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)


 * If it's Official, it's Official, then my beef is with Jeff Strain, not you. :) Thanks for the reference. --Karlos 03:42, 16 March 2006 (CST)


 * I made the move. -- 18:49, 17 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)


 * As a short response to this. No present computer game company has proven they can shell out computer games with the complexity and depth of GW at a 6 monts clip. I am not saying it's impossible, but it's very hard AND quesitionable in terms of letting each chapter sink in (and sell) and also making sure Q&A have the time to weed out the bugs. Look at Halo, WoW, any major game around. Development cycle is usually 1-2 years (even if building on the same game engine). 6-9 months is extreme. --Karlos 20:08, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * But that is my point: They dont need to develop a complete new game. Look at factions: It will use the streaming technology of Ch1 (already developed), the grafics engine (developed), the game mechanics (developed for the core skills at last), the user interface (developed), the AI (mostly developed). All they need to do is the new content with only very little new programming. --Xeeron 21:31, 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)


 * Tetris, it is this exact "connecting of the dots" that you are doing that I am opposing. You started with "I think we should stick to official release dates" which something I (and probably everyone in the wiki) agree with, then you made a logical jump, you made a mental dot-connecting move and said "ANet has repeatedly said that they will make two chapters a year." Which is not actually an official release date. They have not issued 2 chapters per year, not even close, they have issued 1 chapter per year. And even if they did, not a single ANet employee (as far as I can tell) has made the proclamation that Ch.3 will come out in Q4 2006, you made that proclamation. You guessed/speculated/extrapolated that date range. That is my objection. If they are going to produce it this year, then most likely they will try to target Christmas, and you would be correct. But if they produce it in February, they are still within their "2 a year" loose fitting promise.
 * The point is: No official release date is given. There is only one assumed. --Karlos 19:30, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * OK, so you're agreed that they've officially state "two updates a year"? I think that's the important point. The definition of the word year is obviously going to flexible, with most people assuming it means the calender year. Shandy 20:12, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I never questioned they said they will be making two chapters a year. They have not lived up to it. On the flip side, a general statement like that does not translate into us posting that Chapter 3 will come out in Q4 2006. We would be saying something ANet did not say (and will most likely not do). --Karlos 20:15, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * The "two per year" statement ANet made was for the future, not the past, so you really can't say (yet) that they didn't live up to it.
 * It is true that they didn't announce an "official" release date yet, but they officially made two statements that allows anybody who can do basic math to estimate the "target" release date quite precisely:
 * Combine "Chapter 3 is in development since Nov '05" with "dev time is about 1 year" -> Release roughly Nov '06.
 * "Two campaigns per year" = average time 6 months between chapters -> release 6 months after Factions (28 April, 2006) = Oct/Nov '06
 * Personally I think that this is compelling enough to mention it in the article. I could live with not spelling out the release date, just mention the two statements they made. Anybody can do the math. -- 21:27, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * I reworded the paragraph and edited out the release date. Have a look. -- 21:46, 15 March 2006 (CST)

This is kind of an insane discussion. All that said, quote the ANet dev: "So each of these new campaigns has an entire year of development, from a full development team, and they're released on staggered six month cycles.". It's not an official release date (and putting one up would be insane), but at least one person at ANet expects to release an expansion six months after Factions. --JoDiamonds 03:45, 16 March 2006 (CST)


 * That seems fair enough for me. My objection was and still is that we specify November 2006 or Q4 2006 or whatever. Placing the quote is cool. --Karlos 06:13, 16 March 2006 (CST)


 * I reworded once again, put in the quote that JoDiamonds found, but removed the release date. We can leave it to our readers/users to do the math. -- 18:49, 17 March 2006 (CST)


 * If the math is easy to do we do it. We said we're not gonna do it, then let us not say it is easy and not do it. The main problem is that it's not math, it's not 1 year per cycle, divided by two = six months, thetre fore next campaign comes out in November. That is an unrealistic view of the gaming industry and of what has come to pass so far. No math please. --Karlos 20:09, 17 March 2006 (CST)

"2 a year"
I removed it and Tetris L put it back.

I agree that Anet has stated it more than once. However, I do not think it is relavent in release date calculation. Because they have two teams working on two campaigns in parallel (staggered) instead of one team working on two compaigns in serial, you can't just divide it by half. I also agree with Karlos above that 2 a year doesn't really gaurentee it's calendar year, whatever other people might assume.

Even if Team A and Team B always use up exactly 365 calendars day to make their campaign, and start the next one as soon as the prev is over, I can have Team A release Factions in 2006 April, Team B release C3 11 months later in 2007 March, Team A release C4 in 2007 April, etc etc. It probably won't work out that way, but it illustrates how "two a year" and "one year of develpement time" don't really give you an estimated release date.

However, "started developing 2005 November" + "one year development time" is sufficient in placing estimate release date.

Thus the "Two a year" statement may be official, may be true, but IMHO has no influence on the estimated release date of C3. I still think it should be removed (or moved to a diff section and not being used to estimate release date). -PanSola 20:23, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Shorter version: Given that anet started develping C3 in 2005 Nov, and dev time is expected to be one year, it doesn't matter if they plan to release 10000 campagns a year or 0.05 campaigns a year (averaged out), C3's estimated release date will remain end of 06 / beginning of 07. -PanSola 20:25, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * "Two per year" gives us an alternative way to estimate the release date, because "two per year" (regardless if it's year or calender year) means an average time of 6 months between releases. So, if Factions is released end of April, the next campaign should be released roughly 6 months later, that's end of October 2006. This happens to be quite exactly the same date as estimated through the "1 year of development since Nov 2005 " method. Two methods leading to the same result. Everything's fine and dandy. I don't understand what this discussion is all about. -- 21:10, 15 March 2006 (CST)


 * The average isn't meaningful here. If a development cycle lasts for 1 year, approx, like they said, then development since Nov 05 = release Nov 06. BUT, releasing two a year doesn't imply anything about when in the year they would be released. The fact that they said the former statement matters, but not the latter statement (2 a year = 1 every 6 months). ANYWAY. I really don't think this is very important. Tentatively suggesting a Nov '06 date would do no harm, and it is based upon Anet's own comments. Shandy 21:36, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Latest Edit
Lolz. :P Very cynical edit! Shandy 22:24, 15 March 2006 (CST)