A transcript of the GW2 Colin Johanson July 16 livestream where questions from the community and the Living World content will be discussed.
Livestream link: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2585362
Living World
Final words
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Livestream link: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2585362
Living World
- More permanent impact to the world, really make a difference to the players.
- Use it as a vessel to improve part of the game and have a story to go with it
- Second half of the year: update dungeons, fractals to make them more fun and exciting to play with a story to go along.
- Outcome of this vote in next patch will bring in back some of the minigames. They will be on a rotation with each day of the week there is a minigame going on tied to the daily achievement of that day. The holiday minigames won’t come back but basically all the other ones will. They will become permanent additions as result of the vote
- New fractals are built from the scratch as a result of this vote.
- Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Facility will both come back same time as the new fractals at some point at end of the year.
- Focus on permanently upgrading and changing the world. Temporary story but permanent changes.
- Early part of the year we just had one team, they did flame and frost. Team got expanded with Rox and Braham. Now we have four teams, rotating and releasing each month.
- We have a core portfolio of content we can bring back (i.e. SAB, Zephyr Sanctum, Holiday Festivals). Now we can expand on them instead of building them from scratch and focus on even bigger releases.
- We have more teams than just our four Living World teams, we have other teams that will be described by a new blog post coming out on Thursday to talk about what they are working on from now on until end of the year. . Living World teams are only small part of the company.
- Q: We are approaching the first year, when will you bring dragons back into the world?
- A: It is part of a big question. People ask what is going on with expansions. Storyline and dragon would be part of an expansion in the traditional model. We havn’t decided if we are going with a tradition expansion or we will do something unique to Guild Wars. New areas, races, dragons, are not off the table. We need to figure out if we want to do it with Living World or traditional boxed expansion. You won’t see a new giant dragon this year but we will add it in the future.
- A: Early of the year we had a very small Living World team but as we start ramping up to our fourth team, you will find bigger and bigger releases (i.e. June released bigger than May, July was bigger than June). Rotating teams give us more time to polish content as well to make sure they are bug free. Rolling schedule allow us to take on bigger projects than possible previously.
- A: In the short term no but it is something we may do in the future. There is a lot of pros and cons to that.
- A: Traditionally a new region would be added via expansion but we havn’t decided if we want to do expansion or Living World. It is something we are interested. Storyline you experienced this year have a clear point that is is leading to. We will add additional areas to the game either from expansions or Living world, some of those new areas will be based on GW1
- A: Certainly, Fall of Abaddon is based on GW1, Reactor is based on period between GW1 and GW2. Also once a storyline is completed (i..e Molten Facility/Aetherblade Retreat), we may add some of that content back into the fractals as permanent.
- A: We are building it right now, we just had a playtest of it yesterday and it is looking pretty good. It is absolutely going to come out this year.
- A: Aetherblade dungeons, Molten Facility will come back as fractals. Minigames coming back on their own rotation. For future we want to make temporary stories that leave behind a permanent change in the world. Early this year we took out too much stuff we put in and it didn’t create a sense of true impact. We will put in some stuff to help people keep track of the stories.
- A: definitely more personal story, it depends on if we do it via boxed expansions or via Living world updates. Living World storyline is carrying the timeline now until we can get to the next personal story update
- A: With monthly releases in the past, player activity dropped after 2 weeks and people posted they want more stuff to do so our 2 week release is designed to address that. We need to make sure there is enough permanent and time limited updates so people can come back and experience stuff later if they miss it but not always (with regards to story content).
- Taking over Karka Island is really compelling from a story point and an experience we want to repeat.
- A: Races, no promises of which race to do first. New profession is a lot harder, a lot of the core archtype is covered. We might do additional weapons/skills for current professions before putting in new professions. We have 8 now so if we want to do a new profession is it is probably a 3rd heavy armor to balance it out. New profession is probably the furthest thing out.
- A: No, not right now. It is interesting to see how many game companies into the new consoles for MMOs. We want to focus on being the best possible PC game. The regularity we update are extremely hard to do on console. We can’t just update the game whenever we want. A second reason is if you look in the East, which we havn’t launched yet. We sold 3 million copies and not even in some of the most populated MMO market yet. There is very little console players in Asia, China etc.
- A: Tokens given for new content and as rare drops. This is not an American election, this is a pirate election so anything goes. Dirty stuff, bribery etc are expected. Pirates elect very different and players should be prepared for anything and everything.
- A: Whoever wins this becomes a member of the council. So absolutely this can play in the future as they can decide on important decisions. Years from now this person could still have an effect.
Final words
- We are trying something innovative with this game, this means we will take risks. Our Living World initiative is an embodiment of this idea.
- Thursday, don’t miss the blog post. There is a lot of juicy and meaty stuff about where we are taking the game to.
- Stay Classy and vote for Kiel!
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