This this this so much this. If you weren't going to make this point, I was going to but you did it so much better than I would have by making a comparison with the Latino/Mexican thing. People need to understand that culture-mixing is OK taken on its own, especially when it's done intentionally or methodically. In fact, Star Wars is a brilliant and very intentional mix of a lot of Japanese warrior ethos and western sci-fi romanticism. However it's NOT good when the mixing is more stemming from ignorance or indifference to other cultures, their histories and their sensitivities. By throwing them all together as indistinguishable, you're essentially treating real people and real cultures as NPCs. Background characters of minimal importance who act as window dressing for the story of you, the hero.

That was likely NEVER, EVER ArenaNet's intentions, of course. The Cantha stuff was likely put on ice because they want to regroup and do the Factions concept better. The main reason we're not hearing anything about Cantha lately, in my opinion, is because they want to do this AWESOMELY or not at all. And it being awesome would be the ideal outcome here: give non-Asian people a taste of what it's like to feel part of such a culture, or even inspiring a GW subculture of its very own. (it's already halfway there if you look at how many of us want to go back!) I look forward to when we go back to Cantha and I am convince it'll be a "when". But work's gotta be done first to make Cantha its very own thing and not just a stitched-together chimera. Given how amazing Path of Fire's presentation was, I'm highly anticipating this whenever the day comes.