Yesterday, ArenaNet announced that the Sylvari week will take place before Gamescom. They will also be playable at Gamescom. I can’t wait! :)
But let’s look at some dates: Gamescom will be from August 17 – August 21. If Sylvari week is to take place before that, it will have to start before August 16. That’s in just a bit more than 3 weeks – in the worst case! Thus, we’ll probably see more about them very, very soon.
The biggest question for me now is just: How many stations will they have and how long will the queues be to test the game? ;) I’m also really curious about how the movement/controls feel. I’m hoping for them to be/feel like World of Warcraft and not like Lord of the Rings Online. If you know both games, you hopefully know what I mean. ;)
Unfortunately, that also means that Asuras will probably not be playable at Gamescom. I was really hoping they would be. I’m also waiting for Asura week more or less impatiently. The reason is that so far, I really love the race from what I’ve read in the Guild Wars books. And I love how they look in the current Guild Wars game. I don’t, however, like them as much in the previews for Guild Wars 2. Something seems to… plastic-y about them. Let’s have a look at a rather well-known picture showing two Asuras (also note how it’s not too hard to differentiate between males and females): 
In Guild Wars, Asuras look like this: 
Note that it’s difficult to tell who’s female or who’s male. I can just assume that they want players to easily tell them apart because it might be weird to choose a character where you can’t easily see whether they’re male or female (on the other hand… elves… ^^). In case you’re wondering, I wrote about the differences between males and females here: Females tend to have rounder ears than males. That difference doesn’t appear in the above GW2 screenshot.
All in all, I much prefer the look of the “older Asuras”. But maybe they’re not done yet? And whenever I see the GW2 version in a video, I really love their animations. So while I prefer the old look, it won’t stop me from creating an Asura in Guild Wars 2 (preferably a guardian or even a warrior. We’ll see which class I’ll like more). ;)
Nerdy Bookahs 
Asura Necromancer will be my first GW 2 character, no two thoughts about that :)
I wonder if they will ever make Asura race playable at a convention or will leave it to be experienced first directly in the game.
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I started with necromancer in Guild Wars but as much as I like the class in theory, I just don’t have much fun playing it. We’ll see what it’ll be like in GW2 but so far, I rather want to stay away from the class – well, except for having it as an alt. I’m an altoholic anyway. ^^
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I agree on the Asura and I also might need some time to get used to the new Charr look. They already changed in Guild Wars 1, the Ascalon Charr and the new Eye of the North Charr have quite a different appearance.
My other concern is the human faces. The female norn faces as well. They are beautiful but lifeless as waxworks. And the male norns still seem to be fat tons. There is a reason they are mostly showcasing the oversized norn pinup girls and not the males. I would like to play fat viking – but not a fat ton.
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Hmm… never paid much attention to how the Charr look in Guild Wars. I will pay more attention to them from now on, though. ;)
In general, I’m not a fan of tall characters. I actually bought the revamp tokens when ArenaNet put them on sale just to make my necromancer smaller. I’d created her as tall as possible and realised too late that I greatly dislike that. Now that she’s smaller (and got a haircut from Factions – she’s a Nightfall character) I played her several times again.
I’m curious about the options we can choose (hair colour, facial features,…) and how the characters will look in the end. There’s still time till release, after all. ;)
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For me personally, the sylvari reveal coming up in the next couple of weeks is fantastic news, and I can’t wait to see what was involved in the “redesign.”
The two races (sylvari and asura) will make up the bulk of my characters in GW2, in no small part due to their starting areas as well as their appearances. (I really hope the sylvari are more “plantish” and less “anime elves.”)
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Do you already have certain class/race combinations in mind? I’d really love to have a warrior as my main (or guardian) but I also want an Asura as my main. Asura warriors exist but somehow, it doesn’t seem to fit too well.
And yes! I’m really curious what Sylvari look like now. Hopefully not *that* different from their previous look because I actually liked it. I wouldn’t mind less elvish, though. There are enough elves in other games already.
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I’m retired, and as a result, have considerable gaming time available, so I usually have quite an “alt” problem and actually plan for it ahead of time normally… When I look at which character I’m going to create first, I’m usually looking at the first 3 to 4.
The top of my list right now are sylvari necro, asura engineer, sylvari thief, and asura guardian… somewhere after that will be at least a brief experimentation with an ele and a warrior (races not determined yet) but I will most likely be sticking with those 4 as my “main” characters and devoting a couple of hours a day to each of them. (I usually play each character at around the same time of day too.)
Honestly, I think the screenshot of the female asura guardian here http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/guardian/ pretty much says it all… Perhaps I’m biased but, I see no reason why a warrior or guardian asura wouldn’t work.
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