New Game Director

So from the LW Season 4 AMA we found out that Mike Zadorojny will be taking over as game director letting MO put his focus back into running Anet. Is Mike Z going to be introducing himself to us on the forums? Just curious and was wondering on what directions our new game director was wanting to take us.

@Red Haired Savage.5430 said:Just curious and was wondering on what directions our new game director was wanting to take us.

Hopefully forward...

To quote Mo's full reaction (easier then to scroll through the reddit):

Hi all,A few months ago I announced my intention to gradually hand the reins of GW2 game direction to Mike Zadorojny, "Z". You probably already know Z well: he's a 10+ year veteran of ArenaNet, who worked on GW2 from the beginning, and most recently served as the lead designer of Path of Fire.I'm not going anywhere – Z and I sit next to each other and continue to work together – but I won't be able to continue spending virtually all my time on GW2 in the coming year as I did through most of the past two years. A game director should be 100% dedicated to the game. Z is absolutely dedicated to GW2. He has a deep passion and enthusiasm for the game, the same today as when he started working on it a decade ago. As game director I know he'll continue to champion the needs of players, and continue to set the highest quality standards for everything we do.So today I'm making it official: Mike Zadorojny is the new game director of GW2. Congratulations Z. :) Community, please join me in welcoming him to the role.

First of all, Congratulations to Mike ZI personally do not think a lot will change. They do work as coop. As Mo said, they are in the same office, next to eachother. That means they will be involved with eachother a lot. But it is good to have an extra layer inbetween who can, in more detail, involved with the game and the content. I most off all want to wish good luck. We all are custom to having high expectations and Mo has delivered them often.

I'm not expecting huge changes either. I just thought it would be nice to be mentioned on the forums. Since I didn't see an official Anet post about his promotion. And yes congrats Mike Z.
@Mike Zadorojny.7058

I just think we all should make him feel welcomed and give him a chance, I personally am going to miss Mike O's vision

Ideally it will involve fixing the mount skins issue and maybe overhauling the PoF class specs to be more fun.

SAVE PVP! haha But seriously, we're suffering.

@Ohoni.6057 said:Ideally it will involve fixing the mount skins issue and maybe overhauling the PoF class specs to be more fun.

Ideally? No. I hope the new game director is focused on, you know, the direction of the game, not the gem shop. Other people can spend their time worrying about finances; let's let Zadorojny focus on great content, a good story, frequent updates.

'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

@Burnfall.9573 said:'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

The only way to remove any form of toxicity would've been to never have Raids, PvP, or WvW.Too late now.

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

The only true way to remove any form of toxicity is to shut the game down. Online games always have toxic people.

@ImTasty.2163 said:The only true way to remove any form of toxicity is to shut the game down. Online games always have toxic people.

• Jean Paul Sartre: Hell is other people.
• MMO Players: Hell is other players.

@ImTasty.2163 said:

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

Not really. When people aren't competing is when things run more smoothly.

When people want "optimism" in Raids, then the toxicity of wanting the best starts to happen and then any that is "decent" or "okay" or worse is look down on.PvP lobby I've seen some very disgusting talking from people randomly or people losing/dying in the arena.WvW seen a lot of disgusting things in chat at times too when things don't go a certain way either as if everyone supposed to know everything going on in WvW and if you don't, you're worthless.

The most toxicity I would see in like Dungeons/Fractals/PvE-Meta/PvE General is usually if something very very bad happen due to multiple issues with people.Like Triple Trouble of a few people going against the other squads and wanting to do their own thing and then start bad mouthing the squad for not following their rules.Or during Halloween where one commander would pop up for another commander's run and start messing up the flow into the map that the limit is already 25 and now people trying to join let's say a 10/25 group, there's a few individuals in there like maybe 5 and then the next new commander made 10/25 and want the 1st commander to leave because... reasons.Or something like that.

Balancing in this game is horrible, yes, but a lot of the whining and screaming and hollering about "THIS IS TOO OP" as well is from the PvP and WvW people. If those areas didn't exist, certain people at times will talk about certain aspects being too op or too weak which would be easier to balance than to nerf certain things to hell just because of certain whiners and whatnot.

GW2 in the game has the least toxicity I've seen in any online game ever.Ask for help? Majority of the time you get it.Ask a question? Same thing.Died and didn't get to reach the waypoint? If someone is close they will help revive you to get to it.

That dying situation, I've tried Tera once. I hated how slu.... skimpy the outfits were, but I still stuck with it a bit to try and give the game a chance.Got to an area with many players and some enemies around. Decided to give it a go as I had no real clue where I was as I was simply exploring. Died near like 9 people and in the end half of them laughed and they all just moved on without helping me up while I helped some others during that same situation.

@Greyraven.4258 said:I just think we all should make him feel welcomed and give him a chance, I personally am going to miss Mike O's vision

Don't worry, Mike O's vision was, is and ever shall be central to Guild Wars 2.

Congratulations, Mike Z. Welcome to the helm. :mrgreen:

So we have one game director, mike, passing it on to another mike.

Is this a new trend? Is every game director from here on going to be name mike?

The world is doomed to a rainbow unicorn apocalypse

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

It could be too late at a large loss but could spare gw2 at a much larger loss in the end. Yes the damage has been done and must run its course I hope in the end, this news will bring positive changes to gw2. In resulting, great opportunity for gw2 to grow.

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Burnfall.9573 said:'A Game Director is the force behind the creative aspects of a video game. As a Game Director, you are similar to a Film Director because your vision shapes and defines the game'

To Anrt new Game Director: my only wish is for you to take serious disciplinary actions against toxic game designs from the game which are mostly responsible for the community toxic behaviors.

Guild Wars 2 is not a fun, competitive, risk+reward nor a healthy environment because of the toxicity that was created since gw2 release and is continuously being created with class specializations and with each class balance patches.

I do not sugar coat the truth nor will not deny the truth.

I look forward in you to take back full control of gw2 game design and to shape it into a healthy, and competitive game for everyone including to new players. Not forgetting to put gw2 into the right track as gw1

that is all.

Not really, as far as Raiding goes.

so far seems to have a lot of design hours and not much participation, add to that the League of Legends atmosphere the raiding community has insisted upon and has gotten. Arenanet can simply stop making raids .....sure a small group of folks would scream and stamp their feet, but they were doing that before Raiding and unlike most forums if you are too rude here.....you aren't here long. The great thing about MMO's is, it's never to late to right the ship, raiding was bolted on a game that should never have had it, it has added a very toxic element to probably the most friendly in game community in the industry and it isn't very popular to the vast majority of players.

All of those are good reasons to reconsider.

@Majic.4801 said:

@Greyraven.4258 said:I just think we all should make him feel welcomed and give him a chance, I personally am going to miss Mike O's vision

Dude.. They took Mike O's Vision out back and beat it to death when they released HoT.

I wonder if the story will move even more in the direction of a daytime Disney kids show then it was already.