One of the items on my 'to do' list this past beta weekend (BW3) as to see which races I wanted to play and come up with something that will work for launch race/profession wise.
Many people I'd spoken to were convinced they wanted to play Asura (especially for PvP) as the smaller size would be an advantage. This would have made all sPvP and WvW full of Asura only as the male Norn would have been so easy to spot and kill if it's hitbox was the size of the actual character.
From an interview on GuildWars2 Junkies:
Eric Flannum: Every player character in Guild Wars 2
has the exact same sized collision cylinder. For asura this means that
the cylinder is larger than they are and for norn it means that it is
smaller. Very early in the process of making the game we knew this was
going to be the case, so the min and max sizes of our races are heavily
influenced by this.
I'm glad of this specifically for PvP. There will be some tactical advantage playing an Asura as far as sneaking around the map, but there won't be an advantage to being smaller as far as targeting goes in PvP. One of my guildies made a male Norn Warrior one BW and we still laugh watching him run across the map in the Borderlands - Sasquatch on the move!
For my own reference, I did do some size comparison screenies using my Sylvari Thief right before I lost my Internet on Sunday night. Here are a female Sylvari against a few of the other races.
Sylvari and Asura
Sylvari and Charr
Sylvari and Norn
(this is from a previous beta weekend but shows the size difference of the Male and Female Norn)
So, based on playing around with the professions and start zones I've pretty much mapped out my race/professions. The only race I won't be playing - but will do the start zone - is the Charr. I love the lore, but I can't stand the way they move. Reminds me to much of Worgen in WoW, which IMHO run like rabid dogs and was the only Alliance Race I couldn't play.
For launch:
Norn - Ranger
Asura - Necromancer or Elementalist (I'm still not sure which I prefer)
Human - Mesmer & Guardian
Sylvari - Thief
I'll be adding the additional three after launch. Engineer, Warrior and the other caster will be added post-launch.
Only a month until Head-start for GW2 - w00t!
