Tirzah-Bauer
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The Perfect Ten: Guild Wars 2 gravestone epitaphs
The dead tell the best stories, they say. Outside of Divinity's Reach in Guild Wars 2 is a graveyard. It's the type of place that you run through quickly on your way to more lively settings, unless a zombie attack emerges. It was the type of place that I was running through quickly during the previous beta weekend when I realized that the gravestones could be examined -- and each and every one of them had an interesting epitaph to read. Some crazy ArenaNet writer sat down one afternoon and wrote out dozens and dozens of gravestone inscriptions on the off-chance that any of us would slow down enough to read them. It paid off in my case. This may be one of the most trivial Perfect Tens I've ever done, so forgive me with being absolutely fascinated by the epitaphs that came up during my explorations. With an absolute economy of words, each gravestone tells a complete story. Some are funny, some are dark, some play into the lore, and some actually managed to be quite moving. Here are my 10 most favorite that I found. Maybe they'll haunt you as they do me.
New ArenaNet dev diary outlines the making of the Battle of Kyhlo
ArenaNet's last Guild Wars 2 blog post explained the ins and outs of the Battle of Kyhlo PvP map, which will be playable later this month at PAX Prime. The team is now following up on that with a new blog post that outlines what went into the creation of the capture point-based battlefield. The post notes that "collaboration and iteration are the keys to making good games," so with that in mind, we get to hear from a veritable legion of ArenaNet devs, each reporting on his or her role in the creation of the map. We hear from Jeff Grubb on the lore of the arena, we hear from Egan Hirvela on the process of map design, and Habib Loew tells us how the programmers make it work. Then it's up to designer Nick Mhley and his designers to say things like, "You know what's cool? When you shoot the [trebuchet] and blow stuff up. But you know what would be cooler? Blowing up even more stuff!" Outstanding. Then Peter Fries, Scott McGough, and the rest of GW2's writers whip up some dialogue for the announcer and oversee the recording of the lines. Lastly, it falls to Shen-Ming Spurgeon, Mclaine Diemer, Tirzah Bauer, Chuck Knigge, and the rest of the team's visual and audio artists to bring the area to life with their super-artistic magics, followed by Tyler Bearce and the other folks in QA to make sure it works as intended. Phew, what a crowd! At any rate, for the full, uncensored details on the process involved in bringing a map such as the Battle of Kyhlo to life, head on over to the ArenaNet blog.
Flameseeker Chronicles: PAX 2010 travel diary
It's Sunday night and PAX is over. My iPhone and laptop are screaming for mercy. It's been a wild ride, I have the Con Crud, my feet hurt so much I keep checking to make sure they're not stumps, and all I want is to turn the clock back to last Friday so I can do it again. I had appointments and interviews with so many different game studios, and I was excited about every single one of them, but you guys know I was making Guild Wars 2 a top priority. I squeezed in time to indulge at every opportunity and have a lot to say. When I was spending time with Guild Wars 2 this weekend, something struck me over and over. Every employee whom ArenaNet could possibly spare from the office was there in force. I asked at one point and was told that every person wearing that white shirt was an ArenaNet employee. They were out there doing everything they could to spend time with the fans, and more than one developer told me that it was a huge thrill to finally be able to share all of this with people who love it as much as they do. The inability to share all of this exciting news has been as frustrating for them as it was for us, but it was for a good cause, and I think every fan at PAX this weekend agreed it was worth the wait. With that in mind, it was an easy decision to share my weekend experiences and photos with you guys for today's Flameseeker Chronicles. Follow along after the jump while I go find more Nyquil.
