What Race Should I Play In Guild Wars 2? | Up To Date New Player Guide 2021

Scared of making a mistake at the MMOs character creator? My thoughts and recommendations on what race to select: Asura, Sylvari, Human, Norn or Charr.

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[NicholasBrakespear]

Advisory for Norn or Charr:
If you play as Norn or Charr, and you go full size, you will be a giant thing on a regular sized mount, and you'll look somewhat ridiculous. If you reduce your size, your mount shrinks too, so you'll still be a big thing on a little mount... it's just that your mount will be even smaller, and it'll be smaller than anyone else's, because the mount size range is not race-based.
If you do go max size, you'll find that the gameplay feels slower, and you spend your time with the camera zoomed out more/embedded in scenery. Would not recommend for a first character; you'll miss visual details and may feel less immersed in the world.

Advisory for Sylvari players:
Your skin tone impacts the base colours for some of the racial armour (because the Sylvari armour is a living extension of them, visually).
Also, if you play as Sylvari female, your voice actress is Bastila from KOTOR 1.

Advisory for human players:
If you are a human male, you will struggle to find any face that doesn't look prepubescent. Even if you do find an appearance that doesn't make you look like a member of a boy band, your ears will be weirdly pointy due to a low poly count on that specific body part.
Also be aware - your generic nature as a human may mean that any armour fundamentally works with them, in terms of fashion... but it also means you'll never look fantastic and interesting, just... fine. No, strapping wings to your back and painting your armour black doesn't change that.

Advisory for Asura players:
If you're trying to make a "cute" Asura instead of a creepy little goblin person, please reconsider your life.

[steve.nighthawk]

In terms of character size for jumping puzzles, you can get tonics to change your size/shape later in the game. I have a friend that plays char, but uses a cat tonic to do jumping puzzles.

[wasdicay]

Sylvari have amazing fashion opportunities due to their varying colors and glow options.

[LeoBeastmode]

One point you forgot to bring up is the voices. I've heard some players drop an alt because they didn't like the race's voice actor.

[bushy]

I'm from the future and my favorite is the Tengu.

[zuterwer]

I've played for multiple years, but I only recently discovered how important achievement points are. Id love it if you could drive home how much they do for your account, and why doing your dailies is worth it

[iamdovetail]

Happy to see you making content for new players!

I really think it will help grow the channel

[Snailmet]

I’ve been playing GW2 since beta - and still I thoroughly enjoyed this video 🤣👍🏼

[Schmelon]

I CAn't BUHLeeve you forgot the most important difference: each race has it's own /dance emote.

[DagosArts]

Charr and jumping puzzles: try landing with the back feet, not the front

[singinmime]

As A Charr I remember being yell at during the first Halloween jumping puzzle event.

[thfh]

Hey WoodenPotatoes,

Great explanation about race choices and what the effects of them are. This being a series catered towards new players it might be wise to keep in mind that a free to play character does not access to Lion's Arch until level 35. They can however use a way point in each starting area to teleport to friends in those areas.

[SpinDlsc]

My first - and main - character was a Charr, and I've always enjoyed the lore surrounding them. Although they're brutish, they are like that for a reason, as the Charr have almost always had to deal with wars - be it infighting between the high legions, their history with the humans and more recently their fight against Kralkatorrik's Branded minions and Ascalonian ghosts that never die.

Visually, they probably have the most unique look when it comes to the face and body - with different horns, adjustable teeth size and angle and a variety of fur patterns. Heavy armor on the Charr mostly looks good, while medium armor is hit-and-miss and light armor is largely not great on them. Unfortunately, too many armor sets with the Charr in general have some awkward stretching and tail clipping that have yet to be addressed. Also, their shoulder pieces can look a little too broad and wacky at times, so you may have to hide some of them for the best look.

The voice acting for the Charr is some of the best - save for the new male Charr voice.

As sated in the video, jumping puzzles are... clunky when dealing with the larger races.

All in all though, I rather like the Charr compared to most other races. The flaws that exist with them are mostly on a technical front, and they are otherwise one of the most interesting of the Tyrian races. And hell, they are pretty much the ones responsible for bringing the human race to its knees in Tyria between re-conquering Ascalon and the invasion of Orr - both of which put their respective leaders is such a tight corner that they doomed their own people rather than retreating or surrendering.

[kyleblaneplays]

6:50 This is an important point to me. As a new player animations are what is driving my decision for race and class, to a lesser extent.

[PandaTail]

Sylvari and Charr are my favorites.

Sylvari are genuinely the coolest race idea I've seen in an MMO. It's such a neat concept that this race is so young yet thrust into the world in this developed state. I love the implications of it. They have this near-unfiltered view of the world and they get to explore it. I also love them for fashion. They can wear anything and make it work. Then you get to coordinate with more colors because a pink Sylvari is totally normal.

The Charr are partly because I played GW1. It's cool to see them as a playable race after that. I also just love their cultural looks. These giant metal buildings and scrap everywhere. I love how big they are. Their war-like mentality on everything. The different Legions for personal RP purposes. Usually, beastial races in MMOs are more like fuzzy humans. Charr go a long way for me towards breaking that idea with their animations and lore.

[quiquaequod]

One other difference in personal story: at level 50 you pick one of the NPC races to help out. You have a choice of three races to help--each with their own story line. Which three (out of five) they are depends on your race. Humans or Sylvari can help Hylek, Quaggan, or Skritt. Norn can help Grawl, Hylek, or Ogres, etc. See "Racial Sympathy" in the wiki for more details.

[timbaolf]

ArenaNet have never added new races because it would be so much MORE work than in other MMOs, not because it doesn't matter. To introduce a new race, they would need to create:
1. A new city and starting zone.
2. 7 new personal story arcs.
3. New versions of every armor set in the game.
4. 9 new sets of cutural armor.
5. New voice acting.
6. New racial skills.
7. Probably more stuff I can't think of.

Other MMOs aren't like that; that's why they get new races every expansion. GW2 set the bar so high for racial uniqueness that they'll never feel that the time and resources are justified in creating a new one.

[HCadrenaline]

this game left such an impact on me and remember watching your channel years ago during its honeymoon. Would love to give it a go again.

[GaruruMoon]

about the race size and jumping puzzle part: I started with a Charr and it did need a bit of getting used to jumping with mine but I did get the hang of it relatively quickly I believe. I now reached the point where I jump best with my Charr and if I go on an asura I jump actually worse.
most likely any new player will do best at jumping with the race they actually learned their jumping puzzles with, with sylvari and human beeing roughly the same size and proportions so switching between those is easiest. not to mention humans appear in a lot of other games and its what we are in real life, so those 2 races might the most comfortable learning curve for a lot of people in my opinion.
of course if someone comes from another game where they played a smaller sized character and got some practice with movement in that size asura can be just as easy too. same if one has a similar preexisting experience with bigger fantasy characters and norn. though Charr do stand out a bit as their proportions and animation when it comes to movement isnt something I have really seen elsewhere.

further on the general "what should I pick" question: as minor as WP made th story impact sound, I believe with how different those early story chapters are across races it can impact your enjoyment of the game. for new players they probably will either get invested and play a lot or drop it before getting to max level even. so if you are starting out but story and/or combat/exploration with your first character seems to be lacking or feels off in some way, maybe try a different race for a bit and see if it changes anything. coming back to my exprience, I reached such a favorism with Charr that any class I play is more fun on a charr than other races and I cant really narrow it down to any specific reasons besides "I like charr" xD and I do have characters of each races and do try to give them some playtime and enjoy them as best as I can.

[bleh]

Hey WP, I have a recommendation for new player tutorial videos like these. I think that the average viewer is more used to tutorials in which there is a constant background change/slideshow-like format. This helps keep the viewer captivated and makes it feel less like a lecture and more like an exciting topic. While it is important to have your videos stand out from others, I feel like that slideshow style is already engrained into the minds of most of us.