Guild Wars 2 dev laments human race bias: "people avoiding charr & asura are missing the strongest story stuff"

Of Guild Wars 2's five playable races, humans are by far the most popular according to data that ArenaNet put out last month . The Norn take a distant second place and the Asura, Sylvari and Charr linger even further behind. Each race has their own distinct storyline and starting zone, so it's unsurprising that the creators of Guild Wars 2's races feel a bit disappointed that players are opting for traditional human toons.

I'll jump at any chance to be a three foot tall Necromancer, so I was fated to play an Asura the moment they were revealed. For those jumping into the game fresh, it might seem more natural to jump in as a human and get to know the weirder races a bit before starting alts.

As Kotaku indicate, strong human bias isn't unusual in games that offer a choice of races. The different ways that players construct and empathise with their in-game avatars is an interesting, though. Do you try to recreate your looks in-game? Are you creating a new character entirely? What are you thinking when you design a character?

Here's the race stat graph. From left to right: Norn, Charr, Asura, Sylvari and Human.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.