State of the Game (and the main GW site)

I've been saying this for a while but I feel the need to say it again: the quality of editing on the main Guild Wars site (http://www.guildwars.com/) has been exceptionally poor lately. I say this not because I expect every writer of every article to have perfect punctuation and grammar, but because I already know - as Gaile Gray has posted - that professional editors are checking all articles before they are uploaded to the site. This isn't a post about a poor job on the part of the writers, whose job it is to create content. This is a post about a poor job on the part of the editors, whose job it is to make sure all content is edited properly.

Case in point: yesterday's State of the Game article. I don't know if this item was rushed or whether the editing process was skipped entirely, but there are things in that article that even Microsoft Word would catch, ranging from misspellings to multiple punctuation marks to missing words. The description of "The Crag" arena at the very end of the Random Arena section is a veritable minefield of editing errors, including things like "killsin 3minutes" and "akillA" and the seemingly ubiquitous double punctuation.

I understand that in online communication where time is of the essence misspellings will occur, and a lot of us read or use "unedited" language in the game itself. But official content from the company that releases this game, content that isn't subjected to the same time constraints as in-game speech, should be held up to a higher standard.

I care about this game and I can't stand the thought that its main, official website contains errors. Neither can I believe it's good business, not with a "Contacts from journalists" email listed on the Support page. A few editing errors aren't something to base one's opinion of the whole game on, but a journalist who finds them on the site and then finds them again in the game might just give a less favorable review.

I'd like to give direct feedback about this issue, but there doesn't seem to be a "Site feedback" email on the Support page. Not knowing which email address to use, I've mailed my specific editing concerns with the State of the Game article to the "General Community Contact" address. I am, however, getting a bit discouraged, what with no feedback going the other way. Only a month ago Gaile Gray started a thread on this very forum devoted to anything we as players could spot in terms of things that needed fixing. The only thing there I know was fixed is the wording on Knights and Ascalon armor, because I can see that in update notes. If someone is fixing things we're noticing, I'd like to see it reported somewhere so I can give the people a hand for making Guild Wars better. If nothing is being done I'd like to know that too, so that I can enter my "angry customer" mode and try to rile the community up to do the same

What kills me most is that people are getting paid to prevent errors, and yet errors are so numerous. If we're getting tapped by ANet to help find them, I'd really like to know what's being done to fix and prevent them.

.....so the nit-picking syndrome has spread all the way from in-game to....what, the website?!?

Give them a break, they have many other stuff to do as it is.

It may not seem important but look at it this way. If they can't maintain a website then what does that say about their product quality? The best example of this was at the Dragon festival and how many bugs it had.

<<<begs for Arena Net to shape up

I will quote myself so that you all understand that however petty the OP might appear, there is a deeper problem to resolve. Product Quality.

The OP is absolutely right.

So there are so many important issues to solve that they cannot even check spelling anymore?

"Get over it" is not an answer, as is the hint that there are much more important issues. If they cannot meet common standards of language, they disparage themselves and their product. English is not my native language and I can see the numerous mistakes and typos, this is just unworthy.

Actually I agree with the OP here. I love the game personally and understand that people make mistakes, but as of late, it seems rather sloppy. Is it because of their increase of workload or are some people just slacking off? If it's the former, I would suggest some more employees and by the looks of it, with them employing people on the website, that is the case.

The workload is probably up and they dont have monthly subscription income, so frankly I think they are doing pretty good. I've worked as the sole designer and web person at places before and typically had more requests coming across my desk than I could even begin to prioritize, let alone accomplish. Managed somehow, but that's not an easy way to work. My hunch is its a similar case here. Not so much sloppy as it is maybe strecthed a bit thin.

While I agree in an ideal world they'd have enough staff to not push the workload quite to that point, there's probably not many people here who'd say take more resources out of game development so they could place more people on website management. Think I'd cut them a bit of slack and wish them well for the next couple months. When Nightfall is out, if it does well, it'll probably balance things a bit.

I really don't care about it, seeing as the article was not written by anyone who wrote or edited the game content.

I never "nit-pick" the punctuation and grammar of in-game conversation. What bothers me is when people expect substandard punctuation and grammar to "pass" on important things.

And how will that increase the quality of editing? I'm willing and able to help, and ANet has already asked us to, through Gaile Gray and that feedback thread she started.

This isn't the case of a single mistake. Unlike the recent issues of the Scribe, where the majority of the piece is properly edited and there are only minor editing errors most people miss or don't care about, the State of the Game article includes editing errors throughout its length. Besides, the fact is that instead of errors being present in a single article or a single NPC dialogue they're popping up all over.

If they're being fixed by ANet after they're posted in that feedback thread, I'd like to know so I could "get over myself" and "deal with it" by offering my appreciation to people who listen to the feedback and keep making Guild Wars better. So far, however, none of those errors have been fixed (since there have been no announcements to that effect).

To follow through, I just checked on a factual error that was present in the 07/13 issue of the Scribe, and it appears to have been fixed. Where originally Rotscale "made the eastern boarder of Kryta its home," the sentence has been changed to read "made the western boarder of Kryta its home." How is it that while changing "eastern" into "western" the editor didn't notice the word next to it?

Despite all the pretty graphics and the neat sound effects, computer games have not changed over the past 20 years as much as you'd think. The bulk of the information received by the user - in Guild Wars as well as many other games - is textual rather than visual. I highly doubt you base your selection of skills on their images rather than their textual descriptions, and unless you're a gaming prodigy I also highly doubt you have never looked at the descriptions and have only tested the skills to find out what they do and how they scale.

Likewise, the "storyline" part of Guild Wars has a "required reading" component. Quests, NPC speeches and even mission cutscenes are based on text more than on visuals, even if the last of the three is "dubbed." Mission objectives aren't always clearly or explicitly stated in the cutscenes, and often update with text boxes rather than cutscenes like the Tyrian bonuses.

But again, I can understand how things slip by and go unnoticed when they're put into the game and there is a ton of them. What I don't understand is how the official website for the company that hopes to attract new customers with said website can contain editing errors, both so many in an article and in so many articles. The State of the Game article is linked from the main page of the site, and is currently the top link in the "Latest News" section. Isn't it reasonable to think that someone new to the game might get turned off by the lack of editing, believing it to be an example of the quality of all the other text in Guild Wars? Of course they'd be proven wrong since the majority of Guild Wars text has been properly edited, but making a first impression only takes one look.

You are misreading me. Though I may disagree with certain decisions ANet has made, I continue to support the game. What I'm trying to point out is that there is sub-par performance on the part of someone over at ANet, someone who is being paid to edit things. Of course the volume of things to edit in the game has increased drastically (since GW is a textual game) with Factions and will continue to increase with Nightfall, but I would rather not see editing suffer because content has to be released by the deadline. If it's clear that the current staff of editors can't oversee all the content being released, hire more. If there are enough staff but errors are still present, someone isn't doing their job right and needs to get replaced. If you're paid to do something and you don't do it, you shouldn't keep getting paid. It's as simple as that, and doing otherwise is bad business.

The OP is absolutely correct. In any case where text is your primary form of communication, make sure basic spelling and grammar errors are taken care of. In-game chat and such is different, as communication in game is casual, but when an official article from ArenaNet is released, it should look professional.

ArenaNet seems to be doing everything half-assed. From the most recent implementation of character sorting (Why bother having a sorting feature if you have to resort your characters everytime you load the game? Not to mention the more obvious and desired forms of sorting are absent.), to the update notes (Has there been a patch yet that didn't include undocumented changes? Looking at the Patch Notes in GuildWiki, it doesn't happen very often.), to even small stuff like with the Dragon Festival's multiple Emperors.

An error once in a while is not a big deal, agreed, but this is much more than once in while. People are paid to do their jobs; it is not too much to ask that, at least once in a while, something gets done correctly the first time.

Yes, that's right, punctuation and symbol allocation means absolutely NOTHING in programing....

/sarcasm

I however, don't think A.Net's imploding or doing things poorly, I just don't want it to ever go that way.

Yes I see the grammatical mistakes on the website and just roll my eyes.

Instead of getting upset, I just play Guild Wars.

Whenever I start to fume and smoke because I am so terribly upset with a poorly edited piece of news or fiction, I immediately reach for my stress release valve.

I load into Guild Wars.

Editors have to check EVERYTHING. They're constantly being given new content to read over, and this won't end, until GW is on it's death bed/last chapter. Yes, they let an unnatural amount of errors through, but we don't know HOW MANY editors are on the payroll per language.

It also probably has a lot to do with how content is delivered to those different languages. I get the feeling EVERYONE sees exactly the same thing, but the computer changes what language it's in. This may mean the editors get together and decide what looks the best in all languages b/c there's no way around the complexity of English punctuation/grammar.

Again, I don't know how any of it's done, but I tend to cut Anet slack on that department.

So what will you do when you find poorly edited text in the game? Because it's only a question of when, not if, with all the editing errors that have been pointed out in that feedback thread Gaile Gray started.

The point is that the ANet editing team isn't performing as well as it could and should be. You may dismiss that as just my opinion, but then you have to come up with your own explanation of why there are so many editing errors both on the site and in the game.

mmm, it is true, Anet are not pulling out all the stops, but the reasons are fairly obvious. They cant constantly pool their resources into everything because they only get bursts of money every 6-12 months so they have to predict and pan out their expenditure over the course of the lack of income. This will lead to not-up-to-customer-satisfaction standards because Anet have to be weary, or they will do gown the drain.

That is the most asinine excuse that could possibly be given. ArenaNet chose a pricing method that worked for them. They weren't thinking "Hey, lets sell our game at a price that we know won't be able to support us!". Money is not the issue for them, and that means they are to be held to the same standards as any other video game development team. The only issue here is just plain ol' work ethic.

Fully agree. Writers do not develop the game, and it is their job to make a decent page.. I doubt they have better things to do.

lol, if ya can reed the article i aam not wooried abo0t itt.

Hmm, your very reply says a lot.

Since you quoted me, I will respond to your question.

What will I do? I will overlook the editing error and continue on with the game I am enjoying. While I understand your fervor, I do not share it.

all your base are belong to us

I fully agree with the OP. And yes, Anet needs to make sure that their product remains a quality product. Polish actually means a lot (which includes good script writing and voice-acting, btw, and making sure maps for pvp are bug-free).

More importantly, the article mentioned was not really worthy of being a state of the game article. Previously, these article tended to be quite interesting to the serious GvG player. Now they asked someone to put up a little guide to TA and RA especially. I am sorry, but I and many others like me have posted far better guides on guild-websites and (public) forums. The fact that Anet brushes off the fans with stuff like that does make me wonder whether the original inspiration and zeal is still there.

The grammar apocalypse is at hand! Repent!

Thank you for giving a concise, comprehensive, fair and intelligent answer to a question. Online forums could really use more posts like yours.

It is, and you better! I mean, it says so right on the poster board I'm wearing!

I gotta say, once you become a working stiff in something other than flipping burgers, professionalism says a lot about a company. While the editing, grammatical, and spelling errors might not prevent me from buying another game from them (there are several other things that WILL and very well could, but my opinions on these things have been shared in other threads), these sorts of things reflect on a company's management, vision, and quality.

I workin a quality field (a pharmaceutical manufacturing company where I am in QA), and these things are important to me. I agree with the OP and would just LOVE to see Gaile chime in in a thread like this. This is her company (figuratively), and to see such slop being thrown on to a site feature that she's hyped, one would think this should come to her attention.

Although I think the errors should be fixed and shouldnt have been there in the first place for a proffesional company, I think his point was that you can read and understand it. You know what he said even through the errors right?

I'm not serious about spelling, I make typos all the time due to lack of sleep and a average vocabulary, but if its your job/caree then it should be taken seriously. Otherwise people might start to think anet are very rushed.

It does give you that rushed feeling, and gives you a insight into how anet produce themselfs.

i think i will continue on playing in spite of the trauma.

a possible reaction of some is this.

*when in fear
when in doubt
find an error
scream and shout*

Find an error. One.

How many errors will it take until you start getting concerned?

Because at present, the number of editing errors isn't decreasing.

LOL, this is a joke.

Of course it is. Which is why ANet is paying people to edit articles on its website.

If ANet is taking it seriously enough for it to be a job, why shouldn't we care when the job isn't being done well?

Actually I wasn't meaning your post even though I might as well have been, but I'm talking about the nazi mods that keeps deleting my posts, if they have a problem with them they could at least PM me and tell me what the problem is.

But on subject again.

What's with the bolding stuff in all your posts?

And just because you won every spelling bee you ever competed in most people still don't think it's much (or any) of a problem that things are spelled wrong on the site - it's a simple game homepage, not some fancy business page.

I bold my main points so that people who skip over things can still get what I'm talking about.

I also bold things for emphasis

I've never competed in a spelling bee, and the only reason I've ever mentioned that I do editing for my college's literary magazine is because I hope my experience gives some validity to my statements.

I don't know how much more of a "fancy business" Guild Wars can become. Think about it: with 2 million copies of Prophecies and Factions sold, Guild Wars has brought in $100 million. Of course the actual numbers are lower because not all of the $50 you pay for the game goes directly to ANet - unless you bought the game directly from the NCSoft online store or the upcoming in-game Official Guild Wars store. I'd call any business that boasts a revolutionary revenue model, 2 million items sold and a huge fan following of their product a "fancy" one.

Guild Wars is ANet's business since it's (right now) the only ANet game. The Guild Wars website is the main advertisement for Guild Wars. I believe it should be held up to the "fancy business page" standards because it is very likely to be the first place incoming customers will look for detailed game information.

were you aware that everything you described belongs to NCSoft?

LOL

Run-on sentence

Has two subjects.

Should be.

-----

I've never competed in a spelling bee. The only reason I've ever mentioned that I do editing for my college's literary magazine is because I hope my experience gives some validity to my statements.

------

There goes your experience out the window LOL.

So instead of addressing the issue, you want to play the blame game?

Owned, yes. Operated? Hardly. ANet has its own team of game developers, quality assurance testers and even editors. ANet employees are listed separately from NCSoft employees on The ArenaNet Team page. If you complete Factions and stick around long enough in the Divine Path, you get to see game credits for Factions, which also list ANet employees separately from NCSoft employees.

While ANet is technically the property of NCSoft, my understanding is that the ANet team enjoys a considerable degree of autonomy, illustrated majorly by the fact that all other NCSoft games have a monthly subscription fee. Are you suggesting that ANet is nothing more than an adjunct of NCSoft, a "branch office" under direct and total control of the parent company with no input on how things are done?

Or are you telling me to take my concerns to NCSoft, because it's NCSoft's fault that editing errors are present on the Guild Wars website, and NCSoft will be more interested in hearing about them since it's the company that receives money from successful sales of the Guild Wars product? And therefore, as the business behind Guild Wars, NCSoft would care about how well the official website presents the game to potential customers where ANet would not?

From the multiple things I've read on the fansites and the main Guild Wars site, I believe that the ANet team is committed to constantly making Guild Wars better. Are you saying they don't because they don't have as much of a vested interest in Guild Wars as NCSoft does, because they're working for a paycheck and not a commission?

Unless you have the inside scoop on the degree of autonomy ANet receives from NCSoft and ANet's relative freedom in terms of regulating Guild Wars content both in the game and on the official website, why bring NCSoft into this?

I only hope that stating my experience gives my claims a degree of validity. I never claimed that degree would be absolute

Besides, am I getting paid to post in this thread? I wish!

i do not have the slightest idea what set you off on that tangent.

you made a list of Anet assets and i merely said that NCSoft is the owner of those stated assets as indeed Anet is

i was addressing the wealth of Anet assets listed as being NCSoft assets nothing more

It's nothing but disgrace on ANET's part that they decide to trot out shoddy workmanship. It's nothing but disgrace to the players that are constantly making excuses and explaining away ANET's behavior.

I think our little PR Rep's silence on this issue says enough.

So how does the fact that NCSoft owns ANet relate to the fact that the main Guild Wars website contains editing errors? I went off on a tangent to find a connection, since you didn't provide one.