Guild Wars 2

BobbyStein.2315:

Thanks for the kind words. It’s the same group of writers (Angel, Peter, Elan, and myself, with help from the designers on the team who also contribute a large amount of text for us to work with). The Living World would not be what it is without proper planning and collaboration across all disciplines on the team (writing, design, art, audio, QA, and programming), so I definitely want to say that it’s been a group effort in improving story presentation overall.

We’ve learned a lot from season 1 and I’m thrilled that people are enjoying season 2 so far. Keep the constructive comments coming. We are always looking for ways to make our future releases even stronger.

In that quote by Bobby in a thread in the entanglement forum, It seems Bobby, Angel, Petr, and Elan were the big writers at least in this early stage of season 2.

I’m curious as to what the other writers have been doing so far? Scott McGough was very prominent around the beginning of the 2-week roll out last year, but we haven’t heard from him recently. The other two bigwigs, Jeff and Ree, we only see sparringly, and we barely hear what they’ve been working on.

All I know is that Ree at least is working on a secret project they aren’t willing to talk about. I only know that cause Angel replied to my tweet asking about her earlier this year.

No idea what the other writers are doing.

I keep hearing about these secret projects as well… they never seem to become not-secret though…

The last time I remember a secret project it was when Murdock (I can never spell her first name correctly) moved on from the GW:Beyond team. I think the secret project she ended up working on was the GW2 crafting system.

From what I’ve heard, it sounds like many of ArenaNet’s employees do not work on Living World. They are working on other stuff. When Tequatl got revamped someone mentioned that the encounter wasn’t created by any of the Living World teams (back when the Living World was four separate teams not one big one like it is now) but it was created by a Feature Team. We also had the Feature Pack that came out this year and the story journal, so maybe Feature Team is just improvements to the game that don’t fit into a bi-weekly schedule or the skill set used for that. Maybe it’s more than that.

I always kind of hoped Ree and Jeff were busy writing the eventual campaigns into Cantha or Elona (or northern Tyria). As writers from GW1 they have the experience to best write in the voice that captures how that part of the world has changed without making it feel too foreign. Writing a story in Tyria as we know it (Living World) or introducing small extensions to the world (Maguuma) is fairly different from taking on all of the old lore from the original games and doing justice to that in GW2.

In my mind, Living World is filler (I don’t mean that pejoratively) while a bigger team at ArenaNet has almost completed an unannounced expansion. It gave the less senior members a chance to create their own stuff in established parts of the world while more senior members tackle the task of world building Cantha and Elona. Maguuma throws a spanner in the works though, but it’s small enough I can still believe an expansion might be on the way. #unrealisticexpectations

Or maybe Ree is writing another book.

Still, if Living World is the primary content delivery plan now, why would two of the most senior writers not be working on it? If ArenaNet was all in on the Living World, wouldn’t Ree and Jeff be part of that “all”? There are big things happening behind the scenes. #unrealisticexpectations

Ree/Jeff seemingly out of the LS loop completely is pretty disheartening.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Ree/Jeff seemingly out of the LS loop completely is pretty disheartening.

They probably aren’t completely out of the loop, but I’m sure they keep an eye on it since they are still (hopefully) part of the overall writing team. Their “secret project” seem to occupy most, if not all, their time.

Like Shiren said, I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’m really hoping, that they are working on expansion like material. If not that, they are probably working on writing the framework for the extended story arc, while the LS team fills it in as they go along.

I doubt they write the framework. In one of the livestreams I think Theo implied (said?) Angel wrote the biconics. For the biconics to be as important as they are, I would imagine they would be included in any framework. I don’t think framework justifies two of their loremasters working full time on a story which has been very lore spotty at times.

Having said that I suspect Ree/Jeff 100% support the Living World writers (and the whole team) and wouldn’t take issue with how Tyria is being handled (regardless of how some players feel about it). I also suspect they are frequently consulted when it comes to handling new lore (although the Secondborn thing may suggest otherwise).

Framework as in general plot of the story.

Considering how far ahead they have to write, since it takes around 3-4 months of development to make a single episode, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they did. On top of the development time, they have to add time for revisions, editing down to fit all the constraints, and I’m sure all sorts of other stuff.

So if they are working on the extended timeframe, they might be in charge of laying out the story from point A to Z, explaining the different key plot points, and possibly giving general character descriptions of the cast, but it would be the work of the LS team to actually flesh it all out.

For example, they could have given a brief bio of one of the cast characters to Angel…

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Profession: Mesmer
Background: Noble
Bio: Family has fallen on hard times, so she takes a job with Detective character. (Possible love interest?)

It would then have been Angel’s job them to actually write and flesh out her character.