Guild Chat - Episode 114
Guild Chat - Episode 114
- Title
- Jade Sea Map Tour
- Host
- Rubi Bayer
- Guests
- Connor Fallon
Kirk Williford
Chloë Mills - Date
- November 19, 2021
- Official video
- YouTube
The 114th episode of Guild Chat aired on November 19, 2021.
Transcription[edit]
Introduction [11:17][edit]
Rubi Bayer: Hi Tyria. Happy Friday and welcome to Guild Chat. Thank you all for joining us. I'm your host Rubi and we're going to be giving you a tour of the Jade Sea today. We're really happy with how you were commenting and reacting on the video we showed earlier this week, so we're going to dive in a little bit deeper and take you around the map and show some things off to you. A couple things, before we dive in. First of all, as always, we're taking you behind the scenes into a development environment so you're going to see things that look unfinished, maybe look kind of weird, look like they might be a little broken, maybe some temporary icons, some- that kind of thing. Also, especially for this show, we've been saying in the Shing Jea map tour and in the Echovald Wilds map tour, we let you know that we had hidden a lot of things just to kind of avoid spoilers and leave plenty for you all to discover during your game play after End of Dragons goes live. We've done that this time, except we hid everything. This is an extremely spoilery map. There is so much story stuff that we don't want to spoil for you that we talked about this over and over trying to figure out what to do. We ended up- The enemies, the residents, the NPCs: they're all gone. Still lots to show you, but just a heads up, it's a little bit deserted right now. So that said, the mass evacuation- We evacuated everybody. So that said, let's jump in and meet our dev guests. Connor, we'll start with you. Hi.
Connor Fallon: Hello! My name is Connor Fallon. I'm the story design lead on End of Dragons. That means I work very closely with the narrative team and with the other designers in order to determine what our main storyline is and make sure that everything that we're doing is cohesive, which is especially relevant to this map.
Rubi: Yeah. And Kirk.
Kirk Williford: Yes, it is. Hey folks! I'm Kirk Williford. I'm a senior game designer at Arenanet and I am a constant team lead on End of Dragons, including Jade Sea here.
Rubi: Yeah. All right, so where are we going to start?
Jade Sea [13:16][edit]
Kirk: Sure. We are starting at the Frozen Sea Monastery located in in the Jade Sea. So first thing you'll notice- Again, I want to make it sure we call it out, everything has been unspawned on this map. You know, some props have even been unspawned, a lot- all of the NPCs have. A big thing about this map, and I'll let Connor go into detail about this, is this map ties very closely with the story of End of Dragons, particularly later in the story, so...
Connor: Yeah, yeah. So historically when we've done expansions, all of the maps have taken place ballpark the same time. We, when we were breaking out and figuring out what we were doing in End of Dragons, it became clear that there were a lot of advantages to having one map that took place later, so that we could show some of the effects of some of the things that were happening in the story and really like tie it in a cohesive way. Jade Sea is the map. So actually in the game if you try to go to this map early, there will be a little conversation that says, "Are you sure you want to go here? There be spoilers."
Rubi: Here there be spoilers.
Connor: And you can say yes. We're not stopping you from going in early and spoiling yourself. But it's this interesting thing where we've kind of taken an advantage that we had in Living World, with having maps be a very specific slice of time, and applied just a little bit of it to this expansion. So yeah. But the result of this is, when we're putting together how to promote it, how to talk about it, it's hard. Even when we were putting together the trailer, there's a lot of really cool stuff that we just can't show, or don't- Like we could show, I guess, but like, then you'd go in and you'd know everything. You'd know a bunch of stuff.
Kirk: Yeah.
Connor: Yeah, like... So, yeah. And so we've all been working really closely together on this map because of that way that it connects to the larger story, and all those other things.
Kirk: Yeah. It's been a blast, you know, being able to work with the narrative team so closely, you know, and Connor and his team on this map and developing the themes that you see in the content and the experience, you know, on this map, and how it all ties together, not just with what's happening in this map, but what's happening in the entire story at this point. And yeah, even when we were trying to figure out how to do this Guild Chat, you know, it's- The first thing was like, "Okay, how are we gonna do this?" You know?
Rubi: We had so many meetings about this. (laughs)
Connor: Yeah.
Kirk: Because we want to show this map. There's a ton of awesome things to see in the Jade Sea, you know, but there's also...
Connor: Sea.
Kirk: There might be a sea that we can see? See what I did there?
Connor: Yeah, I do.
Kirk and Rubi: (laugh)
Kirk: But, you know, at the same time we don't want to spoil that for folks. We don't want to spoil a lot of things for for people, so we are, you know- That's why we do unhide everything, or we do hide everything.
Rubi: Ohh!
Kirk: I'm not unhiding anything.
Rubi: We'll be right back! (laughs)
Kirk: But yeah, that's...
Rubi: So let's see what we can see, in the sea. I wanted to do it, too.
Kirk: Sure, yeah. Again, this is another area in the map that is a bit more quiet. You know, it's in the rocks a little bit. If by a little bit, I mean quite a bit. But it showcases some of the more solemn areas of the map.
Connor: I'd say it's embedded in the rocks.
Kirk: It is quite embedded in the rocks. But, you know, it still has it's own grand view. It's a gorgeous area. Some awesome content takes place here, you know, with learning more about this particular monastery and what, you know, the folks here do. But, you know, there's a lot of contrast in what you can find in this map because obviously, you know, jade in this place, in Cantha, is very important. You know, it powers the entire Canthan empire. So there's that level and that element of the map where it is a, you know, a big quarry and that has to get the materials to do what it needs to do. I am trying so hard not to spoil things.
Connor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rubi: You're doing really well. Like shout out to Kirk for this.
Kirk: I'm trying. But you know, at the same time, there's also these areas where it's like, you know, it's a little quieter, it might be a break from that big industry size.
Connor: It's still a big historic region that has a lot of culture and history attached to it.
Kirk: Right.
Connor: And people go there, not only for modern reasons, they go there to like, connect to that.
Kirk: Yeah. You know this area is different than what it was in Guild Wars 1 in the sense that, you know, this isn't the land of the Luxons as much. You know, people who are still here are Luxons of descent. They still recognize some of them, they still celebrate their history, similar to what you will find in Echovald with the Kurzicks, you know. But it's kind of, you know, it has another element to it and so we'll start taking a look at it. I'll head a little bit to the east here. I'm going to carefully position my camera. So this is the thing: the spoilers are so upfront in this map that I literally cannot move my camera at certain angles for fear of showing things. But, you know. So we're going to take a little detour through this conveniently placed hallway here and just kind of take in some of the more solemn aspects of the map and some of the cool things that you'll be able to discover, you know, including just some of the awesome artwork that has gone into this map.
Rubi: Yeah.
Connor: So very early on- I mean, you all have probably seen some of these like textures before, but the whole thing is like- Very early on, the art team developed like a couple different iconic patterns basically that were, you know, that would embody Cantha and Canthan art. And I think they really help, in all of our maps, lend this sense of like a style to this area.
Kirk: Absolutely.
Rubi: Yeah. This is-
Connor: I especially- I do love this mosaic so much.
Rubi: Yeah. That's something I've been noticing through the whole map is the attention to detail, even in those little mosaic patterns. And can you- If you can go like, back down and just... even the stone surrounding it has absolutely gorgeous patterns. The map artists have done such good work on this.
Kirk: Yeah. Every time we go into this map it blows us away. You know, the work that Jeff, our map artist, has done on it is amazing and it's just- I love it so much. You know, something that I mentioned last week during the Echovald live stream was Echovald and Shing Jea have two completely different biomes, right? And then as we go through here, you know, Jade Sea is a third different biome. These maps look completely different, you know? There's a lot of different aspects to them, you know, not just in content, but also in art direction. You know, obviously we're starting to see some of the Jade Sea, part of the Jade Sea now.
Connor: What?
Kirk: Imagine that, right?
Rubi: It's here!
Kirk: But yeah, you know, we're gonna head down to this little village here.
Connor: I love that you can see the waves and everything.
Kirk: Yeah. I have some things I want to talk about with this sea here in a bit but, you know. This area here is called Emerald Bluff. Excuse me. And what it is is, you know, as you can see over here, there's a little bit of a dock. This area might be pretty old, you know. They built this maybe when the Jade Sea wasn't solid jade. So this is a little bit of an older area. It has some older folks in it who may not be interested in moving to the hustle and bustle of Kaineng or, you know, Shing Jea or even Echovald, you know. They're all so different than Jade Sea. And so you'll find some cool stories here of the people who stuck around here and why they're still here, you know, in context of what's happening at this point in the story. But at the same time, there is some interest from folks who are arriving here and trying to figure out, you know, what's going on? What's with this jade that now powers the entire Canthan empire? You know and so doing- There's an event here that I really like that one of our content designers, Annie, did that, you know, is about similar to, in real life, how there's, you know, ice core studies that happen in Antarctica, for example. You're able to assist some researchers with gathering jade cores and being able to, you know, figure out what's inside the jade, what can they get from it, what are they learning from it, you know?
Connor: Yeah.
Kirk: And then there's also some other stuff that you kind of run across, too.
Connor: Let's quickly take a look at the table for this, that this researcher has.
Kirk: Nice table.
Rubi: Yeah!
Connor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, specifically I want to talk about what's on the table.
Rubi: (laugh) Sorry!
Connor: So, I've had a couple people- I noticed when I was watching the chat, because I can't help myself, for all these different things. I sort of, when we run by these, a couple people have been like, "What's that thing? What are these? They keep showing up." I'm gonna talk about it. So these are actually... Throughout Cantha and End of Dragons, we have news that will play like from these projectors when you get near them and the thing about this is that news actually updates based on how far you are in the story, what's happened in the world and all these things like that. So there's a sense of like- One of the things that I'm really proud of with End of Dragons is, you know, over the years we've experimented with a lot of different ways to merge our instanced content and the open world to make it feel like they're connected, and by having like these reporters talking about things that are happening in the story as you're exploring, I think that's turned out to be a really effective way for us to do it. We're proud for how it shows up, but it does mean that we've now got these things that are pretty visible in every map and we turn them off in the live stream because we can't have them talking about something that happens in act five when we're showing off like, "Here's the first map you go to!" So... but yeah.
Rubi: Yeah. Actually something that I like about these, that you'll see as you're running around the game after it's live, is the different sizes. And I've joked that it's like desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone because there's like four different sizes of these.
Connor: So this one on the table is one of the smaller sizes. You get the fun-sized reporter that shows up and talks to you, just standing on your table.
Rubi: Okay, I love that.
Connor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then, you know, there's obviously like person sized, and there's a big one for like neighborhoods. But then there's one place in the expansion there's a giant one of these which is always really fun when you trigger it and you see her, like the thing like talking to you, and you're like, "Oh! There's the news!"
Rubi: That's enormous!
Connor: That's the thing! But yeah.
Kirk: It's one of my favorite additions to the open world just because it really helps kind of ground everything in the reality of what's happening, right? Like not- The things that you're doing impact the world and people are reacting to it, you know. You might do something in the story... "something". And then you hear news about it. You're like, "That was may- Oops!"
Connor: And also it's a great tool for world building, right?
Kirk: Yeah.
Connor: Like just the ant- The sort of- We have a bunch of ambient reports that we wrote that are just about like random things and like don't- There's one that's like, "Don't feed the kappa. Like, please. They're dangerous." We know- It's like, alright. Like and that's just kind of a fun thing to have, yeah.
Rubi: Yeah. Alright, so what else are we- Do you want to look at the Jade Sea now and-
Kirk: Yeah, let's look at the Jade Sea.
Connor: We don't want to look at the Jade Sea.
Kirk: We're actually going to skip-
Rubi: Leave. (all laugh)
Kirk: But no-
Rubi: Don't leave yet.
Kirk: I'm going to start heading over. Our goal is to get up on top of that ridge there. It's another one of our beautiful temples but on the way, you know I just wanted to call out the amazing work again that our map artist Jeff has done on this region. These are all hand sculpted waves and a beautiful artwork done. You know you can see the the sea foam you know, kind of blending in at the top and you can get a real sense of motion that happens inside of this map. It's beautiful on its own but something that's really special about this map that I'm particularly fond of is you know you might see that it looks like it goes very far. So something that is kind of different and new to the game for a End of Dragons is the concept of an open bordered map that is land-based at least technically land-based. So you know we do open border maps all you know pretty regularly-ish you know, some of them in Arah are that way and Orr. Grothmar Valley has a little bit of it near one of its edges but it's always done with water you know it's always a water plane that just goes off in into the distance. And we've never done that before for a land-based map technically speaking I suppose this is water but you know-
Rubi: It's debatable.
Kirk: debatable.
Rubi: For all intents and purposes, it's land.
Kirk: but when we were building out this map it was important that we want, you know the Jade Sea is very large and we wanted to accurately convey that in what you see and what you experience in the map and have it feel like a jade sea not a jade bathtub, if you will. And have, you know, it kind of— you're encapsulated in a small space and you can't see how big this thing really is, you know, um.
And so we were talking with Jeff about that and how can we make this work? How can we have a land-based one where it goes off into infinity, really, and he's like, "I have an idea, let me see if I can do it." And shortly after he checks in, he's like, you know, "Let me know what you think." And we took a look, we're like, holy crap. Like, this looks amazing. And what he did is, you know, beyond the borders of what is actually recognized as the map. On the technical side, you know, he hand sculpted more of these waves as props and have them placed, you know, to help convey off in the distance how how big this map and how big the Jade Sea really is.
And that includes, you know, you'll see the rocks and all that stuff in the distance. And that was really important to us because, you know, if you play Guild Wars 1, Jade Sea has that feeling to it. It was a little easier in Guild Wars 1 because you couldn't jump, there wasn't as much, you know, vertical elements to movement in the game. But, you know, so that produced its own kind of challenges for Guild Wars 2 but in doing so Jeff did an awesome job of, you know, really conveying it in an awesome way. You know, it looks like it goes on forever. It's a huge ocean— not ocean. Sea. But you know what I mean. Big body of water.
Rubi: Is it water?
Connor: Jade lake. Jade pond.
Kirk: Um, yeah, so, you know. There's tons of words we can use. The pond, you know, the soak. Whatever.
Rubi: Oh my gosh! Anyway! Okay, so tiny, tiny nit-picky question. When you have the water-based maps that do this you get, like, the strong current when you get to the end. And I know you can't show us, but how does that work on land — I'm calling it land.
Kirk: Call it land, that's fine. Uh, yeah, you know, there is still a similar element when you get close to it. There's more important things for you to kind of focus on and so there, you know, you'll still get a familiar message. It might be a different message this time because there's not a strong water current to pull you back.
Rubi: Is it a spoilery message?
Connor: Yes.
Kirk: Yes.
Connor: [Laughs] Everything's spoilers!
Rubi: Right?
Kirk: When we first were like, okay, we committed to doing this open border, you know. We— I talked to Eric and was like, "Hey, can we change that text?" and he's like, "I'll look into it." And again, same thing, you know. Really quickly we were able to— everyone really hopped onto this idea and it was just awesome to see everyone come together and it looks so cool.
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Note: The text below was auto-transcribed and not reviewed. It could be that text appears for the wrong speaker. https://youtu.be/zeG63_crYfA?t=1635 |
Kirk: Shall we climb? And you know I love all the little details and like the texture work and stuff, you know, you can kind of you can really see the motion and it has some, you know, reflectivity to it. I'm sure that's the. Technical term. Some artists. Is probably no, yeah.
Rubi: It's a word now.
Connor: I was thinking about this part. They do probably have jade bathtubs probably.
Kirk: But this would be a really big bathtub. You know what would you? I don't know. So we're gonna climb up here. Get another expected change.
Rubi: I'm gonna expect a jade bathtub on live now. Somebody get on that.
Kirk: Someone can have their character named Jade Back.
Rubi: It's happening just a second.
Kirk: Here's another view. I love this view of the, you know, the JDC as it just goes off into the distance. This area actually was in the siege turtle video that came out yesterday, which you check out if you haven't, which you should check out. It's it's amazing which, you know, sea turtles play very. But you know this area I really like because there's some fun content here centered around. You know what, what goes on in this temple? But at the same time, you know, this might be a place where you learn about a specific mini dungeon that might be in the JDC mini dungeon.
Connor: Say yeah, I mean, I, as someone who enjoys. Like explorative content, right? Like the one in path of fire, where you're in the Dwarven ruins was one of my favorite places to stumble upon, so I was really excited to hear that you guys are doing more of that stuff this time around.
Kirk: Yeah, we love that kind of stuff too. When we're building out these maps. Explorability is, I'm sure that's a word I'm making. It word to also more. Connor is my technical dictionary. Here you learn the narrative story guy anyway.
Connor: That's, I mean, I'm not the. Some words, but not as many.
Rubi: Ohh anyway it's. A word that's a.
Kirk: Big it's really important to us. We're building out these maps, you know, it's not just the content that's in your face, so to speak, with fighting and what have you. But we wanna have stuff for you to explore as you're building, building your journey through these. And in doing so, we approached the design of many dungeons. For these, you know, and this is one of a couple you might find an end of Dragons that might have something to do with this space. What more, I'm not going to say, but you know, as you journey through the JDC and explore it on your own, you'll find it. It's an awesome thing to explore that. One of our designers, Floyd did. And I'm really happy with how it turned out. You know, Connor ran through it and he enjoyed it too. He likes this area in particular, which I I definitely agree. Before I go there, I'm going to show 1A clip of one of my favorite little vistas. And by clip, I mean, I'm going to time it with that conveniently placed rock on the side there and yeah, just I love the view. You know, this map has being as open as it is, you know, it allows us to have.
Rubi: It is gorgeous.
Kirk: A lot of big open vistas, you know, that just really play well and and not really anything like we've done before.
Connor: And one of the things is we were figuring out like side stories and core stories and things like that. One of the big things we do is is, hey, where's a good spot for some of these scenes that we need to play? Have a specific tone or why don't we want to have the? Certain feel, and there's a there's a particular one which I'm looking forward to people experiencing that we decided to set here looking out on at this expanse because it made sense and it fit very well tonally. That's that's that's. I'm gonna give you. But it's there's in general, I'm really proud of some of the, the, the, the variety of different things and places we've taken. We take our characters. And our world in this expansion.
Kirk: Yeah, Connor, when Connor showed me what he had built here, you know, I was really blown away. It's a really awesome moment, you know, just in itself, but just it's a perfect place to have that moment, you know, it's an awesome beat in, in the story in beat. Sorry, but you know I just the the attention to detail and the focus and handcrafted stuff that everyone has done, it's just it's awesome to see every time we log into the map.
Connor: And you'll just have to imagine it cause we're. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, you.
Rubi: Know it's like it's telling you places to look. Yes, yes, I I like how you said there might be a mini dungeon. Like it's in question. There's, there's definitely a mini. They're telling you where to go. Yeah, the only spoiler I can give, man. Give me something.
Kirk: OK, you can have that one. I really like that too. Just because, you know, in context of like the meta event that is in this map, you know, there might. Be a meta event. In this map there's.
Connor: A meta event. In this map.
Rubi: There is definitely.
Connor: You just said meta.
Kirk: In context of the meta event that is in this map, there's also time. For more of. Those quieter character beats and quieter, you know, more in solo stuff that you can like a mini dungeon or when having some of the stuff that we'll take. A look in a bit here.
Connor: Striking that balance is something that we've been iterating on for every expansion, right? I think and one of the things is the maps. Slightly different maps hit that balance a little bit differently in this expansion. That was one. The things I think that I love that gives the maps a different feel, and this time around, and I think you guys did it, I think we. We did a good job of it here.
Kirk: Yeah, I'm glad. Yeah, I hope. I hope everyone likes it when they're able to check it out.
Connor: Yeah, I believe. This is the point where I vanish, correct?
Rubi: Yes, I'm interested to see if you actually vanished. I do want to say thank you for giving yourself credit too as well for catching that you all have done such amazing work. I'm so excited for you. All to see.
Connor: This so I'm going to be disappearing and we're going to. Be bringing flowing on.
Rubi: We're gonna take a. We're gonna take a really quick break, stick around, and we're gonna keep running around the Jade Sea. We'll be right back.
[35:14][edit]
Rubi: I hope you're ready to continue your tour of the Jade Sea with us because we have more to share. Chloe is with us now. So thank you for joining.
Chloe: Hi, I'm Chloe mills. I'm a content designer working on end of Dragons. I've been working on EE Wilds and. And in JDC I've one of the things I've been working on is part of the meta, including. This is a very spoiler town. The conclusion to the meta.
Rubi: It's so hard not to spoil.
Kirk: It's it really is.
Rubi: It's it's super.
Chloe: Super secret, but I'm very excited for for people. To get like their hands on it, when when this goes live, I cannot wait. It's going to be. It's gonna be. So good. Yeah, I'm super.
Kirk: It's like what Conor was saying about the the story and the meta, you know, coming together and the story teams and the the. Content teams, you know?
Chloe: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's been. It's been really interesting because we are trying really hard to like integrate the narrative a lot with this one and especially like towards the end there's. I don't know how to say this.
Rubi: Stuff but there. Is stuff that we can share and talk about. So let's keep going.
Kirk: What are we? Looking at well here.
Chloe: It is a it. Is a siege turtle hatchery. This is Juno hatchery. It is a different hatchery than the one that was in Gilbert's one gala hatchery, but, but it's kind of got, like similar vibes, even though it's evolved over time, there's. Updated architecture and it has a little bit different of a look. But it's still, it still has a lot of lux and influence it, like sea turtles, are a very, like, integral part of like lux and culture and history. And so you definitely still get a lot of those vibes, even though stuff has like updated and integrated with more of the camp and like culture overall. So I have an event here that I that I made and in it you are protecting some little little tiny baby sea turtle hatchlings that have just hatched out of their nests in the sand and you're helping them get to these little hatchling pools where they can start, like growing up and learning. How to be a siege turtle? There's a lot. To learn so yeah. So because like I want it. So I wanted to make this event a little bit like have another a little bit more of a. Layer than just. Like a regular defend or escort event. So so like they're, I mean, they're little, they're little babies. They're they're naive. They don't know any better. And so, like, they're just beeline. And for that, for those pools and you know, in the way there's a bunch of danger and things that they can run into, including not A and Kappa and and other sorts of dangers. So, so, so you. Really player are trying to herd them and lure them away from out of the like path of danger and help them not get kidnapped by the not a. So it's it's very cute. It's a little chaotic. But you kind of get a glimpse into like what? It's like to work at the hatchery. Here and it's a bunch of. Very cute, baby turtles.
Kirk: Yeah, I really like it too, you know, obviously, there's usually some sea turtles spawned in here, amongst other things, you know, but we had, yeah, everything.
Rubi: Yeah, we had those two.
Kirk: But, you know, like you'll see them all around. You're able to learn about them. You're able to. Experience some of what that that LUX and knowledge is, you know, given their their mastery with the the seeds turtle. As a thing.
Chloe: And this is an important place for getting starting on the journey for getting. Your own siege turtle. So it's pretty cool, but yeah, so like this big pool here, it's like shallow water because it's so like the side pools are for like the little tiny hatchlings and in. The middle is for. The more like adolescent a little bit bigger turtles as they're still kind of growing up and train. Thing and so. It would normally be more populated.
Rubi: I like the progression of the smaller pools and then the large one. Yeah, and I played this event once or twice, and I know she's gonna get, like, sick and be screaming at her about how much I love it. But it's not just like adorable turtles, and you have to help, like the naive little babies that will just blunder into danger otherwise. But the different the different ways. Just that little bit of progression goes and like we were joking that they're food motivated because you can. Offer treats to let them come over here big mood.
Chloe: Yeah. You're like, yeah, like.
Rubi: Yeah, we can. We can give them their lunch, Kirk. But yeah, it is just the care and thought that went into it is it's such a good example of so many of the events on this map. This is one of the few. We can talk about so one of. Yeah, it is. I'm excited for people to experience this one and the fact that it's tied into getting your own seed turtle mount is. Makes it really awesome, yeah.
Kirk: Real quickly, you know, you might have noticed that sometimes I will focus on the nice ground like, you know, look at that. That's a nice round. That is a. Very nice rock, but you know, just again we as, as we said, we are unsparing. We unsewn the entire map. That includes creatures, some prop. You know I can't turn my camera to face specific angles because sometimes it can get too spoilery, so there's a ton of exciting stuff in this map that we really just don't want to spoil for folks. We'd rather have, you know, you able to discover it on.
Rubi: Your own and I meant to say earlier. I appreciate your use of the terrain to hide things.
Kirk: Yeah, I mean.
Rubi: You need to be hidden like you're nailing this. I'm impressed, Jeff.
Kirk: Special he made the train so interesting to look at. You know that we're able to just kind of just chill and relax and yeah, take a look at what it has to offer, you know, and see some props that might be floating a little bit bit because of, you know, dev environment.
Rubi: That's what it is. Remember when I said stuff might be broke? I don't think that column gravity. Maybe gravity was different than I understand it in Kenta.
Kirk: But yeah, that might be it. You know, or I don't know, blame the seeds, turtles the seeds.
Rubi: Click to column wrong.
Kirk: Turtles did it.
Chloe: Yeah, I was. So I was so glad that, like, we were going to have a seed Cheryl Hatchery. It was something that like when we first started talking about it, I was like. I need to be a part of this. I want I I. Really want to. Be involved sea turtles. I I love them. And Gilbert's one I love the luxans, and it's just I I just, like, could not wait and I. Was like I need. To be a part of this.
Kirk: So so badly? And the work that you've done on that area is amazing. It's really awesome. To check out so where? Are we now? We're going to head north. A little bit into the actual query part of the JDBC where you'll see and there's a lot to look at in here, so we'll we'll get to it, but something that I really like about this area is it immediately shows you how much. The mining operation has already gone down. You know, technically speaking, up there is sea level, right? So they've been digging for quite a long time because they need a lot of this stuff to power their empire and in some cases, they've dug all the way down to the sea floor. Obviously this is. Relatively shallow compared to some parts of the JDBC given how close it is to the mainland. But you're able to stand in there and immediately look up and be like, OK, that's pretty deep and see some of those stories. You know, they're still actively trying to do stuff in here. You know, they need that jade to to fuel with all. Of their their stuff. That shall not be spoiled throughout the, you know, the expansion and throughout the. But yeah, you know, in doing so, you're able to see those stories of of the workers here. What they're dealing with, you know, while also starting to reenter a more familiar area for Guild Wars. One players you know, this is the Jade Quarry from Guild Wars one. You know that that PvP PV E mission where it was luxans versus kurzick. You know this is that. Area that has been expanded very, you know, drastically as they've. Just continued that. Operation over the centuries, as it were, and that's brought the attention of many other. Groups including this logo here is an interesting one. Last week we took a look at the headquarters in Echo Vald of the Jade Brotherhood Gang. It turns out that the speakers are in Jade. Be interested in what's going on. Here you know it's again it's empty.
Rubi: So I do appreciate their commitment to gardening, though like this is such a pretty area and I joke.
Kirk: They yeah, they love it.
Rubi: But the trees and the flowers and just all of the little details, yeah.
Chloe: I love this little Meadow right here. It's so picturesque.
Kirk: Yeah, that's the thing that I really like about the JDC 2. I mean, all of our maps have elements of this. But you know, this area is way different than what we started with in this the show, right, and it's way different from what the rest of the sea looks like and is way different from what the quarry looks like. You know, there's still elements of everything for everybody here in terms of variety of, you know, terrain and and elevation, you know, so let's head up there.
Chloe: Actually, yeah. It's it's. And it's really interesting to have worked on both Ewald and JC for that reason, like it has provided a lot of variety just because they're they have just very different vibes and layouts like echo ball is very vertical and kind of more like closed in and spooky. Whereas like, I mean, I know that we're going like vertical. But like as a whole, JC is. But still much more open and it and it. And there's like wide expanses. And so it it's it really. Like I I really like the variety there, but it's also. Created some interesting design challenges to solve of like. How how do? We layout the content and like all the events and stuff, and how thinking about how stuff interacts with just the environment itself, like having where like where do the characters exist, where do enemies live and all of that. And so it's just been. It's been really cool to work on both of them because they just have such like.
Kirk: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's really. I really like it too because it allows us to, you know, have a large variety in the content that we're building for these maps in the sense that, you know, like there's there's pathways that, you know, you'll see people taking those pathways doing. Their own things. But then there's also NPCS that are a little bit more adventurous, you know, like and this is an awesome clip. Was one of my favorite cliffs. And you bet that there's some diving goggles here. You can use, but you know there might be an NPC up here. For example, who's? You know they want a drink of some kind, and because they heard that there might be some some ways to get a drink down here because it turns out even minors, you know, sometimes like to to take a take a drink after their shift. But these two ways to get down here, so you have to figure how to get. Him their own drink. Anyway, yeah, you know, just small things like that. Details here and there that really helps sell the world. And build the environment and takes advantage of the amazing verticality that this map can offer. Hey, Skiff, isn't it great? Yeah, that was one of the interesting challenges with this map is, you know, this is a map that technically is water that is solidified. So see again, sea level means something in this map, you know, but at the same time we want this map to support two or, you know, multiple of our new features. In this expansion, you know, skiffs, phishing. So how do we? Approach that from a both an art. Perspective, but as a design. Wow, that was tongue full. You know, how do you do that?
Rubi: It was fun.
Kirk: It was fine. And that presented its own interesting design challenges. Right. And we'll go into a little bit more shortly, but it allows us to do some really fun things with it and take us through areas that you know, they have their own history and their own ecosystem. That we're able to build content off.
Chloe: Of yeah. Yeah. Like around here. Having the water kind of, like lets us take a look at, like, some of the inhabitants of Jade C not A and I. So I I built another event right around here that has to do with not A and I. I had a I had a lot of fun with this one because I was working with narrative to figure out. Like what? What the not a looked like at this point and like, where have they been? What have they been? Doing like cause in builders one. The not a were like on the brink of extinction because of the jade wind basically annihilating. Most of them. And so they also like in builders on, they also harbored a lot of resentment towards humans because, like, they viewed them as the cause of it. And so it was an interesting working with the narrative team. To figure out like. Where do they stand now? What have they been up to? And so they're, you know, like their numbers are better now, but they're and, but they're still definitely not our friends. But like I think that like some of that, like resentment has like a little bit faded over time and it's more that they're established here and there's all these mining operations happening in the. And so it's more just. Now like get. Out of our territory, like, why are you here like, this is our. This is our turf. So I have an event here where the God, I love that view. It's so cool. I just love how that tower really like, illustrates how much has been mined.
Rubi: Like that was ground. Level at some point.
Chloe: Yeah, it's it's so cool. So I have this event here where you have, there's like, this normally would be populated with like a bunch of people mining and taking things into. Like like storage facilities and moving stuff around. And so the not a are invading because like they this is they view this as their turf. And so there's. They they have their own motivations, it they're definitely being jerks about it. But like there's a little bit more context here of like, some of the friction that's happening in this region. And so you have to. Drive them off and similar to the sage Turtle Hatchery event, I wanted to kind. Of add another layer. To to like how you can go about it and give players options for how you approach the event. So you can choose to drive them off in a few different ways, whether that's with bloodshed or maybe some more peaceful options. So yeah, I'm really it's a fun event.
Kirk: Yeah, I really like that. Event and you. Know because it allows us to learn. More about the. Other elements of the area in terms of life, right? It's not just the humans who are doing querying. Here or the.
Chloe: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of creatures that live. Here there's a lot of history. And so being able to see those interactions and. And see creatures that are familiar from Gilders one like. It's really exciting. Speaking of familiar things.
Kirk: Good segue, right?
Chloe: So yeah, so like all of this rubble rock and the not quite so nicely dug out jade and looks kind of ominous. Sometimes when you dig too, too deep, you might run into some things that you might not have expected, and so so here we are having an event with the Jade Ma which you might have seen in the video about Jade C, But you might also remember it from the solid ocean fractal. So I don't know, like I don't know if it's the. Same jade ma. Or a different guy.
Kirk: In the mystery.
Chloe: Maybe it's his brother. Brother, but yeah, so it's it is an interesting thing to think about like as these people are excavating the jade. Like what what is in it like? What lies below the surface? And so yeah, so we. Have stuff with the jamma.
Kirk: Here and yeah, it's really awesome, you know, being able to take that, that encounter, that was obviously a Fractal 1. So it was designed for five players. And trying to imagine what? How do you know? How does this work? How do these mechanics? Or are we changing things? Are we not, you know, make it?
Chloe: Work as an open world encounter. Yeah, the context really changes there. And so like it. It's oh man. It's so cool. It's cool to see in like a different like in actual, like in an actual like setting rather than just like in the mists in fractals.
Kirk: For sure it helps ground it all, which is really cool, you know. And it's also just it's one of many cool side things that you can find in the. Map to you. Know fight, yeah. A little bit to the West here. We'll we'll we'll explain or talk about that, that what is that, hmm. Who knows? But you know. Talking more about some of the the history and the map in in working with with Jeff, our map artist on how do we work in buildable and swimmable and fishable. You know something that we, you know, Clay was saying with the Jade Maw is what happens if they did to you, you know, what will they find? Will they think of things such as weather? In this case? It turns out maybe they didn't because you know, some things that you can explore as there might be some flooded quarries, bits and pieces. You know who knows how deep that goes? What might be under there, you know? But it's it's a really cool. Element to the map just shows again some history. Maybe this is one of the first spots that they dug down really deep, you know, and they may may or may not have learned from their mistakes, but at the same time, you know it's like. It gives some context some of the water in the map, but maybe not all of the context you know, cause one of those questions with JC and ECHO bald. When we first designed, they're started designing these maps for Guild Wars. Two, you know, is what do these maps look like in context of the fallout from the jade wind, you know, and now that that has been kind of not. It's not as serious. It's not as impactful.
Rubi: Settling down, it's not as recent, yes.
Kirk: Yeah. Why don't you know? We well, yeah, kill those ones for, you know, you took out. Shiro, that's this form, you know. We're just going to go with it. Took down shiro. You know that's not as. Much of A. So what happened? You know, does Jade turn turn back to water? That would be really awkward if you had all these J tech things in cantha and they just splash turned into water, you know, especially if you. Had a jade tech bathtub. Because you already. Have water then I don't know.
Rubi: We're going to need to make a jade bathtub just for.
Kirk: I mean, well, we have the oven. From Echo bald for.
Chloe: Cover all those bases, OK?
Kirk: Yes, yeah, absolutely all covered.
Rubi: So I love this. I love this little. Grotto that we're going into this is.
Kirk: So it's pretty, it's beautiful in here.
Rubi: One of my favorite places.
Kirk: Yeah, like, you know, this is an area where when we were talking about it's. Like what? What can? We do with the concept of the jade wind and how it impacted the jade. You know what happened to the jade is it is it melting? Is it JDC melting? Those are questions that you might find answers. Or some information and through exploring some of the regions of the map right. I really like this area in particular. This is another Jeff special in the sense that we're. Like we really want to have a lot of boating and fishing support in this map, especially given it's called Jade C, which implies water. But we have the flooded quarry area and around where the Nagas are, right? How do we add more and Jeff like I have an idea. I'll get back to you. And in typical Jeff Jeff fashion and he checks it in, he's like, alright, what do you? Think and we look at him like, Oh my. Gosh, it is amazing. Yeah, like you know. This thing is I'm not going to go in any deeper because it is an awesome thing to. Explore on your own. But you know, it's beautiful in here. It's really unique cause the artwork that's being done here, you know.
Chloe: It's so it's so pretty. I love all of. The light refractions on the on the OR I guess it's the water reflections like on the jade. And all of like the little like moats kind of floating around and, like, the lighting is a lot different than the rest of JC. And like in here, it's got much more of, like, a misty spooky. Color going on. It's just like it's. So it's very atmospheric.
Kirk: It I love it so much. The the lighting tricks that Jeff did to you know it, it looks like the sun is literally, you know, refracting through the jade above us. It just it looks so unique and not really like anything else in the game, those kinds of. And you know, environments are discoverable all over and it's just awesome. I love it so much.
Chloe: Yeah, I love. I love how there's just, like a lot of, like on first on first glance. It seemed doesn't. There's just, it seems like, oh, it's just like up here on the surface. But there's, like, there's a lot of little, like, hidden off to the side things to discover. And like that sort of little crotto that's there's there's a. Lot to explore in this. Map and I'm really excited for. People to see it.
Kirk: It's a great balance too, because you know, like like we were saying, when you're not doing the meta in this map, you want to do more exploring, right? And there's there's content in this map for you to do that you.
Rubi: Right.
Kirk: Know we wanted to make sure that we're. And as much as we can in terms of variety, because sometimes people feel more like exploring, they want to go on a fishing trip with their friends or you know, what have you. And we want to make sure that all of our environments, given how unique all of these biomes are, are able to support that. Speaking of support, there's some beefy metal legs here.
Rubi: This is terrifying to me.
Kirk: So without going into too much spoilers here. The camp and empire means business. When they come. When it comes to mining and and quarrying out this jade that it is very essential to their entire, you know, ecosystem, their economy, their technology, you know, and in doing so they will do what they need to do in order to, you know, to get that jade and in doing so.
Rubi: Right.
Kirk: They will build. These massive, you know, mining operation machines, if you have crawlers I think is what we're calling them. To to help them do that. You know this is an awesome set piece for the map. It's super unique. It may or may not have some a little bit of a lux and flair to some of. The design, you know, it does it. Does I think you're probably sensing. A pattern here what I'm saying.
Rubi: I am anytime. Anytime Kirk says something might be the case, it's. 100%.
Kirk: The case 100%. But yeah, you know you can climb it and get some to a cool place from it. Again, spoilers not going to say more, but you know it's it's just. I really like when that first came in. Everyone was like, what the heck is that thing? But it just does such a great job. Again of showing the scale of the map and the verticality of the map. And that that rock that Chloe was talking about before. There it is again, you know, off in the distance. It really shows how deep they've been digging, you know, because this was all underwater way back when or under jade underwater than under Jade. But you know, they've turned this into one big giant quarry. In order to do what they need to do. We're going to continue a little bit further into this query actually you know. Like we said before, this query is the same query from killers one. You know that that Pve mission, obviously there's not luxans and kurzick fighting over it at this point. It is very unified and their goal, even if it does have some interesting folks, you know, we saw the the speakers off in one side of the map and we might run into some other gang members here, you know, given how important Jade is everyone. To be aware of it and you know, take part in what's going on. But at the same time, you're also able to. See, you know. Some of the the jade that they might have fished up, that was like, huh? This this shark had a really bad.
Rubi: Day this this shark. This was not a good afternoon and the the fish. In there too, like we're all. Ohh gosh, this was hard for the show. But also I guess we kind of saved the fish here.
Chloe: They coming the shark is gonna.
Kirk: We violated the prime directive. Well, sure violated the prime directive.
Rubi: I'm looking for an upside here. It is but the creatures in there, yeah.
Kirk: Yeah, when this all turned. Jade. Yep, it's awesome.
Chloe: These are so cool. I love it. Just really brings a lot of life to the jade when you can see like. Like the history there, like it wasn't like a like a water sea. At one point in time and having that like translucency and the. Creatures embedded inside, like they're just like frozen in time and. It's really, yeah. It's just like like such a nice touch there.
Rubi: Those are so cool. It's also an illustration. It's a good illustration of how suddenly this happened.
Chloe: Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah.
Kirk: Yeah, so you know. Again, this is very similar to the was one area most of Jade, C and Guild Wars. Two actually doesn't really take place in an area that was. Explorable in Guild Wars one, but it does touch two spots that are playable in Guilders 1 the first one being this Jade quarry. The other one is a harvesty thing. That might be a bit S from here.
Rubi: You know, would it, would it be some sort of temple? Maybe, potentially, maybe, maybe.
Kirk: It might be.
Rubi: Hey, remember that thing I said a minute ago? About when Kurt says. It might be. He just confirmed a thing.
Kirk: Well, you know. What I know, right? There's. A lot of important elements of the Jade C that we wanted to take into account when we're building cereal, you know, and again I love the the open views of this map so much the. The work that has been done to make it. Work as an open map that looks like it's been queried. You know you can get these grand vistas that are just beautiful to just kind of soak in.
Rubi: Yeah, that's honestly been a problem for me. Like this whole show, because I'm supposed to be paying attention and. I keep going. I'm just. It's so beautiful.
Kirk: That's why I. Like where we have the screen I can see. It's like, yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, it's difficult.
Rubi: You know, there's like a massive screen behind the cameras showing what Kirk? Is doing and. I just, I keep getting distracted.
Kirk: It's beautiful, yeah. You know, one of the cool things about this this area is, you know, when it's not on spawned of literally everything and everybody, you know, this is where you'll see a lot of the the business go down. And people doing the. Job to get the the thing the jade that powers everything and can't the you know, and that you know, you'll see it influenced and everything that they have J tech built into their work. There, they're quarry here, and they have living quarters that are quite large. They have these amazing waterfalls. Those are, in fact windmills, not waterfalls. There's a waterfall in that direction, but behind. Some stuff you know. Just I love the scale of this. Entire thing, yeah. Those windows are so.
Rubi: Yeah, that was I. I know we already called it out, but just those huge windmills, the height indicating how deep the mining has gone is. It's just such a good touch.
Chloe: And I love it. I feel like they're. Yeah, I feel like there's not a lot of places in guilders right now that have, like, this level of, like, scale. Up like like there's things that are like maps that have verticality. But just like the the sheer size of a lot of these. Map props like all this is. It's so cool, like it just has just this sense of. Grandness about it.
Kirk: Yeah, it's great the the, the work that the art team has done, you know, on on this, this project and the the work that Jeff has done on this map, every time we load in, you know, log in here and when we do play tests like we did them.
Chloe: That's really cool.
Kirk: At a play test the other day, it's just it blows us away. Every time we come out of it being like. We hope, well, we wish it was February. So we could play. It with folks. Yeah, right. But. Also, it's like it's already November and you know.
Rubi: It is, it is so close. It feels like I was saying this to you yesterday. It feels like it's 5 minutes away. And forever away we have.
Kirk: Yeah, he really does.
Rubi: We have work to do, but we are eager for February to.
Chloe: Get here. It's getting close.
Kirk: I can't wait. There's many cool things.
Chloe: I'm so excited. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I'm excited for, but I'm. In particular, excited for people to see experience this meta for. The first time.
Rubi: I know we called it out. I know we called it out earlier, but I do want to touch on just one more time. OK. The little details like Ohh and now you flew away. The little details like the even the walls, the, the carvings and the mosaics and just. Even even like the vines climbing up the side of the walls. Every little detail in this map is so beautiful.
Kirk: Is really pretty. It really is. Every time, there's always so many new things like we live in here and we're like, that's new that that's amazing. You know, there's always little even as developers, when we go into these regions, it's always there's things that we'll find and discover and we're like, OK, I want to. Put something there, you.
Rubi: Like, look at the pattern just on the. Side of that wall and it's so good.
Kirk: Everything looks like it's built in. You know, like it looks like it has some history to it, but also it looks like it. You know, they took the history and expanded on it. You know, kind of a blend of the old and the new.
Rubi: Well, thank you both. That was our tour of the Jade. See, today, I hope you all liked everything that you saw. We're like we've said, we're so excited for you to get in here in February and just get this look at it for yourself when everything's not hidden and we're not sitting here going there sure is a thing here and it's great and. We can't tell.
Kirk: So many things.
Rubi: You about it yet? Yeah. So, but we are, we are getting closer and closer. We are in the second-half of November end of Dragons launches in February of 2022, we are. It is coming out as like a fried. Turkey. Guys, he's. End of Dragons is available for pre purchase. Now you can go ahead and get on on that and get some goodies for your account that you can use right away like the sweet Raptor skin that Kirk was running around on. Speaking of pre purchase we also are working with DX Racer. You can pre purchase your own end of Dragons DS, DX Racer gaming chair. This thing is amazing. I love the embroidered end of Dragons logo on there. Pre purchased for this last until the end of November until the end of this month. You can get in on that day. Chairs will come to you in early 2022. So again so close. My gosh, why is it almost Thanksgiving?
Kirk: It's it's right around the point.
Chloe: You know what time is anymore?
Rubi: Right. So Speaking of Thanksgiving, we also have some Black Friday sales coming next week both out of game and in the Gem stores. So keep an eye on our channels. We've got, we're going to have a sale on Path of fire and then a handful of other things. So keep an eye out. We will be telling you about those all next. This week, also next week is our siege Turtle live stream. We get to show off these seeds turtle mount.
Kirk: These turtle height weight.
Rubi: Yes, I am super excited. Really important thing about that next week is the Thanksgiving holiday here in America. So the studio is closed on Thursday and Friday. The siege turtle live stream is same channel, same time of day, but it is Wednesday. Not Friday, so. Don't come Friday. We will not be.
Kirk: Wow, baby Turkey.
Rubi: Here we will.
Kirk: Not we will all be.
Rubi: In Turkey, Thomas, that's right. Kirk Kirk will have lunch. I'm so excited.
Kirk: I'm glad that. This has become a thing that I don't. Even need to talk about it anymore.
Rubi: Right. They'll just do it for you.
Chloe: I don't think anyone. 'S gonna let me down on it.
Rubi: So yes, join us next Wednesday. This channel noon Pacific Time for the siege turtle live stream and we will see you then. All for joining us.
