Guild Wars 2

When I first started playing this game I got it for one purpose.. sPvP. After doing a bit of WvW however I fell in love. It reminded me a lot of the old school Runescape clan wars. I then had a vision to make a guild and run it like WoW raids.

I’ve been running a hardcore (7 days a week) WvW guild since a little after launch and have started to realize that people have really started to lose interest. Almost all of the ‘Hardcore’ ranked players in my guild are asking to be demoted to ‘Casual’. The only thing our guild/server was aiming for was getting Sea of Sorrows to become #1 server. We have achieved our goal. What now?

I myself have also started to lose interest. Not half as much as others but I would run our guilds official runs (4 hours a day – 7 days a week), jump on at 2am to do ‘Night watch" until 7-8am and even level alts in WvW. I now only jump on for our official daily runs and when I don’t have the numbers attending like we used to have only a few weeks ago I feel demoralized. I honestly don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.

From getting 50 people a night with absolutely no problem we have dropped to 20-30 people a night and at times struggle to get these numbers. What our guild is trying to achieve is a World of Warcraft style raid community. We had achieved that for a short time there. People were really trying to get higher ranks in the guild whilst attending 5-6 days a week.

The reason people stay so very active in WoW even after years of play is because a raid style community is really fun. Working with a large group of people to achieve a goal and being rewarded for it through titles and gear is really appealing. GW2 really lacks intensive and A-Net’s approach to WvW is very bad. Before buying the game I heard A-Net go on and on about how WvW is just for fun and shouldn’t be balanced. I honestly got turned off WvW because A-Net didn’t really sell it…

Sorry guys but you’ve built something amazing, you cannot ignore it anymore. WvW is a HUGE part of if not the only part of the game a large majority of the players play GW2 for. If you do not actively update WvW, the WvW community will quit the game resulting in a loss of revenue and leaving a very sour part of the game. Even if you were to fix WvW in a year or two it will be too late, people would have moved onto other games. WvW even in tier 1 will end up empty with about 20 people doing PvDoor at any given time.

Serious Suggestions to improve WvW:

Seasons

WvW lacks fresh air. Making seasons can really allow players to feel like the content even if it’s technically the same feel new. Every 3-4 months a new season should start, Servers should be shuffled around a little and ratings should reset. For example Tier 1 and 2 servers all shuffle around, Tier 3 and 4 etc (not Tier 1 servers playing against Tier 7 servers). Each season there should be new….

Gear

Each Season new Ascended (or better) gear with unique looks which are easily identifiable should be released. 3 pieces of Ascended gear should be released per season so in order to get the full set you must wait for 2 seasons to pass. When I say that this gear should be easily identifiable I mean it. I should be able to look at a player and instantly say "Oh, This player has full “X” gear, no wonder he’s good at WvW". Or while recruiting say "Recruiting WvW players who have at least 3 pieces of “X” gear. Once you get all the pieces for those 2 seasons you should get a….

Title

These Titles should be new each and every 2 seasons. They should possible come with a unique finisher or something along those lines. Titles should be achieved through….

WvW Ranks

Much like sPvP ranks every time you get a kill, escort a dolyak, cap a node, defend a node etc your WvW rank bar should get higher. Scrap Badges, looting should only be for items. As you obtain ranks you should also gain something similar to Glory which you can use to buy the Ascended gear per season (call this badges if you want). Every 10-20 ranks should have a Title of it’s own and once you reach a very high rank you can obtain a Legendary item which is only obtainable through WvW and only has special affects in WvW (much like the weapons that glow only at night). Ranks should also have a /rank command with unique animals/effects to WvW.

Bugs

Seriously guys, There’s so many, it’s been a while since launch and many of the bugs that were around then are still around. Fix them already.

Seasons. So you want to shuffle the ratings, put a first place server in third so they can get first again in two weeks? What’s the point?

Gear. Absolutely not. Linear item progression, and a treadmill? In a world where nobody is actually good, it’s all about the number of people on the field, giving the bigger zerg better gear than the smaller zerg would just cement the already stale brackets…

Titles. Every suggestion for a title is bad, and here’s why: You can’t see your titles, and nobody else can see you most of the time. You are invisible, due to culling. Titles are stupid and pointless.

Ranks. You already get titles. You don’t need ranks, or a glory system. You already get legendaries with special effects in WvW. Every legendary is already only obtained through WvW. You don’t need a /rank emote to show off, because you’re invisible in the mass of people anyway.

Bugs. Name one.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

snip

I’m going to assume that you enjoy, even love, WvW like we do here. Now this assumption may be wrong, but we’re going to go with it for now.

Seasons: Do you remember that feeling you got when you logged on and your server had moved up a tier? You thinking “YES! We fricken did it!” Well, what happens when you plateau in a tier? You sit in the same tier week in and week out, like SBI and JQ have for a while now… Reset the ratings (not entirely, maybe top 3 tiers get shuffled) and you create a new, level playing field. It discourages server hopping, encourages loyalty to your server, and promotes the continued efforts of people wanting to feel awesome about what they helped accomplish.

Gear: I’m guessing by that statement, you haven’t experience higher level WvW gameplay. I’m sure anyone from the top 3 tiers of WvW can attest to the fact that it isn’t about bigger zerg = best server. It’s actually about strategy and application of tactics. The gear obtainable in WvW would ONLY EVER be the same level as gear obtained in PvE – as in, if you didn’t like dungeons or pve, you could do WvW and still have competitive gear. Dungeon gear has it’s own unique look, you can tell by looking at someone – “hey this guy has done X dungeon”. Why not give seasons of gear, all aesthetically different to say “hey, this guy did will in X season”

Titles: Your idea of “stupid and pointless” is something that can’t be seen by others? For a start – titles CAN be seen by others. They’re subtle, cosmetic additions that give you a sense of completion. Something to work towards – much like the sPvP titles. You look at someone with a “Gladiator” or “Mercenary” title, and you know they’re going to be a tougher 1v1 than someone with no title. So give titles to people who actively WvW, so you can look at the guy who has the title “Realm Gladiator” or whatever, and know he is active and has done a certain amount of WvW.

Ranks: There are NO legendaries obtained ONLY through WvW?… This is a way to reward and provide a seperate “style” of gameplay. You can get your PvE legendaries, or you can get your WvW legendaries – both being valid options. The rank system is a way to again, reward people for being more active, give incentives to people who like WvW to play more WvW and make the entire community stronger for it.

Bugs: … Do you even play the same game? Rendering issues. Glitching through doors/walls. Rendering issues. Certain professions skills don’t work as intended. Rendering issues.

^^ exactly. i think these are all great ideas that will add a unique flavor the the WvW experience. none of these suggestions are game breaking and since most of these systems are in place already in other areas of the game; it would be easy to implement. /bump

Bumping up a tier made you feel good? That’s wierd… Seriously though, servers are set where they’re at, and stagnant for a reason. There’s even breaks in the scores almost constantly, and every server sits where it’s at for a reason. Shuffling them wouldn’t change that.

Anyone who’s actually looked at WvW knows it’s a numbers game. More people dumping more money, more karma, more influence, and more gold = higher scores. It’s a numbers game, and frankly, that’s how it should be.

Titles can sometimes be seen by others. But there’s no point in adding more when you’ve already got 16 that most people haven’t aquired all of yet. Besides, sometimes being noticed as someone who spent a lot of time walking with dolyaks isn’t a sign you’re good.

Every legendary in the game requires doing WvW jumping puzzles every day for 85-250 days, and owning everything on the map at least once or server hopping a lot. Also, WvW is PVE. There is no seperation of the two. Unless you want to remove all the server bonuses, and two of the Gifts required to craft legendaries, and fill WvW with premade characters like sPvP…

Bugs. I mean bugs that are specific to WvW. Skills have always been broken, but that’s not really a WvW problem. Glitching through doors/walls, heck I can fall through the world in at least four zones and a dungeon… And rendering issues are spread through the entire game. Is there a single bug that is WvW specific that you can think of?