I dont understand the fascination with Cantha

[EpicName.4523]

In a traditional fantasy setting you have some form of medieval society (more or less). You have dragons, spells, wizards, oversized swords and etc. Yes, there are deviations and even despite that it can get somewhat stale and boring after awhile. However, you just know what to expect and you expect that everything fits together nicely in this world.

 

Recently, I was looking at the last trailer released and all I saw was some depressing steampunk metropolis. It looked completely out place and tbh - kind of ugly. An overcrowded dumpster of gray concrete. 

 

I also remember the weapons that came with the purchase of EoD. All of them had a distinct...Chinese look. Call it Cantha or Cathay, it is China. Of course it will look Chinese, but that's not the point. Point is the association I had - these bamboo weapons reminded me of a cheap Chinese souvenir, the type they sell to gullible tourists in discount shops.

 

And I suddenly came to the conclusion that there will be an entire expansion dedicated to a culture that is kind of out of place in a typical power fantasy with an art style on armor and weapons that I will dislike aesthetically. I remember Mists of Pandaria in WoW and when they announced the pandas I was like - I AM OUT. The areas, the music, the entire setting was just trying too much to be China without really being one. And that was everywhere, it was almost impossible to escape. In a world with orcs, goblins elves and undead there were also the fat pandas. The former April's fools joke that came to be for real.

 

I don't have anything against China, but I am afraid most developers have the tendency to glorify the culture they want to portray, maybe out of respect or maybe because they think it will attract audience in said country. (Probably the latter)

 

Question is, why do people want to see China so much in this game? Am I the only one to fear the setting will be a turn off?

[Rogue.8235]

24 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Recently, I was looking at the last trailer released and all I saw was some depressing steampunk metropolis. It looked completely out place and tbh - kind of ugly. An overcrowded dumpster of gray concrete

 

Out of place?  Real world history is a continuous example of how different, isolated cultures develop differently at different speeds.  Cantha was isolated from the Tyrian continent and developed differently.  Not a shocker....

As far as your perception of the city, eh that's just the way you see it.  We all have different aesthetic tastes.  Personally, every city is blah to me.  Otherwise, it is very clearly built for tourism.  Cantha doesn't have a robust tourism industry, and the city seems to be built on function over form.  It makes sense that it would be ugly.

24 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I also remember the weapons that came with the purchase of EoD. All of them had a distinct...Chinese look. Call it Cantha or Cathay, it is China. Of course it will look Chinese, but that's not the point. Point is the association I had - these bamboo weapons reminded me of a cheap Chinese souvenir, the type they sell to gullible tourists in discount shops.

The bamboo weapons are more of an Austronesian style.  Y'know, the people that sailed the Pacific Ocean way before anyone else in the world could even fathom doing so.  The ones who founded the Majapahit  kingdom.  The ones who are most definitely not at all Chinese.  

Also, Cantha is not just Chinese aesthetics and architecture.  It's an amalgamation of East Asian culture to include China, Korea, Japan, the Majapahit , and some goth people for some reason.  Not everything that is Asian is Chinese....

24 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

And I suddenly came to the conclusion that there will be an entire expansion dedicated to a culture that is kind of out of place in a typical power fantasy with an art style on armor and weapons that I will dislike aesthetically. I remember Mists of Pandaria in WoW and when they announced the pandas I was like - I AM OUT. The areas, the music, the entire setting was just trying too much to be China without really being one. And that was everywhere, it was almost impossible to escape. In a world with orcs, goblins elves and undead there were also the fat pandas. The former April's fools joke that came to be for real.

We have guns in Tyria.  There are snipers and cannons that build upon the theory of advanced ballistics.  That, already, is a departure from typical fantasy MMO's.  Then there's the Asura, which have been there since Guild Wars 1.  You seem to be forgetting them.

It's cool that you don't like the art style and aesthetics of Cantha.  However, to expect that every culture will appear the same is...strange.  Do you expect the entire planet to share the same exact cultural aesthetic?  Even on the single continent of Tyria, look at the variance of aesthetics between Hoelbrak, the Black Citadel, Rata Sum, Divinity's Reach, and the Grove.  they're very different.  The Crystal Oasis had a very different aesthetic as well.  And these are cultures that have maintained contact and trade with each other.  An isolated culture will develop very differently.  

An example of this can be found everywhere throughout world history.  Compare the Maori, Bedouins, Visigoths, Songhai, and Inca.  Extremely different from each other despite being Human and on Earth and present during the same time period.  With your point of view, it should be equally upsetting that they are so different.

24 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I don't have anything against China, but I am afraid most developers have the tendency to glorify the culture they want to portray, maybe out of respect or maybe because they think it will attract audience in said country. (Probably the latter)

Again, you are conflating every East Asian aesthetic with China.  Not everything and everyone from East Asia is Chinese.  As a Vietnamese person, this is especially true.  We're.... ahem... not fond of the Chinese, as evidenced by the past 2500 years or so.

24 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Question is, why do people want to see China so much in this game? Am I the only one to fear the setting will be a turn off?

Question is, why do you think that every East Asian aesthetic is Chinese?  Am I the only one to fear this level of conflation?

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Rogue.8235
spelling

[EpicName.4523]

8 minutes ago, Rogue.8235 said:

 

Lots of stuff

 

You seem to think that I am ignorant enough to confuse China with the entirety of East Asia.  I am not. 

However, I can assure you that given the desire of the vast majority of game developers to ponder to Chinese markets, this is the idea they usually try to present. Cantha is China, not Vietnam or Cambodia or whatever, at the very least given its name, lore and obvious references.

 

You are right the game has guns and snipers and whatnot, but these are not unique to this MMO and I have no problem with them. Other games have done it too and it works. And yes, it makes sense that different cultures are...different. 

 

My fear is that the art, setting, music and everything else, the entirety of the expansion, of the end-game if you want to call it, is based on a culture I personally dislike from purely an aesthetic point of view. I fear that presence will be overwhelming and inescapable. My hope is that if they want to portray China, they just don't overdo it, that's all. 

[witcher.3197]

Because the fascination comes from GW1 Cantha, which has nothing to do with GW2 Cantha. Anet made no effort to recapture the magic of the original.

Think of them as 2 separate things that share a name.

[Gibson.4036]

Out of place in power fantasy?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia

OP, how did you feel about African/Egyptian inspired fantasy in Elona? What’s the difference here?

Edited February 3, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[EpicName.4523]

7 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Out of place in power fantasy?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia

OP, how did you feel about African/Egyptian inspired fantasy in Elona? What’s the difference here?

The difference is in the fact that in Egypt and Africa there isn't a huge market of literally billions of people. A market that the devs might want to capture by relentlessly pondering to what they consider that this market might want. 

[Raolin Soulherder.3195]

1 hour ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Recently, I was looking at the last trailer released and all I saw was some depressing steampunk metropolis. It looked completely out place and tbh - kind of ugly. An overcrowded dumpster of gray concrete. 

GW2 Cantha is quite different from GW1 Cantha

[voltaicbore.8012]

36 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

A market that the devs might want to capture by relentlessly pondering to what they consider that this market might want. 

It sounds like you just didn't know that Cantha was a thing in GW1? All the talk from that game about empire, jade, and dragons evoke a very Chinese vibe, and GW2 doesn't really have much of a choice in terms of inheriting that Sinocentric bent. At the same time, one of the most prominent names that carried over from GW1 Cantha into GW2 was Shiro Tagachi, which is just two outright Japanese names. It's always been an awkward mixture of East Asian motifs. The assassin class/art/armor designs from that era and region of the GW franchise are also much more... shinobi-esque than anything else, which is again Japanese.

What I noticed more is the various efforts the devs made to incorporate more distinctly  non-Chinese elements into the upcoming version of Cantha, specifically some overtly Korean choices. The new flagship story NPC (Joon) has been prominently featured in most of her appearances as wearing what looks like a modernization of the traditional Korean hanbok, and many of the male guard-looking NPCs are wearing outfits pretty closely associated with Joseon-era (again, Korea) military formal wear. The name Joon itself is a very common syllable of Korean given names, and is also a Korean surname. It's also fairly common for many Korean women to have a monosyllabic given name, which is something of a slightly sexist relic of Josean-era naming conventions. Korean males from established households generally had two-syllable given names, one of which they share with all legitimate male family members of their generation (also that shared syllable is determined generations before they are even born). It's actually quite handy for me as a Korean-American with relatively low contact with Korea itself. If I meet another member of my branch of the Lee family (which happens in some of the most random places in the world, my flavor of the Lee name is extremely common among Koreans) who has "Sang" as the first syllable of their given name, I know that they're actually two generations above me (my dad's father also had "Sang" as the first syllable of his given name). I know I need to interact with him with a baseline level of deference so as not to bring shame to my parents.

As women were very much second-class citizens in Joseon-era Korea, female descendants don't share in the "you're part of this generation" thing with the family, so they often just get one syllable. Kinda lame. At the same time, the whole naming/Confucian piety thing is kinda dumb, so in a very real way modern Korean women dodged a bullet there by having a tradition of being given names because they were pretty or sounded cool.

Putting aside the fact that GW2 inherits the foundations of what "Cantha" is from GW1, I think the "Asian cyberpunk" theme is inescapably Chinese in general, and we can't really blame ANet for that. The whole lawless, rickety, overbuilt, ultra-dense metropolis look has deep roots in Kowloon Walled City. Many cyberpunk works and franchises drew direct design inspiration from that environment, and (as much as I personally dislike how it looks in GW2) it makes sense for ANet to also rely on a cyberpunk theme when it comes to rapidly modernizing what was very much a classically designed East Asian civilization less than 300 years prior.

Edited February 3, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[Farohna.6247]

29 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

The difference is in the fact that in Egypt and Africa there isn't a huge market of literally billions of people. A market that the devs might want to capture by relentlessly pondering to what they consider that this market might want. 

Yet it was portrayed without pandering to anyone, an amalgamation of regions yet uniquely Elona, so why is Cantha any different?  Does it bother you if there are mountains or villages because clearly that's pandering to Europeans?  It doesn't appeal to you, no problem.  

[Danikat.8537]

On top of not knowing about Cantha in GW1 it sounds like the OP isn't aware that GW2 is already sold in China and has been for years, so any "pondering" to Chinese players would have happened around the time it was released there and any impact that's going to have on the western version of the game is already present.

[Sigmoid.7082]

Is this a "why do people like something I don't and why is this thing I don't like being put into the game?" or is there more I am missing?

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, witcher.3197 said:

Because the fascination comes from GW1 Cantha, which has nothing to do with GW2 Cantha. Anet made no effort to recapture the magic of the original.

Think of them as 2 separate things that share a name.

It seems to have quite a bit to do with it, except you want to be stuck in the past, while everyone else and the game is moving forward. 🤷‍♂️

7 minutes ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Is this a "why do people like something I don't and why is this thing I don't like being put into the game?" or is there more I am missing?

Partially this, but also "this is not a copy of gw1, so it's bad and doesn't fit in... gw2 250 years later for some reason"? 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Mungo Zen.9364]

 

1 hour ago, EpicName.4523 said:

My fear is that the art, setting, music and everything else, the entirety of the expansion, of the end-game if you want to call it, is based on a culture I personally dislike from purely an aesthetic point of view. I fear that presence will be overwhelming and inescapable. My hope is that if they want to portray China, they just don't overdo it, that's all. 

Your fears and hopes!!!!

They are portraying Cantha, based upon the lore and history of the region combined with new stories to connect Cantha from ~150 years ago to Cantha today.

Like any game this one draws inspiration from the real world, but being a Fantasy game set on a totally different world, there is no direct correlation to the real world at all. 

But hey, if you do not like Cantha for being Cantha, on it's own merits, you do not have to play the game.

[EpicName.4523]

1 hour ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

 

Your fears and hopes!!!!

They are portraying Cantha, based upon the lore and history of the region combined with new stories to connect Cantha from ~150 years ago to Cantha today.

Like any game this one draws inspiration from the real world, but being a Fantasy game set on a totally different world, there is no direct correlation to the real world at all. 

But hey, if you do not like Cantha for being Cantha, on it's own merits, you do not have to play the game.

Ah yes, my fears and hopes. Could speak about yours, but I neither care for nor share them, so I express mine. And yes, I do not particularly enjoy the setting, but that doesn't mean I am against playing it. Don't put words in my mouth, thanks. 

[EpicName.4523]

2 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

On top of not knowing about Cantha in GW1 it sounds like the OP isn't aware that GW2 is already sold in China and has been for years, so any "pondering" to Chinese players would have happened around the time it was released there and any impact that's going to have on the western version of the game is already present.

Uhm, you do realize that an expansion to a game released in 2006 is completely different to one in 2022, right? The world is a different place now. Many companies are trying to please China, including tech giants like Google. Games are made specifically for that market. Celebrities make videos to apologize for some perceived slight. Censorship is enforced just to make a game sellable there. So a game made today will have entirely different goals compared to before and this change must not be underestimated.

 

[Danikat.8537]

14 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Uhm, you do realize that an expansion to a game released in 2006 is completely different to one in 2022, right? The world is a different place now. Many companies are trying to please China, including tech giants like Google. Games are made specifically for that market. Celebrities make videos to apologize for some perceived slight. Censorship is enforced just to make a game sellable there. So a game made today will have entirely different goals compared to before and this change must not be underestimated.

 

Oh, so you really don't know.

I'm not talking about Factions. Guild Wars 2 was released in China back in 2014: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_China

There's seperate servers for the Chinese version (including a seperate login server, mail, Trading Post and other things which are shared between EU and NA) and a seperate publisher but it's the same game and all the content is made by Anet.

So like I said any changes you're expecting as a result of them selling the game to Chinese players would have happened in 2014.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Danikat.8537

[Freya.9075]

Good thing gw2 is not medieval fantasy then. It’s enough games with that. Gw2 has their own way of doing things and I like a lot of what they’ve done so far. I don’t want to see China in the new expansion I want to see cantha and from what I’ve seen so far I’m into it big time. 

[Keitaro Dragonheart.9047]

3 hours ago, witcher.3197 said:

Because the fascination comes from GW1 Cantha, which has nothing to do with GW2 Cantha. Anet made no effort to recapture the magic of the original.

Think of them as 2 separate things that share a name.

I don't get his mentality at all. It's been 260 years since GW1 happened. You do know that things change, that technology advances, like, a lot in just a 100 years right? All you have to do is look at how much technology advanced in the last 100 years in real life.

Edit: And I'd like to add, to be very clear, in the last 100 years, we went from launching washing machines into space, to preparing to colonize Mars. Just for perspective. 

"Anet didn't copy-paste Cantha from GW1, so it's bad."

Edited February 3, 2022 by Keitaro Dragonheart.9047

[Farohna.6247]

6 minutes ago, Keitaro Dragonheart.9047 said:

I don't get his mentality at all. It's been 260 years since GW1 happened. You do know that things change, that technology advances, like, a lot in just a 100 years right? All you have to do is look at how much technology advanced in the last 100 years in real life.

"Anet didn't copy-paste Cantha from GW1, so it's bad."

You know because we are all still riding on horse back and typing this by oil lamps.

[EpicName.4523]

16 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Oh, so you really don't know.

I'm not talking about Factions. Guild Wars 2 was released in China back in 2014: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_China

There's seperate servers for the Chinese version (including a seperate login server, mail, Trading Post and other things which are shared between EU and NA) and a seperate publisher but it's the same game and all the content is made by Anet.

So like I said any changes you're expecting as a result of them selling the game to Chinese players would have happened in 2014.

I guess I don't explain myself very well. It doesn't matter if GW2 is released in China. It doesn't matter if it is in a separate server.

 

You are a customer. You like certain things. When you see things that spark your interest you pay money for them. The people that sell you the stuff you like make more of it in order to sell it to you.

 

You live in China. You like Chinese culture(real shock, I know). You see a game that sparks your interest because it is centered around a version of the place you live in. You buy the game or the cosmetics related to it. You spend time and money. The people that develop the game see that they make a profit by selling you stuff. They decide they should focus their efforts on selling you more.

 

And when you have a large market with potentially billions of customers, you follow that path until the customers' wallets are empty. It's called capitalism and I can't explain this any clearer.

[Sigmoid.7082]

10 minutes ago, Keitaro Dragonheart.9047 said:

I don't get his mentality at all. It's been 260 years since GW1 happened. You do know that things change, that technology advances, like, a lot in just a 100 years right? All you have to do is look at how much technology advanced in the last 100 years in real life.

Edit: And I'd like to add, to be very clear, in the last 100 years, we went from launching washing machines into space, to preparing to colonize Mars. Just for perspective. 

"Anet didn't copy-paste Cantha from GW1, so it's bad."

Oh no they fully understand it has to evolve but they're upset it didn't evolve the way their personal head canon expected it to. 

 

But don't worry, they are a true fan and are here for Cantha when the rest of us are not. 

 

(Paraphrased quotes from another thread) 

[Farohna.6247]

7 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I guess I don't explain myself very well. It doesn't matter if GW2 is released in China. It doesn't matter if it is in a separate server.

 

You are a customer. You like certain things. When you see things that spark your interest you pay money for them. The people that sell you the stuff you like make more of it in order to sell it to you.

 

You live in China. You like Chinese culture(real shock, I know). You see a game that sparks your interest because it is centered around a version of the place you live in. You buy the game or the cosmetics related to it. You spend time and money. The people that develop the game see that they make a profit by selling you stuff. They decide they should focus their efforts on selling you more.

 

And when you have a large market with potentially billions of customers, you follow that path until the customers' wallets are empty. It's called capitalism and I can't explain this any clearer.

No you've made it very clear.  The main point besides the marketing to please a large wallet full of money, is that in your opinion it doesn't fit into this fantasy game.  You didn't care for MoP in WoW, similar thematically, which was also a long established part of the lore.  You don't care for the theme of EoD.  It's not your aesthetic.  However, it is not the present day countries that it borrows from. It looks nothing like modern China, Korea, Vietnam....so therefore it is fantasy, as much as castles and broadswords are also glorified in ways that are unrealistic.  It's not your cup of tea, no issue.

[Sigmoid.7082]

21 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I guess I don't explain myself very well. It doesn't matter if GW2 is released in China. It doesn't matter if it is in a separate server.

 

You are a customer. You like certain things. When you see things that spark your interest you pay money for them. The people that sell you the stuff you like make more of it in order to sell it to you.

 

You live in China. You like Chinese culture(real shock, I know). You see a game that sparks your interest because it is centered around a version of the place you live in. You buy the game or the cosmetics related to it. You spend time and money. The people that develop the game see that they make a profit by selling you stuff. They decide they should focus their efforts on selling you more.

 

And when you have a large market with potentially billions of customers, you follow that path until the customers' wallets are empty. It's called capitalism and I can't explain this any clearer.

So why didnt they go to Cantha instead of Elona for PoF when they released the game in China to capitalise on that market when the iron was hot? 

 

I think you're overlooking the loads of people outside of that area who have wanted to go back to Cantha for literally years, you can find threads going waaaay back, to further rationalize you're disdain for the "introduction" of these elements and themes to the game. Downplaying and ignoring major things to try and justify your point. 

 

Are we going to Cantha because it's one of the next large major areas in the game that people have been asking for for years, is the area of one of the franchise's first major, and incredibly memorable, expansions OR going there just to appeal to the Chinese demographic? 

 

Clearly just to appease and pull in that demographic, no other reason. /s

We get it. You don't like the aesthetic, but don't try to be disingenuous, contort, and misconstrue why we're going there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Sigmoid.7082

[Harak.8397]

Every Western MMO has their "Fantasy Far East Asia expansion".  Visually they all want to touch on the same aspects, the same tropes, etc.  The reveal trailer will probably have greenery, lotus blossoms and people doing Tai chi speaking of honor, harmony, etc. If not those, something similar.  That's a given and it happens to all of the successful ones (MMOs) with the inevitability of death and taxes. (You just wait should ESO go to Akavir for instance )

Now here we go to Cantha, where the danger of falling into the same easy depictions is very real. Then comes the "cyberpunk" element, the rapid  transformation of a society due to technological factors, political tensions, etc. I don't like the aesthetics of it personally but if  Jade tech is the one thing keeping us from running into  NPCs telling us that  "Yoo muss fine balanss and hawmony" with the usual old hollywood faux-chinese accent, then I'm all for it. Yes, we'll still have old sages, white tigers, dragons, turtles and cranes..but at least the cranes are Tengu here! 😉 

Kidding aside, I don't have high hopes for anything coming out of Cantha to look good on my Charr but that's a given regardless of setting. (For some of us, IBS was our one chance at updating our looks in a major way since release and cultural sets.. but I digress).

In the end, I'm hoping the story beats will be steering us away from the usual tropes and the the pervasiveness of Jade tech is going to make the maps trappings more alien than familiar. (I'm having flashbacks of Mists of Pandaria just writing this post and it is my sincere hope that the team at Anet wanted to move beyond the old "well traveled road" so to speak.) In short, I'm not excited about the setting but I'm putting my hopes in the story... which is still a risky proposition as we know.

[witcher.3197]

3 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

It seems to have quite a bit to do with it, except you want to be stuck in the past, while everyone else and the game is moving forward. 🤷‍♂️

 

Enjoy moving forward into maintenance mode while getting ripped off   🤷‍♂️

Edited February 3, 2022 by witcher.3197