Guild Wars 2

For generations, war and chaos raged across the land of Tyria. Then the dragons woke.


The sequel to Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 is a MMORPG developed by ArenaNet. Like the original, there are no monthly fees once you purchase the game itself and has both instanced and persistent zones. The closed beta took place between December 2011 and March 2012, with other betas in March and April 2012 for anyone who pre-purchased the game. The full game was released on August 28, 2012.

The game is set in the continent of Tyria, on the world of Tyria, 250 years after Guild Wars. Five Elder Dragons have awakened and are wreaking havoc across the planet; cutting off continents, flooding cities and, in the case of Zhaitan, raising undead armies.

The following races are playable:

  • Humans - The same old humans played in the original game. Their once-great kingdoms have largely fallen to ruin, with Kryta being home of the modern heroes.
  • Norn - The oversized but otherwise human-like race of proud and philosophical Norse warriors, capable of transforming into the forms of animals. Driven south by Jormag, they make their home in the Southern Shiverpeaks.
  • Charr - A ferocious and feline race who were enemies in the first game. Half blood knights and half egomaniac hunters, with a strong streak of self-determination. They have reclaimed Ascalon from humanity and now reside there.
  • Asura - A small, big-eared race consisting only of insufferable geniuses who created the Asura Gates, and other magical technologies. Driven from their subeterranean homes by Primordus, they control much of the Tarnished Coast.
  • Sylvari - Plant people who grow on a tree. They are a new addition to the lore, with the oldest being born 25 years before the start of Guild Wars 2 from a tree that was planted in the original game. They share a type of Hivemind where everything they learn in life can be known by any newborn Sylvari, but not vice-versa. They share their homeland with the Asura.

The game has eight professions available, which are divided into Scholars (light armor), Adventurers (medium armor), and Soldiers (heavy armor). Any races are able to play any profession and each profession has a "unique mechanic" that greatly distinguishes it from the others.

  • Elementalist - A scholar profession focusing on, not surprisingly, magic based on the standard four elements. Their unique mechanic is "attunements": while the other professions may switch between two weapon sets, Elements may switch between four "attunements", one for each of earth, fire, water, and air. These attunements have both passive effects and change the skill bar of the character. Earth skills focus more on defense, Fire skills on Area of Effect damage, Water on healing and movement interference, and Air on single target damage.
  • Necromancer - A scholar profession based on the manipulation of death. Has a number of life-stealing skills, summonable minions, and a range of support abilities, in addition to some direct damage. Their unique mechanic is a "Life Force" resource that builds as deaths occur near the necromancer. Life force is used to sustain a "Death Shroud" state, which gives the necromancer a new skill bar and causes his life force to take damage instead of his health.
  • Mesmer - A scholar profession focused on illusion magic. A number of their skills involve creating illusionary copies of themselves, either "clones" that look identical to the caster to confuse the enemy, or "phantasms" that are ghostly copies of the caster with more health and damage. They can also shatter these illusions to damage or debuff enemies or buff themselves. Many Mesmer spells will inflict Confusion; a new condition that causes enemies to take damage whenever they activate a skill.
  • Ranger - An adventurer profession that can use both ranged and melee weapons, with the ranged weapons covering a variety of roles and melee abilities being focused around quick movement and defense. May also use traps and spirits to defend or influence an area respectively. Their unique mechanic is animal pets, which can be equipped with a number of different skills for different roles, depending on the exact type of pet.
  • Thief - An adventurer profession that can use both ranged and melee weapons and is the first class announced to use pistols. Utilizes shadowstepping, traps, and stealth in combat. As a unique mechanic, rather than having cooldowns, thief skills consume some of the character's ten 'initiative' points. The thief can also steal an item from a foe and use it as an impromptu weapon.
  • Engineer - An adventurer profession that uses guns, Guns Akimbo and rifles, as well as a number of technological gadgets for offense, healing, and control. They can place turrets down on the battlefield, equip backpack kits that allow them to use mines, grenades, tools, and medicine, and equip new weapons into their hands using weapon kits, from flamethrowers to "pulling" cannons. Their unique mechanic is a tool belt that maps a special ability to every healing or utility skill that the Engineer has equipped. For example, the tool belt skill for the Med Kit is a self-heal, and the tool belt skill for the mine kit is one that detonates all the mines at once.
  • Warrior - A soldier profession that can use both ranged and melee weapons, with ranged weapons being focused more on various types of direct damage and melee weapons covering a variety of roles. May also use shouts, stances, and "battle standards" to enhance allies and themselves. Their unique mechanic is adrenaline, which builds up as the warrior deals damage, increasing the damage of abilities and providing a special ability based on their current weapon when it is high enough.
  • Guardian - A soldier profession that can use one of three Virtues (Courage, Justice, or Resolve) to aid allies in combat or to power up the Guardian's own passive abilities. They can also create Wards which can prevent enemies from crossing, shield against attacks, or even reflect ranged attacks. Guardians can also summon enchanted weapons to help in the fight.

This we know:

  • It lacks monthly fees, just like the original.
  • Unlike the original, it makes use of persistent areas, while still employing instanced ones for each character's personal storyline.
  • Instead of being able to use 8 skills chosen when at an outpost from your list of learned skills, players have ten skills: the first five being dependant on your weapon and off-hand item, and the other five are chosen from your skill list (with the requirement that one of them has to be some sort of self-heal and another an elite skill)
  • The level cap is raised up to 80.
  • Achievements in the Hall of Monuments from the Eye of the North expansion will give non-combat benefits to characters linked to that account.
  • It features so-called Dynamic Events instead of traditional quests.
  • The story concerns each character's personal story, the world's story and many little stories that showcase the aforementioned Dynamic Event System.
  • There are no secondary classes. The developers originally intended to use that feature again, but found it clumsy and impractical with the new equipment-based skill system.
  • Jeremy Soule returned as the soundtrack's composer.
  • There is no healing class... Everyone take a deep breath. It's going to be OK. as the developers judged the necessity of having a healer in each party "boring." Instead, all classes are capable of some healing, as well as more proactive support.
  • Losing all your health will "down" you, though you can rally back into active combat either with the help of a party member or by defeating an enemy using special "downed" attacks. Being beaten again while downed will defeat you, requiring revival by an ally (which, again, all characters are capable of) or spending money to return to a nearby waypoint. Instead of Death Penalty, the time you can spend in the defeated state is reduced with each defeat in close succession. Additionally, If you are defeated, 1 random piece of undamaged armour will be damaged. This in itself has no actual effect, but if you have no undamaged armour piece, one piece will break, nullifying both the armour value it gives and any skill bonuses or others it has. Damaged and broken armour can be repaired by some NPCs for a modest fee.
  • Rather than filling out a party with NPC henchmen or customizable heroes, dynamic events will scale themselves to the number of players participating, making solo play a more viable option. Similarly, a "sidekick" system similar to City of Heroes has been implemented where a lower-level character gets temporarily powered up by teaming with a higher-level one, and high level characters are automatically bumped down when they enter a lower-level area.
    • Sidekick up has been canceled as Arenanet recently revealed, but sidekick down is still in place.
  • Player skills will interact with each other in intuitive ways, and will be a key component in team combat while rewarding experimentation. One example is a Warrior sending a flaming cyclone at his enemies by using a whirling axe attack on an elementalist's wall of fire.
    • In addition to profession and equipment skills, there ware context skills available when there's an object to interact with. This can range from drinking mugs of ale and smashing bar stools to Warriors hurling boulders and Earth elementalists launching rocks like missiles.
  • Players who have grinded for achievements in the first game can earn cosmetic rewards for the second one. This link calculates the rewards your incoming character will gain.
  • There are an assortment of Mini Games to provide a variety of diversions, with six in each of the game's five capital cities. Named ones include a bar brawl, a shooting gallery, and a snowball fight, with at least one game of turn-based strategy being implied.
  • There are lots and lots of Grey and Gray Morality, particularly where the NPC races are concerned. Unless, of course, they're one of the truly Exclusively Evil ones (*cough*Krait*cough*)
Tropes used in Guild Wars 2 include:
  • Always Save the Girl: What broke up Destiny's Edge. Logan went to protect the human queen Jennah from one of the elder dragon's minions just as the group was getting ready to kill the dragon himself. The group failed without Logan, and one of its members and Glint died.
  • Ancestral Weapon: The Claw of the Khan-Ur, a weapon lost to the Char for centuries before being returned to them by the humans in an effort for peace.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: The toughest content will mainly be rewarded with gear that has stats on par with the normal gear at that level, but with far cooler looks. It's also untradable, so that having a full set of this armor means that you've beaten that challenge every way possible.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Bosses are huge!
  • Awesome McCoolname: Due to the Charr's naming conventions, pretty much every Charr has a name like Pyre Fierceshot or Kalla Scorchrazor.
  • Badass Army: All of Charr society is structured around their Badass Army.
  • The Beast Master: Rangers specialize in being this.
  • Badass Longcoat: Invoked by some armour arts, engineer armour seems particularly fond of this. Of course, that is available to all adventurer professions.
  • Badass Normal: Compared to the more magical/technical classes, Warriors, Rangers, and Thieves.
  • Baleful Polymorph: A few of the Dynamic Events revealed in the Press Betas so far seem to involve being transformed into an animal of some kind, such as a frog turning you into a pig so you can look for truffles for it. Seriously.
    • There is also a Mesmer elite skill that turns enemies into moa birds.
  • Beast Man: Norn can transform into a Bear, Wolf, Raven, or Snow Leopard form.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Quaggan, a race of roly-poly anthropomorphic manatees. Anger them at your own risk.
  • Big Red Button: See Schmuck Bait below.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Despite their single-shot apperances, rifles and pistols have a high rate of fire. A thief wielding Guns Akimbo can practically shoot at full auto. Acceptable Breaks From Reality and Rule of Cool apply here.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord: Rangers, Warriors, and Thieves.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: The Nightmare Court is both justified and subverted-they formed as a reaction to what they viewed as an alien culture imposing their morals on the Sylvari, and so actively present themselves as violations of those morals-despite the fact they don't actually think they're evil, just fighting for survival.
  • City of Adventure: Lion's Arch, former capital of the human kingdom of Kryta, is now an adventuring hub where all races converge.
  • Confusion Fu: The mesmer likes this one. A nice example is a mesmer wielding a sword getting a skill that lets him summon a duplicate of him to jump-attack an enemy, and another skill that makes him jump-attack the enemy, leaving a duplicate in his original spot. Now Spot the Impostor.
  • Continuity Nod: Several landmarks familiar to players of Guild Wars 1 will pop up, mostly underwater. Examples include a statue of Melandru from The Temple of Ages that the Quaggan worship, or some of the old construction of Lion's Arch. There is also a LOT of lore to be found about the intervening 250 years and more. Time will tell if this turns into Continuity Porn or not.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: The necromancers are back, and the Charr are now playable.
  • Dead Little Sister / Parental Abandonment: Two of the possible background choices human characters as to what their biggest regret is, are not knowing the parents that left them at an orphanage and not recovering the corpse of their sister when centaurs killed her. For players who feel this smells too much of Wangst, not joining the circus is the other choice.
  • Deadly Decadent Court: Some of the human backstory suggests that we can expect quite a bit of this among the ruling class of Divinty's Reach. And the Sylvari Nightmare Court, with an extra helping of Deadly.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Asura players can choose who was their first teacher on character creation. One of them is Blipp who "was known for his redundancies as well as his redundancies".
  • Dodge the Bullet: And any other attack, including area attacks. You're limited in how often you can do this, though.
  • The Dragon: No puns here, but each Elder Dragon has a champion that they invest a good chunk of their power in. The Shatterer, champion of Kralkatorrik, and Tequatl the Sunless, champion of Zhaitan, have been seen so far in game footage, but others are mentioned in the novels, and three others appear in the original Guild Wars, Glint, The Great Destroyer, and the champion of Jormag who can be seen frozen in Drakkar Lake.
    • Several others were killed by Destiny's Edge in the prequel-novel, but are replaced by the time the game starts.
  • Drop the Hammer: A two-handed weapon for the Warrior and Guardian, providing some flashy attacks in the latter case.
  • Dual-Wielding: Every class except the Guardian is capable of this in some form or another.
  • Dying Race: Humanity is at risk of becoming this. Of the five human kingdoms from the first Guild Wars, two have been destroyed outright, and no one has heard from the other two for a century due to blockades by the Elder Dragons and their minions. Only Kryta remains, and all Human characters start there.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Elder Dragons are closer to this than normal dragons.
  • Elemental Powers: The elementalist's back. And this time, they can change which elemental spells they use in mid-battle, which should help a bit with the practice of seeing 95% of the player using fire exclusively in the previous game.
  • Enemy Mine: While there is a tenuous truce between the Charr and humans, there is still a lot of hatred between them, but the races need to unite in order to defeat the Elder Dragons.
  • Everyone Is Bi: This is confirmed to be in effect for Sylvari society, for whom Purely Aesthetic Gender is rather literal. Gender is irrelevant to the Sylvari, including in matters of love.
  • Extreme Doormat: The Quaggan, who embody this trope so much that they are known to agree to an aggressor's terms simply because they don't want any trouble. Subverted in that if you hurt/anger them too much, they... undergo quite a transformation. To quote from that exact source:
“We started pushing around the little butterballs. All in fun, of course. Then they got mad, and that’s when the REAL problems started.”
—Argoth Onehand, former adventurer
  • The Fair Folk: The Sylvari are both an example and a subversion of this trope (although if the Nightmare Court has its way, they'll just be an example). On one hand, they are honestly alien to the world, and they operate on a sort of fairy tale logic. On the other hand, they're quite capable of negotiating with other races, and even the the Nightmare Court has very understandable motives (they're xenophobes, and want to pollute the Dream of Dreams so that other Sylvari become as isolationist and insular as they are).
  • Fantasy Axis of Evil: Each race seems to have it's own evil group. The Charr have the Flame Legion, the Sylvari have the Nightmare Court, the Asura have Inquest, and the Norn have the Sons of Svanir. With humans, it's not sure if it will be common bandits, or Kryta's Deadly Decadent Court that fills this role.
  • Fantastic Racism: Many humans in Kryta do not trust the Charr at all, due to the massive war between the two races 250 years before.
    • The reverse is also true, thanks to actions by the Ebon Vanguard and their leader Gwen Thackeray, the Goremonger.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Soldier, Scholar and Adventurer classes.
  • Finishing Move: Mandatory for PvP due to the fight for survival mechanic. For most races the characters lift their arms into the air, yell in triumph, then runs them through with a victory banner.
  • Five-Man Band: The broken adventuring party Destiny's Edge:
  • Five Races: The playable races.
    • Stout: Charr / Norn
    • Fairy: Sylvari
    • Mundane: Humans
    • High Men: Norn
    • Cute: Asura
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Aversion, as handheld firearms have been developed in the 250 years since Guild Wars.
  • Flash Step: There are several rapid movement skills for various classes, and all of them have dodge rolls that evade attacks. Thieves' invoke this fully by having what seems to be more of a flash step than an actual roll. Their steal skill is also like this.
  • For the Evulz: The Nightmare Court is an interesting case where this trope applies yet they still have a bigger purpose: By committing evil, they hope to add more terrible memories (both from themselves doing evil and their victims being tortured) to their race's pseudo-Hive Mind, thereby bringing their race around to their point of view.
  • For Science!: Seems to be the Asura's motivation for doing anything.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: The Engineer profession is all about this.
  • Glory Seeker: Quite a few of the Norn are like this.
  • Godzilla Threshold: When the Charr breached the gates of the human capital, King Adelbern used a Fantastic Nuke to wipe out the entire city, which also raised all the human dead as ghosts that still fight against the Charr. Of course, King Adelbern was kind of a Knight Templar in the first Guild Wars, so whether the threshold was truly crossed is debatable.
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: The Engineer skill "Utility Goggles" which breaks stun and grants immunity to blindness and criticals.
  • Guns Akimbo: An option for thieves and engineers.
  • Have You Seen My God?: The human gods have withdrawn from the world, though most humans are still quite fervent in their religious beliefs.
  • The High Queen: Queen Jennah, ruler of the last human nation of Kryta.
  • Hive Mind: The Skritt have one similar to the geth-Skritt close enough to each other are in constant communication, allowing them to compare ideas, form hypothesis, and plan almost instantly, allowing their effective intelligence to rise exponentially. Thus, while a single Skritt is somewhat dim, an entire colony can easily outwit an Asura and replicate their technology. Which is a good thing, as the Asura hate them.
    • The Sylvari have an entirely different kind of hive mind. Their memories and experiences are automatically added to the Pale Tree, from which all of them are born, and the unborn can see those experiences in their dreams while they are still unborn.
  • Humans Are Special: A surprising aversion, given the extreme focus the original Guild Wars gave to humans. Humanity is actually the race most in danger of dying out.
    • Technically all races are on about the same footing. But since Humans were special in the first game, this was achieved by the humans dropping like a rock while other races got stronger.
  • Hurricane of Puns: The article about the Sylvari redesign is filled with plant-based puns.
  • Instant Plunder, Just Add Pirates: There's the zombie pirates controlled by Zhaitan, and the de facto ruler of Lion's Arch is a Norn ex-pirate.
  • Kicked Upstairs: The Asura are officially governed by the Arcane Council, which is supposed to consist of the Asura's best and brightest. But since most Asura would rather be experimenting and inventing in their labs, those on the council were the ones that couldn't find a good enough excuse to get out.
  • Kill'Em All: The Foefire, King Adelbern's final gambit to protect Ascalon City from the Charr, killed everyone in the city, and turning all the humans into vengeful ghosts that kill anything they see inside the walls.
  • Kill It with Fire: Elementalists in fire attunement, naturally. Engineers have a flamethrower as well.
    • Some of the siege weapons in World versus World could count as well, if we are to believe the lucky Beta players. Trebuchets' shots are rather much on fire.
  • Land Mine Goes Click: A weapon option for Engineers.
    • Though they won't go 'click'. The player chooses when to detonate them, they're not activated by walking over them.
      • Per the April 2012 beta weekend event, mines are indeed proximity-activated.
  • Last Bastion: Ebonhawke, for the kingdom of Ascalon.
  • Lethal Joke Character: The Asura as a race were designed to be funny, but an Asura character is just as effective as any other race. If sillier looking.
  • Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition: Of the super-special hard copy variety, with various bits and bobs of physical swag, as well as the digital deluxe edition, with bunches of special in-game stuff, which is also included in the other edition.
  • Look on My Works Ye Mighty and Despair: The Jotun in Guild Wars 2 will be the same barbaric giant tribes they were in the first game, but with more backstory about their once proud history, illustrated by ruined monuments of their once-great civilization.
  • Mad Scientist: The Asura as a whole, but those belonging to Inquest in particular.
  • Magic Knight: Guardians are the most obvious example. Thieves have some magical elements as well (stealth and shadow steps). The revealed casters also have weapons sets that are oriented towards up close fighting, but the effect is more "tough/close up caster" than "combination of weapons and magic".
  • Magitek: The Asura's approach to technology, as opposed to the Charr's more traditional technological advancement.
  • Medieval Stasis: The Charr kick this trope in the groin and run away laughing. Even if some societies have remained technologically stagnant, they're isolated cases.
    • The five primary societies all have reasons for their Medieval Stasis or lack thereof: The Charr need technology to make up for their lack of magic after the Shaman caste is disgraced. Humans rely on their gods for a good chunk of their might (although this has led to them being pushed down to one of the weaker races). Norn don't really have a centralized society, so they don't have a strong scientific base. The Sylvari, as a race, are only 25 years old, so that's their excuse. The Asura take a more magical approach to technology, and are about on par with the Charr, but do it For Science! instead of for war like the Charr.
    • It should also be noted that a promo-video showing the human capital of Divinity's Reach and the surrounding lands show quite a bit of technology that didn't exist in the first Guild Wars (automated irrigration systems and some sort of planetarium). They just didn't turn half the country into a Industrial-age furnace like the Charr did.
  • Mega Corp: The Inquest is one part this, one part Mad Scientist cabal...even by Asura standards.
  • Multiple Choice Past: A character's past and personality are determined by a multiple-choice survey.
  • The Musketeer: Warriors, Rangers, Thieves and Mesmers are all equally proficient at range and close-up.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Nightmare Court, and the titles of its members (Count of Decay, Knight of Lies). This is on purpose. They want you to run away really fast and tell others about how scary it is. See For the Evulz. Also, Tequatl the Sunless.
  • Nature Spirit: The Norn revere four of them: Bear, Raven, Wolf and Snow Leopard. Why the latter was never mentioned in Eye of the North while the Norn would never shut up about the former three isn't clear yet.
    • These are far from the only nature spirits the Norn revere, but they are the most powerful. In fact they have a number of other minor spirits, as well as another major spirit. There were plans to have an Owl spirit in the game as a major spirit, but this was scrapped, and the Owl spirit fought and was killed by Jormag, an Elder Dragon.
    • Snow Leopard wasn't in the original Guild Wars because she was one of the less-recognized minor spirits at the time. She only joined the main pantheon of sorts after she aided the Norn during their exodus.
  • The Napoleon: The Asura are entire race of Napoleons, thinking they are better than everyone else despite coming up to about the waist of a human.
  • Nay Theist: After how they were burned in the last game, the Charr have gone in the opposite direction and now actively resent religion.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's been announced that all eight dungeons will have a story mode that you have to play through once to move the plot which then unlocks a much harder adventure mode, a change which will reportedly follow naturally from your actions in the story mode. So whatever Sealed Evil in a Can is in that dungeon becomes much more dangerous just after you've visited. It sounds like the fine Guild Wars tradition of the players screwing the pooch during their adventure will continue merrily.
  • Non-Elemental: The Elementalist's Arcane utility skills.
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries : Sylvari are Plant People and follow this trope, although it's clearly explained that these aren't functional breasts and merely a shape to make the female Sylvari attractive (which was one of the design paradigms for the Sylvari). Averted by the Charr, the females of which have no visible breasts. (This was directly explained by one of the Anet artists.)
  • Old Save Bonus: Players of the original Guild Wars who owned Eye of the North, and built up their Hall of Monuments, get some nice free stuff (weapons and armor and such like) and cool titles.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: Pretty much the same as the original Guild Wars, of interesting note(and this applied in the first as well), their upper bodies more closely resemble Charr than Humans. One of them is also responsible for the creation of the Sylvari and their philosophical beliefs.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: The Elder Dragons, more akin to primordial forces of nature who warp their surroundings simply by existing than dragons.
  • Panthera Awesome: Charr, natch.
  • The Paladin: While Guardians do not get their powers from a divine source (the Nay Theist Charr are capable of being Guardians), mechanically, they function very similarly to the traditional view of a Paladin.
  • Perpetually Static: The game aims to avert this trope with its "Dynamic Events" system.
    • While an infinite number of random events is impossible and will thus run on a loop, starting these events may be very long (ie. finding a book in a wizard's tower, weather occurring over a certain landmark) or relatively short (ie. bandit raids on a nearby farm).
  • Pillar of Light: A sword-shaped one hovers over Ascalon City, created by the Foefire.
  • Pistol-Whipping: Depending on what other weapon you wield alongside your pistol, you can do this.
  • Plant People: The Sylvari. An article explaining the redesign actually goes into detail on how they used the common properties of plants when designing them.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Every Norn in existence.
    • Subverted with the Charr: While the military is the most basic form of social institute in Charr society, they're also the most technologically advanced. They're more like Proud Soldier Race Guys.
  • Proud Scholar Race Guy: The Asura. With a double helping of the 'proud' part.
  • Putting the Band Back Together: Strongly implied to be a major part of the plot with Destiny's Edge.
  • Real Men Eat Meat: The Charr can't stop talking about how much they love meat when you wander around their cities. But since they're based on big cats, meat's the only thing they can eat that give them nutrition.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The krait, a sea-dwelling race of lizardmen that seem to be Exclusively Evil, and have quickly gotten most of the fanbase howling for their extinction.
  • Rocket Jump: Give an Engineer a rifle and they'll be launching themselves with reckless abandon. Notably, it does no damage to the Engineer, just whoever's in the blast radius and whoever the Engineer is landing on.
  • Rule 34 : This interview, published shortly before Sylvari week, opens by asking whether or not the Sylvari can have sex. Apparently, they can, leading to this trope to apply.
  • Scenery Porn: The Sylvari homeland.
  • Schizo-Tech: Justified. The primary innovators are the Asura and Charr, who are (respectively) too arrogant and too suspicious to share it.
  • Schmuck Bait: One environmental weapon you can get has a skill called "Red Button" with the description "Has 'Do Not Press' written on it." Using said skill blows up the weapon setting you on fire.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The asura speak this way pretty commonly. As an Anet blog post says: "Why use a short word when you can once again prove your superior intelligence by using a word those around you don’t understand?"
  • Shout-Out: Several, in historic Guild Wars tradition.
  • Steampunk: The Charr, Engineers.
  • Spikes of Villainy: Primordus and Kralkatorrik, while not appearing in the core game, are covered in spines in the original Guild Wars.
    • Charr armor designers also make liberal use of spikes, but see Dark Is Not Evil.
      • Charr actually seem to LOVE this trope and tend to put spikes on just about anything. Including plant pots and looms.
  • Spiritual Successor: The Thief to the Assassin.
    • The Guardian to the Monk and Paragon.
    • And the Engineer to the Ritualist, with turrets replacing spirits, kits replacing Weapon spells and the ash summons, and the tool belt simulating the spells that utilized the number of Spirits summoned, how many were on cooldown, etc.
  • Spoony Bard: The eighth profession was revealed to be Minstrel at first...
    • But the reveal was actually an 'illusion' and attempting to click the link broke the illusion and revealed the eighth profession to be none other than the Mesmer.
  • Standard Status Effects / Status Buff: Conditions and Boons, respectively. Plenty of abilities give them out or remove them, with some that even turn one into the other or move them from person to person.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Literally the offer of a group of Flame Legion soldiers to a female Blood Legion soldier to join them. Goes back to the history where the Flame Legion send all Charr women to the kitchen, which bit them in the ass when the women of the other legions did join the fight against them. Seeing how the above offer is rejected and the soldiers respond by attacking her and all other Blood Legion soldiers, including the player, they didn't learn their lesson yet.
    • The Sons of Svanir have a similar attitude; since Jora killed the Nornbear in Eye of the North, women are banned from the cult.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Engineers can do a whole lot with explosions, as well as other tricks.
  • Sword and Gun: An option for thieves and mesmers.
  • Take That: When asked about subscription fees, Colin Johanson responded by asking "If you're paying a monthly fee for a game, what are you playing for?"
  • Techno Babble: The Asuran trademark.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works and The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: Warriors have a greatsword skill called Bladetrail. It's also a Precision-Guided Boomerang that cripples people.
  • Tricked-Out Shoes: Rocket boots and boots that spray an oil slick will be available to the engineer.
  • True Companions: Charr Warbands, who are raised and trained together from a young age. A Charr's Warband is the most important thing to them in Charr culture, and one of the race specific questions for Charr in their Personal Story is which member of their Warband they're closest to. Also the only one who survives your first mission.
  • Turns Red: Why you don't anger the peaceful quaggan.
  • A Worldwide Punomenon: Thieves have a special resource for attacking called Initiative. They have a skill that allows them to roll away from whoever they're fighting and gain Initiative. The skill is called Roll For Initiative
  • The Wild Hunt: It's actually a Sylvari concept, fittingly. Certain members of the race are called to a mission for the Pale Tree (the Genius Loci "mother" of the race), and by extension the Sylvari as a whole. This quest is called the Wyld Hunt, and it presumably often involves destroying threats to the race as a whole.
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