Guild Wars 2's Sylvari Race is a Pleasant Twist on the Elf Archetype... But it May Not be Twisted Enough

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and MMO fashion

Last week, ArenaNet revealed the two previously unavailable Guild Wars 2 races and areas in time for the most recent (and final) beta event. I'm incredibly excited for the game's August release (I've already gushed about it here) so I leaped at the chance to play around with them.  

The Asura are pint-sized technological prodigies (with occasionally questionable ethics) which will no doubt satisfy almost anyone who likes playing dwarven or gnome-like races in their fantasy MMOs. As for me, I'm much more interested in the Sylvari, who are the closest things to elves in Guild Wars 2. I love the race's lore and their aesthetic (including the brilliantly bio-luminescent details on their bodies), which is miles away from anything I've seen in a playable race for an MMO before.

As cool as I think sylvari are, I'm still not entirely convinced that I want to play one myself. Here's why:

It comes down to three words: Dressing the Part.

I realize now that my expectations for the Sylvari may have been unrealistic. I had read an early post on the ArenaNet blog about them that had gotten my hopes up that they would have more unique/contextual equipment pieces than other races. It was something that sounded completely fascinating to me, and it sounded like it would offer a lot of variety... and look incredibly cool. Here's what the post (from August 2011) said:

Sylvari grow their armor and much of their clothing. Their bodies create petal-like coverings, vines, and leaves that they shape into pleasing garments. When they wish to remove the garments, they simply shed their petal clothing as a human might cut their hair. Some sylvari wear armor made by other races or weave clothing in a more traditional manner, just out of preference.

Maybe in the year since then, ArenaNet has realized what a tall-order designing that much race specific gear would be because, with a few minor exceptions, sylvari wear the same clothing as every other race in the game. Yes, I know how unreasonable creating enough gear to fulfill this statement would be, but the incredibly detailed plant-like Sylvari avatars look almost ridiculous in the drab (by comparison) leather and cloth gear players wear in the first 20 or so levels of the game. When you create a Sylvari character, most of the class previews show the gorgeous race-specific armour I was expecting, a little tease before you're swaddled in the plain old starter clothes every race wears. It seems that the only time before level 10 that you get to wear anything that looks even remotely like with the sylvari are supposed to wear is when you're disguised as an evil sylvari (pictured above)... or in your underwear (pictured below).

More to the point, I can understand wearing this armor later on after leaving their home area and venturing out into the world, but when you're in the Sylvari homeland surrounded by other Sylvari wearing plant armor and clothing.... It just feels odd and out-of-place to be rewarded with human clothing than no one but player characters is wearing.

Am I overthinking this? Absolutely. Should I have expected entirely unique gear? Of course not. Is there a chance that the assets for some rad low-level sylvari outfits just weren't finished in time for the beta? Totally. But may also be a case of lore extending a bit beyond the game itself, and unfortunately it made for an aesthetically inconsistent experience. When it comes to MMOs, I'm not a roleplayer. I treat games like games, and I don't play a character. However, when I'm constantly asking myself "why am I wearing this" or "why am I doing this", it pulls me farther away from being immersed in the world.

Maybe I'm too picky (or a bit too obsessive), but if I do play a sylvari character I definitely won't be playing them in the Sylvari homelands. Instead I'll head to the human or the norn areas, where I won't have to ask myself why another plant woman wearing leaves just gave me a tailored leather coat.

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  Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Galatea]

You have the same issue in the Norn starting area -- all the NPCs are wearing culturally specific clothing, but your gear is the same generic stuff all the starting characters wear. Same with the Asura and Charr, although less noticeable on them since their unique body shapes and appearance make it less obvious.

[Rin Tae]

I am going to play the sylvari .. I have decided this shortly after I learend about it and now that I have been able to try them out I am even more convinced to do so.
I have of course noticed the thing about the armuor as well and I guess the armour styles will change once the higher level items are available and even if it wold be nice if every race had theri own distinctive starting set it is only a very minor issue for me .. as long as proper specific armour looks are offered and there is a nice choice between them ^_^ (look matters!)

I have to add however that the Asura are just too funny and too adorable to miss out .. playing one when I treid it out was actually so much fun that I will defintevly make a second character almst right from the start. Especialyl since I think they have great RP potential in them too besides being .. as already mentioned .. adorable and funny :)

They are soething entirly different then dwarves and gnomes in other fantasy games.

[Aleida]

I must admit I too was a little disappointed to see not all professions are wearing typical Sylvari armor. Sometimes it did feel a little awkward running around in 'human' armor sorta kinda :( Still it won't stop me from choosing the Sylvari for my main character. I adore the Grove and enjoyed spending time in this area during the final BWE. During the BWE we only get to check out a small portion of the game. I'm sure there are beautiful armor sets to be found once the full game is released.

[Emperor Norton]

Fantasy gaming content using other fantasy gaming content as inspiration reminds my a bit of looking at a xeroxed copy of a copy of a picture.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

I believe there's a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, of course, GW2 isn't really out to do the endless stat-grind World of Warcraft encourages; all gear at a certain level is of roughly equal functionality, just with the numbers shuffled around. This means looking fancy is upgrade path to encourage grinding, and racial armor is one of those.

Secondly, a lot of this stuff wasn't quite ready for prime-time even during the beta; ANet seemed more concerned about making sure the mechanical bits worked okay.

[Barfff]

GW2 is retarded 70% people are hacking 10% are bots farming or zone camping in wvw/pvp its the worst mmo experience you can have, to top that off Arena made loads of crap talk since the initial beta about how it wouldn't be like GW1.

Surprise...Surprise!!

People talking about it as if its really a whole other world, is all bs its more or less the same old crap with a boat load of new problems that never existed in the original classic. Ranging for hacking, botting, exploits, out of whack economy system, dumb ai, destructible armor (wtf?), unbalanced everything: stats, leveling, classes etc..

To top it off everything in game can either be farmed by grinding away at it or you simply buy the needed currency via real world money. It also has the worst story arch's and bad voice acting ever to grace an mmo wannabe. More or less this game is the Star Wars mistake we were all waiting for but fell for the dark side and ate the dog crap.

As for the Sylvari and Charr races they can go screw themselves they have to be the worst if not ugliest imaginations ever realized on paper. And I don't say that likely, considering what WoW characters look like.