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I love this community. We’re blown away again by your support. Thank you.
I love this community. We’re blown away again by your support. Thank you.
Hi,
As I wrote in my previous response, it’s been a wonderful challenge to support all Living World and Live content development for a game of this size, for five years and counting, purely through the sale of optional microtransactions. We laid out our guiding principles for GW2 microtransactions in March 2012 and we've held true to them ever since. My motivation is to continue to stay true to those principles while also continuing to fund Live content development. I recently apologized for our missteps with the Mount Adoption License. Still, mount skins are purely cosmetic, thus in many ways an ideal embodiment of our goal to support the game with optional microtransactions.
Most of us have two relationships with the GW2 gem store. One relationship is that of a customer: we purchase things when we want them for ourselves and agree with how they’re bundled and priced. Another relationship is that of an interested party: we know that ArenaNet funds Live development ...
Read moreRecently Arenanet switched from NCSOFT servers to ones hosted by Amazon on the east coast. Many players have reported an increase in overall ping with significant lag spikes as a result. West coast players are looking at a ~30ms increase and for many oceanic users the game is on the verge of unplayable. Going forward is Anet going to commit to these new servers or is there a possibility of reverting this decision?
We've been migrating services to Amazon over a period of months. Amazon has better peering relationships for its datacenters than we could hope to have individually. We're also using newer, faster servers at Amazon than the ones we were using previously. In general we've seen a better play experience, lower latency, and fewer network outages to Amazon servers.
Some of you have reported an opposite experience. SCW has been investigating your reports, collecting traceroutes and ping plots. SCW is out today or he'd answer this question himself, but please continue to work with him if you're having trouble.
~ MO
Read moreHey everyone! Great job with the reverse Nightfall, I'm only about halfway through the story but I really like it so far, especially some of those callbacks with names and locations that have been changed by Palawa's reign.
I've got a pretty unrelated question about the Gen 2 legendaries that I don't think anyone has answered in the previous Q&As. Specifically, what happened to the designs that were planned for Heart of Thorns but never released.
Originally I thought that when MO decided to bring legendaries back in LS3E02, they would be the designs that were originally planned to release for the jungle but couldn't be finished in time for release, but as more and more LS3 legendaries came out it became pretty clear that these were completely new designs that were in some way related to the episode they came with: An obsidian mace for volcano island with obsidian structures on it, a quaggan bowl for an icy quaggan outpost, a pirate ship for the city docks, a flame g...
We did use the art we'd already developed for HoT legendaries when we started releasing legendaries in the new system. Some of those first pairings were fortuitous. We had Eureka art, we had Shooshadoo art, and we were able to pair them with episodes they made sense with.
~ MO
What's your reasoning for doing these AMA's relatively quickly after release instead of waiting a few days to let the community experience a good chunk of the new content?
We take the company down on release days –– no normal development, no meetings –– so that we can play the game with you and respond to anything that comes up. That makes release days a unique opportunity to get everyone together. And, frankly, we're excited about what we just released and are happy to be able to chat about it.
~ MO
Read moreWith the (entirely deserved) promotion of Lawton a few weeks ago, the API has effectively not been supported. This manifests itself in some parts flickering between working and broken, some parts having outdated or missing information and no new features getting developed.
The community has poured thousands of hours (1) into developing applications and sites that make use of the API (including the official wiki). This is a labour of love towards the game.
These applications support a massive amount of players (2) in their in-game pursuits (such as looking up items or helping with crafting), keep the players engaged with the game when they can't play it (such as checking on your TP orders during travel or school/work breaks) and even give additional goals to complete (such as competing on arbitrary leaderboards or finishing all parts of specific content, for example gilder skins).
TLDR: Are you planning to continue supporting the API?
...
Awesome work on gw2efficiency! :) Your question in primarily for SCW, who's out today, but yes we'll keep supporting the API.
~ MO
Hi all,
A few months ago I announced my intention to gradually hand the reins of GW2 game direction to Mike Zadorojny, "Z". You probably already know Z well: he's a 10+ year veteran of ArenaNet, who worked on GW2 from the beginning, and most recently served as the lead designer of Path of Fire.
I'm not going anywhere – Z and I sit next to each other and continue to work together – but I won't be able to continue spending virtually all my time on GW2 in the coming year as I did through most of the past two years. A game director should be 100% dedicated to the game. Z is absolutely dedicated to GW2. He has a deep passion and enthusiasm for the game, the same today as when he started working on it a decade ago. As game director I know he'll continue to champion the needs of players, and continue to set the highest quality standards for everything we do.
So today I'm making it official: Mike Zadorojny is the new game director of GW2. Congratulations Z....
Read morebut probably won't, because it's not worth derailing a team that could otherwise be making great new content.
While I respect this opinion, for a lot of players looks mean just as much as "real" content. I know I've spent so, so much time designing my characters instead of playing actual content that was available that this argument doesn't fully satisfy me.
I hope this sentiment reaches the team :)
There are only 14 of them. But they're distinct from a lot of other appearances in the game. I'll check again on feasibility.
Mo
What was the weirdest bug that happened during development?
I always get a kick out of the placeholder computer-generated voice. So many serious lines are accidentally hilarious because of how the computer pronounces them.
But the weirdest bug would have to be dead NPCs randomly riding mounts.
Mo
On the topic of dev teams:
Since John Smith has left the company earlier this year, was his position as game economist taken over by another employee or were his general responsibilities (as he was responsible for alot more than just the economy) transfered to several other positions?
John had helped form a working group of analysts and reward designers to monitor the economy, and that group continues to do it.
Mo
One of the things I enjoyed working on was trying to create memorable characters in the open world. The kids at First Camp are part of a family that has had some loss, so has Jingo. Giving the Followers of Ascension a motive why they seeking it. And how the last survivings sunspears still try to fight the good fight. Refering back to the GW1 characters in some way in the Desolaiton, that was really satisfying as well.
And finally as one who helped layout the worldmap for Tyria and Elona, just matching up some of the locations, and trying to show what became of them 250 years later. Not too many times you get to revisit areas that you worked on a decade later.
Steve, you nailed it with the First Camp!
I'll echo what a pleasure it's been to be able to revisit content and themes from GW1, with many of the same devs carrying forward their work.
Mo
Re: moments during story development when we had to rework stuff, we actually were re-working the story constantly to the point we were giving ourselves anxiety attacks. Spoiler So to answer your question more directly, the last six months were full of "aw crap, we need to redo/address/change this moment" XD
Some props for Connie here. She worked on three of the most storytelling-intensive missions. That's a big workload. And it was always our deal that we wouldn't rest until we got it right. Connie put in a lot of extra work and iteration to get the details right, and I think the end result shows. Connie, your missions shine.
Mo
Thanks for the response, Mo.
I'm sure there are lots of people who miss the "guild" part of guild wars. If a little bit of love to guild activities and guild hall costs could be given in one of the bigger quarterly update type patches, we'd love it.
Thanks Razorant. That's a good way to phrase it.
I'll take the heat from other posters in this thread for pointing out that we haven't had a guild team since the start of Season Three and aren't staffing one now. I think it's important to preserve our team's ability to focus. I'm not pushing new mandates onto the team.
But yes, we love guild content too. We have passionate devs. But no promises.
Mo
I have to say this is one that's never made sense to me. Town clothes... your default clothing... you have to continually re-apply? Whyyyy?
Town clothes provided non-combat appearance, and tonics provide non-combat appearance, so that's why they got translated that way back in the day. I agree it's weird. It's one of those things that I'd love to improve, but probably won't, because it's not worth derailing a team that could otherwise be making great new content.
Another one that drives me crazy is that you lose the visual sense of your armor breaking if you wear an outfit over it. You have to know to look at the armor status icon; otherwise you'll start taking a lot of damage and not know why.
It's a big game. There's no end to the improvements we could make to these older systems. ^
Mo
2006 here as well. This game has been with me from the beginning. Thank you.
Thank you! It's always a pleasure to talk with players who've been with us since GW1. You love Tyria as much as we do, and your support makes this all possible.
Mo
- Will we ever see new guild missions and content outside of guild halls? Even if it's just "run X bounties in the desert"?
- Will we see fixes to the randomization of guild missions so we don't get the same missions, bounties, etc. on subsequent weeks?
- Will we see new guild rewards?
- Will we see new guild world events (ala the ability to trigger teq or triple trouble on demand)? Guild only world events?
- Will guild rewards ever be adjusted to remove the dependence on individual players running Dragon Stand repeatedly (the Crystalline ore costs)? These never really made sense since running DS as a guild is almost impossible due to how the reset works and also running DS as much as is needed for the current reward set is pretty ludicrous.
We don't have a guild content team, so as to the "will we ever..." questions, we have no official plans there.
You may recall that one of my goals as GD was to have fewer dev teams, with more staffing for each team, so that we could be more consistent in the things deliver. My thought is: is you play because you enjoy what we've been shipping, then you should enjoy what we're going to be shipping next. We laid down a clear path in Season Three and that's the path we're continuing to follow.
We do have passionate devs who sometimes work in their spare time. But again, nothing currently in development.
Mo
That explains a lot. I really like all the mounts myself.
Thanks! I love them all too. The mounts team did a huge amount of iteration on controls to get each mount feeling just right. They're a team of perfectionists and it shows. :)
Mo
The Guild Wars 1 servers have been extremely laggy lately, almost to the point where it’s unplayable.
The issue usually comes when you alt-tab out of the game while in an explorable area. When you tab back in your character and NPCs start rubber banding across the whole map and it doesn’t go away.
Other people I have been playing with have also reported the issue. It happens when leaving from both American and European districts.
Is there anything that can be done about this?
We're migrating to a new datacenter in Europe that should have better peering, thus more consistent connectivity. Stephen, our studio technical director, just spun up new servers there last night. So try today?
Mo
What made you decide to somewhat "sneak in" the gryphon mount into the expansion instead of straight up announcing it? Is it the potential flak from the playerbase that made you do it like this?
"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."
We announced a lot in advance, but we held back some things to preserve that sense of discovery on release day.
Mo
~hello, this message is for MO
There were some leaks around the reddit lately regarding easy and hard mode raids: 1 . Crystal Reid said on forums that you won't be adding a different difficulty tier at this time. Has this changed meantime?
How are things progressing with the next raid? We've been waiting for a while now and surely would like to hear some info. What rewards / system will the new raid use? Will it be only skins or there will be new infusions, gizmos like xera portal?
Hi! That message is really for Crystal! Her recent forum thread is still the right answer: we're not working on different difficulty tiers. We're focused on making great content and don't want to slow that down by multiplying the amount of work. We're hard at work on the next raid and development is going well; no announcements today.
Mo