Guild Wars 2

The new Borderlands map is for everyone, not just people who buy (or will buy) Heart of Thorns. So, it’s not a beta of any sort for the expansion.

For all we know, it could get released in a few weeks if the stress test goes well.

Astralporing.1957:

At this moment it almost looks like Anet not only tried to mislead at least a part of the prepurchasers (ironically, the more trusting and less suspicious ones), but also decided to rub their noses in it.

It is not Anet’s problem. It is problem of education system. People can’t read. In game chat, ingame mail, LFG, dungeons, HoT description, HoT FAQ and even this thread.

I would have to agree with the OP in that the pre-purchasers should be the first pool that they send the “special invites” out to. It is not wrong to feel that being a loyal customer and putting your hard earned cash out there before you actually receive the item will entitle you to a front line status. That being said, I bought the Ultimate edition and am just happy to support a brand I love. I did not buy it to be in beta weekends. I bought it because, I love the game.

Grimrah.9256:

I would have to agree with the OP in that the pre-purchasers should be the first pool that they send the “special invites” out to. It is not wrong to feel that being a loyal customer and putting your hard earned cash out there before you actually receive the item will entitle you to a front line status. That being said, I bought the Ultimate edition and am just happy to support a brand I love. I did not buy it to be in beta weekends. I bought it because, I love the game.

How do you know they didn’t first look at streamers who had pre-purchased, then active WvW players who have pre-purchased, then to the next group, and so on and so forth? And got a reasonable sampling from each group.

Why should players who won’t get HoT be at the bottom of the list for a WvW oriented beta/stress test when WvW updates will be given out for everyone regardless of whether they buy HoT or not?

FrizzFreston.5290:

maddoctor.2738:

Miriam.2506:

Just bad for those people who paid 100€ for the game and just getting nothing with BETA Events now like promised. Even a Stress test is important and on stress tests servers should come to their breaking limit, so if a server has normally 10.000 players at stress tests those tested with maybe 12.000 to 15.000 to see where is the max limit for it.

So many as possible people should play and join those event. Having only 5% players at those maps, it not really stressing servers in any way. And I don’t think they setup only one server with this map for testing ??

It’s a test map not a whole server. Maps do not have capacity for 10k players they have capacity for less than 200. So giving access to everyone who pre-purchased would create insane queues (unless only ~200 players pre-purchased)

I thought a WvW map had at the very least 300v300v300?
Correct me if I’m wrong though. If they have a full server that’s quite a bigger amount though.

erm. no! have u ever experience a map with only 60v60v60? it is lag city right there. smc fights are unplayable if 2 zergs of around 40 plus 1 zerg of 60 hit. u literally stand there spamming 1111111 because no other skill will work. now that the map is bigger the cap might get raised a little, but cant be too much as there are all those pve events that will cause more lag. with 300v300v300 i think my graphic card would melt at the same time as gw2 would crash and not be playable for the next 3 days.

I’m not saying anything about performance, thats obviously why they’re doing this stress test. I was merely wondering what a wvw map allows. I thought the cap was set at 300 per side, but it probably could be 300 in total.

But yeah. You probably named the reason they are starting out small. While occlusion will likely prevent any melting of said graphics card.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

It is not Anet’s problem. It is problem of education system. People can’t read.

It’s not that people can’t read. It’s that most people are not naturally suspicious, and when they look at informations like that they do not automatically start to think about what is not said, and about ways such things can be circumvented.

Now, if you are suggesting that whenever Anet says something we should parse the sentences and think of all the ways in which whatever has been said (and what has been omitted) is likely to bite us in the behind, then, considering the current case (and several previous ones) you are likely right. Of course, assuming such approach is needed is the best proof of what i have been saying – things like that are a very bad PR.

Astralporing.1957:

It’s not that people can’t read. It’s that most people are not naturally suspicious, and when they look at informations like that they do not automatically start to think about what is not said, and about ways such things can be circumvented.

Now, if you are suggesting that whenever Anet says something we should parse the sentences and think of all the ways in which whatever has been said (and what has been omitted) is likely to bite us in the behind, then, considering the current case (and several previous ones) you are likely right. Of course, assuming such approach is needed is the best proof of what i have been saying – things like that are a very bad PR.

This actually reminds me of these ridiculous lawsuits that resulted in coffee being labeled as hot and microwaves being labeled not to use them for drying pets. I pre-purchased HoT and was never under the impression that this would grant me access to a WvW stress test they announced before; they even mentioned how they will pick the participants.

It’s kind of funny. The forums, and elsewhere, are full of comments asking that ArenaNet stop ‘dumbing down’ the game, yet demand that ArenaNet spell out in the simplest terms any official post so even the youngest individual would be able to understand.

So, is the playerbase in need of explicit instructions, or is the playerbase competent enough to do without?

It’s baffling. Well, to me, at least.

I guess what they should have done was invite everybody that prepurchased to the “limited number can attend” event and let there be queues with every PvE, PvP and WvW player who wants to try, all in line together.

“Thank you for attending our WvW stress test. You are number 10,573 in line. Your estimated wait time is 38 hours. At the prompt you will have 15 seconds to accept. If you don’t get in this time, the next stress test we will be doubling our numbers playing from 100 to 200!”

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I guess what they should have done was invite everybody that prepurchased to the “limited number can attend” event and let there be queues with every PvE, PvP and WvW player who wants to try, all in line together.

There were many things they could have done (but didn’t do) to avoid the problem. Once they have steppped into it however (offering beta access as a prepurchase bonus, needing to do a limited stress test shortly after that) the absolute minimum they could have done would have been to announce “We’ll be having a beta weekend at 11-12.07. Details will follow. Oh, by the way, we’ll be also having a WvW stress test on thursday 09.07, but due to the nature of that test, as we previously mentioned, access will be limited to a carefully selected number of active WvW players”.

Of course, the best option would have been making clear what the “access to all future HoT beta weekend events” actually means. If i am forced to parse it literally the only conclusion i can arrive at is that it doesn’t tell me anything. After all, they could stay completely true to what they wrote, and do no such event at all.

Astralporing.1957:

Of course, the best option would have been making clear what the “access to all future HoT beta weekend events” actually means. If i am forced to parse it literally the only conclusion i can arrive at is that it doesn’t tell me anything. After all, they could stay completely true to what they wrote, and do no such event at all.

But they are rather clear.

Beta (that is rather clear what that means)
Weekend (also rather clear, I even think I supplied the definition of Weekend earlier in the thread): Friday evening to Sunday.

Event: A specific thing. Not a Test, an Event.

Beta TEST is a test. Beta EVENT is an event.

The thing coming this week is a Stress Test. Thus it doesn’t really hit ANY of the things from the promised access statement.

It is not a beta, nor is it an event, nor is it on a weekend.

I don’t know if it’s possible the think of all the ways that someone can misunderstand something. When I saw the notice for the stress test and I saw it was only for a limited number of people and when I saw it wasn’t on the weekend and when I saw it was a stress test and not a beta, then all that was more than enough to tell me that it wasn’t a beta weekend event that I had paid for but something else entirely that didn’t qualify. I didn’t need it spelled out to me that it wasn’t what I paid for. To me it was obvious and apparently it was obvious to ANet also and they didn’t foresee the need to spell it out further.

The issue isn’t that they’re picking streamers rather than average players to promote the game. The issue is that they are cheaply trying to promote the game in a stress test where the game is to be stressed in situations experienced players know will cause low performance. But more importantly, they themselves announced the invites would go to only the most experienced and dedicated wvw players.

@zetsumei can you point me to the source of " they themselves announced the invites would go to only the most experienced and dedicated wvw players."

All I am seeing is:

“We’ll be holding our first stress test for the new World vs. World desert Borderlands on July 9 from 2:00 p.m to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7). This test will be conducted on a special server with limited space and will be by special invitation only.

If you’re not participating, we’ll be hosting a livestream starting from 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on the day of the test to guide you through the new Desert Borderlands. Participants will not be under nondisclosure agreements and will be welcome to stream and discuss their experiences.

We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!"

I am curious if there is a post or other source I missed. Thank you.

KOPPER.1458:

@zetsumei can you point me to the source of " they themselves announced the invites would go to only the most experienced and dedicated wvw players."

Their words were: This initial test will feature some of the most active WvW players in Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-wvw-desert-borderlands-stress-tests/

Apparently having over 5k hours spent in WvW and holding Diamond Rank is not active enough for an invite….

Oh I see. That was from May 8th. The key word is “SOME”.

That is very different from “they themselves announced the invites would go to ONLY the most experienced and dedicated wvw players.”

Big difference there. Also it doesn’t mean your aren’t active enough. Sadly it would seem you were not picked.

Zetsumei.4975:

The issue isn’t that they’re picking streamers rather than average players to promote the game. The issue is that they are cheaply trying to promote the game in a stress test where the game is to be stressed in situations experienced players know will cause low performance. But more importantly, they themselves announced the invites would go to only the most experienced and dedicated wvw players.

^This

Trajan.4953:

Zetsumei.4975:

The issue isn’t that they’re picking streamers rather than average players to promote the game. The issue is that they are cheaply trying to promote the game in a stress test where the game is to be stressed in situations experienced players know will cause low performance. But more importantly, they themselves announced the invites would go to only the most experienced and dedicated wvw players.

^This

Except for the part where they did not make that announcement.

Their words were: This initial test will feature some of the most active WvW players in Guild Wars 2.

I got invited into the WvW beta! Atm I’m downloading the client but it seems like I’m downloading EVERYTHING (all 300k files…) at 300KB/s so I may or may not be able to play in the beta in time xD

Although the selection doesn’t seem to be based on pre-orders because I have yet to pre-order HoT. As for my play time I’m only a Gold Assaulter but exclusively play WvW and no PvE content for the past year. And I occasionally tag up if that’s relevant