Guild Wars 2

I poked Magnus’ eye out again. I hope you’re all happy about this, because he sure isn’t.

BobbyStein.2315:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Also x2, for when you get to The Secret of Southsun, you include the recorded but never used Faren judging the fancy cat competition.

It’s on the list!

(gasps in shock)

Since he’s not in the city’s council, it wasn’t up to Evon to sign off on the Consortium bid for the surveying and rebuilding effort, though presumably he went along with it to get himself new office and vault space in the bargain (not to mention supplying the building materials). Presumably Evon had a lot of solicited and unsolicited input as a major pillar of the city’s business community.

I don’t think there’s any love lost between Evon and the BLTC’s upstart rival.

eduardo.1436:

Like Peter Fries would say “A slight correction” XD

Aw, you guys knew which Southsun thing I meant. They kind of blur together now, because I worked on both Lost Shores and Secret of Southsun. ;P

eduardo.1436:

Really? I never saw H-tron as a “sentient golem” rather following a simple programming: “find useful employment” and if that’s the case then o-tron was built without the sedative inhibitor that most golems possess.

I guess it’s open for interpretation, but he’s definitely had some unique experiences.

Kossage.9072:

So, Peter, is there any chance we might see an eventual continuation of that hair-raising subplot cliffhanger from Season 1 where the Consortium was very interested in the remains of the Tower of Nightmares (and was pestering quite a few NPCs about it in Kessex Hills)?

Subassessor Prongg is quite a piece of work, isn’t he? I originally envisioned an escort mission where he’d ask passing players to help get him to the tower debris so he could take samples on his own nefarious initiative, but ran out of time to set that up.

Kossage.9072:

Not to mention there’s also Scarlet’s Rattle which has plagued many survivors from Scarlet’s miasma attack and which the Consortium could be just as interested in for all we know…

We haven’t seen any evidence that the Consortium has a weapons division, never mind a bio-weapons division, but who knows?

Kossage.9072:

I do like the recent hints at Consortium leadership in NPC chatter; I could imagine one of them being charr based on that “lucky he didn’t eat you” comment, but who knows. I’ve wondered since the very beginning who the leaders are and why they wish to remain unseen. It’s just as intriguing why at least one of these leaders has decided to come out of the shadows now and go to LA. I look forward to seeing how this plot develops and if we’ll see more of the Consortium (and maybe the legacy of the Tower of Nightmares) in Heart of Thorns or beyond.

Thanks—the establishment of their now very public HQ in LA is the reason for appearances by certain of their leadership. We developed a backstory for their company that we may or may not ever get around to telling… I just thought it would be fun to hint at some of it.

Slight correction: Hero-Tron wasn’t so much freed from the Consortium as “made redundant” at the end of Lost Shores. Hero-Tron is a very rare golem in our game in that it seems to be self-aware, and to have actually developed as a character from the smug corporate functionary that was mocking jobless refugee settlers in Southsun Cove.

Randulf.7614:

Mesmer magic or a glass eye. Def not an oversight

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Lore-concerns-with-the-new-Lions-Arch/first#post5206485

Nope……

I have a feeling (winks hard) that his eyepatch will return in a couple of weeks, and we will never speak of this again.

Louveepine.7630:

Thank you Mr Fries.

I have a question for the Roleplay Lion’s Arch, level Weather:

At what part of the world could comparré the weather? and ocean currents of tyrie are oriented how?

Different parts of Tyria have different climates and the ocean currents presumably vary as well. We haven’t mapped out the ocean current system, so feel free to conceptualize your own take on them and roleplay using those.

There are many captains in and around Lions Arch, which is a bustling port city, but Evon became a captain by buying a ship of his own, in order to qualify for election to (the late) Captain Theo Ashford’s recently-vacated seat on the Captain’s Council.*

*Inspector Ellen Kiel became a viable candidate by assuming the captaincy of an airship that had belonged to the defeated Aetherblades.

pdavis.8031:

Wait…If the superfuous Noll was unintended, and thus fixed, that would imply that the Evon doppleganger IS intended….

Find the imposter “Evon” in Lion’s Arch right now, and I think you’ll find out why he borrowed his doppleganger’s name…

Louveepine.7630:

Did you find the explanation for the royal banners while Lion’s Arch was not under Krytan domination?

I like Konig’s interpretation, that they are meant to honor the history of King Doric’s presence in the city.

Louveepine.7630:

And Dougal? = ( Did he die?

Dougal is fine. He just doesn’t happen to be in the city at the moment.

Louveepine.7630:

Is LA is actually finished?

More or less, yes. The Consortium is still working on building the new Guild Initiative headquarters, though…

Konig Des Todes.2086:

First two Evons, now two Nolls.

Thanks, the superfluous Noll was unintended and I bugged it to fix.

Lurinna.4306:

Not a bad effort! Want to try any of the others?

You clever lore hounds seem to be doing just fine fielding the others.

Lurinna.4306:

Here’s another one- 9: Why isn’t Magnus missing an eye anymore?

He’s, uh, trying out a new glass eye for feel, though something tells me he’ll decide it doesn’t suit him and return to the old eyepatch look in the near future…

(tugs collar nervously)

Iason Evan.3806:

This is great and all but can we finally get that Quaggan genocide we’ve all wanted since launch, please? Where’s Peter Fries when you need him? Take action friend!

On it.

ReaverKane.7598:

Maybe i failed to find it, but there’s no significant Consortium Hub on the town. I mean the Black Lion got the huge Vaults building, but the guys that actually worked on rebuilding LA have a smaller presence than before? How the hell would a cutthroat mercantile guild/corporation/wtv would pass up the chance of improving their visibility in a town they rebuilt? And yet it seems they actually managed to erase their presence.

On the contrary, the Consortium had their brand new corporate headquarters built in the Commodore’s Quarter. You’ll find some of their workers milling around the two doors that lead to the workpit of their common functionaries and interns, and to another, more lavish office where they host clients for closed-door meetings.

Lance Von Alden.8415:

So, I have read about the seasons of Living World in GW2 and well, i am still a noob here (and in MMOs) to know what that means.

Is it like a Series where seasons are parts of the plot?

And what about their playability? Are the stories available to be played by all or you had to play on their release to know about them?

Our Living World is a storyline that began just after the time of our game’s release.

The first Living World season was done mostly as open world events, each available for a few weeks to play before going away. Because of the open world nature of most of those events, they would need significant work to be re-redesigned as instanced, replayable content.

In the second season, our Living World episodes had more instanced content that was unlocked as free to play at your leisure, as long as you logged in during the two weeks that they ran live. After each episode of Season 2 was no longer current, they were made available for purchase. We added a Story Journal with Season 2, that tracks these episodes in linear form, along a timeline that spans a couple of years in Tyrian time.

The storyline of Living World ran in those two arcs that culminated this past January in the revelations that kick off the story of Heart of Thorns. Hope that helps a bit. Welcome aboard!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This is likely a hint to a future Southsun Cove story…

Only time will tell on that, but while you’re hanging around the Consortium’s new HQ in LA, listen for a few small tidbits in the office gossip between employees hinting at their mysterious (and remote) leadership.

Speaking of Southsun, there’s been a slight update in the status quo there, between SubdirectorNoll and the new island Sheriff.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

If you want to see “Evon” for yourself, if I remember correctly he resides under the garden island, with some shady looking people. In his dialog you can confront him about pretending to be Evon Gnashblade to get free drinks.

By the way, there is a detail wrong in your analysis, Gnashblade is not a member of Captain’s Council, as he lost the election to Kiel.

Note that the real Evon (when he’s in his new office in the Black Lion Vaults) is using a ballot basket as his deskside trash bin.

Wait, I can’t enter?

To be fair, Mr. Gilligan had a lot of very talented help writing his show, including Moira Walley-Beckett, Sam Catlin, Peter Gould, Tom Schnauz, Gennifer Hutchison, and George Mastras (Schnauz, Hutchison, and Gould are writing for “Better Call Saul” now).

Xter.6271:

Did you take part in Wintersday’s Warming Grawnk’s Heart? It was funny how the bloodstone food appeared for it. The only real thing I can complain about is that we couldn’t give the ornaments back to the orphans. I felt bad about keeping them.

I believe that content was designed by Kevin Millard and written by Elan Stimmel. The orphans would have wanted you to keep those ornaments. Their orphanage will probably burn down soon anyway.

Xter.6271:

Happy holidays to you and all Arenanet employees!

<3

Back at you!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You know what ANet story writers? Watch “Breaking Bad”. Do it.

Seriously.

Do it.

This is great advice for anyone, and while you’re at it, listen to the official Breaking Bad podcast from AMC (which began with season 02 because they just didn’t have enough time to do it in season 01):

http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/insider-podcast-season-2
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-bad-insider-podcast/id311058181?mt=2

BTW, even the amazing, amazing writers on the Breaking Bad series staff didn’t know the resolution to every plot thread they introduced on the show. One example is the dangling thread of the second batch of ricin Walt cooked up for Gus in season 04. They weren't sure what they would have Walt ultimately use that "Chekhov's gun" for until the series finale.

Merus.9475:

Can you grab a UI designer and find out more about the challenge of doing this?

Sorry. It’s being looked into right now, but I’m not a part of that process and there really isn’t anything to talk about yet.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

I knew it would be our fault again! Germany: Ruining everybody’s experience since 1871!

Now, now. We <3 our German players. Nobody ruined anything; I just meant that each language has its own considerations that can affect our character display limits. Being concise is always a goal, anyway.

When I started on the writing team a few years ago, my teammates suggested I try out Twitter because its 140 character format forces you to find ways to communicate things more succinctly.

Oh, one more thing: sorry for threadjacking this discussion so badly :/

soboard.6974:

Can you describe the limitations on text displays in game? Does this limit the availability of lorebooks in game that include long chapters for those interested in such things? Is it more complex than simply making a string file? This has always bugged me. I know that with the dynamic event system, Anet has striven to go away from quests with walls of text; but Im curious why this simple solution isnt added in?

There currently isn’t UI implemented in the game to display something like a lore book. We have some places that we can display longer text strings, like those summaries in our recently-added Story Journal UI, but conversational text strings have to be kept within a certain length to account for things like German localization.

There’s not a lot that’s “simple” to implement in a game as complicated as an MMO like ours, unfortunately.

Lore books are something we’d like to see happen, but I can’t promise they are on the way soon or anything.

Our team’s producers make waffles for the whole studio on release day. Today’s were gingerbread, with optional chocolate chips, pecans, and various creams.

wwwes.1398:

Good Lord, how much butter is that on that waffle?

Technically, it’s freshly-whipped cream with a scoop of mascarpone cheese.

Iason Evan.3806:

It just needs to be tighter during the meat of the rising action and tension and body of the story for it to work as a complete thing.

Got it. Tighter meat.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Well if his last name is any indication he is probably a frisian and in Germany they are known to be exceptionally cunning… uhm no wait they are known for something “different”

:(

JayMack.8295:

Aww, I want a post it note on your desk with my name on it…

jamesg.7128:

I really think you need to get a Thesaurus, okay? You seem to be really overdoing the use of okay, but let me tell you it’s not always okay.
Surely the occasional alright, very well, fine or good could be thrown in now and then, okay?
There were some episodes where it seemed like every other line had an okay or 2 or 3 which I found somewhat annoying.

Okay, got it.

ElysianEternity.6215:

You don’t have to please us, you have to be honest with us. No need to spill the beans and tell us about what you are working on, but something along the lines of “we’re excited about what we’re working on”

Got the message, will do.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

(…) probably more that my sickened brain cannot really work out atm.

Get well soon.

Xter.6271:

I really feel disheartened by this 6 week break now.

I hope I don’t sound unsympathetic to your plight, but as a content creator and dev, we could have a lot worse problems than our players being impatient to find out what happens next. If it helps, I am as impatient as you to have our next episode get released, and as hopeful as you that you will really like it.

By all means, continue to direct your writing criticisms at me. It may not seem like it at times to you (bearing in mind that we’re working ahead), but are we doing our best to make course-corrections to address your concerns.

I wish you (and all our fans) a great holiday season as well. Thank you for nearly two and a half years of your support, strong feelings, and constructive criticism. You guys are the best!

One other thing…

Stramatus.5219:

First, I want to high light this portion of Peter’s post, IMO, this points out that what we’ve been seeing up till now was already set in stone before Ms. Hoyer joined A.net and she had no effect on it what so ever, but that in the future, perhaps beginning with Ep. 8 more likely Season 3 we’ll begin to see what kind of input she’s had and the direction the LW is moving towards.

While it’s true that Leah joined us while we were well into developing our latest releases, I can assure you that she jumped right in and began giving us her input from the moment she arrived. She had plenty of positive effect on this part of our season and she’ll continue to help us improve our story delivery. Any of the parts you didn’t like were almost certainly my fault.

Wow, tough crowd (mops brow, loosens tie nervously like Rodney Dangerfield)…

Maybe I should have just said, “All I know is that I’m excited about what we’re working on.”

Feel free to buckle or unbuckle your seat belts according to personal taste and locally legislated safety standards.

Dondarrion.2748:

You know you’ve done well when you have a Fake_Peter_Fries on the GW2 subreddit

Honestly not a fan of that, though at least s/he put the “Fake” disclaimer on their Reddit account name. I’ve only ever posted online under my actual name.

Dondarrion.2748:

Content patches might feel a bit short and the pacing is too slow with too many breaks – both upcoming and the one back before November, but other than that I’ve really enjoyed LS2 compared to LS1.

I’m glad. Believe me, our team has worked very, very hard all year to bring you these releases, to focus our efforts, and to try to raise expectations. Note that we have a director of narrative now, as a sign of how serious the studio is about telling great stories.

Dondarrion.2748:

And I’m really curious (but careful not to raise my expectations to expansion-hype levels) what & where Anet are going in 2015.

I know where we’re going, and I advise you to go ahead and fasten your seat belt.

Zaklex.6308:

Ah, but the Priory did send a team of 3 explorers to investigate the area and gather what ever information they could that would be useful: Explorer Amoxtli, Explorer Savio, and Explorer Kitabu. Perhaps the information that they’ve gathered, which apparently they have yet to send any back to the Priory (messenger birds, which they could have but don’t seem to). It would have been perfectly reasonable to have them send a report mentioning the massive changes to what was the Mamnoon Lagoon and suggesting the Priory send someone to investigate as it might be related to Mordremoth. At least it’s a plausible idea.

Heh, I’m familiar with those three, but they didn’t pass north through the Silverwastes on their expedition. Their travels have taken them elsewhere.

Ben K.6238:

A scholar in the Far Silverwastes sent to examine the place would likely be looking for something that disturbed the water table there. Given the caverns underneath are a likely place for water to drain to, the actual cause of Mamnoon’s drying might be considerably deeper.

That’s an interesting idea. As I see it, most of the Priory members in the Silverwastes have their hands and paws full, preparing for the coming Pact offensive. Other than responding to various Mordrem incursions in the wastes around Camp Resolve, they probably haven’t been able to devote many resources to (re)exploring the area, never mind doing serious scholarly research on the local water tables.

Let us know how we did, when you get there.

As for how we’re doing along the way, keep giving us your feedback.

Thanks!

Ausfer.1853:

I sure hope you devs have a thick skin when it comes to the forums. It seems like no matter what you guys do, there will be people complaining about it.

I have a thick, leathery hide myself.

Seriously, players like you sharing their thoughts means that they care about what we’re doing, and that’s pretty great.

Thanks for your feedback, everyone.

In development, I’d given the various forts much more nondescript names like Derelict Enclave and Desolate Bastion, but feedback from testing the content wisely suggested renaming the forts so that players could organize themselves by something more distinctive, like colors. By then, it helped that the environment art was far enough along to actually tell what these forts were going to look like and we could collaborate to make the chosen colors make some sense, like “Blue Oasis.”

We went with cardinal directions on the map because we were going to be sending people through a network of skritt tunnels and seeing the option to go to the Eastern Silverwastes seemed easier to understand than seeing something like “Take skritt tunnel to Goosepinch Gulch.”

Here’s a real ‘inside baseball’ story: when it came time to add a sector for the new sector where you plant the third memory seed, I was stumped on how to name that place so that it was easy to describe where to go in dialogue. We already had a “Northern Silverwastes”—was I going to have to send players north of north? Luckily someone reminded me that we have the “Far Shiverpeaks,” and then I had my place name.

What would you have named those sectors? We (mostly) went with cardinal directions to help players orient themselves.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Since you’re here… why does the Far Silverwastes, formerly Mamnoon Lagoon, no longer looks like a lagoon was there? I don’t mind but was really looking forward to seeing an old lagoon.

Edit: And any other naming trivia? ^.^

One of the names I suggested for the Silverwastes area was “Fractured Mamnoon”…

The unexplored areas of our overmap are subject to change, which is to say as our map artists build out new maps to fit our current design. We couldn’t have anticipated every decision we’ve made in the last two years at the time that the art was created to hint at unexplored areas. The art for our world map gets refined as we go.

Josh and Tami, who worked on building out the Silverwastes and Dry Top maps for Season 2, built maps for every other GW release. Even though I’m a writer now, I built maps as an environment artist on Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North, and Guild Wars 2. There are still plenty of us here from those days, including our studio’s environment art lead (who bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain Krytan legate minister).

Significant upheaval and terrain shifts have altered the face of Tyria in the past two and a half centuries, in some cases making familiar locations all new.

I assure you that no insult was intended. Sometimes we just change our minds.

Susie was always intended to be a dolyak cow.

Apparently, this was another spawning error on my part that I didn’t even notice in game. If it wasn’t for the screenshot on the kittening wiki, I could have just accused you all of lying, but now it is I who am revealed to be the fool.

Funny that I messed that up twice, in two locations. At least I’m consistent.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I would like to know if the unrevealed world map resembles the actual map of Tyria.
In the unrevealed version of Dry Top we could see a ring we can’t see in Dry Top by any means. The unrevealed map of the Silverwastes indicates a huge lake we can’t see in the final map. Do the revealed and unrevealed map still fit together or is the unrevealed map outdated?

The unrevealed (over) map can turn out to be outdated in places, because we reserve the right to make changes as we build new maps, for design/story/art reasons, and the artist who created that overmap art didn’t have that information to reference at the time (I used to be an environment artist at our studio).

Edgar Doiron.2804:

I started translating the billboard with reddit users.

Amazeballs!

Shinki.8045:

The etymology buff in me loves everything about what you just posted.

Here’s another: tera (Greek, monster) + griff (short for griffin) = “stabby cat”

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Dondarrion.2748:

…you what now? Scleritethin, I’ve missed out on this discussion of the DSD… is there a link to naming discussion and is this the name or what you hypothesize is the name?

Not critique, it was just the first time I saw it and now I’m curious!

Basically a joke name using the Sclerite weapons …

Not to derail this conversation, but here’s a peek behind the curtain: when I was coming up with a name for the creepy weapon set created for our ‘Secret of Southsun’ release, I was looking for a term that would evoke ancient sea creatures and also the disturbing eyes on these weapon skins and decided to reference the Greek root skleros, which means “hard, cruel, fierce.”

The word for the white portion of our eyes, sclera, comes from this root, as does the biological term sclerite, the hardened portion of an arthopod exoskeleton.

Sorry—continue speculating!

Since I’m confessing oversights I corrected later, I changed Explorer Amoxtli to be a green hylek while she and the others were at the Repair Station Waypoint, as of the Dragon’s Reach Part 2 release.

Amoxtli was always intended to be Zopatl, and therefore green-skinned, so the six weeks that she appeared blue in-game must have been a result of Savio spiking her water jugs with hylek blue hue potions as a practical joke. Ha ha!

Hello, everyone. This is my first forum post, so I hope I don’t mess it up.

As of this week’s release, your question is answered by journal pages left behind by Explorer Kitabu at the Prosperity, Restoration Refuge, and Repair Station Waypoints. These lore scraps were intended to have been added as of Echoes of the Past to explain where the explorers went next, but I ran out of time to hook them up before that release.

Long story short: the team of Priory explorers have continued on, past the western boundaries of Dry Top to…parts unknown (or at least unknown to modern Tyrians). Susie came along with them in their bellies, slowly digesting.

Thanks for playing!