Guild Wars 2

I thought I was creating a MALE Charr. This is what they gave me:

There is plenty of skimpy clothing in the game, and a lot of cleavage. There are in fact a number of neat sets which provide a more practical look, except fail at the need for some gratuitous cleavage thrown in.

The OP is making the classic “we’re under attack”/victim argument. Sorry, but the societal norm is for skimpy/kittenty female clothing, and in games, armor. The skimpy/sexy/kittenty side is not some poor, oppressed minority. Revealing armor (ie any armor with at least some cleavage or thigh or belly showing) is the majority of armor.

I have MMO’d for about12 years. I have always had these options: (1) to play on multiple servers so that if I needed some me-tiime away from guild and groups, I could have it. To you people who will say “well, log off, then”…No. Sorry, but not. Sometimes I want me-time to grind or bash things. (2) to play on the same server, but have a private alt that no one knows about.

Both those options are unavailable to me in GW2. As a female, in the 12 years I’ve MMO’d, and, well, lived in the world, I can tell you from a female perspective that the transparency in GW2 is uncomfortable. I’m very careful with my online personas. I don’t think that I should be forced by a game to be so transparent that every single character I play is tied to one account that every single person who decides, unbeknownst to me, to add to a friends list, should be able to see.

I’ve also been hacked in MMOs. I don’t need hackers to friend me and see that I have four level 80 characters so my account must be “worth hacking”…or whatever. (I don’t have four level 80s, btw…I’ve only been playing for a week)

To the people who have said the only reason to want to be anonymous sometimes is to be a raging b*tch on one char and nice on another, or because I must have some nefarious griefing reason to want to hide…I say no. I’m just an intelligent, cautious individual who knows that TMI on an MMO is a safety issue. To the devs, might I suggest you investigate a police-taught course in online safety, and you might end up agreeing. There are, unfortunately, severely disturbed people in the world and yes, some of them do MMO. I can’t stress enough that the reason for this post has to do with the fact that I /deserve/ the right to be able to guard, monitor and protect my own online safety. You have removed part of my ability to do that with the level of transparency in this game. For those of you who say, “well, don’t play then”? I just might not, wabbit, I just might not. But my not playing won’t potentially stop someone else from having a bad experience.

In the end, grief players can still be identified at a business level by ID. Every player on the server doesn’t need to know all my alts.

The explanation Korsbaek mentions is the only one you can really believe with things as they are. The largos are a land race, pure and simple, that for some unexplained reason decided to live in the depths. They’re ill-adapted and can’t even breath underwater (or at least, that seems the logical explanation for their masks), yet somehow they have developed these "fins" I’m supposed to believe work underwater? No, I don’t buy it. Their wings, like everything else about them, are ill-adapted to a life at the bottom. It seems inevitable to me that they had to flee back to the surface, yet they persist in and near water despite their awkwardness.

And you know, guys, I’m really trying to keep this from becoming personal. I understand that some people love the largos. I understand that some people actually want them as playable characters someday. I knew this before my first post, and I’m trying not to belittle anyone who actually likes them. You’re entitled to your opinion, and should probably be happy that you’re in the majority here. But I’m also entitled to my opinion, and while in the minority, I’m not the only person who finds the largos design to be lacking.

For me, Guild Wars is a more interesting world without a race of elves tossed in. This was true when the sylvari re-design happened, and it would be true if the largos were ever re-designed as well. Going to elf designs is a lazy fallback these days, and I’m really quite bored with it. Sticking wings on and putting them underwater doesn’t make up for the fact that they’re still pretty much just elves. And if you’ll notice, elves are conspicuously missing from the rest of the game, and I think there’s a reason for that. In fact, I think my opinion was probably shared by the someone(s) behind the sylvari re-design.

(fun trivia fact for you reaaaaaally old school GW people, did you know that originally the charr were going to be just some orcs? ANet’s amazing art team said no to orcs for the same reason they said no to elves. Orcs & elves is over-done. New ideas can be far more interesting and release the writers/artists’ creativity.)

I think the elf thing is a central point I should probably have made sooner. Some people will go crazy for elves no matter where they find them. Elves are "humans but better" so not only are they relateable, they’re ripe for hero worship. You pretty much can not make an elf race without flocks of fan worship. It’s normal.

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in those hordes plenty of times myself. But I’ve long since lost my fascination with an over-done idea. For elves to be interesting these days, they have to rise to a whole different level of good writing, which the largos haven’t. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t in the future, but if they’re ever to move beyond a peripheral near-forgotten race, they’re going to need some serious updating. I suspect that the reason people who dislike largos aren’t more vocal about it is because (for now) they’re easy to ignore. If you pushed them into the spotlight as is, threads like this would become a lot more common.

tdlr: Right now the largos are underwater elves. I know I’m not the only one who finds that boring.

*Become the hero that killed Trahearne

redslion.9675:

Well, I think it would be a bit odd if all players became Grand Marshalls.

I think the players should control the Pact indirectly. i. e. Trahearne is in charge, but he gets orders from you.

This way you could say the Pact is guided by a mysterious group of fighters above everything, the true protectors of Tyria whose names will never be known.

That’s basically what I got from most of the cinematics.

“Trahearne we have this neat bibblededoo to stop the Risen!”
“Or we can simply use this Ermbibble to do the same thing.”
(Trahearne): “Hmmm we do need to stop the Hamena Hamena, so what do you think is best Commander?”
(The Player): “I choose the bibblededoo.”

Having literally JUST played that mission for the first time, infamous cannon fight and all, I think I finally understand it.

The final showdown with Zhaitan ISN’T a fight. People all get disappointed because they’re expecting to fight him, but think about it: when was Zhaitan ever a fighter? All along, he was a chessmaster, using a large and varied stable of minions to put pressure on the heroes. Once you defeat all the pieces, he’s nothing but a helpless King. He can move one space per turn and he loses automatically the second you corner him.

The final mission isn’t a ‘fight’ with Zhaitan. It’s a chase scene.

That said, I am totally expecting we will be ‘fighting’ Primordious in the traditional sense. If that one isn’t a Warrior I don’t know who is. And I SWEAR TO GOD if they give us another “throw rocks at the boss” battle I am going to be super irritated.