MMO Weekly page 2

08 Dec 2009 at 00:00:00 by Jeff Hollis

Some time back, ArenaNet announced that they were working on Guild Wars 2 (GW 2). From the moment I first heard of the project, GW2 struck me as having truly incredible potential to be a huge success. Why? Because GW2 is designed along the same principles as GW was. GW2 is to have all the technical advances, the beautiful artwork, the interesting content, and everything else that the original Guild Wars had, and one thing more: five races to choose from. Also, the races in the game aren't your standard fantasy fare; I actually found many of them to be interesting. Here's the break down:

The Humans: Go look in a mirror. See that? Odds are, you just looked at a human. Sure, it's a boring choice, but you're guaranteed to have completely generic and average stats. Whooopeeeeee.

The Sylvari: GW doesn't call these slim little tree dwelling pansies "elves". That's because, even though they're cute, slim, magical, arrow-shooting effeminate nature-lovers, they're really quite different from elves. Those differences include....um......uh.....well, the minute I come up with a way in which they're different, I'll let you know.

The Norn: If Conan mated with a giant druid (which is pretty likely to have actually happened, since Conan mated with everyone), you'd get a Norn. They're gigantic warriors from the frozen north, and they can shape shift into bears, snow leopards, ravens, wolves. And their women are hot, which is a bonus.

The Asura: Cute little gnomes that are good with magic, and are wonderful engineers. (Hmmmm...it seems like I've seen this in another MMO I played recently. Oh well, it's probably just a coincidence.) If you take a look at the Asura, they have a distinctly Asian artistic vibe to them, which is either appealing or derivative, depending on your perspective.   

The Charr: The big, monstrous race of GW2. They're part lion, part minotaur, and all mean and nasty. They also make a lot of "war machines" and use gunpowder; generally, their whole vibe is very ugly and mechanical.

Although I poked a bit of fun, I found a number of these racial options to be intriguing. The Norn? Shape-shifting giants are a cool concept. The Charr? C'mon, they're oilpunk badasses. The Asura? They rely on a combination of pets, magic, and engineered gadgetry, which has me curious.

I simply found the racial options offered by Guild Wars 2 to be refreshing on two fronts. First, it's obvious that ArenaNet doesn't want to commit the 'humans only' error twice, which is a good sign. Second, they didn't go for a generic 'humans / elves / dwarfs / other things J.R.R. Tolkien thought up 60 years ago' thing that everyone else has done. They innovated a bit, and I like that.

Does this guarantee that GW2 will be a big game, or will be the 'WoW killer'? No, nothing guarantees that. However, based on the quality that GW brought to the genre, and the fact that ArenaNet is now introducing races into GW2, it does give the game a shot at becoming an unbridled success. I wish them the best of luck.

By the way, Guild Wars 2 is set to release in 2011. Though that's a bit far off, it's certainly a quality title to look forward to.

And with that, it's time to wrap up this week's edition of MMO Weekly. If you found this scribble-fest entertaining, please feel free to visit us over at WanderingGoblin.com, where we scratch out this kind of low quality nonsense each and every day. For now, ciao!

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