James Ackley and The Sounds of Guild Wars 2

Over at the Guild Wars Guru forums, a conversation about the sounds in the Guild Wars games and player’s wishes for sounds in Guild Wars 2 was met with a surprising reply by James Ackley, ArenaNet’s Audio Director, via Regina Buenaobra which you can read in full here! There’s talk of footsteps, which I’ll admit to loving in most games, if done properly of course. Also environmental and ambient sounds were a big hit in GW with me (My guild hall has a very nice waterfall that is just nice to listen to while chatting with friends and guild mates!). To say the least, I hate ArenaNet for mostsome of the things they do, but I do love it when they come through in a lot of little ways like this. Kudos for the community involvement, James and Anet!

Guild Wars 2, The Artbook That Steals Souls

ArenaNet has finally let loose of its Guild Wars 2 art book that was originally only given out at this past PAX! All 127 and 1 glorious pages of fantastic concept art for Anet’s upcoming MMO, Guild Wars 2, can now be yours, if you pay for it, as it will not, I repeat, NOT, be bundled with the Collector’s Edition of the game, which has left me to ponder, “What could they possibly throw into the CE to make it worth while?” The original Guild Wars art book was the only reason I got the Prophecies CE on the first day of release! I suppose we shall soon see, but if you want to wait and look at something else, after the bump are 5 pages from the book I need to go buy!

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End of Weekend Notes, Lazy Is But A Word

And lazy is what I yam, and I yam what I yam. or something like that…anyway, while I’ve been out doing website things and other projects and being dragged back into Guild Wars kicking and screaming like a spoiled brat not wanting to go to the doctor’s office, I’ve been keeping an ear or three to the ground waiting for more news of Guild Wars 2 and other praise-worthy geeky-ness.

I read and watched some good Q&A with Anet Heads and designers about Guild Wars 2 which you can check out over at theGuild Wars 2 site which has everything from talking about underwater combat to new pvp systems to what was learned from the original Guild Wars. Still talking about GW2…

New concept art and two wallpapers have made there way to the public and to my harddrives amirite which range from “Oh, that looks neat,” to “Oh, that looks bitchin’!” in terms of awesomeness. Check ‘em all out on the Guild Wars 2 site. Yeah I’m too lazy to link for you.

Let’s see, what else to talk about, I guess I could bitch about Comcast sucking, but that’s too easy. Oh oh, Aion using GameGuard as their “hacker free-for-all prevention” program instead of…anything else, but again, too easy. Well I’ll just leave it at that and wait to find something truly god-awful to complain about before…complaining…again. Or I’ll just post more GW2 news in hopes that ArenaNet will forgive me.

Jeff Strain Strains My Relationship With ArenaNet, Leaves NCSoft West

So, aside from my day without the internet (that day being yesterday), and a doctor’s appointment that took an hour longer than it should have, I had a somewhat a-okay day. Upon my return to the virtual world, however, I find that all is not well in the land of MMOs. According to an article at MMORPG.com, Jeff Strain and David Reid are done with NCSoft.

NCsoft West Public Relations Director Ryan James had the following to say about the departure of Strain:

“With a successful history creating MMORPG games, NCsoft has made an indelible mark on the games industry. Last year, the South Korea-based NCsoft created a division to follow a vision of bringing AAA MMOs to the West called NCsoft West. This organization was formed as part of NCsoft’s ongoing vision to be the premier global MMO publisher in the world. With that vision, change in a growth industry is inevitable. NCsoft West announces the departure of Jeff Strain, President of Product Development, who has chosen to leave NCsoft under amicable terms and NCsoft wishes him the best in his new endeavor. This does not change our plans or negatively impact our upcoming launch of Aion, and NCsoft remains very excited about the game’s launch on September 22nd in the U.S. and September 25th in Europe. These changes do not influence any other teams, development schedules or other launches.”

Bullshit! This is yelling to me that ArenaNet is slowly dying out, and Guild Wars 2 will soon fall into a “Duke Nukem coma”, while the original Guild Wars withers away in a painful death that has been shared by Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault. With Aion soon to be released in a little over a month, NCSoft had better get its proverbial shit together before it hits the proverbial fan if they want to become a global MMO juggernaut, but, as for me, NCSoft is dying, Aion will not do as well as they need it to over here in North America, and with all the player-hype it has, it only has room to plummet to its death…only to has its heart replaced by a battery and kept alive by shocking itself with jolts of fanboys.

Jeff Strain and David Reid Out At NCsoft @ MMORPG.com [via Massively]