devtrackers.gg
EDIT: Auto-correct strikes again ... should be "Developer Appreciation Call Outs"
Hello everyone, Swifty here!
By now many people have read the Kotaku article about potential layoffs for Arenanet employees.
In times like this, its really important to recognize that the developers and others behind the scene of our beloved game have put in years of dedication and hard work into creating something truly special, but its also the little moments that matter as well.
I'd love to share three brief positive interactions I've experienced thanks to some awesome Anet employees:
Back in 2010 I was extremely excited for the soon to be launch of Guild Wars 2. I followed the game extensively since the first reveal of the Elementalist. I was studying abroad at the time living in England working on a master's degree, and had loft (read: unrealistic) goals of working in the gaming industry as a researcher and consultant.
I then learned Arenanet would be showing off Guild Wars 2 in the London Gaming Expo, and I couldn't be more ready! While there, I met Regina while she was working as a Community Manager, and saw Collin off in the distance with a sea of people surrounding him while he was talking and charming the crowd, but she was nice enough to answer a lot of my eager questions and pointed me in the direction of how to apply. Sadly that didnt pan out, but she was super friendly and welcoming to a random gamer with a bunch of questions about the industry.
Tirzah is an amazingly creative world design developer who designed many of the wonderful maps we've enjoyed for years, the Grove being one of her crowning achievements as far as I'm aware. A friend and I interacted with her extensively during a wonderful night of PVP back right during launch. She played a viciously effective guardian and engineer build, and was one of the few people at launch who could bust my bunkery healing 'water/earth' staff elementalist named Ertah Stone (before it was used with dagger/daggers once people played more.) She was a blast to play with and served up some humble pie to my friend and I over those several hours of kicking us to the curb in PvP during launch week.
Jason VandenBerghe (Anet_Jason?) (I think this is him, I only know him from his Reddit handle)
Jason is an absolute bro. I run a raid training community (Raiders In Training) and reached out to the developers online to see if there was any preferred reporting process / pipeline for a lot of the bugs we were experiencing and documenting while raiding. He provided a method of submitting detailed raid bugs and was able to pass them on to the appropriate teams to get some much needed bug fixes wrapped up in an astonishingly fast turnaround (I used to volunteer as QA for another gaming company and it was a night and day difference in turn around time on fixes from the moment of reporting and reproducing the bugs). He was very awesome and detailed in his responses for follow up questions on issues, and extremely respectful with all communication and collaboration. 10/10 would volunteer QA in a heartbeat for this guy!
I'd encourage everyone to share some fun stories you have regarding the developers that left a positive experience that has stuck with you over the years!
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