The long-awaited race-week is here with a load of concept art, dialogue snippets, lore, and of course the first appearance of the newly redesigned Sylvari. Here's the primer, straight from the source.
 
Kristen Perry on Designing and Redesigning the Sylvari
In my opinion it looks pretty much 1000% better than the old design. Also, the article is full of fantastically terrible puns (if that's your thing).
 
The Sylvari Soul - Angel McCoy on Writing the Sylvari
Not really relevant to the article, but fuck does that first screenshot look incredible.
 
Video: Growing the Sylvari
Sort of a summary of the last couple of days, but hey, everything looks better in motion.
 
Updated Sylvari race page (w/ new video)
Interesting lore bit about the Sylvari not being corruptible. And that environmental art is DOPE.
 
Dream and Nightmare
Just a good, old-fashioned, down-home, country-style lore dump. Plus an entertaining little story.

Looks cool, but i dont PLANT to roll one, anyways, more info is always good.

@Lotus said:

Looks cool, but i dont PLANT to roll one, anyways, more info is always good.

Leaf it out, dude.

I'd imagine they'd be the primary Ranger choice. Hearing about the new stuff always makes me excited and hopeful for a release date or window.

I wanna roll a Sylvari engineer. They look better than the previous incarnations, definitely. Still think they're a bit silly. But whatever, FANTASY.

They look much more like plant-people now, not just humans with foliage attached to them.

The detail on anatomy is much better than the previous iteration of Sylvari, too, as if the whole person grew from one spot on the body.

Stumps up from me!

It's time for all these puns to make like a tree, and get the fuck out of here.
 
Pretty cool read anyhow. Definitely an improvement over the old design.

Huge improvement over the old design, I really wasn't expecting anything so good. I especially love that guy with the bark-goatee.

But it's just nice that they don't simply look like humans with leafs and that they didn't go with a typical elf design. Caithe looks amazing now.

Very cool design! Don't really like the faces/colors though. Too bright and disney-esque.

This looks like something I would see in Everquest 2.

Very cool design! Don't really like the faces/colors though. Too bright and disney-esque.

@Akridsaid:

Very cool design! Don't really like the faces/colors though. Too bright and disney-esque.

Well, apparently you can dye these "skins". Perry goes on to say...

The summer skin, as you’ve seen, is very lush and leafy with a lot of different types of plant details making up the anatomy. But what about bark textures and shard edges? For this effect we will have a winter skin available which shows more bramble tendons, dried leaves, bark trunks, and gnarled roots woven throughout the body.

What of spring and autumn? Well, really, if you dye the summer skin yellow-green, orange, or brown, you really have the other two seasons covered.

So aside from the Winter Skin example of a brown Sylvari with a "beard", I wonder what else one could do with them - especially the results of dying the winter skin.

In any case - the Sylvarian Full Plate pictured in the blog post has taken the cup (top right in the link) - I'll be making a Sylvari Warrior as my first character.

Christ, I'm on the edge of becoming a Kristen Perry fanboy. I think she nailed it with this.

Sylvari are looking great now!  Very intriguing race though I think I am going to still make an Asura.  Oh those witty little buggers, love em.

@selfconfessedcynic: The blog also mentioned a possibility of bioluminescent skin, which is what I assume those markings on Caithe's face are for. That is really awesome, especially as we've already seen things like ghostly weapons which glow eerily while it's dark. The sylvari should look pretty amazing in game, I can't wait for Gamescom.

Looks cool, my first character will probably be a Sylvari.

@WinterSnowblind: Hell yeah - as long as they look like that and don't end up looking like Fable 2... But yes, cant wait to experiment. I'm looking forward to Gamescom for the PvP more than the character customization, but now that gap is closing.

@TheHT: : D - I agree. On both counts. Combine that with dying the leaves, and one could make a badass looking thief.

They're late on today's update - I don't see the Angel McCoy post anywhere...

I really want to see these models in motion wearing gear in the context of the actual gameworld. Gotta say those brownish barky  models kinda grow on me. Could see rolling such a Sylvari. The green ones... not so much.

All that covered bush gave me wood.

Great now I feel like a piece of shit.

or rather fertilizer

...

Ghaaaaa

It's just too easy to reach for the lowest hanging fruit

/goes to sob in the corner

Blah blah blah, plant people, blah blah blah. I want them to take my money. NOW.
 
But seriously, I'm loving the new design.

@Tennmuerti said:

All that covered bush gave me wood.

We have a winner!

The new post is up - quite interesting. I have to say, I'm still not warming to some of their writing and voice work... The ideas are cool enough though.

Looks really cool and unique. Less humane to my disappointment, but I guess I'll have to slide since it looks much different than what most developers would create as "grass people" (which is basically green skinned people with some leaves slapped on).

@Meteora: Which is exactly what we had originally :P

I'm still impressed at their willingness to go back and completely scrap gameplay features/designs just to perfect them. Seems we'll be waiting forever to actually play the game at this rate though.

Looking good, but I'm more of an Asura at heart.

The new post is up - quite interesting. I have to say, I'm still not warming to some of their writing and voice work... The ideas are cool enough though.

  
  Proper embed player provided...

Now it's just a week or so until we're finally gonna see them Sylvari and Asura in action. Not just standing around looking pretty and acting cute.
 
And PvP. Let's not forget PvP.

Seeing them move, I'm into it. So far they look awesome, can't wait to see them and the asura in action next week. As well as PvP. And player customization.

Here's the brandnew Sylvari Hometown video. Makes me want to squeeze a grapefruit with my fruitfucker.
 
       

They're going for an Avatar'ish atmosphere with this it seems like.

Looking back after Gamescom, I was totally into Sylvari as a race until I saw them running around in every day settings wearing stock armors. IMO, the magic of the Sylvari was their uniqueness, but in regular armor sets, it's hard to tell that they're Sylvari at all - unless they're green.

In the actual game, I would assume that there would be many sylvari-styled armors obtained through PvE - but I don't think I'd want to play a race that is generic unless I go through the trouble of moving stats from armor to armor as I progress through the game. I may roll one eventually, once this kind of stuff is proven to not be an issue - but for now, I don't think I'll be playing as a green human any time soon.

On the other hand, after Gamescom, Asura look absolutely awesome - they are adorable and their animations are so lively / hilarious. I shall be finding the largest weapon designs in the game as to maximize the size humor. (the weapons scale, but the effect should be possible : D )

ED: Oh, and if they keep dying us hideous matte colours for PvP (instead of, say, giving us a subtle red outline or something), then it doesn't really matter how pretty your armour is.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: I dunno man. For example, this video posted in the main thread. If that didn't say "Sylvari Guardian Female", I would have no idea what race (or to some extent, sex) that was.

As for the red outline, I was using that as an example - I meant that the red team would have a subtle red outline and the blue would have a subtle blue outline. IMO It would be just as effective and far less pervasive than tinting the whole armour blue/red. Oh, and on the minimap, it would be good if they made the dots for your team your colour instead of green. As for leaving it how it is and being allowed to adjust the dye of your colour, it's better than nothing, but still not what I would call optimal. I dont see the point of getting end game armor and making it just the way I like it if I can only show it off in PvE.

In any case - I'm now on the side of "not convinced" when it comes to the Sylvari. Of course, my only real reasoning for this is their armour, and not their character designs. That is still fine, it's just differentiation I'm worried about.

I supposed once you learn how each race runs it won't really matter. I'm sure they are distinct. Possibly even different depending on gender? I'm just going off of my experience in WoW.

@weeman105: Agreed - but then, I like being more obviously distinctive. Eg. Charr, Norn or Asura. I guess part of the problem is just the similarity in build shape of a Sylvari and a Human. Sure, that's part of the lore, but considering I'm pretty much duty bound to play a human as one of my first characters, I wouldnt mind some distinct differentiation.

In any case, they're still a cool race, just not as much of my style as I had thought they would be.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: True enough. I know I sure will if I make one. I want branches and shit. Coming out of my head.

But mainly, I want to see what kind of armour Anet has in store for Sylvarians.