MMORPG: Interview with Colin Johanson

Earlier tonight, MMORPG held a live interview with Colin Johanson. Pokket managed to squeeze out a lot of good information from him, which I will be highlighting below. Instead of writing out a transcription of the interview, I'll paste the questions (some paraphrased) and make bullet points out of Colin's answers. If you want to watch the entire interview, it's up on their Twitch.tv channel.

I know there was a lot of effort put into this Halloween event. It's by far the best holiday event that I've ever taken part in and I have taken part in many different MMO events. ... My question is, is this going to be a one-time thing or are you going to see a lot of this reused next year as well?

• May use a small amount of this years' event as the baseline to build on, but they don't want to have the same holiday festival every year

• Hopefully next year there's something even more over-the-top and crazy

• Going to do a lot of really special one-off events that aren't just holidays


Okay, real quick. It took me over five hours to complete the Clock Tower. How long did it take you? [I kept this question because the answer was funny!]

• "I gotta be honest. I gave up after three hours. I did everything else and I couldn't do the Clock Tower. It's really embarrassing but I couldn't do it. I did it internally, but I cheated and teleported a couple of times but once we got on live I couldn't cheat anymore so I totally couldn't do it. It was really embarrassing."


For future costumes, do you plan on making any combat-useable skins or will they all remain town clothing?


• Something that they're going to talk more about in the future

• Ddded the costume brawl to see if they could make costumes a lot more fun to play around in

• They'll just keep an eye on that and decide on if we want to do anything more with costumes beyond that


Do you plan on putting the same amount of effort, if not more, into the major holidays throughout the year. And, this will kind of dive into November.

• Wintersday is something that is coming in the future that's a Guild Wars 1 tradition

• There will be a different twist now that the Gods don't exist in the world anymore

• You'll see a very different storyline for Wintersday this year

• They're going to start doing a lot of special events in the game as well

• They'll have recurring stories that build out over time and tell stories that occur across the world and change the course of the world over many months -some might be smaller than Halloween, some might take many months

• Want to update the game, tons of free content

• A lot of stuff got lost in the shuffle with Halloween - with that build they added over 50 new events, two mini-dungeons, new jumping puzzles, sPvP tournaments that give out qualifier points for championship tournaments in the future


Can you talk about what's in the November 15th build?

• Beta version of a new sPvP map for people to test and give feedback on, if people like it they'll add it to the permanent PvP rotation

• Weekend long event that permanently changes the world in some places and opens up a new island that people can explore - small map with a lot of fun stuff and a storyline across the weekend that changes the world

• Brand new type of dungeon to be added - gets harder the further you get in, really big with a ton of levels

• New rewards to the game that are buried deep within the new dungeon

Do you plan on having any sort of server first announcements for the dungeon?

• Still talking on if they want to do server first announcements

• One of the things they want is make sure they have messaging so players can tell who are the best at different things, who have gotten the farthest in different areas

• Going to do more for WvW rankings each week and build towards having an official site where you can go and see all of that information (currently in the works and should be coming out very soon™)


Will there ever be dynamic events that affect the whole world like the end of the beta events and so forth?

• One-off world events, the events done at the end of betas, the lead-up to Halloween is something they'd continue to do

• The thing that reveals the island and dungeon that gets added to the world is part of a big sweeping event


Pokket comments on how amazing the Halloween event was and how many people were involved.

• Going to be adding a ton of new stuff for higher level characters

• Going to be adding a lot more to the WvW side


What have you learned from the Halloween release that will apply to future updates and expansions?

• That they need to do better messaging both in the game such as where things are, and better messaging outside of the game to make sure people know what time things are happening and where to show up

• Need to do a better job at getting the word out

• Make sure they know where people are going to go and what they are going to do and planning ahead of time all of the different places they'll log in to


One question I had in regards to Halloween and the Clock Tower. There were a lot of complaints from people that were playing as an asura and couldn't necessarily see through all of the other people. Was that intentional or is that something that you might take and learn for the future and perhaps making it instanced?


• It's feedback that they will listen to, they'll make the choice design-wise for things like this in the future

• They want people to have fun

• It's a challenge because it's an MMO and they want it to be social, they want you to be able to go in with different players, so they need to find a good middle ground


How big will the new island be in November and what will be its setting or theme?

• It's not a full-sized map, it's a place where they want the storyline to play out

• It will stay behind after the weekend with new content

• Not intended as a big end-game expansion

• Live team will add more and more content to the island later down the road

• Will have new rewards that you can't get anywhere else in the game

• Theme-wise - have to wait and see


I'm curious about the plans for sPvP. What new modes are coming out and what new rewards are in the works as it seems people need more of a carrot system beyond just better gear?

• Competitive tournaments that came out with the Halloween update - rewards such as qualifier points and gems

• Down the road there will be custom arenas that they will talk more about later

• Working on things that need to be finished that are mandatory for any game that wants to be a large competitive game

• Working on additional rewards


Are there any plans to give experience to your character outside of sPvP? Like when you're doing sPvP but it gives you experience to level up outside of that for those that want to level outside of traditional leveling.

• It's something they are talking about and they haven't made a decision yet


What's your opinion on build saving tools and perhaps seeing those in the game in the future so that people can switch between builds they like?

• Something they are talking about, a feature they added to Guild Wars 1 a while after the game initially released

• Not currently being worked on


Are there any plans to offer more skills or other forms of PvE progression similar to how completing campaigns could net you new skills in Guild Wars 1?

• Haven't planned anything like that

• Certainly something they might do in the future


What are the plans for expanding guild features? Guild Halls, calendars and things like that.

• Someday there will be Guild Halls but it's not something that is actively being worked on

• Will expand on guild features down the road as well


Can you talk about your thoughts on housing for both players and guilds?

• Not currently working on but housing is another thing they think is awesome and someday it might find itself in GW2


Will there be 10-man or larger sized dungeons or hardmode dungeons that take 10 people?

• Doesn't want to go into specifics yet

• They're evaluating every part of the game to see what kind of stuff to add


Are there any plans to introduce legendary armor? Perhaps special armor skills that are related to them.

• Not currently, but you never know what might happen in the future


Will any future updates include an improved looking for group tool?

• Down the road we might take a look at that

• Not currently being worked on because they are working on more important issues

• Are there any plans to improve dungeon rewards to make them worth more to do?

• Actively working on dungeon rewards to make it more fun for people

• Want to make sure that it feels like a challenge and that you get good rewards for the time you spend in them

Can you talk about the comment from GWI that there is a possible MOBA-style PvP game in the works? The Halloween map was kind of like this.

• He thinks that came from years ago when they played around with one of those and someone did an interview a while ago where they talked about how they had a MOBA map early on

• It's something that was scrapped because it wasn't working well

• Things like that are always open and on the table as projects they might go after again, they tend to pop up in the form of mini-games like the skeleton battle for the Halloween event

• Other areas of PvP that they really want to focus on first