Most bland playable race

[Ayakaru.6583]

Norn, by a milestone.They're just humans plus.We could've had one of many unique races that stand out, but no, they went with a human plus race.. and they went and removed the one thing that made them even slightly different from humans, the spirits of the wild

[ChillyKoti.1928]

Don't get me wrong. I like playing as human (usually prefers non-human but only if they are really well done physically and lore-wise)

But I voted human because it's basically the "default" mode in term of character.

[Ashantara.8731]

Sylvari are the most boring race IMO. The importance of their dream and their time of birth is not being reflected enough to me in their personal story, the impact isn't strong enough. Also, pretty much everything about them feels cheesy, they come across as too weak and vulnerable. And the Grove is by far the ugliest home town (I would have preferred a nice and normal forest theme, the glittering blue is too much in my eyes, again: cheesy).

[kasoki.5180]

Honestly, I think that all non-human races have been basically forgotten by Arena Net. Its hard to pick between drunk-unimportant, furry-unimportant, flower-unimportant and arrogant-unimportant.

Pardon my cynicism

[Pifil.5193]

Norns, they should have been left as NPCs so they could have kept their status as near mythical hunters and warriors, each one capable of holding their own against a charr warband, now they're basically just very tall dwarves: "I like drinking and fighting, yay!"

[Vision.7265]

No race is perfect. Each is unique and will have its own standard for being bland, dull, or uniform. So let's see what they have:

AsuraAs a culture who relishes intelligence and invention, loving learning and discovery is the norm. They have Asuran geniuses who are governed by a council which, let's be honest, is VERY academic in nature. Inquest are the only other major faction who are more into experimentation without any ethical limits. In the early story of the game, they played with Sylvari and then the Olmakhan Charr in much more recent memory.In general, Asura are short toons with dense brains whether or not they are ethical or unethical like the Inquest. We will never see the 40-year-old progeny who was too lazy to get off his couch and actually use his brain because he was too "high", nor will we ever have a sidequest concerning such a bum of an Asura.Every structure they build is some sort of floating cube or other geometric shape. As a race, they can never never have just simple stairs when they have elevators, warp gates, waypoints, and quite frankly, the most advanced technology out there.Sidenote: Although an Asuran Engineer really fits the bill on paper, the engineer class in-game uses technology that is prevalent in the steampunk Charr city of the Black Citadel so it doesn't make sense from a game lore standpoint. Asura should have engineers with the standard tech of their race.

CharrThe furries all love this floofy class of warring furballs. The hulking, muscular charr love to define themselves through war and battle save for the more recent Olmakhan Charr who do not. They are technically the "bad guys" of gw1 so they had appeal just so that people could be the bad guys.They have iron legion, ash legion, blood legion, and flame legion in Ascalon as well as the Olmakhan Charr who validate a druid or soulbeast build from a lore standpoint. But let's be honest, without the Olmakhan, the Charr overall are all just warmongers with flame legion at the top saying the rest of them should get on their level.Their main city structure is a giant, steampunk arena. I sincerely love its design and is the only race to truly validate the engineer class with it's matching steampunk theme.

SylvariAre delicious salads ready to be eaten. No j/k lol. But lets be honest, the npcs love making fun of them. I respect the sylvari because they never seem to be offended by it either. They're all so cheerful save for the Nightmare Court who broke away from the Pale Tree Sylvari. When the Mordremoth Expac came and they got their chance to be mind-controlled zombies like the rest of us were with Zhaitan, I was ecstatic because it brought about a new dimension to their lore.In terms of personality, they have two main types represented by two characters: happy-go-lucky Sieran or Faolain (aka Fao Fao) who was fiercely independent and really did have a mind of her own until they went extra dark side in Mordemoth.Their city? A big tree house. I think it was charming. So in-tune with nature which invalidates the engineer who has a flamethrower.

HumanHands down no one has more lore and focus than Humans both in-game and even in the novels before the game started and even in the previous game. (Good base character design, not fat and wide like WoW Humans who originated from Walmart).The humans are, well, HUMAN. However, they are very idealized human forms. I can easily etch out faces that match supermodels from the base model (I have 21 characters of proof, lol, and that's not all of them).I can make ugly ones with the older, wrinkled, and aged faces, but I don't want to play reality simulator like many people have alluded to in the forums, so I based my humans on models' faces. Additionally, if I want to spend, it won't be on an ugly toon.At any rate, everyone knows about humans because the in-game story forces everybody to know. Lol. We have the White Mantle, we have separatists in Ascalon, human ghosts Everywhere! Oh yeah they live in Divinity's Reach which looks like a Disney Castle from a distance lol.

NornThe Norn have the least amount of lore presented in the game. What we do know is that they are adventure-driven and always discuss growing one's individual legend. They are large, human-like people who relish the hunt and the glory that is associated with victory.In essence, they look like human and like to fight like Charr and are sized like Charr.They have two main factions Norn we can play who sided with Jora killing dragon minions as the right thing to do and those who believe that Jora was wrong in what she did, the Sons of Svanir, who love Jormag and the power of dragon.Their home of Hoelbrak is designed in the snow with the Great Lodge as its governing center.

ConclusionAfter review, it really depends what you're saying is BLAND about the particular race.

Humans are bland compared to the other races in terms of physical description: not to tall, not too small, not too much of anything. They also have generic city design and architecture, typical fantasy castle.

However, humans have the most fleshed out storyline and lore of all races. What I love is that there's MORE lore out there to uncover! I want to know about the THORN line and how it got to Queen Jennah at some point, I looked at the wiki and there are question marks all around the royal line.

Additionally, humans have the most character diversity. Asura all genius love math and science. Charr is war, save for Olmakhan. Sylvari all Sieran happy or like faofao. Nornies all about the hunt and glory and bragging about it. Humans just have a larger range of personalities.

I see why people see Humans as generic compared to other races. But within their own race, humans have much more character and personality range which makes them more attractive to me to play along with the insurmountable amount of lore that goes way back before the games started.

Let me know if there's a sidequest for that 40 year old progeny who never gets off the couch and smokes up, or a charr who's never killed anyone and thinks all Charr shouldn't kill (ghandi charr if you will) or a sylvari who is always depressed and only drinks at the bar, or a Norn who is smarter than Asura who actually cares about knowledge for knowledge alone.

Which leads me to see why DR is so popular for RP. Because of the personality limitations, there are less options to RP with the non-human races from a lore-based standpoint. Are there non-lore-based RP groups out there aside from ERP? If so, I may be interested for the lels because I want to see these unique suggestions I made here come to fruition.

Edit: I voted Norn because they're physically humans and with Charr size and Charr fighting attitude. So a copy of two to make one.

[Lexi.1398]

Norn - while they theoretically are interesting, i love the story, and i prefer them fashion-wise over humans...buut gw2 just hasn't /done anything/ with it. GW1 did and i'd love to play it sometime, but gw2 they're just kind of another race.... i do like that we at least almost always honor norn in story in the way that norn should be, but i want to see a little more.

[Dreamreaver.4908]

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's got to be humans. Yes they have a head start on the amount of lore and history which made it into the games because they were the sole playable race in GW1, and they did go slightly away from the 'generic race' default which humans usually are by reducing their dominance and restricting them to Kryta and Ebonhawk, but they're still the least distinctive race.

I understand why that is. The game is made by and for humans who live in a world where the only recognised sentient race is humans, so of course they're going to be the starting point, consciously or unconsciously. And (probably as a result of that) there's also a convention in RPGs that human is the "safe" race you can pick for your first character to learn the game without having to deal with the quirks of racial abilities. That's not relevant in GW2 of course but I suspect a lot of people still pick human for their first character for that reason, or just because it's something familiar and safe.

I thank you for bringing that up. Most people will say humans just because they've pretty much convinced themselves to provide that answer bias every time, with similar reasoning. Unfortunately it doesn't exactly invalidate their reasoning (which I am not saying you did), but that kind of immediate dismissal seems to tilt votes that might have any deeper thought or consideration behind them.

[Luthan.5236]

Yeah ... you get that a lot of times for RPGS (not only MMORPG) and I especially remember it in threads in a German RPG Maker games forum where for fantasy races a game often gets considered boring and generic if it uses standard fantasy races like elves and orcs. I guess people tend to dislike humans as well because they aren't really unique/nothing new. While the plot and lore still is nice. (I like the history from GW1 until GW2 even though I only really played GW2 I read a bit on the wiki and try go play GW1 for achievements now and for the lore and story.)

The races like charr, asura and sylvari (even though I don't like sylvary - same opinion as someone above that posted about it and dislikes them) feel different. Like really something new. Charr aren't just a copy of orcs without being green and with a lot of hair. They are different even in their military society. Asura are fun and different from gnomes and not just gnome copy. (If I remember correctly gnomes in WoW were the tech guys.)

Makes the other races itself look a bit boring/generic - especially in a game like this. (If the other races were generic races like elves, orcs - then it might be different.)

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

MMOs that don't have human as an option statistically don't last. People love playing humans for many reasons. Most of those reasons is to trash on all the poor saps who pick all the other races. As a self insert fantasy, people love playing a race that dominates over all. Its like Warhammer 40k. You play as a human to revel in the destruction and insanity of obliterating everything that is not.

Also, most people find it awkward to play anything that is sexualized that isn't human.

[Bolero Bloodreign.9025]

Funny how humans get the highest number of votes but is also the most played race in the game.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

@Bolero Bloodreign.9025 said:Funny how humans get the highest number of votes but is also the most played race in the game.

That's the difference between a vocal minority and the majority who won't ever bother going to a forum or interact with GW2 outside of the game itself.

[Thornwolf.9721]

humans, because they are horribly bland. Tired of them in every freaking game; Im a human in real life and I don't want to be on in a fantasy world. This is why I don't have one on my account~ nor will I ever.

[Menadena.7482]

Is there any question that it is human? While there is debate about which of the rest is the ranking (although I doubt most would call the Asura the most bland) humans are just a copy/paste from homo sapiens.

[Menadena.7482]

@Mea.5491 said:It's always human in every game, so overrated and boring. I never pick human unless it's the only playable race, lol.

I am an altoholic and did the 'gotta have them all' thing. Humans were the last race I rolled.

[calb.3128]

Norn. They are a more boring version of humans, and armour looks ridiculously stretched and poorly proportioned on Norn males.

If there is one race that could be taken out of the game without me noticing, it would be Norn. (Perhaps mass migration to Cantha... not genocide!)

[sorudo.9054]

the races are not really bland, Anet just made them so uninteresting it makes them bland.you can have simple humans and make them super interesting by just having a rich lore and interesting appearances, this counts for all races.i voted norn more because they are kinda left out of the good looking and interesting races, if they made the male ones less like unnatural hunks of meat and let them walk naturally they would be tons more interesting. (they run in slow motion, ether run or walk like giants.)

[Tiviana.2650]

@KidRoleplay.3615 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's got to be humans. Yes they have a head start on the

amount

of lore and history which made it into the games because they were the sole playable race in GW1, and they did go slightly away from the 'generic race' default which humans usually are by reducing their dominance and restricting them to Kryta and Ebonhawk, but they're still the least distinctive race.

I understand why that is. The game is made by and for humans who live in a world where the only recognised sentient race is humans, so of course they're going to be the starting point, consciously or unconsciously. And (probably as a result of that) there's also a convention in RPGs that human is the "safe" race you can pick for your first character to learn the game without having to deal with the quirks of racial abilities. That's not relevant in GW2 of course but I suspect a lot of people still pick human for their first character for that reason, or just because it's something familiar and safe.

I thank you for bringing that up. Most people will say humans just because they've pretty much convinced themselves to provide that answer bias every time, with similar reasoning. Unfortunately it doesn't exactly invalidate their reasoning (which I am not saying you did), but that kind of immediate dismissal seems to tilt votes that might have any deeper thought or consideration behind them.

There is no deeper thought about it. Humans look the best from a human pov, the armor looks best on them, people want to play an avatar version of their perfect selves, or they want a pretty female . Eye candy is what its about, this isnt some deep intellectual thought process. Its all about looks. I dont believe in attaching some deep meaning to it, it is what it is, humans are human. Its a blessing and a curse.

[Dreamreaver.4908]

@Tiviana.2650 said:

@KidRoleplay.3615 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's got to be humans. Yes they have a head start on the

amount

of lore and history which made it into the games because they were the sole playable race in GW1, and they did go slightly away from the 'generic race' default which humans usually are by reducing their dominance and restricting them to Kryta and Ebonhawk, but they're still the least distinctive race.

I understand why that is. The game is made by and for humans who live in a world where the only recognised sentient race is humans, so of course they're going to be the starting point, consciously or unconsciously. And (probably as a result of that) there's also a convention in RPGs that human is the "safe" race you can pick for your first character to learn the game without having to deal with the quirks of racial abilities. That's not relevant in GW2 of course but I suspect a lot of people still pick human for their first character for that reason, or just because it's something familiar and safe.

I thank you for bringing that up. Most people will say humans just because they've pretty much convinced themselves to provide that answer bias every time, with similar reasoning. Unfortunately it doesn't exactly invalidate their reasoning (which I am not saying you did), but that kind of immediate dismissal seems to tilt votes that might have any deeper thought or consideration behind them.

There is no deeper thought about it. Humans look the best from a human pov, the armor looks best on them, people want to play an avatar version of their perfect selves, or they want a pretty female . Eye candy is what its about, this isnt some deep intellectual thought process. Its all about looks. I dont believe in attaching some deep meaning to it, it is what it is, humans are human. Its a blessing and a curse.

Nah, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about those that say humanity is bland because... human. And that's it. And this is without regard to what they're actually doing and/ or how they're portrayed in whatever fantasy universe they're in. Of course they wont be 100% replicas of real life, but that's immediately dismissed in most cases because of what they're called.

When it comes to a game where the eventuality of every playable racial encounter doesn't have any diverse behavior despite their supposed differing cultures, and are all pretty much humans with diverse "body transfusions", I then look at which race is doing the least for this kind of poll. S'why I went with Norn.

[Curunen.8729]

Got to be Norn sadly.

They should be more interesting based on lore (what I know of it - I'm no lore buff), but in the game they come off as a specific subset of human culture (highly stereotypical at that) made into a separate race - no more than the difference between humans in Kryta and humans in Elona.

Even visually they're just... big humans. Sure in that case could argue Sylvari are just green humans by appearance, but aside from the visual appearance there are enough differences by them being humanoid plants. In any case I kind of like humans in this game - nice cultural variety and societies. Don't get me wrong I still prefer beast race in any game that has them (asura/charr master race! :D ) but don't mind human npcs or other players.

[Danikat.8537]

@Tiviana.2650 said:

@KidRoleplay.3615 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:It's got to be humans. Yes they have a head start on the

amount

of lore and history which made it into the games because they were the sole playable race in GW1, and they did go slightly away from the 'generic race' default which humans usually are by reducing their dominance and restricting them to Kryta and Ebonhawk, but they're still the least distinctive race.

I understand why that is. The game is made by and for humans who live in a world where the only recognised sentient race is humans, so of course they're going to be the starting point, consciously or unconsciously. And (probably as a result of that) there's also a convention in RPGs that human is the "safe" race you can pick for your first character to learn the game without having to deal with the quirks of racial abilities. That's not relevant in GW2 of course but I suspect a lot of people still pick human for their first character for that reason, or just because it's something familiar and safe.

I thank you for bringing that up. Most people will say humans just because they've pretty much convinced themselves to provide that answer bias every time, with similar reasoning. Unfortunately it doesn't exactly invalidate their reasoning (which I am not saying you did), but that kind of immediate dismissal seems to tilt votes that might have any deeper thought or consideration behind them.

There is no deeper thought about it. Humans look the best from a human pov, the armor looks best on them, people want to play an avatar version of their perfect selves, or they want a pretty female . Eye candy is what its about, this isnt some deep intellectual thought process. Its all about looks. I dont believe in attaching some deep meaning to it, it is what it is, humans are human. Its a blessing and a curse.

In case it's relevant I wasn't thinking about appearance at all when I replied. I was referring to the lore and the abilities the different races have. I know in GW2 all races have the same stats etc. and racial skills are pretty limited and rarely used, but even so it seems to have followed the common pattern of humans being the 'default' who end up in the middle, then you have races who are bigger and stronger or smaller but smarter, newer and less set in their ways or more ancient and traditional, they have more magical abilities or don't use magic at all while humans may or may not use some magic based on the individual...and so on.

As a result they tend to work well as the 'starter' race - you can play a human and pick any class and they'll do ok, not as well as a race with abilities geared towards that class, but good enough for a first character. So even people who might otherwise pick something else are encouraged by a lot of RPGs to make a human first and that reinforces the idea that they're the generic, middle ground 'safe' option, even in games where that's not relevant like GW2. (Also the character creator really doesn't make it clear that your race is largely cosmetic - until you've experimented with all the options, or read it outside the game, there's no way to know that any race can be any profession and use any skills, items etc.)

I tend to forget that some people also want to make a character which either looks like them or which they'll find attractive, so I didn't take that into consideration. But I think that could help explain why human is one of the most popular races even when people think they're bland.

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:MMOs that don't have human as an option statistically don't last. People love playing humans for many reasons. Most of those reasons is to trash on all the poor saps who pick all the other races. As a self insert fantasy, people love playing a race that dominates over all. Its like Warhammer 40k. You play as a human to revel in the destruction and insanity of obliterating everything that is not.

Also, most people find it awkward to play anything that is sexualized that isn't human.

I go completely the other way. I tend to skip past human, or even humanoid, races and look for something unusual or which has interesting abilities.

It never occurred to me to make a character look like me until I found out other people did it, and my own experiments never got beyond the character creator because it always hits the uncanny valley. Especially knowing they won't talk or act like me. (And I don't just mean the voice acting, games almost never have dialogue choices which are what I'd actually say.) The nearest I've come is giving my human female waist length hair, but hers is black and straight, not brown and frizzy like mine.

For that matter that character is only a human because I wanted her to be descended from my GW1 characters (who had to be human), otherwise she'd be a sylvari. And my human male was made just because I had every other race/gender combination and wanted to finish the set.

I also find sexualising your own character pretty strange. Ok, some of mine don't wear a lot of clothes, including my male human (he is literally an Elonian Elementalist) and I usually don't try to make them ugly, but I'm not simply making the most attractive person I can manage either. (I might, if it was part of the character concept that they're attractive, but then I'd probably go with conventionally attractive rather than what I like.)

[Ultramex.1506]

Human then Norn, so many human yet so indifferent, i hope season 5 give Norn more spot light.

[Dreamreaver.4908]

Really, I just appreciate reading these topics and perspectives, and what kinds of things people value. There really is no wrong answer. :)

[Gop.8713]

@Zacchary.6183 said:Asurans. They are also ugly and kickable.

Neither of which is bland :p

@Bolero Bloodreign.9025 said:Funny how humans get the highest number of votes but is also the most played race in the game.

The two things are unrelated though. The majority of ppl might not be looking to their choice of playable race for their game content . . .

[Cerioth.7062]

For me it's pretty much a tie between humans and norn.