Curse

Inde · Apr 28, 2009, 07:29 PM // 19:29

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009...num-interview/

Quote:

It’s an anniversary. Four years today the original Guild Wars: Prophecy came out. Seeing this day approaching, we grabbed the chance to have a quick e-mail exchange with designer Eric Flannum about all that time and even let him include “®” symbols in his answers, as the birthday boy can do such things. We also resist trying to make Eric talk about Sacrifice, the other splendid game he was involved with, because this is Guild War’s special day and it’s hardly the time or the place. Questions and answers are found below in an instanced area below.

RPS: Four Years. Let’s start with a fluffy one: how do you feel?

Eric Flannum: Everything feels great. The first Guild Wars® game is still going strong and Guild Wars 2™ is shaping up nicely.

RPS: Guild Wars is, to say the least, a novel game. What are you most proud of about it? What’s been the high-point since?

Eric Flannum: I’m most proud of how well we’ve been able to build the world of Tyria and make it a place that a lot of fans have really gotten into. I think a high point came at a fan appreciation event we had awhile back, where we brought some of our most dedicated fans out to ArenaNet® to give them a tour of the place and hang out with them a little. I was talking to one of the fans and she told me (a bit apologetically) that she was starting to find Guild Wars a little boring after putting over 1,000 hours into it. I was fairly amazed by that, since we built Guild Wars to be a game that people didn’t have to play like a second job, and yet clearly a lot of them still loved the game and the world enough that they wanted to invest a lot of time into it.

RPS: You have time travel and a one-paragraph message to send to your past selves as they were conceiving the game. What would you tell them?

Eric Flannum: That’d be a long paragraph! I think the short version would go something like this:

Hey, guys. This is Eric, messaging from the future. I don’t have much time but I wanted to tell you about one important improvement we’ve made recently to the game. We separated all of the skills into PvP and PvE versions. Please do this now. It will keep you from having to nerf a bunch of skills in PvE for the sake of balance in PvP. It will also let you buff skills that are weak in PvE without worrying about PvP impact. Oh, also…buff Otyugh’s Cry!

RPS: There was a clear development across the various versions of Guild Wars as the team got increasingly familiar with their engine and what they could do with it. Could you talk about that growing experience? How did you plan the development of the game?

Eric Flannum: One of the most gratifying things about the way we developed the campaigns was getting to see our team work with the existing engine and get better and better at working with it. In particular, our artists were able to do some amazing things as the series progressed. Because we were developing each campaign as a stand-alone experience, it also forced us to gain a lot of experience developing and working together as a team in a short period of time. When you think about it, we developed two stand-alone games and an expansion in about three years—an amazing accomplishment, given how big those games are. I think that this is going to pay off as we move forward as a company. We’ve got a ton of really experienced and talented people here.

RPS: And while we’re talking about that, which is your favorite of the Guild Wars campaigns?

Eric Flannum: My particular favorite is definitely Guild Wars: Nightfall®. In addition to having what I thought was our best story and best overall gameplay, I loved the African theme of that game. I thought our art and design teams did a great job capturing a look and feel that you don’t often see in other fantasy games. One of my favorite games of all time is Quest for Glory 3, which shared the African theme, and it was fun to work on something similar.

RPS: Guild Wars occupies a position in the market of Online Games that’s always tricky to make out. While everyone argues over the rise and fall of subscriber games, you seem to stand to one side—do you feel this is true? Do you think you’re more overlooked than you would be if you were more traditional?

Eric Flannum: It’s hard to think that we’ve been overlooked when we’ve broken 5 million copies sold and are rapidly approaching 6 million. It’s tricky to play the “what if” game and imagine that we’d have been more or less successful, or more or less popular had we gone a more traditional route. It’s possible that we could have done better, but it’s hard to argue with the strategy that has allowed us to succeed to the degree that we have today.

RPS: Here’s one—it seemed to me that at least part of the thinking behind Guild Wars was based on the idea that there’s a hard limit on the number of people who’d be willing to subscribe to an online RPG. You could reach a larger audience by offering a game without one. And, looking at the world when Guild Wars was conceived, that would seem to be a fair assumption. And then along came World of Warcraft and everything changed. How much did that surprise you? Any thoughts on it now?

Eric Flannum: I don’t think we believed that there was a hard limit to the number of people who would subscribe to an online RPG, but rather that there would be more people willing to play a game that they didn’t have to subscribe to. I think that we still hold that belief, and take WoW’s success as an indication that the audience for online RPGs is even larger than we thought.

RPS: And are you surprised no one else has followed your model? We’ve separated into the subscription and micropayment model, with few attempts to combine them. Guild Wars was a success, y’know? It’s not as if the industry doesn’t copy successes.

Eric Flannum: A lot of the success of the Guild Wars business model is due to our fantastic engineering team. They allow us to operate Guild Wars profitably and not charge a sub. That being said, it is a bit surprising that nobody else has at least tried to replicate what we’ve done.

RPS: While the game started there was a separation between PvP and PvE experience. As the years went on, you facilitated that to even greater degrees. Looking forward, from what you’ve said so far, Guild Wars 2 seems to take that even further. Were you at all surprised that the division between the two experiences were so pronounced?

Eric Flannum: We weren’t entirely surprised that the division existed, but I think we didn’t fully understand how wide the division was, or all of the subtleties of what different players really wanted. For Guild Wars 2, I think we have a much better understanding of the issues we face with both the PvP and PvE communities.

RPS: Thanks for your time.

kupp · Apr 28, 2009, 07:49 PM // 19:49

I'm starting to think we won't see any interesting interviews until anet's open to talk about GW2. Until then, just casual chats without anything relevant. Anw, nice article I suppose, but there's really nothing new to see.

Ariena Najea · Apr 28, 2009, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by RPS

While the game started there was a separation between PvP and PvE experience. As the years went on, you facilitated that to even greater degrees. Looking forward, from what you’ve said so far, Guild Wars 2 seems to take that even further. Were you at all surprised that the division between the two experiences were so pronounced?

This surprised me, as Prophecies struck me largely as a gateway to PvP, rather than separate PvE content. Between the various Arenas there was competition the entire way for those interested, and the Crystal Desert seemed to be more of an advanced training ground. The Thirsty River mission screams Priest Annihilation map, and Elona Reach is rather similar to Relic Running. The lore of the story in the Crystal Desert even revolves around gaining entrance to the Hall of Heroes (Tombs). After that, the Southern Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire are rather straightforward PvE content, however, I do not think that the PvE and PvP divide was originally large.

Jecht Scye · Apr 28, 2009, 07:59 PM // 19:59

I was thinking about trying to schedule my own interview that asked the hard questions that fans really want to know. Things like:

What is Lindsey's favorite Breakfast Cereal?

If Regina could be any animal in the world, what would she be?

How does Martin put his tennis shoes on. Does he do the loop and swoop, or is he a bunny-ears man?

......For the love of all that is holy, please give us something on Guild Wars 2. A single screenshot, a character profile, something new that's included that wasn't originally going to be in there, anything new. I want to know all about this game's scope-creep!

Longasc · Apr 28, 2009, 08:37 PM // 20:37

Ah well. I could rant about what GW1 became, but kupp already summed up the interview nicely.

The interview has about as much content as their latest content update. Recycled phrases. :P

lewis91 · Apr 28, 2009, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jecht Scye

I was thinking about trying to schedule my own interview that asked the hard questions that fans really want to know. Things like:

What is Lindsey's favorite Breakfast Cereal?

If Regina could be any animal in the world, what would she be?

How does Martin put his tennis shoes on. Does he do the loop and swoop, or is he a bunny-ears man?

......For the love of all that is holy, please give us something on Guild Wars 2. A single screenshot, a character profile, something new that's included that wasn't originally going to be in there, anything new. I want to know all about this game's scope-creep!

Nicely Put

12chars

Vilaptca · Apr 28, 2009, 09:42 PM // 21:42

I've never even heard of Eric until now.

BrokenSymmetry · Apr 28, 2009, 09:57 PM // 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vilaptca

I've never even heard of Eric until now.

He was the lead designer on the cult classic RTS/action hybrid "Sacrifice" (2000)

ceolstan · Apr 29, 2009, 12:28 AM // 00:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ariena Najea

This surprised me, as Prophecies struck me largely as a gateway to PvP, rather than separate PvE content. Between the various Arenas there was competition the entire way for those interested, and the Crystal Desert seemed to be more of an advanced training ground. The Thirsty River mission screams Priest Annihilation map, and Elona Reach is rather similar to Relic Running. The lore of the story in the Crystal Desert even revolves around gaining entrance to the Hall of Heroes (Tombs). After that, the Southern Shiverpeaks and Ring of Fire are rather straightforward PvE content, however, I do not think that the PvE and PvP divide was originally large.

I thought the PvP reflections were really interesting, too.

That said, to a certain extent, the gateway worked. My own guild, which is PvX but pulls in a lot of PvE players from our sister communities, had a terrific burst of PvP activity once players had exhausted the PvE content of Prophecies--something that happened with one play through.

However, there is no denying that there was a very wide gap at first between the hardcore PvP and the hardcore PvE player. Many of the first PvPers had come from fps games like CS, CS:S, etc. For them, the lure of Guild Wars was that it offered PvP in an MMO setting without the hours of grinding that a game like WoW would require. Their experience in the beta weekends was that PvP would be very, very open. Once the game went live, though, they were very unhappy that players would unlock PvP skills via PvE. This problem was addressed fairly quickly, but many of those players had already left the game. Since that time, it's become easier and easier to prepare for optimal PvP by playing more PvP. Sadly, over time, it's also apparent that fewer and fewer people have made the crossover into the very rich world of Guild Wars PvP.

About one year after the release of Prophecies, it was fairly easy for any group of 8 players on a voice server to be able to play GvG. In fact, the entry for GvG was much easier than the entry for Heroes' Ascent, and also easier than Team Arenas. Both HA and TA required more coordination and since matches were random, your newbie team could end up playing against some very seasoned players. Since GvG was rated, your team could find its own level after a ladder reset and then play against other teams at that level. It was fairly popular, and the entry learning curve, while steep, was within reach of a lot of players--especially at the casual level. Some of those players discovered they liked PvP and became quite skilled. Others discovered that they liked the more casual approach as "weekend warriors" in the world of PvP, and they could win about 50% of their matches.

You'd never notice this on the forums, though, since the radical PvP and radical PvE were usually flaming each other.

The release of Nightfall so soon after Factions meant that players didn't really have time to become bored with the Factions PvE. And the release of GWEN soon after Nightfall meant that PvE players had a lot of new reasons to stay in PvE. I suspect that now we'll start to see some of those same players start to play more PvP.

My own suspicion for the lack of transition is that despite Arenanet's steps to make that transition easier (Alliance Battles, Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood, Hero Battles), fundamental issues with the ladder system and player match-ups have kept the PvE group away from PvP. At one point, the guild ladder was reset after every single major championship. The good news is that your guild could start fresh after a bad season. The bad news is that really average or casual guilds would be noob-stomped for about 2 weeks until after everyone found their true spot on the ladder.

I would have liked to have seen more opportunities for more guilds to gain recognition and have fun while playing GvG. Tournaments like the one hosted by Guild Cafe and Guild Wars Guru brought casual guilds into GvG because they had a tournament space in which they could compete against others near their own level, not against the pro teams. I would have liked to have seen more of these kinds of tournaments earlier in the development, and I would have liked to have seen these implemented even within the mAT format, with different tournaments for different levels of guilds. Overlooking the different levels of competition, and the different needs of players who may like to compete but lack the time commitment to hone pro skills meant that there was less incentive to try out competitive PvP, since it meant losing a lot before learning enough to win.

Additionally, Guild Wars lacks a good way for like-minded players to get together to play pick-up games. A player might like his relatively laid-back PvE guild for a lot of reasons, but if he wants to play GvG at a level his guild can't offer, then he may have to break ties he's had for years--sometimes going back through several games--in order to join a more PvP-centric guild. And smaller PvP guilds have the lifespan of about 3 months before players' schedules change. A more robust social infrastructure that would allow players to hook up without necessarily leaving their guilds would have helped provide some stability in guilds, and help guilds that wanted to develop their PvP to retain their more PvP-centric players, who in turn could use contacts to help serve as mentors. I know that KiSU does try to mentor, but the framework of the game makes mentoring difficult due to problems with the social interaction.

The lack of social tools was in part a result of a belief on the part of the development team that players would meet each other as they worked through the game, and that they'd start to form their guilds once they got to Tombs. I can't remember where I read that information. It was a very, very long time ago. At any rate, there are also very likely some technical reasons for the lack of social infrastructure. But that lack did help make it more difficult for players to make the crossover.

Still, GW is a great game, and I enjoy the PvP side of the game, though I come from a guild more known for PvE. In fact, GW got me more and more interested in team shooters and more fps combat games. I think that's a pretty big compliment to the game's design.

My hopes for GW 2 would be that the game is still skill-based, and that players like myself who want to play both sides of the game can do so. That might make the game still a niche game, where there are still players that are on both sides of the PvP/PvE divide, but it would also be nice to find a place for those of us who'd like to have one game where we could play both.

--ceolstan

Improvavel · Apr 29, 2009, 12:33 AM // 00:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrokenSymmetry

He was the lead designer on the cult classic RTS/action hybrid "Sacrifice" (2000)

Sacrifice was really refreshing

Sincerely I don't know why people think Anet needs to open their secrets about GW2 to the public. Competition is out there too.

You rarely get any information on games until the game is almost finished.

No point in disappointing people by removing a feature that was announced in early stages and then didn't make the final game.