So it’s been over a year now and I haven’t seen any fixes to the big problems or talks about them. Now I don’t represent everyone so I could be wrong, but here is what I would do to each game mode.
1. PvP – Stop pushing esports. Unless you do a complete rework of the classes and skill system it will never do well. Start just trying to get players in there. New game modes (kill the lord, just capture the flag, etc). Offer PvE rewards (back pieces, armor sets, weapn skins) that you can only get in there. Then make guilds more useful. Allow players to create a whole team and a rank is tied to this team. Then allow teams to be sponsored by guilds. Guilds benefit from this by making a new upgrade tab that is from what your sponsored team does in pvp. Increase karma gain by X amount for 2 days if your sponsored team wins 5 ranked matches. Things like that.
2. PvE- start offering instanced PvE zones that act as raids. Not just a dungeon with 15 people, but an entire zone. A very hard zone that you basically need a group to venture through . Make it so that all dungeons must be unlocked by doing a meta event or dynamic event in the area (that is actually hard), then increase the rewards of doing dungeons. Makes them feel more important. Put in some way that players can do a hardmode of these dungeons that give you special tokens that allow you to get the hardmode version of the weapons and armor (unique looks and all).
3. WvW- make defending worth something. Right now most of WvW is running from tower to tower in a giant blob of names taking a structure, then moving onto another, and repeat. It gets incredibly boring after a while. Remove the AoE cap. AoE cap is a major thing pushing for zergs. I know it has something to do with the engine, but this is just killing the gameplay for smaller groups. IF there was no AoE cap people wouldn’t just stand in a giant blob of names. They may actually spread out. Siege weapons could be a lot better and that makes small groups a lot better.
4. Legendary/Ascended weapons- Stop making this a grind. This will kill your game. If your game is like all the others, eventually it will start to go dead. Make it so you put a variety of really hard things in the game. You do these hard events once and you get an item that is used for crafting a legendary or ascended item. Make ascended items precusrors to the legendary. An example of events. Kill Tequatl, complete mad kings puzzle, capture stonemist castle, capture northern keep on each borderlands, etc.
5. Guilds- put in an influence drain. Put in guild towns in each zone. These towns are owned by guilds with a certain amount of influence. A section of the town can be blocked off and only opened to guildies, or open to the public. Guilds can do special events, start hard meta events with good rewards, and use commodations to upgrade the town with a variety of things. You get access to 2-4 special dungeons that can only be accessed if you buy an item in the blocked off portion of the town. You can use your commodations to get special vendors and NPCs to stay in your town for a few days. This offers a drain on commodations.