Guild Wars 2 Interview

NowGamer had a chance to corner ArenaNet lore designer Jeff Grubb and game designer John Peters for a four-page Q&A about the playable Charr race in Guild Wars 2, among other things.
While the Charr weren't playable in the original Guild Wars, how significant were they as NPCs and to the story?

Jeff Grubb: When the original Guild Wars prophecy opens, the Charr summon The Searing, which basically scorches the landscape with these huge crystal missiles that launch down on top of all the towns and cities of Ascalaon. They just kick the heck out of it. They Charr are overrunning the city, and part of the earlier story is you with the king's son Prince Rurik, taking refugees to safety through the Shiverpeak mountains.

The rulers of the Charr, the Flame legion shamans, were then kicked out because their own people didn't like the way they brought all of this upon them, and because they made the Charr worship false gods. So they're now kicked out and still fighting the rest of the Charr legions.

Jon Peters: The set up for this came from the Eye Of The North expansion, where we introduced some of the Charr characters that start this revolution. We don't really tell that story, but we foreshadow it with some of the characters we started to develop.

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As the Charr are technologically advanced, how have you evolved the tech in Guild Wars 2 to fit the 250-year time skip?

Jeff Grubb: It has evolved, and one of the big ways you will notice it is through gunpowder weapons. We had Dwarven blasting powder in the original Guild Wars, which has now been refined into a war technology by the Charr, and spread out among the other races. Asura will have pistols, Sylvari will have rifles and so on. The best of them tend to be Charr, because the Charr also have clockwork. It's not quite steampunk, but it's '˜clockpunk' if you will.