No, I don’t actually have Guild Wars 2 yet. I’ve just been perusing the wiki, getting a sense of what’s there and what I might do for my set of characters. I was reading a fun article from Rakuno over at Shards of Imagination, wherein he writes a bit about offbeat race/profession combinations. This is the sort of thing I love, and something I think is sorely missing from World of Warcraft. Yes, I would make a Pandaran Druid. And a Gnome Hunter. Just because.
Why Gnomes Can’t Be Hunters
(That’s a bit of art I did for BBB a while back. Too much fun.)
I therefore took a matrix of races and professions in Guild Wars 2, trying to come up with Twitter-sized role playing backgrounds for each possible combination. Some are way too easy and obvious, others are more esoteric and interesting. I won’t play all of these, but it was fun to imagine “what if”… if only for a short time.
Now… I should preface this by noting that none of these are actually professions. It seems to me that the profession of every player character in pretty much any MMO is “mass murderer”, the difference only being in the methodology. This is key when considering something like the Thief profession (which awesomely, actually involves something almost like theft in GW2). I imagine these characters as actual, y’know, thieves, not “mass murderer who uses thief-style killing tools”. Maybe that’s a failure on my part when considering role playing, but I do like to think of these things as professions, if only because it makes writing character fiction more interesting. Every one of these characters will wind up as mercenary assassins of one sort or another, trying to selfishly gain power and loot. That’s just how these DIKU MMO things work, for better or worse.
Asura
- Guardian – Tinker’s Guild guard on remote assignment. Secretive, stern, strict.
- Warrior – Napoleon. Must fight anyone and everyone to compensate for ego/size mismatch.
- Engineer – Absentminded professor. Tinkerer with little direction.
- Ranger – Studying animals as golem inspiration/substitutes.
- Thief – OCD kleptomaniac. Simply must have at least one of everything.
- Elementalist – Scientist, systematically exploring elemental magic.
- Mesmer – Con artist, pulling one over on other races to prove Asuran superiority.
- Necromancer – Technomancer, researching corpse/golem similarities.
Charr
- Guardian – Samurai-like with grudge against Raven Norns.
- Warrior – Distilled Klingon.
- Engineer – Weaponmaster, searching for best weapon tech.
- Ranger – Alpha male. Seeks to dominate all animal kingdom.
- Thief – Interhouse chessmaster for hire. Intrigue instigator.
- Elementalist – Pyromaniac. Unhinged and obsessed with Ascalon’s FoeFire.
- Mesmer – Mind game tactician. Compensating for childhood by manipulating others.
- Necromancer – Boneyard caretaker; Grudgebearer avenging those under his care.
Human
- Guardian – Royal guard washout trying to prove himself.
- Warrior – Mercenary. Purely available to highest bidder. Medieval melee Jayne.
- Engineer – Sparky mad scientist. More Tarvek, less Gil.
- Ranger – Circus trainer grudgingly playing the hero.
- Thief – Artful Dodger with little long-term aspiration.
- Elementalist – Sailor with wild talent, primarily Air mage just starting to branch out.
- Mesmer – Carnival entertainer; two bit stage magician with debts to repay.
- Necromancer – Accidental hero. Only defeating bad guys to forestall rivalry.
Norn
- Guardian – Mama bear. Do not cross.
- Warrior – Berzerker, Wolf devotee. Lone wolf because he’s too dangerous.
- Engineer – Civil engineer. Raven-like focus and mental discipline.
- Ranger – Grizzly Adams. On steroids.
- Thief – Enforcer. Mobster. More robber than thief.
- Elementalist – Ice/Water shaman. Specializes in defense and healing.
- Mesmer – Psychiatrist. Norn tough love.
- Necromancer – Preparing heroic spot in afterlife for friends… by any means.
Sylvari
- Guardian – Pale Tree Rootguard. Just wants to stay home.
- Warrior – Photoinsane bloodlusty nut. Only calm in the dark. Avenging vegetable slaughter.
- Engineer – Researching how to make technology useful to Sylvari plant physiology.
- Ranger – Experimenting with animals. Fascinating things.
- Thief – Shiny! Ooh, another one! Squirrel! Mine! ADHD? What’s that? Sounds like fun!
- Elementalist – Earth mage hippy.
- Mesmer – Dancer out to see the world.
- Necromancer – Golgari “circle of life” kind of guy. Just helping the circle along.
I’m not quite sure what I’ll play once I actually get my hands on the game. Apparently, without buying extra, I’ll have only 5 character slots. That means one per race, but not all the professions. (Or some other mix, sure, but I’d like to have one of each race to see the stories.) I’m leaning to the following: Asura Ranger (the bigger the pet, the better), Charr Mesmer (tricky kitty), Human Elementalist (or maybe Thief), Norn Engineer and Sylvari Warrior. That last one could be especially fun to role play, as light and dark in the environment would alter his mood, and his psychotic penchant for avenging vegetable slaughter could have shades of HK-47‘s “meatbag” commentary.
I reserve the right to change my mind on any of this… but it was fun to play with the ol’ imagination for a while, no matter how it all finally settles out.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Some pretty funny ideas. I really love the sylvari warrior avenging his fallen (?) vegetable comrades. The Sylvari thief and Norn necromancer were another favorites of mine.
And thank your for the mention. 🙂
Interesting angles, I like them. I think my favorite is the Human Mesmer from the carnival. I haven’t got fully developed backstories—can we abbreviate that BS? ;P—for my characters; but much like you, I decided on one of each race.
So for me:
Asura Necromancer
Human Engineer
Norn Elementalist
Charr Guardian
Sylvari Ranger
I still want to try the other three professions, but that can wait. Of the ones I have the Guardian is my least favorite to play, though not because he’s Charr. I just haven’t haven’t really gotten the hang of it.
Loved the list, these were too funny. I’ll never look at some combinations the same way again, especially charr warrior and norn ranger, lol.
You know what am gonna say……buy GW2 already!!! 😛
Heh, it’s on the list. My gaming budget at the moment is being burned on making my PC work without random crashes. Since I use it for freelance stuff as well, it’s kinda… important to have a working computer, and my freelance income is somewhat less than up to the task. *shrug*
I think this is the inevitable consequence of chained solo quest games where everyone follows the same chain. The game has to devolve to the lowest common denominator – dps – and class flavor gradually disappears.
The way out imo is a mixture of generic mob-grind for exp and tailored solo quests designed around specific classes for class-specific gear and abilities so for example the thief class could go back to having things like climbing and detecting traps as class abilities because thief quests would be designed around those abilities.
Even more so if the class was its own story i.e. if you imagine the list of abilities / spells you’d a want a necromancer class to have then lay them out in tree form each ability could be the reward of a quest i.e. a necro doesn’t automatically get the ability to summon a skeleton at level 1 they get the ability to learn how to summon a skelly at level 1 but actually learning it involves some task or other which fits the class e.g. digging up skellies at a graveyard while dodging the patrolling watchman.
EQ almost had this system from the beginning. There are hundreds of quests whose rewards only suit certain classes many of which need certain levels of faction and many quests that raised standing with the various factions but the system was almost completely invisible unless you researched it online first (and a lot of it was broken and had unbalanced time / reward also) but the basic idea is a good one imo.
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