Guild Wars 2

I’m wondering – does ArenaNet have any employee(s) on the payroll who have in their job-description an entry like “respond to in-game problems”?

The reason I say this is, that when we did CM story with alts yesterday, we didn’t adequately prepare for it. That is, we didn’t read up on a dungeon we already knew and headed in not knowing that the endboss is currently not working. Had we prepared well – that is, had we read up on current bugs – then we wouldn’t have gone there in the first place. However, what cracked me up was one relatively new player who opened a bug report and then wanted to wait in the dungeon until it was resolved.

Now, obviously we all know that that’s not how GW2 operates. We know that you can report a bug but that usually, you’ll never get a response. We know that even if an issue would be simple to fix (let’s say… a skillchallenge NPC who should never die is dead and needs to be revived) and would resolve a progress-blocking issue (like, say, a skillchallenge that cannot be completed so noone can get 100% map completion), noone ever seems to care about it.

Server-reboots are the only fix to in-game problems. And what a reboot doesn’t fix remains unsolved.

So, the question stands: Has anyone seen a GM in this game? Like… ever?

EDIT: I had the dungeon abbreviation wrong, I meant to write CM but wrote AC. I corrected that. The bug our friend wanted to wait out was the 3rd seperatist not spawning at the endboss. He honestly thought a GM would contact him and award us all the end-loot / XP and achievment.

The only place I have ever seen an ArenaNet employee is in the Mist and they just stood around making jokes.

as far as i know gw does not have gm’s. gw1 did not, and i think gw2 doesnt either.

Sometimes i joke that if the game was as closely monitored as the forums, no bot would be alive and no one would remain stuck for longer than a minute

Of course that isn’t true by a large margin.

But more serious: I also wonder how close the game itself is being watched and followed by GM’s.
I haven’t seen one, and also only heard of dev’s or so chatting about or doing pvp. Not actual GM’s.

Maybe they don’t have many, maybe it is their policy not to interfere openly.
They are trying to sweep up as many bots as possible, according to a message last week. I assume that takes people to be in the game as well as on the account side of things.

All I know is that these forums are very closely monitored, and I sort of expected the same in-game. But seems it’s totaly different.

I’ve only seen a couple ANet staff and they weren’t doing anything of note, probably just testing in-game content or something. If there are any around then they’re completely focused on bots, since whenever someone is trolling and spamming and being insulting rude to everyone in the area, such as a WvW map, they’re always free to do so with abandon. Any kind of griefing or trolling i’ve seen goes unpunished, and the bots still roam around with their caravans… The forum is watched by a big brother presence to the point where it’s uncomfortable, they should allocate some people or hire new ones to monitor the actual game.

To be honest – I have reported a map bug that was preventing me completing a map area and in 15 mins I got kicked and when I got back online, it had been fixed.

I have also noticed when playing the labyrinthe pvp side that the way some players were using to get on top of the wall has been fixed to stop them doing it anymore and that was done within 12 hours of someone first reporting it.

I think they probably fix things according to urgency.

They have people reading reports, that’s for sure.
I don’t know about actual GMs, as in people flying and teleporting around to monitor the game.

However people from Arenanet sometimes like to play a normal characters and join other players without telling who they are.
This is how they find out many exploits and also how people react to different things in the game.

Some of the Arenanet staff also seem to have some sort of special guild that displays the Arenanet logo next to their names.
I know that some of the high ranking members of the staff sometimes talk about upcoming things to people in the game.

GMs existed at critical moments in Gw 1’s history. When the major 3000 ban wave happened and Dhuum started handing out bans in game, there was a gold message for all to see telling us what occured and to expect more and keep reporting.

In the past year of GW 1, Gaile Grey was in Jade Quarry (Luxon lobby) telling people to continue to fight the pvp bots and keep up with the report efforts and answering various game related questions and bugs.

GMs used to be in GW1 a lot and had their massive green GM logo above their head, but it stopped in favor of being unseen and working in the background as common players, instead of, HERE I AM I’M A GM! ALL YOU BOTS BETTER HIDE NOW! Yeah there is a reason for not showing up uninvited.

The other day i saw someone im guessing works for anet in the game. he or she had an arenanet logo beside their name. i was in gendarrin fields and we both walked up to a halloween door and each opened it. then we went into a nearby town and he or she put down a cauldren and he beat me once then i beat him and he bowed and waved and i waved and he walked off. it was pretty cool to have played with one of them if that was one of them. then later i saw he or she ask in the chat if anyone needed to do the book quest there.

I’ve definitely seen GMs in the game, though nowhere near as frequently as I would like considering the vast ammount of obvious botting going on.