Posts Tagged Guild Wars
Set the Stage videos
Posted by Rockjaw in Community, MMO-related, Pimpin' on September 13th, 2008
Almost the last hurrah, this. Below the ‘cut’, if you will, you’ll find two videos that I edited and subtitled (well, except for the actual translation). Both were shot by Jörg ‘Kerensky’ Koonen during the Games Convention in Leipzig.
They’re performances of the winning entries for Set the Stage, the competition that we ran to get players to write scripts for the Aion and Guild Wars characters to perform. (The scripts were reworked by me to become suitable for performance, but these two are quite similar to the original material, with many lines remaining intact. You can download my script drafts for all six final entries at the official Aion and Guild Wars sites.)
The sound quality is not excellent – source was basically the speakers on the stand, which had to compete with everything around – so I’ve embedded the ‘normal’ and English subtitled versions. (There are also French and German versions of each – see below.)
As I said before, these stage performances were probably what I was most proud of achieving during Games Convention. Trust me; there were some obstacles to overcome! However, I personally feel the performances were excellent, given the lack of rehearsal time we had and the environment they were performing in, and I’m very proud to present them to you.
Three GC pics of, well, me (and others)
Posted by Rockjaw in Events, MMO-related, Weird self portraits on August 26th, 2008
Before I forget, a few pics that ended up on Flickr…
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- Reyna, myself and Gwen
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- Namiya and I
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- Alma and I
Images by Mat, of course. A few more (just a few!!) are on the official Flickr feed for us.
Thursday thoughts
Posted by Rockjaw in Day Today, MMO-related on May 29th, 2008
Start the day with coffee, and trying to figure out what we have left to do for the UK Games Expo. We’ve done this so many times it should become second nature, and to an extent it has, but there’s always room for error… and the more complacent you get the more errors you make.
We need to buy hangers (for t-shirts) and storage ‘tubs’ for stock and, in fact, t-shirts. Quick trip to Woolies and one of several local ‘pound shops’ and we’re sorted.
Back to the office. It’s Massage Day (woo!) and Chris is having his First Ever Massage. When he comes out he tells me “I don’t know why I waited so long to have that.” Nor do I mate. Read the rest of this entry »
Guild Wars is three, too
Posted by Rockjaw in MMO-related on April 28th, 2008
Continuing the apparent obsession we have with releasing games on April 28th, in case you weren’t aware today is also the three year anniversary of Guild Wars’ original release.
(For the record, Guild Wars Factions was released two years ago to the day, while Guild Wars Nightfall was released in October 2006 – possibly even the 28th of that month, or darn near. We do like our symmetry.)
April 28th 2005 was a pretty big day for us in Europe – it was the first time we’d released a game simultaneously with the US*, and it was actually as a company the first time we’d released any title globally at the same time (Guild Wars went live in Korea on the same day). There was champagne and video conference link-ups, if memory serves, and given the time differences some of the participants were in pyjamas (Seattle), some were bleary-eyed (Austin), some were having breakfast (Brighton) and some were going to bed (Seoul).
Massively has a couple of retrospective articles up to mark the date, and of course if you’re a player there have been in-game celebrations going on for the last few days, although today’s special; today is when you get your character’s birthday present, assuming that your character was created on launch day, of course.
I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven’t finished the original GW campaign, Prophecies, and I always told myself I wouldn’t play Factions or Nightfall until I’d finished the original. (I did dip into Factions a bit with an Assassin character; it was just too tempting.) This isn’t through lack of trying; I just got stuck on a particular story mission and haven’t been able to get past it! I know, what a slacker… one day, one day.
Anyway; happy birthday to all of our April games, and many happy returns.
* If you’re wondering: NCsoft Europe didn’t exist when City of Heroes and Lineage II were released in April, 2004 in the US. We launched them as soon as we could after we did exist, mind you…
Guild Wars’ architectural vision
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others on April 26th, 2008
Via Rock Paper Shotgun, I read an interesting interview tonight with Daniel Dociu, the Chief Art Director for ArenaNet – who make Guild Wars, in case you weren’t aware. The interview’s at the excellently named BLDGBLOG, which is a blog about architecture.
Why talk to Daniel? Well, he has interesting things to say about architecture in games, and of course he really knows his onions. When asked about his influences when coming up with designs, this was part of what he had to say:
… I look back all the way to the dawn of mankind: to ruins, and Greek architecture, and Mycenean architecture, all the way up to the architecture of the Crusades, and castles in North Africa, and the Romanesque and Gothic and Baroque and Rococo – even to neo-Classical and art deco and Bauhaus and Modernist.
Sounds like he’s forgotten more about architecture than I’d ever know! Anyway, the interview’s worth a read. Or if you prefer, just worth a look for some lovely imagery of Daniel’s. If you’d like more info on the man himself he’s also got his own site, complete with gallery for your perusal.
You said what?