Guild Wars 2

Ludovicus.7980:

Dwayna – school of preservation (bloodstone known)
Jormag – brutal preservation on Ice

Well that sort of makes sense

Lyssa – school of denial (bloodstone known)
Kralkatorrik – brutal denial, distortion of reality

all dragons do that, not only Krally

Balthazar – school of destruction (bloodstone known)
Primordious – brutal destruction by fire

Destruction means more than just fire, but I give you that

Grenth – school of aggression (bloodstone known)
Zhaithan – brutal aggression through your very fallen allies

how is making undead out of corpses aggressive by itself? The necro did a lot more with aggression than just summoning undead, like using bloodmagic and curses, both of which Zhaitan doesn’t seem to do and both fit more with aggression.

Now the 2 gods which are out of the schools of magic:

Melandru – life and earth
Mordramoth – brutal production of life and earth (well, we don’t really know much about this fellow)

does Mordramoth produce life? No dragon so far does, in fact it’s said they can’t, they can only twist and corrupt life.

Kormir – knowledge (they key bloodstone I guess)
Bubbles – for all we know he could be the more knowledgeable of all dragons (we know nothing about him)

that’s it, we know nothing about him, so we can’t align him anywhere.

My thoughts are in bold.

This thread again! Hurray! Short answer to question, are the 6 Dragons the 6 Gods? No.

Thanks for making another pointless thread which will bring up the same old arguments as before and contribute nothing new to the lore community.

You obviously don’t go to the zoo much. Monkeys are some dirty, dirty animals. :P

But be careful, the monkey likes to fling it’s poo at you!

What many people don’t know, the Mists are actually forming a giant monkey, who holds the banana. Isn’t nature beautiful?

Everyone knows Tyria is shaped like a banana. :P

Well there is still the Giant’s Basin (and the Lesser Giant’s Basin), which could support a navy. Sadly we never got much information about it, though in my opinion this is odd, since Kryta’s focus shifted more towards the north, so actually the Giant’s Basin should be more important now.

Edit: I forgot, the Lesser Giant’s Basin doesn’t exist anymore. Instead we now have the Lake Doric, which is located in the Harathi Hinterlands (how much I hate the world Hinterlands, sounds so wrong).

The strongest hint is simply that Kasmeer has a unique model, while Kiel doesn’t. Also there was a story bit about Kasmeer arriving on Southsun, hinting that there is more about her than just standing around and being pretty.
We’ll have to wait and see what comes from this. But I agree her introduction was a bit underwhelming. I’m pretty sure in the end she will be another failed attempt at making an intersting NPC, just like Braham and Rox were, or most of Destiny’s Edge.
The best characters Anet produces are the side characters, like Tybalt, Kiel, Magnus and so on. But no, they get shoved aside for the pretty ones with new unique models. Bah!

The answer is magic. As lazy as it sounds, but Riders were actually brought to Tyria from the Mists by a powerful wizard and they always have been able to cast spells. Well I admit in GW1 many creatures were casters for mechanical reasons, but in the case of the Riders it was implied that they actually are spellcasters. In GW2 there is less emphasize on their magical powers, but they still seem to count als magic creatures.

Zeefa.3915:

Well…. Denmark doesn’t have lions… still our national shield thingie (dunno proper name) is 3 lions.

I think coat of arms is the correct term. But yes that’s is also a valid explanation. Lions symbolize power, wealth and kingship, that’s why they are so popular. Though it is kind of odd that nordic countries use them especially. Sweden, Norway and Finland use them too, I think Iceland is the only one that doesn’t.

deepwinter.9015:

Given how Living Stories aren’t full-on expansions, I’m very impressed with how a small development team can push this content. They are progressively getting better (from the magnificent return of The Mad King to the devastatingly disappointing Lost Shores) at releasing this small content. Southsun is now so rife with activity and players that I find myself going there to participate in events even after I’ve completed my dailies!

So while its not a heavy lore expansion, its good for keeping things alive until said expansion.

Have you played GW Beyond? Those updates were made by much smaller teams with way less ressources and they were better.

They were basically the same thing as the living story, several updates over the coruse of a view months, each bringing new story content and rewards. But the story was better, way better in fact (except Winds of Change part 1, but part 2 and 3 made up for that).

The living story so far is underwhelming. We only get a very shallow plot, most of the important details are always either presented as blogposts or interviews, rarely ingame and if so only as mail. But even worse, the other part of the important details are postboned to future chapters. An example would be Canach. Since Lost Shores we knew he did something with the plants on Southsun, but what he did, we never knew until SoS. Why delay this information? It didn’t even pay off, he just made some steroids out of the plants. What a twist! That really was worth waiting 6 months for it… said no one ever.

The consortium themself are somewhat interesting, since they are not “for teh evulz!”, they are just ruthless capitalists. But I really wonder why we deal with them so much, if we have freaking dragons, undead overlords and ancient evils to fight. Atleast Flame & Frost gave us a somewhat threatening villian, though we again don’t know why they worked together and I’m certain the pay off will not be worth the wait.

And of course a living story chapter that connects to GW1 would be nice, especially since they officially stopped developing it. We were promised atleast another 2 Beyond chapter, which we will never get now (Elona and something in Ascalon). Atleast let us know what happened. That is far more interesting than this boring consortium crap.

Why is Mordremoth Athurian? I rather see his name as hebrew influenced, like Behemoth.

That is actually a pretty cool idea.

Welcome to the club, my home town has the exact same history. If that applies to the name too, than it’s probably a latin name, that got kittenized over time. My town started as the celtic Noviomagus (which is the most common celtic town name ever), was later conquered by the romans, who allowed the probably germanic Nemetes to sattle there, naming the thing Civitas Nemetum. But apparently that name was to long for the common towns folk, so they called it Spira, because the town was set in a curve of the river Rhine. Eventually Spira evolved into Speyer and there you have today’s name.

Sicho.2308:

sure but I’m also trying to find out where the name of the town comes from

I wouldn’t look into gaelic if I was you.

Though the name could have some gaulish roots, which is also a celtic language. Besides that, the roots could be latin, french or german. Or a mix of any of the former.

Some additional details would help, for example when the town was founded and by whom.

Hey Sicho, I might call you neighbor then, well almost, there is the Saarland between us (citizen of Palatinate here).

Regarding the name, to me Canach always sounded gaelic, which would fit to the Sylvari since most of their names are old irish/scottish as far as I know.

According to this site: http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/dictionary?language=irish&toLanguage=english&word=c%C3%A1nach Canach means tax or taxation. Not sure if that was intended by Anet or if it’s just coincidence.

Why do they always have to design fights with invulnerable bosses? That’s so freaking lame, I want to hit the boss, not wait for a window were I may can or defeat him with a stupid environmental weapon. Besides that the fight was bugged big time for me, Canach would lay on the ground randomly without a mine touching him and no damage done to him and then charge from this position. Besides that, he walked through green mines without them exploding, mines detonated even though I hit them with the correct skill and of course green mines doing damage to him and me when he walked through.

I still managed to beat him, but it was annoying as heck. I never ever want to see such a gimmicky fight ever again. Let me just kill him with my own kitten skills! The Doppelganger from Prophecies is a wonderful example on how this is done right.
You go in, you realize he uses your skills, you actually think about it a while and come up with a build that might work and if it doesn’t you try again (or look something up if you are lazy). But this one is an annoying no brainer. The game tells you exactly what to do, instead of letting you figure it out yourself, the hard part is not beating Canach, who is incredibly simple if you think about it, but beating the bugs.

I rate this fight 1/10. One point for the effort, but the execution was horrible and there is little to no strategy involved. Oh and while I’m at it, we need a function to save our builds, this would open up the possibility of making such encounters build dependent! Of course I don’t want to re-trait ever time for one fight if I have to note down and invest my points all the time. But with a function to save builds this problem would be gone, making way for actually strategic fights and not this mindless crap.

Let’s just leave it at this. But I had another idea when I thought about the Forgotten, Naga and Krait, as well as humans, dwarves and Norn.

We know that humans come from a different world. GW1’s lore told us the same thing about the Forgotten, and technically it could still be true, just the part with the gods bringing them might not be (or it is, if they meddled with Tyria before and we just have no recordings of it).

What if humans and Forgotten come from the same planet? That would explain why both have deep connections to the Six (well other races have connections too, but humans and Forgotten more so than any other). Now what if every planet in the GW universe follows the same rules of creation, maybe through the influence of the mist, magic and/or gods? In this scenario, evolution would always take the same or atleast similar turns, through the influence of one or all of the already named factors.

In this case Naga and Krait could just be the Tyrian version of what Forgotten are on their original home world, intelligent beings evolved from snakes. And humans could be what dwarves and/or Norn are, evolved from primates. Further more, Tyria could be more exposed to this influence, explaining why not only one but often several intelligent species evolve from one, like Krait and Naga, who both seem to be evolved from snakes.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

True, but I’d have to call you delusional if you think the norn and humans don’t have similar physiology. ^^

And I merely said that it’s more likely that the norn hold a common ancestor with Luxons, rather than with kodan. More likely != likely

More likely yes, in the way that getting hit by a lightning during a storm is more likely than winning the lottery. :-P

Naga and Forgotten are confirmed to be unrelated, Naga and Krait however is not only possible but likely in my opinion. Both are amphibious (in the military sense) serpentine races that live in the sea. Naga of course are way less hostile than Krait, but “personality” is not an indicator for common ancestry.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I, personally, find it more likely that the norn hold a common ancestor with the Luxons which have a lot more cultural similarities. Honestly saying the norn are related to the kodan because of Bear Form is like saying they’re related to tengu because of Raven Form, or to charr because of Snow Leopard Form.

Not to spark an old flame again, but similar cultue is not an indication for common ancestry.

In ancient times, there were populations of lions in europe and asia, not only africa, but they went extinct (some scientist think they lived in europe till about 100 A.D.). The same thing could have happened in Tyria.

Besides that, as Narcemus mentioned, the Kryta we know today was founded as elonian colony, therefore they could have used elonian symbolism in the capital.

spoj.9672:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL00553A085339802C

They arent finished but a decent and enjoyable watch. He still has the rest of factions to do + Nightfall and Eye of the North.

Keep in mind though that WP isn’t very accurate, he adds drama and details to the plot of the games, that weren’t there, or atleast not in the form described.

There is also a thread on GW2 guru, which provides a pretty good overall summary of the lore we got in GW1.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/7176-lore-summary/

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Hi there. You are doing an awesome job with these sketches. This thread is one of the best ideas I’ve seen in a while. I hope you wouldn’t mind doing one for my Norn engineer?

Preferably with the flamethrower packed and that crazy look in his eyes, that says “I’m gonna go medieval on you!”, but I give you artistic freedom.

Page 5, still waiting for the drawing like a… thing that is very patient.

Oh yeah I forgot that the thing was called Null. Yeah that’s actually pretty obvious and not much of a thing you need to make a thread about.

It amazes me that they try to make a bad*ss out of Canach, when he was clearly none the last time we met him. Well it’s pretty ridiculous to make “cool” Sylvari in the first place, they are freaking salad people, who would ever be frozen in awe when an oversized cucumber threatens you… but that’s just my opinion I guess.

Anyway, I don’t really get what you are speculating on, that Blingg’s golem is Noll’s boss? What? The way I understand the story, Canach will use the golem to get close to Noll, similar to a trojan horse, he will hide inside it.

Well why not give it a shot. I don’t roleplay, but I still like to give my characters a story.

Name: Tyr Snowmane

Approximate Age: 62

Affiliation: Order of Whispers, Pact, G.I.G.A.

Race: Norn

Profession: Engineer

The flamethrower is this old Norn’s best friend. He likes to burn things until they are crispy and he enjoys eating some of his freshly grilled opponents. He has lived 40 years in the Mists, to be more precise, in the Mad Realm, which left a toll on his mental health.

Appearance
Like every Norn he is tall and strong, however not as tall or strong as other male members of his species. His face is wrinkeled and covered with a white beard, his long white hair is knotted into a braid. His overall appearance is gruff and battle hardened.

History

Tyr Snowmane was a young Norn, when he first encountered the Asuran engineer Krugg, on a hunt. Krugg and his Krewe were attacked by Jotun, which Tyr helped to chase off. Sadly Krugg’s assistant was killed and his Golem destroyed. However the asuran scientist agreed to use the young Norn as his new assistant. Krugg was exiled from Rata Sum since his experiment was deemed to dangerous. He chose to do it in the shiverpeaks, because only idiotic bookahs lived here, so if it went wrong, nothing of value was lost.
However while working on his project he realized that Tyr was incredibly intelligent… for a bookah, he simply lacked the magical understanding to use Asura technology to full effect. Deciding to test his assistant’s abilities, he gave him some scrapped charr technology he aquired over the years. It turned out that Tyr was a gadgeteer genius and he soon build various tools and weapons out the given material, among them a flamethrower.
Finally the set up for the experiment was completed. Krugg tried to create a stable portal into the Mists, like the human mage Lord Odran did centuries before. And it seemed to work. Confident in his abilities Krugg pranced through the portal, followed by his stalwart. Unfortunately they ended up in the Mad Realm. The portal closed behind them meaning they were trapped.
Krugg quickly succumbed to the madness, Tyr however kept his sanity long enough to flee on fateful Halloween day, when the barricade between the Mad Realm and Tyria was at it’s weakest. Little did he know that this would also bring back the Mad King, a few years later.
Devasted by the experience Tyr decided to devote his live to a cause, in honor of his asuran Mentor. He would become a legend, fighting by using technology, instead of brute strength like kin does.
And thus begun the legend of Tyr Snowmane, Norn engineer.

Current Status
Tyr wants to prove that you can accomplish anything with a keen mind and you don’t have to be a tough warrior to be feared on the battle field. So far he build quite a reputation through killing Issomir; bringing Destiny’s Edge back together; fighting his old jailer, Mad King Thorn; fending of the Karka and Molten Alliance and even killing an Elder Dragon.

Affiliations
He is a member of the Order of Whispers and naturally also the Pact. Further he is also member and co-leader of a very old and honorable guild, led by a Sylvari guardian, an asuran necromancer and him. This over 250 year old guild is only know by their acronym G.I.G.A., the meaning of it is unknown to outsiders.

Family and Friends
Tyr was a loner before he met Krugg, who was something of a farther figure to him. Besides that his closest friends were/are Tybalt Leftpaw, Eir Stegalkin and his fellow G.I.G.A. members.

Personality
Tyr is quite prone to rage and he can get pretty violent if someone dares to hurt one of his friends, but overall he is a rather “gentle giant”, who just enjoys burning things that he doesn’t like. If he is your friend, he will be loyal and protective.

Quirks
Tyr does reveal a darker side when the full moon shines through the clouds. It said to be a post-traumatic-stress-disorder symptom from being stuck in the Mad Realm for 4 decades. He becomes quite feral and lunatic during these hours.

Stories and Art Involving This Character
Made by Aerobotnik

Hatory.1685:

poor girl, she lost her fingers…

She has hands?! Sorry I was distracted by looking at something else…

I posted this on the Guru already, but I might as well do it here as well, so more people can check it out. A friend of mine made a discovery on Southsun Cove. There was a hidden cave, in it a wall of steam that blocks further entry. However he (playing a necro) managed to time a jump and port skill well enough to blink behind the wall. These are screenshots of the interior space.

I suscpect that this will be either the place were Canach hides, or where we fight the Karka Queen.

The last two pictures were made by me show you how to get there.

Oranisagu.3706:

Crab Toss: you enter, have no idea what’s it about, everybody is an enemy, 3 karkas roll around killing you instantly. you’re constantly knocked down, dazed or whatever.
a lot less fun than the keg toss.
for the second permanent activity (or did I misunderstand?) it’s really bad. had they just reskinned the snowball mayhem or maybe the reapers rumble this could’ve been a lot of fun. the mechanics of the Crab Toss are really not fun at all.

All in all I don’t really care about crab toss as long as they finally find a way for groups to enjoy these activities together/against each others. they really need to update their PvP-Instance system to allow groups to enter etc. wouldn’t affect crab toss as it’s not a group game, but as I said, not really my game anyway.

tl;dr: Crab Toss is the worst activity (permanent or event related) so far. others were a lot better designed. mainly because of constant CC. not being able to enter as a group makes it even worse (which affects all activities though)

This. I went in and it took me 2 full rounds to even understand what the heck is going on. In the 3 rounds I played I managed to hold a crab once for maybe 2 seconds, because I was lagging so hard that I could only ever do anything with a 1 second delay. But even without lag, the objective isn’t fun at all. You take a crab and run with while absolutely everything on the map can CC the ever living crap out of you.

I ended my third round by specifically targeting one player, knocking him down everytime I could, just to make his experience miserable. Why? Because I was frustrated and had nothing else to do, getting the crab was an impossible task, so I ensured atelast one other person wouldn’t get it too. Of course that was a horrible thing to do and I normally never grief, but the game’s mechanics pretty much led me into doing this, simply for the fact that I couldn’t do anything else.

Are you sure you aren’t misinterpreting the situation? I haven’t heard the dialog in months, but to me it never sounded… so intense.

You think this is bad? Try being german, either you live on a mountain in bavaria, drinking beer or in the Black Forest, building cuckoo clocks.

I strongly agree. I still think the Lost Shores update is the best we got so far. It was plagued by bugs yes, but the giant meta event on the last day, this epic bossbattle and the permanent new content made it so awesome. I mean we got a whole new area to explore (granted it is pretty small and not too much to do there) and a complete new type of dungeon, that I continue to run even now, months after it was released.

But I also wanted a new classical dungeon, like the first 8, so I was immensely excited for the Molten Facility and extremely disappointend when I heard it was temporary. I can understand that with the Halloween, Christmas and 1. April dungoens, their thematic only works during the holidays, but why this one? They could have just gave it a permanent entry and add 3 explorer paths over the coming months. BAM! There you go, an entire new dungeon for the whole world to enjoy.
But instead they throw it away, all this hard work for a dungeon that’s here for not even 3 weeks. It’s okay to make the overworld stuff a 1 time only thing, but why remove everything the update brought us? How will this be siginificant to future generations of players if nothing is left?
And making the crab toss minigame temporary makes even less sense. It’s a minigame, GW2 right now has 3 of them, that Golem chess that no one plays, except 1 time to test it, Costume Brawl and Keg Brawl. Before the game was released they promised to give us 1 minigame per city. Again, I understand that the holiday minigames vanish with the holiday, but why crab toss? It could be used to actually bring people to the Southsun Cove even after the update. I mean who wants to go there currently? People who want passion fruit, orichalcum and karka shells, that’s all.

If you call it living story, then make it living and not short bursts of entertainment.

I think in the Beyond Flame and Frost video they said the SoS story will lead into a new story in June, which sounds like they want to make a new arc then, but it could just mean new story part of the same arc.

draxynnic.3719:

Another minor correction:

While they talked about adding more fractals, there wasn’t anything about them being ‘soonish’ – 2014 was thrown around, and the impression I had was that it’s not currently on their to-do list.

Not only your impression, he outright said that. Right now they only think about the possibility of adding new fractals, but they have no plans.

Most certainly wrong, also you are atleast the 50th person to post this theory. Like Erukk said, use the search function.

Bigtony.5089:

I think it will be good to take the time to see the difference between Dwarf and Norn ( sorry for crappy english ) :

Amor : Norn have light armor ( only the T3 heavy model is really a heavy armor, the others are barenaked.) The dwarves, in sterotype, have plate armor ( stone summit) or chainmail amor ( Dwarf of Deldrimor)

Religion : Norn have a religion inspired by the native american of the North( spirit of the wild) , while the dwarf have something more like the viking mythology ( in gw1, there was only the Great Dwarf)

Fight and governement : Norn fight alone , Dwarf in army. The Dwarves have a king , the Norn follow only themself.

Norn fight for glory first, Dwarves for fun( in other universe) ou the futur of the race/king ( gw1). Some fight for fun thought.

Habitation : Norn live in the wild, in isolate farm or can be see in bigger group, but not all the time ( Hoelbrak). Dwarves live under a moutain ( other universe and stone summit) or live in big town on the moutain ( Deldrimor Dwarves.)

technology : Norn have no really technology ( maybe the balista). They are good weaponsmith thought ( dialogue in Hoebrak and one of the weaponsmith in the pact is a Norn. The vigil blacksmith is her daugther.) Dwarves was the first race to use black powder.

Beer : Both love them !

Just a few notes:

Armor: Dwarves in GW1 use light and medium armor too (well atleast something that looks like that, as they weren’t classified in that way in GW1)

Religion: Dwarves also worshipped the human gods and some revered Glint.

Fight and government: Norn also follow great leaders if they have proven themself worthy, they just prefer to do things alone or in small groups (mostly because everyone thinks he is the supposed leader). Some dwarves did fight for fun, like Kilroy, but they had a pretty human attitude about it for the most part.

Habitation: Actually most dwarven settlements we came across were above the ground. It wasn’t until Edge of Destiny that we found out that they had whole cities underground. (Atleast I can’t think any larger dwarven underground settlement, besides Sorrow’s Furnace, but that was more an operation and military base then a settlement.)

I liked them in GW1 and I like them here. I hope they get a better government in the future without having to renounce their defacto communism. But no matter what, I’m positive they’ll be an everlasting source of fun.

Gandarel.5091:

In Flame and Frost, Braham eventually gets mad in front of Knut Whitebear about that “every hunter is at his own” among the norn.

And some people wondered why I thought Braham is “un-nornish”.

Pssst, no one is supposed to know that!

I used to like Quaggan once, but now they are everywhere and everyone is like “aww they are so cute smoochie smoochie”. I just want those annoying little tuna-heads to be eridicated. Make way for the Krait, the true champions of the sea. Snake-people ftw.

Dwarves will never be playable, from a design point of view, because, as Konig has mentioned, Anet does not want to follow typical fantasy tropes and from a lore point of view, because their days of glory are long over. They all turned into stone, making them immortal but also taking away their ability to reproduce. They can only get less, not more and makng a new character who is supposed to be unexperienced in the beginning of the game, wouldn’t make sense for them, as they are all over 250 years old, some far older than that.

If you like dwarves you might enjoy getting into Norn and Charr. Norn because they share that nordic theme, the ale drinking and the stubbornness and Charr because of their tinkering and their mistrust for weak elf-like races (humans in this case).

Well I asked once and they said they want to improve future characters and also that Trahearne will reappear in the story of GW2. But why make a new thread for this, there is one with the exact same topic on the very same page.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/why-does-everyone-hate-trahearne/page/2#post1890768

Well we don’t know what the weather in Orr was like, but south Kryta was subtropical to tropical, as are it’s bordering regions, like the Tarnished Coast. Also Orr had Gorillas, which usually live in tropical (and mountainous) regions, so I guess it’s pretty save to say that Orr had a similar climate to south Kryta.

Uhhhgh again with Wooden Potatoes… to spare you guys some time, this castle has been there (okay in a slightly different position) since GW Prophecies. Back then several villians tried to gain access to it, like Galrath, Verata or Justiciar Marron.

In GW2 the villiage of Garrenhoff is right beneath it, a place where no physical work has to be done by the people, obedient elementals do it for them instead. Sometimes the owner of the tower, Isgarren, who no one so far has seen, invites people from the village into his tower and they never come back. There is a popular speculation that those people are turned into elementals. Some think the tower is now connected to the White Mantle or the Mursaat (as the former tried to gain access to it several times in GW1).

I wasn’t meaning to imply that you dislike it, I was just opposed to saying romanesque is bland. Simple yes, but not bland.

I wouldn’t know that romanesque is a demeaning term, the german version “romanisch” is just descriptive without judging it. However, yes I said simple, but simple isn’t negative in my eyes either, in fact I prefer the simple style over the at times cluttered renaissance architecture (I outright dislike baroque and rococo for that reason).
In the end it’s in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Narcemus.1348:

Renaissance, lol. Ascalonian and Krytan architecture had some kind of revival within the city. Medieval architecture was a lot more bland, it was a time of strife and war so much of the architecture was built for needs only, renaissance brought beauty back to architecture.

You have never seen a romanesque cathedral haven’t you? My personal favortie architecture style by the way, it’s simple yet majestic.

That completly excludes the Dredge. Let’s call them the Molehills.

dinominator.9862:

If by marshmallows you mean rock-hard thighs and abs, then yeah, sure

I don’t agree they look the same. Human females get more of an hourglass shape and softer curves with a triangular midsection, whereas Norn ladies have a more stocky build. They have much more powerful legs, arms, chests, shoulders, neck. Also the midsection is not triangular.

I was more refering to real world humans. If you look at GW2’s humans they all look like fashion models, not what you average person looks like. Female Norn look more like real world humans imo, male Norn on the other hand can be more stocky than real humans are, but I would argue that many of them still look more like real humans than GW2’s male humans.
Anyway the only obvious difference at first sight is the height, not the shape of the torso, which also isn’t different from what a human torso could be shaped like. So my point still stands.
Now we don’t know what Norn genitals look like, but I doubt they are any different from human ones, except again for size of course.