Sylvari week - all info from the promotion week

[shawn]

I both like Ree Soesbee and the new redesign but on a matter of accuracy:

Spoiler

What does a girl with a huge cannabis bud on her head have to do with anything?

[Silverfrost]

By your reckoning we should all go learn Chinese (or Spanish if you don't count Chinese due to the fact they're all in the same place or something).

I wouldn't say "most used/useful" necessarily means "largest number of users", it's more a matter of location. Chinese is, as you say, concentrated to parts of a single, pretty isolated nation. Spanish is mostly used in parts of South America(?).

English is spoken in pretty much every part of the world.

As Wikipedia says:

Total speakers: 500 million as first or second language

Overall first or second language: 500 million–1.8 billion

(Disclaimer: not saying anything about localization here.)

[Sir Jack]

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/sylvari/


The Sylvari page updated.



I must say I'm not impressed by the quality of the grass in the video...

[Gorani]

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/sylvari/
The Sylvari page updated.

I must say I'm not impressed by the quality of the grass in the video...

All giant leaves and luminescent stuff. So many secondary colours! That leaves the impression of very little contrast and I kind of miss the "raw" stuff we have seen in the Tarnished Coast in GW1 (like large ravines, waterfalls, huge rocks, caves etc.). But perhaps we will see that outside the Grove. Divinity's Reach and the other "starter cities" offered a little bit more diversity, at least to the (or my) eye.

[Leonora Windleaf]

Really love the music in that last video... much more symphonic than GW1... just beautiful.

[s4nder]

I really don't get the "honor" and "noble" aspects of sylvari. Both imply tradition and long history, the opposite of what sylvari are about.

[Leonora Windleaf]

I really don't get the "honor" and "noble" aspects of sylvari. Both imply tradition and long history, the opposite of what sylvari are about.

I think those are aspects that were imbued to them by both Ventari and Ronan... and they just kinda took it over from there.

[Alaris]

Honor to me is a way of life.

Nobility was granted to the Sylvari because they were born from the tree queen. I guess.

[Смерть]

Interesting video; lol'd at showing the Sylvari gathering resources "attending their garden"; will have to wait until GamesCom to see some brutality.

Looking up at the plant that reaches into the sky at the end (the Pale Tree?); reminds me of the same effect in Aion with the crystals (starter area of the cooler hoofed race :).

[BrettM]

All giant leaves and luminescent stuff. So many secondary colours! That leaves the impression of very little contrast and I kind of miss the "raw" stuff we have seen in the Tarnished Coast in GW1 (like large ravines, waterfalls, huge rocks, caves etc.). But perhaps we will see that outside the Grove. Divinity's Reach and the other "starter cities" offered a little bit more diversity, at least to the (or my) eye.

Why would anyone expect a city -- even one as alien as the Grove -- to look like the surrounding countryside? Clearly the sylvari have tended and shaped their city to a great degree, putting in as much effort as the other races have devoted to their cities, but using techniques better described as horticulture than construction. I'm sure you're right that the areas outside the Grove will still have wild areas, as well as settled rural areas that are less tamed than the big city.

I suspect that the diversity of other cities comes from giving little attention to central planning, and those cities (especially LA) pretty much just grow. The sylvari strike me as being more concerned with making things fit their environment, and the connections they share with each other and the Tree probably result in a natural coordination and blending of their efforts, even without central planning. They seem more like Treebeard's description of the entwives -- liking order and for things to stay where they're put -- than like the ents -- prefering the wild places and striving for minimal environmental impact -- based on what we see in that video.

I'm looking forward to seeing the Grove from a distance, given the description of the Pale Tree being mountain sized and seeing that last shot of the trunk going up through the clouds. I was a little disappointed this wasn't part of the video, but maybe they just want to save something for the game. Hopefully there will be in-game places from which we can get a good overview. And I really, really hope we can climb to the top. :)