Curse

Ravious · Apr 10, 2007, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Here is my theory first:

We were supposed to get buyable, new content every six months after GW:P was released. A.Net decided that an expansion-like product would not meet their needs (as a company) and therefore started down the standalone product path.

In other words, GW:EN could have been the second campaign, and was very likely concepted/worked on as early as GW:P.

Facts to support my hare-brained theory:
(1) Early interviews discussed the continuation of the GW:P story. It was more vague as in "the continuation of the Guild Wars story." But, I would argue that GW:F is nowhere near a continuation of any previous Guild Wars story. EDIT: There is a gamespot article you can find. I can't remember GWG's policies about linking, so to be on the safe side...

(2) Early interviews also maintained that the next Guild Wars product would be mostly underground. I remember constantly imagining that the next product would detail the dwarven civil war. When GW:F came out, and I played through it. I decided that "mostly underground" was just a misstatement about the sewers in Cantha. (Unfortunately my google-fu is weak, especially in trying to filter GW:EN articles from pre-GW:F speculation but containing the word "underground.")

(2.a) GW:EN seems to have more underground content than any other GW product. In fact with 18 dungeons and my belief that the final fight will be underground, I would say "mostly underground" might be accurate.

(3) To tide us over for the next Guild Wars product we received Sorrow's Furnace. Here is what I think may have happened. Sorrow's Furnace was going to either be a free teaser for GW:EN, or was going to be part of the buyable content. A.Net made the decision to switch from a GW:P expansion detailing the dwarven civil war to GW:F, but had content already created for the expansion. They needed more time to create GW:F, having switched plans mid-development cycle, so decided to release Sorrow's Furnace to keep people interested in the game.

(3.a) Sorrow's Furnace free expansion was mostly underground.
(3.b) Sorrow's Furnace has some material detailing the civil war AND the Great Destroyer.
(3.c) Sorrow's Furnace was a dungeon. I would theorize that it is the first of GW:EN's dungeons, just it was released awhile ago instead.

(4) Gwen. We had unusable quest items from the beginning of GW:P. We were constantly told that they would be used for future quests/content. Then each new campaign we received one more Gwen item. I tend to think, applying ol' Occam's razor, that the simple explanation was that the next Guild Wars product after GW:P was going to continue Gwen's story. Now we have been hinted pretty forwardly that Gwen would be in the next Guild Wars product. This is pretty strong evidence that originally we were going to get an expansion.

(5) Beetletun. The description of the map card is "Historians speculate that in time out of mind, these now-ruined watchtowers guarded Kryta from some unknown northern threat. Now the crumbled towers stand like ancient stone soldiers still awaiting the arrival of that mysterious enemy from across the great saltwater lake called Giant's Basin." Sounds like the Norns live up there. This description gives some strong hints as to what was to come.

I am sure there might be more, but these are the main ones that struck me.

What does this mean? Well, really... nothing. I mean we have three great Guild Wars Campaigns. I just think that selling standalone campaigns was not the plan all along, and may have added to the reason for the "delay" in GW:F. GW:EN is coming, but I believe it has been a long time coming.

For me personally, this just gets me more excited. If the ideas for GW:EN have been in the grinder for this long (compared to GW:F and GW:NF), I expect a truly great telling from A.Net.

savage vapor 33 · Apr 10, 2007, 04:28 PM // 16:28

Maybe its me, but i'm sick of all these theories? Let's just wait for the damn game to come out, how bout that?

EatMoreCarbs · Apr 10, 2007, 04:44 PM // 16:44

Speculation makes it more fun, to try to guess what the game might be about, then seeing who is wrong or who is right.

Karlos · Apr 10, 2007, 04:45 PM // 16:45

I disagree that GW:EotN was supposed to be chapter 2 then got pushed further for some mysterious reason.

If you read the PC Gamer article, it's very clear why GW:EotN is designed how it is today. The designers say they sat down and listed ALL the things they wanted to do and expound upon that they could not (obviously, Gwen, the Great Dwarf vs Great Destroyer is among those) and they discovered that the campaign structure is prohibiting them for fulfilling their vision for what Guild Wars should look like.

As a developer myself, I can tell you this happens a lot, when you sit at the drawing board you have all these dreams and features you wanna put in. But once the money guys start talking, you discover that you have to let some things go. Basically, they like your premise, and they say: We're gonna invest X amount of dollars into this. That X translates into salaries for developers and support stuff (and management) that ends up being: How many months will this project be funded. As you convert that time number into work hours, you discover that you only have enough time to do certain things, but not others.

So, you sit down with a big marker pen and you scratch features. As such, the nature of the "one campaign per six months" plan actually meant there was much that had to be let go. You can see this very clearly with the stark differences between Cantha and Elona. Elona's story is very well thought out, character development is much more gradual, dialog is much richer, on the flip side, Cantha introduced a LOT of new concepts compared to Elona (challenge misisons, Alliance battles, faction controlled towns, ...). You can see that the amount of work put into making the Hero system work in Elona occupied the bulk of the time dedicated for "adding new game mechanics." You can see they are very intrigued with the concept of adding "PvE only skills" but because it's such a big step, they limited it to two lame Lightbringer skills, and now they will fully expand on it in GW:EotN.

So, to summarize, I think GW:EotN is exactly as the designers said in the article, an attempt to wrap up loose ends, especially in Tyria, where it's obvious they were not fully aware that they would not be able to go back and fill in all the side-stories they provided early on. You can see that there is no "Gwen-like" side stories in Factions or Nightfall. I truly appreciate what they are doing, allowing their designers and developers to fulfill their vision for GW1 as well as use that to set the stage for GW2.

Gun Pierson · Apr 10, 2007, 04:52 PM // 16:52

I always hoped they would use the MTG model with one standalone game (2 new professions) and 2 expansions (content) a year. But it never came to that. I'm not talking about free expansions.

With dungeons like sorrow's furnace, the gaming community would never have been spread as thin as today imo. Also it could help ghost places like maguna stade flourish. Add the entrence of an endgame dungeon and people will fill the place.

Nice theory btw, had a good read.

Mordakai · Apr 10, 2007, 05:03 PM // 17:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by savage vapor 33

Maybe its me, but i'm sick of all these theories? Let's just wait for the damn game to come out, how bout that?

[off-topic]
It's you. Only a masochist would click on an obvious theory thread, read it, then complain he read it.

Please do all of us a favor and just ignore topics you dislike. [/off-topic]

ON TOPIC: Ok, Ravious, some interesting theories.

But, here's what we can assume:

For those that don't know, Anet has two teams working at any given time: They are staggered so that each Chapter has a year of development, even though there are only supposed to be 6 months between each Chapter release (with only Nightfall actually meeting this plan).

We can assume that there was a product in development for at least 6 months before Nightfall came out (because the Faction team should have started production on something new as soon as Factions was released).

At some point, the ideas for the next Chapter evolved into a whole new game. We don't know exactly when that happened, but we can assume it was some time before March, when the hints of Guild Wars 2 first started coming out.

(at some point, after GW: EN comes out, I'd like to read the history behind Guild Wars 2 - I think it would be fascinating to read!)

My theory is that Eye of the North was originally going to be a new Chapter, with new Professions, Skills, Heroes and Armor. It was going to be released in April...

Now, were ideas thought up earlier than that? Sure! I'm sure Anet has many ideas that never saw implementation, or were shelved for future Chapters. Of course, we'll never know exactly what Eye of the North would have looked like if it had come out in April.

I just hope that it's the best Guild Wars yet. It will have the longest development time of any Chapter (besides the Original), because even if it comes out in October (it will probably be later); that's still 18 months of development! (assuming planning started in April '06.)

Then again, whatever Chapter being worked on after Factions might have been scrapped entirely, which makes me want to know even more about it!

EDIT: Thinking this through, either Anet was already considering a new Guild Wars 2 by the time Nightfall released, or there was ANOTHER Chapter being worked on after October (by the Nightfall team).

Eye of the North could be a combination of two Chapters, or one of the two Chapters were scrubbed).

Karlos · Apr 10, 2007, 05:22 PM // 17:22

Mordakai, I don't fully buy the whole "two independent teams working on separate campaigns" stuff for a few reasons:

a) ANet is 150 employees, not really much room for running parallel teams.
b) More importantly, the article says that after they shipped Nightfall (not Factions) they sat down to re-evaluate where they were going. This clearly tells me that they don't have two separate teams at least on the development side. Maybe on the design side, but certainly not all the way down the chain.
c) Being a developer myself, I can tell you that when it's time to ship, with the exception of a few high-level designers and program managers who are working on the next big thing, everyone in the company is basically 24/7 working on getting that title through the door. This happens in Microsoft, with a work force of thousands, you can be sure it happens in ANet too.

Mordakai · Apr 10, 2007, 05:32 PM // 17:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karlos

Mordakai, I don't fully buy the whole "two independent teams working on separate campaigns" stuff for a few reasons:

a) ANet is 150 employees, not really much room for running parallel teams.
b) More importantly, the article says that after they shipped Nightfall (not Factions) they sat down to re-evaluate where they were going. This clearly tells me that they don't have two separate teams at least on the development side. Maybe on the design side, but certainly not all the way down the chain.
c) Being a developer myself, I can tell you that when it's time to ship, with the exception of a few high-level designers and program managers who are working on the next big thing, everyone in the company is basically 24/7 working on getting that title through the door. This happens in Microsoft, with a work force of thousands, you can be sure it happens in ANet too.

Well, I was just repeating "accepted information." of course, it could be wrong. And the fact that only one game actually met the 6 month plan leads credence to your opinion.

I agree that after Nightfall, Anet probably decided that the 6 month expansion thing wasn't working and went back to the drawing board...

But still, that's 6 months after Factions. Surely something, even preliminary designs, were being planned for Chapter 4, due in 6 months from Nightfall.

Perhaps this is what Garriott "referred" to in his "misquote" in PCGamer: That the 6 month schedule was simply unrealistic and too hard for a 150 employee company like Anet to meet. You can probably speak to it better than I, but i can imagine with that short a timeframe between games, it would be like every day was crunch time!

Ravious · Apr 10, 2007, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karlos

If you read the PC Gamer article, it's very clear why GW:EotN is designed how it is today. The designers say they sat down and listed ALL the things they wanted to do and expound upon that they could not (obviously, Gwen, the Great Dwarf vs Great Destroyer is among those) and they discovered that the campaign structure is prohibiting them for fulfilling their vision for what Guild Wars should look like.

I think you are confusing their list of all things for GW2 versus tying up loose ends for GW:EN. And yes, I have that PC Gamer.

Quote:

As a developer myself, I can tell you this happens a lot, when you sit at the drawing board you have all these dreams and features you wanna put in. But once the money guys start talking, you discover that you have to let some things go. Basically, they like your premise, and they say: We're gonna invest X amount of dollars into this. That X translates into salaries for developers and support stuff (and management) that ends up being: How many months will this project be funded. As you convert that time number into work hours, you discover that you only have enough time to do certain things, but not others.

And this is exactly why they switched from the creation of an expansion after GW:P to create GW:F. They figured that they needed a standalone product model instead of a build-upon product model, but this decision happened after the "start" of what I believe will be GW:EN.

Quote:

So, to summarize, I think GW:EotN is exactly as the designers said in the article, an attempt to wrap up loose ends, especially in Tyria, where it's obvious they were not fully aware that they would not be able to go back and fill in all the side-stories they provided early on. You can see that there is no "Gwen-like" side stories in Factions or Nightfall.

I do agree that now GW:EN has changed to tie up loose ends, but I think the concept and some material was worked out back in GW:P days. Also the reason there is no Gwen-like side stories in the latter GWs is because they are standalone. By that time A.Net was full on board with the campaign every 6 mos., whereas if you buy my theory, at the time of GW:P there was not.

Ravious · Apr 10, 2007, 06:34 PM // 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mordakai

[off-topic]
It's you. Only a masochist would click on an obvious theory thread, read it, then complain he read it.

Please do all of us a favor and just ignore topics you dislike. [/off-topic]

Well that and the fact that the release of GW:EN most likely will not confirm or deny my theory unless we get a making of DVD (ala Nightfall) or an A.Net person posts in this thread.

Quote:

Eye of the North could be a combination of two Chapters, or one of the two Chapters were scrubbed).

That is also possible. I am not meaning to say that GW:EN will be what it was back when I believe it was started. In fact, I believe far from it. I just think that A.Net started out with the expansions idea, but then shelved it for the campaigns idea in order to keep getting fresh blood, and keep their doors open.