User:Regina Buenaobra/Journal

Revision as of 01:59, 3 November 2009 by Regina Buenaobra (Talk | contribs)

(diff) ← Older revision | Current revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Mad King's Steward Called Away - 2 November 2009

The Mad King's Steward has been called away on an urgent request from Mad King Thorn (e.g. you may have noticed it missing from Lion's Arch and Kamadan), and the Steward will return tomorrow.

Halloween Art Contest Issues - 2 November 2009

We have been made aware of issues related to a couple of the Halloween Art Contest entries. While every effort is made to check each entry to ensure that the artwork submitted was not plagiarized, the internet is a big place, and we are not able to check every single corner. Thank you to community members who contacted us to make us aware of those issues. Entries that the team judges to be plagiarized work will be removed over the next couple of days. One submission was affected so far. When we are confident that there are no further issues with contest entries that are displayed on the web site, we will then start the process of awarding prizes to the next highest ranking creator(s). This whole process may take at least a week. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this.

November 1: Erroneous Fraud Blocks - 2 November 2009

On November 1, a few Guild Wars accounts were blocked in error due to payment fraud, however those purchases were legitimate. We sincerely apologize for this error. The Support Team is aware of this error, and they're devoting more people to reinstating the affected accounts. If you have been affected by this, and have not already done so, please open a Support ticket. For additional information and steps you can take, please refer to the Support Issues page on the wiki. Again, we apologize for this error on our part, and we're doing everything we can to reinstate those accounts.

Happy Halloween from ArenaNet - 30 October 2009

A bunch of staff dressed up for the occasion today. Check our their awesome costumes on our page on Facebook!

PvP Henchmen and Heroes in Guild Halls - Updated - 30 October 2009

You should be able to add Heroes to your party in Guild Halls now.

PvP Henchmen and Heroes in Guild Halls - 30 October 2009

Yesterday's update introduced the new PvP Henchmen into the game. Players also discovered that they could not add Heroes to their party in their Guild Halls. The dev team is aware of this concern, and Joe, our programmer, is looking into a way to address this. Joe told me that he can't make any guarantees, but he's pretty optimistic that he can make it happen.

A Note on the Mad King's Guard Miniature - 29 October 2009

Contrary to rumors and hearsay, the Mad King's Guard Miniature is not dropping anywhere in the world. You cannot obtain it through killing monsters or completing quests. The Mad King's Guard Miniature is being introduced as a prize for the Halloween Art Contest of 2009. At this time, there is no other way to obtain it.

Quick Reminder About Frequency of Halloween Quests - 29 October 2009

Hey, everyone. There seems to be continuing confusion about the Halloween quests. Please note that the Halloween quests are not daily quests. As we noted on the official web site, players will be treated to a "series" of quests, meaning there are multiple quests, but these quests are not daily quests.

Thank you. :-)

Automated Tournament Issues - 23 October 2009

Evening, all.

As some of you probably have noticed, there has been an issue with the last two Automated Tournaments.

As a result of that, many guilds were not able to get the remaining Qualifier Points they would need to compete in this weekend's MAT.

We will reduce the required amount of QPs for this Monthly Automated Tournament to 10.

We will also temporarily revert the changes to the Automated Tournament times.

Izzy and a couple of other coders are currently looking into the issue.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Halloween Art Contest Deadline Extension - 23 October 2009

We've received a report that a couple players have had issues sending Halloween Art Contest entries to contests@arena.net. We had our IT Team on it to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. All told, there was a one hour window during which we were unable to receive mail. Because of this, we will extend the deadline. Players now have until 5:00pm Pacific time to submit their art contest submission.

We're sorry about all the inconvenience, consternation, and confusion caused. Looking forward to seeing those art contest entries!

Codex Arena - 22 October 2009

Today we introduced Codex Arena. You should be able to see Codex Arena on your map in the Battle Isles. If it doesn't appear for you, head over to the Great Temple of Balthazar, and check your map again, and it should appear there.

Remember, you can use just a limited set of skills in Codex Arena. When you travel there, you may see that your skill bar has lock images over some or all of your skills. To find out what skills you can use in Codex Arena for the day, please open your Skills menu by pressing 'k'. These skills will change each day. For more information about Codex Arena and about the Codex Title, please head over to the web page.

Team Arena / Hero Battles Closure - 19 October 2009

The Live Team continues their hard work on the Halloween content.

Meanwhile, last week we discussed letting you all know about the closing of TA and HB, and Linsey agreed that it would be a good idea.

Team Arenas and Hero Battles will be removed in the next build. The game update to remove those two formats will arrive this week.

PvP: Current Projects Status Update - 07 October 2009

As a follow-up to my previous update-y post here, Linsey has outlined more details about what the Live Team is currently working on:

• The Henchmen project: Robert has done a major pass on all the PvE Henchmen, changing many of their builds and polishing their stats to a glossy shine. Only some minor AI tweaks remain. Live Team collectively managed to get through the 30k+ PvP Henchmen submissions and picked 40 builds to be used on release. Robert is working with Joe now to make sure the AI knows how to handle the builds. Linsey and Robert are working with me to get in touch with all the winners, nail down (appropriate, in-character) names for the Henchmen. The last bit of fun is going to be digging up cool models to use for them all once we have the names.

• PvP Skins: The work on this is done. Joe miraculously resolved the two "show-stopping" graphics bugs with the EotN skins, implemented the price reductions and added support for ZCoins.

• Sync-ing Random Arena: The GW2 Programming Team had been playing a bunch of GW PvP lately during their lunch breaks and on the weekend. During one play session, the room got into a lively discussion about Sync'ing Random Arena. Next thing Linsey knows, one of the members of the GW2 Programming Team was telling her that he'd found a way to put everyone into the same bucket so that Sync'ing won't be so easy. We decided to push it live as soon as possible and we put it up on September 1st.

• (TA + HB)^Sealed = WIN!: This project has taken a little bit longer than we had expected. Joe needed to pretty much start from scratch in order for Sealed to be robust enough to handle Live conditions as a full format. That's bumped a couple things from this build back on the waiting list. At this point, Joe is working with QA to get the last remains of TA and HB removed and QA has begun their first test pass on the new Sealed format. Sealed has all its basic functionality there now, it just needs to get through the testing/bug fixing phase and on to the final polish.

• GvG Tiebreaker: We've read through lots of feedback, distilling it down to key points and proposals, but other than that, the project has been mostly put on hold. There are so many different opinions about how we should deal with this that it would be best to wait until the Test Krewe is in place anyway so that we have a way to test each approach. Linsey prefers this one to be really solid before we put it out. That means iteration and a lot of testing, which takes a lot of time and people.

• Bug Fixes for Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry: These have mostly been put on hold for now since they're primarily code issues.

• New HoH map: As we said before, "we’ll probably wait until the Test Krewe is in place" and that's what's happening.

• New Schedule for Automated Tournaments: The last status update from QA was that they were doing their test pass and this was pretty much just a matter of Izzy pulling the trigger.

• The Next Skill Balance: We have not started production on this yet. Linsey won't be free to think about it until Halloween is set, but James and Robert have been brewing some ideas already. We'll let you know when this project gets further underway.

• Halloween: As I mentioned a couple posts ago on this page, Linsey has been itching do something new for Halloween. She didn't want to just put in a few more terrible jokes. It’s been on her mind a lot and ideas have been percolating and for months on sleepless nights and in daydreams abound. The last couple weeks, in between scrambling around working on PvP stuff, she's been developing something fairly ambitious. She isn't sure yet if we’ll be able to pull it all off, but regardless, we'll probably manage to get at least a little shiny and new in for this year’s celebration.

Beware of Phishing Sites! - 05 October 2009

This is an important message for all players. We have recently become aware of a phishing site offering players access to the Guild Wars 2 beta after you input your existing Guild Wars account information (username and password). This site, ncsoftinternational.tk is not affiliated with or owned by NCsoft. Do not access this site or give this site your account information!

Henchman Skill Bar Contest Winners - 01 October 2009

The results are in, and the winners list is up! As a reminder, here were the prizes as listed in the official rules: Prizes: Twenty (20) winners will receive one (1) of each of the prizes below:

• A henchman named after the winner’s character or an appropriate name of the winner’s choosing. Please note that all names must abide by our Naming policy and are subject to the approval of the Development Team.
• One Everlasting Henchman Tonic. This unique item will grant the winner the ability to temporarily transform into the image of the henchman that they are named after.

The list of winners, in no particular order are located on the web site for both Guild vs. Guild and Heroes' Ascent.

Congratulations to the winners!

FAQ

• There are 40 winners listed. What gives?

Because of the overwhelming number of great submissions, the Live Team decided to accept a total of 40 submissions, 20 for each format. We predicted we’d get a lot of awesome submissions, so that’s why we included this line in the official rules: “We reserve the right to declare additional winners and award additional prizes in our sole discretion.”

• Will everyone get a henchman named after them?

Yes! Each player-character listed will get a henchman named after them, or an appropriate name of the winner’s choosing. Each winner will be contacted individually to coordinate naming their henchman, and also to coordinate receipt of the tonic.

• Will the new henchmen be able to use the winning builds effectively?

This was a concern at the start of the contest. We posted that, if appropriate, henchman AI could be tweaked and improved so they can use those skills effectively.

• What went into judging the builds submitted in the contest?

As stated in the official rules, entries were judged "on the basis of merit and appropriateness to game design considerations as determined by the Development Team." The contest asked players to "devise potent, effective skill bars for the new henchmen in GvG and Heroes Ascent" and to submit competitive henchman skill bars.

Linsey explained things a little further in terms of why she and Robert picked the skills they did for the winners:

Magic: The Gathering has a similar situation to Guild Wars: good decks are good decks. Individual players do not hold exclusive copyright or trademarks to use those decks. Lots of people play the same kinds of decks (i.e. those decks are popular), sometimes with slight variations, for one reason: they are effective. There are sites out there devoted to Magic: The Gathering strategies, on how to build the best decks, what cards to put in those decks, etc. This information is available to the public.

Likewise, in Guild Wars, good builds are good builds. Linsey was looking for builds that would be competitive and effective for GvG and HA. This is why the contest rules asked players to "devise potent, effective skill bars for the new henchmen in GvG and Heroes Ascent" and to come up with "great, competitive, henchman skill bars". There are certain builds that meet all of the design criteria that Linsey and Robert were looking for. Linsey and Robert had to balance a lot of needs and wants when judging the entries for this contest. Because there are certain builds that are more appropriate for this than others, one expects a certain amount of duplication. Many of those builds and strategies are publicized on places like PvXWiki, but also in guild forums, alliance forums, strategy guides, etc. They are out there in public for a reason: players have found them to be effective. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that there's no room for innovation or imagination. Only two of the winning skill bars had more than 50 duplicate entries. All the rest had less than 10 others submitting the same bar, and 23 winning skill bars were completely unique in the contest. Keep in mind another fact: Linsey and Robert wanted those henchmen to be equipped with skills that they know players will know how to use and will want to use.

• Were all of the winning skill bars unique?

Of the 40 winners, more than half were unique skill bars that no one else submitted, out of 30 000 total submissions.

Here's the breakdown:

1 Build -> 62 submissions

1 Build -> 51 submissions

1 Build -> 9 submissions

1 Build -> 5 submissions

3 Builds -> 4 submissions

2 Builds -> 3 submissions

8 Builds -> 2 submissions

23 Builds -> 1 submission

In the case of duplicate submissions, the winner was decided by a die roll.

• Will those henchmen skills ever be changed in the future?

It's possible. The design team may decide to modify the henchmen in the future if they feel it's appropriate, this includes tweaking their AI, or even changing their skills.

• When will we see the new henchmen?

You'll see them in an upcoming game update, so keep your eyes peeled!

End of Month, Beginning of Autumn - 30 September 2009

Hola! I thought I'd talk about what's been going on in Live Team land since my last general update to this blog at the beginning of this month.

H1N1 Outbreak

As most people probably know, ArenaNet was hit with the H1N1 virus (I resisted writing “Tvirus” just now, FYI) following PAX, as well as run of the mill after-convention colds/flu (popularly known as “con crud”). Several people in the company had to stay home for at least a week till they got better. Unfortunately, we saw at least one person go to the emergency room for H1N1-related problems. H1N1 had a big impact on the Live Team in the first half of the month, with Linsey, Robert, and Joe coming down with symptoms. At one point during her illness, Linsey actually came into work, but was physically unable to work for more than an hour or two before getting fatigued, so she went right back home for rest and recuperation. Others had very bad colds/flu symptoms, and because of pre-cautions being taken in the company, many people, including me, stayed home to reduce the chance of infecting others at work. The missed work due to illness, of course, impacted workflow. Quite a miserable set of days for all concerned. :-(

Visit From Our GMs

We recently hosted the heads of our Austin and Brighton GM teams here at the studio for a week, and it was great to have them here so they could get an idea of our workflow, processes, and synch up on any support-related discussions.

Community Team Activities

After PAX, I've been working with Martin on a lot of future planning work for Guild Wars 2, in terms of community department structure and staffing. This has involved a lot of research on both our parts, as well as conference calls, meetings, calculations, projections, and so forth. You probably won't see the results of those plans until just before Guild Wars 2 launches, and unfortunately I can’t talk about any of those plans right now. We’re definitely working on exciting things, though!

We’ve also been working on going through the Test Krewe submissions. More on that below.

Of course, we’re doing our regular thing, like keeping an eye on various forums and the usual spots for any issues to report to different departments here.

Chinese Traditional - Community Localization Project

This project is a small-scale beta project. At the moment our Chinese community is helping us to update outdated skills and skill descriptions only. There are no plans to do this for other languages at this time. If you speak traditional Chinese, and you'd like to help out, you can take a look at the project information here.

Henchman Skill Bar Judging

Over the past couple of weeks, Robert and Linsey have been looking at the Henchman Skill Bar contest submissions and deciding which of the bars you submitted should go into the game. The Henchman Skill Bar contest took up more time than we predicted, due to the overwhelming response of the community (more than 30 000 submissions!). We view this initiative a success, despite the fact that it's taken a little longer for the team to select winning skill bars than if they had come up with those bars themselves. The in-game submission tool was something that Mike worked on and it's something that we may find use for in the future. Robert has been taking point on this project, and has been coming in on the weekends for that. The process for vetting builds has been interesting. There’s been a lot of discussion in the Live Team room between Linsey and Robert about pros and cons of certain skills in certain builds, what those builds are most appropriate for, and the like. We’ve had a few laughs about some of the builds submitted, and there’ve been some really great submissions as well. There are some interesting stats aggregated from the submissions, but I’m not sure we’ll have the time to actually compile and publish those. I talked to Robert about what interesting findings he saw, and he said that it looks like we received more bars for Monks and Warriors than other Professions. Also, a surprising number of submissions contained no Elite skill in the bar. If we do have any more interesting facts, I’ll try and grab Robert when he’s not ridiculously busy to give me a few more tidbits.

Test Krewe Submission Reviews

The Live Team continues to review Test Krewe applications. The initial review passes weeded out applications that provided invalid information, and right now we're focusing on carefully reviewing the remaining submissions, giving each one due consideration, and making a short list of folks that we think will be quality volunteers, based on their applications. We have tried to reduce the impact of this time-consuming process on the Live Team by having community shoulder the administrative work, with the assistance of a couple of our awesome QA fellows. The time taken to review those submissions is significant, even with taking out the invalid submissions. A few thousand people applied to the Test Krewe! We’re working on a FAQ to address some common questions in the community about the Test Krewe. If you have any suggestions for that, please let us know!

Future Game Updates

Linsey hoped, by discussing the projects on the list openly in her recent journal post, that this would help give you all an idea of what we would like to tackle in the future. Another hope was that it would address concerns about what is going on behind the scenes. Progress is being made on some of those projects. Much of that progress involves getting items on a schedule and prioritized. There’ve been meetings about Sealed play lately for example, however the main priority in the last couple of weeks has been Henchman Skill Bar Contest. A lot of the planning is going on behind the scenes involves meeting with other departments, so that Live Team plans coordinate well with other departments’ plans, such as the marketing dept and their schedule/calendar.

Halloween

Other things the Live Team is working on include a game update later this month. As Linsey mentioned, she would like to add a bit of new content to the Halloween event. Mike has been meeting with other departments to discuss how much support they have time to give us for this. For example, if there’s any new text or art involved, we need to get the help of a writer or artist, all of whom are working heads-down on Guild Wars 2.

XTH

A current challenge right now is getting significant amount of developer time for the extensive internal stress testing we talked about late last month. Unfortunately, I have no new information about Xunlai Tournament House at this time.

Twitter

You may have noticed that Linsey is using our official Guild Wars Twitter account to hopefully help make players feel involved in her daily work life as a designer. When we discussed getting her involved in Twitter, we agreed that it would give her more flexibility to write short, informal updates via Twitter, than long, drawn out blog posts on her journal. I'm not sure if you know this, but many of Linsey's journal posts, particularly the detailed ones like the one she posted in August, go through several edit passes with a writer. Her August 28 blog post took several days to write, get edited, and so forth. The process is time-consuming, and it takes time away from her design work. So we've been trying to use Twitter as a means for her to show you what's going on in the Guild Wars Live Team, even if we can't actually go into detail about them. If you have any feedback for us, feel free to send an @ reply via Twitter or contact us via the usual channels. :-)

Community News

Just a reminder, but if you’re hosting an in-game event, want to let people know about an article or blog post you wrote, or want to show off a web site or some art, you can submit your info for publication on Community News on the official web site!

To do this, please send the following information to community@arena.net:

• Event name/title
• Organizing guild, alliance, and/or player
• Location of the event
• Date, time, time zone (time zone is really important! :-))
• Event description/details (no more than roughly 175 words)
• Link to your event web page (wiki page, web page, forum post, blog post, etc.)

To help us in spotting your message more quickly and to organize our inboxes, please title your email with the subject: "[Community News] Title of Your Event".

Misc.

As always, the last quarter of the year is busy for Guild Wars. We have the Halloween and Wintersday events, which are significant projects in and of themselves, however as you already know, the GW2 teaser trailer and the GW2 artbook were not the last you will see of GW2 this year…

In other news, a lot of people in the company are playing Aion, to varying degrees of fanaticism. Some people are absolute leveling fiends, and they’re already in their mid-20s. Kind of impressive. I’m taking it easy and leisurely leveling a couple of characters on different servers. :-)

This week, Martin is in Reykjavik for EVE Fan Fest. Did you know he’s an EVE Online player? I guess he just loves math and spread sheets. :-P

Well, this post is already pretty long, so I'll leave it at that. Have a great day!

Art of Guild Wars 2 Book - On Sale Today - 23 September 2009

The awesome Guild Wars 2 artbook that we gave away at PAX 2009 is now on sale. For more information on how to get one, see the Guild Wars 2 website.

This artbook will not be available in the collector's edition of Guild Wars 2.

Aion Wings Emote Update - 14 September 2009

I've got the official word from the Aion team about how they'll accommodate customers who purchased digital versions of Aion and who would like access to the Aion wing emote in Guild Wars.

The good news is that Guild Wars customers who purchased or pre-ordered Aion digitally can get their Aion wings emote by contacting Customer Support to request a code. This is only for digital customers. Customers who purchased the physical retail box will receive the code in the box.

Please note the following:

• The code will not work until the Aion launch date: 22 September 2009.
• After 22 October 2009, the Guild Wars wing emote codes for Aion digital customers will no longer be available. So if you're a digital customer, please contact Customer Support to request your code before October 22.
• Customers who contact customer support with a code request will receive that code by September 21.

If you have any questions about this promotion, please contact our Customer Support team.

Many thanks, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

PAX 2009 Videos - 10 September 2009

The videos are up on our YouTube channel. Here's a link to a handy playlist containing all 12 videos. =)

PAX 2009 - 08 September 2009

PAX is over and what an incredible show! Tons of fans showed up full of enthusiasm and excitement not in the least beacause we were giving out an awesome, high-quality art book filled with Guild Wars 2 concept art. The lines for the art book were massive, stretching at least half of the PAX exhibition hall at peak periods. More than a few people said that the art book was the "best swag of PAX" and that it blew everyone else's swag away.

We had tons of great panels at the show, where fans could ask questions of the artists, designers, and writers about the lore, the art process, and anything else they could think of. We had a lot of great questions, and I hope you had fun following along on Twitter. I asked our web content writer to come to PAX to post all these Twitter updates because I knew I would be too busy organizing anything and everything to do with our booth to be able to sit still and post updates. From the feedback so far, it looks like you all thought this was great, so I'm glad my idea worked out. =)

The community meet and greet on Saturday night was stellar. While it wasn't as large a scale as our Game Works parties of the past, the gathering at the Tap House Grill gave people the opportunity to have a smaller and more intimate setting to have those full, rich coversations with our developers. Much mingling and socializing occurred and I was so happy that lots of fans told me they enjoyed it. :-D

To win a ticket to the meet and greet at PAX, we had people come to our booth and play a little trivia. We showed pictures of outposts and explorable areas to attendees, and you had to correctly guess the name of those outposts. We made it a little challenging for people, taking screen shots from angles that players are not familiar with or can't actually get to because we used our fly cam on the development server. Only the most hard core fans were able to meet the challenge, and even a few hardcore fans had difficulty with it.

The devs, artists, and writers had a great time at the show signing art books and speaking to the players. PAX is always one of the highlights of the year for us, because we love meeting you all in person. Daniel Dociu mentioned in one of his Q&A sessions at the booth that one of the most rewarding things about working at ArenaNet is the support and love that the fans show us in response to the work we produce.

If you made it to PAX, I'd like to thank each and every single one of you for stopping by and chatting with me. If I came across as flustered, I apologize--I had about a million little things I was tracking for PAX, everything from every devs' speaking schedule, to line management and crowd control. It was a hectic weekend! I appreciate people stopping by! =)

I'd like to give a small shout-out to my fans in the Philippines. I know that there's a decent sized Filipino contingent of avid Guild Wars players, but I really had no clue that I actually had a big fan following there. Thanks for making yourselves known to me. I appreciate the support! =)

A Small Note About Scans of the Guild Wars 2 Art Book

I just received a note from our lawyer this morning, stating that we are not giving permission for people to post scans of the art book online. This is in violation of our copyright. If you were thinking of scanning the art book and posting pictures from it on the forums, please know that this is not something we're permitting.

Of course, people can continue to grab and post whatever we make available on the web site, as long as it is consistent with our Terms of Use. But the Guild Wars 2 art book is not included in this.

I know this is a bummer, but we will make the art book available for sale later (date and price TBD). When players get the art book in their hands and see all the concept art, they'll know for sure that any scans couldn't possibly have done justice to the art.

A Few Updates - 02 September 2009

I've got a few short updates before signing off for PAX duty this weekend.

Henchman Skill Bar Contest

There've been a few questions about the contest posted on my wiki page and on the forums, so here's additional information from the Live Team about it:

• Second professions are acceptable. The design team has no preference about whether the bars you submit are single profession bars or dual profession.
• AI: It's possible that the Henchman AI will be updated to utitlize winning builds effectively, but it all depends on whether the design team feels this is appropriate. When submitting your bars for the contest, you shouldn't necessarily feel limited by the current AI.
• Interrupt skills are not out of the question. The design team won't reject bars with interrupt skills out of hand, but if a bar is built to obviously abuse the AI, it's likely to be rejected.
• Your armor and equipment will not be submitted via the NPC in GTOB. However, when the design team reviews the submitted skill bars, they will equip the Henchmen appropriately with design and game balance considerations in mind.

One of the reasons behind a contest like this is because the Live Team wants to involve the community in the game and involve people in having a direct impact on a change in the game. Of course, the team will have the ultimate say in which bars get into the game, but we'll be pulling from a pool that comes directly from players.

Aion Wings Emote

Currently, customers who pre-ordered Aion digitally are not eligible for the Aion wings emote. The promotion is for the retail editions of the game. I've been in touch with the Aion team about solutions they are working on to accommodate digital customers. I will keep you updated when I learn more. They're keenly aware of the dissatisfaction about this promo from Guild Wars players. Please note that this cross promotion is being driven by Aion, and I will let you know any new info as soon as they tell me and I'm cleared to give that info in public.

Test Krewe Application Deadline Reminder

The deadline for Test Krewe Applications is Tuesday, September 8. It's fast-approaching, so if you haven't already submitted your application, please send them in soon.

Community Meet and Greet at PAX

We're holding a small community meet and greet at PAX at a restaurant close to the convention center. If you're going to be at PAX, stop by the booth and ask how you can win a pass to the meet up! Passes will be super limited. What will happen at the meet and greet? Well, you'll get to meet and hang out with a bunch of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 developers. You can ask them questions in a social setting. There will be food and drink served, and you'll get a piece of swag (supplies limited!).

We'll be updating the @arenanet Twitter and the ArenaNet page on Facebook during the weekend, so if you're not already following us, consider doing so. =)

Guild Wars 2 Teaser Trailer - 21 August 2009

Wow, what a week!

By now, most hardcore Guild Wars fans have seen the Guild Wars 2 teaser trailer (if not, then gogogo!). Last week, Mike O'Brien hinted at things to come, and early this week he reminded you all that we had something up our collective sleeves. :-) Along with that post, the ArenaNet Community Team launched our steady build-up of tidbits before the release of the teaser trailer. We coordinated our teaser efforts so that we were in synch. I managed our social media sites at ArenaNet HQ, so we could involve those who couldn't be at Cologne (which would be most of you), while Martin did his thing on the ground at GamesCom Cologne.

Other staff members at ArenaNet played critical roles in the launch of the video teaser: people who managed the web site unveiling and who stayed overnight after the trailer went live to monitor traffic, the team in Cologne who answered the Q&A, our PR rep at NCsoft who helped set up media interviews, and of course the folks on the cinematics, art, design, programming, audio, and production teams, who worked their butts off for the past several months to create such an awesome teaser. When the teaser premiered in Cologne at noon, several staff were right here at the office at 3:00 in the morning. For my part, I was again at the social media command center, managing Facebook, YouTube, three Twitter accounts, keeping an eye on all the posts on the fan site forums, the wiki, and speaking to players on two instant messenger clients, etc. It was exciting! :-) We were totally blown away at the fan response. We loved the fact that the NCsoft/Aion live video feed of the booth also captured shots of the fans during the Guild wars 2 teaser premiere, and it was just thrilling to watch the crowd go wild like that! :-D I forwarded a lot of your comments about the video to the company, and many of them have been keeping a close eye on the forum threads (a lot of the people in the company read the fan site forums).

I realize that some of you were frustrated that the live camera feed only showed shots of the audience during the teaser, so hopefully having it up on the website for download in all its full HD glory made up for that. Another thing to keep in mind that this live camera feed was the Aion team's baby, which is why we didn't promote it on any of our own sites or social media.

I know you probably have a lot of questions about Guild Wars 2 right now. Please keep in mind that the game is still in development, and there is only so much information that we can actually discuss in public. If you've been reading in interviews with our Lead Designer, Eric Flannum, with Studio Head, Mike O'Brien, Art Director, Daniel Dociu, or Game Designer, Jeff Grubb, and seeing in Q&A sessions at GamesCom, this will give you a good idea of the bits of information that, at this point, we can talk about. So for example, we can't get into the nitty gritty details of movement (but there will be jumping and swimming), system requirements (but like GW1, GW2 will be playable on most computers), character progression, or the release date ("When it's done" ;-)) at the moment.

There are a few neat technical facts about the Guild Wars 2 trailer that you may be interested in:

True HD Resolution

• It was played and recorded in real-time at true 1080p HD resolution, not scaled up artificially.
• The animated lore part of the video is produced at 1080p resolution from the ground up. All assets are created at true 1080p resolution.

The Animated Part of the Video

• The animated, pre-rendered lore intro portion of the video was done completely in-house. This was not farmed out to a specialty studio that produces high-end pre-rendered videos. All of the illustrations, animation, editing, and rendering was done at ArenaNet.

The In-Game Part of the Video

• The in-game part of the video is actual in-game footage. It was rendered in real-time in the game engine and recoded live using video capture hardware. Nothing was pre-rendered. All models, textures, and other assets are actual game play versions. They haven't been prettied up for marketing purposes.

Continuing Development

• Maps are works in progress, and may change to better fit game play.
• The team is working hard to make the game even more beautiful for the full release.

Some other questions that I can address, that I've seen on different web sites:

• Guns. Yes, that charr was holding a gun. There will be rifles and pistols in the game. All races use firearms, but the charr are the most advanced in military technology. How does this work in the lore sense? The charr have rejected their gods and embraced their technology, particularly the technology of war. In contast, asura are less technological and more magical, and you can see this in the asuras' use of golems and magical gates.
• Underwater areas. Yes, there will be swimming and you'll be able to explore underwater.
• What or who is that creature in the final shot of the video? Let's just say that while most of the charr have rejected their old gods, the shamans, who once worshipped those gods, have not just gone away peacefully...
• Orr. Yes, you will be able to get to Orr.
• Beta/release date. Betas have changed since we released the original Guild Wars. Because of the changing nature of the MMOG industry and how betas periods have evolved, we're going to hold beta closer to the launch of the game. We don't have a release date yet.

I'd like to offer my personal thanks to all the Guild Wars fans out there who've been waiting to see the first glimpse of Guild Wars 2. We appreciate your patience (and even your impatience, because impatience is just one sign of being a true fan!) and your support. =)

PAX is right around the corner. I'm working on finishing the final touches for the convention. Watch the official website for information on what we'll be up to at the con.

Have a great weekend!

Network Maintenance on August 11 and 12 - 11 August 2009

We'll be performing routine network maintenance from 10:00 PM PST on Tuesday, August 11 to 12:00 AM PST on Wednesday, August 12. Players may lose connectivity as a result of this brief maintenance activity. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.

Planned Start: Tuesday 8/11/2009 10:00 PM PDT (1:00 am EDT; 5:00 GMT)

Planned Finish: Tuesday 8/12/2009 12:00 AM PDT (3:00 am EDT; 7:00 GMT)

Impact Duration: Two hours, intermittent

Network Maintenance on August 4 - 03 August 2009

Hey, all. The network team just let us know that there will be a short maintenance period tomorrow:

On August 4, 2009 our network team will be performing a software upgrade to correct a performance-affecting issue found on one of the routers in the network. The maintenance will begin at 5:00am PDT (12:00pm GMT) and is expected to end at 7:00am PDT (2:00pm GMT). The impact on players is expected to last no more than 20 minutes at the start of the maintenance window. Players may experience some intermittent interruption in game play during that period, as well as a possible disruption to chat and login.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

What I've Been Up to Lately - 24 July 2009

Ahoy! It's been a little over a couple weeks since my last post, so I thought I'd let you know what some of us have been working on.

Teams involved are continuing to work on the Test Krewe project. We have been working on a lot of different aspects, including the technical backend, the legal side, the public facing interface, and other good stuff. There are still several more details to power through before we can launch it, but the teams are continuing to plug away.

As for the Henchman Skill Bar project, we're continuing to plug away at this as well. Right now we're working through the legal issues. Our lawyer has been quite busy working with the Live and Community Teams lately. :-)

To answer some continuing concerns about Xunlai Tournament House... We still don't have a timeline for its return. I don't have any news for you about it yet. We ask for your continued patience, with our apologies.

I've been in PAX planning mode lately. I've super busy meeting with various teams at ArenaNet and NCsoft on discussing logistics and whatnot. There's a lot of little moving parts that need to come together. On one hand, it's a challenge to keep track of these moving parts, and it will be a relief when it's over, but on the other hand, this kind of work is really enjoyable. My years of experience working behind the scenes at anime conventions is coming in handy. :-) There's a lot of differences between running a convention and running a booth, but both require a lot of attention to detail, and I'm trying to stay on top of things on that front. Even though our presence will not be as big as Aion, we do still have a booth, so there are many aspects that go into planning that.

Next week, I will continue to work on PAX stuff. I will be working with someone at NCsoft on the aspects of PAX that they take care of, such as the physical space in the Exhibit Hall, as well as other teams involved. Emily has this massive schedule of DOOM that we're using to track absolutely every single deadline that is in any way related to PAX, no matter how large or small the task is.

While I am working on PAX, Martin is working on his plans for GamesCom. ArenaNet will not have a booth there, but Martin will be at the convention to hang out and meet with German fans.

By now, some of you have probably seen on our Facebook page and via our Twitter (@arenanet), a couple of pictures from Comic-Con. :-) Hope you enjoyed that little tidbit.

If you've been following our Twitter, you may have seen us mention the ArenaNet Football (soccer) Club's exploits in the developer soccer league. Martin plays on the team. Last week, the team went up against Monolith, and unfortunately lost 9-nil. Monolith is one of the best teams in the league (along with Valve), so we're told, so it was going to be a challenge regardless. A few days ago, ArenaNet defeated Microsoft with a score of 7-2, so we were quite happy about that! Watch this space for continuing exploits of ArenaNet FC! When we get the football jerseys in, I will post a picture on our Flickr stream. :-) I don't actually play on the team, but I ordered a football jersey anyway, because I think they look neat!

Have a great weekend!

August Community News - Call for Submissions

If you'd like to have your community event featured on our official website, please send the following information to community@arena.net:

• Event name/title
• Organizing guild, alliance, and/or player
• Location of the event
• Date, time, time zone (time zone is really important! :-))
• Event description/details (no more than roughly 175 words)
• Link to your event web page (wiki page, web page, forum post, blog post, etc.)

Things to be aware of:

• We localize into 5 other languages besides English. This takes time, so please keep this in mind when submitting your news.
• We prefer to publish multiple items at the same time, so to be sure your event will be posted in time, please submit it with plenty of time in advance.
• We generally publish on a Thursday or a Friday, generally once a month, but more if we have more content.

We get hundreds of messages every single week. To help us in spotting your message more quickly and to organize our inboxes, please title your email with the subject: "[Community News] Title of Your Event". A lot of email gets put into the spam folder, and while we do check the spam folder, sometimes the subjects are not recognizable enough for us to take notice.

Summer Time! - 07 July 2009

Summer's here in the northern hemisphere! Lately we've had hot, sunny weather in Bellevue (though today there are ominous-looking clouds in the sky). I've been enjoying the weather, though some days last week it was way too hot for my taste. (At least it wasn't humid... Humid weather is a drag.)

The Live Team has been busy for the past weeks preparing the Dragon Festival. One of the things Linsey had to coordinate and approve was the creation of the new mask. This involved looking at concepts by our artist, going through the edit and approval process, creating the model, testing the model, etc. We hope you liked it! Judging by what I've been reading in the forms and hearing in-game, generally people like it. At the request of a several players, I got myself an Imperial Dragon Mask. A few players wanted one of my masks for their collections.

One of the things the Live Team has been working on is much planning for future updates. This includes talking about features that we think should be included. We have had discussions about the Test Krewe, and what the game update schedule will be like with the Test Krewe involved. We have been working with other functional teams in the office to help create an infrastructure that will support our organizational needs for the Test Krewe. The team we're working with is not full time on GW1 so, their time is at a premium. Other discussion has pertained to Henchman in GvG, and technical and administrative logistics and planning behind that. Another project is Xunlai Tournament House. We're digging into the code for XTH. Know that we're continuing to plug away at it. Incidentally, the folks working on Xunlai, have been drafted in to help with this, meaning that they are not full time on GW1 either, so their time must be scheduled carefully as well.

I've been asked recently about whether we will be at PAX this year. Yes, we will be. It's still a couple of months away, so we don't have details to share, but when we have info we will let you know (on the official website, as we have done in years past). Among the many things we're working on is thinking of cool, fun activities for attendees. We're also keeping in mind that there will be many fans who can't make it to PAX, so we've been brainstorming ways to try and share the convention experience with those who can't attend.

These are just some of the things we've been doing lately. There's some behind-the-scenes stuff that I'm not able to talk about in public, but it's exciting stuff all the same. :-)

That's all for now!

Small Update on Xunlai Tournament House - 01 July 2009

I posted this on a few fansite forums yesterday, and also on my wiki talk page, but I'll post it here as well.

The latest news on Xunlai Tournament House is that our team is still investigating the code. Accurately distributing points from June 18 is linked to correcting the underlying issues with Xunlai Tournament House. This means that the June 18 points won't be distributed until the code is fixed in XTH.

We appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to correct those issues.