions.

I urge you all, go to Lion’s Arch.

Talk to the NPCs
Wander the roads.
Swim the depths of the bay.
Explore the sewers.
Run the jumping puzzles (actually do them, don’t just ’port to the end).
Bet on the moa races.
Leap off the diving board.
Chat with the Tengu.
And much more.

In short, enjoy Lion’s Arch while you still have the time. The clock is ticking.

You see, my friends. With this whole “Oh, bring more homosexual couples”, “We need more relationships!”, “How about different race couples!” you just convince Anet to ruin GW2’s current state of story, lore and etc further. We don’t need more relationships. They won’t really add anything to the story or anything at all. They will just please those who are desperate for such a thing. So Anet will resort to doing unnecessary things.
For example. Many races are still unexplored (especially norn), dragon corruption is not even explained much (even with all the Priory scholars studying it for a while now) and there is more. Give us characters that will contribute to the lore more. We already understood that you want to impress LGBT and DN community, but it’s time to switch to something more sensible.

At present it seems more like Mesmers and probably other professions don’t have any official organisation, or at least exclusive organisation. The Order of Whispers probably had a large percentage of Thiefs by anyone can join, the Vigil probably Warriors but again anyone can join.
It would be nice if we had profession-based organisations in game, would be nice for lore given opportunity to flesh out how some professions are viewed by society and how they view society and mechanically it could introduce profession specific armour, weapons, quests etc.

Do you know what I think about this whole ordeal? I see BOTH TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP as a cheap way of telling a story, and it gets in the way of what actually is happening with the main plot. It doesn’t help that these same-sex relationship in these stories are usually the “in your face” kind of way and that their fans are the loudest when spoken against it.

Meh, it’s kind of cheap play imo to “educate” people about tolerance (lol?), be somehow different than other mmo romances and attract male nerds with lesbians… Not really interesting plot.
In fact, I liked the minor Rox’s romance plot, when she mentions Pickaxe way more.
Things like putting some dialogue into every patch just to say “Heeey! Heey, You! See? We’re lesbians! It’s cool, we live together, love nudity and we looove bananas” is…well… Immature and dumb

MatthewMedina.5419:

The past year of Living World has been a massive learning curve for us for many reasons, and there have been some areas like this where we agree that there is room for improvement. We’re committed to taking the lessons that we’ve learned over this year and applying them to how we author content and deliver story moving forward, and I’m confident that our storytelling in this format will get better and better as a result!

When me and my guildies entered the Dead End Bar for this Living Story, our guild leader commented: “Wow, we are actually being treated as the main character again”.

You can pass that along to the writing team.

iFruit.6190:

Hello! Expanding on the topic of this thread I would like to ask someone from the devs’ lore designers team to comment why the Sylvari race is generally presented as homosexual!

I astutely believe that every person’s bedroom business is their own, and one should not, in anyway, be humiliated or offended for the fact of having an unconventional orientation. On the other hand, I never understood the necessity to share these very private matters with the whole wide world! What is the motivation behind (goal to) this?

It is my opinion that video games as a medium are currently mingling in what could be called a sort of culture war. Homosexuality has made great strides, and become largely accepted in the past few years, but there are still many mediums that are struggling with it. You can see this in the portrayal of homosexual stereotypes in sitcoms.

Video games are also trying to put their stamp on it all, often forcibly so. This is why we’ve recently seen a lot of homosexual couples in videogames, like for example in Dragon Age and Mass Effect. But videogames are a bit of a clunky narrative driven medium. The writing often isn’t that good, and a lot of the writer’s good intentions can often come off as a bit forced and unnatural. The idea behind it is good, but I can see how some gamers may feel that they are getting their noses rubbed in it.

In my opinion, it is more important for a person to be recognized for who they are rather than for what gender they are.

I don’t want to be that guy, but please, anet, stop forcing this crap down our throats. Same-sex relationships are not something that fits a fantasy game. This helps in no way the lore that has already been damaged by the living story. I know you want to make the characters more compelling, but this will just make most people scratch their heads. At least keep it subtle.

Don’t even get me started on the multiracial things with Rox and Braham, because if it’s going in that direction, then this is just gross territory.

There are other ways to make us care about the characters without forcing this. GW2 living story really lacks good characters at the moment and this is not helping.

back on the topic of the OP, I am starting to get tired with the gay/lesbian stuff popping up everywhere. I mean, I am ok with it, I may disagree with it, but I wont hate them for it. Its just that I don’t want to have to see it. I would like to hear about it very little, if at all. almost every game has a gay/lesbian character in it, and its part of the main story so its unavoidable. its just getting annoying to me personally

Now, as some of you recall, the developers recently tacked on five extra days to the Tyrian calender, claiming they had always been there and, similar to The Secret World event, Guild Wars Classic experienced periods of “Nameless Days”. The obvious reason is that someone forgot Wintersday in Tyria actually isn’t supposed to line up with our Christmas, yadda ya.

But I have a much more terrifying idea:

We don’t really know if the Elder Dragons we’ve seen the minions of so far are the only ones, in fact, it’s all but confirmed there are more out there. But what if one of them is REALLY out there? In space.

An Elder Dragon of the Stars so massive, it’s sheer existence has shifted Tyria’s orbital revolutions enough to add whole DAYS to the calender?

What if the Star Elder Dragon observes us from afar, examining us like one would watch microbe swarm and multiply in a drop of water?

What if the Star Elder Dragon draws closer and closer every year, and by the time we know he’s there to fight him, it’s too late, the entire star system Tyria resides in begins uncontrollably tumbling towards it?

I am asexual/nonsexual offline, and as someone with a neutral genderpoint and NO biases, these are my honest opinions

Caithe and Faolain seem to be an emotional romance rather than sexual.
There are plenty of hetero relationships.
The Marjory/Kasmeer romance feels 100% forced.

It was pretty easy to tell right from the get-go that Kasmeer and ’Jory were a couple. It was being commented on right here on the forums by the first few people who went to the Dead End Bar, just how… attached… the two appeared to be. Dagdar and Eladis, then Caithe and Faolain can be explained away as a way to explain how agender the Sylvari are, but Kasmeer and Marjory are pretty obvious.

The way that Marjory talks to Kasmeer is reminiscent of how your kitten Tracy type detectives would speak to a ‘babe’ in those old black & white movies. That isn’t to say that she doesn’t flirt with men too, but the way it is done just feels so forced and false. When she does this with men, she is trying to tease for fun or obtain information. When she does it with Kasmeer, there is no other possible motive than direct flirtation.

It feels – totally – like fanservice. I’m all for mixed gender/race/species relationships, but the way this is played out feels awkward and contrived.

Kasmeer is a totally airheaded space cadet bimbo, Marjory is an over-sultry for it’s own sake anachronism.

Apart from that, Marjory just feels completely out of place in this game. I don’t like her, I wish I’d never seen her, and I don’t care if she gets destroyed.

We’ve all heard the legendary tales of the Norn, but on a lighter side it turns out that for all the ale they drink they’re as susceptible to the infamous “beer goggles” as any other race. Want proof? Just listen to the stories they tell about their conquests of women after a moot. More often than not, it’s Eir today, Garm tomorrow.

The point i was trying to make is: If there is good character development that furthers the story it is absolutely irrelevant if its a gay romance or not. I am not about to praise or condemn a relationship simply on the fact that it “raises gay awareness” or other such crap.