I believe that it was more a case of not talking back to a mod.
I'm pretty sure plenty of people "talk back" to a mod if we're talking about the parental "Don't talk back to me mister!" crap xP. Anyway let's move on to something better.
If you have a problem or question with something I've done, feel free to PM me, but please don't clutter up the thread with that talk.
Sterica on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited January 2012
Well, it's not like the dude is wearing much either, it's just distributed differently.
As a general rule, though, I'd appreciate it if game devs finally managed to catch up with Funcom's Anarchy Online, wherein all armor looked the same regardless of the gender of the wearer. Maybe my big, burly norn warrior wants to wear a mini-skirt and let everyone see his midriff while consealing his manly chest muscles.
Well, it's not like the dude is wearing much either, it's just distributed differently.
As a general rule, though, I'd appreciate it if game devs finally managed to catch up with Funcom's Anarchy Online, wherein all armor looked the same regardless of the gender of the wearer. Maybe my big, burly norn warrior wants to wear a mini-skirt and let everyone see his midriff while consealing his manly chest muscles.
Pretty much this, especially for things like heavy armour on the ladies. If you can make skinny male characters and female characters with anything other than model-to-anorexic proportions then I will really respect the design team.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
This is particularly amusing considering NCSoft's lawsuit against TERA.
Honestly now when I see that pic I can't help but imagine this exchange:
NCSoft: "I'm glad you decided to be the bigger man and let this mess all be water under the bridge!"
TERA: "Yeah, yeah... bigger man. Hey, fun fact, I roofied your ale... asshole."
NCsoft isn't GW2/ArenaNet
But ArenaNet is a part of NCsoft.
Though I imagine about as much as Blizzard is a part of Activision.
Insomuch... not at all. NCsoft handles publishing.
But they are a part of the NCsoft Corporation, hell a few of the higher ups in ArenaNet left to head the NA branch of NCsoft.
NCsoft gives them pretty free reign, but they are owned by NCsoft.
Right from ArenaNet's website:
Located in Bellevue, Washington, ArenaNet is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation.
edit- But like I said, they stay out of ArenaNet's business. Unlike another certain company whose initials are E.A.
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Norn give off more body heat then humans. Just FYI.
That's why they get to be the scantily armored Viking shapeshifters. Because they have a high tolerance for cold. And monsters. And maybe furries since they are bros with the Charr which is a plus in my book regardless.
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Kevin CristI make the devil hit his kneesand say the 'our father'Registered Userregular
edited January 2012
not too close to the charr hopefully. We don't need Bear/Cat hybrids running about.
Nah it was more a case of I had no idea that is was against forum rules and when he said something I thought he was joking around. But it all got sorted out. And lets be honest youre not a man until you have received a non binding inconsequential infraction.
not too close to the charr hopefully. We don't need Bear/Cat hybrids running about.
Sadly, it's confirmed that none of the races of Tyria (player races or otherwise) can procreate and make hybrids. Not even Norns and humans, who are confirmed to be able to do the deed but unable to create offspring. Sylvari don't even have sex organs of any kind because they simply mimic the human form based on their origins in the Pale Tree.
Nah it was more a case of I had no idea that is was against forum rules and when he said something I thought he was joking around. But it all got sorted out. And lets be honest youre not a man until you have received a non binding inconsequential infraction.
No harm done friend. I remember my first awkward post in Social Entropy back in 2009. A very fun experience to be sure. Just stick with us and lurk the various sections of the forum and you'll get a handle for the right balance between srs bsns bears, shitposting and making fun of Cardboard Tube (protip: he likes Hitman 2). Rorus Raz is good people and doesn't hand out the mod hammer lightly. Some mods who will remain nameless could learn from him and Echo.
Sylvari don't even have sex organs of any kind because they simply mimic the human form based on their origins in the Pale Tree.
This is not true. There is an interview I read that states they do indeed have sex organs, and while there have not been any standard kids, they're not ruling it out (or something to that effect).
Sylvari don't even have sex organs of any kind because they simply mimic the human form based on their origins in the Pale Tree.
This is not true. There is an interview I read that states they do indeed have sex organs, and while there have not been any standard kids, they're not ruling it out (or something to that effect).
Ah, my mistake. Those grapevine rumors grow up so fast don't they?
Sylvari don't even have sex organs of any kind because they simply mimic the human form based on their origins in the Pale Tree.
This is not true. There is an interview I read that states they do indeed have sex organs, and while there have not been any standard kids, they're not ruling it out (or something to that effect).
Ah, my mistake. Those grapevine rumors grow up so fast don't they?
I'm officially now making a sylvari called Johnny Appleseed.
An elementalist has a elite skill called Fiery Greatsword right? It's summoned from a big fireball out of the sky, might do AoE damage on impact, and whether it acts like other environmental weapons and others can pick it up hinges on said scenario.
Elementalist comes up across a hill, sees a warrior fighting a bunch of enemies in an event, kind of seems to be having trouble. The sword gets summoned right at the warriors feet, and they pick it up, not realizing another player did it, and start slaughtering everything since it's an elite skilled conjured weapon.
The questing system and the focus on it was fairly new. Also, afaik, somewhat unplanned for. They hadn't intended to do 1-60 quest content but the testers and such loved it so much they felt it had to be done.
The biggest thing WoW did new and keeps improving on was the idea that MMOs didn't have to be a huge grind or punishing or ultra-realistic. They sacrificed realism for gameplay.
Hold up, WoW was almost nothing but grind. You went from one zone killing 3,000 spiders to the next killing 4,000 raptors. It was just grinding all the damn time. I looked at the first expansion when it came out and said to myself, is it really worth it to kill 10,000 demons? Turns out I was right. No, no it wasn't.
This is sorta my peeve. If the armor on a guy covers head to toe, it's cool. If it's a bikini, it just says really terrible things about gaming culture.
Case in point, Skyrim had amazing male-armor to female-armor similarities. The only real difference for most of the heavy armor was that the female armor was just slightly less bulky to accommodate a female body.
I went around looking at the mod sites for Skyrim not too long ago, and saw a bunch of the "Armor Upgrade" mods. I said to myself, "All right, maybe they changed the textures to make them a little more awesome!". Metal bikinis as far as the eye could see. They had actually modded the game to add in metal freaking bikinis because they thought that full armor wasn't cool enough.
That said, the above picture makes me very happy with ANet, because at least if the female armor isn't much, it isn't much on the guy either. I will say though, she looks like she could use some trousers.
Sylvari don't even have sex organs of any kind because they simply mimic the human form based on their origins in the Pale Tree.
This is not true. There is an interview I read that states they do indeed have sex organs, and while there have not been any standard kids, they're not ruling it out (or something to that effect).
Ah, my mistake. Those grapevine rumors grow up so fast don't they?
I'm officially now making a sylvari called Johnny Appleseed.
Oh I forsee a million "Grove", "Leaf", and plant name variations springing up at once. Though, as an Asura, I'll be glad to point out to people that, no, you're not a blueberry bush, you're pale child. And most of the time it'll probably be true out of the game!
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UnluckyThat's not meant to happenRegistered Userregular
The questing system and the focus on it was fairly new. Also, afaik, somewhat unplanned for. They hadn't intended to do 1-60 quest content but the testers and such loved it so much they felt it had to be done.
The biggest thing WoW did new and keeps improving on was the idea that MMOs didn't have to be a huge grind or punishing or ultra-realistic. They sacrificed realism for gameplay.
Hold up, WoW was almost nothing but grind. You went from one zone killing 3,000 spiders to the next killing 4,000 raptors. It was just grinding all the damn time. I looked at the first expansion when it came out and said to myself, is it really worth it to kill 10,000 demons? Turns out I was right. No, no it wasn't.
I'm not really sure you understand what a grind is when it comes to MMOs.
Vanilla WoW questing these days would be called a grind, yes. But that's because WoW itself has progressed the questing experience to a huge degree.
But for it's time? Yeah, not a grind. FFXI? That was a motherfucking grind.
The questing system and the focus on it was fairly new. Also, afaik, somewhat unplanned for. They hadn't intended to do 1-60 quest content but the testers and such loved it so much they felt it had to be done.
The biggest thing WoW did new and keeps improving on was the idea that MMOs didn't have to be a huge grind or punishing or ultra-realistic. They sacrificed realism for gameplay.
Hold up, WoW was almost nothing but grind. You went from one zone killing 3,000 spiders to the next killing 4,000 raptors. It was just grinding all the damn time. I looked at the first expansion when it came out and said to myself, is it really worth it to kill 10,000 demons? Turns out I was right. No, no it wasn't.
I'm not really sure you understand what a grind is when it comes to MMOs.
Vanilla WoW questing these days would be called a grind, yes. But that's because WoW itself has progressed the questing experience to a huge degree.
But for it's time? Yeah, not a grind. FFXI? That was a motherfucking grind.
My very first MMO was Lineage 2.
Before Level 10 on my Orc I was being told to go kill 200+ things for a 'quest'. I wasn't being told to do this -ever- until say, WotLK when they put in crazy vehicles that let you slaughter swaths of things at once.
"Go kill twenty bats in a fairly far away location. Done? Great, go do it again."
Some great MMO god was looking out for me to push me towards trying City of Heroes rather than throwing my hands in the air and giving up on the genre entirely.
The questing system and the focus on it was fairly new. Also, afaik, somewhat unplanned for. They hadn't intended to do 1-60 quest content but the testers and such loved it so much they felt it had to be done.
The biggest thing WoW did new and keeps improving on was the idea that MMOs didn't have to be a huge grind or punishing or ultra-realistic. They sacrificed realism for gameplay.
original WoW didn't have 1-60 quest, they kinda stopped at around 55 or 56, I still remember having to grind some Yetis, or whatever they were for the last few levels, didn't really have fun, well either that or there were quest for all levels they just didn't take you all the way at later levels so you had to grind, they did supposedly fix that with TBC from what I understand
TOR otoh was smooth sailing all the way, hell I even skipped quest, might even get an alt to 50, which I have never done before (hell I couldn't stand getting my mesmer alt to 20 in gw1...)
i don't get the constant shitting on TOR, which is especially strong from the GW2 community
I play TOR, I have fun, I'll play GW2 and I'll have fun (except WvWvW, I still hate this shit for taking away my GvG -.-)
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2012
Actual numbers have skewed lower in terms of questing content over time.
WotLK onwards was a huge grind, though. They just hid it better. Instead of giving you one quest to kill 3000 of something to get a quarter of a level, they spaced the 3000 kills out in fifty gajillion goddamn quests that you pretty much needed to do to get a level and be effective in the next zone, effectively achieving the same thing while making most people think that they were progressing at a fast clip.
It got even worse in Cataclysm. I lost my will to continue when I turned in a quest and realized it barely counted for more then a sliver of the total bar.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy TOR. Between the mini-game, PVP, and the bonus quests, even at 40 I was progressing at a fast rate, getting something like 2/3 levels a day. I'm kind of leery of going back to a fantasy swords and boards setting, as it feels like i'm tapped out on good-will and an ability to stay engaged in these sort of settings anymore given the sheer number of them in the genre.
But if GW2 can somehow eliminate the grind or keep it manageable while delivering on infinitely replayable and fun content like they're claiming, i'll probably pick it up day one.
Edit: Some web-sites like Kotaku have pretty much made their annual upkeep costs off of inciting the TOR/GW2 rage. Go read some of their articles. They were bashing TOR and praising GW2 before they even had a chance to play the former, and knew next to nothing about the latter. It's almost certainly contributed to the people constantly trashing TOR, at the very least.
Archonex on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
The questing system and the focus on it was fairly new. Also, afaik, somewhat unplanned for. They hadn't intended to do 1-60 quest content but the testers and such loved it so much they felt it had to be done.
The biggest thing WoW did new and keeps improving on was the idea that MMOs didn't have to be a huge grind or punishing or ultra-realistic. They sacrificed realism for gameplay.
original WoW didn't have 1-60 quest, they kinda stopped at around 55 or 56, I still remember having to grind some Yetis, or whatever they were for the last few levels, didn't really have fun, well either that or there were quest for all levels they just didn't take you all the way at later levels so you had to grind, they did supposedly fix that with TBC from what I understand
There were quests all the way to level 60, but starting from the 50s they were sparse and often you had to go looking for them.
Even so, it was significantly better than what they had originally planned: to have quests only up to level 20 or so and then let the players do whatever.
Actual numbers have skewed lower in terms of questing content over time.
WotLK onwards was a huge grind, though. They just hid it better. Instead of giving you one quest to kill 3000 of something to get a quarter of a level, they spaced the 3000 kills out in fifty gajillion goddamn quests that you pretty much needed to do to get a level and be effective in the next zone, effectively achieving the same thing while making most people think that they were progressing at a fast clip.
It got even worse in Cataclysm. I lost my will to continue when I turned in a quest and realized it barely counted for more then a sliver of the total bar.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy TOR. Between the mini-game, PVP, and the bonus quests, even at 40 I was progressing at a fast rate, getting something like 2/3 levels a day. I'm kind of leery of going back to a fantasy swords and boards setting as it feels like i'm tapped out on good-will and an ability to stay engaged in these sort of settings anymore, given the sheer number of them in the genre, but if GW2 can somehow eliminate the grind or keep it manageable, i'll probably pick it up day one.
That's all questing is. That's all an MMO is really. All the other shit (questing, story, PvP, etc) is just there to provide context for the grind to hide it.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Actual numbers have skewed lower in terms of questing content over time.
WotLK onwards was a huge grind, though. They just hid it better. Instead of giving you one quest to kill 3000 of something to get a quarter of a level, they spaced the 3000 kills out in fifty gajillion goddamn quests that you pretty much needed to do to get a level and be effective in the next zone, effectively achieving the same thing while making most people think that they were progressing at a fast clip.
It got even worse in Cataclysm. I lost my will to continue when I turned in a quest and realized it barely counted for more then a sliver of the total bar.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy TOR. Between the mini-game, PVP, and the bonus quests, even at 40 I was progressing at a fast rate, getting something like 2/3 levels a day. I'm kind of leery of going back to a fantasy swords and boards setting as it feels like i'm tapped out on good-will and an ability to stay engaged in these sort of settings anymore, given the sheer number of them in the genre, but if GW2 can somehow eliminate the grind or keep it manageable, i'll probably pick it up day one.
That's all questing is. That's all an MMO is really. All the other shit (questing, story, PvP, etc) is just there to provide context for the grind to hide it.
Most MMO's don't just focus on that, however. WoW itself didn't even entirely focus on it, prior to late BC.
Hell, look at the other MMO's that came out around then. Fallen Earth has an entire sand box metagame, the ability to go into a casino and gamble, or just explore an incredibly deep crafting system. Tabula Rasa, before it got backstabbed by NCSoft in their bid to do away with Garriot had the control and cap minigame and let you build an entire alien language to cast spells with. City of Heroes had all sorts of other activities, like mayhem missions, and the open zone PVP stuff. TOR doesn't even have a grind. It takes a RPG style level of progression, if you keep up with the class quests.
WoW was pretty obviously taking some cues off of games like Lineage in its later years. Which is also what attributed to most folks I know burning out on it and leaving to play something else. You can only hide the grind for so long before people start cluing into it.
Archonex on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
That's all questing is. That's all an MMO is really. All the other shit (questing, story, PvP, etc) is just there to provide context for the grind to hide it.
Grinding is generally considered a negative thing, something that isn't fun. Questing is supposed to make progression fun, the opposite of grinding. They're kind of subjective things. Personally, I stopped playing TOR because I thought the leveling process was a humongous grind. Adding five minutes of dull, tedious, voice acted dialogue to generic "go kill X of Ys" quests didn't make them more fun for me, but some people think it is the most brilliant addition to video games since graphics.
reVerse on
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited January 2012
I had forgotten that NCsoft was related to A-Net. Might reconsider getting this game now, given what they did to Tabula Rasa and Richard Garriot.
They went so far as to fake the mans resignation signatures while he was in outer space, to keep him from making a shit-ton of money off of company stocks. Also, killed Tabula Rasa to do it, deliberately denying them funding and screwing with the game for almost its entire post release cycle in order to justify the shutdown. The former thing is some grade A super villain stuff. And the latter is them just being EA scale greedy douchebags.
If I didn't buy games because of bullshit the publisher has pulled, all I'd ever play was indie games.
It's not that hard for a company not to be a raging asshole to people. There's a pretty big difference between a company that's lazy, and one that is actively malicious and malevolent to its employees and customers. Even EA is mostly just incompetent, or gets ahead of itself. Some of the shit NCSoft has pulled in recent years was knowingly done and is borderline illegal (And some of it actually is. Which the US court system called them on, at least once, amazingly enough.). One employee of which they screwed over happens to have been the genre builder for an entire large modern day genre.
Nevermind the fact that they basically took the money from Tabula Rasa and ran off into the horizon with it, shutting it down barely a year after it was released. Which is what they did with Auto Assault too. Hell, the M.O for how they treated both games (Refused funding, sabotaged development, fucked with the staff.) to justify it is, from what I hear, pretty much the exact same. They also actively refused to sell the rights to the games to interested parties, including, in the case of Auto Assault, the company that actually made it. The reasoning being that since they were both fully functional and were potential big money winners themselves with a bit of work, they were competition. They just needed support.
They wouldn't screw with CoX because CoX is one of their big bread winners. It also has high public acceptance and knowledge, which would cause problems for NCSoft outside of legal venues. Nor would I expect them to pull an Auto Assault or Tabula Rasa with GW2 without significant monetary cause, since it's a sequel to a hit game. Doesn't mean they aren't above stealing customers money by releasing games that they shut down faster then most korean F2P cookie cutter MMO's. Which is something that tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I can deal with publishers being assholes from a distance. But when they get up close and personal with it, it tends to be a bit more offensive.
Actual numbers have skewed lower in terms of questing content over time.
WotLK onwards was a huge grind, though. They just hid it better. Instead of giving you one quest to kill 3000 of something to get a quarter of a level, they spaced the 3000 kills out in fifty gajillion goddamn quests that you pretty much needed to do to get a level and be effective in the next zone, effectively achieving the same thing while making most people think that they were progressing at a fast clip.
It got even worse in Cataclysm. I lost my will to continue when I turned in a quest and realized it barely counted for more then a sliver of the total bar.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy TOR. Between the mini-game, PVP, and the bonus quests, even at 40 I was progressing at a fast rate, getting something like 2/3 levels a day. I'm kind of leery of going back to a fantasy swords and boards setting as it feels like i'm tapped out on good-will and an ability to stay engaged in these sort of settings anymore, given the sheer number of them in the genre, but if GW2 can somehow eliminate the grind or keep it manageable, i'll probably pick it up day one.
That's all questing is. That's all an MMO is really. All the other shit (questing, story, PvP, etc) is just there to provide context for the grind to hide it.
Most MMO's don't just focus on that, however. WoW itself didn't even entirely focus on it, prior to late BC.
Hell, look at the other MMO's that came out around then. Fallen Earth has an entire sand box metagame, the ability to go into a casino and gamble, or just explore an incredibly deep crafting system. Tabula Rasa, before it got backstabbed by NCSoft in their bid to do away with Garriot had the control and cap minigame and let you build an entire alien language to cast spells with. City of Heroes had all sorts of other activities, like mayhem missions, and the open zone PVP stuff. TOR doesn't even have a grind. It takes a RPG style level of progression, if you keep up with the class quests.
WoW was pretty obviously taking some cues off of games like Lineage in its later years. Which is also what attributed to most folks I know burning out on it and leaving to play something else. You can only hide the grind for so long before people start cluing into it.
Wha? TOR has a grind to the exact same extent WoW does. It hides it ever so slightly better by personalizing the narrative, but that's about it. It's still the exact same shit.
That other stuff you mention is all in the same vein. Maybe they spice it up with a few different actions to take, but it's all in the same vein. (Hey look, I can grind PvP points instead of PvE points!)
It's all in how you contextualize and disguise this.
that norn male looks like he's wearing stockings or something, if you take them off their armour would look pretty similar except she's not wearing a helmet for whatever reason (look a sexy female guys!)
Posts
I'm pretty sure plenty of people "talk back" to a mod if we're talking about the parental "Don't talk back to me mister!" crap xP. Anyway let's move on to something better.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you.
As a general rule, though, I'd appreciate it if game devs finally managed to catch up with Funcom's Anarchy Online, wherein all armor looked the same regardless of the gender of the wearer. Maybe my big, burly norn warrior wants to wear a mini-skirt and let everyone see his midriff while consealing his manly chest muscles.
I was trying to push the new page into another topic dammit xP
Pretty much this, especially for things like heavy armour on the ladies. If you can make skinny male characters and female characters with anything other than model-to-anorexic proportions then I will really respect the design team.
But they are a part of the NCsoft Corporation, hell a few of the higher ups in ArenaNet left to head the NA branch of NCsoft.
NCsoft gives them pretty free reign, but they are owned by NCsoft.
Right from ArenaNet's website:
edit- But like I said, they stay out of ArenaNet's business. Unlike another certain company whose initials are E.A.
That's why they get to be the scantily armored Viking shapeshifters. Because they have a high tolerance for cold. And monsters. And maybe furries since they are bros with the Charr which is a plus in my book regardless.
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
Guys
Basil's in the beta
GET HIM
Well, his beta key
Welp, that's another week before beta starts!
Caedere will give us all beta invites now.
No harm done friend. I remember my first awkward post in Social Entropy back in 2009. A very fun experience to be sure. Just stick with us and lurk the various sections of the forum and you'll get a handle for the right balance between srs bsns bears, shitposting and making fun of Cardboard Tube (protip: he likes Hitman 2). Rorus Raz is good people and doesn't hand out the mod hammer lightly. Some mods who will remain nameless could learn from him and Echo.
Hold his legs down, i'll go get an eagle feather to tickle him with until he gives us the goods!
This is not true. There is an interview I read that states they do indeed have sex organs, and while there have not been any standard kids, they're not ruling it out (or something to that effect).
Know what I mean?
Ah, my mistake. Those grapevine rumors grow up so fast don't they?
I'm officially now making a sylvari called Johnny Appleseed.
An elementalist has a elite skill called Fiery Greatsword right? It's summoned from a big fireball out of the sky, might do AoE damage on impact, and whether it acts like other environmental weapons and others can pick it up hinges on said scenario.
Elementalist comes up across a hill, sees a warrior fighting a bunch of enemies in an event, kind of seems to be having trouble. The sword gets summoned right at the warriors feet, and they pick it up, not realizing another player did it, and start slaughtering everything since it's an elite skilled conjured weapon.
*Drool*
Hold up, WoW was almost nothing but grind. You went from one zone killing 3,000 spiders to the next killing 4,000 raptors. It was just grinding all the damn time. I looked at the first expansion when it came out and said to myself, is it really worth it to kill 10,000 demons? Turns out I was right. No, no it wasn't.
This is sorta my peeve. If the armor on a guy covers head to toe, it's cool. If it's a bikini, it just says really terrible things about gaming culture.
Case in point, Skyrim had amazing male-armor to female-armor similarities. The only real difference for most of the heavy armor was that the female armor was just slightly less bulky to accommodate a female body.
I went around looking at the mod sites for Skyrim not too long ago, and saw a bunch of the "Armor Upgrade" mods. I said to myself, "All right, maybe they changed the textures to make them a little more awesome!". Metal bikinis as far as the eye could see. They had actually modded the game to add in metal freaking bikinis because they thought that full armor wasn't cool enough.
That said, the above picture makes me very happy with ANet, because at least if the female armor isn't much, it isn't much on the guy either. I will say though, she looks like she could use some trousers.
Oh I forsee a million "Grove", "Leaf", and plant name variations springing up at once. Though, as an Asura, I'll be glad to point out to people that, no, you're not a blueberry bush, you're pale child. And most of the time it'll probably be true out of the game!
Still rolling my Asuran Elementalist though.
I'm not really sure you understand what a grind is when it comes to MMOs.
Vanilla WoW questing these days would be called a grind, yes. But that's because WoW itself has progressed the questing experience to a huge degree.
But for it's time? Yeah, not a grind. FFXI? That was a motherfucking grind.
My very first MMO was Lineage 2.
Before Level 10 on my Orc I was being told to go kill 200+ things for a 'quest'. I wasn't being told to do this -ever- until say, WotLK when they put in crazy vehicles that let you slaughter swaths of things at once.
"Go kill twenty bats in a fairly far away location. Done? Great, go do it again."
Some great MMO god was looking out for me to push me towards trying City of Heroes rather than throwing my hands in the air and giving up on the genre entirely.
TOR otoh was smooth sailing all the way, hell I even skipped quest, might even get an alt to 50, which I have never done before (hell I couldn't stand getting my mesmer alt to 20 in gw1...) i don't get the constant shitting on TOR, which is especially strong from the GW2 community
I play TOR, I have fun, I'll play GW2 and I'll have fun (except WvWvW, I still hate this shit for taking away my GvG -.-)
WotLK onwards was a huge grind, though. They just hid it better. Instead of giving you one quest to kill 3000 of something to get a quarter of a level, they spaced the 3000 kills out in fifty gajillion goddamn quests that you pretty much needed to do to get a level and be effective in the next zone, effectively achieving the same thing while making most people think that they were progressing at a fast clip.
It got even worse in Cataclysm. I lost my will to continue when I turned in a quest and realized it barely counted for more then a sliver of the total bar.
This is one of the reasons why I really enjoy TOR. Between the mini-game, PVP, and the bonus quests, even at 40 I was progressing at a fast rate, getting something like 2/3 levels a day. I'm kind of leery of going back to a fantasy swords and boards setting, as it feels like i'm tapped out on good-will and an ability to stay engaged in these sort of settings anymore given the sheer number of them in the genre.
But if GW2 can somehow eliminate the grind or keep it manageable while delivering on infinitely replayable and fun content like they're claiming, i'll probably pick it up day one.
Edit: Some web-sites like Kotaku have pretty much made their annual upkeep costs off of inciting the TOR/GW2 rage. Go read some of their articles. They were bashing TOR and praising GW2 before they even had a chance to play the former, and knew next to nothing about the latter. It's almost certainly contributed to the people constantly trashing TOR, at the very least.
There were quests all the way to level 60, but starting from the 50s they were sparse and often you had to go looking for them.
Even so, it was significantly better than what they had originally planned: to have quests only up to level 20 or so and then let the players do whatever.
That's all questing is. That's all an MMO is really. All the other shit (questing, story, PvP, etc) is just there to provide context for the grind to hide it.
Most MMO's don't just focus on that, however. WoW itself didn't even entirely focus on it, prior to late BC.
Hell, look at the other MMO's that came out around then. Fallen Earth has an entire sand box metagame, the ability to go into a casino and gamble, or just explore an incredibly deep crafting system. Tabula Rasa, before it got backstabbed by NCSoft in their bid to do away with Garriot had the control and cap minigame and let you build an entire alien language to cast spells with. City of Heroes had all sorts of other activities, like mayhem missions, and the open zone PVP stuff. TOR doesn't even have a grind. It takes a RPG style level of progression, if you keep up with the class quests.
WoW was pretty obviously taking some cues off of games like Lineage in its later years. Which is also what attributed to most folks I know burning out on it and leaving to play something else. You can only hide the grind for so long before people start cluing into it.
Grinding is generally considered a negative thing, something that isn't fun. Questing is supposed to make progression fun, the opposite of grinding. They're kind of subjective things. Personally, I stopped playing TOR because I thought the leveling process was a humongous grind. Adding five minutes of dull, tedious, voice acted dialogue to generic "go kill X of Ys" quests didn't make them more fun for me, but some people think it is the most brilliant addition to video games since graphics.
They went so far as to fake the mans resignation signatures while he was in outer space, to keep him from making a shit-ton of money off of company stocks. Also, killed Tabula Rasa to do it, deliberately denying them funding and screwing with the game for almost its entire post release cycle in order to justify the shutdown. The former thing is some grade A super villain stuff. And the latter is them just being EA scale greedy douchebags.
Garriot at least got them back for it, though.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/garriott-wins-28-million-in-ncsoft-suit-6271808
But honestly I don't think that's going to affect GW2 any more than it did CoX (which they still own right?).
It's not that hard for a company not to be a raging asshole to people. There's a pretty big difference between a company that's lazy, and one that is actively malicious and malevolent to its employees and customers. Even EA is mostly just incompetent, or gets ahead of itself. Some of the shit NCSoft has pulled in recent years was knowingly done and is borderline illegal (And some of it actually is. Which the US court system called them on, at least once, amazingly enough.). One employee of which they screwed over happens to have been the genre builder for an entire large modern day genre.
Nevermind the fact that they basically took the money from Tabula Rasa and ran off into the horizon with it, shutting it down barely a year after it was released. Which is what they did with Auto Assault too. Hell, the M.O for how they treated both games (Refused funding, sabotaged development, fucked with the staff.) to justify it is, from what I hear, pretty much the exact same. They also actively refused to sell the rights to the games to interested parties, including, in the case of Auto Assault, the company that actually made it. The reasoning being that since they were both fully functional and were potential big money winners themselves with a bit of work, they were competition. They just needed support.
They wouldn't screw with CoX because CoX is one of their big bread winners. It also has high public acceptance and knowledge, which would cause problems for NCSoft outside of legal venues. Nor would I expect them to pull an Auto Assault or Tabula Rasa with GW2 without significant monetary cause, since it's a sequel to a hit game. Doesn't mean they aren't above stealing customers money by releasing games that they shut down faster then most korean F2P cookie cutter MMO's. Which is something that tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I can deal with publishers being assholes from a distance. But when they get up close and personal with it, it tends to be a bit more offensive.
Wha? TOR has a grind to the exact same extent WoW does. It hides it ever so slightly better by personalizing the narrative, but that's about it. It's still the exact same shit.
That other stuff you mention is all in the same vein. Maybe they spice it up with a few different actions to take, but it's all in the same vein. (Hey look, I can grind PvP points instead of PvE points!)
It's all in how you contextualize and disguise this.