Guild Wars 2

The game- Excellent, the PVP rewarding both types.
Lore/Style awesome.
Server vs Server idea- amazing.

How it all means nothing because most people are faceless zerg- An utter crime.

1. Server Forum.
Why the frak is there not one? Really? This shoots you in the foot more than anything else due to denying simple measures that strengthen community for the long term.
I hardly know anyone from my server or heck let me rephrase- I know nobody from my server that I did not take there my self with my own guild.
It is an utter crime to stop us communicating by not providing the tools to do so. You say use IG means? Sorry but IG most people by and large are too bothered with their own guild/group of friends to bother with the larger group of people in the general channels.

2. No avatars on forum.
How good are you with names? Can you remember that OP’s name from that forum post 2 days ago that you were part of discussion of? No. You can’t.
However, Avatars are personal its due to the way the Human brain works that it is easier to remember ’’’’’faces’’’’ than lettered name plates.

3. Wvw – Endless zerg of same colored same named nothings.
I find it highly highly amusing that I’ve had more ’’rivalry’’ off of the xxx number of Spvp matches going on than the week long at a time wvw.
Why is it there? to prevent metagaming? ha sorry your own stupid system of free transfers already fixed that by and large.
To prevent trolling after ganking? Really then what about Spvp?
This has a thousand down sides and hardly any ups.
I am from Ring of Fire and to me, I think over the course of the wvw I’ve bothered with Piken Square have been the ‘’evil enemy’’ this was fun for a while but now they are just another server name to me with lots of faceless enemys. Its exactly the same as going through a single player game, like say the new dishoured, its a fun game but every single thing in that game is a faceless copy. Wvw is exactly the same and thats rather pathetic for a so called ‘’Massively MULTIPLAYER online game’’

4: I’ve probably missed some stuff out but if any of the points everyone agrees with even if you have different experiences to me with this…..
That in every MMO you have spent any large amount of time on its the community that keeps you there the longest.. Not the game its self.
If the community of each server is not given more tools to knit together, get closer – with friends and with the enemy you are fighting. This game will be much smaller than it could have been.
Which would be sad as to me.. this is the best mmo that’s surfaced in a very VERY long time and lacking such simple things even the worst of the more recent mmos had, is the height of stupidity.

Thanks for reading if you bothered.

Obviously the only thing AreaNet took into consideration when developing the game was WvW, because that is the only reason such a stupid system as world servers exists.

If you weren’t lucky enough to have picked a server all the people you would want to play with were on at the game’s launch, you’re screwed. Because they’re all full now.

Sadly i have to agree with Reavan. While the game itself feels great so far, the community itself feels pretty much nonexistent, for the most part for the reasons already stated.

True, some players try to fix this by being part of guilds or alliances and even create websites in order to try to create their own community, but in the end this seems to be somewhat of a fail to me from Arenanet, by not providing much of a base system. It doesn’t seem that much of an issue to me to create a section on the forums for each of the servers, allowing people of same server to socialize and plan events.

Spite that I must also say from personal experience from my years on mmos that overall a lot of the communities in mmos been deteriorating, specially on the player end.

Unlike my first years on mmos, and using GW2 as an example (altrough it works well for pretty much for most of the other mmos out there this days), a simple dungeon run lacks any component of socializing, every party I join, if I get a reply to my “Hello” Im already happy, as very rarely I get anything more than that, with most of the runs just being a silent kill feast from the start to the end, feeling pretty much like I’m simply playing a single player game (even the “ai” of some players seem to match some of those poor support characters, resulting in disastrous runs, but that is a different issue).

Another good example of the state of the community is the map chat in GW2, whose seems pretty much dead, unless it’s some guild or group trying to get someone to join them, using pretty much the same template as every other guild/party.

1. Server forums could be interesting.

2. The lack of avatars on forums is weird, maybe it’s just following the same logic as WvW?

3. WvW doesn’t show names because it’s meant to be casual, friendly and easy to join.
The less you know about who you are fighting the less trash talk and rivalry.
It’s also why there are things like jump quests and skill challenges in there.

sPvP is meant to be for those wishing to form rivalries and all that, so working as intended.
sPvP will also be an e-sport at some point in time, so there’s no avoiding trash talk.

4. I agree that people are what really make an MMO.
I played a VERY bad MMO for a long time because I made friends there.
I joined a guild on GW2 and I like the people on it; you don’t really need forums to make friends.
It probably wouldn’t hurt, however.

Edit:

Another good example of the state of the community is the map chat in GW2, whose seems pretty much dead, unless it’s some guild or group trying to get someone to join them, using pretty much the same template as every other guild/party.

Must depend on the server/location. :/
Desolation has people chatting in Lion’s Arch all the time (for better or for worse), and on maps with bosses people are often talking about boss spawn times, sometimes there’s a swarm of people doing /dance at the nearest waypoint, too.

I think this has to do with several factors that are double edged swords for me.

Dynamic events,

These things require people to take down if they are the group kind, the system allows everyone to be rewarded equally, So you will get help. However, this creates an odd issue. Partying ive found gives me no greater rewards of functions other then seeing them on the map on overworld pve. So why would I party? I only party for dungeons, and thats only because I HAVE to, on overland pve? I can run around with a guy for hours, we both get EXP/loot/objectives done, So we dont need to form a party. This is AMAZING for people who have 15 minutes to play on break or something, they can just follow a group of people and get some events in etc, but it also means that the players have no incentive to get to know one another and socialize, as they dont need a party or legit interactions to get ahead.

Basicly, GW2 is great for casuals, as it should be. I love that about it. But at the same time, I have yet to make a single friend in game I didnt know prior in my some 150 hours of play,(im a casual!) I feel like I have no reason to form bonds, since if I wanna do events, I can just join the zerg for easy stuff, and never create lasting bonds.

Dungeoning would be so much easier with an established group of people, but in dungeon runs, ive had people help me since I was a noob and didnt know where to go, but come end of the run, we made it through despite my noobness with only a few silver to waste on repairs, but I exlclaimed “Good job everyone!” in party chat, to find my pick up group had already left the party lol.

I think we need something outside of the game to communicate as well.

regarding points 1 and 3:

I’ve played real pvp games, where your actions had persistent effects on the game world. When you killed someone, they hurt – lost levels and/or gear.
When you took a castle, it was in the regular playing world and you controlled parts of the economy.

In that kind of setting, you do talk with and see your “enemy,” and you define who is/isn’t an enemy.

GW2 was not designed to be a true pvp game. Your enemy is selected temporarily by the game system, and all the pvp is just a game that plays in the mists. No one gets hurt. You only win stuff, never lose. And you’re only on that team until you free-transfer to the next one.

It’s pvp-lite, and I am totally okay with that.

Being pvp-lite, we don’t need server forums (which would be even more work to moderate than our wvw forum). And the names — these friends & enemies are temporary and arbitrary, just like mobs and allies at a Dynamic Event.

Re forum avatars, I’m of mixed feelings. They tend to get annoying, as do .sig because it adds more non-message to the screen.

Server forums would be nice, I must admit. I don’t seem to be having trouble meeting and making new friends on my server though. May I suggest, in the mean time, while we wait and hope for a server forum, that you advertise in /map for a good social guild? Might have some luck that way.

PVP-lite?

I understand people saying casual from a PVE standpoint, as there is no HC pve content what so ever~
How ever from a PVP standpoint in both wvw and st/pvp you get the impression they want nothing short of hardcore while people wishing to opt in can do so freely.

Community restrictions will for sure drag this along on its backside when it could easily soar.

If you’re counting these official forums as the entire GW 2 community then sadly you all are mistaken. The GW 2 community does a lot and if you’re counting only what transpires here then you’re missing most of it. I’ll have to admit that these forums are slightly better then Guru or a few other sites. The constant whinning and complaining is getting very old though. I’ll have to give Anet credit for the most part since these boards do remain clean and somewhat user friendly but it hasn’t gotten them the type of players that really help a community out.

Don’t judge the GW 2 community by what transpires here. Although if you do want to find those who complain and like to shout the loudess just read any part of the forums here. I almost cringe when I come here to read things anymore. I could point the OP in the direction of several well run and friendly guilds ( which run their own sites ) but most folks that are drawn from these forums who do post would not last very long within those guilds. It’s more of an age and maturity thing and sadly Anet also has to endure those who lack that and they seem to be flocking to these forums more and more.

If I were to judge the GW 2 community based on these forums I’d give it low marks as well but I know better. Having come from GW 1 and playing with folks for well over seven years now I can safely say the GW 2 community is indeed very strong and extremely active as well as helpful but I wouldn’t be looking here for those things. There’s way too many bad posts and things here people have to sort through and that gets old.

But that’s the thing, at moment transfer might be free but, and this is what I understood to be the idea before launch and I have yet to read information stating otherwise, in the long run you will have to pay for server transfers, which means you will want to be settled on the right server for you before the free transfers are over.

And how do you know exactly which is the right server for you, if we lack an actual community within the servers, which is even more damaged since people can freely transfer if they feel a WvW, or PvE, or whatever it is is lacking, much of which is, funnily enough, partially connected to the lack of community? (no actual conversation about what to do, who does what in WvW, who actual does Dungeons and with whom, etc)

1. Rarely get used for anything except guild spam.

2. Eye sores. I don’t wanna see your lame attempts at anime ripoff. I always turn off avatars and graphical signatures because they’re a waste of space and slow down information.

3. I don’t like grief. The current system prevents it. You don’t go to WvW to socialize with enemies from other servers.

4. I don’t think game design has much to do with community in most regards. Players have evolved over time and most of your community comes from your guild now and voice chat.

The only major design thing that truly pushes community is forced grouping. Solo gameplay means little community – no reason to communicate. Your optional grouping is either via pugs that don’t have any reason to communicate or via guild so it’s internalized. In older games with forced grouping, you must socialize or you never level, and the overall trauma and misery of such games leads to stronger community. It’s not really worth it to endure the crappy gameplay just to get to know random people a little better.

People want the ability to endlessly solo in these games. It kills community. You can’t really have both since the whole idea of solo means you don’t want anything to do with other people. Solo goes against the whole idea of massively multiplayer but solo is how most of the game is played. Companies want to pay for the expensive games so they make them very solo friendly.

Successful MMOs of the past were more about grouping (and forced grouping) and had way better community. Community develops when you do stuff with other people. That doesn’t happen much when you solo 99% of the game and pug groups here and there.

The only place community ends up happening is within your guild if you’re in a guild that does stuff together.

The game is not very social, I play alone most of the time, the groups we find are things in events we don’t know even the people, it’s just “hi and goodbye”.

Only thing that is saving the social side of the game is Guilds.

I’d simply accept that the game is poorly designed for the things I have brought up.
However its due to the fact that they have such simple solutions that really bothers me.

I come from games where the community was what made the game the most fun. In DAoC you couldn’t see the name of your enemy in RvR but you could recognize them by the colors they wore and the guild emblem on their cloak. Also, it gave out death spam to the whole area when someone was killed – “Soandso was just killed by Susie”. This was awesome and I miss it.

My husband wanted to run dungeons in GW2 and was having a hard time finding PUGs so I went to LA and watched the chat for awhile until I saw some guild recruitment message that looked promising. I sent a message and we joined the guild. We have been happy with people to talk to in guild chat and vent and do wvw and dungeons with.

I have had good luck talking to people doing jump puzzles. Several times this has turned into helping each other and sharing where the next puzzle is and going to do that one together.

Also in DAoC, they had the Camelot Herald. This told you the scores for the week, had a breakdown of classes (professions) hierarchy for the week and overall. It made for some good rivalry against your opponents and competition among your peers.

So, to sum up, some of the social aspect is on ourselves as players. We have to make a community for ourselves. But some of it should be up to Anet. Server forums would be great and would also help people find guilds on their home server instead of trying to go through the mess that is the guild forum. Hopefully free transfers will stop and people will be more “bound” to their server and begin to feel some loyalty to the server they call home.

Filled some dungeon spaces with pug people and they’ve been very friendly so far. There’s often chatting in map chat, especially in LA. As for grouping for events, I haven’t seen much in low level zones, but Orr is full of LFG / LFM for karma farming groups. Low level zones still have plenty of map chat.

I do agree that server forums would be great, especially for guild recruitment since the guild section of the forum is a mess at the moment.

Server transfers do need to stop, it’s detrimental to WvW in particular. I don’t think being able to see the enemy names is beneficial though.

Are any of you from Florida? Let me explain to you the problem with the state: The beaches are amazing. There aren’t actual mountains or anything of the like, but the state parks and springs are pretty incredible. There are also the tourist “districts” that are kept pristine by private companies. And the sub-divisions and schools and apartments surrounding said districts are really nice places to live.

Sounds great right? Wrong. There is no community here. The local government do not care about the citizens, the citizens don’t care about the government (9/10 couldn’t tell you the names of their congressman or mayor). Don’t expect to be shown any courtesy, patience or hospitality from anyone that isn’t on the clock and paid to give you that experience. Historical sites or protected land are regularly “re-purposed” because no one shows up for town-hall meetings to oppose the sale and construction.

Ok, so here is where I was going…Florida has no community because no one calls it home. People from New York move here for whatever reason, they are still from New York; after they have been in FL for 25 years, they will still say they are from New York. They don’t care about the people, places and things surrounding their new home because they will never see it as their home.

Free server transfers…no one has a home. So no one feels any accountability for the way they act or treat people they will need to play with at some point. There’s no home loyalty in WvW. The population is so mercurial that even the few that want to get to know their neighbors have given up because most of who they meet will just be on another server tomorrow. The servers themselves cannot develop a unique identity based on the players because anyone that could contribute to shaping that is “just passing through”.

For so many reasons, free transfers need to go. They needed to go a long time ago.

I agree with everything the op said. While the gameplay is great and the community is large, the communication is poor. I can’t recall the names of any popular/ active players; I don’t know any enemies/ rivals etc. I’ve actually played f2p mmos with smaller but more vocal communities. Hopefully ArenaNet will change this soon.

1. I see no reason for a server forum. Even in the most played MMOs they are dead after a few weeks.
2. Good point, I’d like to have avatars too.
3. I don’t see the need of seeing enemy names in WvW. They are enemies, you kill them, you don’t need to know who they are or anything.
This is good because this way I don’t get hate PMs from people I kill.
4. I have no problem with the community, I have a thousand active players from my guilds.
You’re supposed to use guilds as community hubs to get to know and pick players from.

GW2 is no less no more community-catering than other MMOs, it just does it differently.
Please realize that GW2 is either adapt to the new or go back to the old, it’s never going to clone other games’ systems.
If it was going to, it would lose the large majority of its community (which is the one playing the game, not the one continuously asking to turn this game into a generic MMO in these forums).

Incorrect- it has much less sense of community than any other mmo ive been on.
Hell even TERA which was a travesty of a game had a much better community feel than this, I can still remember some names of the people from my server there and I played for about 2 weeks.