The Scrying Pool: The Sixth Race

This week's article of The Scrying Pool continues expansion talks with new races!

In each article of The Scrying Pool, I look at what is and what could be. After taking a look at what is present in Guild Wars 2 now, be that lore or game mechanics, I then ask What If? What if this happened in the lore or this feature was added in a future patch.

Last week The Scrying Pool checked out what an expansion might look like in Guild Wars 2 as well as some of the core features that would potentially change in an expansion sized content drop. This week’s article will continue this expansion view by looking at potential new races.

Players will probably not see many playable races added to Guild Wars 2. If we see a new race every other “expansion”, then I think we would be getting a lot of new race love. A lot of work would be needed to add a new race to the game.

The first concern would be armor. There has been a noticeable disparity between the releases of new weapon sets to the game compared to armor sets. A big part of this is how much work is needed to add a single item. A sword for example can be created once and used on any character regardless of race or gender. An armor piece, however, must be created to fit each race and if necessary made to fit each gender within a race separately. Now it isn’t just creating one sword, but creating 10 different coats. Then factor in the three different armor classes and all the pieces needed to create a full set and you are looking at up to 180 pieces of gear to create a single armor set compared to the 19 weapons needed to create a weapon set.

The number of armor pieces would only increase with additional races. With each additional race the total number would increase by another 36 pieces of gear: Light, Medium, Heavy armor types for both Male and Female for the six armor pieces that make up a set.

Adding a race wouldn’t just mean more work for future armor sets, but also adapting the current armor sets to fit this new race as well. Currently there are in the neighborhood of 35 armor sets in the game. Multiply that by the six pieces in those sets, again by two for the male and female variations and finally by three to include the light, medium and heavy armor type variations and a new race would require a staggering 1,260 armor pieces to be adapted.

There are some additional considerations with this number. I mentioned that huge number for its shock value. If you had to change everything to fit the new race, that huge number is what you would be looking at. Not everything would need to be adapted and, depending on how the race is set up, it might not require variations between male and female. Shoulders for example might not need any adjustment to fit a race. Likewise new, very humanoid races might require little adaptation from one of the current humanoid’s armor assets.

The next concern is the Personal Story and by extensive of that voice acting. If a new race follows the same path as the current races, then, by my count, there would need to be 44 new personal story quests for the 1-30 racial specific storylines and voice acting for the player’s character for another 93 story quests. Then if any of the other character had voice dialogue dependent on the race of the new race’s character, that voice actor would need to reread those lines for this new race. Then as we are talking about this being part of an expansion, all of the new quest voiceovers would be added on top of this.

Do new races need to do all of these quests? In the current timeframe of GW2, Zhaitan (the end-boss of the current personal storyline) is already defeated. All of the story updates added to the game since launch have been added under the impression that these are post the Zhaitan story released at launch. Is it really necessary then for a future race to have the Zhaitan story retconned to include them?

No Zhaitan for future Races? -->

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Excellent ideas.
# Oct 14 2013 at 7:26 PM Rating: Decent
I honestly think ANet would make a new race as detailed as the previous ones. Simply because they've been rather spontaneous with their effort, some additions have been rather half-hearted, while others just go completely over the top. I like the idea of post Zhaitan storyline, Unfortunately I could see that turning into a concept hinging on the rather dull Living Stories we've been having.
Possible race
# Jul 22 2013 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
Tengu are definitively a race I look forward to playing because of my obsession with Asian culture, so I'd definitively pay 800, and depending on what content you'd get upwards to 2000 or so gems.

As for possible races i think you overlooked a big contender: the Largos.
In a way every race has their own Elder Dragon rival (not to mention a God linked to it):
Humans got Zhaitan
Norn got Jormag
Asura got Primordius
Charr got Kralkatorrik
Sylvari got Mordremoth (unconfimed)
Now, who's got Bubbles the deepsea dragon as their rival? Quaggan? Unlikely as you mentioned. Krait? They can't even wear pants, let alone shoes, generating all kinds of gearing problems. Karka? Nope not a sentient species. Among the sentient deep sea races that only leaves the Largos, they are as of now leaving their ocean depth because of "unknown Horrors". Their culture is based on Houses and honour, if a debt is incurred the debt must be repaid, so them joining the races fighting the Dragons is a House incurring a huge debt to the current races fighting them. Likewise an opposing faction can be another House which has incurred a huge debt with an opposing faction.
Also worth noting is their appearance is fully humanoid (except for their wings which might cause some backpack issues) so adapting armour to their physiology won't be too much of a problem.
Very interesting
# Jul 15 2013 at 2:01 PM Rating: Decent
A very interesting topic, there are a lot of races in the Guild Wars world, so many. Given your reasoning I am inclined to agree with you on the Tengu theory, they certainly look engaging enough to be a playable race.

To address the question you have posed: I too think it is very unlikely we will see a race fully-playable in the same context as the existing playable races. No, I think it is more likely we will see side story missions, or a select few story missions where we get to play as one of the Tengu, or other races, to learn their story. Not only would this be fun content, it would also be more realistic for them to accomplish, and it would be a good story-telling method. It's not a foreign concept in ArenaNet's history to have missions like this.

Another great article :)
Very interesting
# Jul 15 2013 at 1:59 PM Rating: Decent
Double post :X

Edited, Jul 15th 2013 4:01pm by Crainey
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