User talk:Linsey Murdock/Questions

From Guild Wars Wiki

Contents 1 Zehlon Reach 2 Explorable areas 3 Species 4 Questions about Random Things in NF Exporable Areas 5 Spawning quests? 6 GW's programming language 7 Nightfallen Jahai

Zehlon Reach

Hey Linsey, first of all: welcome to the wiki! It's really nice to see more A.Net employees join in in the wiki. Izzy had a bit of a slow start, but is thawing nicely :) and Emily is a pure gem so far. I've got two questions, and I hope you can give an answer:

• The Suspicious Hermit in Zehlon Reach, what is he doing there? Was he part of an abandoned quest?
• Does Bahltek have a further role in this game, apart from being a big enigma in Nightfall?

--  (CoRrRan / talk) 15:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Happy to be here and have a greater connection to the community! Hope these help answer your questions...

• The suspicious hermit was indeed part of a quest at one point. He was part of the quest A Father's Fate which was one of the first quests written by a new designer after he was hired on about half way through NF production. Since he was new to this kind of game design at the time, the quest itself was pretty broken spawn wise (it dun wurk) and clunky story wise so we decided to split it up and rework it to something that made a little more sense.
• Only time will tell when it comes to Bahltek. I'm going to chose to be as mysterious as he on this one. - Linsey Murdock 22:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Damn, there are only cruel people working at A.Net! j/k

So... the Suspicious Hermit was a rookies error? Ha, I'm going to tell him that next time I see him, hopefully he finally won't attack me if I tell him he is just a fluke. :)

And Bahltek? I bet he is Gwen's evil uncle's grand dad from her mother's side... therefor he has to make a re-appearance in GW:EN.

--  (CoRrRan / talk) 22:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't so much say "rookie error" as I would say "rookie trying out something cool while trying to learn our system" :D You can try explaining to the hermit that he's "not even supposed to be here today", but I doubt he'll be very responsive lol. As I said, time will tell when it comes to Bahltek, just keep your eyes peeled and he might show up again. ~_^ -Linsey Murdock 22:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Woohooo, make some BIG chain quest that goes over the whole GW:EN map and once you finally finish it after 250 hours of straight play, you get a picture of Linsey as a reward. Thats worth your time i think :) ~ Kurd 22:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey, don't forget Emily... *wink* Although I do fancy a quest that involves a lot of interaction with a lot of places to go to. The trouble is, it should be something that is not easily done using map-travel, but shouldn't be as boring that you can just put 2 runstances on your bar and complete the quest in no-time... --  (CoRrRan / talk) 22:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I might have a little something something for you guys coming soon to a wiki/Guild Wars near you... - Linsey Murdock 22:48, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

wiki-quests! Yay! Is that a new feature of GW? Or are we going to have to wait till the end of August? --  (CoRrRan / talk) 22:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll throw up a picture of myself on my User page sometime soon (mebbe even later today), but you'll have to wait til August for epic quests such as you describe - Linsey Murdock 22:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I put up a picture of me, I don't know wiki formatting really well, so I just put it up the only way I know how. If I did it wrong, feel free to fix it up for me. -Linsey Murdock 23:05, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice, thanks! I'm not American, so I had no idea if Linsey is a female or a male name (don't look at me like that, I saw a guy name Lindsey once!), and when I talked about you to my guildmates I had to say "he/she/it/boya". Well, now I know : ) (but you need to take a picture using a better mirror : D) Erasculio 00:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Lindsey wass traditionally a boys name, but eventually became asexual. Plus, my parents spelled it the way that makes sense (silent letters be damned!) so... uhhh... yeah. I took that picture during my big 3000 mile move from Rhode Island to Washington state, so the car was pretty grungy but the time I took it. hehe - Linsey Murdock 00:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) What did i tell you people, Didn't i tell you she was hot, now i don't want to drag on about it, but you got to admit i was right ;) ~ Kurd 01:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

O_o lol - Linsey Murdock 01:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

re Bahltek. Suppose an answer to his riddle involves us looking in reflections in places around Istan (or beyond). Would you keep to the area where he talks about reflections or expand the search, and if so where? (IOW, I just spent a horrendous amount of time looking at reflections around the Keys and saw nothing :( ). --Ravious 02:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Explorable areas

Since you say that you are a/the authority on EAs: was it your idea as well to have the big statue in the The Arid Sea being used as a bridge and being seen standing when 'far' away from it? And is the statue also a 'celebrity' in GW lore?

Another question I have, you also say that you are responsible for spawns in EAs. How much thought do you put in creating the spawns? Are you also involved with the patrol-patterns these spawns use?

And who thought of creating the best Factions farm spot (which has taken a hit with the change to Spirit Bond)? Were you aware that the Famine-spirit would be used against the Shiro'ken so effectively?

(And I'm sorry for asking so many questions... you just have a really interesting part in GW.) --  (CoRrRan / talk) 23:07, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I wasn't working here yet for the conception of the statue in the Arid Sea. I don't think we have much lore written for that particular structure but I could ask around and see if any of the old timers know more details on it. To answer your second question, it varies a lot and yes. We script out all the movement of the mobs in an EA (that's kind of what we DO) as well as mob size and variety. We don't chose the skills on each creature, that is up to the creature designers. They hook up all the art, skills, etc to a species identifier for us to use in our EAs and from there it's pretty much up to us how they act. I say that time spent varies because it really does. For instance, I believe that all the EAs in Prophecies were done within a month of release which doesn't leave a whole lot of time for each one. We basically give each one as much love as our schedule allows. Looks like there were a few people who worked on the spawning of the Unwaking Waters reverse, but I could pretty much guarantee that whoever spawned that farm spot wasn't expecting it to be what it turned out to be. We rarely realize that type of stuff when we are working on it. Player ingenuity is something that can't really ever be truly accounted for in advance. Oh and don't feel bad about asking a lot of questions, just don't expect me to be as speedy with responses as today :P - Linsey Murdock 23:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, you do realize you are setting an example already? :) No, I'm not expecting much, I'm just really glad that there are more and more A.Net devs interested in getting a little bit of involvement with the players through this wiki. Like I said, Izzy is really warming up (since I see myself primarily as a PvP player, I'm mostly interested in his stuff) and Emily is really helping us out in a lot of places.

OK, since the Unwaking Waters farm wasn't scripted by anyone @ A.Net, is it something that you EA-people are looking at when designing new areas/spawns? Are you trying to make as many places hard/extremely hard/impossible/very easy to farm, or has that a secondary focus? Are you waiting on user ingenuity to point out the areas that are lucrative to go to, to try to farm?

And of course I have to ask: what is your favorite EA? And I hope you'll be able to say that there is just one. :) --  (CoRrRan / talk) 23:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It was most certainly someone from Anet who spawned that farm spot, I just meant it could have been any one of the three people who worked on that EA over the course of development. With a little extra digging I could give you a name, but I don't think that is necessary. When we spawn an EA, we do give some thought to ease of farming (as in, I probably shouldn't spawn 50 brain dead warriors right in front of the entrance to be taken advantage of by every passing 55monk) but in general we don't spawn EAs as if we are just spawning farm spots. We are trying to make it as cool, fun and interesting as possible in the time alloted. Beyond that, if a tester or QA tells us of a possible problem area, we'll address those in development but most of the attention to farm spots comes after release. Sure we can prevent really bad stuff like the 50 minos example but players really are the best ones to find the crazy farm spots and we do pay a lot of attention to patterns in the way people play the game once its been released to see how that is going.

In all honestly, I think of myself as more of a PvP player too, but I split my time a lot. My guild was a strictly PvP guild (HA to be exact) until we died out for a variety of reason. I really couldn't say what my favorite EA is off the top of my head, but I'll try to get back to you on that. - Linsey Murdock 23:55, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, there's no need to divulge "who did what", it's absolutely not relevant. And I was just referring to the "player ingenuity" when I said Unwaking Waters farm wasn't scripted, not that it wasn't scripted at all. :)

What I do wonder about though, since you say that you try to get an EA as cool, fun and interesting as possible giving the amount of time allocated for development, isn't it a little bit strange that you can not allocate NPCs skillbars yourself, but that there is a different team for that? I can understand that it is nice to make an area as interesting as possible, but getting the skills to synergize on each spawn would be "the icing on the cake", IMO. Or am I now getting a totally wrong impression of the way such an EA is developed? I guess there is much more interaction between your 'department' and the creature 'department'...

And I'm sorry to hear about your guild 'dying out'. I hope it's not as bad as you portray it. Alright, it's bedtime for me. Thank you so much for answering my questions. Like I already stated, I love this kind of direct interaction with 'people in the know', and I hope it will continue to be possible! --  (CoRrRan / talk) 00:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

There is constant interaction between spawners and creature designers. In fact the designer who did most of the EA spawning for Factions EAs is now a part of that team and doing all the skill bars for GW:EN creatures. He has been helping us synergize our groups better by guiding us on the skill interaction within each army. He is primarily a PvP player so he is intimately familiar with the ways of build creation. The creature designers work one room over from the scripters and we are all in and out of each others rooms throughout the day so there isn't much of a disconnect there.

Sadly, it is true that my guild has died out. Some have left for other guilds or other games, many just went inactive in favor of IRL. We were a casualty of the Heroes Ascent changes, so don't let anyone tell you that devs don't play Heroes Ascent! I did, I totally did and I know what they are going through heh. My guild is The Spearmen, we used to be fairly well known amongst HA'ers - Linsey Murdock 00:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Ive been dieing to know what the purpose of the statue is. Crystal Desert was one my favorite parts of Tyria. Searching the whole the desert trying to find Bleached Bones(They never made sense to me :P. But it was fun looking for them).Coming across Ancient Weapon and Statue of Glint,Back then every one did all the quests they could find. Those were some times. Then smacktards started playing GW and the desert became on big Taxinetwork ~ Kurd 01:59, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I actually wrote text for about a dozen more bleached bones to go into the Desolation but never managed to get them into the game. Things were so crazy during NF development that I just plain old forgot about it and so they sit in one of my many notebooks full of ideas. Oh well =/ - Linsey Murdock 02:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you could add them to Stories, if not at least somewhere i can read them ~ Kurd 02:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we can post lore that hasn't already been published somewhere else =/ but I'll look into it. Not promising anything... - Linsey Murdock 02:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Your userpage is another option something like User:Linsey_Murdock/Stories. ~ Kurd 02:23, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, Like I said, I'm not sure they (being the powers that be at Anet) want us to post original lore that hasn't already been published more publicly (ie on the website, in-game, etc), but I'll find out if I could post them on my page or something. - Linsey Murdock 02:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

That would be really, really cool (if possible, of course). I love the attention to details we have in GW, and the little bits of text here and there are among my favourite things in the game (don't let the guys who write the mission text to know, but I like the text of quests and the texts we find in Explorable Areas - from the Bleached Bones to the random talking NPCs in Factions to things like that - a lot more than the text of the main story in the games). Oh, and to whoever it is that writes the "Yes, I'll take this quest" and "No, I won't take this quest" little texts, you have to tell him/her he/she's a genius, I really like those. The one in Factions about hugging trees is awesome : D) Erasculio 02:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Accept and decline text is usually originally done by the quest writer, although often times the people who edit all our text will spice them up a bit if they are too boring. For instance, the infamous "I like pie" from Diamond in the Rough was thrown in by one of the writers during edit even though I wrote the quest. - Linsey Murdock 03:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Koss: "Enough is enough! I have had it with these Balthazar-blasted drakes on this Balthazar-blasted plain!". Laughed so hard when i heard that ;) ~ Kurd 09:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

That quest was entirely Eric Flannum's project. He had a lot of fun with it. - Linsey Murdock 23:19, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

So any news on your stories section? ~ Kurd 23:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Things are a bit crazy around here with a few major deadlines taking up peoples time plus there are quite a few people who took the rest of the week off (including the one I would ask) after July 4th so it'll probably be a while before I get any answers on this one. The moment I do, I'll let you know - Linsey Murdock 23:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Species

Hey Linsey, can I point you to conversation on Emily's talk page? Since you are closely interacting with the creature design team, perhaps you can shine your light on the issue that's being discussed? User_talk:Emily_Diehl#Species_names. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 21:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I am looking into this. - Linsey Murdock 23:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Linsey! --  (CoRrRan / talk) 23:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll be answering those specific questions when I get home within the hour. Any future species questions can be directed to me, as I've agreed to take them off Emily's plate since I am more acquainted with the creatures of the world as well as working with them and reviewing the internal documentation of said species. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, it'll be a fun little project for me and Emily is happy to pass it off. :D - Linsey Murdock 02:18, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Questions about Random Things in NF Exporable Areas

Hello Lindsey, I was wondering if you could answer a couple question about some of the Explorable Areas in Nightfall.

1) Who are the people mentioned in the Wilderness of Bahdza EA? We have noticed, for example, that many NPCs in the Holdings of Chokhin are named over regular forum members of GWO (Sakutilla over Scutilla, who used to post popularity contests between characters, with a NPC who does more or less the same, and so on). Some NPCs in the Wilderness share the same kind of name (something that appears to be a real name, but twisted around a bit), such as Mahk Jenshan and Mikahl Hintohn. Are those someone famous, or friends you guys decided to make a little homage to, or just randomly named NPCs?

2) In the Forum Highlands, at the very bottom of the map, directly in front of the place with the "Do not touch!" treasure thingie, there's a glowing door with some very mysterious symbols. Likewise, the Bahdok Caverns have, at the very bottom, a very pretty area filled with gold, jewels and treasure chests, in front of a "Do not touch!" thing. Were those areas created as random pretty things for the players to find, or were they created on purpose to be used for the "Do not touch!" treasures to be placed on them later on?

Thanks! Erasculio 22:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

1. Those particular examples are both Alpha testers. We decided to add in a bunch of NPCs in Nightfall to pay homage to long time Alpha testers, and highly active forum users who have benefited the community. If you go to the Library of Chokhin, you'll find quite a few of the infamous Lore Forum users. Eric Flannum who did all the text for these homage NPCs has a particular fondness for the Lore Forum.

2. These were "random pretty things" that the map artists put in and we took advantage of when doing those special static loot areas which came much later.

- Linsey talk 23:05, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the replies : ) I have one more question that is not directly about the EAs, but I don't want to cluter your User Talk Page with sections, so here it is (if you are not allowed to answer it, it's ok). How much are you guys allowed to create regarding the lore of the world? In most of Factions and Nightfall, there is the main story of the game (told mostly through the missions) and the story of the world, told to us through quests. For example, in Nighfall we learn that the Hekets are actually inteligent and have been receiving supliments from Varesh through quests; we learn that the Skree Harpies and the Hekets are at war against each other and at war with the Dzagonur Bastion through quests; and the end game quests at the Realm of Torment explain much of what happened in the two previous chapers. When creating those quests (and the many others that let we learn more about the world of GW), do you guys have to follow a detailed script (saying, for example, "the Heket are being helped by Kourna - let the players learn that through some quest"), or is it something more loosely set (for example, "Heket are bad guys")? Erasculio 17:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a combination of both. There are general world plot lines that are loosely detailed out for us to pull from and write quests for. In Factions, the whole team would sit down and talk about each area and what is going on there and then split up and write quests from there. In Nightfall, we worked a little more separately just pulling from the general lore of the world that was outlined out by Jeff Grubb and running our ideas past people to make sure we don't break anything they are working on. With GW:EN we went back to a more co-operative approach by meeting early in the week with the TQ (team quest), Ben Miller (lead for GW:EN) and Eric Flannum (lead for GW2) to talk about what we want to get out of the quests to be written that week. Then TQ would split up to work out the details of our own individual quests and meet again with just TQ and sometimes a couple of the writers (Bobby Stein or Will McDermott) in the middle of the week to brainstorm out anything that wasn't coming along as fast and get things fully fleshed out mechanics wise before writing up the final text to get handed off on Friday (sometimes Sunday or Monday heh). Then towards the end of the project, right before the big text hand off to localization, Jeff Grubb does a massive continuity pass to make sure "we have some" as he puts it. He tries not to mess with things too much and more works on making things sort of fit together. So, yes TQ has a lot of free reign on the lore building that happens through quests but there are checks against a body of loosely written lore as well as Jeff's brain to make sure we aren't too far out of the ball park. Hope that answers your questions :D - Linsey talk 19:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the very complete reply : ) I had no idea the Team Quest had that much work to do - to create the quest itself and its implementation, and also to create and/or add to the lore of the world. It's amazing the 3 of you manage to do all that! I also didn't know you had worked in Factions - did you also create quests there, like you did in Nightfall? Erasculio 17:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I joined the team the Monday after the Faction preview weekend so I didn't do much for the game as I was still learning the system. With Factions and Nightfall, it was more of a hodgepodge of everyone working on everything. So everyone on the design team wrote at least a few quests or missions. Some focused more on quests, some on EAs, and some on Missions or just scripting. So I was basically part of TQ during NF even though it wasn't officially formed yet as my primary work was writing quests, spawning quests and bug fixing/polishing them. We didn't separate into the different teams until GW:EN production started. The teams were formed to better focus peoples attentions on the things they are interested in and create a better continuity there. The Dungeon team works on the dungeons, the Mission team does all the missions and link quests (primary quests) and TQ fills in the rest. :D - Linsey talk 18:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I know Erasculio didn't specifically ask this, but I thought I'd mention that along with NPCs that have alpha tester names, it seems that those of us who were mostly focused on PvP in alpha had bosses named after us using our gaming nicknames. For example, Major Jeahr (JR), Colonel Custo (The Custodian), Midshipman Morolah (Morello), and my own Shaunur the Divine, (who's apparently too unpopular to have a page here.) :p -- losershawn 03:35, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Spawning quests?

Is that like /wavesMagicWand *poof* it's there? :D Just a quick 'ello and a big thank you for all the hard work; I sincerely enjoyed most of the quests you list on your user page. If you have any wiki questions, there's a bunch of people who are willing to help, so ask away! I'm one. :D /pickme - Thulsey - talk 02:42, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I wish I had a magic wand like that, but no it doesn't exactly work that way. We have an internal scripting language we use to script out all the quests and explorables. If you aren't familiar with scripting, its like a dumbed down version of coding. Thanks for the comment! - Linsey talk 04:39, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

GW's programming language

Hi Linsey, i'd like to know in which language is Guild Wars programmed in, as i'm currently studying Computer Science and would like to know which language is used for modern games development. -- Pulse, 00:56, July 21 (UTC)

C++ — Gares 14:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

If NWN is any indication, there are mutiple layers of languages involved:

1. There is the gameplay engine which combines very sophisticated network programming with sophisticated real-time graphics rendering to ensure everything happens real time and looks like it's supposed to.
2. There is producing the art for the game which follows it's own toolsets to convery concept art into actual creatures, terrain and items and then represent them in a concise way that the gameplay engine can just pick up and use without much delay (that would be produce the texturte map you hear so much about)
3. Then there's the "spawning" tools. The scripting/mapping tools that are used to basically "make" areas. i.e. describe the terrain, the objects, the monster spawns... Where everything will be and how everything reacts to the players' actions. It also includes the huge task of coming up with quests, creative writing for dialog and consistent lore across the game.

So, to answer your question, the first part is likely done with C++, the client side requires intimate knowldge of Windows programming (DirectX and networking), the server side could be done on any platform... Might be Windows based or Linux based but still C++. For the second part, I am not very experienced there, but it starts with Photoshop. For the third part, each game will have it's own in-house spawning toolset (see Neverwinter Nights' tool set for a sample one). So, the specific toolset used for GW is made by ANet and the one used for WoW will be made by Blizzard. They might be using some generic tool, but it will be customized for their own usage. --Karlos 22:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Nightfallen Jahai

I was wondering if you could shed some light on an initially non-hostile group of Torment creatures by the Shepherd of Dementia and the Treasure Chest. They seem to be holding a group of ghosts hostage and turn hostile when you kill the Shepherd's group. Part of another abandoned quest perhaps? --Valshia 20:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This is just a neat little EA encounter the designer cooked up while spawning the area. - Linsey talk 06:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The non-hostile group is clearly on their coffee break. Once you kill the shepherds group it is time for them to get back to work. -Warskull 00:38, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course, there is also the convenient fact that the non-hostile group blocks access to the treasure chest, thereby preventing a simple (no combat) run to it. --BramStoker (talk, contribs) 10:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer Linsey. It's nice to see something a little different than just another group to kill. --Valshia 18:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)