SANTA MONICA, Calif. July 2 - ArenaNet is looking to create the "holy grail", design director Chris Whiteside told Polygon in an interview published on Tuesday. To achieve this prestige, the studio must find a parity between the primary development of Guild Wars 2 and February's announced Living World, Guild Wars 2's bi-weekly updates for narrative specific content.
Accommodating for Living World's bi-weekly timeline required that the studio do some restructuring, Whiteside explained. "To get it out on a two week cadence and put this kind of exciting and fresh content out every two weeks required us to basically change the whole structure of the company, build and set up four different teams that would work on rotating cadences and to really empower the developers on the teams to be able to pick and choose what they really wanted to work on and what's most important to them and the places," Whiteside said. "ArenaNet is known for taking risks. So the idea of having just launched the game and restructuring to build toward this two week cadence... as far as I'm aware, no one else has done it to this level of content."
Each Living World event has an assigned team that consists its own set of artists, designers, programmers and QA. The teams will collaborate with one another to affirm that their stories are cohesive. According to Whiteside, there's an overarching story that guides the developers and are tasked to create minigames, dynamic events, bosses, dungeons and more based on the premise.
On the upcoming July 9 Bazaar of the Four Winds update, players will be able to participate in a race held in a floating city. Whiteside teased that players will be able to take advantage of air and elemental movement whilst in the event. The event, he also noted, will build on the existing storyline and grant access to new items and activities.
"For us, the holy grail was to build on the world and evolve it through player feedback and our own direction as quickly as we possibly could, to really make it as fresh as possible — almost kind of like a TV series — there's always something going on, there's always something to check out. But at the same time, while there's a story thread between each of our Living World events, you can dip in at any time."
SOURCE: Polygon
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