Guild Wars 2 in 20 Minutes

My sister suggested I play Guild Wars 2 with her. I was like "it's out!?" because last time I was interested the release date was months away and fuzzy. I haven't played a MMO in ages but I was interested in the sylvari after seeing a few interesting things about them: the design behind them had a functional aesthetic I could get behind. It's an interview with designer Kristen Perry, which struck me because 1) I rarely hear women talking about character design, especially in MMOs, and 2) because it shows a lot of thought.

I also want to note: the female charr are positively BOSS as a monster lady design, so much so that I almost rolled up a charr when I first got in game. The asura are also pretty charming as the race of tiny creature people.

So anyway I left the game downloading overnight and hopped on to play this morning before editing Morgan (auuugh deadlines) with minimal research. It started and ended with "best class for starting" and "racial bonuses." Apparently the races have no real bonuses except for a few that don't impact playstyle too much, which is great to me because I try to choose races on what I want to play dress-up with. That was good enough for me! And it beat WoW where mage = blood elf (less so after mana tap, I miss you, mana tap). I mean, belves are pretty, but give 'em to the Alliance since they have no pretty men and Horde had lots of them ;-;

Being me, I rolled up a sylvari elementalist, which is the closest to a pew-pew mage I could find.

Note: you should maybe do more research because rolling a character involves answering a few questions with not very well-articulated answers. e.g., as an elementalist it asked what glyph I wanted: water, fire, earth, or air, with explanations like "those who use the flame know that nature requires destruction for new growth." I checked wiki and learned that flame = pew-pew while water debuffs, air buffs, and I forget earth.

I want to talk about names. Oh my God, you guys, I have never had this sort of trouble nabbing a name before. GW2 still allows variable name length (most people pick a first and last name) but even still, every name I wanted was taken. I'm not talking common names either. I tried Benefice! And someone had it! That's gibberish I made up for a book! And sure, it's not new gibberish, but come on.

Fine, I'll make a two name character. ...I can't even come up with a first name and now I need a last name?

Finally, memories of sixth grade and "Gaius sursum deorsum salit" floated across my brain pan, and I rolled up Sursum Deorsa (seriously, why is that boy always jumping up and down?)

My plant lady is apparently some sort of pseudo-British, and since I have no ear for accents (even accents I am strongly familiar with) I kind of like it!

( on to the tutorial and spoilers for everyone who cares )

And that's my impression after 20 minutes.