I’ve spent this beta weekend trying to decide on mains. I’d been set on rolling a human street rat Necromancer as my main…but having seen the supreme adorableness that is Asura, I’m not sure. They are freaking adorable. I generally don’t like small characters, as your point of view is too low and armor also looks odd, as if it had been squished to fit. ArenaNet has done a simply wonderful job with Asura. Not only do you feel as though you are playing a “normal” character in terms of size and seeing around other people, the animations are perfect. As soon as I saw my Asura elementalist spin her staff like a baton while at rest, I fell in love. Asura can be as creepy or kawaii as you wish, but either way they are tiny packages made of win.
Elementalist made me re-think Necromancer as a profession; it was just so damned fun setting stuff on fire. But then I started thinking about how much fun Ranger was (as long as you could keep your pet alive), and I became confused. I literally have no idea whatsoever which I’ll roll as main at launch.
What I did decide on are races and faces. My Necromancer will be the aforementioned pigmentally-challenged street rat with an affinity for dead things. My Asura Elementalist will be red-haired and floppy-eared, a bit like a serial-killer kitten. My ranger I’m probably going to also roll as human, although I was tempted by Norn. I love dark-skinned, ethnic characters in games, but usually the skins aren’t done well, or you can’t get any reasonably ethnic-looking features. Guild Wars 2 is a bit like that – many of the dark skins are either of a weird grey/purple cast, or are oranger than a character from Jersey Shore. They don’t really have a natural, dark mixed-race black or Asian skin that looks good in game, so I will have to do what I can.
Perhaps I’ll start them all at the same time, and rotate between them until I settle on a main. Or perhaps I’ll just play my Asura Elementalist, because an adorable gremlin who sets things on fire is just too much to resist.
POSTSCRIPT:
I saw this on a GW2 Reddit thread – a recap of an overhead conversation between two Asuran children:
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks norn cows go “moot”.
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks “crafting” is something you do on the “criver”
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks sylvari and golem are precious metals
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks Blood Legion is something you should see a doctor about
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks “elemental” is four letters in the middle of the alphabet
- Your mama’s IQ is so low, she thinks a golemancer is what you get when you ask a golemquestion
Squee!