Progressive Games: Guild Wars Franchise

There’s often talk about games that need to be all inclusive, progressive, and forward thinking, even if the genre happens to be high or epic fantasy.  Often we think of single player games that way, because in single player games we pay more attention to the story than we do in an MMO.  But in this case, I’m looking at the Guild Wars franchise.

When Guild Wars was launched, it started with Prophecies, and the story of a group of humans from a nation called Ascalon.  They were under attack by a war like species called the Charr.  Now, because we were playing humans, we didn’t really know about the entire history of the conflict.  Just the human side.

But as the story progressed, we encountered many people and heroes throughout Ascalon, Kryta and into the Maguuma Jungle.  It was all very Euro-centric when it started.

Then, in Early 2006, ArenaNet released an expansion.  The first paid expansion of the franchise.  Called Factions, the players were no longer in the familiar setting of Kryta or Ascalon, but in the nation of Cantha.  The conflict with the Charr was very far away.

Cantha had very Eastern Asian aspects to it.  A mix of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Tibetan.  But it really wasn’t any different that other games that had come out before, as many aspects of Far East Asian folklore had been used as a building block for video games.  The big change came in late 2006.

ArenaNet released Nightfall, the second expansion of the GW franchise.  Like Factions, Nightfall was a standalone release, but it had something very different.

Nightfall took place in Elona.  Which had very distinct African features.  Drawing from Egyptian, Yoruba, and even Zulu folklore and myths, Elona was very different than any video game seen previously.  It is incredibly rare when an African setting is the backdrop, but ArenaNet did it, and they managed to create a wonderful story complete with interesting heroes and complex villains.

In mid 2007, Eye of the North was released.  It would eventually become the last expansion in the Guild Wars franchise before the release of Guild Wars 2.  Originally, there was a different idea for Eye of the North, and there were many who believed that there was something pointing to a Meso-American backdrop.  Instead, we learned that there are other species on Tyria aside from Humans, Dwarves, Tengu, and Charr.  We are introduced to the Asura and to the Norn.

The Asura are small, but highly intelligent species.  The Norn are massive, hunter like species that take a great deal of their story from First Nations myths and folklore and Scandinavian myth and folklore.

The progressive attitudes of the franchise sort of slowed, almost to a halt until Guild Wars 2 was released, and we came to the living story.  That is where we were introduced to Kasmeer and Marjory.  At first, one can just assume that they are a pair of humans in a Guild that was dubbed Destiny’s Edge 2.0.  There was Rox, a Charr ranger who had no warband, Braham Eirsson, and Taimi, an incredibly intelligent Asura progeny (a child) who is a student of the College of Synergetics.

Taimi is stricken with a degenerative disease that does not allow her to walk around as fast as others would.  But she doesn’t let that stop her, as she has her Golem Scruffy to assist her, and her incredible thirst for knowledge that pushes her forward.  Many times this is at the chagrin of Braham, who has taken to caring for the small Asura.

Toward the end of the Scarlet Briar story we find out for certain that Kasmeer and Marjory aren’t just good friends, they are in fact a couple.  There had been hints that the two had a relationship, but this comes to the fore in the final battle with Scarlet.  As Marjory and Braham are both injured in the final assault, Kasmeer and the player attack Scarlet, while Rox stays behind to ensure Braham and Marjory are protected.  Once Scarlet is defeated, Kasmeer rushes to Marjorie’s side, and end holds her in an embrace, giving her a deep kiss.

This produced a metric shit tonne of fan art.  Seriously, fans got really happy with this.

During the assault on Lion’s Arch, we also meet an Order of Whispers agent named Symon, he wears a hood and mask and has the distinctive Whispers light armour, who assists with the evacuation of the citizens of Lion’s Arch.  Later, when Lion’s Arch is rebuilt, the player can meet and talk to a woman called Sya.  In the conversation with her, she reveals “I’m Sya. Back then I was known as Symon.”  She goes on to say “Scarlet destroyed so much in the blink of an eye. It reminded me how short life is and how we should spend every moment embracing who we are.”  Sya is a mesmer, and as a master of Illusions, she is able to make her outward appearance look the way in which she feels inside.

Even the Sylvari of Guild Wars 2, one of the five playable races, have a gender fluid feel to them.  They are a plant based species, and while they do have male and female appearances, many players have used this as a way to create a masculine looking female or even a feminine looking male.  The Sylvari even view love and relationships differently, as they do not have the boundaries commonly associated with such things.  While same sex relationships in the world of Tyria aren’t frowned upon, the Sylvari are much more free to take up such relationships.  This may be because Sylvari find a bond with each other that is closer than any of the other five species.

As the player roams the world and learns of the dangers in Tyria, they discover a great number of things that the rest of the populace looks down on.  The Sons of Svanir and even the Flame Legion are two antagonistic factions that feel females are not worthy as warriors and that their only place is tending to the needs of the males.  With the Sons, this stems from the lore that when Jora and Svanir first found the great dragon Jormag, Svanir accepted the gift of corrupted power while Jora rejected it.  For the Sons, this meant Jormag’s power was not meant for them, and if a female Norn is corrupted with the dragon’s influence they will kill her.  Jormag, for his part, doesn’t really care.

With the Flame Legion, they are a legion of Charr who at one time held an oppressive hand above all other legions.  The Flame Legion lead the attack on Ascalon.  But they also felt that female Charr were not worthy as warriors and demanded all females step down from their place in the military and take up a more domesticated role.  This was later reversed as the other Legions pushed back and eventually defeated the Flame Legion.  An impressive event came several decades after the events in Eye of the North, when Kalla Scorchrazor, a female Charr of the Blood Legion, secretly trained other females and lead a revolt against the Flame Legion.  She forced the shamans to surrender, but paid for it with her life as a shaman stabbed her with a poisoned dagger.  Presently in Guild Wars 2, players can find talk of a warband dedicated to the memory of Kalla Scorchrazor.  Nicknamed Kalla’s Killers, it is an all female warband dedicated to taking out the Flame Legion.

There is still a long way to go regarding inclusive actions in video games.  And let’s not be too hasty, Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 isn’t without it’s flaws.  There’s an entire thread one could do that could be posted on either Escher Girls or Bikini Armour Battle Damage.  But, as far as things go, at least Guild Wars is a game that moves in the right direction.

 

What makes a gamer?

The concept of what makes a gamer has been around for some time.  I’d say since before video games, to be honest, though the term “gamer” wasn’t necessarily used in such a way.  But exploring the concept and the idea is an interesting one, considering the fact that a whole new brand of gamer is flourishing.  That being women.

I should back up a bit.  Women aren’t actually a new brand of gamer, they’ve been around since before video games.  They’ve been part of table top pen and paper, board games and other various gaming aspects like outdoor games like croquet, lawn darts, and even baseball.  But in the present, when we hear the term gamer, it’s most often associated with someone who plays video games.  And even then, to brand women as “new gamers” is also very naive as women have been playing video games on console and PC (and even Mac) since those devices have been around.

But what makes a gamer?  Is it the fact that they managed to play and beat Mario Brothers on the NES?  Or have a complete collection of Mario, Sonic, or any number of side scrolling games?  Maybe they had played some of the first FPS games such as Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, or even the lesser known Corridor 7.  Perhaps they made WAD files to modify Doom or Castle Wolfenstein.  Maybe they had a complete collection of Sierra Games, like Hero’s Quest, Police Quest, or Space Quest.  Perhaps it was a combination of PC, console and table top games that they played.

They could have had a vast collection of Magic the Gathering cards, Marvel/DC/Image Overpower cards, or even Pokemon cards.  Trading and playing with their friends, or buying booster packs.  Could have been they played any number of pen and paper games from Dungeons and Dragons (and all versions from 1st ED, 2nd ED, Combat and Tactics/Skills and Powers, 3rd ED, 3.5ED and onto 4th ED), Champions, Shadowrun, or  White Wolf games.

While listing all of these may have brought back a few memories, their existence in what makes a gamer now is completely irrelevant.  What makes a gamer now is that they play games.  Regardless of their gender.  They might mop up the floor in Multiplayer COD, or lead raids in WoW, or have one of the most coveted level 80 Guardians in GW2.  They might even have a kick ass house and family set up in Sims.  Maybe a killer deck combo in MTG.  What really matters is that they play games.

Throughout life, we don’t question someone by their regular actions.   Well, we shouldn’t, I should say.  Because too often that happens.  But too often the questions go in one direction.  That direction being pointed toward a female.  From what she was wearing, to what she was drinking, to what she was eating, to even what she was doing.  When the gaming culture (and by extension, the geek culture) discovers a woman who has a love of a certain game, the common knee jerk reaction is to grill her on the game and all history of the game.  What should be the reaction is to enjoy the moment.  Somebody else likes a thing that you like.  That’s pretty cool.  But often with men, when they find a girl playing their game (or reading their comic or watching their television show) they sometimes find that thing less appealing because suddenly a girl likes the thing they like.  And now, it’s up to that one dudebro to find out if her like for that thing is a legitimate like.

Here’s a secret; her like for a thing is a legitimate like, because it was her decision.  Not the decision of some committee that said “you may like this thing now”.  She made the decision, she plays this thing a lot and enjoys it, and every time she plays it she get better at it.  That’s what makes her a gamer.

Gender is completely irrelevant when it comes to the title gamer.  Women have been there a long time, but thanks to the common reaction from men, they’ve been too busy whining that there’s no women playing/reading/watching their favourite thing to really open their eyes and realize it.  But women have been quiet about it as well, not because they have a secret club or anything.  They’ve been quiet because for the longest time men have made the environment that revolves around comics, gaming and other geek culture aspects incredibly hostile.

That’s starting to change now, and it’s thanks to a lot of different women who have stood up and basically said “I’m not gonna take this bullshit anymore”.  They’re women, they play games, they read comic books, they cosplay, they watch the same movies that dudes watch.

The term gamer doesn’t have a gender, nor does it require a PhD in History.  It just requires someone to love gaming.

 

Features of the game

So I got a pleasant surprise over the weekend while playing Star Trek Online (no really, I’m not obsessed with the game, I just like to play it).  This is one of those things where a person could say “hey, that’s really cool” or “wow, now people can obsess about an MMO without actually logging into game”.  I honestly don’t know if this is the first MMO that’s done this or if it’s been done before, but the easiest way to explain it is through pictures.

This is completely online and seems to be flash based. But the interesting thing about this once the loading screen finishes, is that this site will keep a list of your characters (don’t worry, it’s run through Cryptic not some third party).

Once you log in, there are you characters ready to be viewed. I clicked on my main character, my Federation Vice Admiral.  As you can see, it has access to all the information about her, such as ship specs, personnel files, what accolades I’ve achieved with her and what fleet she’s a member of.

There’s the ship, the U.S.S. Ocelot, tactical escort retrofit, Defiant Class. And there’s all the systems that are used to help give the Ocelot her weaponry and defense.

This is the beam cutting weapon, and the basic information is given. It does not, however, give the information about it being part of the Omega set nor does it give the extra specs that comes with having each piece.

Personal page, giving all of the information about the character, such as rank, biography, weaponry, shields, armour, and so on. You can even click on each piece to get more information about it, just as you could on the ship page.  Little disappointed that right now it has a generic figure displayed instead of my character.

You can even examine the bridge crew, clicking on each member for more information.  This displays similar to the view of the main character, the one the player plays.

You can even take a look at your accolades, though it does not give you progression of accolades you haven’t completed, just the accolades you’ve fully completed.

You can even examine your fleet page, which can detail the roster, the fleet description, events that are going on (which is helpful if you want to check what’s happening with the fleet so you can work that around plans). You can also examine your star base construction progression.

This part’s rather interesting, because you can actually contribute to whatever projects are taking place without logging into game (I did not actually give over 10,000 dilithium to that project, I did that as an example, besides, I need that dilithium for personal projects). You can also view the leader boards for star base and embassy projects to see who is doing most of the work (or contributing most of the resources).

So this is kind of neat, but just so long as Cryptic decides to keep it as something you can look at and inspect and that’s it.  Don’t make a mini game of STO with a flash based engine because that will just end up giving people the excuse to play at work (if they don’t already).  There’s other things I could be doing at work.

 

 

 

Star Trek Online and the hat tips

Star Trek Online released the Legacy of Romulus pack for the MMO.  I’ve played through it, and it’s actually quite good.  There are some issues, and some things that I think Cryptic went a bit over board with.  Before going through some of it, however, there’s one thing I wanted to mention about the game that’s really quite good.

The developers of Star Trek Online have done an excellent job of giving homage to what has come before.  They’ve taken into account that Romulus was destroyed in the 2008 movie, and have used that to weave an interesting world (or universe).  From the fact that Leonard Nimoy does some of the voice over as you cruise from sector of space to sector of space, to the fact Denise Crosby was brought back to reprise her role as Sela (and Natasha Yar in one mission).  They aren’t the only ones, mind you.  Chase Masterson also reprises the role of Leeta, mind you as a hologram that hosts the Dabo tables as a part of Dabo from Quark Enterprises.  From Deep Space Nine to Drozana Station, Leeta can be found with a Dabo wheel.

It’s not just the actors reprising roles.  It’s also the characters that are mentioned.  Worf is standing in the courtyard of the First City on Qo’nos   The character of D’Tan is the new political head of the Romulan Republic, and D’Tan was a character in Season Five of The Next Generation, the very well known two parter that saw Spock going to Romulus to discuss and investigate Reunification.  D’Tan showed Spock a book and a set of toys with the Vulcan language written on the sides.  There’s even a mission which has Bones and another that has Scotty, both in the past on an old Drozana Station.

But that’s not the end of it.

Many of the accolades that players can get point to many different famous lines throughout Trek.  He’s Dead Jim.  Crossing the line.  Neutral no more.  And many other accolades that call back to every single episode of Trek.

Now, with the introduction of the Legacy of Romulus, there’s more.

As a Romulan, the player is introduced to a population trying to find a new home after the destruction of their homeworld.  These are the surivors of that catastrophe.  But they won’t be so fortunate as they are hounded by Empress Sela and the Tal Shiar, who believe what they are doing is the best for the Romulan people.  The player plays as a Romulan who is thrust into the conflict, and must make certain choices, even going so far as to align themselves with the Klingons or the Federation.

Right from the get go, there’s a major difference, as this new Romulan Republic has shrugged off the old uniforms of the past and taken up a fresh start.  The player’s ship can even have Remen crew members aboard (and, players can also play as a Remen).  The missions are interesting, which follows a conspiracy that the Tal Shiar is leading.  Even to the point where the player is indoctrinated by the Tal Shiar and Empress Sela (one of the accolades for completion is called “There Are Four Lights” which harkens back to the TNG episode where Picard was held captive by Cardassians).

There are a great number of episode missions that the players can go through, before they embark on the episodes that are based on their alignment.  Romulans who ally themselves with the Federation go through the usual Federation missions, and Romulans who ally themselves with the Klingons will go through the Klingon set (in some cases, they are the same, such as the missions set on Deep Space Nine and the ones on Defera).

Just like the ships available to Klingon and Federation players, many of the Romulan ships are familiar.  From the old warbirds from the original series, to the massive D’Deridex Warbirds seen in the Next Generation, along with some new designs based on what has come before.  Sadly, there is only one bridge option at present for the Romulan ships, something that may change in the future.

There’s a few more updates as well.  Players who want a Klingon Defense Force character will now get the option to play from level 1 instead of level 20 as before.  This opens up a few more mission possibilities.  There’s also new UI updates, which make the game look a lot cleaner than it did before.

Plus, there’s promises of more of the same in the future, with the opening of the Cait homeowlr (home to the feline like Caitians as seen in the animated Star Trek series, when they introduced M’Ress), as well as the Trill homeworld, and even making the faction for the Cardassians available.

With all of this coming out, Star Trek Online is in good shape.

Now, it’s only hopeful that Cryptic can treat its other properties in Champions Online and Neverwinter just as well.

 

Beta testing and customer service

I remember the glory days of Beta testing.  You know, a new product would come out and you’d sign up to Beta test it, hoping to be one of the lucky few who have managed to make the list.  Years ago, it was a prize to be cherished.

That’s changed a lot now, and while there are still the Beta lists of invites, Beta doesn’t exactly mean the same anymore.  Companies now offer preorders which allow you to get in on the Beta testing of a product.  I’ve Beta tested four games in the past few years, two I got in on merit of invite, two others I did preorder (one of which I really wanted to get, which was Guild Wars 2).Some might say I’m being hypocritical to complain about paying for something in order to be involved in it, and yes, I’ll admit the decisions to pay to Beta test were prompted by the aspect of monetary availability.  I had the money, I wanted to try it out, so I paid.

But the problem with this comes from paying for something, which includes a pre-order, to try it out before the official launch.  What if you think it stinks?  You’ve just blown X amount of dollars in order to “try” something out.  In some cases, name branding will help the product succeed.  Knowing that a brand name that’s been trusted will help in the decision making.  That has the adverse effect, as well.  And it’s very confusing when it’s a trusted name brand that is being developed by a company who has a shoddy track record.

“I know it’s X game, and X game has always been cool, but it’s being made by Z company, and they’ve proven to be really shitty with development and customer service.  So, do I sink money in order to play a really great franchise, all the while supporting a really crappy company?”

It’s a very complicated issue nowadays, considering how video game companies are pumping out products which just seem to be complete carbon copies of what’s been done before.  And the consumer has this attitude that the video game companies don’t have any obligation to deliver anything to the players once they have your money.  Well, yes, they do.  They’re still a business and they still produce a product.  When you give someone money to buy something, even if it’s digital, it’s still a product.  There may not be a physical thing to hold in your hands, but you still did get something in the transaction.  And to say it’s just the entertainment industry is nothing more than a cop out.

Consumers are now paying for the privilege (because, that’s what it is, a privilege) to join in during the Beta, and often, unless you’re really confident about the game or product, that’s like playing Russian roulette.  For every one Beta test you get involved in that’s really good, there could be three or four that are just crap.  And is it easy to get your money back from such a venture?  Most often not.  Sometimes a company will claim that the time you spent beta testing, is money to them.  You, the consumer, basically rented time in the beta to play it.

Video game companies have really gone full bore with business attitudes that they are money making machines first and foremost (which, to be honest, all companies are), instead of trying to make a decent product and having good customer service to help out that product move along.  There are cases where some products (in this case, video games) have gone by the way side, but let’s look at one in particular; Neverwinter Nights.  Years after Bioware stopped production of the game, they still made a patch for it, and they still had servers and support for the game after that.  Almost ten years after the game was launched, Bioware still supported it.  And it wasn’t only until a couple of months ago that GameSpy, the company that ran the master servers for multiplayer aspects of Neverwinter Nights, finally shut those servers down.  11 years after the game was launched.  That’s dedication to a product, that’s customer service.  It helped that Neverwinter Nights had a massive community, but they also had a huge respect for that community.

Another example of excellent customer service and listening to the customers was the now defunct City of Heroes.  CoX (as it was called) would often send out Beta invites for their expansions, never charging for it.  Often, however, if you were playing the original game, there was a very good chance you would have gotten their expansions (City of Villains and Going Rogue).  The team at Paragon Studios kept fans and players up to date on events, issue releases (patches or updates to the game were called Issues, like comic book issues), and a whole lot more, before NCSoft pulled the plug on Paragon (both the studio and the game).  And if there was a problem in game, it was often handled fast.  Paragon Studios and CoX was the fastest response time I’ve ever had with support problems, often times while I’m still attempting to find a solution on my own in game.

Those two previous examples seem to be the exception to the rule, as it now seems companies and development teams are less and less interested in customer service and more interested in pushing a product out.

 

Quick Review: Neverwinter

Since the Internet has had it’s users there have been online games.  And during all of that time, there have been several varied attempts to create a Dungeon and Dragons video game.  Especially with the name Neverwinter.

While the game Neverwinter Nights, created by Bioware in 2002, was the most well known and most popular game (there is still content being used to create modules and there are still active servers that host complete worlds created by different people) it wasn’t the first.  The first came out in the early 1990’s and was a text based MUDD that featured Nasher as a character questing through a complete story.  Since then, there’s also been Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2, created by Obsidian.  The first Massive Multiplayer Online game was released in mid 2000’s with Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while it had references to Neverwinter, it didn’t start in Neverwinter.

Now, Cryptic Studios has developed their own MMO called, simply Neverwinter.  It’s a throwback of sorts, to remind players of the original Neverwinter Nights, even using the font that was popularized by the Bioware release.  However, that’s the only similarity (along with the fact it takes place in Neverwinter).  There’s some good with this game, but there’s also a lot of bad.

I created an old standby character for this play through; Shani Wennemein.

It’s standard Cryptic development, which they used in both Champions Online and Star Trek Online, and is becoming their own sort of stamp on online games.  Many of the animations used in the game are used in both Champions and Star Trek, as are many of the voice actors.  The game was only in Beta, so I’m not going to be too harsh on the character creation system.  It was very lax compared to Champions which has a much more indepth creation system.  You could literally spend hours just creating a character in Champions, whereas in Neverwinter, they have a series of cookie cutter choice that you can tweak, or you can make your own additions and changes.  Again, not nearly as extensive as Champions, but it’s also only in Beta.

Game play itself is pretty decent, and something which can be expected from Cryptic.  After all, this is the fifth MMO they’ve created (they created City of Heroes and City of Villains as well).  Even the system for levelling up is a familiar one for those who play D&D.  However, it’s all very cookie cutter, and there’s very limited customization.  You get feats based on your class with some racial feats levelling up as you go.  You can swap out certain feats to use at various times, and as you battle you gain advantage points to unleash a massive attack.

I’m just a little taken aback by all of the huge stats for a rogue.

It was a decent system for adding to attribute points which includes Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.  Every ten levels you add in more attribute points, two at level 10 and 20, and six at level 30 (only one point per attribute).  I only managed to get to level 30 in the two days I played.  There are 60 levels, which means even at casual play, one could reach the maximum level very quickly (hardcore gamers might do that in a day).

Early on, you get a quest that sends you to a livery, and you can then purchase a horse, which is pretty cool.  However, they don’t allow for attacking while in the saddle.  Any prompted attack automatically takes you off the horse and you’re planted firmly on the ground.  Even in Neverwinter Nights, Bioware had made allowances for riding combat (it was one of the last patches that Bioware released with the game, which was patch 1.69).

WEEEEEE! 60% faster movement rate on this stallion!

Getting a mount isn’t the only thing available.  You can also have a companion to help you with your quests.  The choices are a devote cleric, a warrior, a guardian or a wolf.  I went with a devote cleric, because I have a tendency of losing hit points fast.  Having her along for the ride helped keep me topped up.  Your companion will even level up as you progress, which does take time.  Longer for higher levels.  You go to your character sheet, click the companion tab, and click on the level up button for your companion and they go off and level up (which you just have to imagine they are doing something else and not presently available for an hour or so).  Handy to have a backup companion, that way you can swap to that one as the other is levelling up (I had two clerics).

I played it up that this was Shani’s sister (though, she looks rather human and not elf like) and named her Wren, which you can do in the companion tab of the character sheet.

The vistas were actually nice, the area is well done and looks much improved from what Cryptic did in Champions and in Star Trek.  The only problem I have is… it’s still the same.  It’s very cookie cutter, whereas they took their work from Champions, tweaked it and made Star Trek, then took that work, tweaked it and made Neverwinter.  Even the quests are of similar design, right from having a spawning point in dungeons.  There were lots of “go collect x things”, which is really tired and boring (yes, let’s do the same thing that every other MMO from time in memorial has done).  Even the big dungeons are copy and pasted from what Cryptic did in Champions and Star Trek.  Five player teams needed to do a major dungeon.  Even the monetary system is similar, right down to mining and refining a particular type of ore that can be used as money.  This ore is one that can be acquired through quests.

That’s an odd looking mask. Shani looks like Zorro.

I didn’t get a chance to go through the crafting ability, which has been titled as professions, so I can’t really comment on that at all.  The combat was actually fairly good, and it looks as though they’ve done away with the tab targeting that most games use (you have a targeting reticle and your target has to be in front of you in order to attack).  It makes it a bit more fluid and dynamic when you’re in battle.

The biggest downer is, there’s nothing really new with this, with the exception that they seemed to over use the word “Never” when naming things.  Seriously, having a leader of a city of Neverwinter named Neverember, and have the Neverdeath graveyard.  What next, Neverwater for the city port and Neversobber for a pub?

The game is only in Beta, but there was a severe number of races and classes that were missing from this outting.  No paladin, no ranger, only wizard, no sorcerer.  And I believe that Wizards of the Coast ditched druid for the D&D 4.0 release (which Neverwinter is based on).  But there was also a lacking of races.  Wood Elf was it’s own race, which I don’t understand why you can’t just have “Elf” and a series of subraces in there (such as Sun Elf, Wood Elf, Grey Elf, Drow).

As I said, it was only a Beta, so there may be more changes on the horizon, but so far it seems to be standard Cryptic design, which isn’t bad.  They were successful with the two previous outings, but it’s also not great because it’s nothing new.  I’ll have to see what changes come about with the next Beta weekend.