Picture this. You're a writer for a major MMO only weeks away from launch and you walk into a meeting with a renowned writer who has advice for you. Only, you don't know it and your face is frozen after an unfortunate trip to the dentist.

This was the position Jess Lebow found himself in during his time with ArenaNet on Guild Wars. Find out what happened in this week's edition of Jess Lebow's MMO Story Hour.

Dropping my briefcase at my desk, I walked down the hall to find my boss and two Korean men sitting in a conference room. One of the men was the ArenaNet business manager, and I knew him. The other I was introduced to as “one of the foremost literary scholars in all of Korea.”

This man had been playing Guild Wars for the past week. He had taken it upon himself to get onboard a plane and fly 12+ hours just so he could spend half a day explaining to me how to tell a story to a Korean audience.

Now, we were three days away from pressing our gold master and about six weeks away from releasing the game. My boss was not at all happy about having this Korean scholar in our offices. He felt it was meddling on the part of our parent company and publisher, and he was, rightfully, irritated that this sort of input wasn’t delivered to us at a stage where we could perhaps make changes in the story and game without them costing millions of dollars and potentially slipping our release date.

Read the full article here.

Waw I really loved the story =) And it's true that people on the west side of the world could learn a lot from people on the east side and vice versa.

It is a good thing you were NOT from Britain eh Govener.

That was FUNNY!

That was a great story.  Very David Sedaris.

Everytime I see your picture I have to remind myself that it's not a picture of Michael Shanks. Completely off topic, I know, but, lol, I had to get that out there...

us.imdb.com/name/nm0788218/

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Originally posted by FTLNewsFeed
Everytime I see your picture I have to remind myself that it's not a picture of Michael Shanks. Completely off topic, I know, but, lol, I had to get that out there...
 
us.imdb.com/name/nm0788218/

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If you were going to link to a Micheal Shanks image to show the similarity between him and Jess I'd say you couldn't do better than this one.

The similarities surpass uncanny and border into creepy territory. :p

Teach english in korea and they are really into respect the elders thing.  It gets really bad on the business side,  a lot of times people won'ttell their boss something is a stupid idea out of respect.  Because of that you get a lot of half assed ideas and horrible implementations.  (Basically what seemed to happen here,  boss has a bright idea at the last seconds and does not figure out that it is impossible to do).

funny story...enjoyed the read...

Good read. I've had two dentist try that scam on me. Once when I was but a young pup, and my mother fell for it. Still have the filling to this day. The dentist was later convicted for scamming insurance companies. Second time was 3 years ago. Dentist told me I had a cavity, and being the skeptic I am I didn't believe him. Three years later, with a new dentist I might add, no pain, and my teeth are still fine. Its crazy how many dentist try to pull that scam.

Anyways, good read.

Poor Rurik, must have been pretty harsh for him at Korea (that is the Prince's name).

Nice read (nice to know about the background of one of my favorite games, and I'm really looking forward GW2 eh, but enough flattering already), this shows how hard a worldwide release can be differently seen in the world - you'll have much more cultural differences.

I wonder how close the world's different cultures can come.

The story of Beawolf would have been a very good medium for the two. Total dedication working with a legendary king.

The evil would have been defetated before the fight was realy on.

I'm not one to usually complain about this kind of thing, but... was it *REALLY* necessary for this article to be featured with a picture of a persons mouth with bleeding gums and only a few rotten teeth left in their mouth? I mean, what's next, a picture of Tubgirl to go along with an article on all the [censored] that comes out of a marketing persons mouth concerning their latest upcoming MMO?

love the site hate the pic of the bleeding mouth, plz remove hard to eat dinner with such things floating around a so CALLED GAMING SITE pff i could head to nothingToxic site for this crap,

The story itself is great, but the picture promotimg it is disgusting!
PLEASE, PLEASE, next time use something more acceptable for general public.

Haha! Great story! The rotten teeth picture was a good choice by the way. :D

Thank you for showing us how we can pad out a two sentence episode of our life into a ten minute after dinner story. :D

I'm only going to group with people who have good teeth now. Good story.

lol, they change the picture

Originally posted by nubadak

The story of Beawolf would have been a very good medium for the two. Total dedication working with a legendary king.

The evil would have been defetated before the fight was realy on.

 

I wonder how much the story of Beowulf has been altered to cater to every culture and subculture in order to wring the most possible bucks out of it.

I'd get pretty pissed if someone wheeled in a foreigner to explain to me how to tell a story their way.

Aww i wanna see a side by side of tub girl and some rotting bloody teeth. Ive got bad teeth. I have 4 teeth that have chipped away to nothing but the root. My motuh doesnt bleed my teeth just slowly are eroding due to a steady diet of mountain dew and hotpockets with my everquest obsession for the past 10 years. =) And im too afraid to go to a dentist. I have seizures if i am in too much pain and our crappy governments insurance doesnt cover full iv sedation.  But thats off topic. Great story i dont usually read the storys i get in these e-mails but this one i saw the first bit of it and i just had to check it out and i was pleasantly suprised....Jess you should talk with yoiur coworkers and see if theyve had similar crappy experiences with the dentist.  See me im a sexist person and i find it suprising a woman would do that. =P

your story is great about the difference in cultures.

i have to comment on the dentist thing. i suggest going back to your old dentist for a 2nd opinion.  i'll tell you why.

i moved from Olympia to Spokane a few year ago. i asked my dentist in Oly if he could recommend  someone in Spokane. he thought a minute and gave me a name - great, i was happy. 5 months after my move, i call and get an appointment with the new dentist for a cleaning and check up. the usual stuff is done and the new dentist tells me - you have 5 cavities that need to be filled. i say Wow, ok. i'll check my schedule when i get to work cause i travel and call for the appointments (all the time alarm bells are clanging in my brain - huh - 5 cavities?).

when i saw the dentist in Oly before i moved to Spokane, my teeth were in great shape. my old dentist had two areas he was watching and he gave no indication that i had impending cavities.  SO SOMETHING IS WAY WRONG.

i call my cousin, who's a hygenist in Oly. get an appointment with her and her dentist for the next time i was due over to visit family. he checks my teeth and tells me - NO CAVITIES. he agrees with dentist #1 - couple areas to watch otherwise all is good.

i never went back to that Spokane dentist. got a referral from a friend at work and ended up with a really good dentist.