User talk:Josh Petrie/Temp

Timestamps default to UTC, I believe. You're doing fine with the signing thing. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 00:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thank you.Josh Petrie

*sneak* *sneak* *sneak*

*molest*

--Amantis 01:13, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

*Summons the big mobs*

Look, a new Arena Net guy! Quick, catch him before he flees!

Seriously, though, there's one question we (me, at least : P) are dying to ask: there are hundred of descriptions in the gw.dat file about Nightfall areas, some of those for places that are named in game but don't have a description (like the explorable areas) and some for places that aren't named (we call them landmarks here - we made a list of those). That's content that has never been implemented in the game...But are those descriptions true (in other words, official), or have they been thrown away? It would make a difference for us, since if they're official we could mention them in the wiki articles about those places.

(If you can't/don't want to reply to that, don't worry, of course you people from Arena Net don't own us anything here.) Erasculio 01:52, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Josh develops tools I don't think he knows or could tell you if he did know o.O--Amantis 03:35, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

He did mention he's interested in unimplemented content, that's why I'm asking : ) Erasculio 09:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

In fact, it's quite likely that I'd get to see a lot of content during its development -- tools mostly exist to develop and manipulate content, plus I get to work really closely with lots of difference teams as part of my job. And I get to see it in game. However, Nightfall was developed and shipped well before I started at ArenaNet (I was hired at the beginning of this year), so I don't have first-hand experience regarding the content you mentioned. I'm hesitant to speculate because I seem to recall Linsey not being able to comment in any detail on unimplemented content found via .dat file mining, and since it's the weekend I've no real way to run anything by anybody to see if I'd be getting myself into trouble. Perhaps try back early next week.Josh Petrie 16:39, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. As you may have guessed already, it's better if I don't speculate on this kind of unimplemented content. Sorry! Hopefully I will be able to be more helpful next time... Josh Petrie 17:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

On-demand statistical reports

Hello, me again bothering you with a question. I was curious about what kind of statistical data you guys can collect. For example, is it possible to know what is the most used skill in the game in a given day? In a given chapter? In a given explorable area and/or mission? Is it possible to know how often a skill is used as a percentage of all skills used? Which is the most equiped skill? Which is the least used skills or least equiped skill? Which enemy is killed most often? The most visited explorable area? How many of a given item exists in the game? What is the most equiped sword skin? And etc.

Just random questions out of curiosity. I would appreciate if you could tell us if it's possible to learn those kinds of things or not, but I understand that some things cannot be shared with the public, and besides we all know you people are very busy (I heard there's something called "Guild Wars 2" in development : D). Erasculio 17:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! Guild Wars, like most games with extensive online components these days, is backed by a database. A while back, there was a blog post that talked briefly about the way our database system is structured. It isn't hugely revealing, but it's worth a look if you didn't catch it back when it was first published. Anyway: you can write queries against a database in SQL which allow you to produce almost arbitrarily complex reports about the information contained in said database. We've got tools for performing queries similar to some of those you've suggested above, such as for skill utilization metrics. You can ask such a system all kinds of questions, limited of course by the data the system actually tracks (typically, this is "a lot") and your actual ability to craft suitably robust SQL statements. Josh Petrie 02:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)