Play Asura and Sylvari in the July 20-22 Beta Weekend Event!

From ArenaNet's Blog

BY DAVID CAMPBELL JULY 9TH, 2012

For our final Beta Weekend Event (July 20-22), we’re making the asura and sylvari races available to beta players for the first time. Players will be able to create characters from any of the five main races of Tyria—human, norn, charr, asura, and sylvari—and begin their Guild Wars 2 experience in any of the five radically different home regions.

For asura players, this means beginning your tale in Metrica Province, a vivid, exotic jungle area full of high-tech laboratories, quirky golems, and competing krewes of mad scientists. Nearby, the massive monoliths of the asuran capital Rata Sum hum with technomagical power. These diminutive geniuses may seem cute at first glance, but never underestimate an asura…

Sylvari players begin their story in the Grove, a luminous living city nestled in the shade of the Pale Tree, the “mother” of every member of this young race of plant humanoids. The sylvari are an enigmatic race of chivalrous explorers who are driven by an insatiable curiosity and guided by a collective Dream.

If you’ve played in previous beta events, you know that each playable race has its own distinct regions, signature city, and personal storyline options. But above all, each race in Guild Wars 2 has its own identity, and the asura and sylvari perfectly illustrate this.

We can’t wait to see players drinking in the mystical atmosphere of the Grove or stopping alchemagical experiments running amok in Metrica Province during our last Beta Weekend Event before launch. If you want to reserve a spot in the beta, pre-purchase your copy of Guild Wars 2 today.

We’ll see you in-game on July 20-22! Excelsior!

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Riot teases 101st League of Legends champion, Zyra

(Source)

For many, League of Legends' 100th character is a milestone of sorts. For many, this next champion is a landmark for the game, which released back in 2009 and has since become one of the most successful MOBA games on the market.

Unfortunately, not everyone was happy about Jayce, the Defender of Tomorrow. Many wanted something epic for the 100th release, but as Riot Games' lead champion designer Ryan 'Morello' Scott points out, "every champion needs to be a milestone of some kind".
Morello defended Jayce, while emphasizing Riot's stance of "if there was something more special we could have done here, why aren't we doing that for every champion?"

"While I maintain that Jayce's whole weapon-transforming thing is really fun, it's really not about some big mega-release milestone. It's a nice round number, sure, but I think it'd be kind of ****ty of us if we were holding something back for this that we'd had been capable of doing previously," Morello said in a post.

If we've learned anything from the release of Pulsefire Ezreal, it's that Riot will not release something unless they are 100% confident it's the best they can offer.

"I kind of see it as every champion needs to be a milestone of some kind - just trying to do something we hadn't done before in regards to gameplay, art, lore, or any mixture of them," he explained. "I'll talk more about a couple of the big issues (monsters, why 3 masculine-style males so close) in a future post, but for this I wanna focus on the specific "champ 100 thing." I feel if there was something more special we could have done here, why aren't we doing that for every champion?" 

A new video that takes a look back at the first 100 champion in League of Legends champions will be released next week. It will show some of the processes they use and reveal "the man behind the curtain". 

He didn't stop there though...He also revealed the 101st champion coming to League of Legends: Zyra - a rather sexy looking plant-like champion. 

"I probably shouldn't do this, but what the Hell. I'm really stoked about champion 101 too because I got to work much much more directly on it than I usually do and it's an archetype I think we've needed. I'll..," Morello teased, "plant a little teaser for you." 

"Hint, she's not made of flesh," he added. Morello didn't spoil any details about the new champion, but did tease she will have "something you've never seen before in MOBA." 

Small boobs maybe? You're guess is as good as ours. Judging from his not-so-subtle hint and the image, she will be plant-like. A female Maokai maybe? On first glance at the image, she looks like an AP character which is kind of cool since we've had so many bruisers and AD carries released recently. I'm excited for Jayce, but I have to say, Zyra look amazing! 

What do you think of the teaser for Zyra? What could her secret ability be!?

As much as I love Riot and League of Legends so far, there are times I question their creativity. In this case, the 101st champion being plant-like. I don't know about you guys, but a botanical humanoid sounds awfully familiar *cough cough* Guild Wars 2 race, the Sylvari.

Maybe she won't exactly look like a Sylvari, but you know I'm pretty sure their presence (especially of late as Guild Wars 2 is finally being released) has had some influence on it. Perhaps Morello has a secret love for them? Who knows. I am just now more curious to what she'll look like and where her skills will be rooted from.

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