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Is Ree Soesbee still at Anet? Haven't heard anything about her since a chinese release interview
She is indeed!
Is Ree Soesbee still at Anet? Haven't heard anything about her since a chinese release interview
She is indeed!
@ /u/LeahLorer : Hi ! Could we have the chance to get some lore Q&A in the future ? :)
I'll look at setting up something with the whole Narrative team! It would be fun to chat story with folks.
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Chauncey agrees with you.
My question is for Leah: At the end of HoT some pretty shocking events came to pass. Will we be able to deal with these events in Season 3? Pressing F just... Didn't feel right. :(
The reason I'm asking about this is because I really loved the improvements done to the Pact Commander and the quality of the story missions in general. I really enjoyed playing through the missions and all those sylvari specific dialogue lines were amazing!! I felt really connected in the story with my character (also Canach rocks). Considering how outspoken the Commander was in HoT, it felt very abrupt how the story ended with HoT spoilers
The story will definitely pick up in Season 3 where we left off in HoT. I totally understand your concern. As Mike mentioned in his letter, above, we had to take a lot of people off of Living World to focus on getting HoT out the door. This meant that we were left with a larger gap between that content and resuming Living World content. We had originally intended one to more quickly lead into the other. But the next chapter will be coming!
And yes, Canach does rock! He's one of my favorites.
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We definitely have a long-term plan! I feel that is really important and something that will help us be sure to emphasize key beats and wrap up threads moving forward, rather than create loose ends.
That being said, there are many ways for us to get to the big milestones along the way, and with every new release/season/xpac, we always do a lot of brainstorming on the best ways to get us there.
And fun fact, we Devs have taken to calling it Steve in meetings. It isn't official, but it makes us laugh!
I'm proud of this game.
First time i've see developers speaking so openly with theirs players on a big company.
Thanks. Days like this are some of the reasons I love working here. (Well, not the Colin leaving part.) I'm proud of ANet too.
Read moreMust be weird questions to ask, but since we've got someone to talk about Creatures and someone to talk about narrative... /u/LeahLorer & /u/Anet_RoyCronacher .
1)Are we finally going to have tonics for the Mordrem Creatures from HoT (Mordrem guards + the three Mordrem commanders + Mordrem mounts, etc) ? And if not, why ? Seems weird that we wouldn't get those, when we got like 4 different mushrooms and chak tonics... pretty please ? :)
2) Was there a backstory for the Mordrem commanders like Staffmaster Adryn & Axemaster Hareth ?
3) Was the Nightmare Court storyline really cut off ? There's no explanation whatsoever about who is the duchess Chrysanthea and why we actually let her lead us against Mordremoth at the end of Dragonstand.
4)...What about the other Pale Tree mentionned in the Sylvari personnal story, and Malyck who came from it ? Are we going to know more about that someday ? Ho...
We've had many discussions here about most of your questions. The reality of making games is that we often have content that we love that doesn't make the cut because of scope concerns. We are discussing ways we might be able to delve further into some of these.
As to the Nightmare Court question, there are places in the game where we deal with the fact that, in the war against Mordremoth, we're pretty much on the same side. Nightmare Court don't want to follow anyone blindly...not the Pale Tree and not Mordremoth.
The story in HOT left a lot of threads hanging. Can we expect these to be picked back up in the next LW season? Are there plans for expanding the amount of lore shared with players a la LW S2 optional conversations, inter-actable objects etc? I missed this in the HOT story. (Also farewell Colin, and good luck!)
Our LW season definitely picks up where HoT left off. You will certainly hear more about Rata Novus, the egg, etc. And yes, we always look for ways to put in bonus and optional story for the folks who really want it. We had a good deal of this in HoT, but it was probably in slightly different forms than we had previously. We're always trying new ways to get this info to the folks who love our story!
Leah Hoyer! If you're here:
How does one break into the industry of writing and narrative design for video games or, specifically, Guild Wars? I know you come from a background with other mediums, but I suppose the question still stands. I have a ton of experience in world-building and dialogue construction and all that jazz, but I get the feeling that the industry looks more for experience in live development than for talent in writing or dedication to a particular world/game. Would you say that's true? What led you to ArenaNet, is narrative for video games competitive, and what helps one to stand out?
Storytelling experience in any medium is going to be useful. The fundamentals of character and world building, conflict, structure, good dialog, etc all apply. But the awesome challenge of game narrative is the way that you take into account the player role. Making choices feel meaningful is hard.
A great tool that I would recommend to build an interactive narrative protfolio is Twine. It is mostly text based, which certainly isn't the ideal way to tell story in a game. But it really helps creators think about choice and the role of the player. We have a large group ANetters, both Narrative and folks from other disciplines, who are getting together next week to do a Twine Jam.
Play aorund with it. It is free and easy to pick up. If I'm looking at candidates for a position and they don't have professional game experience, I love seeing a Twine or two among their writing samples.
And also, a team-focused attitude is critical. Everyone who works on the game he...
Read moreThank you for your answer!
I wasn't expecting any spoiler of course, but I recently started playing the original Guild Wars again and I was fascinated by the amount of mysteries and unexplored plots that are still out there. In fact I believe there is a little bit of beauty on some of them never being touched again and remaining a mystery, but I'm reeeaaallly craving for answers on some hahaha
Again, thanks for your answer :')
You are most welcome!
It's sad to see Collin go, but I'm sure Mike will do awesome as his replacement.
Few questions:
General: What's the atmosphere at the offices now that the expansion has shaped up and the holidays have passed?
WvW: How much input are you taking from players across all tiers and playstyles (ppt/gvg/roaming/etc) of WvW? A worry for people who enjoy mid/bottom tiers is that their input and desire might not be considered with the changes coming.
Living Story/PvE: I really enjoyed the quality of content and story that was brought along with LS2, but I kind of missed some of the epicness of the events of LS1. So, are there any plans to cross over both styles? Majority LS2 repeatable content, but also a few larger events that only last for a month or two (rather than 2 weeks) and can ben enjoyed by large groups? Also, start closing some plotlines before opening more! I love the stories in this game.
Thanks for the nice words about the story. As we continue, we absolutely have these as some of our broad story goals: -- Bring exciting content with every release -- Integrate story with gameplay to make a great overall experience...both in instances and open world -- Tie up important story threads as we can while advancing our story
We've lost a big smile today :/ I wish you the best, Maestro :')
And for the Lore/Narrative team, will we ever explore the nature of magic and Tyria itself beyond elder dragons? The Mists, Lord Odran, The Antikythera, The Six Gods, The Hall of Heroes and the rift, The Spirits of the Wild... There are lots of mysteries out there yet to be explored, and we are aproaching them rather slowly :/
I won't give away any spoilers on future content. What I can say is that the team loves weaving long established lore into our new story, and we're excited about a lot of ways that we will be doing that in upcoming releases. And yes, magic in Tyria is broader than dragons.
are you ever gonna do something like LS1 again? i missed out on the whole living world thing for the most part and wish more stuff changed in a permanent way.
LS2 was nice but i liked the open-world parts of the HoT story more than the instanced stuff.
We also love telling stories in open world. We're definitely looking at all the ways we can tell our story in upcoming Living World releases.