Community report july 2014 to Arenanet

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_talk:John_Stumme

see future updates
tad bit newer than bristles' suggestion and I cant find the place its from either (bleh, cant remember where I saw it first )

Maybe the surprise was the live team leaving or quitting?

if my faulty memory can be trusted....it was something about the updates for halloween and such (cant find where I first found that quote)...but yeah, the surprise is on us, there would be no more updates

the interview is already prepared and sent, i can breathe again!

I hope we have good news (or at least not bad news). As soon as i know anything i'll let you know.

Thank you all for the feedback and for the hard work you have done preparing the questions!

#AUnitedGWCommunity

And thank you for taking the time to do this!

wow!
thanks again
and
good luck!!

Too bad we are late to sent a question about this absurdity:


https://forum.guildwars.com/forum/fo...s-on-July-16th


So Threads will not be visible unless they answer your question (i guess). We are getting just a refined tutorial from now on.

Can't get any worse.

It's a matter of time before they just pull the plug.

Would had been nice to ask about the current population of the game (numbers) seems they are already planning to shutdown support once for all.

guess we have the answer to many of our questions without having to ask them...(though I think we already knew this)

I'm still in time to include that question or modify the interview (although is already sent). But only for a few hours.

If you want to send me the question rebuilt and prepared, maybe i can do something! (this applies for anyone that would like some part of the interview rebuilt)

Izzy if you still can, please do it!

You are quite a catch aren't you haha

Personally I will not make any changes, but if you post some well-elaborated question that is worth doing, i'll try to see if we can include it or change any of the existing ones.

I have worked many hours on this interview, and after this last new, believe me, it doesn't deserve my time.

I'm not even playing Guild Wars at the moment, so a catch... catch... not really xDD. But i would come back if they revamp the game with F2P or other interesting stuff (PvP is unplayable!).

As much as i wanted too (write beautifully a well-written question) for the interview, the fact is that I can't.

English it's not my native language. So playing the "captain obvious" here i would try but still fail to deliver a proper/formal/grammar-nazi/acceptable question.

Not that i'm taking advantage of your goodwill but that's why i said "Izzy if you still can, please do it!" in the first place

Nevertheless if it's going to overload you, its fine in the way it is.

English it's not my native language too xD. So it's also hard for me!

I was planning to search someone who could translate the interview to French and German (or any other language that has its own GW community). But considering that there will be no relevant information, I think it will remain as it is.

At the moment the interview will be available in English and Spanish.

Sigh... i have some new information from the Community Manager:

Hi Izzy,

Before being able to answer the interview, would you mind to translate the questions to english? Firstly i have to send it to the Arenanet team for revision (internal processes). [...] (translated from spanish)

Sigh (again)... now i have to start all the process again to prepare the questions properly, this time in english.

Sorry for the double-post

If you do a rough translation here, even by starting with a Google Translate,
let the community help correct any grammar mistakes afterwards.

For sure, Bristlebane

edit: i'm starting with the translation (the interview is not short), and once i have the "basic" translation i'll post it here, so you can help with the reconstruction.

yep yep we can most definitely help put it into good English for you (I taught English for a while so I hope I can still 'fix' things for you as well).

Never mind teaching English. I AM English. From England.

You're all (badly) borrowing our language (there's another 'i' in aluminium btw).

I'm sure we can get it translated with not much bother.

Anyone for a cup of tea?

Max

tea, yes, please Max! (and I think since areanet is in the usa they are talking about american English and not the one that includes extra letters like coloUr )


so yes, we do have many native English speakers here who can (and sound willing to) help.

Well, perhaps after Izzy Own's translated community report, they respond with something like:

Haha! Going off topic a bit, so I'll keep it brief. Extra letters? Au contraire.

ColoUr is the correct spelling. And fervoUr. And endeavoUr.
And jewELLEry. And AEROplane. And sulPHur.

And so on and so forth.



Max

But the mixed CaPs is not correct! (Ok, better get back to original topic)
*harkle*

Izzy Owns,
so do you need our help with the translation and correction? You have seen our qualifications in the most recent emails and we'd be happy to be of service.

I speak with the Community Manager in Spanish and the interview is entirely in Spanish at the moment, as i said, you can help improve the translation once i have the questions (more or less) translated and ready to post them here!

Anyway, this is just for Arenanet Team to revise the interview. After all i'll to translate the answers from spanish to english (no problem doing it!), was on my plans.

PD: my english is not that bad! (although it was better a few years ago). I can teach you Spanish, from Spain!

PD2: wordreference is my friend!

PD3: I have been translating interviews and articles from english to spanish for many years, but its harder the other way around! (spanish=>english)

Spanglish?...

Got another message from the Community Manager: It's not necessarily to translate the full interview, can be a little bit of the specific topic. [...]

Okay. What do you guys think? I'm hesitating between sending the full interview in English or only the topics of the questions, so they don't put any drawback.

huh... what's that?

Mixture of English and Spanish in the same sentence.

I think they'll be fine with your English as it is. There's no real need to translate anything unless you're being graded for an exam. Besides, in America there are lots of Spanish speakers.

Your English as it stands is perfectly fine for this. Don't knock your confidence. There are kids in the uk with far worse English than yours. In fact, it hadn't occurred to me that English wasn't your first language.

Max

that is a difficult one to answer...I would go for just the topics.


spanglish is a mixture of spanish and english (you get a LOT of that in the usa where the immigrants from mexico have settled)...we have also had engrish which is for the japanese who dont have a 'l' in their language so they tend to us the 'r' instead...and a few other made up names for language combinations that we hear people speaking. (edit: max beat me to it, but I will just leave this in anyways)

and izzy your english is better than most english speakers I have read (here even), so yes, you are doing a wonderful job! (it is pretty surprising that most european countries tend to teach english better than the native english speaking countries now...I know its a requirement in many of them to be bilingual if not tri or multi- lingual! And I applaud those who have fluency in more than one, while most of the rest of us struggle with just our native tongues).

Strangely they changed "Councilor" in GW1 to "Councillor" in GW2. Just that one word.

#UPDATE 3 – Interview (English version) (hopefully British english xD)

Hi David.

1) Some may not know it, but before being Community Manager for NCsoft you were an active Guild Wars player. How was your experience in the game and with the community?

2) One of the last news we had was the development of a new website for GuildWars.com: "a new look and improved layout to stay up with everything that happens in the GW game and community." As you're a computer engineer, who knows if you won't finish just developing it! (laughs) What will happen at the end?

3) The Community Managers (and some developers) used to pass by Guild Wars Guru to be in contact with players, answer questions and move the players feedback to developers. Do you have plans to return to GWGuru again?

4) For ArenaNet the feedback from players has always been important. Currently the GWW feedback portal is closed, and players don't have another site. In this situation, How can players move their feedback to developers if it's not strictly a technical support case? Perhaps it's necessary the implementation of a new tool to contact you?

5) The last news we had from the Live Team were by the hand of John Stumme, the team was working on, literal words: more things that would leave everyone surprised. According to the little information that we have we know that they were working on Guild Wars Beyond: Elona, the Lunatic Court and big skill updates. Even more, some members of the Test Krewe revealed that there would be more content that was being tested. What happened with this content? Will it ever see the light?

6) Since automation system has been announced something happened that worried the players very much, the emergence of thousands of bots in both PvE and PvP. As well as the handling of HA, RA and GvG by some players (syncs and hacks) breaking the EULA. Since the reports inside and outside the game do not help much, what will the company do about it? Does this hint that the automation system is not solid?

(I haven't forgotten you, Cosyfiep: P. For not making a giant question, I left extra information in brackets about bot locations and Gold Sellers problem)

7) In recent times players have opened hundreds and hundreds of post in all the GW communities about a possible change to F2P. Why not convert Guild Wars to Free to Play (at least Prophecies) keeping the others campaigns pay to play to have the influx of new players and revamp the status of the game both PvE and PvP?

8) Why would that not be a good idea for ArenaNet and NCSoft seeing the huge success of the currently MOBA games (PvP)? Specially remembering that Guild Wars started as an e-sport and according to Arenanet the server maintenance is low.

9) David, many players would like to see new content for GW1! Last year the community made a letter about this issue: link (+250 likes). Why do not use a crow-funding model? to launch new content: instances, armors, weapons, campaings without taking economic risks, or launch pay content as you did with the Guild Wars: Bonus Mission Pack.

10) Formerly the Guild Wars team used to make events with prizes both inside and outside the game, and also collaborated with GWGuru as well as with others communities (supporting and providing prizes) for holding events together. Will we see more events like these in the near future?

11) Since we have been told on many occasions that you have no plans to do anything new with guildwars (outside of emergency updates), is there any hope that this will change in the future?

12) Next year will be guildwars 10th anniversary, do you have anything special in the works for that?


Many thanks from the whole Guild Wars community for granting the interview, David! We know the great work you're doing in the Guild Wars 2 community, but we hope to see you more around the old (and not for that less good) Tyria!


Do i have to make any changes to the translation?

PD: I think the interview is great

13) Seeing how there was a shift between Guild Wars players to Guild Wars 2 (and also opposite movement from Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars - mainly for Hall of Monuments) just out of curiosity do you have any specific numbers about the current active population on Guild Wars that still play on regular basis?!


Just one more.

cosy took the words out of my mouth.

<3

I have to say this topic was a light in the dark, there's too much doom and gloom going around when it comes to GW. Thanks for keeping the spirit up :-)

i can translate everything in French is some of you request it.

That would be great, tooburns!

If you want you can start translating the questions, and when i have the answers i can send them to you by private message.

PD: Any german, italian or polish speaker over here?

Thank you too for participating in the thread

I could translate it into german if nobody else wants to. Would post it on wartower and the former onlinewelten forums.

Ok, you can translate it.

I'm making a list of the communities in which we could post the interview.

Sadly just Swedish. But if you ever need a Swedish translation, look me up!

Here i am ^^
I can translate it and post it for the italian community

Hi Izzy, I can translate to polish, no problem.

I can translate to Portuguese but the community here is long gone.

There are some people still nurturing the game at Portugal but most of them have moved on.