Curse

HawkofStorms · May 03, 2009, 04:47 PM // 16:47

I demand a Lagbourough easter egg in GW2.

Shadow Kurd · May 03, 2009, 05:09 PM // 17:09

I wonder how they came up with the name's of the outposts in the desert:
Destiny's Gorge
Heroes' Audience
Seeker's Passage

Shadowmere · May 03, 2009, 07:00 PM // 19:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anduin

Though the Luxon areas use a lot of Greek words. I wonder why they did that? (not sarcastic, does anyone know?)

The Kurzicks are the same way, based on Gothic German style; Vasburg, Durhiem, etc. so despite still being ostensibly in an "Asian" styled continent there's a lot more than Asian influences there.

And lol at the story, I so want a house in Lagborough.

Arduin · May 03, 2009, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helix Dreadlock

And as for Hydras and Greek names, I can't see why not.

Because Brol Migo Hinga, Chak Hack Schawack, Graf Wask Derg, Jewk Swem Pleg, Nayl Klaw Tuthan, Rept Parn Freg, Rwek Khawl Mawl, Sheg Zamn Mada or Vrek Qwek Spek aren't Greek words.

Supervixen · May 04, 2009, 08:08 AM // 08:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qing Guang

Really, the Canthan names aren't that hard to pronounce... though I keep getting hung up whenever they put a "u" after a "q", which IIRC doesn't happen in Chinese (correct me if I'm wrong)... I keep wondering if it really is Captain "Kwee-mang" or if they meant it to be Captain Qimang ("Chee-mang). (Then again, lots of people get hung up on my name... THE Q SOUNDS LIKE A CH, PEOPLE!). It's not to make it easier for people in other countries to say, it's to produce a feel - wouldn't it be silly if people from three different continents and eight different countries all had the same types of name?

Heh. U does come after Q in hanyu pinyin, which is the romanji version of mandarin I suppose. But the rule is, all 'u' that comes after a q consonant is a ü, though you needn't write it thusly.

Then again, knowing mandarin doesn't help me one whit in recalling names and places in Cantha, it makes it worse, actually. All the rules of hanyu pinyin fly right out the window, you get consonants in all the wrong places and it's just ... ARGH. Instead of Wapanese, they used Whinese.

Don't even get me started on the 'lol I messed up my kanji tattoo' characters floating out of the incense pots on the Isle of Meditation. Drives me bonkers.

True though, the places are different enough that people know what you're talking about regardless. At least my guildies always knew what I meant when I said 'anyone up for mastering Tannykuy/Nahptooi?'.

Eradras · May 04, 2009, 10:23 AM // 10:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supervixen

Heh. U does come after Q in hanyu pinyin, which is the romanji version of mandarin I suppose.

It's "romaji".

Also, Lagborough sounds kinda epic

Fril Estelin · May 04, 2009, 10:43 AM // 10:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eradras

It's "romaji".

For Japanese yes, but for Chinese?

Quote:

Also, Lagborough sounds kinda epic

Actually, they used the form of "bourough" (which sems to be used mostly in USA?). "lag" is probably for "lake" and not network latency, but it does sounds like lag in this context!

glacialphoenix · May 04, 2009, 11:00 AM // 11:00

Quote:

"lag" is probably for "lake" and not network latency, but it does sounds like lag in this context!

You gotta admit it is true during festival season, though...

Supervixen · May 04, 2009, 11:17 AM // 11:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eradras

It's "romaji".

My bad. Good thing I never said anything about knowing Japanese. o.o

Stolen Souls · May 04, 2009, 11:18 AM // 11:18

For me, the Eye of the North outpost should be renamed Lagbourough >_>

Vilaptca · May 04, 2009, 11:28 AM // 11:28

If they ever release an auction house, how about using Lagbourough for the name instead of Xunlai Marketplace.

Supervixen · May 04, 2009, 11:35 AM // 11:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vilaptca

If they ever release an auction house, how about using Lagbourough for the name instead of Xunlai Marketplace.

I second that. Now that the backstory for it has been explained, it'd be cute.

Course, with a disclaimer like that, you realise it might be 2020 before it happens.

Longasc · May 04, 2009, 11:39 AM // 11:39

I say Lagborough would be a great name for the capital of Kryta in GW2.

Founded by Scottish modem users way before the Searing, due to lag issues they are still in GW1 Beta.

glacialphoenix · May 04, 2009, 11:54 AM // 11:54

I wonder how they came up with some of the boss names - Allobo Dimdim used to be my favourite until I spotted Chak Hack Schawack - who's a mesmer boss.

Stolen Souls · May 04, 2009, 02:29 PM // 14:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by glacialphoenix

I wonder how they came up with some of the boss names - Allobo Dimdim used to be my favourite until I spotted Chak Hack Schawack - who's a mesmer boss.

I'm quite fond of Brol Migo Hinga and Vrek Qwek Spek.

Fril Estelin · Jun 01, 2009, 10:52 AM // 10:52

In case you haven't caught up, Jess Lebow continues his chronicles on mmorpg.com where he talks quite a lot about the inception of GW1. I'll put his articles, which are mostly relevant to GW, here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/3013

Quote:

Jess Lebow's MMO Story Hour: Design By Bug
This week, Lebow looks at the honest to goodness way most MMOs are really put together. Check back each Wednesday for more from this veteran writer.

-----------------------------------

One of the cornerstones of game development is iteration. The old adage: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again—this is more than our motto. It is our manifesto.

It has to be.

MMOs regularly take more than five years to develop. (Some even longer.) Creating a fully realized virtual world just takes a long time. Even if you have a big team, there is still so much to do, that it’s not uncommon to have companies with well over a hundred employees working on just that one game.

With that many people, it’s often difficult to get everyone moving in the same direction. Don’t get me wrong. Every company has a core group of creatives whose job it is to create and maintain the vision for the game. But if these people are doing their jobs right, and they are trying to make a game that isn’t just a copy of something else in the marketplace (the serial numbers neatly covered up with a new art style), then they are pushing to break new ground. They are looking for new and interesting ways to innovate, come up with fun interaction types that give players a new experience, or find new ways to enhance old mechanics.

To do that, you have to come up with a lot of theories—things you think will be fun but just won’t be sure of until you see them in action. But you’d be surprised how often a good idea on paper isn’t as much fun in reality as it sounds. And in MMOs you always have to be conscious of exploits. Even if something turns out to be fun, it might not make it into the game because it breaks the economy or some other major system.

When we encounter these sorts of roadblocks, we start over.

And over.

And over.

It’s inevitable. Some things are going to work. Some are not. And you just have to keep plugging away.

One of the ways we keep up our momentum is by generating and collecting ideas as a team. I’m talking the whole company. Everyone inside the building with a signed NDA chimes in. Because at the end of the day, everyone on the team has a vested interest in seeing the game succeed, and while each person on the team has a different role, we all have something in common—we all love to play games. We’ve all played a lot of games, and collectively we have a lot of ideas about what would make a game fun.

So we make a list, a huge list, (believe me when I say huge, I mean: titanic, gargantuan, enormous—really, really big), and we distill it down. We punt the things that we know won’t work, the good ideas that will cost too much or take too much time, and the stupid ones we just don’t like because they are, well, stupid. That leaves us with the ones we hope will work, but we still aren’t quite sure if they will be any fun. We decide which ones we have the time and money to experiment with, and we simply start putting them in the game.

One of the things that always ends up on the list is some variation of the escort mission. On paper it’s a great idea. It allows players to continue core game play (I.E. explore the world, kill monsters, take treasure, learn more of the lore, all the while gaining XP). But in reality, we all hate escort missions. Either the guy you have to escort runs off and aggros a bunch of mobs, or he’s too damn slow and can’t keep up with you, or he gets stuck on a prop somewhere and you have to go back and find him, or he’s always in your way and you just wish you could put your own warhammer through the back of his skull.

But it comes up, so inevitably, we put it in.

One time we put it in fairly early. It was like the second or third full-blown mission in the game. This time we’d chosen to let the NPC run ahead of the players, effectively making him a timer. If you can kill your way through the mobs before the escort gets himself killed, then you can clear the mission.

In he went, and we all followed, running the mission to see if we had created an encounter with that exquisitely delicate balance—if we have managed to walk the fine line that separates fun from frustration—or discover if we had in fact laid a giant digital turd.

About half way in the NPC we’re following comes to a stop, turns to face us, and shouts the word “window!” Okay, so he didn’t really shout. But a word bubble popped up over his head. And he might as well have shouted because none of us were expecting this to happen.

We knew we had word bubbles, but at that point we hadn’t figured out how to fire them off at pre-specified locations in the world without the player interacting with the NPC. If we had known how to do that, I certainly would have written something more interesting for him to say than “window.”

This was, of course, a bug. Well, it was actually two bugs. But what we learned from the experience was that escort NPCs who run up ahead of the players have the opportunity, if you design it right, to deliver interesting story information in a rather organic fashion. Since it doesn’t slow the action of the game and you’re not forced to read a huge block of text, it feels very natural for an NPC to tell you a little bit about himself or the world around him while you complete the quest.

Did we solve the problems inherent in escort quests? No. But we did find a way to make them at least a little more interesting—a result we hadn’t planned for or intended.

I guess it’s fair to say that there is another reason for lots of iteration, other than simply proving that a good idea on paper is also good in the game. Sometimes you find things you never thought of in the first place.

Fril Estelin · Jun 01, 2009, 10:54 AM // 10:54

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cf...rytelling.html

Quote:

Jess Lebow's MMO Story Hour: Why Good Teeth Are Important to Korean Storytelling
Fresh out of a trip to the dentist, Lebow retells the tale of one strange encounter during the development of Guild Wars.

-----------------------------------
For all my life I’ve had good teeth.

Well, let’s clarify. I had crooked teeth that for one reason or another managed to remain cavity free—even through the torturous orthodontic nightmares of braces and retainers—until the age of 30.

I brush my teeth twice a day and go to the dentist regularly, like I suspect most people do. I’ve just been lucky I guess.

But when I started at ArenaNet I got a new dentist. My old dentist was a long way from the office and my apartment, and he wasn’t fully covered by our dental insurance. Several of the people at the office were going to a dentist only a few miles away. They all loved her, so I took their recommendation. The first visit was completely painless. The cleaning went fine, and when the dentist came in to examine my teeth she asked me if I had any questions or things I wanted to discuss with her. I said, “Just tell me I don’t have any cavities.”

And she did. No cavities. She even went so far as to tell me that I had great teeth, especially for someone who grew up in Seattle. (Later I pondered that statement, wondering if she was insinuating that those of us born and raised in the Puget Sound area simply didn’t take good care of our teeth, or that we were all backwater hicks who hadn’t yet embraced the modern convenience and technology of the power toothbrush.)

Six months later I was back for another routine cleaning. Again everything went fine and the dentist came in to ask me if I had any questions. “Nope,” I said, thinking about repeating my quip from the previous visit but deciding against it.

And that was where the train came off the rails.

Sitting down beside me, the dentist pulled out a sharp hook attached to a long wire. She then proceeded to place the pointy part into the grooves of my teeth. Each time she touched the enamel, a high-pitched noise was emitted from a small box near her feet. It sounded a little like the screech an old-school radio makes when you’re trying to tune it from one station to another.

She scowled at each of these noises and scribbled notes on a small pad beside the chair. Her scrawl seemed exceptionally loud, since the paper was right beside my ear. After which she proceeded to tell me that I had four small cavities, two on the right side and two on the left. (Though it is completely irrelevant to this story, I will tell you that it is my firm belief today that I did not, in fact, have any cavities at that time and the dentist was simply drilling holes in my head to get more money out of me and my insurance company. But like I said, not relevant.)

From there I was whisked into a room at the back of the office where the right side of my face was shot full of Novocain. Apparently I have a resistance to Novocain, because I needed three shots just to numb me enough to drill two small holes and fill them with cement.

The whole thing only took an hour, and I was walking into work after this ordeal at about 9:30AM. When I arrived the entire Guild Wars writing team was in a panic. Apparently one of the founders had come by looking for me three times already. The extra work at the dentist had run longer than I had anticipated, but to be honest, arriving at a game company anytime before 10:00 is well within bounds. I didn’t have any meetings on my schedule, so whatever this was had been unplanned.

Dropping my briefcase at my desk, I walked down the hall to find my boss and two Korean men sitting in a conference room. One of the men was the ArenaNet business manager, and I knew him. The other I was introduced to as “one of the foremost literary scholars in all of Korea.”

This man had been playing Guild Wars for the past week. He had taken it upon himself to get onboard a plane and fly 12+ hours just so he could spend half a day explaining to me how to tell a story to a Korean audience.

Now, we were three days away from pressing our gold master and about six weeks away from releasing the game. My boss was not at all happy about having this Korean scholar in our offices. He felt it was meddling on the part of our parent company and publisher, and he was, rightfully, irritated that this sort of input wasn’t delivered to us at a stage where we could perhaps make changes in the story and game without them costing millions of dollars and potentially slipping our release date.

My boss then proceeded to pull the business manager out of the room for a private discussion, leaving me and our visitor alone in the room. Now, I’d never heard of this man before. Why would I have? But what I later discovered was that this meeting was roughly equivalent to me being in a one-on-one writing seminar with our American poet laureate. In other words, this was an event of a lifetime for a writer like me, but at that moment I had no idea.

Still, being primarily a friendly person, I began a conversation with our guest—at which point I learned that he spoke very little English. Our business manager had been in the room as an interpreter, but he was no longer there. I, on the other hand, speak no Korean at all, and half of my face was completely numb from the unexpected dental work. So that morning, I could barely speak English myself.

The two of us suffered through what amounted to a little over an hour’s worth of trying to understand each other. My boss and our interpreter only returned to escort our scholarly friend out of the building and help him get a cab back to the airport.

Despite our difficulties, I did learn a thing or two. As it turns out, there is a rather large difference between the stories that resonate with an American audience and those that resonate with a Korean audience. Primarily this has to do with the differences between the two nations in what is culturally acceptable. For example, Koreans are far more respectful of their elders than we Americans are. The story I had written for the first Guild Wars featured a prince defying the commands of his father, the king, in order to do what he thought was right. Korean gamers looked down on this. They wouldn’t see this prince as a rogue hero who overcame tremendous obstacles to do the right thing for his people. He would instead be a disgrace, someone who could not be looked up to simply because he did not have the values or honor to respect his father and do right by him. It was a tough discrepancy to overcome at such a late date for certain.

It was an interesting experience. If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I would have pressed to spend more time with our friend. There are a lot of things I’m certain I could have learned from him and I suspect, there are a few he could have learned from me. The very least of which is how to tilt your head back far enough while talking to avoid drooling on the table when one whole side of your face is still numb.

Snograt · Jun 01, 2009, 11:40 AM // 11:40

Keep 'em coming, Fril - this stuff is great!

BrettM · Jun 01, 2009, 02:18 PM // 14:18

Second or third mission. NPC who runs ahead into aggro, stopping once in a while to spout short exposition. Hmmm. Wonder who THAT could be.

I'm with Snograt. More, Fril, more!

Longasc · Jun 01, 2009, 02:28 PM // 14:28

I guess he is refering to Prince Rurik and Ruins of Surmia, as people already said on the forum. It is interesting that it took them till Factions till they got their "text bubbles" right.

This seems to have become a Wednesday column on MMORPG.com.

What I personally ask myself is which writer invented the GW Pantheon of Gods. It would also be interesting how much better Prophecies storyline would have been with better tools like the improved text bubbles and BMP storytelling mechanisms.

While Shiro's story was not that great per se nor in execution, I really would like Lebow back in the story department for GW2. I just preferred his initial GW vision to the later variations of Jeff Grubb in Nightfall. EOTN was a lot of unfinished business, and I wonder who is going to lead the writing/story team for GW2. Ree Soesbee wrote the prologue/appetizer for PCGamer: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_...t_of_the_World