November 2009 wiki watch

Regina journal summary:

Mad King's Steward Called Away - 2 November 2009

The Mad King's Steward has been called away on an urgent request from Mad King Thorn (e.g. you may have noticed it missing from Lion's Arch and Kamadan), and the Steward will return tomorrow.
Halloween Art Contest Issues - 2 November 2009

We have been made aware of issues related to a couple of the Halloween Art Contest entries. While every effort is made to check each entry to ensure that the artwork submitted was not plagiarized, the internet is a big place, and we are not able to check every single corner. Thank you to community members who contacted us to make us aware of those issues. Entries that the team judges to be plagiarized work will be removed over the next couple of days. One submission was affected so far. When we are confident that there are no further issues with contest entries that are displayed on the web site, we will then start the process of awarding prizes to the next highest ranking creator(s). This whole process may take at least a week. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this.
November 1: Erroneous Fraud Blocks - 2 November 2009

On November 1, a few Guild Wars accounts were blocked in error due to payment fraud, however those purchases were legitimate. We sincerely apologize for this error. The Support Team is aware of this error, and they're devoting more people to reinstating the affected accounts. If you have been affected by this, and have not already done so, please open a Support ticket. For additional information and steps you can take, please refer to the Support Issues page on the wiki. Again, we apologize for this error on our part, and we're doing everything we can to reinstate those accounts.

art contest:

Thanks for making us aware of the potential issue with the papercraft submission. This information was emailed to us over the weekend as well. We are looking into it at the moment. We have taken down the other entry, following a tip-off from a player in one of the forums.
We're going to see if any other issues pop up with the other entries before making final decisions on the next highest ranking entries on the list.
In future at contests, maybe we should require everyone to submit a "making-of" video in addition to their final submission. ;-) --Regina Buenaobra Image:User_Regina_Buenaobra_sig.png 21:21, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

PS: There is Linsey activity too, but she just archived things on her talkpage

Does stuff they say not on their own talk page go here? Or maybe it's redundant...

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Talk:..._of_Dhuum#Note

Confirmed. The Skeletons are targeting farmers in UW. Solo and Speed Clear. - Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpgLinsey talk 04:18, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

This was on Regina's Journal

The Mad King's Steward Would Like a Word With You... - 5 November 2009

We hinted a couple days ago in various forums that the quests that began during Halloween would eventually reach a conclusion.

The Game Update notes read:

"The Mad King's Steward will soon depart to serve his master, but he has one last word for all the brave souls willing to join the battle against Dhuum's minions."

The Mad King's Steward is offering a new quest today, but he will not remain in Lion's Arch and Kamadan for too long, so if you're willing to answer the call to arms against Dhuum, you will need to speak to him while he's there. After he's gone, you won't be able to accept that quest.

Please also note that the "waiting" referenced in the quest text is not a matter of hours, but days.

Found this on John Hargrove's page

GW2 was not a factor in any decisions made about Nicholas. Now, read it again, but this time say it out loud to make sure it sinks in (because I could get in a lot of trouble if anyone leaves my talk page with the wrong impression!): "GW2 was not a factor in any decisions made about Nicholas." ... okay, seriously though, I just wanted Nicholas (aka "Project Wumpus") to be a lot of fun, and a big part of that was the feeling that he could appear almost anywhere in the entire world. In order to do that we obviously needed to give him a lot of locations, and so we did. His list of possible haunts at launch was 137, and given 1 a week, that's 137 weeks (or ~2.6 years) of Nicholas' travels before he even considers going to the same place twice. I believe that will keep him moving around until close to the end of 2011, but that date won't mean anything except that we ran out of sensible new places for Nicholas to travel to. The worst case scenario at that time is that he starts doubling up on the same stomping grounds after 2.6 years of unique locations, and that's not so bad for the worst case. I'm just glad to know that he'll always be somewhere out there. (...beneath the pale moonliiiiight!) :) - [John Hargrove] talk 03:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Joe Kimmes on the storybooks:

The whole resetting thing with books is more of a server space/code decision than a design one. Basically, the expiration is triggered if you don't do anything involving the retroactive pages of a given book for a month. So for the Young Heroes book, doing any mission the book covers would reset the expiration, but wouldn't affect any other books. By 'doing a mission' I mean completing it, as only completion involves the book data. Is that a better explanation? - Joe Kimmes 17:35, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

30 days, starting from when you last completed a mission. - Joe Kimmes 17:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Regina journal:

New Honorable Mentions - Halloween Art Contest - 10 November 2009

After some discussion (with our legal department), much email communication with different parties, and information gathering, we have an update for you about the issues with a couple of winning entries in the Halloween Art Contest. Another entry had to be removed. This change was reflected on the web site on November 9. This left two empty spots in the ranking. Following this decision, we contacted two contest participants who were next in line according to the tally of votes to offer them the Honorable Mention prize. I'm happy to say that the two participants have replied back and agreed to accept the prize. We will update the web page to show off their entries this week. Thank you to all for your patience, and thank you again to the folks that let us know via PM, email, and other methods that there were potential issues with certain entries.

on a release date for GW2

Guild Wars 2 will be released when it is done. When we go into beta, when there is a specific release date, we will let you know. We give specifics when it is the time for that.
And Martin didn't speak to Eurogamer... I'm not sure why you thought this. Martin and I are given the same information, and given permission at the same time to talk about that information, so naturally we would synch up on the timing talking about things in public, when the time comes. --Regina Buenaobra 02:11, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Dervishes in GW2:

I can't comment on that, unfortunately. --Regina Buenaobra 02:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Reply to questions about HoM:

Well I'm not going to spill any info on the HoM unless it is first posted on our website and/or by our community team, but just know that I will be holding the rewards to a pretty high standard given that I am probably the person at the office that will be the most personally affected by it since I *believe* I may be the only Anet employee with GWAMM. Hopefully that makes me a pretty good gauge for the rewards since I've pretty much done it all, and for that reason I can weigh them versus the amount of effort it took pretty well. [John Hargrove] talk 00:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

On skill balances for November:

The design work on this continues to progress. There are a couple other projects that Live Team are working on that are planned for a future update (which I am not permitted to talk about yet), and juggling those different projects impacts time spent on a skill balance. I want to reassure you that progress is being made on this, however (for what it's worth). --Regina Buenaobra 20:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Gaile on disconnects:

Support Issue: Disconnects after 19 Nov Build

As of this hours, we are aware that a number of players are experiencing connectivity issues since the new build went up at approximately 8:00 PM Pacific time. (Build Reference here.) The team is working on this matter right now; we hope to have a fix for this very soon. We realize that it is frustrating to have this happen and we're very sorry for the fact that some players are experiencing trouble getting into or staying in the game.

I will post an update on this as information becomes available. -- Gaile 05:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit]
Update: 10:15 PM Pacific--19 November

Two issues have been identified as the cause of the connectivity issues. The team has already identified one issue and has developed a fix for it. In the meantime, one of our key server programmers is looking into a second issue, and we hope to have a fix for that one very soon as well. We'll roll out the fixes just as soon as they're completed and tested. Quite honestly, that could be a few minutes or a few hours, but please know we're on the case! -- Gaile 06:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
[edit]
Update: 10:43 PM Pacific--19 November

The team identified both factors that appear to have been causing the connectivity issues and a Live Build is being distributed now. You should see the in-game message by, oh, 11:00 PM Pacific (that is, in about 15 minutes or so). Please quit and rejoin the game so that your files are updated and the problem is solved. Thanks for your understanding while we corrected the issues. -- Gaile 06:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)