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Blood and fire! Prepare yourself for the coming of the charr legions – Charr Week has begun!

All week we’ll be taking a look at the ferocious, feline charr, one of the five playable races in Guild Wars 2, here on the blog and on the Guild Wars 2 website. We’ve got brand new lore, art, audio clips, fiction, interviews, and more charr stuff than you can shake an axe at – including a brand new charr video on Thursday, April 21st!

The charr first appeared in the original Guild Wars as the implacable foes of humanity, but a lot has happened in the 250 years between the first game and the time period of Guild Wars 2. The charr have rejected their false gods and embraced industry and technology with gusto, crafting devastating weaponry and incredible machinery. But empire and expansion comes with a heavy price, and the charr of Guild Wars 2 are beset by formidable enemies on all sides.

This week we’re going to take a closer look at the charr and go behind the scenes with ArenaNet devs to learn more about making the charr come to life in-game. Here’s what we’ve got planned:




Monday – On the blog today, designer Devon Carver explores the Village of Smokestead, a key location in the charr starter area and explains the iterative process behind this map’s creation.

Tuesday – In this blog post full of audio clips of charr chatter, writer Scott McGough will show how writing and sound design come together to create a compelling, immersive environment for players.

Wednesday – We’ll talk to the artists responsible for the visual look of the charr – Katy Hargrove, Kekai Kotaki, and Kristen Perry.

Thursday – We’re updating the charr page on GuildWars2.com with new charr background text by Jeff Grubb and a video tour of the charr homeland.

Friday – Lore and Continuity Designer Ree Soesbee illustrates the ferocious, competitive nature of charr society in this loreful charr blog post.

Q: Kristen, can you talk a little about the different approaches you tried out for the female charr before settling on the final design?

Kristen: As a team, we had many discussions regarding the direction of the female charr, and a lot of that back-and-forth was in the form of thumbnail sketches and theoretical debate. These discussions centered around the tension between making the female charr attractive to the playerbase while still making it look like part of the same race as the male charr.

Much of the problem was in making the female charr more universally attractive, which leans towards a more human appearance. Those initial designs explored the tension between an acceptable human notion of beauty and an animalistic design that is cool, but just too “creature” for the average player to find engaging. This exploratory process brought about one model design that was indeed more humanoid and catgirl in appearance. It had the back leg joint articulation of the charr, but stood much more upright, had a human neck, slender arms and almost hand-like paws—and, yes, breasts. The problem with this design, though, was we were trying to find a solution between both goals, which meant we didn’t really satisfy either. The human part of our charr catgirl wasn’t human enough to be cute, and the charr part of her wasn’t charr enough to be fierce, let alone look like a female of the same race. So while this experiment was very important for visualization, in the end it didn’t give us the result we wanted.

By this point we knew we didn’t want a catgirl, but there was still another conundrum to solve. The males of the charr race are large, overly muscular, brutish, and monstrous. We couldn’t give the female of the race the same hulking masculine proportions, because then there’d be no real way to see any gender difference. But how do you make a smaller, less muscular, less imposing member of the race feel just as powerful as their male counterparts?

Q: So how did you strike that balance and create something that was both feminine and charr-like?

Kristen: Well, when I started designing the female charr, I definitely wanted her to feel just as fierce as the male of the race. She had to feel sleek and agile while at the same time have an appearance of strength and power. By thinking in terms of movement, it became clear the answer was in optimizing nuances. Yes, she had to be large and robust like the male, but we could tone down the testosterone by really extending her body lines to gracefully flow from the top of her head to tail tip.

I didn’t see any reason whatsoever to give her less clawing power, so I rebuilt the sabers on her hands and feet and brought out the padding design. The face and horns were designed with style and movement in mind, but also incorporated markedly more feminine cat-like features instead of the more monstrous male features, though there will be those options too. The horns don’t have a particular direction to denote gender; they just have to look cool. The female’s tail, however, has long hair. This was a very specific thing I wanted to include, as I love the sweeping feel to the long hair, and it’s an easy detail to note from behind in telling whether the charr is male or female.

Finally, there was the matter of the chest. It really didn’t make any sense to have boobs on a charr female, particularly with all the effort we took to make her sleek and fierce. We thought they should have no breasts at all or at least hide them under some fluffy fur. Above all else, we needed to be true to the race, of course! There was still some debate, however, so I gave them a choice: either be subtle and downplay the breasts (it wasn’t a point of the race, anyway) or go full-on realistic. Yes, that’s right —none or six!!

But really, the armor augmentation required for six boobs would be just as ridiculous, so none it was!

Q: Kekai, how did you approach the charr design for Guild Wars 2?

Kekai: My approach was simple: make the charr badass. And then make them even more badass.

Finally, there was the matter of the chest. It really didn’t make any sense to have boobs on a charr female, particularly with all the effort we took to make her sleek and fierce. We thought they should have no breasts at all or at least hide them under some fluffy fur. Above all else, we needed to be true to the race, of course! There was still some debate, however, so I gave them a choice: either be subtle and downplay the breasts (it wasn’t a point of the race, anyway) or go full-on realistic. Yes, that’s right —none or six!!

tired of the hypersexualized females compared to fairly asexual/ferocious males.

see w-orgen

Q. Could you describe your favorite dynamic event?
A. Colin: One word, “Cattlepult”. A brilliant, or insane, depending on how you look at it; charr Iron Legion engineer has invented a device to help get food to charr towns that are under siege by enemies and running out of food. The device, the cattlepult, flings charr’s favorite food—cattle—from massive distances over the walls of besieged cities to deliver food to the friendly forces trapped inside. In the event, a rancher brings a small herd of cattle up from a nearby cattle ranch and delivers them to the Iron Legion engineer. Using his prototype Cattlepult, the engineer begins lobbing cattle at a nearby hill to test the velocity and angle for the Cattlepult to prepare it for use on the front lines. The first cow that a lands on the hill enrages a group of harpies who live on that hill, and an event begins to protect the cattle and the engineer from the rampaging harpy horde. If players can manage to drive off the harpies and save the cattle, a mini-game begins where players in the area can bet on where each cattle launched by the Cattlepult will land. Each correct guess of a cows landing location awards the players a cow token, which they can turn in to a nearby merchant for a number of cool and unique rewards, like cow bells.

How are gigantic, rippling muscles any less hypersexualized that gigantic tits?

What does one even do in Guild Wars? I don't want to find out on my own and enough of you nerds are obsessed to the point that I can find out everything I want without doing my own work.