Human Failings

Finit

Excerpt from my blog Divinity's Reach:

 

I just finished one final, and my brain needed some rest so I went on my daily cycle through the community websites.  As I was exploring various GW2 sites, I stumbled upon a very thought-provoking thread over at MMORPG.com. (see http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/6401/Guild-Wars-2-Human-Weaklings.html for original post)  The author argues that the humans don't have the same mentality as the other races, and this attitude leads to his frustration with them.



While dragons are awakening and causing mass destruction in the land, the others races have quickly risen to the challenge.  The charr are designing larger, and ever more complex war machines, the Asura have built a city and are constantly competing to prove their own self worth, the Norn are (and have always been) willing to charge in to battle at a moment's notice if it gave them even the slightest possibility of earning glory, and the Sylvari well, they are a really, really young and curious race (what attribute did you want me to give them).  The humans, however, are barely holding on.  Centaurs are rampaging through their lands, the other continents are out of reach, bandits are around in increasingly dangerous numbers.  With all of this going on, you would expect humans to be doingsomething of importance. However, if you walk through Divinity's Reach, the atmosphere is almost applicable to a festival.  If you go through the personal story, corruption has run rampant through public officials, the Seraph, and many nobles.  While the human populace's morale is at an all time low, the people they are looking to for guidance are only looking out for themselves.  Don't get me wrong the Queen seems to be doing her share, as well as some others, but by and large, the human population is on a crash course.  There seems to be a fundamental divide between "what the human race should be doing" and "what they are actually doing."



Where it gets interesting is when you start combining this with our world.  Many of the people who are reading these articles and playing video games are well-off.  Traditionally we all use video games as a from of relaxation. We live in war-torn, disease-prone, poverty-stricken society, and we are playing (or in this case writing about) video games.  Perhaps, the humans of Guild Wars 2 aren't that different from ourselves.  While this article certainly is not accusing anyone of anything, it is quite interesting to speculate on ArenaNet's intentions.



It's also extremely captivating that almost of all the human models are ridiculously good-looking.  When going through the character creator, try to make a human female look ugly.  It's almost impossible, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.   Did ArenaNet just continue playing on the tradition that the humans of Tyria care more about their appearance than their self-destructing world? Or, maybe it means nothing, and we will hopefully see some more cosmetic options added later? Sometimes I speculate too much on the importance of small details and this can get me into trouble.  Sometimes a fish, is just a fish.  There's no hidden meaning in it.  Other times, it's a telling sign of things to come, and things to fear.