It's been a week since the developer celebration, let's talk.

[Kaneyren.3657]

It has been 1 week since the developer celebration for "A star to guide us" and the community response to the AMA has been quite frankly less than lukewarm. To sum up the event, 32 questions were asked by a grand total of 25 people. Out of those questions only 26 received an "answer", with many "answers" simply expressing gratitude for the admittedly well deserved props from the community, after the release of, what I and many other players consider, the best Living World episode to date.

Many people on "*other platforms*" are under the impression that AMA's won't work on the official forums and they would like ArenaNet to return to previous iterations of the developer celebration that were held on "*other platforms*". With @"Gaile Gray.6029"'s comment [here](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/55727/release-day-dev-celebrations-moved-here#latest) this seems unlikely to ever happen.

As someone who has historically always participated in the developer celebration and has loved them for the chance to talk to developers about the game I love, I am more or less indifferent to the platform ArenaNet will choose for future developer celebrations. It is a tad sad to see ArenaNet move away from "*other platforms*" as I, as well as many others, was first made aware of Guildwars 2 on those platforms, but the forums aren't so bad and I personally think that future celebrations can become as well received as the previous ones on "*other platforms*". I do however wish to see some changes to the way these AMA's are held, since the participation and quality of questions, as well as answers, in the one from last week clearly indicated, that the current format is not ideal.

 

For starters I want to bring up the age old complaint that holding these AMA's on the release day will worsen the quality of questions significantly. This is pretty much in direct response to @"Gaile Gray.6029"'s comment "AFC to Follow! Players have shared with us that the dev celebrations are fun, but they'd like a chance to play through the content in order to provide more detailed and relevant feedback. In response to that input, we will have an ArenaNet Forum Chat next week so that you can post your feedback, questions, and suggestions." [here](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/55214/dev-celebration-tips#latest). My question to you is: What is the point of the developer celebration AMA, if you understand that quality question couldn't possibly be asked due to scheduling? If you are aware that players want a chance to ask more substantiated questions at a later date, why not delay the AMA by a day or two until people had a chance to play the content? I obviously am excited about the AFC and will participate in it, but it seems weird to essentially have 2 AMA events for basically the exact same content. I would like to add to this that in the past week there were some very interesting question with even more interesting answers that gave intricate insight into the development process and I personally think that these questions would have fit perfectly into an AMA, but could have only possibly been asked after a day or two of enjoying the content ([example](https://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/9h4eoc/im_a_bit_disappointed_xiuquatl_doesnt_show_when/))

 

Furthermore, as a european, I very much loathe the timeslot you choose for these celebrations. I am aware that it is difficult for an American company to accommodate europeans for something like this, but I think this could be changed, were the celebration to occur a day later around the time you usually ship a patch. This would give both Americans as well as europeans an opportunity to participate and increase the quality of the event, due to participants being given more time to familiarize themselves with the content.

 

I think the best way to summarize my opinion, is that I'm more or less advocating to change the developer celebration into an AFC style event, that goes for the entire week, or at least several days. This would fix practially every problem that I and many others see with the current format. Either this, or a justification to having 2 events for the same content, only a week apart.

 

I am a huge fan of these developer AMA's and it felt incredibly disheartening to see them go from multiple hundred, sometimes even over a thousand, coments, to less than a hundred. I do not think that this was due to a new format and people "just needing time to adjust" and I hope that future AMA's can be held on here with the same quality that was established on "*other platforms*".