Guild Wars Wiki talk:Game integration

Game integration

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Bringing up web content inside the game client is going to be a long-term project, but we could easily have the game client fire up a web browser to display wiki pages as an intermediate solution. We were thinking about trying this out with one simple category of content. The one that seems simplest to us is quests, because it wouldn't take much of a change to the game's UI to add a wiki link to a quest description inside the quest log.

If we do this, we'd like to link by quest id, rather than by quest name, so that little tweaks to quest names or spelling don't break the linkage. For example, the id for Althea's Ashes is 123, so if the user clicks on the wiki link from Althea's Ashes then we might call up a wiki page named Q123, which could then automatically redirect to the correct page for Althea's Ashes. (I'm not sure about wiki naming conventions, and perhaps it would be more appropriate to put these redirection pages in another namespace.)

Let me know your thoughts on this. --Mike O'Brien 21:20, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Another namespace is a better idea I think, rather than populating the main namespace with a bunch of id-named pages. -- ab.er.rant 21:27, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

So something like "Redir:Quest 123"? And then we would eventually have "Redir:Mission 456", "Redir:Map 789", etc.? --Mike O'Brien 21:32, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Shouldn't it be "Redir:Q123"? But anyway, yea, something like that. But "Redir:Map 789"? So that we can just click on a link to see a map image on the wiki from inside the client itself? Or it'll just pop up a browser pointing to that image? If the latter, might as well just jump to the quest/mission page instead. -- ab.er.rant 21:41, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I figured that there's no reason not to be more verbose, especially since categories like Mission, Map, and Monster all share the same first letter. When I talk about "maps", I mean any place in the game that you can travel to. There's a lot of good information on this wiki about towns, outposts and explorable areas. --Mike O'Brien 21:51, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I support using a new namespace for this, although I'm not sure about "Redir", that seems pretty generic. Maybe "GW_interface", or "Game_link", or some other combination that better defines the namespace. As to the names of the redirect articles themselves - if it's not a problem to program the more verbose version, then I think that will work better for clarifying what each link represents. I would also suggest a central index article someplace in the namespace as well, to help explain that "Quest 123" should point to "Althea's Ashes", etc - that'll be useful for keeping the links current and pointing to the right places. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:16, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I just wanted to mention that once these redirects are made, they need to be protected, either that or protect the whole namespace. I don't know if that is an option or not, but if it is I think it would be the better choice. --Rainith 23:06, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I was thinking the same thing - protect the namespace but not the associated talk pages. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:08, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

I disagree that we need to use a separate namespace for this. What advantage will that have? Redirecting Quest 123 and tagging it with {{R from Guild Wars client}} or something would be just as effective.

I'm not opposed to a namespace, it just seems unnecessary. The rationale behind using namespaces for builds and guilds has been that it's an easy way of isolating them from those users who don't want to see the changes in recent changes, and an easy way of singling all articles for deletion if the decision ever comes to delete the build/guild sections. I don't think redirects for the game require isolating for either of those reasons.

On a less related note (maybe this should be under a different subheading) I've been considering for some time how we can avoid vandalism appearing in the game.

At present all sysops have the ability to mark changes as patrolled, although this feature isn't actively used at present. Marking a change as patrolled implies that the edit has been verified as correct (or at least, not vandalism or a bad faith edit). This is mainly used so that other sysops need not also check the article; patrolled edits can be omitted from recent changes.

I wonder if, were we to start using this feature, the game client would be able to look at the most recent patrolled version of an article? This way if an article is vandalised it would not show up in the client, because it would not be marked as patrolled.

I'm not sure if this will be possible, but I thought I would suggest it ;) LordBiro 05:32, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

As the in-game link redirects will rarely need edited, a new namespace could be created as protected by default. Requests for changes could be done using the talk page and the {{Editprotected}} tag used. You can then use Special:Prefixindex to easilly view the contents of the namespace (granted, that second benefit can be replicated via categories).

My reasoning for a unique namespace is that game-linked redirects are very different by nature than any other content in nearly all other namespaces. It's the same reasoning behind having a "Guild Wars Wiki" namespace - which, incidentally, is the only current one that seems compatible to me - I could be convinced to support using that one instead of a new namespace for in-game link redirects, protecting each link after creation rather than the namespace by default. But to me, that's the only existing one that seems reasonable to use. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 11:25, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

I support a new namespace too and protecting it as default is a good idea. I think it's great to see this being implemented as soon as possible. Although Biros patroll idea is good, I don't see vandalism being any bigger of a problem than before. If the game only uses the latest patrolled edit somehow, some pages might not show updated content for a long long time if it goes unnoticed by the admins. -- (gem / talk) 11:37, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Since what we talk about here is mainly a bunch of technical redirects, no new content, I dont see why a separate namespace should be a bad idea. --Xeeron 14:28, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

I'm not saying a separate namespace is a bad idea, just an unnecessary one. I don't know if redirects should be protected. The potential for abuse is the same as if someone were to alter the article directly.

As far as patrolled edits go, if sysops were to use the patrolled edits feature regularly then I don't see that this would pose a problem, and edits carried out by sysops are automatically classed as patrolled. My only concern is that someone will see something offensive within the game client, which I think is a more difficult topic than if they see it on the site. LordBiro 20:23, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

That sounds like a good idea. Armond 20:39, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

(reset indent)

LordBiro has been pointing out that a separate namespace may not be necessary, but I haven't seen arguments that a separate namespace is actually undesirable. It seems to me that, if we're going to experiment, it's easier to experiment using a separate namespace, and then maybe choose to migrate the pages to the main namespace later.

Some advantages that a separate namespace may someday buy us:

• Page protection, if we ever choose to use it
• Users able to filter "Recent changes" and other special pages like "All pages" and "My contributions"
• Pages in this namespace not showing up in things like "Orphaned pages" (maybe?)
• Pages in this namespace not showing up in search results or "Random page" (maybe?)

Since there seems to be little reason to avoid using a namespace for now, I think we should just create the namespace "Game link" (Barek's suggestion) and start experimenting with it. -- Mike O'Brien 16:19, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

After doing some testing today, here are my impressions on how this system works.

Pros:

• Frankly, it's just cool to see game links in action. Thanks to the efforts of Austin Spafford, on our dev servers, each quest or mission description is now followed by a wiki link, and if you follow the link it will popup your web browser and display the appropriate page.
• Since we're linking by quest id, the user will never see a disambiguation page. We have quests with duplicate names (such as Choose Your Secondary Profession, Family Ties, Mysterious Message, and War Preparations) and various other naming conflicts in the game, and none of that matters.
• It also doesn't matter if the name in the game contains quotes, or if it uses the Unicode ellipse character instead of three successive dots, or any other special characters. Everything just works.

Cons:

• After following a link from the game, the browser's address bar reads, for example, "http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_link:Quest_80" instead of "http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Message_from_a_Friend".
• At the top of the page, it displays "(Redirected from Game link:Quest 80)".

Is there any way to fix these issues? And if not, do they outweigh the benefits of no disambiguation and no broken links?

--Mike O'Brien 22:01, 1 May 2007 (EDT)

The cons represent the difference between http 302 (or 301) redirects and the inherent mediawiki redirect mechanism. Here are some crazy brainstormed ideas about how to get 302 redirects happening (note: I haven't researched these thoroughly and do not necessarily endorse any).

1. Install the HTTPRedirect extension that causes redirects to use the 302 redirect mechanism.
   • Some pro: Looks pretty simple.
   • Some con: Not sure how finished/tested it is. Affects all redirects, sitewide. (yuck!)
2. Send players to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Special:Lookup/Quest_80 instead. Have somebody code a basic special page that implements Special:Lookup, using "wfMsg($par)" to grab the string "Message from a Friend" from MediaWiki:Quest 80, and sending it as a 302 redirect to the viewer.
   • Some pro: Should actually work! =)
   • Some con: PHP coding effort/testing. Redirect data can't be unprotected from editing.
3. Same as #2, but instead of grabbing the destination string from MediaWiki:Quest 80, grab a large array/mapping from MediaWiki:LookupTable or MediaWiki:LookupTable/Quest, and lookup "Quest 80" in it.
   • Some pro: Redirect data is gathered together rather than one-a-page, so easier to edit. Might actually be a generically useful extension..
   • Some con: More PHP coding effort/testing. Redirect data can't be unprotected from editing.
4. Add Guild Wars Wiki itself as a recognized inter-wiki link destination "self", and change the content of [[Game link:Quest 80]] from "#REDIRECT [[Message from a Friend]]" to "#REDIRECT [[self:Message from a Friend]]". This takes advantage of inter-wiki redirects being 302 redirects.
   • Some pro: Looks really simple.
   • Some con: Not sure if it would actually work. Have to keep $wgDisableHardRedirects as false. Annoying to edit/view the redirect page as there is no handy link given (have to manually add "?redirect=no" to the URL, see Guild Wars Wiki:Administrators for an example).

--Rezyk 00:10, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

To me, option 4 looks the most promising and simplest to implement. Theoretically, it should work. A fifth option, which I'm not a big fan of using is to maintain an external table which the game looks in to lookup the game's reference code to find the full article URL. Pro: relatively easy logic to implement - con: maintenance would need to be restricted as it would be a table external to the normal wiki article spaces, which would delay updates if/when needed.

Personally, I think the pros of the current game link namespace solution outweigh the very slight annoyances of the reference to the redirect page. But I think that Rezyk's option #4 should be attempted as a relatively simple solution. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:27, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

Option 4 might be pretty good, but I'm happy in any case as long as we don't choose to use option 1 as it messes with how the wiki works for all users and all pages. -- (gem / talk) 07:01, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

FYI: I did a simple test at User:Barek/Sandbox with a redirect using the existing inter-wiki link to wikipedia, and it worked fine. Based on that, I believe that if a new inter-wiki entry were added to the table for "Self" or "GWW" that points to this wiki's URL, then it should be usable to eliminate the references to the Guild link namespace article names. As Rezyk pointed out, the main con is that in order to access the page to edit it, a long link must be used now to http://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?title=User:Barek/Sandbox&redirect=no - but these links for maintenance purposes could be setup in a central article someplace (that could double as an index of what each game link code should correctly be pointing towards), so it is a workable solution. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 00:24, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Nice. :) -- (gem / talk) 02:15, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

I agree that #4 is generally the way to go, but don't use "GWW" as the code as that would conflict with some existing pages. --Rezyk 02:38, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Those are some good choices, Rezyk! I actually prefer a system where all redirects are given a 3xx code. It has annoyed me for a long time that when I visit an article and I'm redirected, and then I copy the link to my friend, he will also be redirected. I realise it's only something like 42 queries when directly accessing is 40, but it still bothers me :)

So I prefer #1, but #4 is fine too (sorry for being awkward... again...) :) LordBiro 04:15, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Actually, reading through HTTPRedirect.php, would this remove the "(Redirected from X)" text or not? If it would then I can't support it. LordBiro 04:22, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

It would indeed remove it, so I guess you're not supporting it. Click on the "article" tab before copying the URL to your friend. =) --Rezyk 14:18, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Yeah, I don't really support it, I think the inter-wiki link hack is probably the best option we have. I frequently do click on the "article" tab before linking, but when you're linking to a section, especially one quite far down the page, you sometimes don't realise the redirect has taken place. It would MediaWiki could send a 301/302 AND inform the user they'd been redirected, but I don't even know if that's technically possible! LordBiro 14:55, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

The IT team added a 'self' inter-wiki link for us to try. Unfortunately it doesn't work quite as I had hoped.

• Barek's example works great: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:Barek/Sandbox
• But my test using 'self:' doesn't automatically redirect: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_link:Quest_80

Any thoughts? -- Mike O'Brien 15:41, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

It seems that the "wikipedia" and "self" entries have different iw_local values. Try fiddling with that. --Rezyk 17:04, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Cool, that did it. It's working now. -- Mike O'Brien 14:12, 4 May 2007 (EDT)

Resetting indent again. Seeing as I understand only most of the words above, and can visualize only a few of the situations mentioned, I'm going to tackle this from a player's point of view: The "redirected from" line is kinda insignificant - 90% of the time I don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. However, you may have something about the page name thing. That could get confusing, but I think we could live with it if this whole linking thing doesn't work out.

Oh, and a couple unserious questions - what quest is number 666? And what number is Mallyx the Unyielding? :P Armond 20:54, 3 May 2007 (EDT)

Hi Armond,

Quest #666 is "To See the Sights", and "Mallyx the Unyielding" is quest #754. I ran the wiki bot for a while last night but so far it's only up to quest #322.

-- Mike O'Brien

Would there be some way to get your bot to add a quest stub if the redirect target doesn't exist yet? It goes to a lot of blank pages now (which is fine since they just haven't been worked on yet) but it would be helpful if they all had stubs so that users could see which need to be added. This is easier than manually filling in each quest number to check them. — RabiesTurtle 15:02, 4 May 2007 (EDT)

I don't think we need Mike's bot to do this, although if he's willing to add this functionality then that'd be excellent. Missing quest information will no doubt be filled in fairly quickly. There's a list of broken redirects as well, but (I presume) the system that we're using to silently redirect means that the broken quest link redirects don't show up there. LordBiro 15:11, 4 May 2007 (EDT)

Thanks Mike (To See The Sights was considerably easier than its number would suggest...). In my experience, interwiki links don't show up on broken redirects - at least, I'd assume they don't, as the link doesn't even check to see if the target page exists. Also, interwiki links don't show up on "whatlinkshere" pages, so once again I'd assume it won't work with broken redirects. However, this special page displays all pages in the "game link" namespace; that could be handy, but not as precise as we'd like. There's always Random Redirect and Short Pages, though I doubt they'd be useful. Armond 01:20, 6 May 2007 (EDT)

I made the wiki bot more sophisticated so that it's capable of reading and parsing existing page content before deciding what to add to a page. The first version of the wiki bot was just feeding keystrokes into a web browser, but this new version connects directly to the server and understands http and html. So if you'd like me to have the wiki bot add templates for missing quests, I should be able to do that. Just let me know details. (Incidentally, I wonder if there are any other cool uses for a smarter bot.) -- Mike O'Brien 14:26, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

That's great, Mike! I'd say that, if the bot can't find an existing article to create a redirect to, it should edit an article with the name that it thinks is best and add "{{quest-stub}}". Is that enough detail? LordBiro 14:51, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Don't you mean "{{quest-stub}}"? ;) poke | talk 15:42, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Hehe, I do ;) Thanks, Poke. LordBiro 15:49, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Dirigible, it looks like you're well on your way to having all the quest stubs done, so I'm going to leave them to you. Thanks for pitching in! -- Mike O'Brien 18:11, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Can it make scrambled eggs? d-: Though on a more serious note, for game balance changes, can the bot be used to auto-update skill articles? -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 16:14, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

(ri) I just started adding stub tags to non-existing quests, BlastedT seems to disagree with that though, see User talk:Dirigible# PAGES WITH ONLY STUB!!! :( and {{Redbetter}}. 400 more pages to go, do I proceed or not? --Dirigible 16:59, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

Per the discussion on my talk page there, also adding {{Quest placeholder}} in addition to {{quest-stub}}. This adds 1) a scary notice box to each page, which we can always get rid of if it's not needed, and 2) Category:Quests with no data, which I think is actually useful, that way these completely empty quest pages can be separated from the regular stubs. --Dirigible 17:19, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

I added my thoughts to your talk page but I'll repeat them here. I agree with BlastedT that red links are better than empty articles with just a stub tag, but as we've discussed already the game link mechanism in place doesn't produce any red links, or any other notification that a broken link exists, so I think using {{quest-stub}} and {{quest-placeholder}} makes a lot of sense. LordBiro 17:38, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

I think I got them all, they should be in Category:Quests with no data. There's 374 empty quest pages, so I'm guessing it'll take a bit before all those articles are written up. =\ --Dirigible 18:51, 8 May 2007 (EDT)

This is just nitpicking, but the ?rdfrom= line in the redirected url is hideous. Is there a reason for it? Can it be removed? Or are we okay with it? Eerie Moss 09:12, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

I think it might be a pain to remove, and I actually have an alternative suggestion where we may want to keep it. One of the main cons of the interwiki hack we used is that we have to manually edit the URL to edit the redirect page (because no link is given anymore). My question is: If we could bring back that "(Redirected from Game link:Quest 80)", while keeping everything else the same (still a 302 redirect), would we want to? If my thinking is correct, this could be easily done by adding something like

$wgRedirectSources = '!^https?://[a-z-]+\.guildwars\.com/!';

to /LocalSettings.php. --Rezyk 18:45, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Yep, I support having a 302 but still showing "redirected from". The long url though makes the page a pain for users to share. Is there no other way of having a 302 redirect without the inter-wiki linking? *reviews the options again* Eerie Moss 19:23, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Nothing is quite right, is it? Am I right in saying that ideally we would like to see the following?

1. 302 redirect
2. show "redirected from"
3. have a redirect source in the URL, but have it only show the article name, not the whole url

Eerie Moss 19:33, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Regardless of what solution is finally selected, I would also like to see a Game_link:Index or similarly named article created to act as a central coordination point for these links. It would show to where each of the Game_link articles redirect, and the URLs could also have the full URL with "&redirect=no" to allow for easier navigation. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 20:29, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Here's Guild Wars Wiki:Game integration. Shall we move this discussion to its talk page?

Eerie Moss, I'd probably add a "4. Easy to do" since this game link stuff was concepted as an "intermediate solution". --Rezyk 21:17, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

(ri) I've changed my mind. People clicking on links in game don't want to see redirects. And for admin purposes we have this article linking redirects to articles. Therefore I support 302 redirects in this namespace with no indication of where you were directed from, as long as it doesn't affect redirects sitewide. What do we want in a final solution as opposed to an intermediate one? Eerie Moss 07:12, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

I agree. There's not much use for the "Redirected from..." links, I think. The Game link: pages will almost never need to be edited, and now we have even an index of all of them for easy editing. So, I as well am in favour of redirects as transparent as possible. --Dirigible 21:22, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

I think they wanted to show wiki content directly within the game. --Rezyk 20:48, 16 May 2007 (EDT)

We'd like to do this in stages. For now, we'll have wiki links in the game that start up your web browser to show the page you requested. Then, in the future, we'd like to integrate web browser functionality into the game so that the wiki page can come up right in the game. -- Mike O'Brien 14:19, 17 May 2007 (EDT)

(ri)Mike, I guess it would have been better for A.Net to give us a heads up that the ingame-links were going live yesterday. We are currently trying to solve a lot of Guild-page layout problems and some users are noticing that there are certain 'problems' with the Guilds-policy. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 20:20, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

New article

Wow - the page came into being a lot faster than I had hoped! :-) --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:34, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

I shouldn't have added the quests all in one batch, the wiki keeps timing out when trying to get the diff of that edit... --Dirigible 22:56, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

War Preparations

What is up with all of the links to the Quest War Preparations game link 217-222 are all of them. --Sktbrd341 22:26, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Each of the six core professions has a different variation of War Preparations. --Dirigible 22:38, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

Yes Yes you are correct I forgot about that. I saw them and just wanted to point it out if there was a problem. --Sktbrd341 14:43, 17 May 2007 (EDT)

Beta quests

Just noting, Slay Rotscale, Slay Frostbite et al have come up in the list. — Skuld 05:43, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

Ouch. Slay Stank Reekfoul, Collect Gargoyle Fangs, Collect Charr Armor Set too. --Dirigible 21:32, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

Unfortunately I don't have an automatic way to identify quests that are in our database but no longer used by the game, but feel free to manually delete this links when you find them. -- Mike O'Brien 15:17, 17 May 2007 (EDT)

It would be nice to keep these for historical reasons as part of the article retention discussion, obviously with a template to label them as features no longer in the game. --Lemming64 18:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Skill links?

I noticed that there are some new Game link:Skill * game links being added. I think this is a great addition; but with all the new links to index, I suggest that we split this index page into multiple sub-pages (maybe have a navigation tool at the top or bottom to link between them). This article is already over 63K. All the links for all of the skills will far surpass that, which would make this page huge if we don't split out sections into their own pages. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:28, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

Guild names in other alphabets

We have a bug in the game client right now where wiki links don't work for guilds whose names contain high Unicode characters such as Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

Does anyone want to express a preference about how we fix this?

- We could make the links work, in which case this wiki will start seeing more guilds like this: Guild:英雄無淚

- Or we could say that this wiki is English-only and therefore guilds with non-English-alphabet characters in their names don't get links, which would be disappointing to them but would make this wiki easier to administer.

-- Mike O'Brien 18:01, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Until you set up wikis for different languages, I feel that all guilds belong on the wiki, regardless of their character set. —Tanaric 18:41, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's tricky, but in order to keep the wiki from being covered in ???? I feel that allowing these character links should not be allowed. Is there any way of a Translation? so that the name of the guild is translated (as close as possible) to english? This way the guilds could still create their pages (in english), as well as also being readable by all wiki users. The problem I see is that guilds with high Unicode characters in their name, will likely use the same characters throughout their guild page, making it look very poor when just presented as a list of ?'s. My thoughts. --ChronicinabilitY 18:44, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

There are no question marks. Install a Chinese character set or use an operating system that supports them out of the box. :) —Tanaric 18:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not really feasible for our game to programmatically "romanize" far-east characters into an English equivalent. We need to just allow them in all their glory or disallow them. -- Mike O'Brien 18:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

In that case I would say that it is unfair to simply rule them out, since they dont have their own Wiki at the moment, so maybe a Tag should be created with a warning that can be added to pages using these characters, Thus informing users about what they are seeing, and why? If this was done correctly, it should minimise the effect as well as alowing for them to have their pages. I cant think of any other idea's right now. I dont like the idea of just ruling them out completely though. To me it doesn't seem very 'Wiki-like' =S --ChronicinabilitY 18:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

One problem that occurs with pages in different languages: it's hard to distinct between proper pages and pages full of vandalism/cursing/etc. Since I speak a few languages more than my native language, I can check a number of them, but not all languages in the world. Therefor, it'll be really difficult to 'police' those kind of pages for me. But since we don't have a localized version of this wiki for each supported language, I guess denying them the space to put a page up would be a bad thing IMO. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 19:06, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

It's nobody's job to "police" articles. If one happens to see an article that doesn't meet our standards, one can address that specific article. The lack of policability is certainly not issue from our side. —Tanaric 21:16, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you all for your feedback. Since you seem able and willing to handle guilds with foreign names, we'll enable that in the client. -- Mike O'Brien 00:37, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

How to fix an in-game link...

So I've read through the page here and I'm still not sure what the accepted way is to fix a link from the game like this: Game_link:Outpost_38 (which oddly shows as a red link here...) which I got after clicking on Augury Rock. Wouldn't be as simple as #REDIRECT [[Augury Rock]], would it? I don't remember seeing any 'Redirected from' messages so far... Let me know how and I'd love to fix it. But I notice here that there's lots... and lots...

Sigh. I know nothing about how this is even set up, nor where to go to find out more. - Thulsey - talk 17:22, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Sure, just make that page say #REDIRECT [[self:Augury Rock]]. The "self" part makes the redirect transparent to users. And thanks for helping! -- Mike O'Brien 17:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

My pleasure! Self makes more sense now (an odd sentence). :) - Thulsey - talk 17:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

How to fix things like this? Seems like someone got there from in game (the list from the post further down points to a healing fountain, which makes sense when reading the post on the talk page I linked). But what is it supposed to be? Is it the object, the "environmental effect" or what is it? How can we find this out? :) - anja (contribs) 23:23, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Monster skills?

Noticed these three skills in Guild Wars Wiki:Game integration/Skills#Monster_skills:

• Skill 1319 → Final Thrust
• Skill 532 → Healing Breeze
• Skill 562 → Lightning Orb

Anyone have any idea what those skills are supposed to be in-game, since they are tagged as monster-only skills? --Dirigible 21:15, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Are they listed in the same order as here? Also, some skills, like Resurrect come as a normal skill and a monster-only skill because of tweaked casting times and the like. --Santax (talk · contribs) 21:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Nice spotting, it does seem that the numbering is the same. Not sure if it helps tho. Copy/pasting the descriptions from that list:

• Skill 1319 → Final Thrust → (hidden)
• Skill 532 → Healing Breeze → Healing Breaze (Locked Skill)
• Skill 562 → Lightning Orb → Lightning Orb (Locked Skill or invalid ? )

Weird. --Dirigible 20:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

From looking through the source code...

Skill 1319 is used by Luxon and Kurzick Guards against opposing guards during a territory change.

Skill 532 is used by Agnar the Foot in Pre-Searing.

Skill 562 is implemented but appears to be unused in the game.

-- Mike O'Brien 23:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm surprised about the Lightning Orb one, I thought at some point people were mentioning that the version of the skill used by Flash Gargoyles was different from the version used by players. Although possibly this has been changed in an update since then. --Rainith 12:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Flash Gargoyles have always used the player version of Lightning Orb. Skill 562, which was a more powerful version of Lightning Orb, was used by the Eye of Janthir until September 17, 2004. -- Mike O'Brien 17:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I may be mis-remembering then. I'll try to dig around and find the original discussion. Thanks for the history on what it was actually used for though.  :) --Rainith 18:54, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Raisu Palace

Weirdness on the raisu palace links discussed here User_talk:Lemming64#Raisu. --Lemming64 17:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

225 is "Raisu Palace (Cooperative Mission)" and 233 is "Raisu Palace (Explorable Area)". 226 is "Imperial Sanctum (Cooperative Mission)" and 327 is "Imperial Sanctum (Explorable Area)". Thus, the correct links should be Mission_225, Explorable_233, Mission_226, and Explorable_327.

Any one map id may be associated with at most one outpost or town, and also at most one mission or explorable. Sometimes missions or explorables don't have associated outposts, and sometimes outposts don't have associated missions or explorables. But one thing you can be sure of is this: if a number is used for a mission, it should not also be used for an explorable, and vice versa.

When I was running the wiki bot that filled these all in, I had to collate data from many different sources, so it would not be surprising if I made mistakes, and I appreciate your help fixing them. -- Mike O'Brien 17:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

If it's indeed the case that a number can be associated with at most only one mission or explorable, then we have a few more of these quirks to iron out:

34 Mission 34 → The Fissure of Woe Explorable 34 → The Fissure of Woe 75 Mission 75 → The Hall of Heroes Explorable 75 → The Hall of Heroes (explorable area) 78 Mission 78 → The Courtyard Explorable 78 → The Courtyard (explorable area) 84 Mission 84 → The Underworld Explorable 84 → The Underworld 119 Mission 119 → Augury Rock Explorable 119 → self:Augury Rock (explorable area) 190 Mission 190 → Sorrow's Furnace Explorable 190 → Sorrow's Furnace 191 Mission 191 → Grenth's Footprint Explorable 191 → Grenth's Footprint 213 Mission 213 → Zen Daijun Explorable 213 → Zen Daijun (explorable area) 216 Mission 216 → Nahpui Quarter Explorable 216 → Nahpui Quarter (explorable area)

217 Mission 217 → Tahnnakai Temple Explorable 217 → Tahnnakai Temple (explorable area) 219 Mission 219 → Boreas Seabed Explorable 219 → Boreas Seabed (explorable area) 220 Mission 220 → Sunjiang District Explorable 220 → Sunjiang District (explorable area) 222 Mission 222 → The Eternal Grove Explorable 222 → The Eternal Grove (explorable area) 224 Mission 224 → Gyala Hatchery Explorable 224 → Gyala Hatchery (explorable area) 227 Mission 227 → Unwaking Waters Explorable 227 → Unwaking Waters (explorable area) 244 Mission 244 → Arborstone Explorable 244 → Arborstone (explorable area) 245 Mission 245 → Minister Cho's Estate Explorable 245 → Minister Cho's Estate (explorable area)

--Dirigible 14:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up mike, I will continue to test game links in game as and when I am in certain areas to check they go to the right article. I have fixed a couple of others too that were meant to be for outposts and pointed to the mission or other little errors like that, Normally caused by the wiki's naming format than anything else. --Lemming64 18:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I did some more digging and here's what I came up with.

Augury Rock (119) is only a mission. Sorrow's Furnace (190) and Grenth's Footprint (191) are only explorable areas.

For the rest, there are both mission and explorable versions, as follows:

Name	Mission	Explorable
The Hall of Heroes	75	344
The Courtyard	78	345
The Underworld	84	347
Zen Daijun	213	246
Nahpui Quarter	216	265
Tahnnakai Temple	217	269
Boreas Seabed	219	247
Sunjiang District	220	256
The Eternal Grove	222	128
Gyala Hatchery	224	144
Unwaking Waters	204	227
Arborstone	218	244
Minister Cho's Estate	214	245

-- Mike O'Brien 18:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Got 'em, thanks. I think you missed one, though, Mission 34 and Explorable 34, both of which are currently pointing at The Fissure of Woe. --Dirigible 20:06, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. I think The Fissure of Woe is only an explorable area, and that there is no need for a mission redirect for map id 34. -- Mike O'Brien 20:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Wiki integration

Whit /help, /wiki and F10, GuildWars try to integrate gww in game but faild to make it as intuitive as the game it self. Today, i ran into the Webkit project. It is the html rendering engine use on Apple desktop, Safari and eventualy Kde's web browser.

What if GuildWars was linked agaist Webkit?

• GW windowing system could provide drawing canva for the Webkit html rendering engine.
• All skill, location and mission info could be a link that open in-game window to the wiki article.
• Player and guild could also be linked to the wiki.
• No more GW window minimise. (like the infamous minimise even whit GW is in windowed mode)
• GWW could be extended in such way that it can query up-to-date data from the game server and database directly. For exaple; open wiki from map's outpost info box and it article will display the allience that own this town and how many faction is need.
• Apple use this software in comercial product, lisencing should not be a problem. Else there allways mozilla(more bloated but chose is good).
• Endless applications! Use your imagination.

What the gw community think about the above? Any GW developer care to comment on this?

--Bob 17:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

aside from the fact that I have no idea WHAT you're talking about, I'd like to say this: They haven't failed at anything, and I do think that they're already working to integrate more. -FireFox File:Firefoxav.png 17:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Bob, see the first comment at the very top of this page by Mike O'Brien, they're already planning to integrate the wiki directly in-game as you're suggesting, without passing the request to an external browser. The current state is just an intermediate stage, until they've figured that one out. --Dirigible 17:39, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Sound promissing. Hope they get it to work the other way around too like in my point 5. --Bob 18:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

How 2 start my own game?

← moved to Help:Ask a game question

Internal Server Error

This page returns an error 500. Can someone help? Chriskang 11:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. --Xeeron 12:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Skill links

How do I find out what number a skill should be? I've added Lunar Blessing, Spiritual Possession, and Lucky Aura but have no idea what their numbers are in order to added to Guild Wars Wiki:Game integration/Skills. -- ab.er.rant 01:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Open the Help panel (default F10) and they should show up under Recently Encountered Skills. Click on them and it will open your browser to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_link:Skill_<number>. -Smurf 02:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

So that's how you guys check. That means I have to actually get those effects in order to check. Hmm... where to find some Lunar Fortunes... -- ab.er.rant 05:26, 11 October 2007 (UTC)