Originally Posted by John Stumme

I don't want to derail the point of this thread (Huzzah for Halloween!) but there are things being discussed that I wanted to touch upon. A good number of these we spoke about at our panel at PAX this year - I'm a little bummed that it never made it onto YouTube.

First, let's talk about costumes and the relation that they have to content. Costumes are made for us by our fantastically talented artists on the GW2 team (our latest ones were designed by Kekai, and worked on by Susan, Kristen, and Patrick.) It's not something that takes away resources from us, or is consuming time that we would otherwise be spending on other projects. I have tried to treat it as the opposite: new microtransactions are a reality of supporting a game of this type, and if that is the case, then I want to focus on getting the most that we can out of it.

For example, I requested the costumes for Winds of Change so that we would have new NPCs work with in order to tell that story. I have tried to use costumes as a means to support the creation of content, and if people choose to buy the costumes that go along with them, that's fantastic. The biggest intrusion that they serve on our time are the meetings that I have with artists wherein we enthusiastically flail at each other until we've arrived at a mutual understanding on topics like "This would be awesome to do for Halloween!" Well, it also takes QA's time to do passes on the costumes, but that's taken into account for how we schedule things.

So the short form is, we use costumes to enable us to do more. They're basically "free" in terms of the Live Team's workload - so we can either make something relevant, and integrate it into the story, or we could sell nonsequitur items, like a "Roller Derby Rurik" costume. Actually, that's not a very good counter-argument for the point that I'm trying to make, because that would actually be sort of awesome. Moving on!

For content creation, that was one of the things that we discussed more heavily at PAX. One of the examples that I gave was that Winds of Change has been in production since December of last year. Over that course of time, we planned out the entire story before we began work on it - that way we could make sure that everything was working toward and seeding a conclusion that felt strong, instead of meandering. Then came the fact checking, poking holes in the plot, making revisions... in the absolute earliest version of the story, the primary antagonist was referred to as "Copernicus." Because really, that's just an amazing name for a villain. True story.

Once a story is all hammered out, actual production consists of a couple of different steps. First, the story is broken down into individual steps, which are shaped into quests. These quests are written up into design documents, which is also when the first pass of all of the associated text is written. That text will eventually be sent off to editing, while the spawner (in this case: Andrew) will begin scripting the quest. I wasn't joking at the panel when I said we work in Notepad.

Actual scripting involves placing all of the associated NPCs, enemies, Triggers, Tripwires, scripts, dialogue, and actions into the world. All of that, when complete, is handed off to our programmer (Joe) to make it actually work. In an anatomical sense, scripting is the skeleton, coding is the muscles. And the two will work closely to make something function. Or unbreak things. Or break things. Or break things in an awesome way. I would give more insight into the programming side of things, but I don't have Joe's ninja-like comprehension of languages such as PBASIC and C#Minor or whatever it is that people are using nowadays. We do still call things with IF A$ = "Y", right?

QA gets to look at things after that, and find all of the various ways in which things have gone wrong, and set about making them right. This involves a lot of ribbing between QA and Design / Programming. It is, however, all in good fun. So far, there have been no casualties as a result of standard work operations. None that we are willing to report so openly or brazenly, at least.

It sounds fairly straightforward on paper, but it can be more time consuming than you'd think in practice. I'd really encourage people to give it a try themselves to get a feel for it. Obviously it wouldn't be scripting anything for Guild Wars, but there are several editors or programs out there that you can check out for making games (such as Scirra Construct, or GameMaker.) Giving it a try will really help get you into the mindset of all of the various details and requirements there are for making something work.

Even if you don't try actual game creation, give it a shot with just a normal story! What's the story, who are the characters, how is the story told, what happens from moment to moment, what is needed to make each individual step happen? What are the enemies you are fighting, what skills do they use, what is the composition of their group, how often do you fight, how far do you travel? Almost everything begins with a Trigger: something sets it, and something (or things) reacts to it. Every time you want something to occur, you probably need one of these, and to tell everything how to respond.

I think you'll find it can be a rewarding process, and will give you more insight into how we actually work. There's a lot of incorrect information that exists on the forums that people get angry over: "Why are they working on this when they should be doing this!?" when things are not actually that simple or convenient. I wish it were! However, we have to work with the resources that we have. I feel like it had more impact at PAX to be able to see the entirety of our team sitting there (all 6 of us.) We do a lot with what we can, and I am damn proud of my team for what they're capable of. We've put out some major stuff over the course of this year, and it isn't even done yet.

I understand that some people will always be upset that the things that we are doing are not the things that they want us to be doing. But that's not a reason to belittle or invalidate the hard work of people that love this game, and love doing what they do. We try to treat people with respect and fairness, and I think it's a courtesy to at least afford us some level of respect in return. Guild Wars is a great game - I've been having fun with it since 2004, and I honestly still love getting in game, even if it's just to chat about random nonsense (whether as a GM or otherwise...) with people, and I have fun with it. I understand that people love the game just as much, and it's that love of it that gives them such strong opinions about it. I really appreciate that people care that much, it's fantastic that they're so deeply invested. But just remember, at the end of the day, videogames are about having fun. If something in that game is enough to make you unhappy enough to assault others on forums, or even people that you don't know: then it's time to step back and take a breather. It's just a game, and life is too short to be spent harboring negativity. Things get better with a little time and distance: trust me, I've been there and done that with other games that I have enjoyed.

Which brings me back to the real point of things: Halloween is the best of all holidays, and Mad King Thorn jokes are ALWAYS HILARIOUS. What could be more fun than the terrible, terrible jokes that lie in wait?