With Guild Wars 2 Head Start (Aug. 25th) around the cor­ner, it’s time to make the dif­fi­cult choice.

Select­ing a race and profession.

Oh well, that would be one of the dif­fi­cult choices.  The other emerg­ing one is another topic for another day.

I don’t nor­mally believe in the say­ing of “igno­rance is bliss”, but now I see the merit some­what.  Never before I had such dif­fi­culty in choos­ing a race and class for my char­ac­ter in an MMO.… I sup­pose never before I am instilled with much lore and back­ground sto­ries of a vir­tual world before I set foot in it. /fanboi

So, srs bsns is seri­ous.  I’m not fond of mak­ing alts, which com­pli­cates the prob­lem even more.  Unfor­tu­nately, Guild Wars 2 is unlike Mabinogi, Eve Online, PSO2 and mostly other MMO games I enjoyed where the player is allowed to be a “jack of all trades” on one char­ac­ter;  in Guild Wars 2, race and pro­fes­sion are set in stone after char­ac­ter creation.

To help tackle the prob­lem, I feel a nec­es­sary evil is needed: that is, some stereo­typ­ing of pro­fes­sions in respect to each race.  Dis­claim­ing any author­i­ta­tive­ness, I’ll “ana­lyze” each race’s char­ac­ter­is­tics and find two most cat­e­go­riz­ing pro­fes­sions for each race.

 

Asura

Asura plus com­bat, Gole­mancer is the first time comes to mind.  Sadly the Asura-only pro­fes­sion is not (and for obvi­ous rea­sons, can­not be) playable.  Since Asura believe in Eter­nal Alchemy, I sup­pose if there’s an Alchemist pro­fes­sion, it would be another sig­na­ture for the Asura.

1. Necro­mancer

Necro­mancer deals with, magic, death, and sum­mon very use­ful min­ions to be meat shields in midst of com­bat.  Although the Asura has no nat­ural affin­ity to the “death ele­ment” in necro­mancy, their exper­i­men­tal­ist approach to magic and cre­ation of life and death fits into the picture.

Think about a diminu­tive Franken­stein.  That should do the trick.

2. Engi­neer

So, the Asura are advance both in sci­ence and magic, and hav­ing assigned Necro­mancer to cover the “magic”, it is only nat­ural to have the Engi­neer pro­fes­sion to rep­re­sent the other qual­ity of the race.  An inter­est­ing ques­tion to be asked is: to have a loyal golem buddy, does it require more magic, or more engi­neer work?

 

Charr

I still remem­ber the trau­matic moments of van­quish­ing Ascalon areas in a party of 4 back in Guild Wars 1.  My three heroes and myself got mer­ci­lessly mur­dered by the Axe wield­ing war­riors and Bar­rage rangers.  It’s a good thing that they are no longer the vil­lain, while remain vig­i­lant  in deliv­er­ing deadly force to its foes.

1.  Engi­neer

Ever since the Charrs ousted the Shaman caste who led the race into wor­ship­ing false gods, the race’s cul­ture made a sharp turn to empha­size steel and mech­a­niza­tion.  The Engi­neer class’s raise of social rank is a result of that.  Although a typ­i­cal Asura may call a Charr’s mechan­i­cal cre­ation “crude”, the Charrs would pride them­selves for build­ing any tool that wins the bat­tle for them.

2.  War­rior

250 years is not enough time to change the physique of the Charr race:  they are still mas­cu­line and value phys­i­cal strength.  The War­rior pro­fes­sion in GW2 is most ver­sa­tile:  blades, to bows, and guns are all in their weaponry.  War­riors deploy phys­i­cal strength and tech­niques to over­whelm opponents–a fit­ting theme for the Charr race as well.

 

Human

They are tra­di­tion­ally the median race in fan­tasy RPG:  the most flex­i­ble race with­out ini­tial spe­cial­iza­tion.  Are­naNet must has been con­sci­en­tious about that, since they molded the race into some­thing slightly dif­fer­ent from the norm.  In the time­line of the orig­i­nal Guild Wars, humans were the most pop­u­lous race, and by exten­sion, the most influ­en­tial.  How­ever, after lost wars to Charrs and the rise of the Elder Drag­ons, their seat of de facto leader race of Tyria has eroded away as other races gained promi­nence in close proximity.

1. Guardian

“A Noble, Resilient Peo­ple.”  — offi­cial site ver­ba­tim, racial description.

I sup­pose noblesse oblige moti­vates the view­point of humans that they have a duty to fight min­ions of the Elder Drag­ons and pro­tect Tyria and all its races.  The Guardian pro­fes­sion, which closely resem­bles the “Pal­adin” arche­type, is more or less the embod­i­ment of that idea: they gen­er­ate boons and use ban­ners and walls to help allies and them­selves, while wear­ing heavy armor, they pun­ish their ene­mies up close.

2. Mes­mer

The cur­rent Queen of Kryta is a Mes­mer.  Case closed.

Let me elab­o­rate.  I think humans are the only race that pro­duced iconic mes­mers in the past.  It may have some­thing to do with the humans in Guild Wars 2 are at an era that draws par­al­lel to Renais­sance, and the­atrics being part of their cul­ture.  Charis­matic lead­ers, and charm­ing actors are both facets of the Mes­mer profession.

 

Norn

They hunt, and they boast about it with ales.  Their stereo­typ­i­cal image may be eas­ier to define, but it cer­tainly is not fair for their long his­tory in Tyria.  Luck­ily, the scope of this post is exactly what stereo­typ­ing is all about…

1. Ranger

The Ranger pro­fes­sion is more than an archer in Guild Wars 2.  They are pro­fi­cient not only in bows, but also swords, dag­gers, and axes, plus an assort­ment of off­hand equip­ment.  Of course, don’t for­get about their pet com­pan­ions.  Though if I were to name the pro­fes­sion, I’d just call it Hunter; less confusion.

2. War­rior

The Ranger encap­su­lates the essence of Norn so well that a sec­ond pro­fes­sion choice becomes opaque.  It’s a hard choice, but I think War­rior is nat­ural for a race like Norn.  Being a Norn war­rior is a bit dif­fer­ent from being a Charr war­rior, though.  A notable dif­fer­ence is that: for Charrs, they fight in squads and con­sider them­selves as gears of a greater war machine, aim­ing for vic­tory at any cost.  For Norns, how­ever, a vic­tory is noth­ing if it doesn’t bring glory, and their soci­ety val­ues greatly on indi­vid­u­al­ism of such glories.

 

Syl­vari

The youngest and least stud­ied race of Tyria.  While other races have ori­gins long before the orig­i­nal Guild Wars’ time, there sim­ply isn’t enough his­tory for Syl­vari.  Although that does not make each Syl­vari less wise, there is a gen­eral theme: the Syl­vari are curi­ous, explor­ing, and have a sense of duty.

1.  Guardian

The Syl­vari makes a good Guardian the same way a human does.  Although social sta­tus and sense of worldly urgency moti­vates the humans, it is sub­tly dif­fer­ent for the Syl­vari.  Born to Tyria at a time that the land’s exis­tence is threat­ened by the awak­ened Elder Drag­ons, many Syl­vari con­sider fight­ing the drag­ons and their min­ions, along with any­thing evil, being their rai­son d’etre.

2.  Ele­men­tal­ist

Ele­men­tal­ists are adept magic users who focus on the four nat­ural ele­ments: fire, water, air, and earth.  Sim­i­lar to Norns, Syl­vari has a dis­tinct affin­ity to nature… shouldn’t be a sur­prise for a race who can be said, is born from the giant Pale Tree, and built its home city around it.  Come to think of it, the Syl­vari is equally fit the descrip­tion of Rangers…

 

Hon­or­able Men­tion: Thief

This was a hard one.  All races have cul­ture ele­ments that oper­ate in a more secre­tive fash­ion.  For exam­ple, the Ash Legion of Charr, and the Syl­vari hero­ine Caithe are patrons of the Thief pro­fes­sion.  Its pre­de­ces­sor pro­fes­sion in Guild Wars 1, Assas­sin, was pop­u­lar due to its elu­sive nature.

In con­clu­sion, I hope these list­ings con­form with both intu­ition and real­ity of the game, and they are remotely help­ful for those who could not decide which race/profession to roll with.  Quite a few days left still until the game goes live, so make up your mind :)