[Suggestion & Request] Language

Hello,

I would like to share a thought of mine that I have since I started playing Guild Wars, which is years ago.
I know there are four different languages in the game and what they have in common is that all of them use Latin Letters.

The suggestion is concerning the Greek language, the code of the Greek Alphabet is working in the Trading Post,but not in Chat or in Guild message for example.

Writing in the Greek language with Latin letters is completely wrong and for sure not enjoyable in a discussion.The proper communication in an Online MMO Game is one of the most important things.

What I would like to request is to add the Greek language at least in our Chat which is the most important and in the Guild & Squad message, etc.

P.S. Personally, I do offer my help if you need any kind of help with the language sector in the forum or even in the game.

Thank you in advance, <3George

We do need greek lang, plz add it

This will never happen. If they add character support for greek letters then they need to hire someone who can read through all chat reports that use those letters, to find out if reports of bad language, harassment ect are correct.

The benefits to the playerbase are so small they do not justify the cost of hiring this person. Most greek players can already speak english, and the few that cant, can use 'greeklish' which while not perfect as you said, is sufficient to communicate in greek when its necessary.

@zombyturtle.5980 said:This will never happen. If they add character support for greek letters then they need to hire someone who can read through all chat reports that use those letters, to find out if reports of bad language, harassment ect are correct.

The benefits to the playerbase are so small they do not justify the cost of hiring this person. Most greek players can already speak english, and the few that cant, can use 'greeklish' which while not perfect as you said, is sufficient to communicate in greek when its necessary.

Zombyturtle, i understand exactly why you say what you say but:first of all the cost of someone translating can be easily covered by the increase of the Greek population in the game, as supporting Greek letters will make this game probably the only international MMO that support Greek letters.And second and final, the benefits to the player base are not small at all, having a whole community being able to speak in their language properly and convey all the messages they would like to convey as they should be conveyed is somewhat very important for some people.

So finally, my opinion on this, whoever is Greek and would like to write in greeklish, should not be taking part in this debate at all, as the addition of Greek characters in the game will not affect them. It will only affect the people that actually want to write in their language. I would say lets include the Greek characters in the game and lets watch the population of gw2 going up by a lot, as there are a LOT of Greek gamers out there!Thank you!

It will not happen. They have ruled this out for all other languages. Not only is there a big costs involved in adding all the text to the game, but ensuring moderators can translate all player written chat as well. If they allw greek, suddenly they are under pressure to add russian and loads of orher languages with identical claims as yours, whilst having to hire moderators who can translate all these languages.

The benefits to the game are tiny. Most gamers have adapted to using another language and anet will have the metrics to say whether it is worth the cost. Since they have already said on record multiple times that it isnt, we can safely assume they are doing the right thing from a business perspective.

Not that I think it will happen, but the OP, et al, isn't asking for Greek localization, but for the Greek alphabet to be added to the chat selection of letters.

No UI changes necessary, no localization necessary, but.... there still would need to be someone able to read and translate Greek chat in Support.

Even the small change to allow the Greek letters still means someone who can read and speak Greek needs to be on staff should someone get abusive to their fellow countrymen and this gets reported. Even without that, there is still the issue of making sure the letters never get too big and stay within the character restriction. I can't see this changing unless a full translation is added, and Gaile just said there are no plans for that. Sorry.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:We have been asked in the past about supporting other languages. As others have pointed out in this thread, there is much more to localization than simply translating game content. Here are a few examples:

• The UI may need to be altered in size or presentation to accommodate different text, and may need to be adjusted from time to time as changes are brought to the game.
• Localized content would require constant monitoring to keep it at its top quality. (We have that now for FR, DE, and ES, where localization experts watch for in-game reports and forum threads and comments about needful changes)
• We would need to hire customer support representatives conversant in the language in question, to review and respond to tickets, and to assess in-game reports.

At this point, we find that supporting the four languages currently on offer is best from a development and business standpoint, and we do not have plans to offer Guild Wars 2 in any additional languages.

Hello,

I'm not asking for Greek localization in the game, just the alphabet.

Greek people can't write in their language because there is no Greek alphabet in chat etc, so they use latin alphabet to write in Greek and it's called Greeklish, but that's not a language and it's completely wrong.

You have no one in support who can check Greeklish because he should speak Greek to understand this kind of writing. So, my point is that if you add Greek alphabet in chat, it will be the same for you.

You have no customer support for Greeklish and that was never a problem for you.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Not that I think it will happen, but the OP, et al, isn't asking for Greek localization, but for the Greek alphabet to be added to the chat selection of letters.

No UI changes necessary, no localization necessary, but.... there still would need to be someone able to read and translate Greek chat in Support.

This is exactly what I'm asking. I created this post because right now Greek people are typing "Greeklish", which is the Greek language with the Latin alphabet (but that's not a language). There is no customer support in Arena Net who can read or translate this. So it would be the same, that's why I insist that my point is valid.

The chat doesn't support for cyrillic too. And maybe many more.

I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

@"Ashen.2907" said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

Like I mentioned before, right now Greek people are using "Greeklish", which is written in Latin alphabet - there is no moderator who can read Greeklish in ANET right now. So that point is not valid.

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@"Ashen.2907" said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

Of course it is valid. Adding an officially supported option for Greek would put the onus for moderation in that language on ANet.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

Like I mentioned before, the request is only about chat. Right now there is no moderator in ANET who can read what we write in game, so with Greek alphabet will be the same as before. I'm not asking for Greek translation of the game.

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

I understand what you are requesting. If ANet officially supports Greek in chat then they become responsible for moderation in that language.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

Just letting the Greek Alphabet is not becoming responsible for a "shift&alt" option. I mean, with that logic they are responsible if there is verbal abuse in "Greeklish".I know how companies, programming and support section works very well, that's why I've asked Greek alphabet only for chat and nothing more.An example, if i someone is flaming in "Greeklish", in chat - no one will be able to report it cuz there is no moderator to read it. Nothing will change if they let Greek alphabet.

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

No, they are not responsible if some portion of their playerbase use an unsupported code to communicate in a manner not recognized or understood by the developers.

But, if they declare a language to be officially supported, they can be held accountable for that support.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:I wonder if the ROI would be sufficient to offset the cost of hiring additional moderators (minimum of more than $35,000 per year per greek reading moderator).

Well, Greek gamers in GW2 have a numerous rate. It depends on ANET how they want to present the difficulties of letting the Greek alphabet, then I will not have any argument to bring on the table. Thank you for your kind respond Ashen.

i would like aurebesh support but...well....

@"Raven Lust.4786" said:Well, Greek gamers in GW2 have a numerous rate.The question is: how many more players will invest euros in GW2 is ANet adds language support?

There's always costs associated with support additional character sets (quite a few more than most people think) because assumptions about the character set get made when setting up UI; it's not just about adding it to chat. As Ashen (and others) have mentioned, "official" support adds "official" responsibilities, which increase ongoing maintenance costs.

Finally, if ANet ends up supporting more character sets than needed for the officially supporting languages (ES, DE, FR, EN, CN), there are other character sets that are used by more potential gamers than Greek: Cyrillic, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, ...

I think it would be awesome if every game had support for every character set. Unfortunately, it turns that it's not cost effective, so gaming studios have to pick & choose.

@"sorudo.9054" said:i would like aurebesh support but...well....

The problem with Aurebesh support is that there aren't currently any official Unicode "code points" (numbers that represent specific characters) defined for Aurebesh script. That makes it really hard to type in. At least for terrestrial human languages, there are Unicode representations.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Raven Lust.4786" said:Well, Greek gamers in GW2 have a numerous rate.The question is: how many

more

players will invest euros in GW2 is ANet adds language support?

Like I mentioned many times, languages which are written with Latin letters have no support area either and no moderating help.I don't follow your logic coming in this thread to judge who is more potential and vote for other languages rather than Greek. By the way, last time I checked, Greek is the base language of Latin and Cyrillic and many more.

@sorudo.9054 said:i would like aurebesh support but...well....

Making fun of a request for the language which is the basis of yours isn't the smarter thing to do. Lack of knowledge makes bad humour.

@Raven Lust.4786 said:

@sorudo.9054 said:i would like aurebesh support but...well....

making fun of the importance of a dutch language support is the same, guess what is happening for the last 12 years, lack of historical knowledge makes it worse ;)