Guild Wars 2 in 20 Minutes

[damselfish]

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!

So the sylvari are "born" by waking up under the pale tree. They come out of fruit! Nice. As a race they've existed for 25 years and blah blah stuff, but I did like it. It had a very fantasy feel-- where most old guard fantasy is "argleblaargh ANCIENTS" I'm seeing more and more short-lived races. So anyway you have a dream, depending on the prompts you picked in character selection (am I chasing a white stag? Did I see a green man? I dunno man it's 9 AM and I just wanna play my flower lady). Your character wakes up in a "dream" and is counseled by someone from the real world. Nice setup for a tutorial.

The controls aren't too confusing, and the elementalist goes straight to blowing things up.


The casting animations are nice. I am mostly blowing things up with fire but the water animations are much prettier. ...Also I couldn't get a good shot of fire.

You can also see the UI, which I really want to mod. I can't make out anything on this. Seriously, gray text against green-gray grass? In a small font? I can't read that. At least the buttons are huge and say "fire" "more fire" "lots of fire." That's all I need.


Then your guide takes you to fight a giant dragon which is where you learn things like the limits of your range and that your boots are SUPER CUTE.

Look at them.

So cute.


Then you wake up naked in the real world. Bummer. Though I do like the flower bikini.


Butt ruffle. Though I actually took this picture because I was jealous of that NPC's wing things.


And that was Guild Wars 2 in twenty minutes!

I spent a fair amount of time coloring my armor. Oddly enough I am not terrible bothered by the sexy armor? Yeah it shows a lot of skin and has a garter, but it also makes me squee to myself over how cute it is. It's got so many ruffles.

I might reroll her because the pink that looked adequately flowery in the creation screen (and looked great with that blue hair) ended up not looking so swell in other lights, as if I tried to make a planty human. What do you think?

And the warriors actually wear warrior armor and stuff, so I can't be all that bothered over the sexy clothes.


Sure it's pretty fantasy armor... but it's not a chainmail bikini.

Though I did look at the norns and humans and they run the gamut between gorgeous and full coverage (uuuunf norn engineer and human ranger!) and Vegas showgirl, I guess there's sort of something for everyone. Unless you really want to be a norn elementalist lady. I am also not usually struck by the prettiness of skimpy outfits, so I guess I'm shallow enough that pretty design trumps feminist values. Who knew.

I kind of want to roll a mesmer just for the dress. I don't think I'd like the playstyle at all, but THAT DRESS:

I'm getting my girl cooties all over this game.

And that's my impression after 20 minutes.