Guild Wars 2

Josh XT.6053:

We lost out on having our fun for 7 months because of this nearly unplayable map and there are people here crying about getting it back? No. We don’t want to even hear it because WE (the majority) were already screwed for 7 months.

Uhm, majority of population left game mode long before you were “screwed for 7 months”. Now it seems that this “majority” deniess any change to game mode and even forces it to regress.

Still, it is hard to blame ANet for listening their active players. Had they listened 3 years ago…

Could you specify how this was good thing?

dank.3680:

With all due respect all of those are menial surface changes. We’ve played the same map for 3 years, nothing fundamental (every day game-play besides pvdoor) has changed. Those of us who were bored of it, are still going to be bored of it.

Not to say I don’t love some of the changes (ambient mobs, rally, removing Siegerazer- namely), but they won’t change the way the map is played one bit.

This is what I meant with my trolly comment.

I would like to add that this ongoing nostalgy with WvW has caused me to loose all faith that WvW could ever advance or fulfill its full potential as game mode. I’m glad for current players that these changes seem popular, but I doubt that this will do wonders for game mode.

When we get lake and orb hackers back?

I’m horrified to notice that nobody has asked the only important and truelly meningful question that effects thousands of active WvW players:
Does this effect EotM reset times?

Catalin.5341:

SFR is suffering at prime time because many guilds left, but last night at prime time there was only one guild raiding and our only objective was Necropolis. I had it all sieged up and for almost 2 hours FSP and JS with guilds like SLAY, Kale, GoldenHorde and others tried to get inside.

They tried for proxy catas at SW walls, then for trebuchets at South wall, proxy catas at NW wall, rams a couple of times and at some point they managed to destroy the SW wall with catas because we were starving for supplies and that wall was only at 30% and couldn’t be repaired.

The commander did a good job [FD] guild, by claiming the Refugee camp to have supplies and basically took all surrounding objectives to know when the enemy was coming.

Thanks, I was leading that day. SFR community has not appreciated it’s scouts for a long time and as a scout/roamer/smallscale commander I try always to help scouts. I actually got whispers from our friend guild Kalevala that was one of the attacking guilds that day: “Nice that someone is actually fighting back”.

I have to state that our guild has been really inactive in normal borderlands but have somewhat enjoyed the new borderland map. It has many things to benefit small scale and outmanned fights when compared to old maps. Still EotM seems to be more enjoyable as there is much less toxiticy.

Name: Frozen Dawn
Gameplay: Daily WvW and PvE
Server: Seafarer’s Rest for WvW
Region: EU
Size: 200+ Members (“active”)
Active: Evenings
Contact: Julenal.3907

Frozen Dawn is a Finnish mature gaming community and our Guild Wars 2 guild is recruiting Finnish players at Seafarer’s Rest for PvX! (Finnish text in the end)

Frozen Dawn was founded in 2006 and we have been active in nearly all modern, atleast somewhat popular, MMO’s. This includes DDO, WoW, EVE, WAR, Aion, Rift, WoT, SWTOR, GW2 and numerous smaller games. As a big gaming community (over thousand logged in our forums within 3 months) we normally offer both hardcore and casual gameplay options and naturally forums and TS to support this. Because we are Finnish gaming community we naturally require our players to understand finnish and atleast listen in community TS during guild activites.

Our main activities are weekly WvW-raids with guild or alliance guilds, Guild Missions two or three times/week and weekly SPvP night. Of course we have active dungeon and fractal runners, like any active guild, but the guild itself doesn’t organice these activities. You can read about our activities from our Twitter or from our guilds forum mainpage. For example, we will unlock Guild Challenge this week and we are running it for the first time.

We didn’t play GW1 with Frozen Dawn, but many from our GW2 guild has played the original game. GW2 was still logic choice for us and we started to prepare for it in 2010. We got ~250 players from internal recruit and 100 more from friends and family of our older members. We didn’t open the external recruit until at the end of last year to prevent guild filling up too quickly. Now our roster is full, but because of so called MMO-effect most of them are inactive. These days our weekly activity is bit under 100 players/week and ~50 online for Guild Missions.

This is end of the english information about our guild. Following text is in finnish.

Kuten yllä mainittu, Frozen Dawn ei ole vain GW2-kilta vaan pelaajayhteisö, joka toimii aktiivisena useassa pelissä. Hakiessasi Frozen Dawniin liityt siis yhteisöön ja olet lähtökohtaisesti oikeutettu pelaamaan muitakin Frozen Dawnin pelejä nyt ja tulevaisuudessa, mikäli kirjaudut foorumeillemme vähintään kolmen kuukauden välein säilyttääksesi foorumitunnuksesi. Paljoa lisättävää aikaisempaan tekstiin ei ole, enemmän tietoa löydät halutessasi yhteisön etusivulta, killan etusivulta ja rekryalueeltamme. Twitter-tilillämme infoamme toiminnastamme ja meihin voi tietysti törmätä pelissäkin.

In the last three years game has had quite remarkable change in movement speed and mechanics in it. At launch there was variance between classes and classes that didn’t have good access to swiftness or great passive movement speed buff really appreciated when they got support from others that were able to provide swiftness.

These days it’s almost mandatory to have passive 25% movement speed if you even try to kite anything or catch something as many players are using +25% from some source. Due to wide spread use of passive movement boost Swiftness has lost it’s value and seems to be coming non-mechanic. Role of swiftness is further reduced as it seems that AE Super Speed is coming to many classes…

I have short history of moment speed detailed in spoilers, skip if you want to continue to rest of the text:

Now virtually every class has got access to passive 25% movement speed or near permanent Swiftness. Compared to few classes that had 25% passive at launch and when only Engineer had Super Speed. This culture of movement speed buffs and power creep has lead to situation where even Guardians are whining to get 25% passive. (Examples 1 2 3 4)

Problem isn’t only that swiftness has lost great deal of it’s value, but players are in situation where they have to make forced decisions “how I can get 25% movement speed to my spec” and movement in combat in many areas of the game (like WvW) has come and is coming quicker all the time. In WvW importance of the placement on the battlefield is greatly reduced as many players move at least +25% speed all the time and this problem is further highlighted when near immunity to soft CC is kind of meta for melee classes. This also somewhat effects boon ripping as valuable boon removal might hit swiftness and enemy’s movement speed is only reduced by 8%.

I really don’t have great solutions to this as it seems that most players hate in/off combat movement speed. One possibility might be to reduce +25% passive movement speeds to 15% to make clear difference between swiftness and passive movement speeds. If 25% passive is something that ANet wants to keep then maybe boost swiftness percentage.

Still I would like to ANet to acknowledge this trend and consider is this power creep really something that they want for the game.

Frozen Dawn is a Finnish mature gaming community and our Guild Wars 2 guild is recruiting Finnish players at Seafarer’s Rest! (Finnish text in the end)

Frozen Dawn was founded in 2006 and we have been active in nearly all modern, atleast somewhat popular, MMO’s. This includes DDO, WoW, EVE, WAR, Aion, Rift, WoT, SWTOR, GW2 and numerous smaller games. As a big gaming community (over thousand logged in our forums within 3 months) we normally offer both hardcore and casual gameplay options and naturally forums and TS to support this. Because we are Finnish gaming community we naturally require our players to speak and understand finnish.

This is end of the english information about our guild. Following text is in finnish.

Kuten yllä mainittu, Frozen Dawn ei ole vain GW2-kilta vaan pelaajayhteisö, joka toimii aktiivisena useassa pelissä. Hakiessasi Frozen Dawniin liityt siis yhteisöön ja olet oikeutettu pelaamaan muitakin Frozen Dawnin pelejä nyt ja tulevaisuudessa.

Serverinämme toimii Seafarer’s Rest, mutta tämähän vaikuttaa vain WvW:n osallistumiseen. Enemmän tietoa löydät halutessasi yhteisön etusivulta, killan etusivulta ja rekryalueeltamme.

Just going to leave this here since “fixing” night capping could be easy:

Julenal.3907:

…
Map points
…
consider that points would be calculated based on population. For example, Green team has everything capped on all maps and they have 25% of potential own max population in WvW -> they get 25% of points.

This could go like in example for whole WvW or separately for each map. (previous example: all active players (25% of total max = 100% on one map) on one map -> full points from there) Active servers would get advantage in addition of upgraded keeps, but night capping would not dominate match outcome.
…

Entenkommando.5208:

if there is not even a single server lower than medium (+the players above the threshold) and since the population is now only based on active wvw players what do you think will happen with hot?

What they wanted: new players cannot select “full” servers and WvW population will balance itself out because T4-T6 will get massive amounts of new players. (…not)

We have heard much complaining about how the new map will affect lower tiers and T1 servers are full of players and have massive queues already. What ANet hopes is that this will balance amount of WvW players between servers, but more likely this will result new players to join “dead” WvW servers where nothing is happening.

Active guilds are not encouraged to transfer to any reasonable servers as (in at least EU) first server with 500 gem transfer is in T7 and every active WvW guild knows what kind of fights there is. Sure, if one server would get multiple active guilds it would rise to T3-T4 easily. Still getting enough players to transfer to lower tiers might be option if you don’t want to sit in a queue and I suppose ANet would want that since it’s 6.25€ (-taxes) per player.

T1 servers have more than enough player base to stay Full for few years after HoT will bring back bunch of old players and some T2 servers have much less population than worst T1 servers. At the same time Full server guilds are expect to experience slow death since existing communities are not getting new players and they are not encouraged to transfer to greener pastries. They are left to bicker between themselves with 10 or less active WvW players since new ones are not comming in a while…

Still, making free transfers might be even worse, try to remember what happened when season 1 started (?) and they offered free transfers to medium servers. Hard to say exact numbers, but I expect that SFR’s WvW population quadrupled since it was guild focused T1 server with medium population.

Enko.6123:

Your hero skills got reset and you can’t use them so the game probably thinks your trait lines aren’t unlocked. At least, your current selected trait lines still work as well as all your utitly skills.

This is what I have gathered atm. SPvP lobby works, wonder where ANet makes their QA tests…

Due to latest patch we cannot (at least) change specilization lines in PvE and WvW. (still testing other things)

Samuel Loretan.8601:

This should be rolled out tomorrow.

Fantastic!

What I found weird is that while some say that this is biggest change to affect WvW we hear about this 4 days before the change is live. Still it’s kind of better than promises still not fulfilled after 2 years: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/What-you-promised-us/first

I hope that unannounced things about new map and War Room will address many of these things. Just saying that if you are working on something else it would be nice to hear about it…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/World-Population-Changes-Are-Coming

Samuel Loretan.8601:

Fellow Warriors of the Mists,

World population is visible on the labels on the World Selection and Transfer screen. It determines whether you can transfer to a world and, if you can, how much the transfer will cost. These measures historically have been set based on aggregate population levels around all game modes. But because World versus World is the only game mode to which worlds apply these days, we have developed a better model that exclusively uses WvW data to determine population levels and transfer costs.

We will be rolling out the new model soon and some shifts in the population levels should be expected. We’ll continue to monitor the situation, and we’ll make all adjustments we deem necessary to improve the WvW experience. As always, your feedback is very welcome.

See you in the Mists,
— Samuel

Seems that Servers are going to stick.

xDudisx.5914:

Rule about banning players:
-IF exploit affects the economy -> BAN
else-> NO BAN

But they are gaining more loot by being able to kill players more efficiently → exploit affects the economy?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Julenal.3907:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I would humbly request that you don’t ban Dull Egotistical Raiding Party [DERP] on Maguuma. They are my close friends, and I love them very very much. I can promise you that my guild does not cheat or hacks. We live by a strict Code of Honor, much like the Samurai of old Japan.

So why are you posting here?

Because I’m in agreement with the thread title “Banning is NOT the solution”. Far too many times, other players have attacked my guild publicly. Even when they were on TC for a short time. If I remember correctly, a Dev needed to respond to all the posts about us, confirming my guild wasn’t trolling. They even had to delete threads that tried to blacklist us. I thank Anet for that vindication.

So you suspect that there might be epic banhammer hitting your guild? For following your “strict Code of Honor”? I’m puzzled…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I would humbly request that you don’t ban Dull Egotistical Raiding Party [DERP] on Maguuma. They are my close friends, and I love them very very much. I can promise you that my guild does not cheat or hacks. We live by a strict Code of Honor, much like the Samurai of old Japan.

So why are you posting here?

Julenal.3907:

Community disagreed, but we have to remember that community isn’t always right.

Or single players.

I was running EotM yesterday with few guildies and didn’t see the buff on anyone. Is this problem more widespread on US servers than in EU?

Random.4691:

Radian.2478:

I would rather have the WvW population significantly reduced (even if it’s dead) with exploiters banned than to keep it active with people who don’t deserve to still have their account

You need to stop inadvertently justifying the fact that Anet has ignored this Bug. Those players would not be abusing the buff if Anet would fix it, it’s not like people haven’t been complaining about it since the day the event went live. You would also need to distinguish between those doing it intentionally and those people who are getting the buff inadvertently. Good luck with that.

Well, there are guilds posting videos of them running with buff killing zergs, people talking in chat how to get it and so on. Finding out who is using it intentionally is ANet’s job, like is fixing the exploit. While it can be hard it’s not really our problem how they handle it as long as they handle it. While they don’t…

Random.4691:

Or they could fix it.

I know …. it’s a mind blowing concept.

And they could fix it

Timiok.1048:

Ban all these people.. I’ve never heard anything so stupid… Ban hundreds of people, ban guilds. It doesn’t matter what their intents are/were, it is Anet’s fault 100% that this problem hasn’t been fixed, and that it came into place.

I answered you on other topic and just noticed this. I suppose this is why you made the other topic. Anyway:

Julenal.3907:

Timiok.1048:

You DO realise that if anet bans everyone who has exploited the supercharge golem bug,a massive chunk of people will be gone.

Banning != Permanently Banning

Severity of the punishment != Effect of punishment

IMO messaging players that using exploits is not ok would reduce using exploits in future. There is research about this in legislative use, but also in games. Some material about this from GDC 2015:

Slides: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021800/Anti-Social-Behavior-in-Games
Video: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021799/Anti-Social-Behavior-in-Games (~14:30 )

BTW: ANet should be aware of this since they were talking about their AI in that conference and most of the materials are free to watch later.

Banning would be sensible option to avoid that this kind of exploits won’t spread again. Banning doesn’t mean permanent bans but 1 day bans to minor offenders to send clear message that using this kind of bugs is not ok.

ANet is still responsible for this mess as I tried to say in my QA message earlier.

Julenal.3907:

Josh said that this didn’t take resources from HoT development as he did this by himself. Does this mean that single non developer is allowed to push events of this scale to live client without QA? Or was QA involved and three exploits got trough?

And they should fix these bugs ASAP.

Random.4691:

You’re right, he tried to mix it up and bring something to WvW for us. It was a mistake and not very well thought out but his intentions were good. What he (or whoever’s job it is) should be doing now is addressing the community regarding the bug. We need Anet to listen and discuss this event so in the future we don’t get more game breaking events put into place. As per usual they are just ignoring it, this is a prime example of how NOT to run a business/company. They need to man up, put on their flame suits and come in ready to work with us to make future events not only enjoyable, but healthy for the game as a whole.

+1 for everything.

Xenesis.6389:

Yeah well they can ignore this and continue to work on HoT, but I think doing so has done damage to their customer relations, and I’m sure quite a few players are now rethinking about even buying the expansion, including myself.
So hope the event was worth it at the end of the day, because they kitten off a lot of wvw players and for sure lost some sales.

…

Look at the end of the day I appreciate they even did an event, I could have stomached this week if the exploits weren’t around. I questioned why have golems built for free AND given 100% damage and speed, do one or the other but not both would have been fine. Hopefully this was a lesson in not granting that much power to siege ever again.

+1

You don’t even have to buy HoT in order to participate in new WvW map. Sure you miss your Elite Specialization and maybe some guild hall related mechanics.

So much missed opportunities; imagine if they had released new map like half a year ago and said that it is going to be even better once HoT releases with guild hall related mechanics. Same value, same work, but love for WvW-community and opportunity for ANet to hone new map/mechanics well before HoT.

Timiok.1048:

You DO realise that if anet bans everyone who has exploited the supercharge golem bug,a massive chunk of people will be gone.

Banning != Permanently Banning

Severity of the punishment != Effect of punishment

IMO messaging players that using exploits is not ok would reduce using exploits in future. There is research about this in legislative use, but also in games. Some material about this from GDC 2015:

Slides: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021800/Anti-Social-Behavior-in-Games
Video: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021799/Anti-Social-Behavior-in-Games (~14:30 )

BTW: ANet should be aware of this since they were talking about their AI in that conference and most of the materials are free to watch later.

Dawdler.8521:

Julenal.3907:

Josh said that this didn’t take resources from HoT development as he did this by himself. Does this mean that single non developer is allowed to push events of this scale to live client without QA? Or was QA involved and three exploits got trough?

To be fair, if we assume that WvW was bug free without exploits before (3 years since release), this event would merely change some modifiers when inside a golem and change supply cost. Neither of which should have needed any particular Q&A, ignoring the obvious impact on gameplay.

1. Josh had to create new buffs this event and somehow script them to client. We don’t know the specifics, but I would say that there is some bug in pre/post-conditions on Golem use on engine level to allow buff exploit.

2. They knew that Golems were bugged earlier with dupe bug but it was “fixed”.

3. I don’t see any reasons why environmental weapon bug wouldn’t have existed before.

Assuming that WvW (or at least Golems) was not bug free is useless as it clearly wasn’t or somehow the bug was recreated. I only know how environment weapon and dupe exploits works and both are clearly engine level bugs and I assume that Josh couldn’t have avoided either on scripting level. When it comes to “change supply cost” this isn’t how the Golem price reduction works…or at least it doesn’t explain “51 supply” bug.

Saying that changes to live client won’t need QA is just… Well, that kind of attitude or that level of assumptions is why we have these three exploits that some consider game breaking.

Dawdler.8521:

exploits should have been fixed as they where discovered if they wanted to see it through a week, or the golem rush part of the event stopped.

+1

Mahkno.7593:

i think anet should thank and reward the people testing this bug for them and bringing it to the attention of the community. it’s obviously a very complicated thing that’s requiring 100% of developer attention which would be the only explanation as to the radio silence.

I just want to point this out in here also:

Julenal.3907:

I think that primarily this issue highlights ANet’s QA/GM politics:
1. Golems were bugged even before the event (atleast dupe (but they “fixed” it), dont know about environmental weapons)
2. Non developer scripts this event and known previous bugs are not checked with altered mechanics
3. This results three game breaking bugs, no word, about fixing them nor bans to users (as far as we know)

Josh said that this didn’t take resources from HoT development as he did this by himself. Does this mean that single non developer is allowed to push events of this scale to live client without QA? Or was QA involved and three exploits got trough?

Rin.1046:

The golem event was created by Josh, to ensure no resources were taken from HoT. It was not designed to fix WvW issues or to test out new things. It was purely for a bit of fun.

…

I also think it is extremely childish and unfair to have a go at Josh for the issues with the golem event. He is not a dev, he was merely trying to add something different for us to enjoy. It had issues, yes, but he did not cause these issues, nor is he in a possition to fix them.

He could come on the forum and communicate with about this, but then I personally do not think it would be worth his, or our, time. All he would receive is a torrent of undeserved abuse about something he cannot do anything about. I personaly thank him for his efforts, and I am sorry that it did not pan out as well as he hoped it would. I also hope to see more things like this added periodically, because it is nice to have a break from the norm sometimes and have something new to enjoy.

When it comes to Josh, it was good that he tried something new. Community disagreed, but we have to remember that community isn’t always right. I think that primarily this issue highlights ANet’s QA/GM politics:
1. Golems were bugged even before the event (atleast dupe (but they “fixed” it), dont know about environmental weapons)
2. Non developer scripts this event and known previous bugs are not checked with altered mechanics
3. This results three game breaking bugs, no word, about fixing them nor bans to users (as far as we know)

Josh said that this didn’t take resources from HoT development as he did this by himself. Does this mean that single non developer is allowed to push events of this scale to live client without QA? Or was QA involved and three exploits got trough?

Golem buff exploit shouldn’t bother us after this week and at least it has given some players ability to win some fights once in their time in GW2. I personally hope that we will get info that they get banned and we don’t have to see any exploit so widely used later.

mordran.4750:

And you are basically saying that they should not “waste” their time doing something about it to fix their broken stuff ?

+1

I don’t understand why someone would think that this level of exploits would be ok since hot-fixing those should be as easy as turning this event buff off… Yeah, that would require that someone would pay at least some attention to their bug reports/exploit reports. But there is no logic why ANet should allow these exploits to exist once they learn about it.

illenos.5134:

At least we’ve got a post regarding lags. They will try something with the next patch or in the near future. Better than nothing

True, Bill is our hero this week. Funny how that topic has more dev posts than all other topics combined in last three months.

illenos.5134:

the fact that Josh is still hiding is somewhat pathetic! duck and cover

At least Josh told us in the first place that he made this golem event. I wouldn’t beat him (too much) for trying as that might be the original cause why “WvW-team” (if there even is one) isn’t talking to us.

BillFreist.1527:

I put together a fix for a pretty nasty performance issue on our game servers. This should make it into our next release so I’d be curious to see if it makes a noticeable improvement. The bug looks like it was introduced around when this thread popped up.

I also got a couple client improvements that should help reduce framerate hitching with lower-mid range video cards and/or higher shader settings. Coming next release, too.

-Bill

Wait, it is now 1 AM at Seattle? I just want to point this out: only dev communicating with WvW-community during this week is doing it at his free time. Props to Bill.

Wartna.8671:

But yeah, I was merely trying to talk some sense into people arguing that this isn’t an exploit, which it clearly is. It could get you banned,

This clearly is exploit, end of story. If you use logic “it is in the game, so it is ANet’s fault and I can use it” then nothing is exploit.

Wartna.8671:

Whether or not you will be depends on Anet.

I hope that they will ban those using exploit and inform us about it. If they don’t it is clear message to community that using any exploit is ok in their game.

Notsoperky.4291:

Thanks for the frank admission Bill, and for coding in a fix. It’s much appreciated.

+1

Things that ANet could comment:
-Exploits on Golem and in general (is it bannable offence, are you going to fix golem related exploits or address continuing exploits )
-Feedback on Golem Rush event (19 pages of feedback, is anyone even going to read this or is giving feedback just waste of time?)
-State and future of WvW ( For example multiple topics focusing on low population servers , future of servers )
-Lack of communication (Like this topic and no comments about feedback, but also topics like cry for help )
-Why developers opinions differ so much with players ( Most famous incident of them all , no one plays WvW only (not that all players always agree with eachother) )

Without input from developers we are left here to bicker with each other .

majos.8503:

Anet doesn’t pay attention to WvW because WvW players doesn’t spend their money on gems. WvW players don’t spend money on gems because believe that Anet don’t deserve it for the work they do on our game mode. As simple as that.

Have you ever wondered how T1 servers get flow of new players and lower tier servers are loosing their WvW players? Standard Transfer fee to Very High population server is 1800 gem. That fee is only for WvW players and has to be there in current system to at least somewhat protect match balance.

When it comes to your presumption that WvW players don’t use gems we are left without facts. Might be, but there is also guilds running Chars with nuke hairstyles and Mist Herald Back Item skins. We are not sure how this truly is, but seems that showing off is part of any PvP in all games and gemstore is great part of this in GW2.

Nick.6972:

Just logged in to say this:

These kinds threads have been here on WvW forums for years. Arena Net doesn’t care about them neither they do they about you. You can make as devitalized and constructive threads as you want, it wont make any difference.
So either quit or accept WvW as it is because it won’t change.

(Haven’t played WvW for 7 months)

Yeah, but even after 3 years with little attention from developers it is still most engaging game mode in the game…

PariahX.6970:

Julenal.3907:

What I wouldn’t want to think is that ANet is staying in this system because this system is making them more money than others they have come up. Whatever the cause is there are people that find this system really unfair:

I think they are staying with this system because it is easy and for some reason WvW takes more resources and investment than it pays off. I find that hard to believe but I really don’t understand enough of what all goes on behind the scenes to make things work. They are a business first and if changes would make them significantly more money or not hurt the bottom line I am pretty sure they would be all over it, otherwise it is always safer to stick with the status quo. So it is not so much about greed but lack of desire to take a risk.

This might be true, but we don’t know any statistics about WvW population versus PvE population or how much working hours are spent between gametypes. Still, with little attention there is multiple full WvW maps, EotM K-trains daily. Well, we are left guessing…

PariahX.6970:

I could easily buy the gems to transfer anytime but it is more a matter of principal for me.

What I wouldn’t want to think is that ANet is staying in this system because this system is making them more money than others they have come up. Whatever the cause is there are people that find this system really unfair:

AmberUK.5380:

Can someone from Anet explain to me why I should have to pay IRL money or in game gold to move servers because the WvW server I am on is so quiet it is imbalanced with the other servers it plays against.
…

Why is the onus on the WvW players and not on the mode to be fixed? And how does all this moving help the people who are left behind? How does it help the casual players? How does it help the new players? Why is there this pushing to farm farm farm?

I really cannot say anything about lower tier population, but it seems that T1 and T2 have enough population for WvW and other maps are empty. I find it next to impossible that this imbalance will sort itself out.

What I found funny is that during this Golem Rush week EotM matches are not “all green” maps as other servers have fighting change because of the golems.

Well, this was made by Joshua Davis who doesn’t work primarily on WvW:

https://youtu.be/5goa21iunTw?t=2434

It isn’t good to beat people, who try to do something new just because they didn’t succeed as you would have wished, as then they and others wont be so eager to do anything extra later. What I want to point out is that this event isn’t something that actual WvW team failed in.

(still, more love for WvW would be nice…)

Johje Holan.4607:

I doubt Anet is going to answer this question.

I doubt it too, but I will still try to get answer from them as the current system is not working as it should. I know that it will ruin WvW experience from many returning players and cause them to leave the game again.

Johje Holan.4607:

A while back a dev said that they will not be merging WvW servers or switching to an alliance system or anything of the sort. He said that Anet recognizes that server pride matters for people so they won’t be getting rid of any servers.

Now granted that was over a year ago I think so its possible population drops have changed that. But with the coming xpac I doubt they’re going to change anything now because they hope to have more people coming into the game.

Yeah, server pride is factor in all this, but as far as I know HC WvW guilds transfer to servers where they find best fights and many servers have lost their original identity. Way I see it: ANet has to acknowledge that the current system after all the transfers and population disparity is not going to work once HoT comes as they originally intended.

Liston.9708:

If you are fighting queues why help pay for transfers? Or did I read that wrong?

Well, “fighting queues” and playing with friends is something that can be hard simultaneously.

We have massive (600+) player base from our gaming community and we will know that many of them will be returning to game once HoT launches. SFR was our original server and we have been getting recruits later from other servers. As many of the new players are interested in playing with us transferring them to SFR is only option atm.

And when it comes to “fighting queues” I wouldn’t say that it is my goal. Sure, queues are a problem, but queues are symptom not the problem. As I said earlier:

Julenal.3907:

It would be ignorant from ANet not to do anything about this as they must acknowledge the problem and be aware that HoT will be bringing back massive amount of players. It’s not beneficial for anyone that players will sit in queues and guilds are having hard time playing together now and even more once HoT releases.

If ANet is working with something I would really love to know, like many others:

PariahX.6970:

ANET really ought have a plan for the future of WvW beyond the new HoT map and you are not the only sitting on the fence wondering what that might be. I would hope they would share those plans with us sooner rather than later so we can all make more informed decisions.

I can see HoT’s release being a real quagmire for WvW without something being done as a bunch of players come back to the game to check things out and a bunch more venture in WvW to try out the map. Tier 1 worlds are going to be bursting at the seams and low tiers might give new players or returnee’s a bad taste in their mouth for lack of action or organization.

I completely agree with PariahX. WvW has been lacking the attention it needs since it’s easily game mode that requires least attention from developers when comparing to amount of players it is able to keep in the game. But WvW has not ever had it’s ability to shine with culling, queue problems and random DC’s at launch, lack of EotM at first season and this PPT&PvD&K-Train nonsense continuum.

PariahX.6970:

I am a lone player on a Tier 1 world who has remained loyal since BWE1 for “Realm Pride” but now really wants to move to find a new guild and home where casual playtime can still have meaning. I don’t want to be trapped in a T1 queue once HoT drops but I have been patiently waiting to hear what ANET has up their sleeve. I could easily buy the gems to transfer anytime but it is more a matter of principal for me. If I am going to transfer it will only be once and it is not something I take lightly cuz I am old school like that.

+1 (conspiracy theories thou…)

This question isn’t relevant only to guilds or individuals considering transfers but when you take in to account what the matchups are in general. We get almost daily posts about imbalance of matchups that effect WvW at the moment and concerns how the new map is going to effect WvW.

I personally play in T1 in EU at SFR and in few weeks (7?) we have been ranking #1 for a year. This is due to massive player base that gives us 24/7 coverage and this effects WvW experience in general in massive way: every night we have queues of 30+ to all maps. This causes massive overflow of decent WvW players to EotM, that we can notice as a 6-8 all green (or whatever color SFR is) EotM overflows.

It would be ignorant from ANet not to do anything about this as they must acknowledge the problem and be aware that HoT will be bringing back massive amount of players. It’s not beneficial for anyone that players will sit in queues and guilds are having hard time playing together now and even more once HoT releases.

So I’m wondering are servers a thing in a future?

While I understand feedback above I would try different approach:
-Mirror Blade bounces between target, hitting each target max once
-Reveal baseline more severe effect/mechanic is somewhat tweaked.

Mirror Blade tweak would also remove that effect “why did you steal my might by comming next to me” and not encourage use of AI companions to mitigate Mesmer spikes.

Stealth stacking in builds and hopping in and out Stealth is much bigger problem and effects other classes than only Mesmers…

I’m GM of medium native guild and we have policy of paying half of the transfer fee if player wants to transfer to our home server in order to participate in WvW.

Now that HoT is comming we are having more recruits than usually (which is awesome) but I’m wondering are servers a thing in a future and is there point in transferring between servers?

gz! It might have took you 2 years to catch up Viz, but WvW is marathon, not a sprint.

Proposal Overview
Improvement of Guild Roster UI by adding a mark/checkbox/text to see if players are in a party or in a squad to ease grouping up.

Goal of Proposal
Ease grouping by allowing players to see with one glance who is online, where they are and if they have group/squad already up to join. This could increase amount of groups forming naturally for general PvE and WvW roamers. If you add squad icons it would be easy way to tell from roster if WvW/Event/LS map has commander and so on.

Proposal Functionality
Idea is to use what is in the game as you are able to join existing groups by right-clicking players. So at the moment you have to click each player and check if they are in a group. After this you could see icon if player is in a group in “Main” or “Roster” view next to player. This could be utilized also for squads or anything else “group related” (like “raids”, “guild only groups”, “guild only squads” etc.) if you decide to add anything like that later.

Associated Risks
Stalking within guild.
“Random” party joins.

I have really enjoyed current living story so I hate to be pessimistic about it. Quality of LS2 is way above LS1 for both content and story, but I find it hard to believe that ANet can keep this up. At the moment it seems that ANet is using old resources from original development of the game:

1. First maps of Tyria at novels Ghosts of Ascalon and Edge of Destiny included square markers on map for Ascalon Catacombs, Flame Citadel, Crucible of Eternity, Arah, Ruins of Denravi and Bloodstone Fen.
2. Brisban Wildlands bottom left corner (now Tangle Root) has always been somewhat designed, northern tower has always been visible on the map.
3. LS2 story is heavily tied to ”old” Guild Wars lore, unlike LS 1 that always brought something new and unheard. From the trailer for Dragon’s Reach part 1 it seems that we will have connections beyond trivial Maguuma lore.

Seems that ANet has always had plans for Maguuma Jungle/Wastes areas, but those were cut for launch from the game during original game development. So much of the lore for Maguuma has already been designed and they are just now using it.

What I find most interesting is fate of Magdaer. It has been lore mystery, that might have been explained in cut dungeons Ruins of Denravi or Bloodstone Fen and might have been more convincing way to develop relation between Logan and Rytlock than ”we’ve been talking”. Now that we are going for Maguuma it seems somewhat logical that we are seeing story related to it.

So I hope that they can keep this quality up, but I won’t be holding my breath just yet.

Aeolus.3615:

Tough the next update would be on 25

Have they postpone it:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/march-04-2014/

Aftermath

A small release will be available on March 18, which will provide an epilogue to recent events. That release will show the aftermath of what players experience in the Battle for Lion’s Arch and will conclude the current story arc.

I have understood that we will get some kind of conclusion for LS1 tomorrow. What do you think we will see?

Festive? LA reopened? Uninvited Elder Dragon at festives?

Every single Elder Dragon has caused some kind of disaster once awaken. (Flooding of LA an Kryta, Dragonbrand and so on) I would find it hard to believe that we wouldn’t get any signs of Mordremoth…

Check out short story “What Scarlet Saw”. We have a villain that have seen “everything” and has some level of access and understanding of “the basic fabric of reality itself”.

I’m not surprised that everything went according to plan. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to find out that she knew that she is going to die there and had some kind of plan for it… (but ANet has said something like that we are going to get rid of her….)

They had long break in Short Stories since Halloween as they wanted to get that lore to the game. (like Scarlet’s Secret Lair diaries, NPC dialogs…) I would suspect that the new Short Story is not in-game only because what lordkrall said; they are not able to release this kind of stories within games age rating.

It’s shame, most of the players will miss this story.