About 20 minutes ago it was confirmed through a tweet that GW2 will be having Sylvari week before Gamescom (in August) and they will be playable at Gamescom and PAX.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the redesign is going to be, because the initial presentation of the race didn’t… well, it didn’t fit the setting.  Cartoony green skinned elf people.

[UPDATE:  From the bits of information I was able to round up, we can safely assume that Sylvari are going to be playable at Eurogamer Expo in London as well.  You can hold me accountable if this proves false.  But I can’t see Anet toting around a second version of the demo in September, when they had a playable version with Sylvari in August.  :)]

Shortly after this Anet discussed the need for a redesign and the GW2 community has been waiting, and speculating, patiently.  There’s been a good variety of concept art that doesn’t look anything like the characters in the first image.

With such a contrast between the images we have to go off, I have no idea what the final product will end up looking like.

From what little I know about Sylvari and this is for visual appearance alone, I know that they’re are birthed from the fruit of a great tree.  If they’re associated with fruit then I hope that is conveyed with their redesign.  Frankly I don’t see fruit when I see any of the concept art.  Maybe the last one, but not entirely.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

– Thrangis