Mike Zadorojny.7058

Hi everyone,

This past week there have been a lot of questions about the status of Guild Wars 2. I’d like to share with you a little about what’s currently going on at the studio and what it means for the game.

The Guild Wars 2 team is still committed to bringing content and feature updates to the game. The next episodes of Living World are already in development, Swiss tournament support is coming to PvP, we’re looking at more WvW events coming soon, and the return of the Super Adventure Festival is imminent. Our long-term plans for the game like World Restructuring and large-scale improvements to quality of life are still in the works.

The studio has recently been affected by layoffs, which is going to take some time to process. There’s no easy way for any team to adjust to that. We've had to say goodbye to friends and colleagues that we've worked alongside for years. We’re welcoming back some familiar faces to the Guild Wars 2 team that had been working on unannounced projects. After all is said and done, it's going to take some time for us to adjust to our staffing changes.

As the proverbial dust settles in the next few days we're going to re-evaluate our schedules to make sure that our releases are realistic and allow us the time to make sure they hit our internal quality bar. This means that some updates are going to see delays, like the recent Warclaw, as we regain our focus.

I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have reached out in support of our studio family. Thank you for your patience in this trying time. We’re making every effort to keep things running as smoothly as possible and stay on track with releases. Rest assured that ArenaNet is not done with Guild Wars. And the team is not done with our tale of dragons, or our eternal conflict in the mists. There’s still lots for us to do together.

We’ll see you in Tyria,

z & the Guild Wars 2 Team

Here's a quick transcription from the sheet music. I'm sure the audio team will be doing something more with this in the future.

Aurene, Aurene,

Dragon full of light

Aurene, Aurene,

Guide us through the night

Rise up fealess

Lead us with your sight

Take flight

From the Legendary Team:

Our design process for legendary weapons follows the design philosophies of the studio. It is a layered process where we start with a broad idea and then start to narrow in on ideas over time. So no, we did not have the weapons designed back when gen 2 started. Rather, we had a vague idea of what we wanted to do and then refined it as it came closer to release. Most of the time the final result ends up being completely different than our original idea.

It is hard to say when the process fully starts but when we get closer to release we take all developers who will be involved (artists, QA, designers, and producers) and do brainstorms in a room and riff off of some the initial ideas people have gathered up. We usually have two or three of these before we narrow in on the full concept. Then we split up tasks between artists and design and get to work!

/hug

And because this post is too short, here's a second one:

/hug

Is it?

Regarding moving from Season 4 to Season 5, we announced this in the 6th Anniversary Celebration Video. We talked about wanting to release expansion level stories and features over the next couple years. Our goal is to create powerful moments like the final instance of this episode that are a culmination of multiple departments and raise the bar for what it means to be a Guild Wars 2 experience.

Thanks for the feedback!

Given budgets and line counts sometimes we gloss over character introductions to get right to the action. This can come across, like in Logan's case, as them being introduced quickly. It also means that we can't include every character in every scene. We try to do call outs or side comments that let you know they're still with you, even if they aren't directly involved.

>! Any time you create a story that resonates with players it can effect them emotionally greatly. We knew that the ending was going to touch players at different levels. We've seen reactions commenting on how much the ending as pulled them in, we've seen players shed tears, we've seen frustration and many other reactions. These are all emotions that internal members have shared during development as well. It will take varying amounts of time for people to process the final events of the episode, and that is ok! We knew that some people were going to feel as you currently do, but we also know that the community as a whole is going through the experience together. And even in the most troubling times, having friends to share your emotions with is a boon. So I recommend that you take some time to processing your thoughts and we will be here when you are ready.

Hey everyone!

**Quick reminder! Your fellow players are still experiencing the episode for the first time! Please use spoiler tags where appropriate!**

Today Living World Season 5, “All or Nothing” was released! In this episode you’ll travel back to the Shiverpeaks to battle Kralkatorrik's influence. A new upgradeable weapon set can be obtained as you prepare your forces for an epic confrontation. You can build the legendary long-bow Pharus and call upon light itself to attack your foes. Dessa’s krewe has discovered a new Fractal, Siren’s Reef. Venture with your allies to an island with cursed pirate treasure.

As always, members of the teams that worked on the episode will be joining me to help celebrate this release. Thank you for joining us and hopefully we’ll see you in game!

Here's who will be here with us today:

Living World Team – Linsey Murdock, Clayton Kisko, Andrew Gray, Cameron Rich, Erik Fagerstrom, John Jarynowski, Lee Bledsoe,

Fractals Team – Benjamin Arnold

Cinematics Team - Da-Hee Im, Emilio Pujadas, Jason Byfield

Systems Design Team – Jessica Croft

Communications Team - Gaile Gray

Marketing Team – Lis Cardy, Mike Silbowitz

As a reminder here are our ground rules. We're here to chat with you about the new release, its features and content related to the new season of Living World. We will not be discussing or revealing future items that may be in development. Finally, please remember that not everyone will have finished playing through the episode yet, so please use spoiler tags appropriately.

We will also be hosting the ArenaNet Forum Chat from Friday, January 11 until Friday, January 18, here on the official Guild Wars 2 forums where devs from the episode team will answer questions as well.

Thank you all for your continued support of Guild Wars 2 and being part of such an amazing community!

**EDIT: Thanks for joining us today. We're going to wrap up this celebration, but you are welcome to post questions or comments over the next few days and we'll try to respond as time allows.**

> @"xboxer.6785" said:

> is it just me or storm tracking is bugged as you go to complete it and then you saying we leaving the area when we are following the objective..... is anyone else having this problem ????

>

>

> 2 times we restarted the instance

>

Yeah, sorry! There's a kill plane that ended up in a bad location. You can actually navigate your way around the problem, but we are preparing a fix for that as I type.

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> - Love the Legendary Djinn event chain. Did not love the 1AP. Why is the 1ap still a thing despite our constant feedback every episode? Can we have a discussion please about AP rewards at some point? It really isn't helpful when it gets brought up in every AMA, feedback thread and yet is always ignored. 1 AP for a a very long chain like this isn't a suitable reward when you get 1ap from communing with a mastery point - the 2 should not be comparable. From a story perspective, the event chain was fantastic though. I loved it all, even the length of it.

Living World Episodes are given a range of achievement points to distribute throughout the episode. Our goal is not to blow out the point totals that players can earn between releases. This does constrain us to sometimes imbalanced point totals for various tasks. APs aren't the only reward on an achievement however, so sometimes that gets balanced around whether or not it is "required" for meta achievement completion, or just a bonus, or they'll have unique rewards. It is our goal to prevent rapid inflation of players' achievement point totals.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

This morning we released the latest episode of Living World Season 4, "A Star to Guide Us". In this release, players will get to explore the Jahai Bluffs, a section of Kourna that is under assault by Kralkatorrik's forces and an area that we have not seen since Guild Wars: Nightfall. You will be able to unlock and build up Sun's Refuge, a long lost Sunspear safe haven, to regroup your forces and unlock additional stories and rewards as you gear up to talk on the Branded. A brand new legendary scepter, Xiuquatl, is yours for the crafting, along with its serpentine familiar. And finally, journey into the Mystic Forge with 9 of your most formidable allies to take on the latest challenges in the new raid, the Mythwright Gambit.

For the next couple of hours members of the teams that worked on the content of this episode will be joining me to help celebrate this release. Thank you for joining us and we sincerely hope you enjoy the latest episode, "A Star to Guide Us".

Here's who will be here with us today:

Living World Team – Linsey Murdock, Heather Conover, Kirk Williford, Connor Fallon, Jeffrey Vaughn, Charlie Engelhard, Heather Smith, Tracey West

Current Activities Team - Joe Kimmes, Josh Foreman

Cinematics Team - Da-Hee Im, Jason Byfield

Engineering Team - Jon Olson, Joseph Cherlin, Raymond Lukes

Audio Team - Katelyn Isaacson

Systems Design Team - Matt Pennebaker, Jessica Croft, Byron Miller

Raids Team - Benjamin Arnold, Anthony Tran

Communications Team - Gaile Gray

Marketing Team - Mike Silbowitz

Even though we're doing this in a new location, our ground rules are the same. We're here to chat with you about the new release, its features and content related to the new season of Living World. We will not be discussing or revealing future items that may be in development. Finally, please remember that not everyone will have finished playing through the episode yet, so please sure spoiler tags appropriately.

We will also be hosting the Forum Chat next week, here on the official Guild Wars 2 forums where devs from the episode team will answer questions as well.

Once again, thank you everyone for your continued support and for making Guild Wars 2 such an amazing place to play.

z

EDIT: Thanks for joining us today! We'll see you at the next Dev Celebration!

The core feature that Utopia was being built around was giving players choices through the form of quests and having consequences for the collective choices made by the community. Imagine a story line that branched every couple of weeks/months based on the total number of completions of one set of quests vs another. Which group of people did you choose to provide assistence to? (Did you focus your efforts on the hospital or the orphanage?)

While we were building out the story and associated characters, we started playing with the in-game tech more and more. It got to the point where we started to ask questions about things fundamentally associated with Guild Wars as a whole. I think the big turning point came when we essentially created a prototype for something like Shaemoor, that was a persistent map that had 50+ people running (and jumping) around. Like Joe mentioned some of the foundational code work was built around instances being the core PvE content and as we started to try to break that mold the tech hurdles started becoming larger. I know the engine programmers were also trying to push the boundaries on the quality of assets we were creating, but I don't remember the specifics there. Ultimately it wasn't a single idea that pushed us over, but enough things popped up that we decided our efforts would be better spent moving our designs into a new game.

Thank you for sharing your story with everyone. It is never easy to lose a loved one, but I'm happy that what we do meant so much to you both. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are more than just video games, they are playgrounds that brings communities and friends together in sometimes momentous and special ways.

My time on Guild Wars was mostly in facilitating the creativity in others and providing support to the teams that made really cool stories, experiences, art, skills and more. My proudest contribution to the lore was in the form of Keiran Thackeray. On a Thanksgiving road trip to visit family in Oregon I spent the entire ride building the character, writing notes about significant life events, feelings on social-political issues, friends, etc. It ended up being four or five pages that helped the team create the character for the initial Wintersday quests. Years later Robert Gee would dust off my original notes to build out the rest of Keiran's unit as part of the War in Kryta story line. It was a really cool feeling to know that in creating something small, other people would build upon that idea and turn it into something really special.

Oh yeah, also the Zenmai and Olias quest re-designs! It was the first chance that Colin gave me to design content for the game. And it all started with an "If you think you can do better, then give me a pitch" style challenges. Changed the direction of my career.

Most of the plans for new areas were tied to new campaigns, and once the studio moved to focus on Guild Wars 2, the Beyond team had to get creative with their use of new art. Most of the unused map locations were tied to the Utopia design, but ended up getting re-purposed for Eye of the North.

Working on testing the Luxon missions and maps was one of my first experiences at ArenaNet. Also, Siege Turtles!

Hey everyone!

We are fast approaching the end of our 2-3 month cadence window for Living World Episodes and this morning we were hoping to unveil the Episode 2 Trailer along with the announcement of its release date. However, as we were preparing the episode for launch we discovered issues that we want to take additional time to address, to make sure it lives up to our standards. Once we have nailed down the last few details, started the process for moving the build to Live, and are confident when the episode will launch, we will release the trailer. Thank you for patience and bearing with us as we put the finishing touches on Episode 2. We look forward to playing the next chapter of Living World with all of you once it is released.

Thanks!

Mike Zadorojny