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The Guild Wars 2 Fourth Anniversary Livestream gave us a bunch of new information on the history of Guild Wars 2's development, and Peter Fries, Hugh Norfolk, and many others made the show genuinely entertaining. At 166 minutes, it was long! There was far more in the show than Dulfy's notes suggest, so maybe listen to it if you're going on a three-hour drive somewhere.
The most interesting part of it for me was right at the end. Anthony Ordon, a dev that has contributed to many parts of the game, was interviewed. He worked on most of the Guild Missions. We had confirmed in the livestream that no new Guild Missions are currently being worked on, but that he would like to make more.
I have done Guild Missions with my guild every week for the past three years. I have completed each mission far more times than I have done any dungeon path. Though my guildmates don't really need the Guild Commendation rewards anymore, this kind of content routine gives the PvE guilds I've been in a purpose to exist. New Guild Missions in the rotation some year soon would be very welcome!
Here is a direct link to 2:35:19 in the video where the interview begins, and below is a transcript.
Rubi Bayer: All right, let's talk about some content that I play on a really regular basis, so I'm kinda biased: Thank you for Guild Missions. Again, everybody else is gone; you did it single-handedly.
Anthoy Ordon: Some of it I did single-handedly, yeah.
Ruby: It's a huge system that we've added to the game.
Anthony: Yeah, so I was back on the team, way back when we first put it in the game, which was I think right after Lost Shores? Or Fractals? Yeah, it was the next thing that kinda happened. And then we added the core set of missions that are in the game, and then I stayed on the team by myself with map artist and I think a programmer and we added another set of Bounties, I think one extra Guild Mission, and a Puzzle. So yeah, I'm responsible for some of the nastier Bounties.
Rubi: For example?
Anthony: For example, I did the drunk asura.
Rubi: Sotzz.
Anthony: Yeah, Sotzz. I did Big Mayana, the frog that eats you. I did 2-MULT, the weather golem—
Rubi: Ohhhh... 2-MULT...
Anthony: —that will never stop spinning. I did the ogre with the rats. Yeah, yeah.
Rubi: I'm just prayin' for Poobadoo every time we fire 'em up.
Anthony: I did not do Poobadoo, but, y'know, Poobadoo's...
Rubi: He's just doin' his thing. He wants to lick you.
Anthony: Yeah, it doesn't get much better than that.
Rubi: Alright, so... [laughs] Ladies and gentlemen.
Teddy Nguyen: You can tell we've been on air for a while now.
Rubi: It's the best.
Anthony: I haven't.
Rubi: Anthony was over there eating Chinese food; I was happy. So when we started talking about adding Guild Missions, what was the overall goal for the team?
Anthony: Guild Missions were supposed to be coordination-based content for groups in the open world. So we had the system in the game to scale content up, which kind of to some people felt like there was no content in the game where you needed a group, so we were trying to deliberately make stuff that required people to actually work together, right? And so that in of itself scaled up and down a little bit. So you can't do the Puzzle by yourself, right? That's just one of the things about it. You can't do Bounties by yourself; I dunno, maybe somebody has. But that's kind of the idea.
Rubi: That someone is not me.
Anthony: We weren't really married yet to the idea of doing Raids, and so the Guild Missions were kind of the early answer to that. And then I've always wanted to go back and extend 'em, but yeah there's always something else to work on, so... But yeah, that was kind of the idea, that it would be this extendable system and that every time we did updates we would ship a new pack of Missions or whatever. So, yeah, it's still there.
Rubi: They are still there. You've added some more over time here and there.
Anthony: Yeah, I haven't added anything since the original set, but I know they kind of went to refactor—
Rubi: Hugh's over there laughing!
Anthony: Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to see more.
Teddy: Take credit for everything; no one will know.
Rubi: We as a group. I'm gonna take credit for this while we're at it.
Anthony: For Guild Missions? Go for it. It's all Rubi's fault.
Rubi: You are welcome. They are a good time. They are a fun system we added to the game. It's been a good time.
Anthony: Absolutely.
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