Guild Chat - Episode 52
Guild Chat - Episode 52
- Title
- The Guild Wars 2 Fifth Anniversary
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Bobby Stein
Matthew Medina
Peter Fries
Stephen Hwang
Crystal Reid
Anthony Ordon
Tricia McIntosh
Eve Eschenbacher
Clayton Kisko
Connor Fallon
Elisabeth Cardy
Aaron Roxby - Date
- August 28, 2017
- Official video
- YouTube
The 52nd episode of Guild Chat aired on August 28, 2017. Host Rubi Bayer interviews some of the developers in celebration of the fifth-anniversary of Guild Wars 2.
Transcription[edit]
Guild Wars 2 - Get Ready trailer [6:57][edit]
- [Sweeping shots of the different races of Tyria.]
- [Intensifying drums]
8 · 28 · 12
GUILD WARS 2
[edit]
Narrator: "Tyria."
Narrator: "The dragons have always been here, sleeping deep beneath the earth, beneath the sea, waiting for the time to rise."
Narrator: "One hundred years ago the drowned empire of Orr rose from the sea at a dragon's command."
Narrator: "A dragon whose name is written in the legends of the dwarves."
Narrator: "A dragon known as Zhaitan."
Narrator: "His soulless army surged from the waters, hungry for destruction."
Narrator: "Our ancestors fought against the tide, but Zhaitan's power was too great."
Narrator: "We have learned from those defeats. We learned that no single nation can fight alone and succeed."
Narrator: "The five races must stand together against their enemies, and refuse to surrender."
Narrator: "Heroes come together in glory, discovering new magic, new technology, that will save our world."
Narrator: "It is time for legends to become real."
Narrator: "Now is the time. Claim your destiny. Forge your legend."
Guild Chat studio [12:35][edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi everybody and welcome to the fifth-anniversary episode of Guild Chat. Happy birthday to Guild Wars 2 and thanks to all of you who have been sending us birthday wishes today! We're gonna just spend the next couple of hours hanging out with members of the Guild Wars 2 team and talking about our memories of the past 5 plus years of Guild Wars 2 and Guild Wars 2 development. We're going to start with these three guys. But we do have a little goodie to show off first. This is, this feels kind of fitting because this little dudes turned into kind of our unofficial mascot, not a word out of you (laughing), but it is super cute. WeLoveFine has been working on these little quaggan coffee mugs for a while now. And just in time for our birthday, they got one to us for, I guess, pre-order. You can pre-order or reserve these if you go to WeLoveFine and do a search for quaggan mug and they will have these. They wanted us to let you know they will have these shipped in plenty of time for the holidays. So if that's a thing that you guys want to drink your morning coffee out of a quaggan. (laughing) I know everybody has been wishing for that —
Bobby Stein: And from what used to house its brains
Rubi: (laughing) You have got to stop that. (laughing) Or if you're—if you're... Bobby, you wanna get, what did you say? A brain...jello mold?
Bobby: Uh, no I think Peter said that. Oh I said turn it into a sign...nevermind.
Rubi: Or if you're like the rest of us, you wanna drink your coffee or whatever, you can go ahead and preorder one of these guys. So, right now, I have the only one.
Bobby: But if you hand it to Peter he'll smash it.
Rubi: Do I look like I'm gonna hand it to Peter? (laughing) That's why he's way over there. So, we wanted to show these off from WeLoveFine and they are super cute, and he looks like he just really wants you to enjoy your coffee. Spoiler alert, he doesn't look like he cares one way or another. Alright, so let's go ahead—I'm just gonna hang out at this guy and keep it way over here from you, um...but let's just go ahead and talk some about the past—jeez, how long have you guys been working on these? On Guild Wars 2? Not the quaggan mug.
Peter Fries: Forty...three years?
Bobby: (laughing)
Matthew Medina: Sounds about right.
Rubi: Forty three years? (laughing) You did want us to put old down there.
Matthew: So, um.
Bobby: I think we've all worked on it since the beginning, right? 2007?
Rubi: Quick, do math! What's combined? The combined number of years?
Bobby: On Guild Wars 2?
Rubi: Yes.
Bobby: What, thirty years?
Matthew: Yeah.
Rubi: I'll take it.
Peter: Thirty years for normals, and...you know, every year in game development is five years for normals.
Bobby: Oh.
Rubi: So, what are some of your favorite work memories and stories? They have to be safe for work, please.
Peter: Oh...jeez. Uh.
Rubi: You guys have worked there for a long time so I'll let you just talk over each other and decide who gets to go first.
Peter: My favorite was Karl sitting one of those ball chairs and it exploded underneath him.
Rubi: What? I actually haven't heard this one.
Peter: Oh he was just sitting at his desk, working, and it exploded underneath him while he was sitting there. (laughing) It was like one minute there's a chair and the next second it's gone. He just fell straight back.
Rubi: Was he okay?
Peter: ...I guess. Who cares?
Rubi: You don't know? (laughing) Oh my god!
Peter: It was funny.
(all laughing)
Rubi: I guess who cares, it was funny.
Peter: He's still around, I was just talking to him.
Bobby: He might have, like a metal bar going through his spine but...
Rubi: Feel like he's gonna be here in a second.
Bobby: Um...All right. Since we're talking about unfortunate accidents, um, so right after we moved to this building and there was the whole concept of "hey, you're gonna have all of your desks on wheels, so you can, you know, push your stuff to wherever you need to go", it was probably the first time I saw someone trying to move their desk to their new pod where they were working, and...This was a new thing for us, and apparently the company that was sending us the wheels—you know, they may have sent us a cheaper knock off version or whatever. So, somebody was trying to push their desk through the front door, you know, to get to the elevator?
Rubi: Yeah...
Bobby: And...Like the wheels snapped off. And when that happened, then the—the legs snapped, like, fell in, and then it just went like. (makes weird noise) And then all the computers and the monitors went like spiraling onto the floor.
Peter: All their knickknacks and trinkets.
Bobby: Yeah...And I was just looking, like "oh, oh", you know?
Rubi: Yeah, 'cause it's not like we empty our desks when we move. We just pile everything on top and—
Bobby: Wheel it around like a shopping cart. And—yeah, I don't even know if that person is still here, but I was just, I remember like "Oh, I guess you need a new computer, buddy".
Rubi: And everything that was on your desk.
Bobby: Yeah. It was, uh...
Peter: All of our happiest moments are our teammate tragedies.
Bobby: (laughing) Laughing at someone else's misfortune.
(all laughing)
Peter: Wanna (unintelligible) me?
Rubi: Somebody do better.
Matthew: Yeah, I mean, mine is similar, in—in—in...
Rubi: No. (laughing)
Matthew: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And I apologize for the people involved that I'm gonna out, but... There was one morning where I came to work, and—this was not this building but the one where we were before. There was, it was built on a swamp, so there was—parking was underneath the building and so you would come up the stairs... And, I opened the door to come up the stairs, and I see Josh tumbling down.
Rubi: What?!
Matthew: And I was like "Whoa! What's going on?", and then I realized. Pat—No, Tammy had apparently pushed him—'cause they were filming some sort of video where she pushed him—and he—you know, they were like doing stunts.
Peter: It's the...It's the lunch money video.
Rubi: I think I've seen it! I've seen this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew: —And so I've. That—that was an interesting way to be greeted—
Rubi: That is, that is—
Peter: Josh did a prep fall down that whole staircase.
Matthew: Yeah. I'm surprised he's still around.
Rubi: Wow, I've forgotten about that. So you just opened the door and there he was.
Matthew: Yeah.
Rubi: Wow.
Peter: So again, slapstick.
Matthew: Yeah.
Rubi: I'm glad he was okay—since in my head all of these things happened to the same person.
(all laughing)
Rubi: One guy that accumulates all our misfortune. Oh my gosh. Okay, let's—hopefully move away from bad things, 'cause I wanted to ask you about interacting with players. Please, please, don't talk about bad things that happened to people here, I hope you have something better. (laughing) But, like, we've talked a lot about interacting with our community because they're really great to encounter—just—I've run into random players in public, I got stopped at Macy's one day, which was kinda cool. Um, but either in or out of game, what about you guys?
Bobby: I mean if I'm out and I'm wearing you know a shirt for one of the games—sometimes people will ask, and if it, you know, says "dev team" around on our back, it's kinda hard to blend in, but, um, yeah, usually when people see the shirt, they say nice things. I hadn't had anyone chase after me and throw stuff because they were unhappy about anything. Um, and...Yeah, actually, okay, here is a real quick funny story.
Rubi: Please do.
Bobby: I was at a local game store that I like to go to. It's in Edmonds, it's called "Another Castle" and they, they—
Rubi: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bobby: Yeah, they're great, they have a little arcade there, a little bar and they sell, you know, used video games and stuff like that, and I've found, actually, a copy of the Guild Wars Factions strategy guide that I actually wrote. It was the first thing that I wrote—or like helped with. When I was here, and I found it, and it was like a dollar used, you know? But I was kinda laughing, because I'm like, wow, it's really held its value you know. At any rate, you know, I was showing my wife and we were kind of chuckling about it and I said "You know, I think I want to buy this" 'cause, I don't know, maybe—
Rubi: You totally should have bought it!
Bobby: Yeah, oh I did. And when I was at the counter, you know, my wife somehow brought up the fact that I worked on it and we just kind of got in a long conversation about it. It was kind of neat. Super friendly people and, yeah, this happens all over the place, in the game, or, just out. It's great. We have a great community.
Peter: Yeah, like Bobby was saying earlier most of our wardrobe is you know swag shirts from this place.
Ruby: Yeah.
Peter: I was at our local supermarket just a couple weeks ago and the guy that kid that was bagging my groceries pointed on my shirt and I didn't even realize I was wearing one and he's saying, “Oh you work with my dad” and I got all confused and I was trying to figure out who he was and then I realized it was Josh's son, who is bagging my groceries.
Ruby: Did you figure out or did you have to be like who's your dad?
Peter: No, I just hadn't seen him in a while so it —ya just finally clicked, like oh man this is ahh little so and so.
Ruby: Oh my gosh.
Matthew: Mine is… is not an out of game experiences just it was when we went to the first, ah—PAX. And we got to have our first real interaction with people introducing Guild Wars 2 to the community. Ahm, the sheer amount of people that showed up and ran through the booth and everybody wanted you know we had “The Art Of Guild Wars 2” books everyone, everyone who wanted signatures, ahm, I mean that was just so much fun to me to like have that moment of like “Oh we've arrived”. I mean Guild Wars had you know a good community and a good following but I think the franchise was still sort of you know not quite public knowledge.—
Ruby: Yeah, yeah.
Matthew: It wasn’t quite the, the sort of popularity hadn't hit yet and so this was the first moment of us really feeling like “Oh we've got something really good here”.
Ruby: Yeah.
Peter: It was at PAX East or West?
Matthew: PAX West.
Peter: Yeah.
Bobby: Oh, I have one more and it's real short.
Ruby: It doesn't have to be it's fine. We have, it's been 5 years, it’s been 5 years, you deserve to get to talk.
Bobby: So I was at my kids grade school and every year the teachers I was like oh you know they like to have the parents come in and talk about their work and once they find out that I do what I do, “like oh, you should come in and talk to the kids”. I remember I brought my laptop I was I had this whole present who writes a PowerPoint presentation for like a bunch of eight—year—olds? (Raises hand) Right, this guy!—
Ruby: Alright, so you’re organized. Just roll with it.
Bobby: I did all this work and then I realized I couldn't hook it up to their projector—
Ruby: Nooooo!
Bobby: or whatever so whatever so I had to think — on my feet and narrate I was just starting to tell these kids, “Hey you know, I work on games” and like all of a sudden all these hands go up and I’m like, “You” and they're like “Do you make Minecraft?” “No”.—
Peter: (laughing) Yes I do!
Bobby: And then the other Kid “Do you make Mario?” “No”—
Peter: (laughing) Yes, yes I do!
Bobby: “Do you make Halo?”, “No” and then—
Ruby: Just lie.
Bobby: I was like no, I make this game, right you know Guild Wars. So we, I go through the whole thing and I tell them all about you know writing for the game and making the game in the art and the music and everything you know and then finally I'm like hey does anybody have any questions and then all these hands go up again, they're like “Do you make Minecraft?”—
Peter: (laughing) Yes I do!
Bobby: and I’m like “No, I do not make Minecraft!”
(All laughing)
Rubi: “Are you sure you don't make Minecraft?”
Bobby: And then I was basically saying, “I don't make Minecraft. I don't make Halo or whatever.” And then like all these, these hands started going down.
Rubi: Oh no!
Peter: The kids were all crying.
Bobby: Yeah, no. And then I was like “But you can play our game for free, kids! Tell your parents!”.
(All laughing)
Bobby: So hopefully there are a couple of gems that came out of that presentation.
Peter: Get your kids credit cards.
Rubi: It turns out that eight-year-olds have the attention span roughly of a goose. So, you know you can tell them something and it doesn't matter.
Bobby: It was, it was hilarious, it's awesome. And every time I, I do talk to kids it's really kind of refreshing and eye-opening. Because they, they really love games. And you know, if they know anything about the game you make they, they have a lot of questions. But I mean even just the fact that they know that you can do something like this, that it's a viable career and that it's a way to be creative about something that, that can really touch a lot of lives. It's awesome. So I just love encouraging people to just kind of chase after their dreams. Because I mean that that's why I'm here. I had done a few different things before I got my job....
Rubi: Yeah it is I've done a couple of school groups here and there and one of the neatest things is getting to talk to them about all of the different paths that you can do; it's not necessarily okay I have to be a programmer or I have to be a designer and one of the things that I talk to about one class, I was just talking to some younger high school kids and saying well you know you have I don't remember how it came up but some of them were talking about how it was frustrating for them taking all of these classes they felt like was a waste of time, it's like I just want to get out of high school, I want to go to digipan or I want to you know I want to get into design school and I want to start learning how to make games and I was like wait, okay breathe, stop, what do you mean you feel like you're wasting your time? She was like well, I have to take French class and I don't understand why I have to take French class. And I was like, well I don't know how many,how many languages...what games do you like? And she rattles off a couple and I was like well how many languages do they support? And watching them watching and they get that realization of oh that's...I'm suddenly a hundred times more valuable if I'm bilingual, oh this English class that is a pain in my butt where I'm learning the rules of grammar, suddenly I won't sound like an idiot when I'm at work and trying to write this stuff. Watching them understand that there's more than just, okay I have to be a programmer, has been so cool when I'm talking to these kids. So yeah, it's the same thing.
Peter: Nobody has to be a programmer.
(laughter)
Bobby: Actually, we need quite a few, Peter.
Rubi: You look so haunted when you say that.
Bobby: The game would not exist without programmers, so stay in school.
Rubi: You know, as I think of that I realized that they were probably like 14, 13 14 15, in that age range and the attention span was a little longer than the eight year olds, but they were like, "Yeah, I have to take French!" Okay, remember what I just (said).... No, I don't, I don't want to knock the kids too much, but it was, it's, it's a lot of fun talking to them and talking to people who want to go into the industry, and helping them figure out, "oh there's there's a ton of stuff I can do, there's not just this one pathway."
Bobby: Yeah, actually, Tom and I haven't been doing outreach to people who are interested in narrative. I mean, occasionally we'll have a, an intern, but we don't get interns all that often for a narrative, but whenever we're at you know, GDC or any of these conventions and we talk to people usually we're we're totally available to kind of coach them on things and give them advice and stuff. I mean, you know, at the PAX party Friday I'm sure you know if anyone wants to talk about this stuff I'm more than happy to give them advice and talk about,
Rubi: Yes, please.
Peter: If you have any lore questions, like really, really obscure lore make sure to ask Bob. That's his favorite thing to talk about.
Bobby: Direct them at Peter and he'll make up the answer on the spot and make everyone else's job harder.
Peter: Especially if they're egg related.
Bobby: Do not wanna hear more about eggs.
Rubi: So pretty much the two of you are gonna just bounce players back and forth. No, it's like, go ask your mother, go ask your father
Bobby: Yeah actually I have nothing to show for it, except for Peter's laughter.
Peter: An evening wasted.
Matthew: This is the dynamic of working with these two.
Rubi: And now you look a little haunted.
Bobby: Just take Peter's phone and keyboard away from him.
Rubi: And Matthew sits in middle and cries.
Peter: Yes, that's pretty much our working relationship.
Rubi: So, but you do manage to get some content actually made here and there-
Peter: We work on it, yeah.
Matthew: Sometimes.
Bobby: Coming out soon!
Rubi: Oh my gosh, how many days? Oh jeez. I don't wanna think about how many days.
Peter: It's still in the oven!
Rubi: I'm gonna start hyperventilating, just stop doing the math, I don't wanna think about it.
Bobby: It's not too far off.
Rubi: It's exciting. Path of Fire's almost here you guys!
Matthew: Yes.
Bobby: Yeah.
Rubi: But we've had a whole bunch of stuff over the past five years. What's your, what's some of your favorite content that you've put out. I'm not gonna make you pick a favorite, but what's some of the favorite stuff that you've worked on over the past five years?
Peter: I'm actually pretty excited about Path of Fire.
Rubi: I am too!
Peter: And I really worked hard on the, you know, open world stuff and Amnoon especially you know that the Oasis map and the one to the north of it especially, but, pretty excited about that.
Rubi: Amnoon is gorgeous. I love how excited everybody's been about it.
Bobby: It's a beautiful map.
Rubi: Because you're excited about nothing else.
Matthew: No, my- mine is... I always tell this, there's a bit of a caveat there. It's both the best and the worst experience of my career here, which is Lost Shores weekend.
Rubi: I know what you're gonna say, yep.
Matthew: Because-
Rubi: We talked about this.
Peter: I remember that.
Matthew: It was such a great idea and we, you know, we were, we were so flushed from the launch and we were like "let's do this cool thing," and we had a bunch of great ideas. But then, you know, we we were still pretty new to the whole, "hey how do we make a big game like this into a live service and have that function" and so, anyone who experienced that weekend knows, it was a little bit buggy. It was a little bit unstable, um, but it brought the team together in a way that I haven't not felt since. You know, we were all just there that whole weekend with the fans, playing, checking in fixes, doing all that we could to, you know, make that content more stable than it was.
Rubi: It really was, it was an experience that I don't know that we've had since. It was just wild. In every way.
Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. It had definitely, you know- I mean. It introduced some cool characters that are still around, you know Canach.
Rubi: I love Canach.
Matthew: Um, who was uh, one of our favorites at the time-
Peter: Kiel, Kiel was in that too.
Matthew: Yeah, Kiel, um, so it was-
Peter: Everybody loves karkas.
Matthew: Everybody does love karkas. (Peter laughs) I'm actually amazed that [crosstalk] we got the karkas in there.
Bobby: Job-o-Tron.
Peter: That's right, Job-o-Tron.
Rubi: Oh yeah!
Bobby: Job-o-Tron made his debut.
Peter: Everybody loves Job-o-Tron.
Matthew: Although, he was- he wasn't Job-o-Tron?
Bobby: He was Job-o-Tron then, then he became... a million other things.
Matthew: That's right.
Rubi: Who was he? What did he start as?
All three guests: He was Job-o-Tron.
Rubi: He was Job-o-Tron first?
Bobby: Yeah. He was trying to strong-arm them into an unfair employment deal.
Peter: Then he was Ho-Ho-Tron.
Matthew: Yeah.
Peter: And then he was Hero-Tron?
Bobby: No. He was Hobo-Tron when he was out of work.
Rubi: Mm-hmm.
Bobby: Anyway.
Rubi: And then there was Hero-Tron. There was Ho-Ho-Tron in there somewhere.
Bobby: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Peter: Ho-Ho-Tron was for Wintersday.
Rubi: I love him, he's great. I remember-
Bobby: So, I have two-
Rubi: Yeah!
Bobby: Sorry, if I was-
Rubi: No, no. I was just thinking back-
Peter: Oh no! We're out of time! (everyone chuckles)
Rubi: (jokingly) Time to go!
Bobby: (jokingly in a stern voice) Remove your mic!
Rubi: No. When you speak about Hobo-Tron, the thing about him, that I remember: somebody's mini-pet showed up in the cutscene, where Caithe um: "I will bear your pain, sister", and she stabs... and in the back is a Ho-Ho-Tron. (everybody laughs) Some player uploaded that video, I can't remember who you are, but I loved that, and that's all I can think of any time I see the Ho-Ho-Trons.
Peter: Every version of that, where things wander through, is hilarious.
Bobby: Just flamingo-walking into frame or something.
Peter: Just like that- when the- when the player goes into The All and has that vision in that one cinematic... [crosstalk] and they take a Quaggan Tonic or something. That's hilarious.
Rubi: The Krait Tonics were the best. The Krait Tonics were the best, because the tail bugged into complete- he looked like a pencil. (everyone laughs) It was great. I'm sorry, what were you- please-
Bobby: Nah, it's okay. It's just two- real quick.
Rubi: It can be three and stop. You don't have to be quick. It's okay. I promise.
Bobby: Gotta keep this moving, man. We've got a schedule. So the first is the- personal story restoration.
Rubi: Yeah.
Bobby: Being able to go back in old content and improve it- was an interesting challenge and I very much enjoyed working on that project because I think what we ended up doing- made the game better. So that was a really cool project to be a part of. And the other thing is just the- Bastion of the Penitent. That raid.
Rubi: Yeah!
Bobby: Yeah, just working with the team on that and coming up with a story to- you know, kind of connect to lore, to humanize a character, and to just tell a very different kind of story in the game. That was, like, the- it was told through every single discipline, like, design, art, audio, you know obviously writing and dialogue and stuff but it all kind of came together in a way that I was very, uh, happy to be a part of that process.
Rubi: That was a fascinating- Yeah, that- The whole way that was done was done so well and I feel like [crosstalk] the work that was put in, yeah, really showed through
Bobby: It was a great team. I mean, you know, the building is full of great teams right, but that was my experience with a small group of people and actually honestly to, uh-helping with the, uh, story stuff for the- about the past year has been a really great experience in getting to work with Matthew and the rest of the folks you know and Scott and Connie and Connor and yeah everybody, um- Path of Fire, it's been really great... thing. They had a really great kind of team dynamic before I even showed up but, uh, it's been an honor and a pleasure to be working with that group.
Rubi: Um, for Bastion of the Penitent, do you want to- I know not everybody is necessarily familiar with that, do you want to just give a short summary of what that is?
Bobby: Uh, it's- it's a self-contained raid and it...
Rubi: You don't have to do the whole thing.
Bobby: [crosstalk] I don't wanna spoil it, but basically it tells a very different kind of- like a darker themed story but it also humanizes a character who, if you know anything about him, you might assume the worst and, uh, it's just kind of like a tragic story so it was, uh, it was a- it was a different kind of, um, narrative to tell in our game.
Rubi: I know working through it I had started out with a very one-dimensional perspective and just- "Oh yeah, this guy sucks, this guy's a jerk", and working through that I came out with a lot more sympathy.
Bobby: Yeah, I mean, if that- if that's how you feel then that- that's great because that's what we were shooting for.
Rubi: Yeah.
Peter: It worked on Rubi, so it's good!
Bobby: (laughing) The coldest of hearts!
Rubi: Yeah, and I'm usually so hard-hearted, yeah.
(laughter)
Peter: Warmed your cold heart!
Rubi: Alright look I'm a giant sucker, ok? (laughter slowly dies) This is... this is a thing that I do, but it did work, and it was a well-told story from all angles.
Bobby: Thank you.
Rubi: So, I did like it. Um, that, well, now you can't- you can't use that one because you've ruined it, but I want you guys to talk about some things that are only in the game because you put them there. It can be just an Easter Egg or a piece of content but I want you to tell secrets.
Peter: (laughing) Secrets.
Rubi: Terrible secrets!
Matthew: Yes. Mine is just goofy. Anybody who follows me on Twitter knows I'm all about going barefoot.
Rubi: What?
Matthew: What. I know. So, I have to put barefoot characters everywhere I go. So, Hoelbrak has a bunch, there is definitely a couple in Wetlands Grotto, ... sorry, that's the internal name - I always do that - Brisban Wildlands.
Rubi: I always go: I don't know, I don't remember what that is.
Matthew: Yes, I know. Brisban Wildlands. It's just my thing. It's my signature. It's ... Josh has his little tokens and coins that he leaves everywhere.
Rubi: Yeah, yeah.
Bobby: We are looking at you, Peter!
Peter: I'm trying to think about something I-
Bobby: Oh.
Peter: haven't talked about before. I've got the Drooburt thing.
Matthew: Drooburt. That is your infamous.
Peter: The Chauncey thing ended up like a weird almost out-of-game almost experience because it never ended up in content.
Rubi and Bobby: (together) Yeah.
Bobby: Yeah the VO's in the game but it's just nothing connected to it.
Peter: There is a reference to it in the game, but it actually happened.
Rubi: Yeah we ended up just kind of running with that though.
Bobby: Yeah.
Peter: Matthew and I tried to bring it back-
Matthew: Yeah.
Peter: As like a sort of disconnected episode story thing. But we ran out of time to do that in between. It was, in between...
Rubi: Oh no! Oh really?
Matthew: It's still on the back burner. We'll get to it one day.
Bobby: Pile of unfinished ideas, pile of broken toys...
Peter: It's going to start with Lord Faren going "I remember that time with the cat show and then..."
(laughter)
Bobby: We have the episode, well never mind.
Rubi: Nope too late.
Bobby: Probably a little too dirty to talk about. So, I got one: BRGL-5000.
Peter: Oh yeah.
Bobby: He's a...
Peter: Bargle bot.
Bobby: Bargle bot in Divinity's Re-, no, Lion's Arch. That's just hiding in one of those little houses near Kiel's Office. At any rate, I kinda took a hint from, uh, what's his name? Drooburt? You'd kinda give him money but Drooburt didn't do anything. This guy just lavishes you with compliments but basically you just pay him...
Peter: He's a sycophant.
Bobby: The more you pay him, the more of, like, a butt kissy comment that he gives you so (shrug) that (Rubi laughs) I just had a lot of fun with it. I really, like, I wanted to actually make a little follower thing that, you know, depending on, you know kinda like how Copper-Fed Salvage-o-
Rubi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bobby: ...Matic thing. It would be cool if you do things in the game where, you know, you kill something or you do something heroic or you just jump. You know how, like, the backpack-
Rubi: Yeah, "you jumped".
Bobby: It's just like, master of the obvious, but this thing goes and just gives you compliments and kisses your butt the whole time.
Rubi: (gasp) That would be hilarious!
Bobby: Yeah, I think that'd be worth it.
Rubi: Did you ever make him, like, a backpack?
Bobby: It could be. You never know! Or a hat. It's just an idea right now, but I'm thinking big.
Peter: It's still on a marker board!
Rubi: Oh my gosh! I didn't know, I didn't know that was a thing you were thinking about.
Bobby: Oh, nah, I mean the bargle thing was just basically a joke-
Peter: What does bargling mean?
Bobby: Um, nothing I can talk about... (laughs) but-
Peter: I was just wondering where that term came from.
Bobby: We'll have a private conversation about that, Peter! No, um, we, uh, geez. (everyone laughs) And with that... and with that, cut to commercial! You ever watch Showtime at the Apollo? There's always, like, the clown who comes out with the big hook? Like, we need that for this show.
Bobby: And Peter since you're on the end you're gonna get just like...
Rubi: Like put the chairs on wheels and like roll someone out... (everyone laughs) Well that was just an unfortunate coincidence that we actually are doing. (laughs) You absolutely ruined everything. (Bobby nods) But happy 5 years you guys, because the three of you in particular have been around for ages (Bobby laughs) so much of its complements of it. So I lined a few walkers over there. (points)
Bobby: Thank you, thank you...
Rubi: Thank you guys very much! Congratulations and here's to many, many more years.
Matthew: Yes.
Rubi: So Path of Fire... Very, very soon... Thank you guys and we will be back in just a couple of minutes.
Guild Wars 2 - "A Million Adventures Await You" trailer [39:19][edit]
Narrator: Rated T for Teen.
Narrator: A million adventures await you in Guild Wars 2.
Guild Wars 2 - Super Adventure Box trailer [39:50][edit]
Child: C'mon…almost…
Child: Finally! Yeah!
- [Screaming riff as Rytlock Brimstone bursts into the room]
Rytlock Brimstone: Victory is ours!
Child: Whoa! Rytlock Brimstone?!
Rytlock Brimstone: Now the journey continues with the Super Adventure Box!
Rytlock Brimstone: Travel through a strange world of great danger and mesmerizing beauty.
Child: Awesome graphics!
Rytlock Brimstone: You'll need lightning reflexes, nerves of steel…
Child: Stop the graphics!
Rytlock Brimstone: …and the heart of a warrior!
Rytlock Brimstone: Farewell; the fate of Tyria is in YOUR hands!
Narrator: Live the saga of Guild Wars 2 on your Super Adventure Box from ArenaNet. Your parents'll help you look it up.
- [Evil laughter from Lord Vanquish]
- [Angry cat growl]
ArenaPets [41:07][edit]
Christy Clemens's partner: Get it! Yeah! (claps)
Christy Clemens: Heh heh.
Guild Chat studio [43:28][edit]
Rubi Bayer: Wow. Crystal, that was a cool dog picture.
Crystal Reid: Yes.
Rubi: That was an awesome dog. So.
Crystal: I like my dog a lot.
Rubi: So welcome back. Since we're talking about a lot of ArenaNet life and all that, we thought we would include some of our furry and scaled and, in one case later, feathered friends, so we are bringing you ArenaPets because everybody likes cute animals. So, thank you Crystal for...
Crystal: It was just a clever excuse for you guys to get us to send cute pictures of animals all day long.
Rubi: My inbox was the best thing for weeks, you guys! (laughs) And I'm trying to think of an excuse to do this again, because really, with all of my work emails, just having them peppered with adorable pictures and videos all day long kind of makes me happy.
Crystal: You should just, like—"reply ArenaNet all"—make everyone's day better.
Rubi: I'm on board.
Crystal: Alright.
Rubi: So. Alright, well, welcome to the Fifth Anniversary livestream, and congratulations on five years, you guys.
Crystal: Thank you.
Steven Hwang: Hi.
Rubi: Aside from cute animals, we are taking about some of your favorite work memories and stories from it in the office. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be you. I'll let you guys introduce yourselves first if you want to. Although, we've already kind of done that for you.
Steven: Alright, I'm Steve Hwang, game designer.
Crystal: I'm Crystal Reid, lead designer.
Anthony Ordon: I'm Anthony Ordon. It says game designer, but it really means useless designer.
(Laughter)
Rubi: Alright, we'll change it up but I feel kind of bad about it.
Anthony: That is what I put on the paper.
Rubi: Jeez! (laughing)
Anthony: I just want everyone to know.
Rubi: So, we are a little more casual today since we're just kind of celebrating and enjoying the past five years so I'll let you guys kind of-
Steven: Stories?
Rubi: Yep. Hit it.
Steven: About work?
Anthony: Stories. Did they do X-men yet?
Steven: Oh god...
Rubi: Oh no it was a lot of people's desks falling apart and breaking and Josh Foreman falling down stairs. It was terrifying.
Crystal: Take us there.
Anthony: I was- Back when were in the old building-
Rubi: All the best memories come from the old building.
Anthony: They really do, yeah. And I was pulling up the parking lot, I was late for some reason, I don't remember why. And I pull into the parking lot and this squad car pulls in behind me right. So like so I kind of pull into this spot and they pull into this spot opposite right. And I get out of my car and then these two police officers pop out off their car with like mp5 like submachine guns. And they're like, "We need you to go back to your car, sir." And I was like, "No problem." I get back into the car.
(Laughter)
Rubi: And they went home and never came back.
Anthony: And I called up like "What's going on?" right? Turns out that there was a debt collection agency somewhere nearby in the office complex.
Steven: There was filming next door.
Anthony: They have been attacked with a man wielding an axe. (Laughing)
Steven: Yeah, on the 2nd floor, there was some debt collection.
Anthony: And they called the cops.
Steven: And the guy used the axe on the door and then he went to work afterwards.
Anthony: Yes, he left! He just- So they didn't find anybody. He just peaced out. And then he was just like, he just went to work like a normal day.
Steven: Yeah the whole park was under lockdown. And like I was getting all of these texts in the morning. I wasn't there. And I was like, "I can't get in, you know. Tell somebody." Everyone ended up going to like you know the cafe for breakfast.
Anthony: That is enough to go after the guy. I am sure he had a really good reason but like-
Crystal: I feel like this segment is going to be full of crazy stories I think.
Rubi: That's great. I'm just in awe that I've never heard this story.
Anthony: You didn't know that one?
Rubi: How have I never heard this story?!
Anthony: It's the best one.
Rubi: Like, I heard the story of- Oh gosh. Now I'm scared to say it cause I'm afraid I'll embarrass somebody cause I feel like he probably wasn't happy about it. The barbecue in the back of someone's pickup the got out of control?
Anthony: (laughs) Oh yeah.
Steven: Oh yeah, that was a good one.
Rubi: Who was...?
Anthony: That was here, right?
Steven: No, that was the old office.
Rubi: That was at the old office!
Anthony: Okay.
Steven: Yeah, the old office is different now.
Rubi: Was anybody- I wasn't there for that, but now I feel like I've accidentally brought it up and someone has to tell it. Was somebody there for that?
Crystal: I don't know about the barbecue story so...
Rubi: Maybe don't say who because I feel like they weren't happy about it.
Steven: It was just a barbecue on someone's pickup that got a little-
Crystal: You're tailgating!
Steven: That got a little out of control, that's all. (laugh)
Anthony: A little out of control. Just half the force. Just... gone. Deleted.
Rubi: Yeah, there was- Apparently there was just black smoke like billowing everywhere. Oh, man.
Steven: Do you remember the- One of the things I remember was when Jon Peters jumped Eve.
Anthony: Yep.
Steven: And so we had that-
Rubi: Oh yeah!
Steven: We had that Eve standee. It was like, I don't know, maybe like 4, 5 foot or 6 tall?
Rubi: Yeah! Those cardboard standees!
Steven: And Jon Peters, like, he was like, "I can jump that." You know, like because you know he's kind of a track guy and runner and he's like and then- So we all put on bets and like Albert, you know he was back with us, one of the designers, like, "I can jump that! That's not a problem!" There's this little trash can that's like a foot and a half tall and he's like, "Yeah! See? I'll just jump this!" And he jumps it and he trips, puts his foot in the trash can and just tumbles!
Rubi: What?
Anthony: Yeah. There's a lot of workplace accidents.
Rubi: But then Peters totally jumped the Eve standee, right?
Steven: Yeah! He did.
Rubi: Like he cleared it!
Steven: He cleared it. There was a little bit of wind when he was running so it kind of tilted, but... Yeah.
Rubi: I had forgotten about that. I- Was I here for it?
Steven: We have video of it.
Rubi: There's video?!
Steven: Yeah!
Rubi: How-?!
Crystal: It's on the network somewhere I'm sure.
Rubi: Mark and I are both like how did nobody send us this video?!
Steven: You guys have to check our common directory sometimes. I'll point you to it.
Rubi: Yes, but it's a little late, like we want to show it right now. I'm so sad.
Steven: I'll point you to it after this.
Rubi: Okay.
Crystal: Next anniversary.
Anthony: The tenth year anniversary.
Rubi: Man... Okay, ten year anniversary. Okay, five years is enough time to get it. I don't know. So do you have anything from the old office? That was before my time, so... I don't have any good swamp stories.
Crystal: It wasn't a swamp. It was sinking. I mean there's- The parking lot was closed off for a while because it was like sinking so it like had like- The pavement was like shooting out.
Steven: Yeah, there was one time there was like a foot and a half of water and like, you know, it was next to the flue and the flue was overflowing and people just couldn't get to work.
Crystal: Yeah. It was always like- The thing was like cause Dave, he comes in at you know before the light is even awake, crack of dawn. So he comes in super early-
Anthony: Because he's up the night.
Crystal: Yeah, he's up. That's right. And because he drives a big truck he can just go anywhere. So if it poured rain overnight, you'd be like, "Hey. Check our email. Did Dave make it into work today?"
Steven: That's true!
Crystal: And then if Dave made it into work, he would assess the damage and be like- And then he would send out an email and tell everyone whether they should come in or not.
Steven: Well, same on snow days, right? Like there was that, what? 2007 wind out where like everybody lost electricity for like a week?
Anthony: I wasn't here for that.
Crystal: I wasn't here for that either.
Steven: And people were at the office because, you know, their homes just didn't have, you know, heat and...
Crystal: Oh, wow.
Anthony: That was where they got the idea for Nightfall, right?
[Laughter]
Rubi: Wow. Really? I didn't know people were camping out at the office, that's insane. Jeez.
Steven: That's the old office. There's a lot of old stories - that's pre Guild Wars 2, though.
Rubi: That's okay, that's totally allowed.
Steven: Okay. The great one was when Brett tackled Jeff Strain into the swimming pool.
Crystal: What? This was way before our time.
Steven: Yeah, yeah, so at one of the pre-launch parties for Guild Wars 1, you know, we were all going to go see, I think it was - what was the last - Episode 3. And everyone was like, "Brett, Brett"
Rubi: We all knew what he meant.
Steven: We were at this pool party, right, somewhere in LA after one of the E3s and we were talking about how, "Oh, Brett, you should tackle Jeff, get him wet." like "No, no, no, no" but then, so, we finally encourage him, make sure he doesn't have his phone on him and things like that, and Brett gets him into the water, he's wet. And what we didn't know is he had all our tickets to the movies. So later, when he's passing out tickets, you know, for the movies
Rubi: They're all like, stuck together.
Steven: He's like "You don't deserve this, you don't deserve this, you certainly don't deserve this."
[Laughter]
Rubi: Please tell me he didn't give Brett a ticket.
Steven: No no no everyone
Rubi: Oh did he? He's a nice person. Ok
Steven: one, yeah.
Anthony: All in good fun.
Steven: All good fun.
Rubi: Oh my gosh
Steven: Those were the ones where we had the drinks named after the professions.
Rubi: I've heard about it.
Steven: Yeah
Rubi: Way before my time also
Steven: yeah
Rubi: but, oh my gosh. He had the tickets on him?
Steven: Yeah, they were just wet.
Rubi: Make sure he doesn't have his phone, but you know, the movie tickets whatever. I'm sure, it's fine.
Steven: Those were fun days.
Rubi: Oh my gosh. Alright. So that's terrible stuff that we did to each other.
Steven: My embarrassing one was I almost I almost promised alliances to a handicapped lady in the line of Disneyland. Like I mean I'm Disneyland I got the shirt on and when you get the shirt on-
Rubi: yeah
Steven: people who sure come up to you and it's like oh yeah we have this skill and she was in like a wheelchair she's going on California Screamin' and she's like 'if only we could get more people into our guild we could get them all onto the same one' I think we have alliances coming for factions.
Rubi: Oops!
Steven: and I was like wait did we announce that? Apparently we had announced it a week before that and I was like 'Oh phew'
Rubi: Yeah, sometimes it's hard remembering...
Anthony: Yeah there's always that "Can we talk about this yet?"
Steven: Ben Miller used to always tease me about this like "Did you promise alliances to a..." (laughter) Sorry.
Rubi: Sometimes it's hard to remember if we said that or...
Anthony: They were here first, at a line in Disneyland
Steven: Yeah, I know.
Rubi: Yeah.
Anthony: She's gonna show up at the company two years later "You Promised, we've got this written on the back of this Disney map"
Rubi: Jeez, we announce things in weird places
Steven: I was at Panera once and a server's like "That's a nice sweater, you know hoodie. I'll buy it off you." It's like no, I just (laughing)
Rubi: Oh my gosh.
Crystal: It's my hoodie.
Steven: Yeah.
Rubi: You may notice I'm using it right now.
(laughter)
Rubi: What about you guys, what about some player encounters.
Anthony: Oh, player encounters?
Rubi: Please tell me you didn't announce things in line at Disneyland.
Crystal: No
Anthony: No, we didn't announce anything in line at Disneyland. Erm, you know...
Rubi: Oh, you have one about the dogs that I wanted you to make sure to tell.
Anthony: Oh yeah I can tell the dog story. I was actually going to say I liked-
Rubi: Sorry.
Anthony: -Being there when where the mesmers invented "accidentally" throwing people people off cliffs with the way portal used to work.
Rubi: I remember this
Anthony: So it was Beta weekend one and I was running around with the dev tag and everyone was following me, and we were having a great time, and then some clever mesmers threw up the portal, and the way it was set up was portal here and edge of the cliff here so this train of people just went into the portal, and you didn't used to have to press F, it just grabbed you, and then they just walked off a cliff.
Rubi: Yeah, it was just: you fell in the hole. Yeah.
Anthony: Yeah, it was great. That was when we changed portal to not be like that.
Rubi: (laughter)
Anthony: That was good, and then the story that Rubi's talking about is I have this friend of mine who I met at PAX and we were just there showing the game off for the first time, and I was talking to everybody, and there was a guy standing in line, and he was like "I can't wait to take video of all these skills" and he was super into it and we got talking and then somehow he brought up his dog, or he had to go home and take care of his dog and I was like "Oh, what kind of dog do you have?" so it turned out he had a husky that was about six months old, I also had a six month old dog, and so we were like "yeah, we should meet up some time and talk about Guild wars 1 and let the dogs hang out or whatever, and so I didn't think, that's what everybody in Seattle says, like "yeah, maybe we'll do it", and he was serious, he was like "yeah, let's get your number"-
Rubi: (laughter) This is a Seattle thing
Anthony: "Sure, yeah yeah" because he's not from Seattle, he's from Oregon and so- (laughter)
Rubi: Oh wow.
Anthony: Yeah, we showed up and he lived over by Marymoor Park and so we met up one day and let the dogs play.
Rubi: Oh yeah.
Anthony: And then we just kept doing it. For now it's been about five years later, right, and here we are. So we still, like I just watched his dog this month twice, cause he was going and doing some stuff, and so we, you know, we...he's our only dog-sitter, cause our dog hates everybody except his dog.
Steven: Guild Wars 2, bringing people together. Dogs together.
Anthony: Yeah she's terrible. That dog, she likes to run away and so, shortly before the game had launched, we went up to this local trail. It was called lost beagle trail, it's up on, you might know it. It's up on-
Crystal: Lost beetle trail?
Anthony Lost beagle trail.
Crystal: Oh, beagle? Is that where all the beagles go? (laughter)
Anthony:' No. Yeah yeah yeah, well I don't know how the trail got its name, well basically we were up there, and the dogs were off the leash, and we should never ever have done that with her.
Crystal: Well that was your first mistake.
Anthony: And she decided to take off and the trail almost got renamed to Lost husky trail. Anyway after this, it was such an ordeal that I put a character in the game. He's in Wayfarer Foothills and his name is Crag Wilcrucks and he's got a dog named Shastar as his dog's name is Shasta, and it's not an event or anything, it's just this little vignette where he chases the dog around, and the dog will never, ever ever get caught. It's scripted to go on like that forever. It's kind of my joke to him.
Rubi: Oh my gosh. That's adorable. I love it.
Anthony: So that was my favourite player interaction I suppose.
Rubi: Aww, that's so cool. What about you?
Crystal: Um, I'm trying to think cuz I've only been to one kind of convention with the fans. It was when we were at Twitchcon and I didn't have a ton of player interaction because we mostly were hanging out on set all day.
Rubi: It can also be in-game if that helps.
Crystal: It can be in-game, so in-game I have a good one. After raids came out we kind of formed this dev team and you know, we weren't amazing but we killed all the bosses and that was the most important thing to us, and I think there's one night where two or three people just couldn't show up and we only had like seven players and we're like well we didn't really want to bring a bunch of people in, and so we had like exited the raid instance so we're all in Verdant Brink and we're like well what do we do now. I'm like obviously we all just tag up and we go do a hero point train farm.
Rubi: Sure!
Crystal: So like we just all tagged up and then people were like "oh my god there's devs" and they just followed us and we're like look at all these followers and we had a great time like we just carried everyone through a whole hero point train farm through Verdant Brink.
Rubi: Oh fun!
Crystal: It was a ton of fun. People were just like so surprised like they were super surprised like "there's devs" like yeah we play the game all the time.
Rubi: We do play our game you just don't see us a lot of times.
Crystal: Fair.
Rubi: Yeah. So did you get to, we were yeah we were backstage a lot at twitchcon, did you get to hang out with players at all?
Crystal: Um, yeah we did a little interaction on the... While players are waiting in line to go play the demo for heart of thorns, so I got to interact with a bunch of people because we had just recently announced for raids and so people are kind of curious, like what are you doing?
Rubi: Yeah.
Crystal: I was like we're doing raids. They had a lot of questions and that was fun.
Rubi: Aw, yeah that's... It's really neat getting to go out there and just talk to them face to face and okay yeah you know you care about this and you're excited and you want to discuss this face-to-face.
Crystal: Yeah.
Rubi: I... One of the things that I've noticed that I've heard from a lot of people on all of our teams is that it's easy to kind of feel isolated you know you're in here working and there's not a lot of face-to-face interaction with the community, and then so when you get out there talking to them it just really changes your perspective, having that interaction and feeling like everybody's as excited as you are.
Crystal: Mhm.
Rubi: It makes a huge difference and it feels so good.
Stephen: Funnest things to do I mean like it's very gratifying.
Rubi: It is!
Stephen: To see your end results being enjoyed by lots of players and you know that's the... The one that I remember the most what it was the GW2 like beta and we had the art books and everyone was signing art books and getting in line and one lady wanted me to sign her pants. I was like okay sure (laugh). And she had a bunch of devs sign her pants.
Crystal: Was she wearing her pants?
Stephen: Yes!
All: (laugh)
Rubi: I think that... Relatively speaking there's a lot to work with, that's fine, so.
Anthony You're right, you're right. You're totally right, that's mean. It's all just [crosstalk 59:09].
Rubi: It's just... But yeah the initial thing is, uh hold on a second. But yeah.
Anthony: I don't know I mean you know if I was gonna have shwings(?) on my pants [crosstalk 59:18]
All: (laugh)
Rubi: You know what, that's for later. That's guild chat after work. I did at our launch party... Just we were talking about signing things at our launch party, I had a player run up to me and he had like, I don't even remember what it was, something to sign in one hand, and a sharpie in the other hand and this was like the happiest looking person, he had this huge smile and like he was just lit up, and I was like okay yeah I can totally sign whatever this thing is. And he was like are you - and he like named another person who was not me. And I was like no. I thought this dude was gonna cry.
Crystal: Because you were not the person he thought you were?
Rubi: I was not the person he was asking about.
Anthony: What if you should've doubled down, like yes I am that person.
Rubi: I was...Well she was also there, but I didn't even have time to be like she's over there and send him that way, because dude shrunk like five inches and just went :( and walked away.
Anthony: He didn't even get her signature?
Rubi: He didn't want it.
Stephen: Aw
Anthony: Aw, what.
Rubi: I was... And I couldn't even be mad, just like... That was amazing. If you want to come back I can take you to her, but he was gone. It was like, I like, ruined that guys day. [crosstalk 1:00:19]
Stephen: Some of the best ones are like, you see the same fans at multiple conventions
Rubi: Yes!
Stephen: especially at local ones
Rubi: yeah
Stephen: local meet and greets and you recognize them. You're like, "You're still playing? Awesome, that's great!"
Rubi: yeah. and it's great seeing them come to event after event and getting to check in with them and talk to them. And a lot of times, and I've seen this over and over, they bring new fans along.
like hey I brought some friends and they've started playing the game and converts yes I've brought new ones one of us so it is it's it's like you said very very gratifying to get to hang out with players humble yes very much that well thank for stuff that we've all been working on yeah I don't know I mean I I always get him like I play the game and they're like oh I'm so glad that you uh you know made this game like one guy was like I I'm gonna like just just huge debt to redo that forever and I was like well you did give us money which you're welcome yeah glad you're having fun it's always great to hear like you know friendships being made or people you know making friends in-game but then meeting up in real life later yeah yeah I love seeing like guilt groups yeah coming to events together let's talk about content that you guys have worked on speaking of people giving us money for we're all here because we love it that is true content that I made what some of your favorite over the past five years I know what my favorite of yours is okay go for it the bunnies yeah before the game shipped I did a lot of weird stuff weird stuff and that map so there's the snowball fight oh yeah is what that one is these kids parents thank you yeah if you go up the hill from the snowball fight there's like a rabbit mine phew yeah and something something you don't like go get the food that's buried in the snow and the rabbits just come out after you right yeah yeah they drop cake because we have that animation for sorry yeah it was alright I mean it was supposed to be easy if you had two people doing it I know I remember doing it after we shipped with Iran and we were like we were by early to pick up a piece of food and I would escorted back and then we trade off every now and then one of them would dropkick you also I'm responsible for the terrible hearten in that zone the one where you have two abducted the Doleac children get that one yes turn out quite like we thought it was gonna and then we were also trying to like sort of transition you to the shower seems like a very sharp thing to you but like I didn't realize that they were gonna be like animated in like make horrible baby Julia crying noises Peter freezes summer in the building on I got a double Batman need to step up my game oh my gosh okay so now we know your favorite content of Anthony's yeah what about actually yours Mike you can't just say like favorite content that I've made no so I want to say raids like I've thoroughly enjoyed like all the encounters they've worked on there I should really name my favorite encounter that you done what's my favorite what's your favorite encounter that I did probably to quarrel I mean it's pretty good catching the kitchen the wave James show occur did the the effect on it like like Ian came up with the idea and he was like what if we have him come down with these big wings he does this tidal wave in my honor we're gonna do that really biggest effect we've ever done the game and he was like sure it's just why not so it was also how we throw you into the deep end right yeah but like like it worked the only kind of crappy thing is you don't really see it now anymore because they just they dunk him down like you never fail the battery events like I saw a lot the first week oh yeah he's so good to see the wave anymore I just it was something great about it like just showing up that thing and there's a hundred people here and like this is what I love about doors to know whether game does this no other game is a hundred people fighting a dragon like that you just don't see it right like what the only game I think that you know it's out there like you know just you could just do this use login right now go fight the dragon with a hundred people yeah and then watching that dragon five o'clock yeah I'm like check in the Pacific log in and guilt for me just to do that yeah was great too is like watching the community sort of like coalesce around a strategy for that and then it just became known figure it out yeah you could show up to that participate I'm sorry and then we kicked it up for two quad only beat him on the first day or like oh man they got him on the first day really well we're gonna we're gonna up this for a triple trouble when we worked on the jungle worm and that was it took longer to beat than we thought it would but like we'd come in every day and we'd watch like the live streams and back then wooden potatoes is kind of an up and rising star lore so he was actually commanding one of the groups on one of the servers and he'd been up for something like 30 straight hours or something cuz like they hadn't beat him and then every time you failed you like you had to wait two hours again for the next encounter yeah and so we were watching it and like he was commanding and he would like lose Steve K we didn't get it guy is like I'm gonna I'm gonna stick around for one more and he finally hit a point where he's just like I have to and so we were watching the stream it was like getting pretty close to another the escort events to kick off and because they were streaming all the the teamspeak stuff this all of a sudden is one player starts screaming is that oh god I fell asleep players were falling asleep at their desk just staying awake trying to kill it so that was that was pretty cool yeah I was glad that you guys continue the tradition of making Coast the map full of things that eat you what do you what eats you before so in Coast there is a giant Drake that eats you there's a giant shark that eats you there's a giant slime that eats you and now China giant jungle remember she's like oh we're thinking about doing this room we're good yeah thank you for proving all of that stuff when she runs it by you yeah the tidal wave and the vomit watch this watch this perfect so do you guys remember the first group that succeeded a triple trouble with like the I think it was the same group that did like never watch Charlie close a speech on teamspeak there's like the stirring motivational speech came out it started the whole like to coddle terror squad or the TTS yeah that's like ten guilds at one point there's so many and their whole goal was to just take out these world bosses they got really really really close I don't remember the group that did it first I remember the first night I do remember that they had they want to try to do it it was completely different than we thought they were gonna try to do it because they was you have to sing kill the worms right well they you have to do that spike we weren't expecting them to Zerg them that was the interesting we expected them to try well we try we didn't expect them to almost succeed like they're gonna try and this isn't gonna work out and then they were doing it like they'd leave like ten players at each worm in this huge surge of a hundred players and like they'd like length away point and they'd all go to the waypoint and legs are all the way down and like dunk one worm down to 10% yeah and then back to the Waypoint and back to the next one I was like that's like oh my god and then they'd like one group got really good at it but they were kind of they started making mistakes and stepping back and then so when other groups start making more progress and like we can do this in a horse they stopped the Zerg for the record the reason why we didn't want them to spike the the worms like that was because it's bad for the server's yeah when there's 200 people standing in one spot executing all the skills right yeah so you know I was like Kristen you can't do another to coddle we're like they're they're pretty far away like so they're they're out of like port range so yeah they're not really like conscious of what other players are doing but players are like I'm glad you clarify we didn't expect them to almost succeed because I don't know if you saw the face I made when you said we didn't expect them to Zerg it that's like really well no we knew we knew they were gonna try there we go yeah that's yeah that was that was one of the most fun things I have ever seen because I'd remember I just wanted to jump out of my chair and be like yes when they finally succeeded and all of the screaming on their teamspeak server that's so good to hear I missed the actual kill it happened like on a Saturday morning yeah yeah and then I woke up and I it's enough to do and then I went and checked reddit after it's like I got it alright well do you guys want to you had mentioned the the what was it lost beagle trail candy trail yes yeah escaping husky do you guys want to talk about some things that are in the game because you put them there little Easter eggs that you've stuck in there yeah get mine I thought yeah you already did but if you have more that's fine too content I guess you know happy I sort of Protestant put in this destroying Lions Archana I was just happy about that well it's a huge endeavor and you've heard the man I know a lot of people have you know it's nostalgia for it but you know it just was a great you know endeavor to you know get the players off together a few like you know we have to take it back you know they felt something you know for the city that they wanted to take it back just to create that feeling of purpose and unifying the player base and some sort of goal I thought that was yeah the whole battle for lionsearch thing really was it was it was touching yeah yeah we don't just blow it up for fun no we don't it was good content thankfully my favorite thing yeah so Teddy and I have both been in the same guild three beers like playing video games and we've put almost every one of our guild members into the game at some point that's right so Teddy worked on the original the upper yeah the upper level of the Queen's pavilion the Queen's gauntlet and so most the bosses they're named after players or people from our guild so there's like like Elvia Leo drey's cereal those are all people we actually know and then a bunch of the the raid bosses like I kind of continue that I want to work in raids so Knuckles those character name is like Nicola and we do not chose but neither Nicola or nachos we're gonna sit with her not just gonna be a little weird yes we call them knuckles Kernan the commander and the Takada Levent I think names Naru and she walks around with a - char and gnar was a name for like our raid leader and she's quite short so of course she's gonna Sarah I depict the smallest one and yells at us all the time for doing things so I was like yes there's little commander Naru and she yells at players I'm like Zil D in the chalk gerrant encounter like that's another character of mine what I was working on that encounter and there's a few in like the char camp as well yeah just like all my most of my guilt is in there at some point I even managed to Garrett a character his character name is fridge or refrigerator one of the two and we managed to get a character in after him just because his real name was kind of here just kind of like a normal real name and then we ended up naming the fire ski role after him because is that his actual real name was like Matthew Gabriel I was like wow that's a kind of like a priest he shaman name what if we just modify this to work for ya so we managed to get him in the game - oh I love it so did they look for themselves or do they know what's coming now usually I tell was like a fat show game somewhere I'm not I'm not gonna say where but oh yeah that's awesome yeah that's cool that you can do that mhm and you make it work it's not like yeah here's this guy random Joe just sitting here being very very obvious that he doesn't actually belong in the game yeah there's a another one his name is Terrell he's actually a real name is Terrell it's it's like T erri ll or something that's his real name okay and but like people have also mispronounces liked Earl so he's actually got two characters byron put Turrell in he's in Lyons Archie does like the little Karka hunt and it gives you the gun for them oh yeah Turell it's also Terrell it's the same one twice yeah awesome well I will let you guys go unless there's anything else for the fifth anniversary that you want to add you're more than welcome to put salona you've said too much amalgamation of Celestin on loan on dirt yeah yeah jewelers reporter yeah the Guild Wars reporter podcast yeah well you can't no yes it stopped yeah Ilona does host of Ascalon yes you're both going I will link you afterwards it's very good yeah check it all right all right thank you guys very much congratulations on five years and we will be back in a little bit to you [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] - shadow from emeriti between I expect but just one course of actions when we take up [Applause] you you I love that lesson I don't know how I'm supposed to top that like and then my bird landed on my head no big deal I know right I know my kids done that a few times but it's a lot more dramatic yeah it's probably more painful and less charming right yeah well welcome back and happy Guild Wars 2 anniversary you guys I'll let you guys go down and introduce yourselves okay I'm Trisha I'm producer on living world teams also helped out a little bit with the new Mac release that we had recently thank you I'm Avastin Barker I'm the voiceover lead I'm Clayton Kisco and game designer awesome thank you guys for coming and helping us celebrate so we've been starting with some of your favorite everyday Network stories from the time you've been here a lot of them seem to involve injuries or people's things falling apart no nothing permanent so it hasn't been very bad so I'll let you guys jump in and see what we come up with I've only been here years so I don't really have or seen to the horror as Peter pointed out that's like five years indef years yeah yeah that is true that's definitely true it nothing do you guys have anything most of my stories involve time Burbank in the morning studios Burbank is fine but I also sit near you guys and I hear what goes on over there oh yes drama and fun things occasionally nerf guns always chocolate too yeah every time you travel you come back I always get this email like hey I brought like this amazing stuff from Japan and yeah please come over and eat some of it I brought this time I want to went to Japan for my summer vacation and came back with like I seriously bought way too many sweets I I still have like a container of cookies and crackers on my desk at all seriously yeah so I always like bring back piles of sweets and I email everybody and I please come eat all of the good things I've brought you're overdoing it yes you can also tell Burbank stories those are the good ones yeah those are those are always fun I had to Burbank for recording sessions roughly once every two to three months or so it's not like a set schedule it shifts so you know the time in the studio is is a lot of a lot of fun a lot of entertaining times you just got back right yes I just got back can you say down they're recording without I'm spoiling anything I cannot I do mention where characters are there cuz our player characters are always there okay yeah you can't have a release with that player character so it's always fun to record with Nolan North and Brandon Bailey gosh yes Matthew Mercer we have three of the critical role critical roles of D&D web show you the members of that are on our voice cast oh really liam o'brien sam riegel who is Bram Liam O'Brien does a bunch of characters for us and Matthew Mercer is our PC normal so if you play normal you hear Matthew Mercer um you're talking about Nolan North being down there and I remember when we were down there for a heart of thorns and he was doing the mordremoth he was doing the mordremoth repeat vo it was like you know surrender to me and then he just like busted out what sounded like king candy from wreck-it Ralph to me yeah and he's doing more yeah he's doing more droughts lines King Candy's voice and somewhere I have video of this I can't find it I can't remember where it is but the outtakes is yeah we've got a ton of outtakes but every time we talk about nolan north doing recording i think of that because it's freakin glorious yeah i love it some swaps voices all the time and he is one of my out take heavy actors he's so fun yeah a lot of fun in the booth John DiMaggio is a lot of fun in the booth oh yeah but more we don't have a lot of videos that we could show a lot of it is PG rated but occasionally it's local yeah a lot of I'm just trying to remember some of John DiMaggio's outtakes that RPG and I'm realizing the list is sort of short but they're also good they're so fun one of my favorite ones was there was a line for heart of thorns and this was John John DiMaggio outtake he had as Kanak John DiMaggio knock as cannot he was saying you know we have to go and find mordremoth and he busts out into he owes me $52 that son of a oh you you need to email me that I keep the collection yeah I've gotten some I've gotten some good emails from you can we can we like release that to the fan like I feel like everyone I would definitely outtakes for my favorite part of any movie early summer so we can we could probably put in there yeah we're just bleep out John's awful language you can't we've done that on Gill chat before we've run some outdated vo recording oh okay yeah cool I remember John DiMaggio his first session we tried to edit down into just a run of his outtakes and I think we took like four passes at it before deciding that no it's it doesn't work there's also an outtake reel there's like five minutes maybe being a complete idiot I can't even get through a prepared script bring it up over and over it was glorious so what have you guys been working on you say and you I keep going back to this you say only a year but there is a lot to be done in that amount of time yeah I mean I've worked on the ex back and worked on like just events open-world stuff specifically which has been a lot of fun I was working also with the concept of what a mount heart would be like our hearts traditionally are like just combat heavy and Shalini is kind of like help out a village right but what does it mean to be on a on a mount and do that content yeah so that was really fun and that was exciting cuz that was new stuff to do yeah we were talking about just some of your work stories and stuff and you'd mentioned making waffles on release days so everybody loves you so waffles are kind of a cool tradition that we have here at Arena I think one of our other producers Marc Davis started it a long time ago on living world yeah so here's a picture of that this is one of our most recent releases that we did I think this is a four Episode six so back like like I said early on living world days Marc just wanted to give back to the teams for all the hard work that they did and we could have ordered catering or you know whatever but he wanted to really give back so he brought in a couple of waffle irons and just started making waffles for the team and it kind of evolved from there and so it's a fun thing that the production team does now for the teams every release we have of course in classic producer fashion turned it into big organized production we have a Kanban board that we make now to have everyone's tickets for waffle orders come in and we expedite everything we have a producer that like writes names on plates and then we have a line of producers that make waffles and then we email people automatically as they get done and then they they all come in so it's like a really well-oiled machine now so everybody really looks forward to waffle day it's in the same system as our bugs right yeah it's like kind of a sneaky way of getting everyone in the studio to learn how to use our bug workflow system so if you can learn how to like put in a waffle order you can learn how to burn down a bug so it's kind of like a practice session I think that started in season two yeah into a living world I could be wrong it has been it has been super awesome to see how it evolved because I remember way back when it was like two different kinds of waffle batter I think in a picture and you just took a post-it note and you wrote your name on the poster note and you stuck it to the plate and put it on the bottom of the stack and came back later to see if it was done and now it's like yeah you just you order it from your desk and you get like a status update on your waffle and the whole but you guys have turned it in this incredible thing and evidently a teaching tool which I have no idea about the end of it yeah we go through a lot of iteration we even have like retrospective meetings after talk about ways we can improve the waffle process more chocolate chips like very like we're serious about the waffle process but you know what it has applications in other things doesn't feel like a waste of time learning experience too for like when I started as a producer that was one of the very first things I learned at ArenaNet was my second day at the studio was a release day and a part of my training they were like it's a waffle day here you go this is your introduction to production you're like where am I yeah they're like this is how you're gonna learn how to use JIRA this is how you're gonna meet everyone in the studio this is how you're gonna learn how to be a producer here and I'm like okay and they're going to be incredibly happy when you see that yeah everywhere I go now I'm gonna take that with me that's hilarious Len how to make waffles then we can make games I need to work on this I think I told you everyone my secret I need to everyone make it better and hope it still works something you know the thing is our producer a lot of times he orders them for us he's just like in our pod yelling who wants what so I'm sorry we also accidentally circumvented your sister well you know pretty sure I think it's more efficient because we're always really busy on release days that's you know that's how it works yeah sorry about that well-oiled machine so we were talking about player encounters too I feel like I should take us out of the studio because we've been rhapsodizing for about waffles for like what five minutes now as much as we love them have you guys had good player encounters like in in or out of game either one but that's the part that is the most fun for me is getting to talk to players and hear how much they love the game especially when they find out that we're in game and start whispering us or if we run into them in public players have been just amazing they're always like hey what would you thank you cheers you know I mean and I loved the game thanks and then they're like very quickly on their way and like they just go back to their thing like yeah it's been a great experience they car community's arguably like the best community that a game could have it's it's really cool we've been talking but several of us just got back from Gamescom we were walking around the show floor and we were talking about this in the office over the past couple of hours just in various meetings Mike Z and I were having lunch with a couple of players at Gamescom and we there was just like two or three guys that we were arranging to meet up with and once we got settled down and we were eating Mike was like hey why don't you just tweet real quick here's where we are in case there are any other players that are around here that might want to come by and say hi I was like okay and it was just my it was just my personal account which is you know not a huge thing like the guild wars to account but I felt weird doing that officially you know it's like hey we're sitting on the floor eating crepes come talk to us I was like you know we're eating and if anybody wants to come by and we thought you know maybe if there's two or three people around they might we were there for five hours and like somebody estimated from pictures flying around on Twitter later that like 200 players came by oh wow and it wasn't even like oh talking you know oh we're going to talk to Mike see which I think everybody did because he's amazing and manages to talk to every single person but they were just talking to each other they were coming by in big groups and bonding over our game oh that's so cool and it's not - and huge thanks also to the gamescom crew for not throwing us out because we have taken over like a significant chunk of floor and we were just sitting there all afternoon that's so cool yeah a huge surprise because that's like I said we expected maybe five six other people to happen by and it was probably a couple hundred all afternoon but that is that's the great thing about our players they were just bonding with each other over our game and how much they loved it yeah it's it's a neat thing to get to talk to him it's really refreshing because we're you know we're all in here minimum 40 hours a week and you can get that tunnel vision about just you know get the job done and get the job done and talking to them helps us remember oh yeah if we're do this because we love it ridiculously and so did these people that we're doing this for yeah I'm sure you must have felt like so motivated and like I don't know like because like you said you can get tunnel vision right and you and your focus and you're passionate about your work but like there's nothing like a bunch of fans maybe coming up - you're talking you mean like thank you you know I love what you do you've I've done this or like it the game is MIT this to me or whatever like that that's inspiring that's motivating that's really cool and even just sitting back for a while I was just sitting back and not even really chatting with anybody mostly because I was losing my voice at that point but listening to them talk to each other and just share different experiences in game and make plans to do stuff is extremely extremely cool awesome yeah it was it was really really fun so do you guys want to talk about different content that you've worked on or participated in that is especially you over well your time at Guild Wars - what some of your favorite toward me and it's like I I it doesn't I started here about a month month and a half after launch and I have been involved in every release that has gone out that had vo in it so every living world every expansion that's me you know I've been on all of them so there's I'm just kind of off on the side waiting for everything to be ready enough for me to take it down to Burbank and and you know have the actors do their their things with the amount of vo we have that's a lot yeah I I did the math recently and and I've been involved in recordings for almost a hundred thousand lines of EO yeah thank you so much because existing especially running down there so regularly but it really it really really makes a difference yeah it's we're trying really hard to you know keep that personal touch on the vo not just hand it off to a company and be like here you deal with the mass you know we're I'm I'm in the meetings table reads everything with the designers the right and trying to get a sense of what the content is so that when we get in the studio we can have you know convey that to the actor and the actor can bring the characters a lot of yeah and you guys do you want to talk a little bit about the table reads that we do here because I mean that's that's cool that's a cool element that makes sure we all know the content yeah I know what's going on before we go down for every recording once we've had the vo deadline we we sit down in a table in a room with the designers and the writers just reading the content out loud making sure that we understand okay is this in combat or is this you know like a one-on-one conversation what's going on in this scene and reading it out loud just to see like is it even possible to say this because holy cow is the word mists hard to say in the middle of conversation we have to run to the mists that ts sound it's it's frustrating but yeah that one that one we can't change the name stuck but trying to say okay well I've tripped over this word too many times let's rewrite the sentence so that it it's it sounds better and it's not so hard to say yeah and now I'm thinking of ok now the word mists now shout it in combat are you being punched in the gut good luck those know how that works out I didn't combat your being punched in the gut we're gonna do this yeah yeah yeah give him all that all that background context that we can and I'm sure the actors appreciate okay I figured this out before we brought it down to you yeah and that you're there and can help with it that's like you said that personal touch yeah giving them the the notes okay this is what's going on in the scene this is the subtext this is you know how you know can you read it a little bit more angry can you can you make it sound a little happier can you hit this word a little harder to to give it the right emphasis yeah so it's I mean it's I I'm honestly looking at you a little bit surprised because I feel like you've been around forever way before lunch and you said that about oh yeah Monday after lunch of what that's it yeah how did we survive I'm almost in my five years and I honestly don't know it makes me sad a little to egotistic no you deserve it I have been the one woman vo team here for quite some time you have worked super super hard yeah and our vo deadlines are constantly being moved constantly getting iterations like that's no joke yeah you're wrangling cats I am yeah I don't think they're via living world episode that we would have been able to ship without talking to Eve so props to you for all you've done well what about you guys what is some of the what are some of your favorite content that you've been involved in I mean I really enjoyed working on season three I came in about around Episode three and I just think it's been a really great experience driving towards this path of fire announced it's been really exciting it's really awesome that we've had this momentum going into this expansion oh man yeah so it's been a really crazy experience just to be hitting all these releases very strong and then on the release of episode six to turn around and be like surprise again yeah so that feels really good and it feels really good to see that just a response that the fans have given us for everything it just feels really good to like just be doing the one-two-three punch with all the content we've been putting out so well I'm not a content creator myself it feels really good as a producer to be able to help the teams get their cadence on time and and and I know that we set these milestones and they feel challenging while we're in development but to get this payoff at the end and see the rewards at the end it feels really good yeah so it makes it feel all worth in then so it's been a really amazing experience yeah alright you Clayton without telling too many secrets yeah so one of the secret I've already gotten thrown out on a reddit which I was proud of it because as a player I always loved when developers would do this we managed to put a specific warthog meerkat and lion you know there's me and a couple designers one they were just like this would be such a great idea we love finding little like nuggets of that like throughout the world and so we definitely put it in a couple more that people haven't found yet so I'm excited to see if you'll see it but that like is as small as it is is really rewarding to see the fans reaction it being like you know thanks for thanks that little like like little nugget of fun that we found I forgot that that was you to put that in there and that weekend so many players right we're grabbing screenshots of that and like tweeting them at us and posting it on our Facebook page and showing I found this I found this and oh my gosh they stopped at the bugs guys yeah so nice work on that thank you you guys this is who you think for good putting the lion in the warthog and meerkat in there Sarah Sparrow was also part of that like she was G with I wasn't gonna do it she's apt to do it I was like hey Koko Sarah yeah probably her too but yeah well that kind of that kind of fits my next question about what some content that's in the game because of you that wouldn't otherwise be there and you told me you didn't have an answer but I thought of something that I don't know if you know or not oh man sous chef SEMA rocks born Sivir Seymour Knox born man he is an npc in the game and he has a lot of voice lines and one of the things he talks about is how much he loves Tuesdays because that's wall day oh yeah Tuesdays are great because those are the days we get waffles that's amazing yeah I love that yeah we're gonna give you credit like tied in yeah there you go yeah and that was I love we have a lot of little like ArenaNet in jokes here they're hiding in there and I remember seeing that one in thinking okay that's that's kind of Awesome there's another one about I think he talks about how mondays are hard because there's so many meetings are like everybody in one room talk about everything yeah that would be fantastic could we just like have a huge company meeting every Monday where if that's an airing of the grievances just be shouting for two they are they are productive meetings but mondays are yes that's their jam-packed yes there's and this morning was super fun because the whole time I'm like looking at my watch going oh you guys I got I gotta get ready for this thing we gotta go so well there's a whole like Kanban process scritch the storm was yeah I remember them that was that was Rachel Robinson and Troy Baker really yeah doing that those the story Wizards are trying and trying to build a ship in a cave yeah are they good at scrum or no no there are all kinds of scrum in jokes just like you know what it's been a long [Laughter] no the ship they're building is upside down yeah upside down and a cave and yet okay I mean how are you gonna flow to ship upside down a cave out of the cave while they're trying to resource water but the waters but backlog they have a stand out but nobody comes I don't like one dude comes and they're he's like where's the others the others are busy yeah yeah it's it's pretty fantastic we'll have to show it to you later yeah you guys hope to showing so all right well thank you guys very very much for helping us celebrate five years yeah and it sounds like lunch is happening so I will let you go I have to go grab the last of the food will show you the waffle guy and the upside down ship later I know I love seeing stuff like that alright thank you guys and happy fifth anniversary yes guys we'll be back shortly hey everyone my name is McLean Timur and I'm the composer here at ArenaNet and today I wanted to take you behind the scenes to look at the recording session we did for the music for living world season 2 everyone at the studio has been working really hard to make sure the game is improved for living world Season 2 and one of the things I've wanted to do for a long time is record the music with a live orchestra so this past May we went to Germany and recorded at the Carl Philippe Emanuel Bach concert house just outside of Berlin and it sounded amazing for living world season two we wanted to do something distinct and cool that would match the new content we recorded a lot of new music that relates to the new creatures locations in the situations you find yourself in as a player and for people who've been listening you might recognize some themes that we introduced in past living world releases each of the zones in Guild Wars 2 has a very clear musical palette and I wanted to do the same for what's coming up in season 2 I think what we recorded matches the aesthetic already set in Guild Wars 2 and I also think that it stands on its own is something unique and fresh this was my first time working with a live orchestra for the game and I was really nervous about writing music that would do it justice but the orchestra was incredible and they did an amazing job bringing it to life and it's been a dream come true hearing my music played by a live orchestra I think it really succeeds in elevating Guild Wars 2 when you hear live music as you're playing you feel it on a much more visceral level [Applause] thanks a lot for taking a look at the music you'll hear in season two and thanks for listening I'll see you in the game [Applause] you something like that that was take one Oh terrible I'm just warming up okay i above the coniferous tree tops some ten miles east of Seattle Washington rest a modest video game developer doing big things ArenaNet made their mark with the release of Guild Wars and now with the announcement of Guild Wars 2 MMO fans are more excited than ever so in an effort to extend their gratitude ArenaNet invited their biggest fans on our exclusive in-depth tour of their brand-new studio it's amazing this beautiful beautiful studio the structure of how they've got it set up is is kind of akin to how they're trying to structure their MMOs as well ArenaNet founder mike o'brien gave fans an intimate look into the various departments that make up the studio including the design department cinematics animation and the audio department you can't fake a crowd you know the only way to do it is to record a crowd so you guys are actually gonna be helping us out quite a bit fans were surprised when the audio team requested their help to record sound effects for upcoming Guild Wars 2 levels alright let's try it ready and the audio team was surprised that their award-winning performance [Applause] so you're acting or you're just getting caught up in the moment it's perfect yeah after a successful recording session everyone migrated to the usability lab to play the latest build of Guild Wars 2 while the players tried out dungeons and underwater combat the developers were by their side giving them tips and answering questions the tour ended with fans and ArenaNet employees hanging out in the kitchen common area over good food and cool drinks of course it was a blast and you got to see so much of how this game is done and they're bringing the community closer together they've bringing the employees closer together I think it really will reflect in how good was to wielded played and how it will look like ArenaNet is providing a fresh new look to the entire structure of MMOs and I'm blown away with what they've got to offer [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right now that we've all died from cute that's a really good way to make sure that your segments start with everyone smiling I know well except that we were all literally sitting here going so I actually like the video before it I thought there were really cool people [Laughter] yes and we hired so many I'm sure really glad that we have that scream forever you know I I feel like Ramon did not care at that point he was really into it so thank you guys all for joining for the last segment of our fifth anniversary livestream and congratulations on five years I will have you guys introduce yourselves real quick and your closest so you captured I'm Connor I'm a Content designer on path of fire so I will be dodging around the things that I'm working on today you the dodge dodge has not been disabled I'm on the brand and marketing team I'm Aaron and I'm on the living world team designer awesome so we've been starting with some of your favorite work stories sure I mean I know that mostly other stories were about people getting physically injured unfortunately not to have I do not have one okay so anyone who's looking for more bloodshed is going to be disappointed my story is about one of another co-worker who's he's come come by frequently but he's he's he really ramped up a lot of paths fire-type King he's a writer yeah ty and in my story specifically about ty Kings desk which it's worth the story obscures yeah so ty he starts and you know his desk is normal for a little while and I don't know but what well at some point he changed it so his monitors were tilted like this so he has these two monitors that shelf like this and he just works normally like all the work programs are at an angle and he's like just does his head slightly tilted aside and like you know you just walk by it you feel slightly disoriented every time and finally like uh finally like rook seal or like tie like what's up with your monitors and he's like well you know I just I just like it like that and then I think because he knew that people were definitely paying to his debt paying attention to his desk he started to escalate dramatically so hands came later spoilers I mean it began with like is his background changed to a Windows 98 like startup screen yeah so behind it looks like he's using ancient software he and then later his screensaver was like something that his son made he said was like it's a bunch of people going down an escalator it was actually a screensaver designed for his slanted monitor so he was committed and then one day you know he stayed like that for a little bit and then one day I come in and his desk is covered in like those modelling hands like yeah yeah and they're not only like not only others like hanging on lamps and they're like on the ground and there's one hanging from the ceiling on a chain that's holding like his hat well sure as you do yeah yeah and and III Govan I asked him and I has this one of the things about ty is he's he has this very deadpan delivery and so he just goes I just want one person in the room to have been like oh my gosh we're like and that's why the office is now covered in hands and I'm also a little sad that when you asked like why what's up with your monitors he was like what yeah acted like there was nothing I mean he's yeah he's moved upstairs now and I went up there recently and now he has like a giant Lego like backboard to his desk as well so it's continued it hasn't stopped and I'm sure like by the time in the next year is gonna consume the entire office somehow like we will all be assimilated into Ty's desk like the Borg yeah that's some commitment but I all right somebody topped that I don't know if I can top that probably my favorite thing we've done around here was this would've been last November we had a Pokemon Sun and Moon tournament in the office and I was super proud of myself because I came in second to last but yeah the best part of it was the person who had organized it one of the engineers here actually built a WWF belt with a giant pokéball they I don't know who has it now because I dropped but it's been going around there's pictures somewhere but yeah it's a full size like WWF belt but it's got the building I wish we could have gotten watching the stream in the office this is the one scenario where you are free to kick down the no no oh my gosh sorry you were saying was my favorite work stories involve a lot of profanity yeah in fact one of my first things that I ever did at ArenaNet was I was responsible for helping build out a word filter for I don't remember if it was Facebook or something but we need to populate it and I thought like surely surely I know a lot of swear words so I I thought so too I was very surprised it took a while and I put down you know all the offensive terms I could think of and pass it over to Dave Campbell who was and he was like oh sit down honey the list had like quintupled in length Dave Dave is a good writer Dave knows lots of work he knows many many words but one of my favorite things about my job is so I'm on the marketing team and whenever there's titles or something like episode titles don't tend to get a ton of scrutiny you know for the most part those come kind of from the narrative team and we're like yeah that doesn't sound weird it's you know it does it have to do with a fiery release great you called it a members or whatever like awesome we love that but expansions get a little more scrutiny and heart of thorns we obviously lucked out it was a great expansion name and hot is a great acronym pacifier went through a lot of name iteration like so much name iteration just meetings with narrative and us and story and then you know different groups of people maybe if we only have these three people in the room they'll have different ideas and we'll put these other people in a different room and they'll have their own ideas and so once we had a bunch of candidates we would sit down as kind of a marketing team and go okay like which ones have really really offensive acronyms there was one where the acronym was BS right maybe we don't want our expansion to stand for being like maybe that's not what we want so we had a shortlist of probably 50 names and we're going through them and going okay like these ones have pros and cons for story stuff and then they have pros and cons for how they shorten and I don't remember what the actual proposed name was but the initials on it were DTF meeting with like the you know CFO of the company and my boss and my boss's boss and like 15 other people going we can't use that and my boss is like well why not what does DTF mean and everyone's just consider going no no no like well it's my time to shine means he was like oh I admire your bravery so much because like we're all just like well I was like look how elaborate of a metaphor and we none of us even had like an entire word I think it was just a lot of noises and she was yeah it was exactly it was my time to shine and yeah it was once that bomb was dropped all right let's let's not do that because gosh I don't I don't remember what the name was I just remember the horror something to ask what does that mean and having to explain oh gosh this is this is an awkward gathering of people you know what you were the brave one there's the leadership you're on livestream to all our viewers and there's like some kind of statute of limitations there when now we could talk sure it's been a Wilder I think that's probably fine so how about player encounter we didn't swear I almost every player encounter I've had in the wild I guess ya know I read the bus and I have an ArenaNet backpack and so yeah I get fairly frequently on the bus and it's always you know nice great yeah it's it's super fun but it's definitely there there are times where you know like I'm not super prepared to meet people and you know it's unfortunately I wish I had one where somebody like went crazy and you know what just talking to people in random situations like that is I think so much fun for also the players oh yes oh my gosh I just on the bus and yeah I've seen especially the last bus before it comes to the park and right across Larry it's like ArenaNet backpacks ahoy yeah yeah we're all like getting on there and it's just yeah and I'm sure any players you've told them all they're like the bus so I am undercover I'm gonna the actual game because I'm not good enough at the game yet that I want people to know that like actually work on it which means that I get a lot of like I get a lot of things where I'm running around and someone is like talking about like things that they probably have just directly asked me about if I was there that's fine it is kind of fun I remember I remember the specific weddin was like I just gotten hired and I'm like I need to like familiarize myself with all the content again so I created like a safari and I was playing through the starting area killing fireflies or whatever um and these players are having this talk that was like oh I'm like this is really nice I'm talking about like you know how good or Rena net is listening to feedback and they're going on and on about that and then the conversation takes a sharp right turn where they start like complaining about how ArenaNet is you know yeah they're generally on the bus but for some reason they just don't get that people want mounts and this was like way like either one of the first things I learned pumping when I was like you're on path of fire here's the big feature its mouth so I'm like I'm just I'm like I'm just gonna keep killing fire in my sleep yeah I don't think just ignore this thing but this is this has occurred to me multiple times playing this game like with my friends as well they were like yeah like enjoy moving around but I just wish them out so I'm like yeah you know it's development time all things takes priority there is there is a thing word that I don't know it's it's difficult when I was talking to some players about this last weekend that is so hard when there's so much stuff that we can't say yes and setting aside a thing where we were talking about earlier where it's you're trying to remember is this a thing that we've said you've always got that split second of hesitation have we announced that yet yeah have we said that publicly yet but things that you know we haven't announced publicly and they're like gosh I wish we had mounts and you're going meanwhile I'm running around like pressing the X key like and you're so glad you're not tagged up right yeah it is it is a super it can be a super frustrating situation and I think you and I have talked about this when we announced heart of thorns at pack South I was talking to a group of players right the announcement was over and we were all just chatting and I was saying we've known about this for so long and it is such you I can't explain to you guys what a relief it is to be able to talk to you about this it just it feels so good to be able to say this expansion is coming and it's just it's it's been so hard and one of them immediately goes so what's the elementalist elite specialization and I looked at it when I went ten seconds ten seconds is how long you let me have that there's I mean there was a very simple thing to Choya like everyone on that everyone on the path of fire dev team loves the Troy and we love them forever and they there's kind of this thing where there's oleate they went from just being like a regular mob to like something we featured in more and more stuff and so when that when pacifier shows up and they're just in a single shot of the trailer and people seized upon them and was like these things are amazing looking like it was extremely gratifying that like we didn't even need to point them out like they immediately love the same thing that we had like yeah attached ourselves to one little random mob that inadvertently turns into the mascot I don't know I mean there are a lot of really cool things that we've put into path of fire the sand sharks are yes hysterically funny to me for some reason I don't know how many people got tossed into the air in the in the preview weekend but they kind of delight me just for that reason just like sit back in the corner and just watch people find out the hard way that they do so do you guys want to talk a little bit about some content that you've worked on in the past few years or that you've been involved in the geologic I so one of the first things I made here was the scrit area in ember Bay and I've got actually I've been looking a lot of the stuff I've worked on has been really fun because it marks also and tobey's and whatnot but yeah the the script one and the the stone dwarf head that that whole thing in there like I have a soft spot for all of that I think that yeah the scrit are a lot of fun anyway and they brought their and doing the the sort of I did I worked on both of the instances with fake Lazarus yeah and talking about like like giving stuff away and whatnot I remember doing the guild chat for Episode two at that point I knew Lazarus was and the entire time I'm like that's definitely a mistake I had made in real life but yeah really fun and I loved the the dwarf head and the little random thumb was yeah it's it's a good touch in the game though I mean we've always talked about how you can tell when the devs are having fun with their content yeah and it carries over to those yeah that's it's good that you're having fun with it yeah so I have shipped about eleven words to the live game and I'm very proud of those eleven words they win the special event UI like a year and a half ago so I made an official game but most of what I've done obviously has lived kind of outside of the game it totally counts yeah and and it's really hard to point to specific things because we tend to be a little more of a team effort for the stuff that I worked on but I remember I joined the first thing that I wrote release highlight content for was dragon bash and that was when we were in just this like runaway rail cart of of a content release cadence yeah so the cadence of time was a week before a release we would put out the release highlights then the release would come out then the next week we're putting out the next releases highlights and a couple releases after dragon bash was the Queen's Jubilee and then clockwork chaos and I'm like getting ready to write the clockwork chaos release highlights and I was like hang on we're gonna put out a week before scarlet shows up that scarlet showing out like this see I like it's gonna be a bit of a weird thing for players like supposed to be the surprise attack how is it gonna be surprised and for literally being like so screwed let's turn up and so that was when we came up with the kind of idea of the kind of bait and switch released highlights page where we set up the Queen speech and sounded like a release but not you know as good as the actual release and then slowly de faced it over time because I basically went when I was like I can't write release highlights for this like yeah how do you be like hey there's a surprise attack on lion's arch coming next week get ready and so that was one of the first times that we started kind of as a marketing team to go like Oh like how can we kind of play with player perception of this and started to be fully cognizant of what kind of the story meant in terms of making sure that we were prioritizing player experience yeah ruining it for them yeah yeah I obviously can't talk about much we stud the demo stops just short of content I worked on I work on that chap I've one of the chat my chapters is the one immediately after the demo content but I will say there's a lot of attention to detail and fun little stuff and pacifier because I mean we we gave ourselves the time to put in a lot of things so and I think a lot of them people won't find for a while there's one thing I will say that people might not be on the alert for is there are some instances of subtle things changing in the open world as a result of what you've done in story in vice-a-versa so and well we'll just see how much of that people find it you have like what three and a half weeks I'm sure they'll find it like the rest don't throw up all right now I'm super super curious it's mainly it did I have to backtrack this now so it it's mainly really minor like Easter Egg II like flavor you know what's a little Easter Egg Easter Egg flavored things are the fun ones those are the fun things yeah so that makes it hard for me to ask about like little things that are in the game because you put them there I mean you're fun you'll find there's a bunch there's a bunch and throughout the entire thing I mean Connie and and Matt and myself and and Jason and everybody of theirs there's just a ton of Jeff Jeff worked on this long sequence that I think people are going to really I really enjoy it but I mean I could say that about anybody's content so I should just stop well and that's exactly like she said it's a team effort pretty much across that board I mean everybody's put in so many cool things yes I am kind of curious about your eleven words though right yeah oh it was just it was remember that it was when we had the special event UI for the heart of thorns announcement and we had to like make sure that it didn't break the fourth wall so it was like tune in for it we couldn't even say tune in because that was too modern it was like join us for an announcement oh yeah we're serious futures that's right the whole heart of thorns announcement experience was oh my god it was magical it was an experience that I will never forget I was we were talking about that over the weekend with some players I was like ugly crying at the side of the auditorium the whole time and I noticed there was like a camera guy panning around I was like don't do it don't do it I am this is not a color I like and there's a lot of eye makeup running right now and it's it's not okay and like my shoulders are shaking but I would not have changed anything it was it was pretty great the path fire announcement was amazing in the same way I was talking to a couple of players from Spain this weekend they were live streaming there they were live streaming their reactions when we announced about the wire and they were saying that they were they just started screaming when we announced the lunch date and it was you know it was exactly what I hoped for yeah that was a really fun moment here because I was in this room actually helping kind of push the buttons to make sure that we were streaming in all four languages simultaneous thank you so we're kind of closed away it was like marking myself and a couple other people pushing buttons and I was really focused on the mechanics of it cuz obviously you don't want to like push the wrong button and like so I'm like really focused on like watching the countdown that was going on three two one okay push this button and it didn't really click for me that like our announcement was now live until I'm hear this roar from the fifth floor because we had everybody up there watching and everyone up there is just losing their minds because the announcement started in it like it's sunken for me that and that like oh this is happening this isn't just me pushing a button this is us sharing this with everybody now I had that at my desk too because we were getting the videos out on our social media channels every time I was like hey and mounts and you know the crystal desert and Ramon and Stephanie and I we're all we're like back and forth you know okay German videos out French videos out Spanish video and my hands were shaking so hard that I was scared I was going to push the wrong button - and hey we just tweeted the English video on the Spanish Channel and it was the same thing I know that roar that you're talking about everybody was screaming and I just froze and yeah it was it was pretty much great so besides webby what's the thing that's in the game because of you Oh both of my dogs that we saw pictures of earlier are in Fire Island cute there's a researcher and there's it's like because all the script pirates have weird they're like second-to-the-last to the third mate boughs is short for Bowser probably the only two likely personal things yeah webbie's there and I saw your dog's name and I still didn't put it together oh yeah oh just now that is awesome yes so cool that you get to do that yeah so that's they've yeah I think you ever run into somebody who's like oh you named your dog after this one thing for this name like no it's the other way around no I know that that big of characters I actually technically my dog is a canonical part of the Star Wars universe now because I worked on the Star Wars game that is well thank you guys so much for being part of our fifth anniversary celebration thank you thank and we have I was just looking at the clock and realizing gone on for a while but it deserves it can I turn one question on around on yield let's find out I want to know what your favorite employee story is okay yeah cause like you run these live streams I was curious if there's been like what is your favorite like thing [Laughter] mark is laughing because of how unprepared I am or are you laughing because you're thinking of something mark you want to come out oh no no we're not telling about that no but you know what he did if we're not gonna tell that story but he did remind me of on the heart of thorns launch livestream when Hugh made me play the jelly bean game anymore the jelly bean game bean is it called bean boozled I think so there's this game where you there's a hair in my face there's this jelly bean game where you take a spinner and you pick a jelly bean color and there's this big box of jelly beans and like it might be pear or it might be boogers it was horrible and so Hugh brings it to the launch livestream and he sits down and you know I mean we're well into the night I've been doing this for like what three hours now and and just like I don't want to play this and he's now come on try it and I was like all right let's see what happens I did not get pear so we're live and I just like mate I made this the worst face I have ever made and I just spat it into my hand like I've stopped myself like this massive awful and I have like doubled over and just it looked like I was about to be sick and Hugh is dying it's the funniest thing that's ever happened to him in his entire life and I'm pretty sure gifts were made that day and so not sorry was the thing yeah that was I mean that's probably exactly what he was hoping for yeah I think it was pretty much what everybody flavors anything in that box tasted good but then we went to packs the next year and we saw that like that game at the top of an escalator had a huge booth at PAX and I just almost turned around went right back down no no no and they had they were like yeah you can totally have it play if you want to but I wait I do not want to lost so yeah it was it was funny that's the best thing I can say in the yard stare it was I don't play the game so yeah there's mine I'm sure there's others but mark was laughing so hard that that's the one that I immediately thought of you know what I do have a player encounter story that I want to tell that was pretty much awesome and it was the essence of what I absolutely loved better player base at our packs party a year or two ago at the bars I forget the name of even though were there every year thank you at Green Bears it was like getting to the end of the night and you know how tired we are at that point and I was like okay we're almost done I have a drink ticket and I'm just gonna get a cocktail and I ran into a player and she was like I didn't get any drink tickets okay here's my drink ticket and then I was like okay you know what I'm just gonna pay for a drink at this point I don't you know we're closing up in like 15 minutes I don't have to drive so I'm gonna have a cocktail I almost make it to the bar and my hand touches the edge of the bar and somebody taps me on the shoulder and it was just like and I turned around and it was a player and I you know so I'm like hey what can I do for you and I'm thinking and she's just I don't know she looked very serious and I was like uh-oh something's gone wrong it's okay I will fix it but I'm so tired I went to cry and she said I just saw your staff shirt and I wanted to tell you I just wanted to see an ArenaNet staff person and tell them thank you because I had surgery less I had major surgery last year and I was bedridden for six months and Guild Wars 2 was my connection to the outside world and it was the thing that kept me sane while I was stuck in bed and and it was I you know playing with my guild and talking to my friends and now I'm like didn't want to drink some crying and she was like and I just wanted to know if I can hug you and that was that right there was like okay this is exactly why I do this yeah so it was it was absolutely perfect so thank you and she was she was much better and she was in really good health and good enough to come out and party so that was the perfect ending to the evening for me did you get your drink I didn't want one no I was I just sat there chatting with her for a while and then it was time for cleanup and it's like you know I feel about a million times better right now yeah so yeah that was that was awesome and I love every single encounter like that so thank you guys very very much thank you let you guys get back to work and thank you guys for spending a couple of hours with us to help us celebrate five years we will see you next time on guilt they all powerful Elder Dragons and woken from their slumber corrupting the land of Tyria now heroes from the five great races of Tyria must set aside ancient rivalries to face the Elder Dragons together or die apart enter the world of Guild Wars to a vast realm of great beauty and terrible danger from the frozen Shiverpeaks to the steaming megumi jungle to the wonders of rata soon Terry earth cries out for Heroes will you answer the call your Guild Wars character from the five playable races the humans on noble crowd race surrounded by enemies which are masters of warfare and conquest the Norn heroic shapeshifters from the frozen north the Asura beings of small size and great intellect the sylvari a mysterious new race of plant people after selecting your race you'll choose from eight professions each with their own special abilities warriors experts with long range and close quarters weapon range elementalists spellcasters who harness the elements to defend and destroy rangers versatile adventurers who rely on deadly aim and loyal animal companions necromancer's practitioners of the forbidden arts of death engineers ingenious inventors who create hopeful gadgets and lethal devices Mesmer's magical duelists who wield illusion and deception like weapons guardians defenders that protect their allies and smite their enemies thieves agile masters of stealth who strike from the shadows when you're ready you will enter Tyria a massive ever-changing world filled with stunning vistas fantastic creatures and dynamic event because these dynamic events evolve and change depending on the actions and players like you each time you log in you can find something new your heroic journey continues in the chapters of your own personal story this unique customizable adventure changes and branches with every choice you make no two players will have the same experience take up arms and engage in intense hard-hitting combat against a vast range of fits and adversaries dodge out of the way of incoming attacks combine forces with other players to deliver devastating combo attacks take advantage of environmental weapons and commandeer siege weapons you can even challenge your fellow players in competitive player vs. player matches or wage war against hundreds of other players in epic world vs. world that Guild Wars 2 it's a living breathing fantasy world a deeply customizable role-playing experience innovative gamer and intense combat all with no subscription fee Guild Wars 2 oh yeah it is time or we'll send the jungle dragon we serve did commander there's something I have to tell you I went into the mists after my sword but I found something else refugees are pouring in from Alona if he kills an elder dragon tyria will have I cannot stand above this horse right I just can't can you believe one of the guards gave up on us
External links[edit]
- "Guild Wars 2 - Get Ready" trailer on ArenaNet's official channel on YouTube
- "Guild Wars 2 - Teaser Trailer" on ArenaNet's official channel on YouTube