Guild Wars 2

For me, what really pulled me into MMOs at the beginning and really made the world feel alive is the possibility for conflict… I played Everquest and server hopped until I landed on Tallon Zek PvP Teams. After my first low level war outside the gates of Freeport, I was hooked. Eventually I found a guild, and we organized to run through entire zones and march to major hubs of the Lighties (The “Lighties” were a loose alliance of The Elves, Humans, and Short teams who banded against the “Dark” team- it was a 3v1 with inner conflict of the 3) We were able to use this mechanic to create rivalries and wars.
In Vanilla WoW, some of the my fondest experiences we had involved raiding capital cities, and harassing certain quest hubs to stir the hive of Alliance.
When you were PvEing, you had to be alert. Others could be out hunting just to kill other players. We would stalk people and wage attacks.
It wasn’t always perfect, or balanced, but it was always fun.
The potential for have created these memories cannot truly be replicated by a Battleground- WvW comes close, and SPvP is expertly handled, but there is another experience of PvP that can only be created by real, live players in the world.

GW2 prides itself in being a dynamic world… events happen as you wander through, and you can get sucked into these mostly scripted events; sure, they scale in scope depends on the amount of players roll up and the outcomes are not always the same, and that is a massive piece of magical story telling that GW2 provides.
Is it possible to do the same in Tyria, with conflict and PvP as an available mechanic?
How would they do it, and how could it be balanced? More importantly, how can they appeal to everyone, which seems to be ArenaNet’s credo?

Could we do actual Guild Wars with some kind of ranking structure? Where guilds agree on the terms of a war between the two- if we see you somewhere, we can fight you? And then kills be tallied or something?
An open PvP server with people falling under character created Banners in their guilds?
I mean, the name of the game is Guild Wars, so it would be interesting to see that actually fleshed out.

Maybe a game mode, a battleground of sorts, where Tyria is in a war… and servers are represented much in a way that they are in WvWvW; but instead, it involve 5 different servers, each bound to a specific city as their protected hub; or perhaps 4 with the Asura city being available for capture or as a neutral point.. because lets face is, that place is awful.
This could be worth exploring out; where all the fast travel points can be captured by a team, locking out the other, and some other resource pushing the worlds to clash. Scripted events could occur that pull in battles, boss battles against the dragons and giants could be contested.
With scaled levels, the only unbalancing factors would be skill unlocks and gear. Deal with it, perhaps, or scale gear stat wise?

I have the exact opposite experience. I too played on a PvP server during EQ – Rallos Zek specifically. This is why to this day I will never play PvP again. Don’t get me wrong there are times when it’s great but for the most part it’s getting jumped by someone when you’re almost dead or while you just aggro’d 5 mobs. There are certain people who are exceptions but most want to just gank the crap out of people and aren’t interested in fair combat.

I’ll pass but I don’t see why they can’t servers for those who would want it.

Due to the nature of the open world dynamic events, I find it highly unlikely that we’ll ever see open world PvP in the “main” maps of the game.

The game is fundamentally designed around players cooperating in the open world. There are no “sides” the players naturally align with that would be in global conflict, and if it’s everyone vs. everyone, then the whole open-world event system just completely falls apart.

They could certainly add factions to the game, and allow players to align with one or another, and then add maps which were built from the ground-up for that sort of environment. Oh, wait… That’s pretty much what WvW is.

Expanding WvW seems likely. Retrofitting the existing world for PvP? Not so much. The effort required to add it would be substantial, and likely better spent improving/adding to WvW, which is their concept of PvPvE.

Of course, that means you can’t take a bunch of level 80s and march into the low-level zones and wreak havoc. If that’s what you’re looking to do, then I think that GW2 is never going to be your game, because that’s not ArenaNet’s vision for it.

What if they made a battleground that is Tyria and hard code some rules and points into it, making it opt in and opt outable, though gain certain rewards. Add in the WvWvW mechanics somehow into Tyria?

Not make this an entire server, but, if you wanted to treat it as such, sure, and then be able to go back out onto your regular server and continue doing story quests?

Being ganked by 80s would be countered by the scaling level. There would still be disparity in gear, but perhaps there could be a game rule that scaled gear slightly, as well?

My vision, Synch, is not to overpower people because of sheer level- that was my biggest complaint with WoW, and the saving grace of EQ’s PvP system where you could only attack a few levels difference- though that was faced with its own issues (like Out Of Range healing) but could be corrected for by level balancing which is already implimented.

i loved the jumping puzzle in the eternal battleground.

sometimes, not all enemy players will attack you.
but some do.
its really a really nice ride to do it.
(except when many people are camping the last part).

i d like more content like this.
pvp “dungeon” type stuff.

Open world PvP, or more precisely the lack thereof, is one of the reasons I play GW2 and not one of the other games that allows it. That is to say, no thank you on open world PvP.

So you’d be opposed of having an actively opt-in-opt-out system like WvW?

You guys realize that in most MMOs that have open world PvP there are servers that are exclusively PvE. Unfortunately GW doesn’t have world PvP which is a shame as it makes the world 100x more alive.
And just so you know, even on a PvP server, the majority of players don’t hang around low level areas ganking. Ganking low levels isn’t PvP or even fun, unless you’re a bit sadistic.

Sure, they could add new borderlands to WvW, and even use existing maps as the basis for them. But you’re not likely to get the spontaneous fight-someone-on-the-way-to-a-random-quest type of encounter in GW2.

First, because there aren’t natural lines to divide the player base into. Charr, Humans, Sylvari and Asura are all allies at the moment, and – barring the unexpected early demise of several elder dragons, aren’t likely to begin warring anytime soon.

You could do it on a guild-by-guild basis. But that would be a major system addition, akin to adding another game mode ala WvW to the game, with a whole new level of complexity (how to handle changes in guild-hostility while the game is live. Is guild-relations a server-tied entity akin to influence? If so, what happens when guesting?)

The upshot is that I think it’s going to be more work than it’s worth, even if ArenaNet wanted to do it. And If ArenaNet had wanted PvP in the main game world, too many decisions would have been made differently than they were made.

WvW is clearly their focus for PvP in an environment where PvE events also occur. Unlike sPvP, you keep your stats/build from PvE when playing in WvW. There are already champion-level PvE events on the eternal battlegrounds (it’s the Grub!), and things like the Quaggans on the borderlands.

Adding a Frostgorge Sound borderland where all three servers can fight each other and the Claw of Jormag for glory, match-points, and (badges of) honor would be doable (and sounds pretty cool – WvW siege weapons vs. the Claw, anyone?)

Or have a dragon invade Stonemist Castle if it’s held too long in a match? But none of that sort of thing will generate the sort of ad-hoc encounters you get with genuine open-world PvP. For good or ill, I don’t see GuildWars 2 evolving into an open world PvP game.

They can certainly add PvE events and content to either new or existing maps in WvW, as that provides the natural faction split for players, and they might – but to the extent they do, there will be cries of “foul!” from folks who don’t enjoy PvP in the least, and want to experience that PvE content without being killed by an invisible thief just as they’re about to complete something. The vistas/pois/jumping puzzles already in WvW generate their fair share of protests, and that’s a pretty minor set of PvE content.

So I wouldn’t expect substantial PvE style content or rewards to creep into WvW, and thus I don’t think you’ll ever likely to be going about your PvE questing and get surprised by (or surprise) another player and have a fight over something in GW2.

Adding borderlands/events to WvW that encourage/reward/require smaller-scale PvP is another matter entirely, and I’m sure they’d love to hear ideas about that. But it’s not going to be the same as open world PvP.