ArenaNet talks about naming Guild Wars 2's world

Salutations, readers! I’m Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda, a content designer here at ArenaNet, and I’d like to give you a little background on exactly what goes on in the process of naming things in Guild Wars 2. The world of Tyria has a vast amount of creatures, locations, and items, and though wrangling the names of so many different things over such a huge scale is a daunting task, ArenaNet has developed an excellent system to manage them.

Names in Guild Wars 2 have their origins in many different sources — real-world lore, established naming schemes, onomatopoeia, outside media, cheeky references to Colin Johanson, and — of course — button mashing. (Although obviously that last one isn’t meant to be permanent.) Whether it’s for a monster, a character, or an item, all names begin life in a placeholder state, and are subjected to what we like to call the “sanity check.” This is a safety pass to ensure proper spelling and pronunciation, the latter of which is even more important if the name is ever going to be voiced by an actor. As Guild Wars 2 has moved into using a lot more voice-over work than the original games, the importance of this pass has grown tremendously, and the rule of thumb is to say any name or phrase out loud a few times before committing to it. “Xanthoaediax” may seem like a lovely name, but it’s going to be a nightmare to pronounce!

“One of the lore elements of the game that I find the most fascinating is the cultural evolution of charr names.…” Another thing I want to touch on briefly is the handling of the “fourth wall” in names and situations.

Don’t get me wrong, we do love us some clever pop cultural shout-outs, but they can be risky: references fail when too few people get the in-joke, or it’s something that seems out-of place for the game world, or it’s a reference with too short of a shelf life. (Face it: Nyan Cat won’t be relevant forever.) If the joke is too obscure or really overt, we tend to either chop it out or look for ways to improve it. The world of Tyria is already lush with stories, and most often we’d rather explore our own lore instead of trying to shoehorn in external references.

After that, we send the name on to our loremasters, the legendary Ree Soesbee and Jeff Grubb. Ree and Jeff work very hard every day to maintain a cohesive feel to the Guild Wars universe, and they have done their best to make the basic structure of this universe understandable and accessible. ArenaNet keeps an internal wiki, with pages dedicated to each of the five playable races — as well as the many less populous races of the world. These pages detail their culture and naming conventions and include a large list of suggested character names. This ensures there’s plenty of information available to help designers get a solid feel for a culture, and formulate good names quickly. Once I create a character name, I run my sanity check on it, and then contact Ree for her approval. If she okays it, in the game it goes!



Here’s my favorite example: if you choose to create a charr in the Ash Legion, you’ll encounter a character named Sicaea the Shrouded, personal spy of the Ash Legion Tribune.

Before I named her, I knew the character needed to be an exceptional undercover agent, who was excellent at avoiding detection until she shanked you from the shadows. I knew I wanted her name to be based off of a weapon – it suited her nature – so I did a search on classical Roman weaponry until I found the perfect one: a sica, a short curved dagger considered by many classic Roman texts to be an assassin’s blade. I modified the word slightly to make a more Romanesque-feeling name, and slid in the descriptive title “the Shrouded” …and voila, you have my favorite character name in all of Guild Wars 2.

However, the twist in this is process is that while sentient characters can explain or demonstrate their names, or they hint at a real-world connection that the player can put together for themselves – they even have the advantage, such as with the charr, of being culturally consistent.

The process gets a little more exhaustive when naming things that lack those advantages, such as creature species. There are many strange monsters in the world of Tyria, most of which lack a non-fantasy analog. We, as players who live on Earth, know that a big furry dog-like creature is a “wolf,” but what do we call an enormous, hairless predator that looks like a cross between a dog, a bear, and a mole?

Our process in naming such a creature starts with asking ourselves several pertinent questions and trying to create a name from there. Where does this creature appear? What races have come into contact with it? Did they name it? Was it ever sentient, and did it name itself? What does it look like? Is it passive or aggressive? All of these factors combine to help us come up with a name that works — and ideally, that name will then inspire more brainstorming to get a better picture of how this creature fits into the world.

Here’s another example for you. For another event, I knew the player would be clearing out enemies from a snowy cave system, and I wanted to give them a creature they’d never fought before as a new and exciting challenge. While looking through the available creatures on our wiki, I saw something perfect: a hairless, fanged, ghastly-looking quadruped whose only placeholder name was “rat dog.” I knew I wanted the creature to live in a cave system in norn territory, and I wanted it to be a territorial hunter-scavenger that lived in large packs — a worthy challenge for a hero, but hardly glamorous prey. Its name needed to sound like something lurking, cave-like, but still appropriate for the more grandiose naming scheme of the norn.

From this basis, I started chatting with Ree about my ideas, and soon more people started adding their voices to the discussion. Due to most of the story team’s (mostly misguided, in my opinion) loathing of mushrooms, something like “morel” was suggested, and developed to have more of a sinister sound. Continuing further with the fungus idea, the concept of spores and poison was brought up, but the idea of venom being associated with the beast didn’t mesh with its appearance. Due to its similarity to a rat, disease was decided on as an alternative, and lo — the murellow was born!

Though it might seem like a lot of work, the names of creatures or characters are really the first way that a player gets to know a world, and inconsistencies in that presentation can impact a player’s experience. There’s an adage that says, “To name a thing is to own it.” We hope that when you name your first character for Guild Wars 2, you feel as deeply connected to them as we do to the world of Tyria and all the characters and items we’ve made to populate it.

MURELLOW



Size: 1.5-3m

Range: Alpine caves

Distribution: large family groups to smaller colonies

Prey: hunter/scavenger

The murellow is nobody’s favorite creature, least of all the norn – not only do they threaten livestock and caravans, but they don’t even make good trophies when mounted on the wall. Murellows typically dwell in very deep cave systems, but retain the eyesight that was the mark of their forebears – badger-like beings who lived in large familial groups. Murellows have recently been sighted close to the surface in disturbing numbers, likely the result of destroyers driving them from their original territories.

Murellows are opportunistic pack hunters, but will scavenge on occasion, their habits closest to those of rats or dogs. Though one single murellow may not be as much of a threat (aside from the danger of the many diseases that it carries), a roaming pack is a danger even to trained fighters. Though it typically goes after docile prey, it has a habit of ganging up on unsuspecting creatures… rumors have spoken of caravans attacked in the night, and grown norn falling to their foul plagues. Murellows are aggressive and expansionist as well, and will viciously defend what they have marked as their territory.

TH