Template talk:NPC infobox/Archive 2

Add army, family and world, deprecate species and campaign

Based on what's been learned on talk:species, I think it would be appropriate to phase out the species and campaign parameters and phase in the army, family and world parameters since they are the official terms. I believe that army should default to none, family should default to unknown and world should default to core. -- Gordon Ecker 03:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that those should be considered official terms (unless ArenaNet explicitly says they should be). My interpretation is that they are just terms that ArenaNet uses internally for design and development. If anything, "type" is more official/appropriate than "family" as it's a term used in the interface to players. --Rezyk 03:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure about family, but army is definitely official, the Stone Summit and the undead are specifically referred to as armies on the official website. -- Gordon Ecker 03:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Naw.--§ Eloc § 03:50, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I think we should wait until we get more information on creature types before we make any changes. -- Gordon Ecker 04:21, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

→ moved from Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/NPCs

Although we already know that a creature may have many features (they can be undead, elementa and construct at the same time, like Carven Effigies) we also know that only one of those is the 'dominant' and the used with Edge of extincttion, like 'Elemental' with Carven Effigies. Althought nothing else is needed, 'aligment' or 'affiliation' could be stated, like 'Kourna army' with kournan soldiers or 'Awakened army' with Carven Effigies. MithranArkanere 20:32, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Undead isn't a species, it's an army which encompasses all members of the mummy, skeleton and zombie species, as well as some members of other species. -- Gordon Ecker 23:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh... no. The awakened are an army. The orrian undead are an army. 'Undead' is a type a creature, a trait, a species.

Mummy are a 'subtype' of undead, like ghosts, ghouls and skeletons.

Please read User_talk:Emily_Diehl/Official_information_archive#How_.22species.22_is_stored_in_the_game. No matter what wiki editors 'decide' undead is treated as a 'trait' ingame, and all affiliations, species and traits are trated the same. So we have to use the edge of extinction to check the 'dominant' trait. There is no other way to check the dominant, since bounties and weapon modifiers are somehow arbitrary in that and they may affect lesser traits, like undead in Carven Effigies. MithranArkanere 00:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Now that I come to think, we could change the species and afilitaion into a 'trait' list. For example:

• Zombie dragon: Undead, Zombie, Dragon.
• Carven Effigy: Elemental, Undead, Awakened, Construct.

Of course, a trait won't be added unless it is tested in some way, like using a weapon mod, bounties and, of course, the Edge of Extinction.

That would fit much more what dearest Miss Emily Diehl said. MithranArkanere 00:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

No, family / species, affiliation and trait are not treated the same, a couple days ago Andrew McLeod gave a detailed explanation on Talk:Species, and earlier this week he listed the four undead subtypes as ghosts, mummies, skeletons and zombies on User talk:Linsey Murdock/Species. EoE and disease always use family / species. There's also the world trait, which flags creatures by campaign. It's currently not known if creatures have multiple army, family or world slots, however there are no confirmed examples of creatures with more than one army, family or world. -- Gordon Ecker 00:48, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Aaaaw.... that's more clear... so 'family' is our 'species', group is our 'affiliation' and 'world' is our 'campaign'. We don't need to change the names, we just need to add 'affiliation'. But I'm still right. The Awakened and are an army, not a species, and 'mummy' is something invented by us, their family/species is just 'undead'.

When it comes to creatures that are 'ungrouped', we just put a generic name for them as species. That should do just fine. MithranArkanere 01:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

We can still use Edge of Extintion and Disease to check the family/species and we can still use the drops to check the group/affilitation, like Stone Summit Badges for Ice Golems. MithranArkanere 01:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually undead is an affiliation / army, which is why weapons of deathbane affect both awakened and Carven Effigies even though effigies only EoE elementals, and why skeletons and zombies won't EoE eachother. I'm okay with keeping affiliation, campaign and species if it turns out that army, world and family are unofficial nicknames, and if army, world and family are official, the switch can easily be handled by bots at some point in the future. Mummy appears to be the internal term for the species / family that the Awakened belong to. -- Gordon Ecker 01:27, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the internal name for them is probably just zombie. (I'm not saying we should use that, though.) --Rezyk 22:49, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Aw... so that dialogue of palawa Joko: "No, No, No! Mummified flesh on the left! Dried bones on the right! No, your other right! You worthless bits of animated anatomy!" was more that just babling... it makes much more sense. All are Undead Army, and army formaed by many types of creature: Skeletons, Mummies and even elementals... Ok. There are some random things due to how the traits and species work, but I think we finally have a real basis of the system. MithranArkanere 02:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the word "army" is a very good word to use; it refers to a very specific organisation (and this is where the confusion above has arisen). I think "allegiance" is a much better word to use in this instance. LordBiro 08:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Affiliation perhaps? Allegiance implies something specific to me as well as army. --NieA7 10:38, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. We already have corresponding terms to those that Andrew explained. Is it really necessary to follow his terms? We don't even know if he used those terms because he was just trying to illustrate things to the wiki community or if they are really used by Anet internally. -- ab.er.rant 13:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

We have a term for 'army', actually: Faction. Kurzick and Luxon are counted as 'armies', but they are called 'factions'. No doubt about that. Factions would be, for example, Undead, Charr, Am Fah, White Mantle, Echoval Forest, Animals,

We can recognize some factions because they attack others, like onis attacking Jade Sea creatures, mantises attacking Echival forest creatures, Mursaat attacking stone summit... hm... they should give different colors to them ingame so we could check them better (and see colors in our wells and wards) MithranArkanere 02:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather not use faction, the faction article is already a disambig. -- Gordon Ecker 02:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Faction is way overused already. I'd stick with affiliation. I would also choose army over faction. -- ab.er.rant 04:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) This is just a general note to say that I support the move towards using the NPC information traits (world, army and family). It would be nice if these terms could be confirmed as official before implementation, otherwise I'm ambivalent as to what terms are used to refer these classifications so long as the terms are consistent, the information is present and reasonably accurate. Note that world does not necessarily equate to campaigns that a creature appears in, as mentioned here: User talk:Andrew McLeod/Species#World trait. Also, should this then become a GWW project (e.g. Guild Wars Wiki:Projects/NPC classification), preferrably with input by Andrew McLeod. --Indecision 09:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

If we are doing this change, how do we make it easy for the regular contributor to put creatures into the right categories? Is the categorization intuitive enough? Campaign is easy, species is somewhat harder but still doable for most contributors, I'd say. If this way of categorizing will mean only the "elite" (no negative meaning there) people who read the right talk pages can make correct categorizations, I'm opposed to this change. - anja 10:26, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd say that army is generally a pretty intuitive addition, however there would probably need to be some modification to Guild Wars Wiki talk:Formatting/NPCs to help casual editors. As far as the terms used goes, I'm not fussed either ways, so I'd be happy to keep them the same (i.e. campaign and species) if that's felt to be the best option. I suggested the project more to form an oversight section to help editors know which articles belong to which classifications. The vision I have is more to be able to clean up categories such as Category:Species so that they correctly resolve into armies and species etc... As I find the general pages such as Demon or Undead to be quite helpful in determining the correct species/army of an NPC. I agree that it is important to help casual editors in their classification, but I think its still important to contain accurate information on the NPC pages, even if the information itself is somewhat unintuitive. --Indecision 11:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's the other way around. If we owe a duty of care to anyone it's the users of this site, not the editors. We're supposed to be a highly accurate reference for Guild Wars, and if nothing else the users vastly outnumber the editors. With that in mind I would strongly favour documenting the exact, technical family tree of the creatures - as soon as we start obfuscating it for the benefit of editors then we're doing our users a disservice. It's clear that the technical definitions supplied by ANet have direct, in-game effects, such as vulnerabilities, resistances, aggressiveness (who will attack what on contact) etc. Better we document all that and get it right than we try and munge the terminology so it's easy for people "not in the know" to guess at. Anybody can guess, that's why it's not very helpful. --NieA7 11:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I didn't explain my point very well and sounded a bit more harsh than intended. My main point is, the system should not be overly complicated for someone who has been in contact with wiki before and should be as intuitive as the old system for totally new users (wiki users). The only benefit of keeping the old system would be that most old wiki users know it already. I'm all for a more intuitive and game based system, as long as I don't have to read up on 5 pages before I can add one NPC to the wiki ;) - anja 13:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you worried about the auto-categories or the manual categories? If we can get to auto-categories to work, this shouldn't be an issue. For manual issues, I would say that it doesn't really matter if you don't get the category right upon creation, as long as it's actually linked from somewhere, sooner or later someone who knows about the correct categories will stumble along and fix it. -- ab.er.rant 14:28, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant more, how do I determine what army, family and world this NPC belongs to, when I'm creating an NPC article. If I can't fill the parameter with the right thing, auto-categorization doesn't help alot. And I think our goal should be a system where most people can get most things right (by reading an article or two), not where a small group of individuals have to go through each article to correct/fill in everything. I'm just worried this new system gets overly complicated/unintuitive. "This is a charr, and he is in Ascalon" is quite easy for someone to get, since it's very visible (Name, and you mostly know where you are)... I don't know, maybe I'm just complicating stuff in my head. - anja 14:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh? Isn't that how it is with the current species already? How do I know what species an Enchanted Hammer is? I don't. I just guess and hope someone else comes along who knows what it is. Or are you actually saying we should retain the terms? Personally, I'd prefer "species, organization, and campaign" than "army, family, and world". The former is more intuitive. -- ab.er.rant 14:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see what Anja is getting at - the reason nobody had a clue as to what system ANet was using before we got to talk to them directly is precisely because it's non-obvious. However, in this case I think that's kinda of like a mirror complaining about reflecting ugly people - it's not the mirrors job to change anything, it's just gotta show what's there. If that means we end up with vast numbers of uncategorised NPCs until we can get official word on them then that's a price I'd be prepared to pay, but others may feel differently. Perhaps we could run a dual-categorisation system (obvious vs technical) until such time as most NPCs have a correct technical category? --NieA7 14:56, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a table in the army article, and I've added a table to the family article. -- Gordon Ecker 01:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Wiki nomenclatura

As per the above debate we should try to come to an agreement for what to call these things on the wiki. I'll list the suggestions I've seen so far. Feel free to add. Backsword

family

• Species
• Family
• Kind
• Type
• Race

army

• Army
• Affiliation
• Allegiance
• Faction

world

• Campaign
• Chapter
• Continent
• World

Opinion

We could just add votes somewhere, after enough people vote, the chosen ones would be used.

Family: For this one, either Family and Species are good for me, I like Species more, though.

Army: I like army for this one. It's shorter and easier to remember, and it's already used with Undead Army, Charr Army or Shadow Army.

World: This one could be confusing for new users, since there is one one world (Tyria), so either Campaign, Chapter or something like that woul be better. Remember that pre-Searing has a different 'world' that the rest of Prophecies, so maybe Chapter would be better, since both chapters are part of the same Campaign.

MithranArkanere 17:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

• Species: Has the right immediate connotation but carries a meaning which doesn't always apply to the final groups, which causes problems
• Family: Sounds strange at first. Used internally by ArenaNet, but I think that words used externally in the interface should have a natural precedence over this.
• Kind: Used in the interface on disease. Too informal.
• Type: Used in the interface on Edge of Extinction. A bit ambiguous. Main article would be "Creature type", I guess.
• Race: Strictly worse than species.
• Army: Used internally by ArenaNet, but often wrong connotation. "Easier to remember" is really only relevant to editors and not viewers.
• Affiliation: seems meaningful, yet general enough to never be wrong
• Allegiance: clashes with stuff like allegiance rank
• Campaign: Seems okay to me. Do we even have to split pre-Searing from post-Searing, just because it is done internally?
• Chapter: no better than campaign, and campaign is the preferred term in other systems
• Continent: also no better than campaign
• World: what MithranArkanere said

My overall preferences at this time:

• Type > Family > Kind > Species > Race
• Affiliation > Army > Allegiance
• Campaign > Chapter > Continent > World

--Rezyk 18:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I share most of Rezyk's opinions, except that I'd still prefer Species over Type, although I won't be against calling it "Creature type". Continent is strictly worse than Campaign and Chapter because a few regions and locations just can't be placed on a Continent. -- ab.er.rant 15:37, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd go for Species, Affiliation and Campaign. Can you give some examples of problems with using "Species" Rezyk? --NieA7 14:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

"Species" is problematic because it's used to refer to the Charr and Titans, which are all the same type of thing from a lore perspective, but the Charr are divided between the Charr family and the null family with at least one army, while the Titans are divided into at least three armies, with some or all Titans in the null family. It's also used to refer to various subtypes of demons which overlap their own army and the Domain of Anguish army, such as Margonites and torment creatures. I think that species would work better as a term used exclusively for intuitive, lore-based classification. -- Gordon Ecker 22:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy with Rezyk's preferences of Type, Affiliation and Campaign. However, I'd be concerned about having a dual classification system, with both species (lore based) and type (technical based), as I feel this would be confusing for both viewers and editors, without necessarily adding much to the individual NPC articles. --Indecision 00:44, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

IMO type is far too vague and generic. It could refer to army, family or mob name (Charr Flamecaller, Naga Ritualist, Rampaging Ntouka etc.). -- Gordon Ecker 01:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Does a Charr (which?) with null family show up together with other Charr of the Charr family? Same with the demons. Do the non-nulls and the nulls ever appear in the same location together? -- ab.er.rant 05:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Prophecies Charr are encountered along with Eye of the North Charr during Charr Invaders. There aren't any null family demons, but Margonites and torment creatures and every other monster in the Domain of Anguish belongs to the DoA army, while Margonites and torment creatures outside of the Domain of Anguish have separate armies. As for Titans, I'm not sure if Nightfall Titans have a family, but they definitely have an army, as Lightbringer skills were stated to be army-based, and both Prophecies and Nightfall Titans are encountered in the Gate of Madness mission. -- Gordon Ecker 05:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

This whole "family" business is so messy - we're just gonna confuse casual readers and cause people to unknowingly "fix" the family value when they see a null Charr. It's a case of an article saying "Species: Charr" versus "Family: Charr, Null". -- ab.er.rant 05:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

We can deal with that by manually categorizing them all as Charr, and including something like <!-- this is not a mistake --> in counterintuitive family and army entries and including an explanation in the main Charr article. -- Gordon Ecker 06:46, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

In this case, the missing trait is an anomality and can be documented as such. Backsword 12:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Both the common and scientific meanings of "species" in the real world clash with some of the groups. "Animals", "plants", and "insects" are not species, but larger groups containing many species. A crab is simply not the same species as a lion, even in terms of Guild Wars lore. To say that they are in fact the same species requires us to essentially say that instead of the normal meaning of species, we're going to redefine it to mean this other thing which is usually the same or similar, but not always.

Not that it's illegal or insane to do that; most people will get the idea...but what's the need for it? It creates more room for people to get confused between their expected definition of species and our re-definition...why add that complication? Don't you guys get a sense that ArenaNet purposely avoided using the natural label of "species" to avoid being inaccurate about it? Why take that step for them instead of staying consistent with a word that is already being given to players in-game?

Maybe I just don't see what is so bad about "type"/"creature type". I'm imagining that things would be labeled "Creature type: Minotaur" or "Type: Animal" and (to me) it doesn't seem too vague or hard to understand for new players. --Rezyk 07:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Right now, most of the family / army / "species" articles use a type column for mob names, what should we rename the type column to? -- Gordon Ecker 07:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

"Name". --Rezyk 07:42, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe I didn't think of that. Anyway, I've added a proposal to add a line to the general formatting guideline stating that official terms are preferred. -- Gordon Ecker 01:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I just made a similar argument against not re-defining something, so I won't argue for species any more. -- ab.er.rant 08:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

"Type" just seems a bit meh to me, but with the examples I can see that species would cause some confusion (though I really doubt that ANet deliberately avoided "species" as a label considering they used "army" as another). Bearing in mind the problems with Charr, Margonites, Titans etc, I think we may need a fourth "obvious" category (all Charr are lore Charr, all Titans are lore Titans and so on) in addition to the three technical ones. Perhaps we could use a cunning infobox (warning: poor ASCII art ahead):

|--------------------------------------------|
| Name:          Charr Flame Wielder         |
| Species:       Charr                       |
| Profession(s): Elementalist                |
| Level(s):      8 (23)                      |
| Technical:     <world> / <army> / <family> |
|--------------------------------------------|

with Species (lore classification) and Technical leading to appropriate definition pages (i.e. what the three names that follow mean in game mechanic terms). That way we avoid having to name the technical descriptions on every creature page (only on Technical), hopefully saving us from well meaning edits. --NieA7 13:00, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

In that case, I'd use terms like 'Internal', 'Engine' or 'Mechanic' instead of 'Technical'. But since the term we currently use instead of Species is almost always either army or family, I still thnk we should replace that 'Species', instead of adding more. MithranArkanere 14:58, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

"Internal" would be OK. I think there's still value in the old-style species: it's documenting the lore of the game rather than the mechanics of the game, both have a place here. It's unfortunate but it looks like the two can't be combined - I think that means we've got to have the separate, rather than dropping one. --NieA7 16:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if there's a similar clash between our perceived Affiliation versus Anet's official army... but regardless, since the infobox is all about the stats/attributes/properties of a creature, might as well drop the lore-based species (since some are guesswork anyway) and keep only the game mechanics. -- ab.er.rant 06:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say that lore stuff was part of the properties of a creature, so would be at home on the template. Besides, I don't recall a guidelines anywhere saying that the NPC infobox had to be limited to mechanics. Doesn't really matter, but personally I'd rather display more info than less. --NieA7 11:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

My suggestion was more for consistency and clarity rather than following any guidelines. More is of course better than less, I'm not saying otherwise, but when it isn't all that useful (and might be confusing when we have 2 similar entries), I'm willing to consider some alternative, like putting it into a description (and all our creature descriptions are woefully short and lacking anyway. -- ab.er.rant 15:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent) I'd generally favor leaving "extra" species info to the description, at least to start off with. Or have it as an optional infobox row just for when it doesn't match the type/family (and is clear enough).

|--------------------------|
| Name:        Reef Lurker |
| Type:        Animal      |
| Affiliation: None        |
| Campaign:    Factions    |
| Species:     Crab        |
| ...                      |
|--------------------------|

|-------------------------------|
| Name:        Orshad Chieftain |
| Type:        Centaur          |
| Affiliation: Losaru           |
| Campaign:    Prophecies       |
| ...                           |
|-------------------------------|

--Rezyk 19:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I like that example Rezyk, seems to be quite clear. Can anyone think of an example where this method would result in confusion? Only thing I can think of is multi-campaign creatures who belong to a null family in one campaign and have their own family in another. How should we resolve this? --Indecision 00:29, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Allegiance > Affiliation imo, but I'm not against affiliation if it comes down to that. Calor - talk 00:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

|-------------------------------|
| Name:        Charr Invader    |
| Type:        None             |
| Affiliation: None             |
| Campaign:    Eye of the North |
| Species:     Charr            |
| ...                           |
|-------------------------------|

Something like this for null family? Allegiance is not so good a choice because of Allegiance rank. And personally, allegiance gives a stronger sense of loyalty than affiliation, and we have quite a few NPCs on which that term won't fit well. -- ab.er.rant 07:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Every monster has an army. IMO both the family and army parameters should default to unknown if they are unspecified. -- Gordon Ecker 09:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yup, instead of 'None' the default parameter should be 'Default', since if a monster is not part of a fixed army, they will be part of the Default army of the area. MithranArkanere 14:37, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Gordon was saying to default to "Unknown", not default to "Default". There doesn't appear to be such a thing as area default; default is apparently not having an army at all. -- ab.er.rant 02:34, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I added the "affiliation" parameter. Any objections to adding "type" and making "species" optional? --Rezyk 01:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Are we agreed to use type instead of family? -- ab.er.rant 01:38, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer to use family, since it seems to be the preferred official term, but kind and type also have official status. I dislike using affiliation, since it's completely unofficial and we have an officcial term, but I'd prefer it if the official vs. unofficial terms issue was discussed on the general formatting talk page. I don't see any point in stalling things, since a bot can deal with any future parameter renamings. -- Gordon Ecker 03:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Just a question with regard to affiliation. As the Shadow Army have just been allocated as Nightmares, I assumed that we would use affiliation for grouping them (lore-wise) into an army (see Shadow Lord). However, technically, this isn't the case, as they belong to the generic Fissure of Woe army and not their own particular army. I'm just wondering what we are going to do in cases such as this, where NPCs have a lore-based grouping that is not covered by the lore-based species trait, or the technical traits. --Indecision 01:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

In this particular case, I've been monitorizing info about this. All Shadow Army members (that is, all menzies servants) are of the same family as the Nightmares (Call them, Nightmares, Shades, Shadows or Whatever), BUT, they are NOT part of a single army. Shadows in the Fissure are part of one army, shadows in Elona and the Torment are part of another, and finally, shadows in the Anguish are part of a third army. So, they all share family, but not army, although in the 'lore' they are all the same. Annoying, eh? In those case, there's only one thing we can do: Use the Description and Notes sections. We can denote in each army article that they are the same for the Lore of Guild Wars, and add another page for the complete list. Like the current 'Shadow Army' page. MithranArkanere 01:45, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest three type-based supercategories: army, family and some sort of "miscellaneous" category covering groups like Charr, Margonites and the Shadow Army which span multiple armies or families. -- Gordon Ecker 06:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"Do we even have to split pre-Searing from post-Searing, just because it is done internally?". I'd say that if something is worth documenting, it's worth documenting correctly. In this case, it also seems relevant to other things, such as presearing Tyria having a different map. Backsword 11:36, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

My own preferences for 'family' is either Kind or Type. They're official, and the other are biological terms with clear defenitions that don't match. Tho' type is problematic, as Gordon has mentioned, due to being in use already, for different things. The use of the word type instead of name is quite frequent on forums, and for other uses too. There is also several other 'type's in the game, including the offical term "Skill Type". Thus I prefer Kind, even if it is a 'least bad' choice.

I don't find Allegiance to be as problematic as others, since Luxon and Kurzick are valid values. Army is more problematic, as most things just aren't in what we'd call an army in real life. However, Affiliation has none of these problems, so that'd be my preference.

Unlike most here I think Campaign is the worst choice. This because I value consistancy. Campaign appears in most of our infoboxs, used for document what Campaign they're tied to, based on this being a technical part of how a skill is implemented. But since we're documenting something different here, use of the same term can only cause confusion. Especially since they are simillar things. World is problematic for the reasons mentioned by others. Chapter is just an old term for Campaign, and I'd rather not reintroduce it. Continent is my prefered name; it matches values like Elona best. Admittedly, this is a problem for creatures in The Mists, but I doubt there is a perfect solution on that. Backsword

There are only to thing I veto:

World. In lore, there is only two known 'worlds': Tyria and the Rift. So we should not use world, since it would be confusing.

Campaigns. There are four 'campaigns': Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North. But (there's always a but) pre-Seaing counts internally as a separate 'World', so we can't use 'Prophecies' for both, but both are part of Prophecies campaign. Even using of using 'Prophecies (pre-Searing)' to denote that world, it still is out of the 'Campaign' separation. On top of that, Eye of the North is another 'chapter', but not another campaign, but an expansion. MithranArkanere 13:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah! There's another one too. 'Continent' So far, there are only two know 'continents' Tyria and Cantha. Elona is part of Tyria, and even part of Elona (Crystal desert) is in the Prophecies map. I wish there were better options, but it seems that between those listed, only chapter fits the thing. MithranArkanere 13:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Elona is considered a seperate continent in lore as it used to be seperated from Tyria be the Crystal Sea. Backsword 13:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Tyria is both the name both of the 'world' (the globe) and the 'main' continent. It would be like 'Eurasia'. At least is what I've learned from reading in Anet staff user pages and answers. Anyways, even if Elona were considered a different continent, 'continent' won't do because of pre-Searing and Eye of the North. We go back to the same. pre-Searing, Prophecies map and Eye of the North map are all part of the same continent, yet pre-Searing and Prophecies are part of the same campaign, yet all three of themhave different 'internal worlds'. MithranArkanere 18:35, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Presearing is something in it's favour; We already have a region differated on time. (Ascalon). Should thus be easy to understand. The north, we'll, I don't know how that is handled internally. Should ask. Backsword 10:25, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

In addition to lumping together Prophecies and Eye of the North, continent would also split up Nightfall. -- Gordon Ecker 04:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

How so? Backsword 10:25, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

The Realm of Torment is not part the same continent as the rest of Elona. - anja 12:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Oh boy, this is getting more and more icky. Since we rejected using "Species", it would seem "Continent" is an easy rejection. -- ab.er.rant 14:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

No that's not it. Andrw McLeod has already pointed out that it is, from the game perspective. That's why I mentioned The Mists above. Backsword 12:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

McLeod has already stated that when it comes to 'world':

• pre-Searing has its own world.
• Prophecies Tyria and the two realms of the gods share another.
• Cantha and the elite areas have another world.
• Elona, the Torment and the anguis have another.

I don't know about Eye of the North, but if all Eye of the North areas are another world, that makes 5 worlds. It's armies what are different. The nightmares in Shiverpeaks and the Shadows of the realm of the gods have different armies, but the same 'world' and family (Nightmare, shadow, shade, whatever you call it). You can just check his page for that. MithranArkanere 15:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

There is also a PvP world for the Battle Isles and HA. Backsword 15:34, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Compare | continent = Elona and | continent = Presearing Tyria with, for example, | world = Tyria, | campaign = Cantha or | campaign= Presearing Prophecies Backsword 15:34, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Continent is a misleading term because of Nightfall. Anyway, I think we should just use campaign in the infobox, and possibly a world parameter which is only used when world differs from campaign, which would add "(Pre-Searing world)" or "(Prophecies world)" in the campaign column. -- Gordon Ecker 02:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Opinion overview

Made a table to get an overview of peoples opinions. Consider it research. Backsword 12:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

User	family	world	army
MithranArkanere	Species, Family, Race. Never Kind nor Type.	Chapter, Never World, Campaign nor Continent.	Army, Faction, Allegiance. Never Affiliation.
Rezyk	Type, Family, Kind, Species, Race	Campaign, Chapter, Continent, World	Affiliation, Army, Allegiance
Aberrant	Species, Type, Family, Kind, Race	Campaign, Chapter, Continent, World	Affiliation, Army, Allegiance
NieA7	Species, Family, Type	Campaign, Chapter	Affiliation
Indecision	Type, ?, ?, ?, ?	Campaign, ?, ?, ?	Affiliation, ?, ?
Calor	Species, Family	Campaign, Chapter	Allegiance, Affiliation,
Gordon Ecker	Family, Type	Campaign / World	Army
Backsword	Kind, Type, Family, Species, Race	Continent, Chapter, World, Campaign	Affiliation, Allegiance, Faction, Army

Order is most favoured to least favoured.

General idea so far seems:

Family - Species = Family → Type → Kind = Race

World - Campaign = Chapter → World → Continent

Army - Affiliation → Army → Alliegance

Votes go against everything wikis are for, but this is a good poll to see the results, not to make decisions solely based upon. So far, it seem species, campaign, and affiliation are most popular, but campaign could easily change to chapter with the release of GW2 possibly in installments instead of campaigns, and the fact that GW:EN is not a campaign. Calor - talk 05:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, I didn't factor in the order of how people favored terms, because some people included all, some didn't, and that would've been long and ugly. But the results I put in above are inaccurate due to not factoring in the order. Calor - talk 23:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Campaign 5

We need a campaign 5. As of right now, it only goes up to 4.--§ Eloc § 01:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

what? --Lemming 01:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Lol, did you miss the announcements for Guild Wars 2? :) There won't be a campaign 5 anytime soon because they don't have further plans for GW1 until GW2 is released. -- ab.er.rant 06:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

No, like 5 for Core, Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall and Eye of the North...which adds up to 5.--§ Eloc § 20:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Ehm, "core" isn't a campaign Eloc. It's what is the core of GW, i.e. stuff that repeats throughout the 3 campaigns and the expansion. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 20:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes indeed, you use Core if all 4 apply, so really you only need 3 campaign slots so we have one extra at the moment if anything. --Lemming 20:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

XD, ok fine.--§ Eloc § 20:44, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Profession categories

Profession categories like Category:Warriors are too large and unwieldy. A good way to cut them down is to group them by campaign. I tried to change it (big mistake! :P) but forgot about the way multiple campaigns get specified. Anyone has a good idea on how to elegantly pass all the campaign names to ? Or a better alternative to that helper template? -- ab.er.rant 17:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Test in sandbox plzkthx, job queue of several thousand = dead wiki. - BeX 17:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I just noticed that Gordon asked a similar question a couple of months ago... >.< -- ab.er.rant 17:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Ask one of the bots to do it here to sort it by campaign.--§ Eloc § 19:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Map

Would it be possible that an additional parameter for additional images could be added to this template? Take a look at this for example, there is a small box underneath the NPC image, but it's labelled as Map(s) and there is no current way of changing this currently :).--Gummy Joe 18:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't that image be at Weakness already? I'd say just link to that in his description. - BeX 00:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

I would say get rid of that image altogether. What's needed is the dialogue. -- ab.er.rant 01:14, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Just add a
pic1 =
pic1-text =
to the infobox, similar to Template:Location infobox.--§ Eloc § 16:12, 4 October 2007 (UTC)