Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/Locations/Archive 3

Refocus on Shrines/Bounties

It seems this issue has become rather stalled and disjointed.... so bringing it back together here. If you still have active alternatives, relink them all here please :D

I personally prefer the header Shrines to Bounties... aren't all bounties collected at res shrines? Find me one that isn't and I'll be quiet. It also covers the God shrines and blessings. It also coveres all campaigns even though each campaign is different in what is available. I've always preferred the KISS theory (keep it simple, stupid) to making it way complex.

Something like this maybe...

==Shrines==
===[[Resurrection Shrine]]===
*[[bounty giver NPC]] → [[Bounty's name]]
**Direction (south, east, etc) - Shrine of [[God]] if available, and location, using some point of reference 
(such as, outside of [[outpost]] exit).
===[[Statue|Monument to (God)]]===
*[[Avatar]] 
**Direction (south, east, etc) and location, using some point of reference 
(such as, outside of [[outpost]] exit).

-- Wynthyst 21:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Aren't all statues resurrection shrines? — ク Eloc 貢 02:57, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, there are res shinres on every map, and there are statues every here and there. The areas where you enter FoW/UW for example. — Galil 03:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Shrines seems like a good collective name to me, if all bountygivers are located at shrines. I thought someone said there was bountygivers outside shrines, but I may also have dreamt that. - anja 18:34, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a good compromise for the bounties section. I'm for it - anything to get this over with :D -- ab.er.rant 04:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... how about something like this instead:

==Shrines==
;[[Resurrection shrine]]s with [[<bounty name>]]:
*NPC 1
**Direction and/or point of reference 1
**Direction and/or point of reference 2
*NPC 2
**Direction and/or point of reference 3

;Resurrection shrines with a [[<god name>]] statue:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1
*Direction and/or point of reference 2

;<god name> statues:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1

As usual, I don't like the subheading :) For pre-Nightfall areas where there are no bounties, we can cut away the "<bounty name>" part name and just document the locations of the resurrection shrines. Again, as usual, these should be kept short and concise if there is a map available. -- ab.er.rant 06:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for less headings (smaller toc). This should look nice. - anja 07:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The bounty needs to be tied to the NPC, not the shrine, as there are multiple bounties in NF areas, all at different res shrines around the map.

Like this...

==Shrines==
;[[Resurrection shrine]]s:
*NPC 1 → [[<bounty name>]]
**Direction and/or point of reference 1
**Direction and/or point of reference 2
*NPC 2 → [[<bounty name>]]
**Direction and/or point of reference 3

;Resurrection shrines with a [[<god name>]] statue:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1
*Direction and/or point of reference 2

;<god name> statues:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1

-- Wynthyst 08:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I know. My idea is to group the resurrection shrines by what they have next to it - bounties, statues, perhaps even Luxon/Kurzick NPCs. So it's more like "Resurrection shrines with Insect Hunt" followed by the name of the NPC plus the direction, and then "Resurrection shrines with Plant Hunt" and followed by more directions. I feel the name of the NPC is secondary to their location. If it's short enough, I'd merge the NPC name with the directions too. There's always only one NPC offering a bounty at one shrine any way, and the same bounty is always offered by the same-name NPC too. Since the section header is "Shrines", I figure grouping things inside by what shrines have nearby sort of makes more sense. Yet another point of splitting the bounties into multiple shrine groupings seems less cluttered than putting them all in one big list, but that's just me. -- ab.er.rant 09:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok.. so you mean to have 4-6 res shrines all listed individually with all the surrounding npcs.... I get it.

==Shrines==
;[[Resurrection shrine]] with [[<bounty name>]]:
**Direction and/or point of reference 1
*NPC 1 [[<bounty giver]]
*NPC 2 [[<merchant>]]
*NPC 3 [[<guard>]]

;[[Resurrection shrine]] with [[<bounty name>]]:
**Direction and/or point of reference 1
*NPC 1 [[<bounty giver]]
*NPC 2 [[<merchant>]]
*NPC 3 [[<guard>]]

;Resurrection shrines with a [[<god name>]] statue:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1
*Direction and/or point of reference 2

;<god name> statues:
*Direction and/or point of reference 1

-- Wynthyst 10:56, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, not exactly. Hmm... since you put it that way, it didn't sound too good... let me just give it a try and we'll see how it goes:

ab.er.rant's (bad idea :p)

Wynthyst's (looks good ^-^)

Resurrection shrine with Insect Hunt Sunspear Scout Somewhere someplace sometime Just outside some blah blah place that will cause a long direction Right at the corner of some area Resurrection shrine with Plant Hunt Sunspear Scout Another place (has Grenth statue) Just outside here (has Lyssa statue) Resurrection shrine with Elemental Hunt Whispers Informant Just some obscure point somewhere Resurrection shrine Just a shrine with no NPC around it Resurrection shrine with statue of Lyssa Woo look, Lyssa! Right there. Statue of Grenth Some place some where Another place another time

Resurrection shrine Sunspear Scout → Insect Hunt Somewhere someplace sometime Just outside some blah blah place that will cause a long direction Right at the corner of some area Sunspear Scout → Plant Hunt Another place (has Grenth statue) Just outside here (has Lyssa statue) Whispers Informant → Elemental Hunt Just some obscure point somewhere Resurrection shrine Just a shrine with no NPC around it Resurrection shrine with statue of Lyssa Woo look, Lyssa! Right there. Statue of Grenth Some place some where Another place another time

Hmm... ok, my on-the-spot idea is definitely worse than yours. I ditched the bold, but it still doesn't look so as nice as I pictured it. Oh well :P I used your second template, and it should probably be as good as it gets without turning to tables.

Just three things though, I just added a plain "Resurrection shrine" part for those shrines with nobody there, maybe there's a better idea? Also, I feel that the bounty name and the NPC name should be swapped, to place more emphasis on the bounty instead of the NPC, so maybe something like "Plant Hunt (Sunspear Scout)" or "Dwarven Raider (Beacon of Droknar)"? And finally, do we need to treat the Luxon/Kurzick shrines in any special way? -- ab.er.rant 11:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, lux/kurz shrines have multiple npcs.... merchant, guards, and priest. The priest would be the bounty giver of course... and the npc's do fight if aggro comes close enough, so not sure if that's worth any mention.-- Wynthyst 12:30, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I also think that keeping the NPC name first stays more in the format that is being used with other NPC types. Bosses have their cappable skill listed after, etc... -- Wynthyst 23:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Latest changes - shrines and NPCs

I've added to the template Wynthyst's second example (with some slight tweaks), plus added comments on how to sort the NPC lists, a new "Services" section, and comments on how to group the NPCs as necessary (some from the "Subheadings" talk section above). One last point I'd like to bring up again that Eloc brought up previously. After editing Monastery Overlook, I'm in favor of putting in the profession icons and the levels for allies as well. It's just more consistent, and is particularly useful if an ally will actually fight. For example, it'd be nice to see right away that Kisai and Mai are also first level, and those students who aren't joining Instructor Ng are already level 2 and 3. Charmable pets should ideally have a level specified too. And finally, aside from consistency with the "Foes" section, it also makes the page less bland (i.e. full of white space on the right side) when we have a long NPC list. (and I'm still thinking of how to make long "Quests" sections be less space-wasting) -- ab.er.rant 01:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm all about consistency.-- Wynthyst 05:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I say no to the capitalization, as it does't fit with our policy on that. It also doesnt fit with the formatting of our other page types (ie. Boss -> Skill (elite)). - BeX 06:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I think levels and professions for allies can look really weird at times, for example when we just know it for one of the NPCs in the list. Then that name gets a huge indent. but the others don't, making the list harder to read, imo. Also, I'd like to avoid listing or for those we actually don't know. But it's not a big issue for me, I'd rather get the formatting finished than have it my way. :P - anja 08:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, good point on the capitalization. For the ally profession and icons, while it's mostly useless for NPCs that don't fight, I think they're slightly useful for allies that do help fight. Yes, we need the to keep the indentation correct. Also, I believe it is a useful crosschecking for NPC names, professions, and levels. Back on GuildWiki, I used to crosscheck both the info on the NPC page as well as the explorable page. It's just easier and faster for people to add in one missing NPC (complete with profession and level) into an explorable page than it is for them to try creating an NPC page just to specify the level and profession. Users may encounter a particular NPC in a certain level, and they may not think about adding to the NPC page, but just the explorable they are on. I'm thinking this redundancy helps to ensure that we get all the levels (while editing Monastery Overlook and Sunqua Vale, I've already noticed some levels that are missing from the NPC pages but are found in the explorable page. -- ab.er.rant 02:12, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

One more thing I'd like to point out is that I've tried to word the NPC section such that the NPC groupings are flexible, basically, you can group them however if more appropriate for a particular location, allowing for something like Shing Jea Dojo. Someone reword the guidelines if this isn't clear. -- ab.er.rant 02:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: Regarding capitalization, does that mean the henchmen list needs to be changed as well? To "Lukas (guardian)" instead? -- ab.er.rant 02:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, you convinced me about both levels and icons. :P It's better to get the info than just look good (which is only imo anyway). About the headings, it's not really clear if you mean services, henchmen and allies are standard, and then subgroups can be added yo them, or if groups can be added in any way (omitting the services heading if there's only a few services and NPCs or similar). - anja 08:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, a definition: I refer to the "Merchants and traders", "Collectors", "Trainers", etc. as Headings. What I meant by flexible is that the guidelines should somehow say that these headings are not fixed in stone, and that if there's a more logical or flavorful or useful grouping, then the headings can be changed. As for henchmen, I'm not sure whether "Devona (Fighter)" should be de-capitalized into "Devona (fighter)", since we're de-capitalizing the NPC service (Merchant -> merchant). -- ab.er.rant 13:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, now I get you. I don't think we need more guidelines that we already have on how to group the service NPCs, it is just a guideline afterall. It's easy to apply on each article as we see fit. On capitalization, I would consider Fighter a proper noun (thus capitalized) in this case since I see it as a name, not a description (Illusion henchmen use dom skills, for example), while merchant is a common noun. But I don't mind either way, really. - anja 15:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

on the thing I suggested. — ク Eloc 貢 00:53, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Final call for comments

Final call for any outstanding issues (at least, any issue important enough to prevent this from becoming official first). -- ab.er.rant 04:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Removing the "Exits" section, since it's in the infobox already. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be anything worth noting, though I haven't actually read anything but the wiki-code. Still looks good though. — Galil 05:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If you remove the "Exits" section where would you put the directions and conditions? Direction can be seen from map, true. But it should be nice to have a section that says you can't go out via this exit because you haven't done so-and-so quest. It's say most useful for Factions locations. -- ab.er.rant 05:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's good to go. -- Wynthyst 05:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) But then remove the one in the infobox? I personally don't see the point in having the same information twice, especially not considering it usually lines up just next to each other. :S — Galil 05:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with a little redundancy, and the directions and other notes in the Exits section of the article are great to have. -- Wynthyst 05:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Galil has a point. Might as well remove it from the infobox if we're going to repeat it with more details anyway. And we don't have "getting there" in the infobox either. How about renaming it to "Neighbors" (ala GuildWiki) to sort of give a geographical reference on where it's situated. Or maybe remove it entirely. But this issue shouldn't stop the the whole "officialising" process. -- ab.er.rant 05:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd vote for "Portals" or "Adjacent areas". "Neighbors" just doesn't sound right to me. — Galil 05:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course, keeping "Exits" would work too. ;) — Galil 05:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

No capitalization? - BeX 10:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm moving this guide to accepted later tonight, since there doesn't seem to be any more outstanding issues. - anja 18:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, with this many things missing from the guide (see below), why's this in Accepted? — ク Eloc 貢 10:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Allies revisited

Decided to make this a subsection as it's just easier that way. Anyways, what about professions on the allys? — ク Eloc 貢 01:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Didn't we agree somewhere up to include profession and levels on allies? *goes to search* - anja 01:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Then why isn't it in the formatting guide yet? — ク Eloc 貢 01:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Because we forget :P And the last time I did a change I just had to revert because I was too quick. I'll fix it now :P - anja 01:31, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Alright, ty. — ク Eloc 貢 02:11, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Erh... you know, i could swear that we had agreed just the opposite (for allies and pets), since level information on non-combatant npcs was not really relevant on the location article, plus we would fill the articles with s since most of the times it's not clear what profession npcs are. Check section 14 of the talk page. (added) So... any link to where the decision about changing it was taken? --Fighterdoken 02:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

See "Allies" above. - anja 07:14, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Nnnnope, Allies was Eloc's proposal relating the inclusion of afilitation for npcs (unrelated here). Only topics related to class/levels of allies i can see are "Profession on Allied NPCS" where we kinda agreed (Anja included) that it was too much info, and "Allies revisited" where that was suddenly changed ignoring the previous concensus on the same talk page. In any case, since we usually don't keep this kind of arguments on a single page, kinda curious on where it was changed. Forget it, "Latest changes - shrines and NPCs" was the place (i thought it was "NPCS at the shrines (bounties)", silly me). In any case, i still think service npcs, traders, and in general every non-combatat npc should have this info excluded (because some places will look just ugly, and the information helps on nothing), but... --Fighterdoken 07:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Points of Interest

(Edit conflict) Change that heading to Landmarks as our GWW definition of landmark is "a notable location, architecture, building, construction, terrain, settlement, village or other point of interest". Also, below it says Landmark 1/2 if that helps any. — ク Eloc 貢 01:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Points of interest sounds more general to me, we don't make landmark articles for signposts and such. - anja 18:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

So we add those signposts under Points of Interest? — ク Eloc 貢 21:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather call it "Landmarks" too since we don't generally bother with listing exactly what signposts there are.... but then again, "Points of interest" feels more appropriate with things like Bleached Bones. -- ab.er.rant 01:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Exits

Just to confirm the point Galil raised. Do we keep it as it is or would it be better to rename or reuse the "Exits" on the infobox for some slightly different purpose? "Adjacent" would be all locations that borders to the current location. "Portals" would be all locations that can be reached via portals. Something else? Or we just keep things as they are? -- ab.er.rant 01:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Henchmen and Bosses

One more thing. Does anyone else think it might be better to reduce "Henchmen" and "Bosses" into using just ";" (like the shrines section) rather than a level 4 header? The additional header causes a weird-looking table of contents, and we're never going to have more than one such level 4 header per location anyway. It just seems to look better when it's not a header. -- ab.er.rant 02:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that change would be consistent with the rest of the formating, since bosses are just a subsection of foes, and henchmen are just a subsection of service npcs. In any case, i think the pages look better without ToC :).--Fighterdoken 02:45, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I turned the "Foes" section into a table for Sunqua Vale. Opinions? Better not use a table since it's probably confusing to casual editors? I'm thinking of tables for of the longer quest sections too... I just find all the long-skewed-to-the-left location pages to be not-so-nice :P -- ab.er.rant 04:28, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it would be a good idea to use tables. Like you said, it could be confusing for casual editors. Also, at low screen resolutions it could make entries use 3 or more lines of text, or cause horizontal scrolling when not needed. Finally, i think we should keep a single formatting guideline, so every article has tables in a certain section, or no article with tables at all.--Fighterdoken 05:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Yea, reverted. Didn't look so nice anyhow. -- ab.er.rant 11:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Experimental application of guidelines

I've applied the guidelines to several starting Factions and Nightfall locations. Some of them include Shing Jea Monastery, Sunqua Vale, Tsumei Village, Plains of Jarin, Chahbek Village (outpost), Consulate, and Sun Docks. Take a look and let's gather some first impressions before we start a full-scale project to update all the rest of them. -- ab.er.rant 11:11, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

First thing is to say that i want a flamingo pet (yeah, didn't know they existed). Overall, i think the guideline works fine, but i feel that some stuff appears to be a bit messy. Leaving aside what i think about pets/service npcs and level/class, i guess we could change a bit the way afiliations and species are shown as to allow for them to be more visually different. In that regard, i think i may need to retract of my previous statement about using ";", changing all of the to "====" instead, and maybe adding a bit of " ''' " to the afiliations/species (can we noinclude the l4 header? or remove the ToC?). --Fighterdoken 01:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't like the way the NPCs section is set up, allies are not a subset of service NPCs, service NPCs are a subset of allies. Also, I think it would be useful to distinguish combatants from non-combatants in some way. I'd also prefer to keep all non-boss quest spawns in the quest articles, possibly with a list of the quests which affect an area's spawns in the notes section. -- Gordon Ecker 08:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

@Fighterdoken: How would changing the ";" to "====" yet excluding it from ToC actually change how it looks? Visually, they'll be similar, except for the extra "edit" links on the side. I'd like a way to simplify or shorten or otherwise get rid of the large white space for the list of NPCs too. It still feels like it's too long. For levels... one thing I'm concerned with when we exclude them is that since we're interested in the levels of enemies in a particular area, shouldn't we be interested in the levels of allies that might help us fight as well? I can see that it's mostly useful for outposts and towns, so perhaps separate guidelines for the different locations? Or we could try (as mentioned before some time ago) to divide the allies by those who fight each other and those who don't.

@Gordon: I placed it such that Allies are on the same level as Services. Service NPCs don't fight (except in certain quests), some allies do. I suppose it won't make much difference to put Services under NPCs. It's just that I find it helps separate the service-oriented NPCs from those that don't. *shrugs* It feels a little weird to have a header called "Allies" and then inside there's a "Services" and a "Other allies". Might as well drop the redundant "Allies". I like your idea about filtering away the quest-only spawns though, it'll keep things cleaner. Maybe expand the "Quests" section for that? Like adding an icon or a superscript to mark quests that will change the spawns of an area (maybe different ally spawns and enemy spawns too)... -- ab.er.rant 13:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I think removing quest-related spawns could get really messy, because I think the average wiki user doesn't know what spawns are there normally and which aren't (I know I don't, mostly). I think it's more informative to see all NPCs in an area, and then be able to tell what spawns (and disappeares) which each quest. If I understand you right, Aberrant, you are suggesting to move quest-related NPCs to the quest area of the location article? I think that could be a solution. - anja 14:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually I was thinking of getting rid of all quest-related spawns and mark each such quest with a ¹ this quest affects the spawns of this location. Or something similar, like an icon maybe. -- ab.er.rant 17:19, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Thinking again, since quests are listed above NPCs, I don't have a problem with that. Just need to make it clear :) - anja 17:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Since quests already list a spawn table, this may be a good solution for cleaning the pages a little. Maybe making a test page again, just in case, to see how it would work?.
@Gordon Ecker: The idea of using titles was to increase the font size of the text, and allow sections to be a little more differenced that with just using ";". Also, for levels, i agree that information on combat-related npcs is useful, but we still should reconsider if the extra information for service npcs (and basically any npcs that cannot die)is really needed.--Fighterdoken 22:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I just felt that if you had to manually prevent a section from appearing in the table of contents, then might as well not bother with the section header in the first place... but I guess I don't feel too strongly about that. It's just that the template for location pages would need one more obscure-looking (to casual users) piece of code. As for the NPCs, I have an idea, maybe we could split the NPCs by their "reaction" instead? So under "NPCs", we'll have three sections: "Allies", "Neutral", "Foes" (or we could call them "Friendly", "Neutral", "Hostile"). We group foes by species (excluding quest spawns), and we group allies and neutrals on a case-by-case basis - services, storyline groupings, lore groupings, etc... Allies are those we're sure will fight against foes, and neutrals are those that won't get attacked and won't attack. -- ab.er.rant 03:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

In response to my own response, I've tweaked Sunqua Vale here: User:Ab.er.rant/Sandbox.

• The quest-only NPCs cannot be removed unless we expand the "Quests" section to include quests that are not offered in that location. To clarify that section, I propose renaming "Quests" to "Quests available".
• I've also moved "Services" under "Allies", and then renamed "Allies" to "Friendly" (to avoid confusion with ally) and "Foes" to "Hostile". Of course, this is no big deal and I'm fine both ways.
• I've also changed ";" to "====". While the extra "[edit]"s are nice, I feel the size difference is even worse than using ";" to easily show where the "Foes"/"Hostile" section starts. If you scroll down quickly, it's easy to miss the "Foes" section. I wonder if it might be a better idea to just split "NPCs" into "Friendly NPCs" and "Hostile NPCs" instead. That way, we can have them both as 2nd level headings.

-- ab.er.rant 11:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry Aberrant, I'm just so tired of this whole guide, I think anything you propose sounds good. :P - anja 13:04, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I know what you mean. I'm getting a little tired of trying to get everyone to agree on guidelines. I'm going to go ahead and format more articles regardless of this soon. My latest changes hopes to address concerns (in reference to current guidelines, not my sandbox) raised by Gordon and Fighterdoken and hopefully resolve them.

I moved "Services" back under "Allies". I also moved "Charmable pets" out of "Allies", since they're not exactly allies. I also renamed "Quests" to "Quests available". I still insist on keeping the NPC levels and profession - it's not strictly necessary and they're mostly useless, but it's also mostly harmless to leave it there, and mostly harmless to omit them too.

And lastly, I agree with Gordon on removing quest-specific spawns and mentioning quests that affect spawns (just as how we avoid listing festival-related spawns). I'm only having trouble with what name to call a section of such quests. Until someone (or I) comes up with a good header name or at least a nice way of making the quests section look much better, I'll leave it as it this and we can come back later. At least agree on NPCs first. As before, samples can be seen in Shing Jea Monastery and Sunqua Vale. -- ab.er.rant 02:46, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe adding some kind of note or an icon (working in the same way as with repeatable quests) that just states that "X (or "this") quest changes the spawn table for this location"?. --Fighterdoken 05:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes I thought of that too, but it won't work unless we change what's shown in the "Quests" section, because some quests that affect spawns are not offered in that location, so we'd need to expand the scope of the "Quests" section. -- ab.er.rant 02:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Ow, i see. I guess alternatives could be just adding it to the notes section (as in "The following quests modify the spawn table for this location: A, B, C"); or expanding the "Quests" section splitting it into two, a "Quests acquired at this location" and a "Related quests" (with better names).--Fighterdoken 05:39, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Great minds think alike! (even to the extent where I too couldn't up with a good header name :P) 10:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Getting there

Do we really need the Getting there section seeing as there is a map? — ク Eloc 貢 21:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

The map doesn't tell anything about how you can unlock a specific area. Some players maybe just think "Oh I'm in the neighbour area so I can simply walk to that location" and they will often see a closed door :P poke | talk 22:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

If I show you a map of Gate of Torment, would it be obvious how to get there? "Getting there" is much more necessary than "Exits". -- ab.er.rant 01:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Tho' notes would do fine for special notes. Backsword 09:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

---

For areas and outposts, there may be two lines of approach. The one that is currently described is the one starting at the beginning of the campaign. A second sequence that might be interesting is how to get there from a 'foreign' campaign. In other words, how to get 'back' there if possible. --Max 2 18:12, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

NPC section. Again.

I noticed that this section have been changed to not include anything spawned by a quest. I see both advantages, such as a much clearer list and the possibility to denote special groups of the same unts that also exists normally in an area (Eg. the 9 bodyguards in Anton's quest The Assassin's Revenge), but also disadvantages, such as vanquishers wanting to know if any quest increases the kill requirement, and also the situation where some editor notcies a creature when playing but do not realise that a quest they have acgtive can cause the spawn and thus adds it back, creating messy article. I thought we could turn the disadvantages into something positive by somehow standarising how we display quests that modifies the NPC section. Or something. Backsword 09:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I've asked that before but received little feedback, so I've left all those quests under notes, above any vanquishing tips. I don't really have any good ideas aside from moving the list of quests that affect spawns into the quest section. For examples, see Zehlon Reach, Mehtani Keys and Plains of Jarin. -- ab.er.rant 01:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Those articles are a bit of an eyeopener. Didn't realise some locations had that many quests changing spawns. My thinking was to use the NPC section, as that's where people are most likely to look when it comes to NPCs. We don't use the area between ==NPCs== and ===Allies=== for anything, currently. I'll copy your usage in the notes section for now. Backsword 06:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Elonian Landmarks

After noticing the very high number of red links in the templates for Elonian landmarks, I did some research, and I learned that most of those red links were taken from names found within the game's .dat file, together with a small description (more details on this [topic from GWO).

The problem, IMO, is that not only we don't have much information about those places, but we also don't even know if they were added to the game, or if they're "official" names for things we have in game. For example, the Freeman's Cove appears to be the cave found within the Barbarous Shore, but there's no factual evidence that they're the same place, nor that said name is the "official" name of the cave, even if they were originally intended to be the same thing.

Given how it's unlikely we will get any more information about any of those landmarks, I would suggest just removing all of them. Other option would be asking Emily about them, but IMO it would be a somewhat troublesome request. Erasculio 21:36, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that removing those that we cannot confirm to be in game (no name mentioned anywhere in game) would be a good idea. There are too much invalid/inapplicable information in the dat for it to be relevant to put on wiki. If there were info in the dat to add to wiki, fine, but since we just have a name and nothing else it doesn't seem very useful. - anja 13:09, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm on the fence. On the one hand, we have pages dedicated to skills and other features that were dug up from the dat file but never released in-game, so there's no harm having pages talking about landmarks that we don't even know where they are. On the other hand, because of their vagueness, they don't have much use either (but to make them longer, we can mention where those names were retrieved from and add a note saying that we really really don't know where they're located :) -- ab.er.rant 04:01, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

First, seems User:Zora has implemented most now, so that should be considered.

Second, this discussion seems a bit skewered to me. It should not be about that file in the first place, one way or another. The relevant question is whether those landmarks exist in the game. If they do, they should be implemented and listed regardless, if not, at most an article marked unimplemented and certainly no template listeing. Backsword 00:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Freeman's Cove is definately that area on the Barbarous Shore, you can figure out from a few of the DAT entries:

Mahnkelon Ward

Water pumping station used to filtrate parts of the Elon and flush the waste into the Bahnelon.

This is of course the area where the Rilohn Refuge mission takes place and where you kill The Drought.

Bahnelon River

Underground river that emerges to the south and flows into the sea at Freeman's Cove.

The underground river that emerges to the south is obviously the one in Bahdok Caverns, and where does the river finally flow into the sea? At the Barbarous Shore.

Now it does seem that not all of the landmarks mentioned are actually in the game, but there are a good portion that are and there really shouldn't be a reason not to include them at least. Sounds Risky | 00:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem, IMO, is that the knowledge that areas like those mentioned in the .dat files are in the game does not mean that those areas are exactly those mentioned in the .dat file. For example, maybe Arena Net had planned to make a large set of caves or even an entire explorable area where the "Freeman's Cove" is, and that's what would have been named Freeman's Cove. Maybe they were going to name those caves we have in game "Freeman's Cove", but decided against naming them in the end, and therefore the caves' name would not be "Freeman's Cove", regardless if they fit the description or not. And so on. If people are willing to follow this issue, we could ask Emily about this and get confirmation about which names are "official" and which ones aren't, but personally I wouldn't like to give her more work than we already do. Erasculio 12:21, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Confirmation would be grand, but until then I would consider the information valid as long as it doesn't directly contradict anything in-game. It would be nice to get Grubb to poke his nose in here though, I imagine he has notes written down somewhere. Sounds Risky | 13:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually I don't have a problem with including those landmarks.. Even if the information is not within the game, I think a simple note with something like "The name and the description of this landmark are not available in-game, but were stored internally." would be fine.. poke | talk 13:38, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Would that issue not be readily resolved by adding a note explaining such? -- ab.er.rant 14:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

"Note: This article may or not be about what it's talking about"? Somehow that idea doesn't thrill me : P Asking Emily would be better, then, IMO. I'm writing a list of locations together with where they have been guessed to be, so we have something simpler to show to Emily. Erasculio 14:48, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Well... I wouldn't put it that way... :D but you're right, it's a little pointless. How about we redirect all those names to a centralised page containing "unconfirmed locations" or something? Something along the lines of Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/Unanswered questions? Or maybe we could merge it there or something. -- ab.er.rant 17:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

We'll see. I have wikified the list, added the guesses by other people (and my owns), and asked Emily about it. Erasculio 23:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

(RI) Well, Emily said she would look into it, but she's extremely busy, so I doubt we're going to get a reply anytime soon. Mohnzh and me were discussing this, and we thought about adding the remaining landmarks (since so many of them are already there, and adding them would reduce the number of red links we have around here) with the descriptions from the .dat file together with a note explaining the source of that information and that it's a bit questionable, as Aberrant had suggested. Does anyone oppose? Erasculio 20:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I support Erasculio's proposal. I stumbled into this discussion while trying to make the missing pages list useful again by reducing the number of pointless red links. I noticed that the Elonian Landmarks were full of them and that some existed with only a stub-notice and infobox. I copied the template into all the empty Vabbi Landmark pages fully intending on doing some in-game research tonight. That's when Erasculio caught me and pointed me this way. From what I gather, there is a mixed message. It seems like we are not yet creating the pages because their only evidence is the .dat file. But we do not remove them from the nav-box because there is evidence for their existence in the .dat file. I think that we should either decide to allow for the .dat file to be sufficient to at least begin these pages, or conclude altogether that no reference to them can be made without in-game evidence (including excluding them from the nav-boxes). My preference is the former, along with Erasculio. We don't have to know everything in order to provide some information. We could even present them as sort of lore, indicating they exist and have been described, but exact locations have only been speculated. Mohnzh say what? 20:23, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Vanquish count... time to call consensus on it?

For some time already, there has been two trends for adding a "vanquishing count" on explorable zones. One is the "average" aproach that intends to use standard language to convey the message about the numbers in question, and the other is the "min-max" aproach that tries to prevent constant changes to that section of the article by good-willed (but missreading) editors.

We already have the information on the Vanquish article, so whichever we choose could be filled without further research. Then... could we just pick one way of adding the information already? Pretty please, with sugar on top?

Current options are something like:

• For vanquishing the zone, players need to kill an average of xyz creatures.
• For vanquishing the zone, players need to kill between xyz and uvw creatures.

Or, if nothing else:

• For vanquishing the zone, players need to kill between xyz and uvw creatures, which means an average of abc kills.--Fighterdoken 08:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I am simply of the opinion that it would be nice to be able to separate the reported min and max from the non-quest-influenced average. Since the Vanquisher template is now being used for min and max regardless of quest (except the special case of Zen Daijun), I thought it would be nice to state on the explorable area that the number there reflects the actual non-quest-influenced state of the area (since all quest-specific stuff is being moved to quest pages as much as possible to keep the location articles "clean" of quest info). I don't mind swapping them around but I think it would be good to note down a different average from the one in Vanquisher. -- ab.er.rant 14:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

That would require some aditional research, but i think it is a good option if we decide adding min-max values, since (as you say) the vanquish article shows entries that are affected by quests. In any case, as a user who utilized the available info for deciding his vanquish methods, i must say that i found the "max" count and the quest notes a lot more helpful than min or average values.--Fighterdoken 17:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

So what are you suggesting? That we swap them or place both types of data on both? I hoped the wording that I used would be enough to discourage people from trying to keep the numbers in sync (they won't); primarily to keep them from going out of sync so easily actually, since the average will deviate less than the min-max values. Add the fact that we aren't really verifying whether a reported min/max value is really possible or not kinda also makes the average without quests more accurate (to me anyway, since I have no quests left and thus the max is not useful). -- ab.er.rant 11:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

As you say, the idea behind using the "average" wording is probably the best aproach document-wise, since it will give a good idea of how many opponents there are in the zone regardless of the conditions. But, as you also noted, wiki users will insist from time on time to replace that data entries with their own (be it average or min-max count), and since we don't have a official stance on it, revert skirmishes will just keep happening.

If possible, i would prefer to use "min-max" (AGF'ing the data entries) just to prevent stamping reverts right in the nose of new users, but more than anything i would just like that we make a official decision about the wording (even if it is "average") so other editors are aware of it.--Fighterdoken 06:19, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

All right then, how about "Vanquisher runs of this area in hard mode are known to have about x - y enemies; tending to z enemies on average when without active quests." or something like that. -- ab.er.rant 15:14, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good enough as to ensure random_user_001 don't change the data entry just to fit it to his own observations.--Fighterdoken 21:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Guild_Wars_Wiki:Formatting/Locations#Middle_sections

"It is not necessary to list quest-only NPCs or quest-specific spawns, as these should be listed in the corresponding quest page instead."

As this formatting guideline also applies to explorables, i request this sentence be changed or removed, since we have always been listing said NPCs. Much more because quest-related spawns exist only in explorables (and dungeons?). It would be omitting useful information if we wouldn't. I'll just change it if I don't get replies here, just wanna make sure i tell people before changing to give an opportunity to bring up other opinions. - Y0_ich_halt 18:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

We have always been listing said NPCs because that's been the way GuildWiki did it and the initial data have mostly been copied over, heh :D iirc, I added that line, because I found all the "only during blah-blah quest", "except during blah-blah quest", "unless so-and-so quest" to be rather cluttering (since a lot of times, you don't really care about quest effects, and if you do, you're only interested in just one or two, not all). I figured that since the mission articles is meant to hold only the mission-specific stuff, and quest articles holding only the quest-specific stuff, I thought it would be logical to have location articles to have only location-specific stuff, which means no quest or mission related stuff.

Check out how I conformed all the Nightfall articles (except the Realm of Torment explorables; haven't done them) to the current guidelines. I'm on Factions now, but Bart has nicely done many of them so I'm just adding stuff here and there. I've removed all quest-only spawns and replaced them with a list of quest that affects the area, allowing a sort quick reference. The only NPCs I've retained are those are appear before or after certain mission/quest requirements, since they don't fit well onto the quest articles. -- ab.er.rant 07:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

well, i never had a problem with "not during" and "only during"... also, i'd count NPCs to location-related stuff in any case. the difference with mission and quest articles is that neither missions nor quests overlap with any other location where this guideline applies. as explorables are often where quests take place, they do, so they can't be treated equally. separating related and non-related stuff is harder with this overlapping, and it would be easiest to just list everything for completeness. i looked at Sunward Marches to see an example of how you did it. an overview like this is nice, but i still think it can't make up for npcs missing in the full list. - Y0_ich_halt 12:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Would it be better to add quest-specific spawns to a separate subsection of the NPC section? That way, we remove the clutter from the normal list, but still provide the information. I agree with the logic that we shouldn't need to list everything twice, but I still feel it can get confusing if you find an NPC in an area that isn't listed. - anja 16:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Nah, additional sections would probably just make the page too long. As for someone being confused about seeing an NPC, well I'd probably just search that NPC rather than the location where I saw that NPC, but that's just me I guess. I just didn't like where, in certain areas, a whole long block had to be included because a quest decided to name those creatures differently, or when there are multiple requirements like quests A and B active, but quest C not active or not complete... oh well, guess that means it's time to go through them again if no one else voices up. If only someone noticed what I was doing when I started working on the Istan articles... about half a year ago ;) -- ab.er.rant 17:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I remember discussing it by then, but as I said I don't care much either way. Just trying to find a solution :) The NPC list is way too long sometimes. Could we make the list of quests that affect the spawns more visible? At the bottom, in the notes section, is too far away imo. It ends up several scroll lengths down on those pages where it really is needed, where there are too many NPCs and quests :P - anja 17:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think that if people are looking for an NPC that only appears during a quest, they'll be on the quest article. If people just want to know about the location, they won't care about NPCs that probably won't be there. I think aberrant's guideline is fine. The information will be on the wiki, just not in several places on the wiki. Ale_Jrb (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

well, i like anja's first proposal. what's the problem about a heading "Quest-specific NPCs"? we don't need to divide it into subsections through headings i think. a list would be enough. as for people not caring about npcs that won't be there: the problem is that they might be there without being listed, and people won't know why, so they'll either ignore it, add them to the list or post on a help page. - Y0_ich_halt 17:59, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The point about people not realising the guidelines and trying to add those quest-specific NPCs is a good point. And I think that also applies to the quest-specific NPCs. If we have a plain list (which we really can't for foes of different types), there will be users who will attempt to break them up into sections. So rather than having a lot of duplicate section headers, if we are adding them back, I'd rather we just did them the way we did it before. -- ab.er.rant 05:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

As I've read your arguments, and look at the articles, I do prefer to move quest NPCs off the page. It is confusing no matter what way we put it. If we could do as you have proposed in the next section, move them to a more visible place, I would be very happy. This, to me, seems to be the least confusing way for viewers (apart from those that just expects everything to be a guildwiki copy ;) ). - anja 08:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

i still don't know what you find so confusing about "NPC x (only during quest x)"... as for plain list: i meant a nested list like below or similar. - Y0_ich_halt 15:38, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

==Quest-specific NPCs==
;Allies
*Human
**Whatever
;Enemies
*...

Just for illustration purposes, and to have something to look at, I've chosen a complex explorable area to apply the above options. Let's compare:

• Cliffs of Dohjok - more or less based on the current guidelines
• Cliffs of Dohjok v1 - the style where quest-specific NPCs are merged into the NPCs section
• Cliffs of Dohjok v2 - the style where quest-specific NPCs are placed into another section (I could've added the "only during" thing too, but it was too time-consuming already)

Bear in mind that I don't mind the quest-specific NPCs in areas with few quests. It's for the early explorable areas, like v1, where lots of quests take place in, that I hate the "only during". It's just makes the section look really complex. Another thing is that I think if "only during" is present, "also during" might be warranted too. But that's another issue. To make it look cleaner, I think we will need to modify to guidelines to mention that grouping the NPCs by quest is warranted if it will make the page cleaner. For v2, the long extra NPCs section is probably cleaner, but it's essentially merging all the NPCs sections of all the quests involved into one big list. Another reason I'm against this sort of extra redundancy is that it will introduce inconsistencies between quest articles and location articles, similar to how we're having level and location inconsistencies between NPC articles and location articles. -- ab.er.rant 08:13, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

i still don't see the problem with v1 (though the list in the notes section is redundant, it might still be handy). it gets complicated if you're looking for monsters with unconditional spawn, but why would anyone? i don't consider the list of normal npcs very important anyway, but the list of bosses should be complete at least. looking at v2, that might not have been as good of an idea as i thought. - Y0_ich_halt 13:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I've expanded the guidelines and removed the part about ignoring quest-specific spawns. I'll probably run a few trial changes and see how best to reduce the clutter from all the repeated "only-durings" for the more complicated cases. -- ab.er.rant 08:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I thought of alternatives to the "only during" text, perhaps to differentiate the requirement/condition text from the more usual location or quantity notes as well as from the unique item link (for bosses). The standard one is at the Sulfurous Wastes#NPCs. I did italics on the Ruptured Heart#NPCs. And I did <small> on Poisoned Outcrops. -- ab.er.rant 03:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

late response, sorry. i like the sulfurous wastes and ruptured heart ones very much. the small font for poisoned outcrops looks strange, but would be ok, too. :) - Y0_ich_halt

Ehh, are we back to listing quest spawns in location articles now? Didn't we just change most of the wiki to not include them? Are we to remove them from quest article too? I don't care strongly either way, but it seems most people prefer the cleaner compartmentalised version over the more complete listing way. (from a quick skim) Backsword 06:18, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

We didn't really change "most of the wiki" to not include them, just the NF locations, and a few Factions ones. I guess this is back to square one. I'll stop doing any changes to the NPCs section until we really get this resolved. Perhaps this issue could be resolved together with the "Quest influences" issue below, by making it more obvious what quest introduces/removes what NPC? -- ab.er.rant 03:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Having the "only during" note behind every NPC does in fact not look very nice. But like yo, i also don't have a problem with listing them on the location pages and think it's adviceable to do so. The layout you've shown here looks nice imo. Though the list of some locations' NPC sections will get long, i don't think that it gets that confusing like this. Additionally, as yo said, especially listing the bosses might be interesting for many. —ZerphaThe Improver 15:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

With "we" you mean "I". I have changed many of the other location articles. Thus most. Backsword 15:41, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Wohkay :) I'm really more interested in just putting this to rest than leaving it hanging, so I'm fine either way. -- ab.er.rant 06:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm just miffed at the prospect of first spending effort getting to a situation, and then spending as much effort again to get back ote starting possition. It feels a lot like digging holes and then filling them in again. Backsword 00:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Quest influences

As Anja noted above, the way the Nightfall articles (the explorables in particular) are organised, the list of quests that take place in the area are placed at the bottom. Should it be moved as a subsection inside the "Quests available" section? Perhaps subdividing or marking them with "influences enemy spawns" or "influences ally spawns". To make the section nicer, perhaps we can complicate it (perhaps a bad thing) by turning that section into 2 columns. Or perhaps we merge all of it into one list, and then use superscript or icons/legends to mark them as either "offered here" or "takes place here", maybe in addition to the spawn influence marks. Or... leave it as it is? -- ab.er.rant 05:19, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

My idea was a simple "Quests" section, with a simple text list with parantheses (or small headings, if it applies to several quests) to show why this is relevant to list. I think we can start from there, see how it works, and then maybe work out icons. We are very iconified on this wiki, so even more icons might get confusing. Or it might be awesome, I'm not sure. :) - anja 08:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Something like this? Or is mine way too complex? -- ab.er.rant 08:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks great, to me. It might be a bit cluttered, but I can't figure out a way to make it better. All info that is there needs to be there. - anja 09:25, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

this one would be nice imo. - Y0_ich_halt 13:47, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Would something like this work? Of course, those icons are just something I coughed up in 5 minutes. But just consider the idea of using icons. The colour should be dulled and the size probably reduced I guess. -- ab.er.rant 07:21, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

very nice, but as you say needs dulling and maybe shrinking a bit. i'll try to get something outta it with my 1337 gimp skillz :D - Y0_ich_halt 17:19, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

So, how are those leet skills coming along? :p -- ab.er.rant 03:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

not so great, i don't like them personally. is what i currently have. (and the same green of course) - Y0_ich_halt 13:00, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think I prefer text over icons. Red/green symbolises foe/ally, I guess. But what would two + mean? It's not obvious, which is why I think text is better. It isn't too much text afterall. - anja 15:38, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Anja; those small pluses don't really explain what they were actually added for, and I doubt there is any other icon that is able to do that in this case. poke | talk 16:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

i don't care if it's text or plus, though i personally would prefer pluses (and of course two pluses means many spawns o.O) - Y0_ich_halt 16:26, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I thought it would be more obvious, but they do have a point I guess. Someone looking at the pluses for the first time probably might not immediately figure out what they mean. Does making them smaller helps visually? -- ab.er.rant 02:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Not really :/ But the italic definitely helps :) - anja 05:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

If nobody has any further ideas or thoughts about this, I'll probably give this (the italics style) a go on a couple of location pages and see how it goes (read: when I feel like trying :P). -- ab.er.rant 13:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... I kinda like this. -- ab.er.rant 07:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Points of interest

Backsword (and others, I think) has been adding interactive objects to the notes section (such as Wajjun Bazaar#Notes). I'm thinking that the notes section is being used for too many things. I propose renaming "points of interest" to something else (no idea what's would be good) and have it also used for interactive objects. Kinda like a section for the "clickable stuffs in a location" (which includes signposts I guess). -- ab.er.rant 08:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you are thinking about here. Landmarks are not clickable, no more than, say, missions are. Iobs and landmarks have next to nothing in common so it seem strange to me to group them. The closest replation to Iobs would be NPCs. Backsword 01:13, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

That's probably because I still think of landmarks as being more like a "point of interest" than a "location". And interactive objects, while being objects, are still specific points of interest in that area. But I guess you do have a point about them not having much in common. How about a "Interactive objects" section? Say, we rename "NPCs" to "NPCs and objects"? My primary motivation is to see if the "Notes" section can be trimmed and return it to only additional notes, not for content that applies to many locations (of the same type). Those are no longer just "notes", but facts or attributes of all explorables/outposts/etc. (I feel like moving out the title-specific stuffs as well, but haven't thought of anything good yet) -- ab.er.rant 08:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that notes would be suited for only nonstandarised information. In fact, I argued so when you and Anja wanted Iobs in the notes....

I'd be fine with your suggestion. I prsume you intend a level three section below foes (and bosses)? "NPcs and objects" sounds a bit klunky, but most alternatives may be hard to understand for normal users. From a technical perspective, you'd call them "Actors" or just the more general "Entities". I guess "Spawns" may work, but it sounds a bit informal.

BTW, while I leave the vanq headache to you, we should really do something about the explorer notes, as they are actually objectivly wrong, and based on a misunderstanding on how the title works. Alway.s felt that the official wiki should not perpetuate that, but never had the energy to campaign against it. Backsword 02:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm thinking of Iobs as level three under foes/bosses. I think we can stick with "NPCs and objects" for now, until something better comes along. It has a nice side effect of making things like the Xunlai Chest fit in. Whats wrong about the explorer notes? I just standardised and reworded what's already there so I have no idea. -- ab.er.rant 02:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Explorare doesn't work on map zones at all; it works on the underlying terrain blocks, and it doesn't matter which zone you are in when uncovering. This misunderstanding makes people waste a lot of time when exploring; by visiting every corner of every zone, even if they already uncovered it from another zone. It also make the percentage values pointless: how much you can uncovers depends in what order you do zones. Backsword 03:25, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

True, but it's the perception of it. If we assume that a player does not use Texmod, then it's hardly convincing to tell them not to bother exploring every corner since they have no way of checking whether each corner has been fully explored yet. Of course, that's brings to mind the relative uselessness of the percentage in the first place. Disallowing the percentage amounts the same sort of work I did when I tried to disallow the vanquisher kill count ranges - users are just going to add them when they notice it missing. What might work better is to try to incorporate a link to the proper mechanics and to reword that sentence in a manner that explains the meaning of the percentage. -- ab.er.rant 03:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Let me clarify another problem: 'as the percentage is inherrently false it will only cause probelems'. The supposed purpose is to help cartographers. Ie, if you've gained this percentage, you have everything and can move on, else say and explore more. But that is directly harmful. Take this example: A terrain block is shared by an outpost and an explorable. Person A enteres the outpost, and immediately enters the explorable. A notes that he gained 0.1% in the ooutpost. He then scrapes the edges, crisscrosses the map and do everything to explore, gaining 1.4% in that zone. He thus edits the wiki and puts in 1.4%. B is also exploring, but B does every corener of the outpost first, getting 0.3%. He then goes out in the explorable to map. Once he thinks done, they see that they've gained 1.2%. They then check the wiki to see if that's all, but sees that they should get 1.4%. As a result, they spend a large amount of time trying to find the 'missing' bits, but no matter how much effort they put in, no result. And the thing is, there is no good cases to make up for this.

But as you say, this is the perception, and the effort to change it would require reeducating the community, a major project. Which is why I have given up on the entire thing. Backsword 15:51, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

After adding an "Objects" subsection to several places, how do you feel about it now? I think it looks better than in the notes section. Should we go ahead and change "NPCs" to "NPCs and objects" (or something)? -- ab.er.rant 13:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Eh, it's not much different. But I guess a list is a list, and it may as well be like this. It does look a bit out of place with no prof icon and no level, just a straight list. Perhaps we could use the minimap symbols in EotN? That way it would double as a (partial) map key. OTOH, there are only icons for some objects, so the list may seem "uneven". Backsword 15:10, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...then I guess it's not ready enough for all the locations yet. Notes is better then, at least it "belongs better", sort of. -- ab.er.rant 02:03, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Did this every reach the stage of being accepted? I must admit that in my tidy up of the quests, missions, and locations I had actually been moving things back into the Notes since I had assumed that the GWW:LOCATIONS page was definitive. Since that hadn't been updated, I assumed that this proposal had been abandoned. I don't really mind either way, but since I'm ploughing through them all anyway, I might as well use the latest and greatest official layout. --DryHumour 15:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

While not specifically NPCs someone has proposed (in another discussion section further down the page) that Res shrines and statues are possibly NPCs. I think they should not be in the notes section, but rather in a section near the NPCs, possibly titled "Interactive Objects", could go under points of interest main section, that has any statues (they are intended to be interacted with by the PCs). 42 - talk 03:26, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Vanquisher notes

Does anyone a subsection would be good? Possibly either a ==Vanquishing== or a ===Notes on vanquishing===? Or is it currently fine. See any NF explorable for examples. -- ab.er.rant 08:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer a Guide to Vanquishing article for subjective stuff, prefering to keep articles to listing objective truths. Backsword 15:42, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Shrines

Does anyone think the shrines section should be shortened in height? Or perhaps a way to merge the bounties list with the avatars list? See any NF explorable for examples. I was originally supportive of the current format, but now I think it can be improved to be more compact. -- ab.er.rant 08:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Exits

I noticed that most articles now have the exits in the {{location infobox}} so should the description of where and how to add exits be updated?- TheRave (talk) 22:13, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. The "exits" parameter is explained in the infobox template. The exits section is explained under "Middle sections". -- ab.er.rant 02:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

My guess is that he believes that sections to predate the infobox inclusion, and thus that it should be removed now. Backsword 15:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

That's what I think. Since the exits are now listed in the infobox, there is no need for an "Exits" section in the article. Since this is a guideline, I'm going to remove the Exits article section from it, preferring to have just the lines in the infobox. Biscuits 20:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with removing the entrances/exits section from the main body of the article. The information is usually listed in the infobox, but most people's eyes would be drawn to the main body of the article for information pertaining to that location. Using the argument that information is already somewhere else can be carried to ridiculous extremes, as it seems to be done far too many times already. 42 - talk 20:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

One possible counter-argument is that information which must be maintained in multiple places often isn't. For something relatively static like the exits, it's not that big a deal either way though. That being said, I had already started taking them out&hellip. --DryHumour 21:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

That could cause problems doing so. While I don't remember where I saw this, I saw someone suggest taking out a "How to get there (backended way of "exits")", and someone else mentioned it is needed on articles that do not have a "specific" way to get there. To keep the articles consistent, shouldn't they be kept in? Also, I don't think that there has been enough discussion on this yet to say for sure one way or the other yet. 42 - talk 16:21, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Since there's a fair amount of update work going on right now, and both styles are being used, it would good to reach a consensus on this soon. Obviously it doesn't matter enormously either way, but if people are putting in the time to edit the large number of pages involved anyway, it would be nice if they were all formatted consistently. --DryHumour 15:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

NPCs during quests

I haven't read this whole talk page (or the archives) so apologies for the repetition and whatnot, but I wanted to bring up the matter of listing NPCs which only appear during quests again. I think listing those NPCs is useful for vanquishers, elite skill cappers, runners, and basically anyone that wants to know what's in an area (which is what the location articles are for, right?). I think listing the NPCs themselves rather than just the quests that influence spawning is more helpful - less clicks, less going back and forth, less windows to open (you don't necessarily want to open, say, 5 tabs to see exactly which NPCs become available).

Alternatively, having a list for the NPCs and a list for quests may be even more useful - you'll be able to see which quests influence spawning, and which NPCs will appear regardless of the circumstances.

The issue's been brought up at Talk:Frozen Forest#Mragga in regards to listing Mragga, which brought me to here. -- Brains12 \ talk 19:24, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm the troublemaker who added the Mragga bit, found it almost immediately removed, and put it back. I based my edit on a number of area pages I had perused in my eternal quest to get my legendary survivor. Thanks to Brains12, for pointing out this policy page to me.

It seems the transient NPC policy (if I may call it that) is fairly new in written form, added specifically on October 24 2008. Perhaps that's the reason there are pages with transient NPCs still listed (e.g. Salt Flats). Sorrow's Furnace was just recently changed to the newer format.

Sorrow's Furnace is an interesting case, though. The number of quests there influence a larger number of transient NPCs, resulting in a bit unwieldy older format list. Perhaps we can find a way to unclutter the information but still make it easy for area planning.

Area planning example: while advancing my survivor through Prophecies post-ascension, the Salt Flats page, still listing Yxthoshth as only being available during The Ranger's Path quest, alerted me to change the order I attack the secondary quests (making sure I do The Mesmer's Path before this quest), so I could capture Crippling Anguish fairly early on - hey, 5000 extra XP for the survivor!.

Sorry for the long post. Just thought I'd chime in. Yikes, I got involved! (Ralmon the Gen 02:32, 25 December 2008 (UTC))

I also haven't read this whole talk page/archives but I too would think this information would be more useful and informative to have on the location page than to not, for example for the aforementioned elite skill capturers. Also Ralmon I fixed the date in your comment about when this guideline was changed since over a 1000 years isn't new (October 24 1008) =P --Kakarot 05:58, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

"over a 1000 years isn't new" - hehe! Maybe in your reality... (Ralmon the Gen 15:17, 25 December 2008 (UTC))

I not sure I want to get involved in a discussion of having or not having quest NPCs again (since I'm already contributing very little content these days). The main discussion were in the "Middle sections" and "Quest influences" sections above. I have three points/summary for you guys to consider:

1. Several users have already changed many (most?) of the location articles to not have them. Before changing the guideline, consider this: If there are no dedicated users willing to help with the mass changes and see the change through, changing the guideline becomes just that, changing the guideline. It took quite a while before the current guideline got implemented on many of the location pages and most of them are still not conforming. I just think there needs to be the effort focused on organising people to help with mass changes rather than discussing about a possible change.
2. I've edited a few pages for testing, but I noticed that only Backsword noticed (or at least, no one noticed enough to comment on them). It was over a month ago I think, and I haven't yet got an urge to propagate the changes, so my test edits were limited to a couple of Istan location pages so far. And only a few users were interested in the above discussion sections. I'm worried that this is an indication of the commitment users have to a change like this.
3. My test edits to Plains of Jarin and Zehlon Reach were to two sections. The ones you guys are interested in is the "Quests" section. I merged the quest influences list in all the notes sections with the "Quests available" section. My trial changes were meant to be proposed as a compromise to both extremes. I wanted to retain some info regarding quest spawns while not cluttering the NPCs list with lots of repeated "only during blah blah", plus being able to group the quest spawns by quest, not spread out across several subsections. Also, specifically for vanquishers, by having a summary, they can see at a glance what quests they should or should not have active.
4. But yea, the Mragga issue is not going to be resolved by using my test change. I tend to use List of elite skills by capture location for something like that, but I'm aware other people don't use stuff like me :P But again personally, I feel this is more an issue of "Elite skills in this area" than an NPC listing issue. If we change the boss section to not list elite skills, and put elite skills in another section, problem solved?

ooo, longest post I've made in a long while :D -- ab.er.rant 15:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

→ moved from User talk:Ab.er.rant#Bad idea

Bad idea imo, it messes up things like how First Spear Dehvad's quests used to be in the order you did them. I think listing them by quest giver is more useful than an alphabetical order. Misery 13:46, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Plains of Jarin? -- ab.er.rant 15:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The quest influences section is interesting but confusing at the moment. It seems unclear that those are added as additional foes (I assume that is what that is indicating). I would leave the quest list as it is for Kamadan and maybe move the quest influences section down to the NPCs section with perhaps separate sections for additional foes and removed foes (I'm pretty sure some quests remove foes). Misery 15:34, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was more concerned with noting additional foes. But your suggestion basically puts us back at the original discussion we had some months back: how to deal with quest-influenced spawns. I used the new format on all the explorable areas on Istan to see if anyone reacted. I guess I should've started with Kamadan :D -- ab.er.rant 15:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I stalk RC, so it depends on whether or not you did it when I was about. Kamadan is actually an extreme example of where it doesn't work so well though becacuse there are a lot of sequential quests there. The whole quest sections get so large and complicated though, especially with quest influences. Misery 16:15, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The quests section on the pages looks a bit weird and unordered. Is there actually any order? It's a bit confusing, it's neither by name nor by quest giver. And I don't like how the quest givers name appear that often. I prefer the classic style.

And I agree that "Quest influences" should be listed in the NPC section - as that is what changes, not the quest. poke | talk 16:34, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The list was alphabetical. Misery 16:35, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I know what you mean poke, it's the old GWiki style that you prefer. Problem is, the ones willing to make the changes tend to support a no-only-during-this-quest-note style :D I just didn't like how the only-during-this-quest marks appearing here and there and cluttering up the place (which, incidentally, causes the quest names to appear pretty often as well, same your dislike of the repeated quest giver names). Also, I'd rather see a summary of what a quest introduces than having it spread out across a long vertical list. I'm repeating myself, maybe we should go here or here. -- ab.er.rant 01:26, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

While it appears this discussion has slowed way down, I think it is time to restart it.

I am of the opinion that if an NPC appears in a specific map location, then they should be listed in the lineup. If it is only from a quest, with a note that it is quest specific. A person shouldn't be forced to go and look through all of the pages they have active quests on to see if a certain NPC is going to appear in an area. 42 - talk 07:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Resurrection shrines in Allegiance areas of Factions

I believe we need to come up with a way to document the NPC's at the resurrection shrines in the Kurzick/Luxon areas of Factions that somehow conveys the changes that occur when allegiance changes. Currently the are specific to Kurzick/Luxon and get changed (occasionally) when allegiance for those areas changes in game. -- Wyn 22:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Quest bosses

The last time this was brought up, it didn't seem to go anywhere. I would like to revise the guideline to include quest-related boss spawns rather than excluding them as it does for other quest-related NPCs. This is already how they are handled in most articles, so the change would merely formalize the current informal style convention. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure that's how it's being handled in most articles? I'm pretty sure most of have been removed. -- ab.er.rant 13:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I just used list of elite skills by capture location to skim through articles for zones with quest bosses. At a glance, it seems that about 2/3 of them list quest bosses. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 07:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Good estimate I guess. Nightfall locations won't list them. Some of Factions won't list them. Don't know about Prophecies and EotN. -- ab.er.rant 09:38, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Profession specific quests

I noticed that some - but not all - profession specific quests on location pages have profession glyphs to help signify that status. Since as a new GW player and wiki user I found that information useful, I thought I might formalize its use. In the process, I created a little template for "profession pairs" (primary and secondary) and I applied it in a couple of places. Wynthyst suggested I hold off pending community consensus, and that I make a recommendation here.

Accordingly, I am soliciting opinions whether:

• profession specific quests should be specifically identified in the "Quests" sections of locations pages;
• glyphs are the most suitable form in which to communicate that information (perhaps colour coding? text?);
• "profession pair references" (primary and secondary professions) should have a standardized representation via a template;
• the specific representation provided by the current Template:pp implementation is suitable.

I've sandboxed an example for consideration. --DryHumour 00:20, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't like how the by the template generated icons stand out and look different from normal icon usages. This is especially visible in the "The Elementalist Experiment"-line. Also the slash shouldn't get a different font size imo, that will just make it render wrong with some browsers and increase the line height unnecessarily.

Otherwise a good idea. poke | talk 12:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Good idea, but what if you put it at the beginning? Similar to how (in your example) the NPCs are labeled. I like the general idea, since the way it is now, you have to click the quest link to find out if there is a required profession. Minor nitpick, but I also agree with Poke on the font size of the slash. --Freedom Bound 13:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not all that happy with the visuals either. "Artistic Talent Needed." I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately every time I try to line things up, I run up against a MediaWiki bug/feature which causes problems with certain layout elements when they're included into list items. Sigh. --DryHumour 02:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Most of it is good, as those icons both provides help for those reading the article and givves a more polished look, without any read drawback.

However, I don't think we should use a special template for the case in your sandbox. It is so rare, and nonituitive, that by the time a reader knowns what it means, and that won't be made easier, they'll already be past those quests. It would be preferable to just explain the situation, in notes if it gets long. Backsword 18:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Being a very new GW PvE player, I didn't realise that this wasn't a more common occurrence. When I get a free minute, I'll update the sandbox with some alternatives. --DryHumour 18:54, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the example with samples which incorporate the various suggestions, as well as some existing examples for comparison. I've indicated there that the first one constitutes the current proposal on the basis of the feedback here. --DryHumour 22:58, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Last call. Any objections to the current proposal? --DryHumour 23:29, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Only link the first instance of a word, for example, if it's a primary quest, only link "primary" once, not for every primary quest listed. I personally prefer icons to be after the quest name if they need to be there. -- Wyn talk 23:52, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

It was always my intention that these proposals be applied to both location pages and the quest pages themselves. However, it was noted that no such formal proposal was made with respect to the quest pages. Therefore, I have made such a proposal at GWWT:QUESTS#Profession specific quests. --DryHumour 00:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I happen to agree with Wyn on this, as far as identifying primary and secondary quests with the icons. As long as it is standardized through all of the pages, it would be clear to users of the pages. I also think, that if the quests are going to be identified with profession specific icons, that they be put to the left of the quest name, following the same way they are for the NPC lists. Also, if you are going to flag the quests with professions, if there is a quest that is for any profession, that the icon be used, just to keep the formatting standard. 42 - talk 20:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Various proposals were evaluated (including both using and placing the icons in various positions) both here and on GWWT:QUESTS#Profession specific quests. The final consensus at the time was to leave them at the end and to leave "any profession" quests un-tagged. Feel free to check out User:DryHumour/Sandbox/Profession Quest Example, though. Since it is plenty tedious to change the many, many, places this occurs I'd prefer to leave it as is. (And if it is revisited, I'd suggest using a template so that future editors needn't suffer next time around. I actually almost did so this time.) --DryHumour 21:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

IMO, using "this is how it was done" especially when it was done "wrong" to begin with is a cop-out. The skill lists have the icons at the left side, the NPCs should follow that format, as should any prof specific quests. That precendent is set many many times already. Since there is a way to tag them as any profession, if any quests are tagged, they should all be. The "any" icon can be changed in size to be the same as the prof icons. 42 - talk 22:56, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Since it is a question of presentation rather than content, there is not really (in any absolute sense) a right way or a wrong way to go about it. From a pragmatic point of view, it was much less work to follow the existing precedent for quests: that those with no profession requirement have no special glyph associated with them. (That the effort was lower was true in two senses: the editing effort; and the effort required to build consensus.)

More specifically, as other commentators have pointed out, the icon has the distinct drawback that it does not carry any terribly strong semantics, particularly to new players. It would also be visually rather dense, in particular for the vast majority of situations where multiple quests with no prerequisite are mentioned together. Since my main interest was to furnish myself (and, hopefully, other new players) with a means for quickly determining which quests could be accessed, I felt that these arguments had merit. As you can see from the record, several different suggestions were made, by various parties; they were discussed; trade-offs were considered; compromises were made; and a consensus was ultimately arrived at. (None of this is to say that decisions cannot be revisited, but the onus then falls on the agent of change to produce a compelling new argument, and to sway opinion so as to arrive at a new consensus. This can be rather hard, tedious, unrewarding and at times unpleasant work depending on where one's interests and experience lie. I know that I do not particularly enjoy it.) --DryHumour 00:53, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Headline links

As User:Backsword pointed out (in an edit comment for the page proper), the use of links in headlines tends to look fairly odd. However, in ploughing through updating the various quests and locations, I've noticed that there is considerable prior art for linking the Bosses and Charmable animals headlines, and the information in those articles is useful for new players. In order to arrive at a compromise, I had started using a {{see}} as the first line in these sections. Some editors have reverted these on the basis that this usage does not appear in the guideline template (c.f. Anvil Rock). Accordingly, I would like to try to arrive at some sort of consensus here for the kind and degree of linking which should be used. --DryHumour 21:45, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I will update the sample boilerplate on the main page later tonight. --DryHumour 22:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I actually have to agree, that using the see template doesn't really look good. I would rather just see no links to the respective articles. It's not that important anyway and looks a lot better. poke | talk 22:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

I tend to actually prefer the linked headlines myself, which is what I was originally changing everything to (particularly since it seemed quite common already) before Backsword demurred. But it's a very minor point, and I don't much mind what we end up with so long as I don't have to revisit all of the pages again afterwards . So if I go with "no links at all", does anyone mind? --DryHumour 23:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Since there are no strong opinions for retaining the links, and some against, I'll continue the cleanup using the "no links at all" style. --DryHumour 16:28, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think that the standard of linking the first instance of that particular topic should be followed, even if that happens to be in the headers. I don't think that the headline should be a link just because it is a headline, if, for example, the word had already appeared previously in the same article. I also think that the major divisions (such as a campaign character specific difference) should be made a headline subsection, to make it easier and faster to navigate to within the article itself.

On a side note Dry, something I have done is make a working section area as a notepad of sorts for myself. To let me know what sections of a certain project I have left, what is done, etc. 42 - talk 19:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm relatively new here, but it seems that there have been a number of other threads on various discussion pages in the past about linking etiquette. I suspect that attempting to gather consensus will likely be… tricky. For my part, I'd really like to see the "first use" rule weakened to "first use in each major section" or even just "as makes sense" (or perhaps even removed altogether as an official policy to allow it to vary sensibly and naturally on a case by case basis). --DryHumour 21:08, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I have seen it done this way on probably 95% of the pages I have seen, and I try to follow this format if I make any changes to links in other pages, is to not count the infobox in any of the other links in the rest of the article while following the "link the first occurrence" standard. Within each of the lists of locations and map areas, I do not mess with however the links there are for the main words (only make one link in any (this is extra information)areas), even if they are repeated in the quests, locations, skills, and NPCs areas. If there were an occurrence before those lists, that would be an acceptable link, but in a section after those, wouldn't repeat the link. 42 - talk 02:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe (but cannot be certain) that the intended procedure in the case of an incomplete section (as opposed to one which is known to be empty, and therefore omitted) is to include the section and use {{section-stub}}. Of course, as with any project this size with this many contributors, it's not particularly uniformly applied. --DryHumour 03:19, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) "It's not that important anyway" I am sure that the people who find that information useful would disagree with you, and it goes against the standard accepted of linking first occurrence. More proof of thought that because some people don't find something useful means that no one else should be able to make use of it. 42 - talk 23:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

My personal opinion on linking, it should be done the first time appearing in an article (not counting the infobox which should have it's own links), and all items within a list (any notes on those items should follow first occurance rule), all the items of the list should be linked. It would be clearer to show by generic example.

Ragnvald offers Norn Hunting Party after being defeated. (If Norn Hunting Party appears again in the article, it shouldn't be linked again.)

==Locations==

• Far Shiverpeaks
  • Ice Cliff Chasms (southwest from Eye of the North, at the exit to Battledepths)

==Skills==

• Cleave (elite)
• Bear Form
• Healing Signet
• Dismember
• Disrupting Chop
• Axe Twist

(Repeated locations appearing in the list should be linked, as should skills.)

==Rest of the article==

Any words linked before should not be linked again in this area, including those that were in skill or location sections.

42 - talk 23:11, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Statues are interactive objects

I propose a minor change of organization in the layout, and it follows what I hope most people would see as common sense.

Right now, the interactive objects (like chests and such) are being put in the notes section, and not all location articles would need that anyway. Since statues are also technically interactive objects, I suggest that, if it applies, any other interactive objects such as chests be put in that same section. I do understand that for some people, the chests might not have as much importance to them as any shrines or statues, but they are both technically interactive objects in the game mechanics. 42 - talk 19:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't really have any preference either way, so long as the usual "omit empty sections" semantics apply. In passing, it is perhaps worth noting that there is quite a lot of prior art for having a separate section immediately preceding Notes and following Foes. The only reason I mention it is that specifying it that way might mean a little less work for the poor schmoe who does the updates --DryHumour 20:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen a few articles that have a "Objects" section as a sub-section of "NPCs" (example 1, 2). Currently, none of the guidelines mention how interactive objects (such as chests and levers) should be listed in articles. --Silver Edge 22:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In regards to your comment on the empty sections, I think actually having certain sections that do let you know there is nothing of that section in that particular map area wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. After all, letting someone know that the particular section has no information would be useful, and it could clearly say that the section isn't just missing because someone hasn't put it in there yet.

Personally, I don't think that Objects should be a subsection of NPCs because they are not characters per se, they are their own type. But I do think that, in the game mechanics, the statues are by definition interactive, because to get them to work, you have to interact with them; even though they might not be considered the same way in the scope of the wiki. 42 - talk 02:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I tend to agree that flexibility is usually the best course (guidelines rather than rules); in conjunction with the assumption of good faith edits, reasonable results will tend to emerge over time. What I wouldn't want to encourage is "This page intentionally blank" syndrome where every section is always included simply from a slavish application of the template. --DryHumour 03:26, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I believe (but cannot be certain) that the intended procedure in the case of an incomplete section (as opposed to one which is known to be empty, and therefore omitted) is to include the section and use {{section-stub}}. Of course, as with any project this size with this many contributors, it's not particularly uniformly applied. --DryHumour 03:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with that idea to a point. However, there has to be some way to let a game player (and also a potential editor) know (other than having to open up the edit and see <!-- comments -->) that a section is intentionally not there, and not just missing because no one has gotten to it yet. While there is the {{stub}} tag, what would happen if the section actually is missing, and the last person (or group of people) in didn't remember to put a stub tag in. Or worse, they didn't put one in because they thought someone else should have done it if it was missing stuff. 42 - talk 19:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

See the 'Points of interests' section above. Backsword 11:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Vanq

This appears in just about every ea article. It's a standarised item, but it is in notes. SHoulden't we display it in some standarised way? Backsword 11:42, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In some other standardized way than in the notes? Most of them contain the exact same two sentences, and any possible way to increase/decrease the number or otherwise affect the spawns (type of enemy, for example). Did you want a new section that contains that information? -- FreedomBound 16:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

If they do in fact always contain the same exact two sentences, and using a template transclusion name would take less typing, why not just make an easy name template to put there? 42 - talk 23:14, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Because the sentences are already there? -- FreedomBound 23:20, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

How about an optional value in the location infobox? I dislike scrolling to the bottom and scanning around the notes to try to find the number. Manifold 22:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Using templates, is it possible to make it so that the figures in the Vanquisher page also appear in each of the explorable area pages? Cause most of the time, people update one of the figures in Vanquisher, but don't update the corresponding explorable area page, and vice-versa, so the figures are inconsistent between the Vanquisher and explorable area pages. --Silver Edge 23:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Depnding on how it's done, it could vary from easy to impossible. Any solution would have it's drawbacks. Backsword 13:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Services order

In terms of festival hat makers amd costume makers, where in the order of NPC services should they be placed? Sure it's only a few select locations where you find them, but those are places with abundant NPCs. I was thinking :

*{{x}} ## [[Rare scroll trader NPC]] ([[rare scroll trader]])
*{{x}} ## [[Skill trainer NPC]] ([[skill trainer]])
*{{x}} ## [[Festival hat maker NPC]] ([[festival hat maker]])                  <--Here
*{{x}} ## [[Costume maker NPC]] ([[costume maker]])                            <--Here
*{{x}} ## [[Pet tamer NPC]] ([[pet tamer]])
*{{x}} ## [[Profession changer NPC]] ([[profession changer]])

Obviously without the "<--Here" part. Thoughts? ~Celestia 04:41, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Note too that Lion's Arch and Kamadan already subgroup their large lists of NPCs, where these are lumped in with the crafters (which is probably sensible). --DryHumour 04:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)