As promised, we share with you the first part of the Guild Wars Live Team interview about the content that was added with the “Winds of Change” updates. I was surprised about the length of the answers, especially the ones voicing critique on some of the things the community did not enjoy so much (need I to remind you about the “Minister Cho” part?). The amount of insight into the development process of Winds of Change is a great read, so I hope you will enjoy this first part of the interview.

GWOnline.net: In the first part of the Winds of Change set of quests, the eleven “Cleansing…” quests were criticized by a lot by GW community members for being boring and very repetitive. The second part offered more variety. Was that a direct response to criticism or planned all the time?

John Stumme: The overall design of Winds of Change had been completed long before it went into production, so the changes that you see in part 2 aren’t a direct response, so much as it is the story picking up its pace. Part 1 was intended to be a gradual introduction that began to establish the Ministry of Purity as a believable faction within the world, one that was populated with members that were people, and not just green names in a map. The player’s main point of contact through this was Zei Ri, and he was written in a way to give players a sense of who the Ministry was drawing in, and how their movement was evolving.