Guild Wars 2

On Reddit some guys who followed the chinese stream (where Ree was interviewed) posted that Ree Soesbee would be the new writer for the upcoming Living Story Season.

Can someone confirm this? This would be huge for me personally, I absolutely LOVE her work.

That would be great, Sea pf Sorrows was a good book, not the best among the 3 GW books, but good nonetheless.

The last year’s LS was disastrous. I mean, honestly, I know that this game’s supposed to appeal to the widest spectrum of players possible, but come on, dialogues written for 10-year-old children aren’t the way to go…
Plus, leave the temporary content, introduce permanent one ( new explorable maps, classes, professions, more skills, weapons mix n match et.c etc. as compared to msotly gem store items ) via the LS if you have to.
My personal favourite would be to, along the LS temporary kitten, introduce an exp pack. That would fit the ANet’s philosophy, I believe.

I don’t think it was the writers per se, it was more like the limitations imposed by 2 week temporary content and the game engine.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

I don’t think it was the writers per se, it was more like the limitations imposed by 2 week temporary content and the game engine.

Most of them lasted for nearly a month but we got new add one every 2 weeks to the LS at the same time. It would not be much of a story if it just happens over and over endlessly images if scarlet was still taking down LA at the same time as she was in her drill at the same time that she dies at the same time as ppl are morning the lost of there loves ones after scarlet was gone at the same time as we have this new event coming up at the same time as we start to rebuild LA.

Some times content needs to get cut leaving it in the game becomes pointless when ever one is done with it about a month is a good time scale for most ppl to do the event and get the full story (most of the time ppl doing it with in the first day its out).

They need to rebrand the Living Story. Season 1 ruined the name “Living Story,” giving it a really bad connotation.

Could I get a source on that? I can’t find the post on reddit.

The ‘story’ of the Living story could definitely be improved on. I wouldn’t mind if they had different writers every season, bringing different tones and perspectives to the table.

It is my understanding that she’s always been a part of the writing team. Her title is Writer and Lore & Continuity Designer for Arenanet

Mega Messiah.1734:

Could I get a source on that? I can’t find the post on reddit.

Here you go.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/25g12e/prepare_for_the_festival_of_the_four_winds/chgsx9s

EDIT:
They don’t have a link to the stream, but that’s where I first saw it.

I dont think LS was all that bad. It was inconsistent and felt stitched together, but was OK.

GuzziHero.2467:

I dont think LS was all that bad. It was inconsistent and felt stitched together, but was OK.

In other words, it was really bad.

Nnnooooo I don’t think thats what I said. English not your first language?

Indeed, english IS not my first language.

Wiki says:

Ree Soesbee is a Writer and Lore & Continuity Designer for ArenaNet. She is ABD on a PhD in Literature & Myth, and has written novels, CCGs and RPGs, including work for the Star Trek RPG, Legend of the Five Rings, and Dragonlance. In addition to her literary work, she studies Japanese, plays the violin, ganks people in PVP, and serves as Companion to the Grand Adventuress of Cats.

Last edited on 29 July 2013, so I am not sure if this is news.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ree_Soesbee

She has always been one of the writers for gw2, i dont know which parts she was writing though.

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!! <3 Ree!!

I’m in heaven here!

If this is seriously true, then I can truly understand why Season 1’s story was so terrible…
I always had somehow from the begin on the fealing, that none of the “main writers” are responsible for Season one, nor have written the lore around it, but instead someone copletely different did all the work.

When even the lore quality of the Novel Books is like 10000x better, than the games living story, then there simply can#t be something right…

However, when Ree is now taking back the lead of the lore writing, I’m sure things will get with the next season and onwards then only alot better.

Because Season 1 just felt, as if it has been completely written by an amature, compared to the Novel Books, which are all very good reads

GuzziHero.2467:

Wiki says:

Ree Soesbee is a Writer and Lore & Continuity Designer for ArenaNet. She is ABD on a PhD in Literature & Myth, and has written novels, CCGs and RPGs, including work for the Star Trek RPG, Legend of the Five Rings, and Dragonlance. In addition to her literary work, she studies Japanese, plays the violin, ganks people in PVP, and serves as Companion to the Grand Adventuress of Cats.

Last edited on 29 July 2013, so I am not sure if this is news.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ree_Soesbee

Here’s a video posted 2 years ago on twitch, echoing in the audio for the first 2 1/2 minutes.

Edit: link didn’t go through, here it is http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/b/327657138#!

dragonlance? I really enjoyed those books back in the days…

this is good news.

Ree has always been one of the overseers of the in game lore, and one of the major writers. But she wasn’t writing for the living story before, so this is really great news. It means the living story should fit in with the actual lore a lot better than it has done.

In what should be quite a positive thread (go Ree Soesbee! Sea of Sorrows was my favourite novel!), the level of vitriol is pretty unsettling. Everyone has their criticisms of season 1, myself included, but ultimately it was an experiment. ANet have always, from GW1 to release to the Living World, been willing to try out things that other devs just won’t. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and you know what, I think season 1 did actually work. There was a massive improvement between Flame and Frost (remember that “small expansion-sized update” we were going to get in Jan/Feb, which then ended up being quite a bit smaller than that and spread out between Jan-April?) and Tower of Nightmares, and it continued to improve after that. And it will continue to improve in the future. And I think there’s probably very little truth in attributing the problems with S1 purely to the writers. It was an experiment with a poorly-defined scope, and that’s what led to the time constraints that led to crucial things like Ellen Kiel’s victory speech being left out just because someone forgot to add it into the game, and staffers pulling regular 60-hour weeks for the Battle of Lion’s Arch, just for people to turn around and say season 1’s story was terrible, let the “main” writers do the job.

The complaints aren’t really what bothers me. They’re standard for MMO official forums, and every now and then someone actually makes the effort to think about them constructively, and the company gets actual valuable feedback. No, what bothers me is the personal nature of them. ANet do read the forums, and there’s a chance the people whose livelihoods you’re saying are being wasted, who are passionate about what they’re writing to be told that it’s trash, will actually end up reading what you’re saying. No amount of fault with a product, perceived or real, entitles you to be that kind of customer. It’s something you only ever see on video game forums, or in the worst kinds of school classrooms. And it’s possible to criticise without being too personal. This thread was almost entirely negative, but the feedback was also constructive and well-thought out, and was acknowledged and seriously considered by ANet.

And by the way, my understanding is that there are several Living World teams who work on a rotation, so there’s actually quite a few writers (including Jeff Grubb, who is by no stretch of the imagination an amateur) who write the releases. I’d imagine that Ree was on one of those releases you’re saying was so terrible. At the same time, I don’t think everyone at ANet is involved with the Living World, so I’d be interested to hear about whatever those who weren’t were working on.

But yeah, I’m optimistic for season 2. The LW has had a year and a half to find its feet, and since nearly all the characters and storylines were new, nothing got broken. Now it’s going to be delving into more established lore, new areas from GW1, and by the looks of it it’s kicking off with a callback to one of the better releases from S1. I know this isn’t going to make much of a difference, but ANet have shown that they are developers who really are interested in feedback, and if you’re willing to sit down and think and consider what specifically it was about s1 that left you disappointed beyond “the writing is terrible”, and more importantly what you would do to improve it, then they’ll listen to you too.

EDIT: By the way, if you want to see what some of these writers can really do, I recommend the wiki’s collection of short stories.

Hey guys. We’re going to temporarily stop selling old-soda that everyone buys. We’re going to replace it with NEW-soda, which will intentionally be inferior to the old-soda. After that, we will reintroduce the old-soda again with a hip, new, RETRO marketing campaign. Business will be booming as everyone flocks back to the old-soda! (We also get PR for looking like we “listen” to fans too!)

That’s my metaphor. But I don’t know how much it applies to GW2.

If she and Jeff Grubb would be responsible for Living Story instead of McCoy and Scott, I would be really pleased, knowing that I don’t have to worry about upcoming content.

One can dream.

Thanks Tamias, I felt much the same way. I’ve seen a lot of “you should fire xyz person / team” posts, and wondered if those posters had considered what they would be thinking if someone came to their workplace and said that about them, to their boss, in front of their face. I do believe the nature of the Internet is responsible for some of that – I very much doubt the same people would be as brazen in real life where things don’t seem so detached.

Personally, I suspect the problems with storytelling in LS Season 1 fell to production issues – mostly having to cut corners to meet deadlines and resource constraints. If the writers had something more detailed in mind, but constantly had to scale back the places they were going to do that plot exposition, it’s pretty easy to imagine that any story with too much nuance is not going to come out how they wanted it to.
You can fix that with better planning, and the last few episodes of the LS seemed to improve the hit/miss ratio – so I think it’s something that can be fixed without requiring a new writing staff. They’ve had a year and a bit to learn what tends to happen in this format, and might be better at making it work now.

Of course, they also might not… I just prefer not to be a kitten when I don’t understand what people have to deal with. They do have to get better though. Regardless of the reasons, Scarlet came across like a cartoon villain, and nobody wants a repeat of that.

Belzebu.3912:

That would be great, Sea pf Sorrows was a good book, not the best among the 3 GW books, but good nonetheless.

Did we read the same 3 books? Sea of Sorrows was the only of those 3 books that raised the bar and was a decent read. OK, Ghost of Ascalon is decent too, but Edge of Destiny… oh man, it was nearly Living Story in book form :P

On a serious note, if Ree was not involved with story writing for Season 1, then having her onboard for Season 2 is both a necessity and great news if Anet are serious about having Living Story succeed.

Dondarrion is right. Sea of Sorrows was the only book that was actually well written. Ree is an amazing writer. I’m an English student and spend all my time reading books, the first two GW novels were ok, but they were nothing special…

Dondarrion.2748:

Belzebu.3912:

That would be great, Sea pf Sorrows was a good book, not the best among the 3 GW books, but good nonetheless.

Did we read the same 3 books? Sea of Sorrows was the only of those 3 books that raised the bar and was a decent read. OK, Ghost of Ascalon is decent too, but Edge of Destiny… oh man, it was nearly Living Story in book form :P

In my opinion GoA > SoS > EoD
Lore-wise SoS is the best by far, but as a novel, as a whole, I prefer the GoA.
SoS is a bit slow paced until the last 5 or so chapters, imo.

SoS, and to a lesser extent EoD, also had a bit of a problem with ‘can hear the dice rolling’. Although, to be fair, when it happened in EoD it wasn’t skills that actually exist in the game…

That’s probably my biggest criticism there, though, and if probably substantially less relevant within the game itself, for obvious reasons.

phys.7689:

She has always been one of the writers for gw2, i dont know which parts she was writing though.

Ree and Jeff were both somewhat absent in LS1 – they were consulted on lore points, but kept very quiet about what they were doing themselves. The most likely explanation for that was always that they were doing the groundwork for something that would come after Season 1 (albeit not necessarily immediately after).

if season 2 is just her explaining lore.. then you can sign me up right now    n___n

I could’ve sworn the 2 writers responsible jokingly admitted to writing the framework for Living Story S1 by locking themselves in a room and coming up with everything in 1 day.

Guys, we’ve seen some of the blog-posts from the LS1 writers and these were quite good; people just complained that those weren’t released ingame instead – not on it’s quality.

What I’m trying to say: the problem wasn’t the quality of writing but the way it was integrated into the game. It seems that they had to cut almost everything with depth because there was simply no time to include it because it takes obviously a lot of time to create new events which make use of those story-bits.

goldmagistrate.2601:

I could’ve sworn the 2 writers responsible jokingly admitted to writing the framework for Living Story S1 by locking themselves in a room and coming up with everything in 1 day.

That would be this, I believe, where GW2 writers mention that the entire year and a half of Living Story was put together by these two while locked in a room for two days.

goldmagistrate.2601:

I could’ve sworn the 2 writers responsible jokingly admitted to writing the framework for Living Story S1 by locking themselves in a room and coming up with everything in 1 day.

That explains a lot.

Well, I am optimistic for the story with season 2, I seriously doubt it could be worse.

I asked Angel a long time ago via twitter what Ree’s been doing since Sea of Sorrows. I got the response that she’s been working on a project for a while now…maybe Season 2 was that project.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Guys, we’ve seen some of the blog-posts from the LS1 writers and these were quite good; people just complained that those weren’t released ingame instead – not on it’s quality.

What I’m trying to say: the problem wasn’t the quality of writing but the way it was integrated into the game. It seems that they had to cut almost everything with depth because there was simply no time to include it because it takes obviously a lot of time to create new events which make use of those story-bits.

Physical stories and game stories are two very different things. Think of it sort of like the difference between a novel and a movie. Someone might be great at writing novels, but that is not going to translate automatically into being good at writing movies. Screenplays require a completely different set of skills from a writer, the pacing is different and the way everything interacts is different.

The stories that were posted to the blogs were decent (though I don’t think they were as well written as the pre-launch stories), but that writing skill set doesn’t necessarily translate well into the story that the players get to play through – which is the most important thing.

Thanks for the clarification Bobby, at least I hope that she’s still working on content for GW2. I absolutely mean no disrespect to the LS1 writers, like I mentioned above.

I agree with FlamingFoxx that the important thing is the translation from the writing board to the actual live game.

BobbyStein.2315:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

On Reddit some guys who followed the chinese stream (where Ree was interviewed) posted that Ree Soesbee would be the new writer for the upcoming Living Story Season.

Can someone confirm this? This would be huge for me personally, I absolutely LOVE her work.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I think some overzealous fans misinterpreted the announcements from China. Ree did not work on the Festival of the Four Winds content. I can’t comment on what she’s been working on lately, or on any unannounced future releases.

It’s great to see so many fans of hers express support, though. I’m sure she’ll be excited to know you’re looking forward to whatever she’s involved with.

Hmm, seems like the question remains unanswered.
The topic was if Ree is involved into next living story season, not release. We know that she isn’t in Bazaar and Queen’s Jubilee seasonal releases already.
Unless you claim Bazaar to be the opening of Season 2 which may be… Cool

So we either can’t exclude Ree kitten writer if Bazaar isn’t S2 or if Bazaar is S2, I could take it as a confirmation

talking about something important:
  is that the map will remain? = 3

what? why look at me like that?

• cough *

ok. ok. * be hidden *

Bobby Stein are you the good counterpart of Bobby kotick?

BobbyStein.2315:

I can’t comment on what she’s been working on lately, or on any unannounced future releases.

It’s great to see so many fans of hers express support, though. I’m sure she’ll be excited to know you’re looking forward to whatever she’s involved with.

expansion lore, confirmed    >_>

BobbyStein.2315:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

On Reddit some guys who followed the chinese stream (where Ree was interviewed) posted that Ree Soesbee would be the new writer for the upcoming Living Story Season.

Can someone confirm this? This would be huge for me personally, I absolutely LOVE her work.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I think some overzealous fans misinterpreted the announcements from China. Ree did not work on the Festival of the Four Winds content. I can’t comment on what she’s been working on lately, or on any unannounced future releases.

It’s great to see so many fans of hers express support, though. I’m sure she’ll be excited to know you’re looking forward to whatever she’s involved with.

Wait a tick; you said the same thing 8 months ago that both Ree and Jeff were working on a separate project.

BobbyStein.2315:

I can’t comment on what Ree and Jeff are working on, but I can say that I’m ultimately responsible for the quality of the Living World story. I don’t imagine we’ll please everyone with our new direction, but that’s true of any story. That stated, I encourage people to leave their feedback. Just please be respectful.

That is either a long hiatus period, or something else that is pretty major.

Obviously, Anet hooked up Ree and Jeff to computers, and they are holding them in isolation pods, so they can harvest all their thoughts and ideas for future future lore.

@Bobby Stein
Q: If according to your Wiki Ree was on your team since atleast 29 July 2013, can i ask if she did or did not work on any of the LS story from S1? Or is she about to start out with S2.

BobbyStein.2315:

Rym.1469:

BobbyStein.2315:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

On Reddit some guys who followed the chinese stream (where Ree was interviewed) posted that Ree Soesbee would be the new writer for the upcoming Living Story Season.

Can someone confirm this? This would be huge for me personally, I absolutely LOVE her work.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I think some overzealous fans misinterpreted the announcements from China. Ree did not work on the Festival of the Four Winds content. I can’t comment on what she’s been working on lately, or on any unannounced future releases.

It’s great to see so many fans of hers express support, though. I’m sure she’ll be excited to know you’re looking forward to whatever she’s involved with.

Hmm, seems like the question remains unanswered.
The topic was if Ree is involved into next living story season, not release. We know that she isn’t in Bazaar and Queen’s Jubilee seasonal releases already.
Unless you claim Bazaar to be the opening of Season 2 which may be… Cool

So we either can’t exclude Ree kitten writer if Bazaar isn’t S2 or if Bazaar is S2, I could take it as a confirmation

Festival of the Four Winds is a festival release. We have not announced anything past that.

Ah, I get where you’re coming from, because of job reasons you’re literally not allowed to tell us anything. Thanks for sharing what you could.

While I’d like Ree to join the LS writing team, I don’t think it’s wise to have an overhaul of the writing team, for coherency and consistency reasons. I just want a little bit of Ree added to the “soup” to make it tastier. I know different ingredients mixed together could lead to a bad tasting soup (please bear with me on my analogies), but I have hopes this could lead to a much tastier soup. I’m not saying the soup is bad, nor do I question the passion of the writers. It’s just that, nothing else. Also I’d like to suggest hiring rookie writers from different cultural backgrounds. I think their contribution could add some unique flavor to the “soup”, although their vision of Tyria might conflict with the existing ones, I do think this is for the best of Tyria. I’ve always believed (lore-wise) that the Mists, the Ethernal Alchemy, the endless sea of aether, to be sentient, or atleast semi-sentient, and that the writers of Guild Wars are its other-wordly caretakers, shapers. Beyond the Mists, beyond the dreams. By adding rookie writers, you add chaos to the Mists. And from this chaos, you give birth to something new.

^—- That doesn’t make sense to me. Ree is the Lore and Continuity designer, so if anyone is going to make the lore and story more consistent it is her. Thus far it’s been kind of messy and all over the show. Ree would be the perfect solution >.>