Talk:Campaign Three

Move?

 * Unless anybody objects, I'll move this article to Campaign Three tomorrow, as "campaign" is the preferred / official term now (see Talk:Chapter). I'll make Campaign 3, Chapter Three, Chapter 3, Ch3 and C3 redirects. -- 00:51, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * What is the official label for it? If the producers at ANet call it chapter three, then we should keep it at that. If they call it campaign three (doubt it, doesn't sound right), then we should call it that. --Karlos 08:30, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * No press release yet. But various interviews seem to be using "campaign" more often than "chapter" now, I suspect that's what Anet's telling them to use, but I got no evidence. -PanSola 08:37, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * My point is, it would be called the "Third Campaign" not "Campaign three" --Karlos 09:17, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * Quote Jeff Strain (source): "Campaign III has been in development since about November of last year, and is already far far down the pipe." So, for now it's "Campaign III" or "Campaign 3" or "Campaign Three". I'll postpone the article move for 1 day to give more time for discussion, but unless anybody objects, I'll move tomorrow. -- 18:56, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Release Date
Karlos commented that: "Release Date - ANet does not make two chapters a year.. Highly imporbable we'll see any other chapters this year"

From the first link of this article, Jeff Strain was quoted saying: "We're releasing two Campaigns a year but each of those Campaigns will have a full year of development ...Campaign 3 started last Fall so it's well into development."

Now of coures these industry ppl tend to give overly optimistic figures, so I wouldn't say Karlos is outright wrong. On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to use the time-lapse between Guild Wars and GWF to estimate the time-lapse that's going to take place between GWF and Campaign 3. I doubt Factions started development 6-months before the release of Guild Wars. -PanSola 08:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * Knowing the software industry, I doubt it didn't. And they have not released two chapters per year up to date, why should we hold on to a blank statement that has been proven wrong? My guess is they will do a Sorrow's Furnace-like update to Factions and maybe add a few maps to Prophecies as well and call that the major update of the year. I have seen nothing to make me believe they can or even would produce two chapters a year. --Karlos 09:16, 15 March 2006 (CST)
 * I can't claim to know as much about software industry as you do, but I know enough to make the presumption that Guild Wars's business model was a rather risky concept in the online gaming industry. Whlie George Lucas might have a 9-episode epic in mind when he first envisioned Star Wars, he was doing something no one has done before.  Sure he had lots of ideas, lots of notes, about the other 8 episodes, but no way was he getting working on actual production of the Empire Stirkes Back before the original Star Wars movie was completed, and proved to be a box office success.  Likewise, I would presume Anet probably had ideas of how future expansions could go, might have some names, stories, even some concept arts for the 5th expansion, and they might have high confidence that Guild Wars would be a great success.  Still, they had an entire industry watching them doing something that hasn't exactly been attempted before, so even if Bill Gates had ppl working on Longhorn production even before Windows XP was released, I am inclined to think Anet really was focusing on getting their first product out on the market right, as oppose to alrealy working on production for an expansion.  Basically, by calling on the uniqueness of Guild Wars' business model in the online gaming industry, I am attempting to lower the credibility of opinions derived from "knowing the software industry", and thereby increase the relative credibility of my own less experienced opinion.
 * This next part is where your knowledge of software industry will definitely prevail over my opinions, but here's my opinions nonetheless. It is not the same blank statement that has been proven wrong.  The statement proven wrong was "new expansion every 6~9 months", and that promise was made before they had enough staff to fully pipeline two production process (assuming what Jeff Strain said about last October was at most a big exaggeration of truth and not a blatant lie).  It took 12 months to get the first one out.  But they made the new promise of 2 every year AFTER their staff size has grown to pipeline the process, thus I see the new promise of two each year as being more conservative than their original 6~9 month promise (I see 6~9 month as their originally estimated total time to develope an expansion).  And yes, I could be greatly mistaken, and that when they made the 6~9 month promise they already were accounting for eventually having staff size enough to pipeline the process, even though back then it was still too early to guess how much of a success (or lack of) GW was going to be.  While I'm not holding my breath expecting Campaign 3 to come out before 2006 Dec 31, and developement time will probably exceed their estimation, I still consider Anet to have a relatively clean record.  The one blot on their record I see was "summer" equating to September.  I don't see Factions coming out in April as a sign that campaign 3 will be excessively delayed from the 1-year development time... natural disasters and alien invasions aside.
 * (and after your next reply I probably woudln't have anything new to contribute to the discussion, so I'll probably jsut stop here, though will still read your reply (-: ) -PanSola 09:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I think there is a huge difference between Prophecies => Factions and Factions => Chapter 3. While Prophecies was not released, they definitly concentrated everyone on that and did not devote any manpower to Factions. However with the money flushed into their pockets from prophecies (and the knowledge that their game sells), it is very much possible that they hired more people to work on Chapter 3 already while Factions was released.
 * Another thing that makes me think they might be correct with their time estimation is the (percieved) distribution of programmers at ANet. I do get the feeling that they have lots of creative talent sitting there, almost dwiddling their thumbs, while the game engine programmers struggle to keep up. Notice how long it took them to introduce the trade channel (and still no ingame trade solution, despite this being the user wish No1 for ages) or the observer mode, pathing is still an issue. In the meantime, the creative team did come up with the whole factions content, plus the halloween update, SF, the wintersday update (all three no small feat in terms of content creation), plus adding small stuff every now and then (IDS, Ruins of tombs). If the need for more programming declines, I think they could release Ch3 quite quickly. --Xeeron 18:27, 15 March 2006 (CST)
 * While I agree with your initial points, how long did Necros have to wait for their Tormentor 15k? Thus I'm not quite sure about the creative talent dwiddling part. d-: -PanSola 18:33, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I think we should stick to our policy that we list "official" release dates only. Regardless if anyone thinks that there will be a delay in Factions release, as long as ANet havn'T officially moved it, we list the official release date, which is April 28. The same goes for Campaign 3: ANet have stated openly and repeatedly that they plan to release 2 campaigns per year, with a dev time of 1 year, so it is quite easy math if you know the release dates of C2 or the dev starting date of C3. Even if anyone thinks that their plan is unrealistic, we should still mention it, because it's "official". -- 18:56, 15 March 2006 (CST)