Edit: (well-fuck-a-doodle-do, that's and embarrassing typo in the title /facepalm)

With Darksiders2, Sleeping Dogs and Fall of Cybertron finished my choice in games have started to dry up a bit again and with Borderlands 2 still 3 weeks away I'm starting to get mighty tempted to give GW2 a shot. However i'm still a bit on the fence about dipping my toes into another MMO atm.

Now this might seem a little silly but I like to roleplay my characters a little bit. Not full on roleplay roleplay mind you, no talking in character or anything serious like that. But i do like to sort of have a characterization of the persona in my head and when i play MMO's my overall mannerisms and subtle behavior starts to slightly adjust and modify from my actual self.

To give a crude example, when playing WoW in years past one of my characters would try to gank at the first opportunity and be a merciless cunt, yet when i would be playing my other char he would never gank period but at the same time was not a pacifist and would wait for the enemy to be ready before starting a fair fight and hell if it was an interesting one might even give respect to the enemy. Another example would be my tauren shaman having never ever ever been specced into anything other then enhancement even when it was crap. Little shit like that you know. So while it might not be important for a lot of people character creation is for me. It's the start of creation, making something interesting for yourself to adapt to for a bit, fleshing things out etc...

With GW2 i was not feeling the creative spark much when it comes to the races. "Cat people" seemed interesting at first but after some though not quite hitting the spot. Plant dudes are kinda cool, just not right now. So i was daydreaming like usual on the way to get my lunch coffee and though well it would be interesting to create a Norn(?), bulky sure but totally short, dwarfish sorta mother and have at least a semblance of a beard (mannerisms and the like i can think of on the fly). Something like that could get me into giving GW2 at least a spin.

Sorry for all the exposition :P

Question: can you make one of those viking dudes look like a friggin dwarf or at least approximate one. To get technical, does the game scale the entire body shape to your height or can you change girth and height somewhat independently? And how low can you go, is it possible to get those dudes to at least slightly below average human height?

PS: In retrospect it's kinda funny how little things like that can make a difference between sale or no sale for me, go figure >.>

You can not play as a dwarf. Dwarves in the GW2 lore are kind of a rare sight as they never go above ground.
 
Also, they're basically living rocks at this point.

@Dezztroy: I don't mean an actual dwarf. If you read the post I meant modify an existing race to look more dwarfish. :)

@Dezztroy: I don't mean an actual dwarf. If you read the post I meant modify an existing race to look more dwarfish. :)

You can make them stocky with awesome beards but they're fairly tall even at the lowest height setting, so if you like oversized dwarfs then maybe.

I've some very short fuckers around but I smacked the shit out of them in pvp.
Totally unrelated but everyone hate gnomes and such, right?
 
Every race has a set height you change a bit but like Dezz said it won't be that much.
The creator is great however, made some amazing looking characters and like you I don't really dig the races.

@Dezztroy: bummer

@geirr: thanks, hmmm, i don't mind oversized dwarfs (the girth/height proportions are more where it's at), still will have to mull it over

@TaliciaDragonsong: yea fuck gnomes (i totally made one once >.>)

This ain't Middle Earth, son. Get some Asura up in this bitch!

@Sweep: Low center of gravity is the shit for combat. Ugly faces are sweet too. And beards are distilled awesome.

I just like short dudes.

wait...

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Totally unrelated but everyone hate gnomes and such, right?

@Tennmuerti said:

@TaliciaDragonsong: yea fuck gnomes (i totally made one once >.>)

...and now somewhere in Tyria an Asura weeps in his sleep :(

Edit: Picture added for proof ;)

The fattest I could make my Norn.. he's got great floppy breasts too and some tattoos even highlight the fact. There's also a head size and width slider, so you can totally get a dwarfish look if you manipulate the sliders right. But still they get pretty tall compared to the other races even at their lowest.

@HarlechQuinn said:

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Totally unrelated but everyone hate gnomes and such, right?

@Tennmuerti said:

@TaliciaDragonsong: yea fuck gnomes (i totally made one once >.>)

...and now somewhere in Tyria an Asura weeps in his sleep :(

Haha the Asura are awesome though IMO, and their weeping/crying animation is super cute.

@geirr: thanks for the pic!

@HarlechQuinn: dude i don't know ... that does not seem cute, it's kind of creeping me out to be honest

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@HarlechQuinn: Hope he chokes on his tears! ^_^

Those type of cruel comments are the reason why he became a Necromancer, as the dead are usually not that mean spirited ;D

@HarlechQuinn: Vengeance at the cruel world seethes in his little black heart doesn't it. :D

@Tennmuerti said:

@HarlechQuinn: dude i don't know ... that does not seem cute, it's kind of creeping me out to be honest

Never said that it looks cute ;)

Concerning the "creeping me out" aspect... That's how we Necromancers roll 3:)

I made a cat guy, big horns, blonde mane. They're sort of big and hulking in the same way Tauren are except they run on all fours, it's completely awesome. You should make one of those.

@RockmanBionics said:

I made a cat guy, big horns, blonde mane. They're sort of big and hulking in the same way Tauren are except they run on all fours, it's completely awesome. You should make one of those.

Technically that's very logical. And I first thought so too.

However my tauren in wow was kind of special to me, being my first character in wow and also the most loved, i grew quite attached to dear old Greydog over those past years, enough to use a tauren as my avatar even tho i don't give a shit about wow itself anymore. The problem comes from exactly such a fondness, making a Char would create a dissonance a feeling of things just not being the same, nostalgia and all that jazz. So that option kind of became a no-no. It could potentially work if i created a Char vastly different in personality, but still a bit risky. I just get a weird feeling thinking about it atm doesn't quite sit right.

(call it a negative effect of personifying something for so long, leaves a mark on the memory, at the very least makes one think of him as an actual separate entity/character like a favorite character in a book say, rather then just a throwaway polygon model with stats)

@Tennmuerti:

Norn are pretty much Dwarfs. The males are all stocky and beared. They're grumpy and drunk and rowdy. They carve stone into statues of their heroes. Only difference are their dimensions. Instead of being 'halflings', they're 'doublings' of regular-sized humans. The whole animal spirit angle of their beliefs is kinda neat too. Trippy!

Also - they invented Keg Brawl - which is a hoot and a holler. Can't go wrong, rolling a Norn.

@Seppli: Can you play norn as a caster type character rather then a physical one?

@Tennmuerti said:

@Seppli: Can you play norn as a caster type character rather then a physical one?

Sure - all classes aka professions are open to all species.

Dwarves are mostly all extinct in this world. :(

Sad events happened in Eye of the North unfortunately. But the Norn are very shamanistic and hearty beer-lovers.

@Tennmuerti: I think I get what you mean. I used to draw a little bit and despite never quite putting the effort in to give my characters real..eh, character, I still have a spot in my mind for how they were like.

Now I'm gonna make an odd suggestion, and one based on my own subjective experience so it might not apply to you at all, but if you when you made your character pictured him as knowing your old character then it might get easier to get it sorted in your head.

They way I see it, and again I'm just going off of personal experience so bear with it for a bit, is that when "Graydog" was created in your mind he was created from the you of the time. If you're going to make a similar looking/feeling character and you don't want it to cause a dissonance or begin to overwrite your previous one, then you have to make him a separate entity. The easiest way to do that is to create him from the "you of the now". The biggest, easiest difference between the you that created "Graydog" and the current you, is that the current you knows "Graydog". You have a picture in your head of what he is like. If you make that a starting point for your new character, then even a character with a similar look and feel will be different because characters are partly defined by who or what is around them.

Basically, picture what the new character would think of the old character and later what the old one would think of the new one, how they would interact. That will help separate them. ...or you could just make a tree dude, or a Norn or whatevs, thaty would probably work just as well, I guess : P