Guild Wars 2

Things are getting serious folks! The hype train might be ready to leave the station!

https://guildnews.de/interview-mit-horia-dociu/

“wir sind immerhin inzwischen fast 400 Leute bei ArenaNet”

“We are, after all, nearly 400 people at ArenaNet”

…Makes you wonder what absolutely super amazing wonderful things are coming down the pipeline for GW2!

Better engine capabilities and optimization?

An epic proportions profession overhaul that will completely blow our minds?

Customizable UI?

Crazy cool total wvw revamp?

The mother of all expansions that destroys any expansion throughout mmo expansion history?

Dwarf, Kodan and Tengu playable races?

5-10-15-20… new Elite Specializations???

All of the above and way more than we could possibly imagine???

What do you all speculate?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

Maybe Legendary Black Lion skins???

Not all 400 of them are programmers. Some are designers, some are story writers, some are artists, some work on the music, some on other sound in the game etc…

A much better number would be a breakdown of how many people at Anet are devoted to programming, and how many of those are devoted to the second expansion versus devoted to the game right now (ie LWS3 teams, raid teams, fractal team, WvW team, PvP team, current events team and any other teams I missed).

OriOri.8724:

… WvW team…..

haha

dont hype yourself up, wait for anet to release info and dubble/tripple it like always…. then qq that they dident implement what you told yourself they said.

Programmers are not even the majority on development team anymore. And among the programmers, some don’t actually write code that is shipped with game, instead they write code to support production. You have tools programmers (they make level editors, etc. so not shipped), you have pipeline programmers (build machine, versioning, deployment, etc.), etc. Depending on how big Arenanet’s budget is, they will also have library and programmer tool builders that will help make the code that’s already written reusable and improving other programmers’ productivity.

Better engine? Though they do appear to have (I’m sorry to say if any Anet programmer is reading but it does look like it from the outside) one of the worst game engine out there, it’s probably polished and debugged enough for Guild Wars 2’s needs. I don’t think what they would gain would be worth the risk and the effort.

A customizable UI would not surprise me. That’s the kind of thing I expect them to ship eventually. They most likely already have UI design tools internally, so they would “just” (I know…) have to plug it into their game engine.

There’s a lot of misconceptions about what a game programmer does. A programmer is not a game designer, and she’s usually not a game designer’s coding poodle either. A game programmer typically builds the core framework that supports the game (the engine) and will build the base features of the game, leaving enough screws and buttons to let non-tech people to customize the gameplay and other stuff to their liking.

Other things you mentioned like balance or WvW are usually the game designers department, unless they require a change in the game’s foundation. Programmers time is too precious to waste it tweaking damage modifiers or creating new buffs or debuffs when they could be fixing bugs or creating new features and tools. Instead of that, tool programmers will give designers enough screws and buttons to tweak the gameplay without bothering programmers all the time. It’s only when those tools are not enough that a programmer will actually do the job for them.

Quite possible they staffed up for the expansion with contract employees. The assumption is they learned from the two content gaps around HoT and wish not to repeat it so they simply can’t halt content on the live game to put all hands on an expansion with a drop dead release date.

Bearhugger is right. I would guess only a third, even less are what players think of as “programmers”. For an MMO it’s all about asset generation.

400 doesn’t means 400 developers and it is hard to coordinate 400 developers anyway
im sure a great number of them belong to the non-development side

SkyShroud.2865:

400 doesn’t means 400 developers and it is hard to coordinate 400 developers anyway
im sure a great number of them belong to the non-development side

399 managers and 1 developer that think if you’re into WvW you’re really into PvE?

Just because they work at Anet doesn’t mean they’ll all be working on GW2

A company needs to think about the future and games take years to develop so what if there working on something else. Look at all the spinoffs that WoW produced and sure GW2 characters or rather just Rhytlock I think are used in other works like the Moba MXM. That wouldn’t necessarily stop Anet from working on some other genre.

So numbers don’t matter heck the quality of the worker also must be considered are they a vet or fresh out of school for instance.

One would also think if that many people were actively working on this game alone they’d feel secure enough to give even some modest predictions about the direction they plan to take the game.

This is probably stating the obvious but I feel like I need to say it anyway: It’s not a bad thing that Anet employs people who are not programmers. Or even people who are not developers.

In fact it’s absolutely essential to producing a functional game. Because just like those other people are not programmers the programmers are not artists or story writers or UI designers, they probably don’t know much about how to go about balancing all the hundreds of skills and traits across all 9 professions or how to fix the servers if they’re playing up or how to process payroll so they all get to eat for another month…

Even seemingly simple things like working out in advance when you’ll need to bring representatives from different teams together to discuss their progress and what still needs doing, scheduling that meeting at a convenient time for everyone and getting the info out to them in advance so they can prepare requires skills not everyone has. (Says the person whose usual approach is “Oh kitten I’ve got a meeting…um…now. I think I got an email about it, I’ll print it and read it when I get there!”)

I’ve helped make mods where the person who did the initial work was a brilliant programmer and a decent developer and what they send me is well made behind the scenes. But it’s got a UI literally made in paint (without even using the strait line tool) with text written in spray paint saying things like “#fx 6” or “VO ops” which they genuinely think is fine and perfectly clear for an end-user.

And it goes the other way too. I send them mods with (IMO) really pretty graphics and install instructions like “Search through all the game’s folders and drop each file into the folder with the matching file type already in it, if any don’t match leave them here and see if it works” and they send me back a neat little package players just need to drop into their mods folder and it will install everything in the right place for them.

If i remember correctly, that number was mentioned already somewhere around the April patch, when MO took over. So nothing has changed since then.

Can’t be, games dying.

Oh wait…

Need to bookmark the link for the next few weeks so I can link this when the bext wave of doomsayers passes by.

this is part of what killed hot. and the game all together . was fake hype just like this . and when this is not delivered upon the amount of salt well am sure that taste will not go over so very well at all .

400 ppl and not a single team touches wvw feelsbadman interestimg tho i didnt know they were hiring all this time so now what the racio how many ppl on expac and how many on the live game?

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

this is part of what killed hot. and the game all together . was fake hype just like this . and when this is not delivered upon the amount of salt well am sure that taste will not go over so very well at all .

Anet went to great leinghts to tell us what we were getting with the expac they are at fault somewhat but ppl’s expectations where high above and beyond

Astralporing.1957:

If i remember correctly, that number was mentioned already somewhere around the April patch, when MO took over. So nothing has changed since then.

Check this out!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

“We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both. Within these groups we have cross-discipline teams with focused missions. For example on Live we have the PvP team, the WvW team, the Fractals team, the Raids team, the Living World team, the Legendaries team, and a couple others. The teams are charged with carrying a feature from inception and design through completion. When they finish, we typically package work from multiple teams into a single release, then we hand it off to release teams for final voice integration, localization, QA, and release management.”

So “about” 220 people by MO’s statement, and now they have “nearly 400 people”!

Der HYPE ist real!

Danikat.8537:

This is probably stating the obvious but I feel like I need to say it anyway: It’s not a bad thing that Anet employs people who are not programmers. Or even people who are not developers.

In fact it’s absolutely essential to producing a functional game. Because just like those other people are not programmers the programmers are not artists or story writers or UI designers, they probably don’t know much about how to go about balancing all the hundreds of skills and traits across all 9 professions or how to fix the servers if they’re playing up or how to process payroll so they all get to eat for another month…

Even seemingly simple things like working out in advance when you’ll need to bring representatives from different teams together to discuss their progress and what still needs doing, scheduling that meeting at a convenient time for everyone and getting the info out to them in advance so they can prepare requires skills not everyone has. (Says the person whose usual approach is “Oh kitten I’ve got a meeting…um…now. I think I got an email about it, I’ll print it and read it when I get there!”)

I’ve helped make mods where the person who did the initial work was a brilliant programmer and a decent developer and what they send me is well made behind the scenes. But it’s got a UI literally made in paint (without even using the strait line tool) with text written in spray paint saying things like “#fx 6” or “VO ops” which they genuinely think is fine and perfectly clear for an end-user.

And it goes the other way too. I send them mods with (IMO) really pretty graphics and install instructions like “Search through all the game’s folders and drop each file into the folder with the matching file type already in it, if any don’t match leave them here and see if it works” and they send me back a neat little package players just need to drop into their mods folder and it will install everything in the right place for them.

communication is about knowing how to talk to ppl while updating an mmo and delivering new content is about manpower

400 people? does MO need that many people to bring him coffee while he works on the game alone?

(no offense, anet, all in good humor)

Wanze.8410:

OriOri.8724:

… WvW team…..

haha

never gets old xD

GW3

/15 characters

zealex.9410:

Wanze.8410:

OriOri.8724:

… WvW team…..

haha

never gets old xD

what doesn’t exist can’t get old

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

And more power creep + aoe spam lag in wv, next trait lines wil be mandatory.

they dropped the evolution through armor but started to force people to be eficient scheme with “class progression system” as in buy new classes to get good.

Amaimon.7823:

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

wich means more broken pvp power creep….

Amaimon.7823:

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

u dont wonna mess with the casuals ^^

Aeolus.3615:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

And more power creep + aoe spam lag in wv, next trait lines wil be mandatory.

they dropped the evolution through armor but started to force people to be eficient scheme with “class progression system” as in buy new classes to get good.

Amaimon.7823:

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

wich means more broken pvp power creep….

harder lw content —> broken pvp power creep… heeeh?

zealex.9410:

Aeolus.3615:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

And more power creep + aoe spam lag in wv, next trait lines wil be mandatory.

they dropped the evolution through armor but started to force people to be eficient scheme with “class progression system” as in buy new classes to get good.

Amaimon.7823:

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

wich means more broken pvp power creep….

harder lw content —> broken pvp power creep… heeeh?

Was thinking on the expansion lol….i have a feeling that they wil ldefenitly kill the game, by the logic of the events and changes.

Still dont forget that classes are purelly designed to pve in this game, dev’s create the class on how they think the classes should perform in pve with their gimmicks, and surviability it doesnt not matter how much they can be broken in pvp reason u had to remove some trinkets from the game instead of balance the game overall…. then they throw them in a pit just because a mmo isnt good w/o pvp stuff, and call it metas.

Aeolus.3615:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

And more power creep + aoe spam lag in wv, next trait lines wil be mandatory.

they dropped the evolution through armor but started to force people to be eficient scheme with “class progression system” as in buy new classes to get good.

Amaimon.7823:

Healix.5819:

The raid team mentioned training new hires for the living world.

“fingers crossed for harder Livin World content”

wich means more broken pvp power creep….

I think you misspelled “more split skill definitions per game mode”

Now if we could get say 100 of them to play wvw in a good 3 way fight and let them see how wvw is running!

400 people is really small for a mmorpg

that many ppl and they can’t even fix beta stuff?

sorudo.9054:

that many ppl and they can’t even fix beta stuff?

Don’t jump your guns. A staff of 2000 people with several million dollars didn’t know how human faces work (you know we’re talking about you, andromeda)

Swagger.1459:

Astralporing.1957:

If i remember correctly, that number was mentioned already somewhere around the April patch, when MO took over. So nothing has changed since then.

Check this out!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

“We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both. Within these groups we have cross-discipline teams with focused missions. For example on Live we have the PvP team, the WvW team, the Fractals team, the Raids team, the Living World team, the Legendaries team, and a couple others. The teams are charged with carrying a feature from inception and design through completion. When they finish, we typically package work from multiple teams into a single release, then we hand it off to release teams for final voice integration, localization, QA, and release management.”

So “about” 220 people by MO’s statement, and now they have “nearly 400 people”!

Der HYPE ist real!

Those 220 are only development staff though. That’s presumably not counting QA, HR, Customer Service, Marketing/PR/Community etc. I could imagine another 150 people spread over all that, and suddenly we’re at “nearly 400” total employed.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

this is part of what killed hot. and the game all together . was fake hype just like this . and when this is not delivered upon the amount of salt well am sure that taste will not go over so very well at all .

Fake hype? XD

Amaimon.7823:

Don’t jump your guns. A staff of 2000 people with several million dollars didn’t know how human faces work (you know we’re talking about you, andromeda)

eh, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge.

They had well over 300 at launch, they’ve barely expanded their staff at all. And with how successful launch was, they should have nearly doubled staff right then, and immediately began working on improving gameplay systems for whatever the next major release would be. Instead they shoveled out content that their gameplay systems couldn’t sustain except through extreme repetition of a very few of the games mechanics. If they had worked on the system instead of pushing content out maybe we would be looking at the top MMO in the world instead of a hasbeen.

But instead they doddled around for almost three years, refused to expand on existing systems for a lack of manpower and out-and-out blind pride from company leadership, and now improvement is a far off dream, just basic survival hinges on not screwing up a second expansion in a row.

Conncept.7638:

They had well over 300 at launch, they’ve barely expanded their staff at all. And with how successful launch was, they should have nearly doubled staff right then, and immediately began working on improving gameplay systems for whatever the next major release would be. Instead they shoveled out content that their gameplay systems couldn’t sustain except through extreme repetition of a very few of the games mechanics. If they had worked on the system instead of pushing content out maybe we would be looking at the top MMO in the world instead of a hasbeen.

But instead they doddled around for almost three years, refused to expand on existing systems for a lack of manpower and out-and-out blind pride from company leadership, and now improvement is a far off dream, just basic survival hinges on not screwing up a second expansion in a row.

First all all, I wouldn’t say a 25% increase in staff is barely expanding their staff at all, when you consider that most MMOs don’t increase their staff, and quite a few reduce their staff after launch. I’m not so sure you could find many MMOs, if any, that have increased their staff 25% over the first four years.

More than that, they didn’t twiddle their thumbs, they tried stuff that didn’t necessarily work, By the same token, many people loved Living World Season 1, which lasted a year and a half and added no permanent content to the game.

I was here for that and I wouldn’t trade that experience for different permanent content. Tower of Nightmares, Escape from Lion’s Arch, the Marionette fight were all flashes of brilliance and looking back, it added depth to the story of the game, because the world changed and because I was there. I feel like my characters were there.

Nope can’t say I agree with you at all.

Swagger.1459:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

Maybe Legendary Black Lion skins???

Does it cost 200000 Gems?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

[Looks into Crystal Ball] I see…. more Black Lion weapon skins!

Lol you win the thread.

There is 400 people, maybe, but what arethey doing?
Not many are devs, infact most of these will be HR, middle and upper management, secretaries for upper management, IT, customer support, clerks, accountants, PR agents, media agents, janitors, cafeteria personell, lawyers etc…

Big companies, like Anet, more often then not has a hard-on for employing people in fields that has nothing to do with production. This goes for all of the western civillisation.

Say maybe 200 people are part of the actual GAME development, those are split between audio engineers
audio directors
story directors
story writers
graphics designers
art directors
art designers
model designers
game engine engineers (often people who was part of the last big product, wont make a new engine, only fix what they made a decade ago)
optimization engineers (go to any game company, and they will have way too few of these)
UI designers
networking engineers
server software engineers
general code engineers (these are more often then not, interns or temporary contracts. Common practice in the software industry. Sadly this means a lot of people have to do bandaid fixes to other peoples code, and code is usualy not tidy or easy to read)
game balance/general design engineers
Bugfixers
Map/level designers

Well, they were always said to be 300-350 people. And a common criticism is how slow development is.

Now that have 50-100 more, and you think it’ll make a ginormous difference all of a sudden? :P

For all we know, they hired a standing cleaning crew of 50 people because the others order that much pizza and never clean up their desks. As in: We know nothing about what the number means. :P

Swagger.1459:

Astralporing.1957:

If i remember correctly, that number was mentioned already somewhere around the April patch, when MO took over. So nothing has changed since then.

Check this out!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/

“We have about 120 devs working on the live game, 70 devs on Expac2, and 30 devs on core teams that support both. Within these groups we have cross-discipline teams with focused missions. For example on Live we have the PvP team, the WvW team, the Fractals team, the Raids team, the Living World team, the Legendaries team, and a couple others. The teams are charged with carrying a feature from inception and design through completion. When they finish, we typically package work from multiple teams into a single release, then we hand it off to release teams for final voice integration, localization, QA, and release management.”

So “about” 220 people by MO’s statement, and now they have “nearly 400 people”!

Der HYPE ist real!

220 devs. 400 people. It’s possible that those 180 people are management, marketing, office workers and janitors.
Surely you don’t think there are only devs in Anet, right?

Astralporing.1957:

Surely you don’t think there are only devs in Anet, right?

A lot of people probably do think exactly that. Like all the people who freak out when my organisation hires anyone who isn’t a scientist (or who they think isn’t a “real” scientist or whose job title doesn’t sound like something they imagine a scientist doing).

However Anet are in the fortunate position of not having to justify every hiring decision to the general public. They don’t have to convince us that all of those people are doing things which need to be done and explain why they need to be done in order for the developers to do their job, they can just get on with doing it. (Not that I’m jealous or anything…)

I still think they have only about 10% programmers, ie people who look at source code. The rest are various kinds of artists (levels, landscape, equipment, animations) and game designers (damage, boons, condi, powers design, LS and main story). Plus about half are customer service, HR, etc.

Probably either a bunch of temp people to finish pushing out Expac 2 or, if you read the glass door reviews, there has been a ton of turnover so sometimes you might have to hire 1.5 to 2 junior people to replace what one senior person can do.

The whiteknights on this forum are unbeliveable. I swear if Anet had 1k employees people’d still say “it’s a small company” and would claim at least 980 are artists/management/janitors which means we should be glad that this poor small company has enough resources to at least keep the gem store going.

400 is probably more than WoW has. At the time of GW1 Anet had ~60-80 employees total yet were capable of dishing out 3 campaigns and 1 expansion in 3.5 years with regular balance patches inbetween. Granted it was a somewhat smaller in scope (no gliding, masteries, achievements, etc although there more content to play), but still. Stop making excuses for them.

More Gemstore stuff!

NotASmurf.1725:

The whiteknights on this forum are unbeliveable. I swear if Anet had 1k employees people’d still say “it’s a small company” and would claim at least 980 are artists/management/janitors which means we should be glad that this poor small company has enough resources to at least keep the gem store going.

400 is probably more than WoW has. At the time of GW1 Anet had ~60-80 employees total yet were capable of dishing out 3 campaigns and 1 expansion in 3.5 years with regular balance patches inbetween. Granted it was a somewhat smaller in scope (no gliding, masteries, achievements, etc although there more content to play), but still. Stop making excuses for them.

You don’t have to be a white knight to know something about programming.

A pathed lobby game takes a lot less work/time to produce than a fully fledged MMO.

For one thing, Propehcies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North combined had less quests than Guild Wars 2 had dynamic events at launch. You need far more dynamic events than quests to create the kind of game Guild Wars 2 is. Those events have to scale quite broadly, and different events scale differently.

Without pathing, and with stuff like gliding and jumping and swimming, this game is much harder to control.

Everything takes longer to create and, in case you didn’t realize this, sometimes having and organizing more people makes things take longer, because communication is not as easy and hiring more people means less control of individual people.

Not everyone who says something you disagree with is definitely a white knight.

Finally, 400 employees is not 400 developers.