Guild Wars 2

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

ColinJohanson.2394:

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Thanks Colin. Can I ask if there might be more spotlights like these?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/concept-artist-spotlight-taylor-krahenbuhl/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/concept-artist-spotlight-naomi-baker/

Very much enjoyed those.

@sprawl: High level, meaning “We plan to do X, Y, and Z, by working on A,B, and C…”
Leaving out details like L,M,N, O and P…the nitty gritty stuff…the % changes nerfing an ability, or the drop rate, or whatever.

Its how we operate in corporate america. Tell the director what he needs to know in lamen terms without getting too technical, even if the situation calls for a technical description.

ColinJohanson.2394:

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

Brilliant, short and sweet. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks, Colin.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Are we going to get some information about the horrible drop rates or will this issue continue to go unanswered.

Speaking of directors: Colin, I thought you were the Lead Content Designer. Did you get promoted to Director? If so, I’ll offer up the traditional gamer “gratz”. You dinged!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Just give us the notes and we will help you edit it.

I hope the high level plans include making world PvE much more attractive to players. The game world can sometimes feel dead, but there would be no reason for this if an hour of world PvE was considered equal to an hour of FotM.

Wasn’t the initial design intent that players could do Dungeons, WvW or World PvE and be equally rewarded for their time? Time to get things back in balance. (I like FotM, but I still can’t comprehend why something like that was added to the game so early in it’s life span. It seems like the kind of thing you do around year three, when you’ve already lost the fight to keep players in the world zones).

ColinJohanson.2394:

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Great news! Really looking forward to something new and interesting coming from the great minds at Anet ^^ Can’t wait!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Hi Colin i know you prob don’t want to go into details but can you give us a hint if there will be an lfg tool in the coming months jan/feb/march?

Thanks for the response, Colin — looking forward to the next update! :-)

Guys, really. The Game Director took the time to answer a forum question, only an hour after it was posted.

What part of “There will be a blog post in around week or so” did you read as an invitation to spit snide remarks, or request immediate details on changes to game mechanics?

It’s good that they’re being a bit more up-front with communication, but does anyone else feel the communication is a little one-way at this point?

It used to be: “This is what we’re thinking about doing, what do the players think? Give us feedback please”.

Now it’s: “This is what we’re doing, get used to it.”

Fyrebrand.4859:

Thanks for the response, Colin — looking forward to the next update! :-)

Guys, really. The Game Director took the time to answer a forum question, only an hour after it was posted.

What part of “There will be a blog post in around week or so” did you read as an invitation to spit snide remarks, or request immediate details on changes to game mechanics?

I agree, save the snide remarks for what they write in the blog if it’s at all unsatisfactory not before. I expect since it’s a new means of communication they’ll be more forthcoming what with the criticisms they’ve received.

Thanks Colin for answering a forum post and communicating with us. I hope that this happens more often in the future and that you won’t allow people’s nasty attitudes to disenfranchise any further communications in the future.

Azjenco.9425:

This is exactly what I wanted to hear.

They’re very good at that part, anyway.

I think the ANet people need to just put up a massive wall between themselves and the community. Read what the community wants, and then do whatever they feel is right…in silence.

This community is vicious, heartless, and childish. All of you who are spitting venom should be ashamed of yourselves.

Every time they offer something to this community, the community takes a snap at the hand that’s feeding them.

To Colin: Thanks a lot for the update. Really looking forward to seeing what you’re all bringing to the table.

I for one hope they plan to release guild related content. Sorry, but WvW just isn’t enough right now and PvE is in desperate need of something. We want epic encounters expertly scripted that jaw drops the player base. I came to MMORPG’s when I first saw Ragnaros with the epicness of first seeing him. You may disagree and that’s fine, but I myself am drawn to play when I see something interesting.

I brought over 12 of my friends wanting something new and worthwhile, but I’m saddened that we at max level have little to look forward to. We aren’t playing much anymore because there isn’t anything that captures the drive to play the game. Maybe we’ll come back when drastic changes are done, but right now it’s just too stagnant. If this is it, then I’m sorry and we’ll move on to something else.

Money is what makes this world turn and don’t think for a second that anything trumps it. Think of it like this, I’ve already given them my money and I wouldn’t ask for a refund for anything because this game has been worth it many times over. The problem isn’t with the game, but with the company. They are playing with the people who will buy any future items that they create or the gems they have now. Will I ever buy a game from them immediately? That answer is highly dependent on how they, as a company, treat their customers. Not every complaint has been a mature one (I’m no exception) but they are all valid. You can claim that it is a two way street but I guarantee that once you have disrespected your clients because they aren’t nice to you then you will lose their business and if you keep that up you will lose all business. It’s their future in their hands. My respect is earned. I don’t give it away to anybody that I give my money to. I had respect for them from GW1 but that has changed.

You may not like the negativity of the nature of a complaint but they are ten times more useful than anybody saying “love you Anet, keep up the good work”. And this part will sound childish, but, the reason a lot of people have been so negative and not shown respect is because they haven’t been shown any either. Someone has to step up first and I highly doubt it’s going to be the community lol.

I made the first step. I bought their game. Now I want to be shown respect and I’ll show them equal, or greater, respect. I’m easy. I’m not a tough customer. All that I ask is admittance of mistakes and their plan to rectify them. And here’s to hoping that is what will happen in a week.

I refer to the months with no information. The drop rate discussion. After the patch on November 15th nothing was heard regarding this massive topic until approximately December 22nd. An entire month gone by and hundreds of posts giving incredible data and information and nobody could even figure out if they meant for this to happen or not because there was not a single post regarding this problem from the devs. Besides that there are many examples where the devs went from discussing their ideas and plans (pre-release) to maybe getting something about a change a week after it was implemented.

Anyways, that is what I call “radio silence.”

Edit: Your post is nice. But I still find it lacking compared to how they used to be. What happened to the (I’m having a huge problem coming up with the term I want to put here so I’ll describe it as see through development. When they used to keep us informed constantly and wanted us to know what was going on behind the scenes)?

I don’t want to sound critic (I hate complaining), but I have a suggestion for you, Colin.

Since GW2 relies on a loyal playerbase rather than selling the game to many people and money-grab (aka the P2P approach), you don’t need to talk about GW2 like Billy Mays would, you need to create a long-term relationship with the userbase.
It would be very nice to see marketing jargon gone and some good ol’ standard humanity appear in future Blog articles.
Marketing behaviors in general make you look like you aren’t estabilished yet and are trying to fool people.
In this time where people is sick of political slogans it would be the best idea to speak the language of the people.

I mean, when I want to pick up a random girl quickly I just go there show six pack and stimulate her curiosity/make her want me, but to build a lasting relationship I need to be sincere, honest, direct, straight-forward, sometimes humble or rude, caring, and speaking my mind and hearth out humanly.

Just some thoughts out the top of my head.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

You may not like the negativity of the nature of a complaint but they are ten times more useful than anybody saying “love you Anet, keep up the good work”. And this part will sound childish, but, the reason a lot of people have been so negative and not shown respect is because they haven’t been shown any either. Someone has to step up first and I highly doubt it’s going to be the community lol.

There’s a point between blind naivete, i.e. the “love you Anet, you can do no wrong” crowd, and the rage mongers, i.e. the “you suck ANet, you’ve destroyed everything you touch, thanks for a crappy game” crowd. Neither of these crowds make the game any better, and I believe the point in between is where every person who frequent the forums should be.

I personally love GW2. However, I’ve brought up so many dissatisfied points in these forums that I may be considered a whiner. That’s definitely not what I am though, for I believe that if you form criticism in a way where you point out what it is that you dislike and then formulate how you’d solve it, then you give the designers an exact idea of what your issue actually is. Blind rage and sucking up will do this game no good. We need more sound minded, rational individuals who hold thorough discussions about the game’s issues.

I will agree, there are a few things that ANet should have spoken up about, and it has annoyed some people. I think the problem is the severe lashing out that’s happened in the past. ANet have made a few missteps (ascended exclusivity through fractals, as an example) and the critical (instead of constructive response) caused them to be weary. A certain level of distrust have formed on both sides. This will need to heal, and I think ANet feel the need to take baby steps to see how they inform the player base on what is going on, so as to avoid needless aggravation. Transparency is key. But ANet can’t quite spew every little detail that happens behind the scenes, it’ll be anarchy. They still need to find the perfect spot where they supply exactly what we need at the right moment.

However, if you consider the AMAs, the PvP podcast, the developer response on forums, and blogs every now and again, ANet is definitely not trying to be offish towards us. In fact, it feels to me like they’re still in that process to find the best method to break news, and respond to player input.

With only 9 days left in January, it’s a bit concerning that the update page for the month is still blank. The videos announcing what’s to come and the blog post setting our expectations low for January are nice… but it still said there’d be something. With multiple rounds of testing I’d presume that you’d have an idea of what’s coming w/ 9 days notice and to give us something to plan for / get excited about…

It’s not the end of the world; but just as some honest player feedback, it’s not so exciting to be playing something that starts feeling stagnant so soon. It feels like the design team went on Xmas holiday and never came back :-(

Don’t torture yourself. Do something else while you wait. The time will pass much faster.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Azjenco.9425:

Will there be a January focused blog to detail the changes coming? Or will the incoming blog summarizing the plans for the first half of 2013 effectively cover everything that’s happening in Jan?

There will be a blog post in around week or so that summarizes the high level plan for the first 6 months of 2013 for Gw2.

Then each of the individual releases for January, February, etc. will have their own release pages on our website, as well as blog posts describing specific important new features where appropriate.

More info coming in about a week once it’s all edited and localized!

Is it too much to ask that we get ALL of the changes when you post the patch notes ? or will we have to wait to find out ALL the changes as they are gradually found…. like small dmg reductions to certain skills, random stealth nerfings, random stealth buffing of bosses, random things that affect the game that you decide we do not need to know about for some odd reason.

(edit: apparently it is too much to ask for)

Rune Jairusion.4610:

With only 9 days left in January, it’s a bit concerning that the update page for the month is still blank. The videos announcing what’s to come and the blog post setting our expectations low for January are nice… but it still said there’d be something. With multiple rounds of testing I’d presume that you’d have an idea of what’s coming w/ 9 days notice and to give us something to plan for / get excited about…

It’s not the end of the world; but just as some honest player feedback, it’s not so exciting to be playing something that starts feeling stagnant so soon. It feels like the design team went on Xmas holiday and never came back :-(

The reality of this that they are doing a Jan 28th patch. They are changing the transfers from free to pay to transfer and they will be introducing the guesting feature. There could be other things that are added but we know that is the date for those so that will be the only content to expect beyond that it’s all a guess.

Several postings that were off topic or against the rules of this forum have been removed. Please keep in mind that if you want to discuss issues on our forums, you have to do it in a constructive way.

Incredible. “Infracted” not once but twice and both in this thread. Apparently “constructive” means agreeing with the 1984 style of moderation.

Here’s something constructive for you,
Whenever you’re (developers) are going to communicate with us (players) please respect our level of intelligence.
If you can’t answer a question just say so and close the thread. If you can answer a question (read: answering the question, not rephrasing it and answering something unrelated, not redirecting to a merged thread where all the issues are swept up in pages and pages of trite(your moderation team does a wonderful job of this by the way, the stickied and merged drop thread is truly a shining example that should be shown to all NCsoft employee’s)) than do so and close the thread, the same way a republican would end an interview when asked how their tax breaks would help the middle class.

Leaving it open is just inviting a barrage of further questions/jabs from players/dissatisfied customers, which your moderation team finds “nonconstructive”.

Calae.1738:

Don’t torture yourself. Do something else while you wait. The time will pass much faster.

No worries, Borderlands 2 keep me warm at night.
I must say, the best part of GW2’s no sub fee is that you never feel forced to play the game. You don’t need to play GW2, you get to play GW2. If you get another game, you can enjoy it without that nagging feeling that your wasting your sub fee, the game will still be there for you when you get back. I love that.

However, I’m so psyched to see what ANet’s got cooking for the next few months.

ColinJohanson.2394:

The highlight notes for the release will be out within a few days.

The detailed line by line notes on the day of the release on the 28th.

Keep an eye on the website, maybe even as early as….tomorrow morning =)

Oh, why must you tease us so. T_T

DreamOfACure.4382:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The highlight notes for the release will be out within a few days.

The detailed line by line notes on the day of the release on the 28th.

Keep an eye on the website, maybe even as early as….tomorrow morning =)

Oh, why must you tease us so. T_T

Colin is malice incarnate…

I hope he realizes that I’ll now be F5ing the page every ten minutes until the blog is out. Addiction is bad m’kay.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Incredible. “Infracted” not once but twice and both in this thread. Apparently “constructive” means agreeing with the 1984 style of moderation.

Here’s something constructive for you,
Whenever you’re (developers) are going to communicate with us (players) please respect our level of intelligence.
If you can’t answer a question just say so and close the thread. If you can answer a question (read: answering the question, not rephrasing it and answering something unrelated, not redirecting to a merged thread where all the issues are swept up in pages and pages of trite(your moderation team does a wonderful job of this by the way, the stickied and merged drop thread is truly a shining example that should be shown to all NCsoft employee’s)) than do so and close the thread, the same way a republican would end an interview when asked how their tax breaks would help the middle class.

Leaving it open is just inviting a barrage of further questions/jabs from players/dissatisfied customers, which your moderation team finds “nonconstructive”.

Imo the op’s question has been well answered.

Azjenco.9425:

Colin is malice incarnate…

I hope he realizes that I’ll now be F5ing the page every ten minutes until the blog is out. Addiction is bad m’kay.

Don’t do it, you’ll bring down the login servers again :P

Don’t know why there’s so much hate in this thread. Colin has been exceptional in regards to communication. Really appreciated!

BroScientist.9875:

Don’t know why there’s so much hate in this thread. Colin has been exceptional in regards to communication. Really appreciated!

Well, when I called him malice incarnate, I was only kidding, of course. I implied that the vagueness of his date just makes the wait all the more intolerable.

But I agree. I love the ANet guys, they’ve been great to us, Colin very much included. I’m also not one for blind adulation, so if they put a foot wrong, I’m among those who’ll point out that they’ve erred. But that’s only because we love them.

BroScientist.9875:

Don’t know why there’s so much hate in this thread. Colin has been exceptional in regards to communication. Really appreciated!

Tell that to the people banned because of the “Awesome Communication” with the Snowflake “exploit”.

cheers!
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/january-2013/

ColinJohanson.2394:

The highlight notes for the release will be out within a few days.

The detailed line by line notes on the day of the release on the 28th.

Keep an eye on the website, maybe even as early as….tomorrow morning =)

Awesome! Thanks Looking forward to what fun Flame & Frost will bring! (and looking forward to faster obby shards with new tokens yaaaay!)