Curse

Razon · Oct 01, 2009, 01:43 PM // 13:43

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 At the moment our Chinese community is helping us to update outdated skills and skill descriptions only.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 (at) 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!

On GWW

Sarevok Thordin · Oct 01, 2009, 01:51 PM // 13:51

Yikes, 1 went to the emergancy room over swine flu D:

zelgadissan · Oct 01, 2009, 01:57 PM // 13:57

Not really any new information, more or less just a recap of stuff we already knew.

Either way, thanks for the update Regina (and Razon)

Qing Guang · Oct 01, 2009, 01:58 PM // 13:58

I skimmed, but...

POSSIBLE NEW HALLOWEEN CONTENT! Yay!

slowerpoke · Oct 01, 2009, 01:59 PM // 13:59

nothing new here, and no etas on any content updates.
by the sounds of it they are further behind.
for a team with such limited resources they sure have wasted alot of time on the henchmen skillbar contest.

issues that require swift ingame action are being left to fester.

upier · Oct 01, 2009, 02:03 PM // 14:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razon

Henchman Skill Bar Judging
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!)Also, a surprising number of submissions contained no Elite skill in the bar.

Test Krewe Submission Reviews
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.

Twitter

Her August 28 blog post took several days to write, get edited, and so forth.

I just quoted some parts that I am not in favour of.
The GW team seems to be overloaded with things to do, and then you don't go around and add more thing to their plate.
They should REALLY focus on certain priorities - balance in PvP and new content (And the content shouldn't be just seasonal!) in PvE.
Looking over 30k bars when some of them don't even include elites IS a waste of time.

Edit:
Reduced the quote.

And it seems I am slower then slowerpoke! :S

snaek · Oct 01, 2009, 02:13 PM // 14:13

bout time someone posted this... i guess everyone was busy with rr. i am assuming this means another rr day or two?

this is my biggest lol in the update:

Quote:

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. :-)

Shayne Hawke · Oct 01, 2009, 02:27 PM // 14:27

The only new Halloween content I'm looking for is new skillbars in Costume Brawl, properly functioning masks, and a new set of hats. New CB disguises and a new map would be a bonus.

II Lucky Charm II · Oct 01, 2009, 02:41 PM // 14:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razon

End of Month, Beginning of Autumn - 30 September 2009

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. :-(

On GWW

Why would you waste your time writing this paragraph informing the public of the condition of the Anet team? For all we care, we paid you (ANET) so therefore you are obligated to serve us under any conditions. We could care less about the H1N1 virus, tough luck. Hire new people... Remember, your new franchise, GW2, depends on what you're doing with GW1. If you lose people's interest, then you know the outcome. Stop trying to come up with new stories to delay the updates.

NO SARCASM IMPLIED

keli · Oct 01, 2009, 02:45 PM // 14:45

I guess the guy above me said sarcasm.

Aljasha · Oct 01, 2009, 02:51 PM // 14:51

kinda disappointing. no wonder nothing new happens in gw, after all anet are grinding their way through aion.

advice: forget about all those festivities, test krewe and skillbar thingy. give us thoughtful balance updates, sealed deck and some other new content (ha map) and you'll stop self-owning.

Scythe O F Glory · Oct 01, 2009, 02:53 PM // 14:53

They gave me swine through the computer!

And yeah, I sure hope Lucky Charm is being sarcastic...

FoxBat · Oct 01, 2009, 02:56 PM // 14:56

Test Krewe is going to reduce the workload significantly down the road, it's worth the time investment now. Half the recent balance disasters could be averted if they had people actually play with the dartboard buffs. It wouldn't take a genius to come up with R/As, just some people actually testing skills instead of theorycrafting how to make GWs honorable. Also any new content in the pipeline will need to get the bugs ironed out.

citizensmith1001 · Oct 01, 2009, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by II Lucky Charm II

Why would you waste your time writing this paragraph informing the public of the condition of the Anet team? For all we care, we paid you (ANET) so therefore you are obligated to serve us under any conditions. We could care less about the H1N1 virus, tough luck. Hire new people... Remember, your new franchise, GW2, depends on what you're doing with GW1. If you lose people's interest, then you know the outcome. Stop trying to come up with new stories to delay the updates.

Wow , all i can say to this rant is wow =/

ll Jamie ll · Oct 01, 2009, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by II Lucky Charm II

Why would you waste your time writing this paragraph informing the public of the condition of the Anet team? For all we care, we paid you (ANET) so therefore you are obligated to serve us under any conditions. We could care less about the H1N1 virus, tough luck. Hire new people... Remember, your new franchise, GW2, depends on what you're doing with GW1. If you lose people's interest, then you know the outcome. Stop trying to come up with new stories to delay the updates.

If your not being sarcastic then this is biggest load of crap i have ever heard.

Anyhow, regarding the halloween event i sure hope there are some cool builds for costume brawl. (thats all i ever do in the event apart from the hats)
Perhaps instead of having famous GW NPC's to play as we can wear halloween costumes depending on proffession

Aljasha · Oct 01, 2009, 03:05 PM // 15:05

this could have been solved much easier. just invite like 30 people to an internal testing team, who are gw-wide known for good knowledge of the game and valueable feedback for the live team. ~20 people may agree and there you've got your decent beta testers. this - however - was already said countless times before.

Shasgaliel · Oct 01, 2009, 03:07 PM // 15:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by II Lucky Charm II

Why would you waste your time writing this paragraph informing the public of the condition of the Anet team? For all we care, we paid you (ANET) so therefore you are obligated to serve us under any conditions. We could care less about the H1N1 virus, tough luck. Hire new people... Remember, your new franchise, GW2, depends on what you're doing with GW1. If you lose people's interest, then you know the outcome. Stop trying to come up with new stories to delay the updates.

I hope people like you will lose interest in GW2 and hopefully leave GW1 as well. That would make my day for sure. I would even likely see the next update delayed by half a year to see this happen.

at OP. Thank you for the information.

vamp08 · Oct 01, 2009, 03:09 PM // 15:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razon

the GW2 teaser trailer and the GW2 artbook were not the last you will see of GW2 this year…

On GWW

*cries* (tears of joy)

Shursh · Oct 01, 2009, 03:17 PM // 15:17

Thanks for the update.

I wonder if there is a way to sort out and/or delete build submissions which don't contain an elite. Might help with the enormous task of going through 30k submissions...

And I hope everyone gets over the swine flu!

QueenofDeath · Oct 01, 2009, 03:31 PM // 15:31

What a way to squeeze more time of not doing anything pretend to be sick. I want to see medical receipts. If you had a virus like Swine Flu then everyone of you should have doctors reports and return to work slips. It's too easy to call a cough some kind of flu. I bet they stayed at home and played video games just like all of you do when you pretend to be sick.