Guild Wars 2

For example, will they require Politics 5? I think small non-maxed guilds would be interested to know this beforehand so we can start plotting out upgrades, given they take a few days to complete.

So in other words to do guild missions guilds need to have bothered to research things in a tree that untill now has been WvWvW focused and thus mostly ignored by none pvp oriented guilds? thats abit lame but i guess not unexpected…of course smaller guilds are shafted in favor of huge guilds by this since alot wont have lvl 3 let alone lvl 5 in anything ah well i guess we(my guild and other smaller ones) can go back to focusing on architecture lvl 4 and other lesser tech tree research instead and leave the guild missions to the bigger guilds untill you(arenanet) pull your heads out of your collective butts and realise not every guild is gonna be that far into the tech tree(and some wont even have started art of war since its been a waste of research to pve focused guilds until now) and offer something at lower tiers.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

This is disappointing to read. Even if I’m in a lager, upgraded guild.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

Wait, this means we all HAVE to be on the same server to participate in those missions together? Please tell us that guesting will work, otherwise that’s gonna be a pretty huge disappointment.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

Is this true for all missions? If it is then it is a HUGE hit to smaller guilds. I know mine is only at level 2 and we don’t have enough faction to get to Art of war level 5. It’s basically gating off content and promoting larger guilds.

Thats a huge disappointment. Whats the point in putting in really cool content like this if a lot of players won’t be able to use it?

Great job quashing small guilds.

The guild I am in has everything researched, so consider me unbiased.

I do not think it was a wise move to gate the first batch of missions so strongly. The first batch should have required Level 1 of something, the second batch of missions require Level 2 of something, and so on.

That way Guild Missions are seamlessly integrated into the current upgrade system and not tacked onto the end.

Edit: It actually baffles me that the current AoW Level 5 restriction made it past the initial round-table discussion. Not only does this hurt small guilds, but it prevents new and future guilds from enjoying the fruits of your labor for quite some time.

Edit 2: I totally forgot that AoW is a PvP upgrade tier until I read further posts. Why is PvE-centric content gated by a PvP tier? Again, baffling.

This is a real huge hit in the face. Seeing this tree as the only real non-PVE tree, and now it is needed for a big part of the endgame PVE content? It would be nice if you could rethink that, level 5 seems hard or achieve, and in my personal opinion the politics tree would seem alot better suited, as alot of small guilds that enjoy the PVE content, got this one atleast on level 3 to get guild weapons and armor.

This is silly. They should have created an entirely new tree, one in which the most basic mission is available right from the start, while the more advanced ones would require further progress into that tree. Building it into the upper branches of an existing tree unfairly penalizes those that didn’t see a point to the existing tree options, and unfairly rewards players that already liked the content in that tree.

sigh
I was really looking forward to next week’s patch. And now I have to question the minds behind said patch.

Maybe I was truly blinded by my love for the game and you all at ArenaNet, to not see that you would choose to block off these new parts of the game behind artifical walls so high that only real money can allow a majority of us to scale them.

My guild is a small group of friends who have been together for years. We all do not really wish to deal with the drama, requirements and politics that go along with being a member in a large guild. We recently switched servers because the lack of players in PvE on our original server. We once were Level5 in all but Art of War (since we are a PvE group). But alas we lost that because we made the decision that was best for us at the time. We were punished for our server move. We thought that was done and now we are being punished again because we are not a large group?

Sure you tell us that small guilds will be able to complete these tasks because other people can help. Well you failed to tell us that we wouldn’t even be able to start them, let alone complete them.

Now my small group of friends that has been around for almost a decade across a number of MMOs. Now my guild will more than likely be yet another one of the small guilds who in order to participate (and be rewarded for) in a major piece of game content, be broken apart or eaten by a larger group who may or may not care about our individuals.

I really can not express how much this hurts a large portion of the playerbase. I had realized that the content would inevitably gated to some degree. I had mistakenly thought that it would be rank 2 or 3. A rank that ANY guild regardless of size could access with very little effort. I did not believe that there would be such a high cost placed upon gaining access to game content.

If a guild like mine wishes to participate in your new content we would arguably have to farm massive amounts of gold in order to buy the influence needed or more likely have to spend 100s of dollars on gems in order to buy said influence. Its a sad sad day when I think that a game company is monetizing content like this.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

Oh well, seeing as our small guild has no upgrade to level 5 yet, and Art of War was scheduled for last (so it’s completely untouched)… i guess it will be a veeery long time before we’ll look at that content. Other upgrades are at least useful on their own for a non-PvP guild.
Really disappointing.

First available in a lvl 5 tier? Really…? Most small guilds (PvE oriented) specced into the others not WvW as it yields the least benefit, you’re totally screwing them over now, a 10-30 member guild would need a month or more to just get some influence towards tht t5 level.

Really really poor choice. Would have been much better to introduce an entirely new tech tree to spec into.

Well, I was excited about this update but not anymore after reading this.

So much for small guilds. Guess that blog was all a lie. Seems only the hardcore/large guilds are going to have access to this new content. Here I was hoping it was just going to be added as a side thing. Guess not. So much for catering to everyone. Just gated even more content yet again.

WOW……… I mean WOW. Art of War lvl5. Well looks like my tiny guild will not be participating in this in anyway now then. That really is a terrible idea as all you have done now is kill off small guilds. In my guild there are only a couple of us playing now .

Am actually quite disappointed now. Was so looking forward to this.

It does seem like the way this new content is structured makes it heavily favour large guilds at the expense of small ones…

Art of War? Most MMO’s have about 10-20% of their player base focused on PvP and you put out the first content directed towards the majority of players as requiring the guild to have planned for PvP? Why do you think the majority of your player base loves PvP? If you as a company have numbers that back this up, great. I just personally don’t believe it to be so.

Terrible terrible move

brokenserenity.4638:

So in other words to do guild missions guilds need to have bothered to research things in a tree that untill now has been WvWvW focused and thus mostly ignored by none pvp oriented guilds? thats abit lame but i guess not unexpected…of course smaller guilds are shafted in favor of huge guilds by this since alot wont have lvl 3 let alone lvl 5 in anything ah well i guess we(my guild and other smaller ones) can go back to focusing on architecture lvl 4 and other lesser tech tree research instead and leave the guild missions to the bigger guilds untill you(arenanet) pull your heads out of your collective butts and realise not every guild is gonna be that far into the tech tree(and some wont even have started art of war since its been a waste of research to pve focused guilds until now) and offer something at lower tiers.

You may or may not have a point but you come across as a very unpleasant person. How about showing a little respect for other people. As always if the devs do something that you don’t like form a constructive and mature post. You might find people listen to you more.

I didn’t expect a novice guild be able to do guild quests, but level 5 for the first one? Are you serious? This kills small guilds.

Wait and see guys, Bounty is logically placed in Art of War. I guess we will see other content in other areas (e.g: Trek in economy ), and perhaps new content in lower tiers of guild upgrades (not related to guild events). Given the new content we may also see an increase in influence gain. So don’t let your spirit down.
I am also part of a 6-7 member guild, and I understand your concern and I do hope we will not be let down. We have no aim to increase our guild size to include no IRL known persons.
In the meantime, Wait and see.

A total fail on two counts, both mentioned many times above:

1) requiring ANY of the guild trees to be at level 5

Even not-so-small guilds may not have level 5 in anything if it doesn’t unlock something they’ve seen having a value until now

2) using the PVP tree when many players/guilds never touch PVP content

Fine, you want to encourage PVP but using a huge stick like this won’t do that, it’ll simply turn people off.

Can two of the same mission be going on at the same time?

If not, then I can see why this is the case. We can’t have every single guild trying to activate the same mission, so having prerequisites is important, especially when there will only be a handful of missions to complete.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who put a little thought into it. I never for a second considered it being a low level guild upgrade.

And don’t forget that just because you can’t afford to “Start” the mission doesn’t mean you can’t still participate.

My guild has never had more than 15 active players, and we are fully upgraded, with pretty much every item stockpiled. Apparently to most of the posters in this thread, 15 is a large hardcore guild.

Toxyn.9608:

I do not think it was a wise move to gate the first batch of missions so strongly. The first batch should have required Level 1 of something, the second batch of missions require Level 2 of something, and so on.

- They have to place the new content in a way that pushes the playerbase forward, because none of these updates were present at launch. Same thing with new currencies, new item tiers, new achievements etc. The new has to compete with the old. None of what we have now is relevant when the game is 3 years old.

What would it be like otherwise? “Hello guys, here’s some level 30-40 missions in case your character is not level 80 yet, reward is level 35 rare.”

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Me personally I don’t want everything being even to me straight away and the PVE crowd have been screaming for some long term goals, now you have some.

Have faith guys, this game is run by people who actually do listen to us so I’m sure it will be good.

Zenith.6403:

Toxyn.9608:

I do not think it was a wise move to gate the first batch of missions so strongly. The first batch should have required Level 1 of something, the second batch of missions require Level 2 of something, and so on.

- They have to place the new content in a way that pushes the playerbase forward, because none of these updates were present at launch. Same thing with new currencies, new item tiers, new achievements etc. The new has to compete with the old. None of what we have now is relevant when the game is 3 years old.

Be that as it may, but to stick it at lvl5 !!!. That is insane. Do you know how much influence is needed to get to lvl5.

Hell I have managed to save up 3.7k influence on my small guild in preperation for this update. Alot of that is basically just from me. Just to get to lvl3 you need 6500.

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

Missywink.7162:

Be that as it may, but to stick it at lvl5 !!!. That is insane. Do you know how much influence is needed to get to lvl5.

Hell I have managed to save up 3.7k influence on my small guild in preperation for this update. Alot of that is basically just from me. Just to get to lvl3 you need 6500.

- You may think level 5 costs much, but we haven’t seen the prices of those missions yet
inb4 ****storm xD

We have to define “small” here people. A Small guild is 20 active players in my opinion. In this case, maxing every Tech wouldn’t be hard at all.

A guild that rarely sees more than 6 or 7 players online at once is hardly a Guild. It’s more of a party.

Well, their politics towards smaller guilds has been unfriendly up until now already, so I certainly did not expect them to suddenly adjust upgrade prices to the guild size (which is something that would’ve made a lot of sense). They basically did exactly what I thought they would do, as bad as that idea is.

ArenaNet seems to love their anonymous mass guilds, don’t expect them to do any favours to smaller guilds in which the members actually know each other. Wouldn’t be surprised if the guild missions were nearly impossible to complete with less than 20 players as well.

I don’t know how I feel about lvl 5 req, but Art of War for a PvE centric feature? HUH?

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

No, it depends on the individual player. If you want access to everything now with no wait then yes, you will need to transfer to a larger guild that has done the work for you.

If however you gleen any satisfaction at all from doing things for yourself then you may want to start expanding your guild or enjoying the journey towards what you want. I think the problem with MMO gamers these days is they expect everything, open access to all content regardless of how much effort to have put in.

I remember the big guilds in WoW (yes aim here for even mentioning the W word. ) you knew if you got in you were then running with a group who would give you access to end game content because they had put the work in to form a well structured guild. If you want to bimble about with seven players in your guild then fair play to you but why should you get the same rewards as a guild where all the officers spend hours of none game time every week running it so there are many members all enjoying prearranged events?

Gisei.5749:

We have to define “small” here people. A Small guild is 20 active players in my opinion. In this case, maxing every Tech wouldn’t be hard at all.

A guild that rarely sees more than 6 or 7 players online at once is hardly a Guild. It’s more of a party.

So why do ANet insist on having only 5 people in a Guild able to “team up” to do anything … seems an ideal size to me.

Also, if 20 people in a large guild all want to “join in” on one of these Guild Missions, do they get the same rewards as the team that tagged the event?

Sorry, you can’t join us today we only need 5 men … silly idea.

Genophix.3098:

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

No, it depends on the individual player. If you want access to everything now with no wait then yes, you will need to transfer to a larger guild that has done the work for you.

If however you gleen any satisfaction at all from doing things for yourself then you may want to start expanding your guild or enjoying the journey towards what you want. I think the problem with MMO gamers these days is they expect everything, open access to all content regardless of how much effort to have put in.

I remember the big guilds in WoW (yes aim here for even mentioning the W word. ) you knew if you got in you were then running with a group who would give you access to end game content because they had put the work in to form a well structured guild. If you want to bimble about with seven players in your guild then fair play to you but why should you get the same rewards as a guild where all the officers spend hours of none game time every week running it so there are many members all enjoying prearranged events?

Because in GW2 influence is earned by the number of people you have not how hard you work. If anything smaller guilds work harder than larger guilds yet larger guilds get handed more stuff to them without putting in that much work for the return. Ironic isn’t it? That the smaller group that works harder than the larger group isn’t the one that gets things handed to them on a silver platter.

I’m a bit surprised by this too, and I’m not a fan of it, even though my guild has already maxed everything it could (and we’re sitting on 150,000 influence that doesn’t do all that much for us).

The game’s been out six or seven months and I bet there are a lot of guilds that have excess influence with nothing to spend it on. And this is probably where the aim of these missions are.

I’d imagine smaller guilds wouldn’t have a great shot of even doing the smaller missions.

Still, it would be nice if they had something for smaller guilds to do as well. My guild isn’t a problem, we have 70, 80 members, with a good 20-30 who play pretty often. But I’m sure I’d feel pretty bad if I were in a small guild.

I do wonder why PvE content is gated behind PvP upgrades, along with the rest of the thread. To me, it would surely make more sense for these updates to fall into, if they had to be level 5 of anything, Politics or Architecture, maybe Economy for the missions which will reward with Gold gain etc.

If we were talking WvW events or bonuses, perhaps, yes (seeing as SPvP is a level playing field, although new guild armours there would be nice), but at the moment this is effectively penalising those players who have not delved into the PvP side of the game.

I am a member of a large guild (which could easily afford the upgrades) and a couple of smaller ones with fewer than ten members, many friends who don’t get online to play all that often due to university etc. Gating the missions to this extent means that I will be unable to complete guild missions with my closest friends, and will encourage players to ignore smaller guilds in favour of larger ones, furthering the problem for small guilds as time goes by.

I’m now facing the choice of which guild do I spend time/influence on – the one with my friends, or the one with a population to afford to run guild missions, even though I may be left out as I am just one out of more than a hundred, playing off-peak.

I will reserve final judgement until after I see how the implementation works post update, but I am very sceptical at the moment.

If this helps reduce the number of ridiculously small guilds, and medium sized guilds with poor representation, then I am all for it.

Game has been out for 6 months. If your guild has not researched all the tiers by now, regardless if your guild is PvE only, then stop building all those useless MF banners and enforce rules of representation to get the influence to do research. If that is not to your liking, then stop whinging about being gated from content.

The clue is in the title of the game, people, and seems Anet is looking to consolidate the player base. I say this is about time …

My guild is super small and only does PvE. We’re 6 or 7 active players. Does this mean we aren’t really supposed to play this stuff? We don’t even have Art of War 1. I guess I dump my guild mates and friends and go find a big guild to do this stuff. This is the social aspect of the game, right? Find “new” friends and do stuff. The more people, the better. You don’t need, or want, to know those people.

Honestly, I’d be disappointed in this news, if I wasn’t already disappointed with the news of the rewards. As much as new missions sound fun, I’m not investing any guild points in something with rewards that are just new guild banners. I’ll save my small guild’s points, as I’ve been doing, for something of value — a fully upgraded guild bank. After that, if I had any points left, any points would be horded until this company starts valuing my time better and offers rewards that are actually, you know, rewarding.

In the quest to make guilds something more worthwhile, guild missions are a band-aid, at best.

RoChan.1926:

Genophix.3098:

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

No, it depends on the individual player. If you want access to everything now with no wait then yes, you will need to transfer to a larger guild that has done the work for you.

If however you gleen any satisfaction at all from doing things for yourself then you may want to start expanding your guild or enjoying the journey towards what you want. I think the problem with MMO gamers these days is they expect everything, open access to all content regardless of how much effort to have put in.

I remember the big guilds in WoW (yes aim here for even mentioning the W word. ) you knew if you got in you were then running with a group who would give you access to end game content because they had put the work in to form a well structured guild. If you want to bimble about with seven players in your guild then fair play to you but why should you get the same rewards as a guild where all the officers spend hours of none game time every week running it so there are many members all enjoying prearranged events?

Because in GW2 influence is earned by the number of people you have not how hard you work. If anything smaller guilds work harder than larger guilds yet larger guilds get handed more stuff to them without putting in that much work for the return. Ironic isn’t it? That the smaller group that works harder than the larger group isn’t the one that gets things handed to them on a silver platter.

Smaller guilds work harder than larger guilds, how exactly?

Regardless my point is that it’s really difficult to run a big guild and keep your members a) logging in b) joining TS c) taking part in game events. Surely you must see that organising a guild with ten people would be a cake walk compared to guild with a hundred?

So that’s not being handed things on a silver platter is it? So, not ironic either. Sorry I just thing a lot of people are jumping the gun here on the nerd rage. Maybe wait until its out before casting judgment.

Why are some of you complaining so much? Ye, it caters to some more developed guilds more than others at first. It gives guilds a reason to rank up their stuff. You could make an argument that any type of content benefits certain types of people. Its like saying Explorable gear isnt fair because it caters to level 80’s. This is an MMO. You cant expect ease of access to everything. The progression is necessary for the game.

Plus, most of the small guilds nowawadays have just started out anyways. Which is not very smart knowing the game has been out for around 6 months. You have a very low chance of recruitment. Plain and simple, people dont want to join small guilds of 50 people or less, even if it is active, you only see around 10 people online at most. Its much more preferred to a lot of players to join a large active guild where you regularily see 30-60 people online at once. Thats just the dynamics of guilds so don’t complain about that.

As I see it,this does benefit larger guilds with banked influence.

I have a small guild and for our size we earn influence pretty fast but because there is a limit to what we can do we have to be very careful on how we spend it.
We spend it on upgrades that are actually useful to us- hint-not Art of War lvl 5.

Initially my concern was that we are to small to complete missions but now I can’t see us even kicking off an event- it seems to me that smaller guilds are being strongly encouraged to merge with bigger Guilds and misses the point of why smaller guilds are so popular with players.

It is fine to ad content that can be enjoyed by large co-ordintated groups and I will even say that it is needed and will make many players happy.
What I would like to see is similar content for small guilds.

Not all small Guilds want to grow, that does not mean we don’t like fun stuff to do together.
If Anet wants to build the community they should supply the tools to do so- to the whole community.

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

Dude thats not discouraging people from joining small guilds. People don’t usually join a small guild over a large guild anyways. So don’t place the blame on this. Small guilds constantly spark into existence, usually by noobs, and its usually late in the game, like now. They also usually only last a few weeks anyway because of the slow member recruitment.

bri.2359:

If this helps reduce the number of ridiculously small guilds, and medium sized guilds with poor representation, then I am all for it.

Game has been out for 6 months. If your guild has not researched all the tiers by now, regardless if your guild is PvE only, then stop building all those useless MF banners and enforce rules of representation to get the influence to do research. If that is not to your liking, then stop whinging about being gated from content.

The clue is in the title of the game, people, and seems Anet is looking to consolidate the player base. I say this is about time …

The name of the game has nothing to do with “Guilds” in the game. The lore behind the name “Guild Wars” is easy to lookup. Stop trolling the forums and making pointless posts like the one you just have. All you are doing is causing trouble in the hope that a constructive topic like this one that raises some genuine concerns over how the devs are implementing content, will be locked.

Please stop.

Gisei.5749:

We have to define “small” here people. A Small guild is 20 active players in my opinion. In this case, maxing every Tech wouldn’t be hard at all.

A guild that rarely sees more than 6 or 7 players online at once is hardly a Guild. It’s more of a party.

I am the leader of a small guild we are atm 17 members but still growing, it’s already hard to grow as a guild when there are huge popular guilds out there, the people that joins my guild has almost the same state of mind as me and how they wan’t to play the game, we are fine with not being to many. When I read what A-net said about these Guild missions to be able to do as small guild or big guilds I was happy to read that.

I arrange events and dungeon runs and I try to make the guild grow, I call my Guild a Guild and if A-net realy wanted “only” big guilds they could have set a minimum number of members in the set of a day.

I do like the idea to have guild missions at Art of War level 5 but as the first release is just bogus, what about “We wan’t everyone to be able to participate in new content”?
So for me to try out the new content I have to iether join a PvP-guild that has level 5 in Art of War or join a Regular Guild that has been active a long time and have level 5 Art of War? No, I don’t wan’t to leave my friends behind and I am proud of my Guild and someday we can try these Guild Missions but until then we have to enjoy the other parts in the update.

Edit:
Bri.2359

If this helps reduce the number of ridiculously small guilds, and medium sized guilds with poor representation, then I am all for it.

Game has been out for 6 months. If your guild has not researched all the tiers by now, regardless if your guild is PvE only, then stop building all those useless MF banners and enforce rules of representation to get the influence to do research. If that is not to your liking, then stop whinging about being gated from content.

The clue is in the title of the game, people, and seems Anet is looking to consolidate the player base. I say this is about time …

Your idéa would mean there won’t be any new guilds after a while, how good would that work with your statment ‘The clue is in the title of the game’ when there is now guilds fighting.
Not every Guild has been active since start of the game, my old Guild died out so me and some friends started a new Guild with specific requirements so we are not as fast growing as many other guilds.

It amazes me how short-sighted some of the posters are being, claiming that small guilds have no place in the game, that making a new guild is pointless, and that an MMO that has been out for six months is considered old.

Small guilds definitely have a place. Making a new guild is never pointless, even years into a game’s life. Finally, as GW2 is still very young, the first Guild Mission upgrade should not have been gated so strongly. Especially since Guild Missions are a new type of content that many people were looking forward to. It is the biggest addition in this month’s patch, which is supposed to strengthen the core of the game.

What do guilds that are PvE focused (who didn’t upgrade AoW because they don’t participate in PvP) have to look forward to in this patch? The only other major addition is the new sPvP map, which is also pointless to such a guild.

Normally I argue in favor of gating content and carry a somewhat elitist attitude, but this time the small / new guilds have a very legitimate complaint.

So the new content requires grinding to unlock? I’m sensing a pattern here…

To all the players suggesting that this is a good move:

Remember when ArenaNet first talked about the core concept of Guild Wars 2? They used terms like “player-driven” gameplay that promoted player freedom and accessible content. This, if is to be released as is, would be a great leap backwards from that mentality. Reasons why have already been covered above: Making Art of War 5 a requirements puts an extremely difficult entry level for this content that smaller guilds cannot reach as easily as larger guilds. This is a problem because not everyone enjoys joining large guilds and would rather have a small, personal, less than ten member guild of real-life friends. It also stops all new guilds from accessing this content, because farming 36,000 influence for Art of War 5 is no easy task. If the player base wants to keep content accessible and hold ArenaNet responsible for its very own claims, we need to pin them on their misjudgments and hold them accountable for their actions. Just about all the responses here are in protest at the absurdity of this plan. This release must not go uncontested.

This actually makes Leah Rivera’s blog-post look like AN INSULT TO THE PLAYERS!

Seriously. She states, in a different context, though – but still:““But what if my guild is super small?” you may say? Not to worry—”

Yeah, what if my guild is super small and there is no way on earth I can obtain the needed influence in order to enjoy the amazing new content on which I was really looking forward to!?

Arenanet is so funny: On one day, I am hyped because the trailer and the blog post read as if everything is amaaazing! But right on the next day, all my hype gets destroyed because of something like this. I’m on a very small guild which I don’t want to leave behind as I built guild bank and stuff nearly by myself! But our influence just isn’t enough for lvl 5 in every category (have to rush personal story with other characters now and have to pay 20g for influence, great!)

I understand that bigger guilds should have advantages with regard to those missions, but lvl 5 in every category is a bit too much in my opinion – it feels like i get excluded from content! Make it lvl 3 or something like that.

Well, I have to look for a big, all lvl 5-guild shortly -.-"

First time ever that i “rant” on the official forum … feels bad xD

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

I’m sorry, I gotta ask, who thought this was a good idea…? Who genuinely went “yeah, this is brilliant, let’s do this!” …?

You’re gating global guild content, something any guild will extensively want to do, something which, based on the information we’ve been given so far seems particularly PvE related, behind the highest and only PvP-exclusive gate?

Let’s look at this for a second – Guilds have 4 trees you can dump influence in:

• Architecture – Related to guild-wide buffs, like storage and research “perks”. Benefits roughly everyone on any kind of guild.
• Economy – Player-wide buffs, such as boost banners. Again, benefits roughly anyone on any kind of guild.
• Politics – Directed as “personalizing” your guild a bit more, through guild-clothing, emblems, etc. More optional than the above, but still interesting for roughly any guild.

…
…

• Art of War – Used exclusively for WvW related content. Only ever used by WvW-related guilds.

And THIS is the one you choose to gate your seemingly PvE oriented content with…? Level 5 of it, no less.

…Who thought of this…? Cause this just baffles me…