Guild Wars 2

Thank you Mike for the ‘heads up’ as well as all the hard work!

Mike, are “Current Events” going away any time soon? Or will they be available all the time? I would like to know – so I can catch up on all of those achievements before events will disappear.

Sorry, umm, “A”, as in one episode?

That year we shipped a wide variety of things: nine or ten releases that we’d today call a Living World episode, plus updates to systems and content for other parts of the game, plus festivals. So it was the extreme unbundled version of this.

Could you kindly parse this statement for me? I’m not entirely sure I understand, because it sounds like it could be a couple things. I think it means that the next LW update will be one Episode, the same size as a 2013 Episode, plus festivals/feature updates/other content. But with the other context surrounding it it also sounds like a Season 3 LW Episode is the size of 9-10 Season 2 episodes, which I can’t imagine is the case.

Basically, 9-10 singular releases that are equivalent to a singular current release.

vs.

9-10 releases that we could, collectively, call a singular current release.

I imagine it’s the former not the latter. Thanks.

Please make sure the new dialogue flows smoothly and the tone of the voices are consistent. There were places in the HoT dialogue where this wasn’t so.

But what about tomorrow (7/12/16)? That’s what we all REALLY want to know about. This information is great and it sounds like it’s going in the right direction, but this is all we get? If there is just a gem store update tomorrow, I’m going to cry.

the latest Meteological Forecast just came in from the College of Synergetics:

The coming weeks will be cloudy in anticipation of a Cloudburst resulting in the largest rainfall this quarter has seen effectively ending the drought as we know it.

Thanks Mike and all the other devs at A-net!

Lanaeris.3845:

But what about tomorrow (7/12/16)? That’s what we all REALLY want to know about. This information is great and it sounds like it’s going in the right direction, but this is all we get? If there is just a gem store update tomorrow, I’m going to cry.

They’re probably going to release another rehash of the event templates that they’ve been doing the past couple months.

You just applied 25 stacks of Confusion to me Mike.

I am dead now from punching my computer.

Thanks for the post Mike, but I’m disappointed that it’ll be just 1 episode, with no ETA still as of yet.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Hi all,

I signed off on the first episode of Living World Season 3, and we’re getting ready to announce the episode and its release date. I’m super proud of the team for hitting this milestone. Over the past few weeks the team has been processing up to a hundred pieces of feedback each day, working to get all the details right.

Reaching sign-off on an episode doesn’t mean we’re done. Now we integrate the episode content with the other updates that ship in this release, and with localized text and voice-over, and we do final testing of all that. To give a sense of the scope of this process, this update has about 1,500 distinct lines of new voice dialog, each of which must be recorded, integrated, and tested in each supported language. For the player character’s voice, we separately record each race/sex combination in each language, so that means 40 actors for each line.

With this release, we’re bundling a Living World episode with additional content for other areas of the game. You’ve seen that we’ve been following a pattern of releasing a bundled update each quarter; this is a content-focused continuation of that kind of thing. Of course, we’ll give this release a name, not “July Quarterly Update”. And we may be able to increase the pace, ramping from four bundled releases per year towards six, so we’ll move away from calling these “quarterly”.

Some of you may look back nostalgically at 2013 when we shipped updates every two weeks. That year we shipped a wide variety of things: nine or ten releases that we’d today call a Living World episode, plus updates to systems and content for other parts of the game, plus festivals. So it was the extreme unbundled version of this. It was nice that there was always something new, but I’m personally not wistful of that cadence, because we sacrificed so much to be able to ship that frequently. With Season 3 our goal is to deliver content sustainably, at quality, establishing a pattern we don’t have to take breaks from.

It feels great to be shipping Living World again. Thanks for your patience through the recent content draught. Having been through it, I’m sure you understand why I’m focused on sustainability.

Stay tuned for a more formal announcement, and for more details from ArenaNet and our partners.

Mo

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month???? And what about the forever promised wvw overhaul?

The Mordrem High Priest is ready for battle.

Lanaeris.3845:

But what about tomorrow (7/12/16)? That’s what we all REALLY want to know about. This information is great and it sounds like it’s going in the right direction, but this is all we get? If there is just a gem store update tomorrow, I’m going to cry.

First of all, who are “we”?

Second of all, I’m pretty sure that “We” are more interested in when LS3 comes than what comes on some patch day.

And to answer your question, it would be unexpected if today would not be a patch day however don’t expect anything big. If they were to release something big, they’d announce it beforehand. So like people before me said, probably some new events, gemstore update, bugfixes, etc.

robertjan.2197:

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month????

He called it “July quarterly update”. Anything not clear?

leviathan.2148:

robertjan.2197:

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month????

He called it “July quarterly update”. Anything not clear?

Read the word right before “July Quarterly Update”.

leviathan.2148:

robertjan.2197:

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month????

He called it “July quarterly update”. Anything not clear?

Reread his post.

IrisAtlast.3829:

Sorry, umm, “A”, as in one episode?

Yeah, I’d like some clarification on this too. That’s the type of thing that can been misunderstood.

“Of course, we’ll give this release a name, not “July Quarterly Update””

He states that they will not call the release “July Quarterly Update”. The reason might be that it is not releasing in July….I hope it is, but this piece of text gives them the option to also release it in August!

Ayrilana.1396:

leviathan.2148:

robertjan.2197:

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month????

He called it “July quarterly update”. Anything not clear?

Read the word right before “July Quarterly Update”.

I believe they mean that although it will be released in July,it will have a more appropriate name.
Hope it’s the good stuff.
I wouldn’t mind if they had to delay it a bit in order for it to be as bug free as possible.

What is there to be clarified and/or misunderstood (besides willful ignorance getting involved)? He clearly said it’s the FIRST EPISODE[/b][/i] of Living Story 3. Unless you didnt play during LS1&2, or did play but lived under a rock so deep even the dredge didnt find you, you’d know that they were episodic as well. Hardly any different now than it was then.

Depends on how big it’s going to be. Probably a bit larger than the fortnightly ones.

Doesn’t really matter much, it’ll be ready when it’s ready.

It is really good to finally see some story content again and a new map with new events and things like that for the first time in almost a year. Pvp has been the only thing I have enjoyed in game for months and it will be awesome to actually play pve for fun again rather than just to grind achievements and rewards.

What I do not like the sound of however is that the updates may not be every 2 weeks. Even back in season 1 and 2 I had done everything by 1 week and got pretty bored of the same content fort he second week of the release. Monthly releases would affect many other people who do not play as much as me and would make many of them stop playing between releases. Updates every 2 weeks if by far the best thing for me, even if there are never any updates to any other areas of the game during living world seasons.

I think that having expansions as part of the game is what is very harmful to the amount of content being released and I would absolutely love it if there were never any other expansions (not going to happen but it is good to hope). With all this said however, I am extremely excited for living world to come back and I have no doubt that it will be a lot of fun to play and have a very interesting story which will probably be longer than heart of thorns.

An announcement of an announcement. Yay.

Assuming each line’s an average of 15 words, that’s 1500 lines, 40 repetitions, for a total of just under a million words. Assuming a modest conversational speed of 1wps, that’s still 250 hours of recording to be done. Even at a pace of 4 hours a day of perfect takes, that’s over 2 months of voice recording if done as a single session per day. In order for them to finish in a week (5 days), it’s going to take 13 recording sessions per day for them to finish the voice recording alone. Text stuff would likely take 1/5th as much effort, so add one more day. Integration and testing will likely take AT LEAST as long as that, so we’re looking at the end of July in a best case “a wizard did it” scenario. Mid-August is probably more reasonable.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Now we integrate the episode content with the other updates that ship in this release, and with localized text and voice-over, and we do final testing of all that.

To give a sense of the scope of this process, this update has about 1,500 distinct lines of new voice dialog, each of which must be recorded, integrated, and tested in each supported language. For the player character’s voice, we separately record each race/sex combination in each language, so that means 40 actors for each line.

Of course, we’ll give this release a name, not “July Quarterly Update”.

And we may be able to increase the pace, ramping from four bundled releases per year towards six, so we’ll move away from calling these “quarterly”.

Pay careful attention to what he says so you don’t over hype yourselves up. They still need to do the voice overs and translations. They won’t call it july cause it may not come out by july, they will move from quarterly as they try for 6 releases per year.

If anything I’m expecting it out by say hmm… “mid to end of August”, because something of something something is coming out then. Which would also look good lining up august queens pavilion, october halloween, and december wintersday, but again I wouldn’t put too much stock in that.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Some of you may look back nostalgically at 2013 when we shipped updates every two weeks. That year we shipped a wide variety of things: nine or ten releases that we’d today call a Living World episode, plus updates to systems and content for other parts of the game, plus festivals. So it was the extreme unbundled version of this. It was nice that there was always something new, but I’m personally not wistful of that cadence, because we sacrificed so much to be able to ship that frequently. With Season 3 our goal is to deliver content sustainably, at quality, establishing a pattern we don’t have to take breaks from.

If the quality shows like the first raid has then I have no problems with this. Especially if there is great replay-ability versus some of the original grind we got when HoT first launched. Just to have us kill time next to how little content there actually was. I brought up the returning festivals in the another thread, because that dead time can be soaked up by it. I still believe that.

Aidan Savage.2078:

What is there to be clarified and/or misunderstood (besides willful ignorance getting involved)? He clearly said it’s the FIRST EPISODE[/b][/i] of Living Story 3. Unless you didnt play during LS1&2, or did play but lived under a rock so deep even the dredge didnt find you, you’d know that they were episodic as well. Hardly any different now than it was then.

They said that what was previously released in 9 different releases is what we can call now a new LS episode,so I expect it to be quite more than a s2 episode.

More content, story and lore, don’t give a rip about hair or hair styles.

Xenesis.6389:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Now we integrate the episode content with the other updates that ship in this release, and with localized text and voice-over, and we do final testing of all that.

To give a sense of the scope of this process, this update has about 1,500 distinct lines of new voice dialog, each of which must be recorded, integrated, and tested in each supported language. For the player character’s voice, we separately record each race/sex combination in each language, so that means 40 actors for each line.

Of course, we’ll give this release a name, not “July Quarterly Update”.

And we may be able to increase the pace, ramping from four bundled releases per year towards six, so we’ll move away from calling these “quarterly”.

Pay careful attention to what he says so you don’t over hype yourselves up. They still need to do the voice overs and translations. They won’t call it july cause it may not come out by july, they will move from quarterly as they try for 6 releases per year.

If anything I’m expecting it out by say hmm… “mid to end of August”, because something of something something is coming out then. Which would also look good lining up august queens pavilion, october halloween, and december wintersday, but again I wouldn’t put too much stock in that.

Just for you:

Integrate – verb (used with object), integrated, integrating – to bring together or incorporate (parts) into a whole

It does not mean that they don’t have the VO. It means that they need to put them together which actually implies the opposite.

Your implication that they won’t call it July update because it won’t be released in July is not based on anything. MO hasn’t said anything like that, he just said that it shall have a specific name.

Why would he call it July update then? Why not Summer update? They called Spring Update a Spring Update, not April Update – my point is that if it wouldn’t be released in July, there would be no need for him to even mention that month.

Xenesis.6389:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Now we integrate the episode content with the other updates that ship in this release, and with localized text and voice-over, and we do final testing of all that.

To give a sense of the scope of this process, this update has about 1,500 distinct lines of new voice dialog, each of which must be recorded, integrated, and tested in each supported language. For the player character’s voice, we separately record each race/sex combination in each language, so that means 40 actors for each line.

Of course, we’ll give this release a name, not “July Quarterly Update”.

And we may be able to increase the pace, ramping from four bundled releases per year towards six, so we’ll move away from calling these “quarterly”.

Pay careful attention to what he says so you don’t over hype yourselves up. They still need to do the voice overs and translations. They won’t call it july cause it may not come out by july, they will move from quarterly as they try for 6 releases per year.

If anything I’m expecting it out by say hmm… “mid to end of August”, because something of something something is coming out then. Which would also look good lining up august queens pavilion, october halloween, and december wintersday, but again I wouldn’t put too much stock in that.

No he doesnt say they have to do the voice overs, he simply gives us an insight in what they have done, and now have to be tested.

Tomorrow’s forum topic forecast – Salty with occasional upbeat posts that we at least heard something.

• It’s the first episode of LS 3, implying more that one episode
• It will have an episode name, not July Quarterly Update.
• Future updates should be more frequent so the term “quarterly” is inappropriate.
• The update will include other content changes besides LS3. This is likely tweaks/revamps to Fractals, WvW and PvP. So no longer separate LS content releases and technical updates.
• Living Stories won’t be held to a rigid release schedule. They will come out only when they think it’s done™.
• They are now at the point to fold LS3 into the updates that were being worked on for Live. It’s my opinion this means we likely won’t see it in July, likely August now, 4 weeks the earliest. Unless I’ve seriously overestimated how long it’ll take to localize and record 1500 lines of dialog or misunderstood that work still needs to be done.

What about the long promised wvw overhaul?

robertjan.2197:

What about the long promised wvw overhaul?

Besides all the stuff we already got? Well that’s covered in these statements.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Now we integrate the episode content with the other updates that ship in this release …

With this release, we’re bundling a Living World episode with additional content for other areas of the game.

All I read is “we have done a lot of work and it’s not ready yet. It is big though, but we will be bundling a bunch of other stuff in there that is not Living Story. Oh, and it won’t be coming this month.” Nice PR piece.

robertjan.2197:

Thanks for the info on the next big update. But does this mean we won’t get it this month???? And what about the forever promised wvw overhaul?

I think that’s specifically kept vague so that they don’t have to have a set date. It’s ready when it’s ready.

But people will read into it what they want to anyway. Which is why he talked about the lines of voiceover that were needed. Most players don’t really know how much effort things take and have their own ideas of how fast something should be released.

I found it commendable he was willing to use the words content drought.

shrug

He’s vague as usual so whatever he says can be taken either way. There is a point to mentioning July and taking that off, because everyone’s expectation at this point is that it will come out in July since that lines up with the quarterly scheduling.

If they expect to ship it in July, which they would know at this point, then why bother mentioning it at all? We don’t care what the name is. By saying they won’t call it the July quarterly update, he’s giving the team time in case it doesn’t make the July cut.

Actually in fact, Mo called it both the april quarterly update and spring update.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-changes-in-Spring-Quarterly-Update/first

He did that post like 2-3 weeks before the release I believe, so hey July is still possible.

My point is though, don’t go overboard on the hype train and think it’s July for sure, stay calm and don’t riot if it doesn’t come out on the 19th or 26th.

I just want to know where these other 15 playable races are, I would certainly like to go start a Tengu Warrior, Skritt Thief or maybe a Hylek Ranger.

Seriously though 40 actors for a possible ten combinations? Is there a third sex option I’ve been missing?

Okay so it’s a minor nit to pick but if he’s exaggerating about ~that~ well …what else?

Necrotic.7820:

I just want to know where these other 15 playable races are, I would certainly like to go start a Tengu Warrior, Skritt Thief or maybe a Hylek Ranger.

Seriously though 40 actors for a possible ten combinations? Is there a third sex option I’ve been missing?

Okay so it’s a minor nit to pick but if he’s exaggerating about ~that~ well …what else?

Other languages

Take all the time you need. I don’t mind the waiting. As long as you finish everything in a way you wanted it to be, not to cut something.

Besides I still have a lot of collections to finish in game and grind that came with HoT so I don’t mind the waiting

Xenesis.6389:

shrug

He’s vague as usual so whatever he says can be taken either way. There is a point to mentioning July and taking that off, because everyone’s expectation at this point is that it will come out in July since that lines up with the quarterly scheduling.

If they expect to ship it in July, which they would know at this point, then why bother mentioning it at all? We don’t care what the name is. By saying they won’t call it the July quarterly update, he’s giving the team time in case it doesn’t make the July cut.

Actually in fact, Mo called it both the april quarterly update and spring update.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-changes-in-Spring-Quarterly-Update/first

He did that post like 2-3 weeks before the release I believe, so hey July is still possible.

My point is though, don’t go overboard on the hype train and think it’s July for sure, stay calm and don’t riot if it doesn’t come out on the 19th or 26th.

True. His description of the voice over requirement may have been an attempt to explain why it’s taken so long for LS3 episode 1 to be released. It’s also implied that LS3 episodes are larger than LS1 or 2 episodes be describing how several LS1 chapters and technical updates are an unbundled version of what we will be getting.

Of course telling us this when we are only weeks away from it’s release than having some reassuring hand holding posts over the months would have kept the salinity in check a bit.

Mike O Brien.4613:

It feels great to be shipping Living World again. Thanks for your patience through the recent content draught.

As an aside MO; drought – a prolonged absence of something specified; draught – available to be drawn from a cask rather than from a sealed bottle. Maybe it’s a metaphor that this content is aged like a fine whiskey.

Necrotic.7820:

I just want to know where these other 15 playable races are, I would certainly like to go start a Tengu Warrior, Skritt Thief or maybe a Hylek Ranger.

Seriously though 40 actors for a possible ten combinations? Is there a third sex option I’ve been missing?

Okay so it’s a minor nit to pick but if he’s exaggerating about ~that~ well …what else?

4 languages (English, Spanish, French, German) x 2 genders x 5 races = 40

Yes the languages is where I missed it. My bad. Having trouble replying since I’m on my phone.

I’m mixed about this announcement. Looks like the Italian article was right about the “one episode every other month”… It’s just because I’ve been a bit disappointed with LS2 and HoT.

But I guess I can have faith in the “new” ANet, so I’m still looking forward to playing more content And I’m especially happy to hear that we’ll have more frequent updates ^^

I for one do not miss the 2013 bi-weekly update schedule. There were definitely periods where I couldn’t risk NOT logging into GW2 every day, and that was incredibly stressful.

Oh come on… no release date?

Cool. Something to do before (like it or not) the next WoW expac takes a huge number of the player population away for a while. But I’m sure you guys factored that date that into your release timings. Sounds like you’ll be releasing soon, which will be just in time!

Thank you Mo for the communication and update .

Mike O Brien.4613:

With this release, we’re bundling a Living World episode with additional content for other areas of the game.

I’m glad something is finally coming out, well done.

I would prefer something coming out regularly though, not a living world/raid/wintersday in July or anything else you have planned altogether… with your regular activities like wintersday, Chinese NY, Halloween and living world updates you could space it out quite nicely and keep people interested in the game throughout the year.

I remember the last time you brought out alittle content, when HoT came out and I missed most of Halloween activities in GW2 because I wanted to join others doing HoT stuff….

Anyways, it’s good news

Thanks for the communication Mo
Really happy about this new announcement since it gives us something to look forward to without hyping stuff to the Moon just to be disappointed after patch when we didn’t actually get the Moon.