Guild Wars 2

so… i decided to leave guild wars two behind about 7-8 months back. my reasoning was that in terms of a pvp game, guild wars 2 just did not even come near cutting it compared to its predecessor. the e-sports thing, why? there has to be an actual game worth something (depth) in order to get the amount of people/resources to have an e-sport. guild wars was e-sport worthy in spades for many reasons. it was an EPIC pvp game for players of any level, once every two weeks on a sunday afternoon running about FA/JQ/AB, rounding off that pve title (lol) to those who committed a good part of their day to TA/HA/GvG, farming rank and working hard to stay on top of things and push the limits of the meta. guild wars pvp was incredibly exciting (spectate THAT!), and there was something for everyone.

just a note here. i did not list all of the pvp modes available in guild wars, just some that were high profile. each one of those had a very different set of objectives, from flat-out deathmatch to extreme strategy (and some formats had sub-maps where the objectives were different from one to the next!). epic every one. here in gw2 we have all of six maps of conquest and no real playerbase to pimp them out. OH! there’s WvW, but that’s basically conquest with a ton more people involved.

bout eight months later, i stick my head back in and i’m seeing the same problems with pvp in guild wars 2 that i did back then. we said the pvp game was/would be dead those months ago, and we were right.

so about this community y’all wanted to build…

Guild Wars has been out for seven years.

Guild Wars 2 has been out for nine and a half months.

If your only qualm with the game is a lack of content and depth, perhaps you should return in a year.

Personally, I’m enjoying what the game has to offer and I think it has a very solid base with a ton of future potential, so I plan on sticking around refining my skill for when PvP really takes off (whenever a new PvP system is implemented). PvP is really shallow right now, but it’s still quite fun in the same way an FPS is fun. Now that we’ve got custom tournaments we don’t even need to wait for the devs to begin community-driven events, so that’s what people have been doing. I honestly believe GW2 is only going to grow from here, despite people’s negative first impressions (which are really unjustified, considering many were made based on the Beta’s PvP… realistically WoW was in a worse place a year after release than GW2 was in Beta).

i cannot disagree with anything you just posted there, demon, but then most of what you posted was opinion. it’s hard for myself personally to share your optimism when the bulk of the actual work on guild wars 2 post-release was put into pve land.

hell, i’d rather be pocket-healing sins and turtles. it’s more interesting tbh.

i still check to see if fort aspenwood is seeing any play

Coffee.6394:

i cannot disagree with anything you just posted there, demon, but then most of what you posted was opinion. it’s hard for myself personally to share your optimism when the bulk of the actual work on guild wars 2 post-release was put into pve land.

hell, i’d rather be pocket-healing sins and turtles. it’s more interesting tbh.

I see what you’re saying, and in part I agree.

It is indubitable that in-game PvP right now is quite shallow— there is no visible rating, no rewards, nothing to aspire to except ranks/pvp exp which garners virtually no gratification. All gear you can get opens up only every ten ranks, with no real point to any levels in between, and the gear is generally lackluster until rank 80. The only gear which is impressive looking is tournament gear, which can be acquired from rank one, and you’ll likely have all of that before rank ten. There is a leaderboard, but it’s largely dysfunctional due to premades and solo queuers being clumped together, no display of rating, and no in-game support.

The way the game displays it, PvP is more like your typical bomb defusal match on CS:S. It’s fun in the moment, gratifying to win and to have good teamwork, but there’s really no point to it and to some it will get stale. Personally, I don’t mind this and I enjoy playing solely to improve and win more frequently.

That said, now there is a lot of incentive being derived outside of what the game supports. Organized teams are forming, there are tournaments popping up, and despite there being no official system to support it, there’s finally a real point to honing your skill. Custom tournaments allow you to scrim against players whom you know are of a high caliber. If you look at CAL, MLG, etc. you’ll see that systems like these definitely have the ability to expand. None of those leagues ever had any sort of in-game support like League of Legends, but all were incredibly successful due to a thriving and persistent community.

We don’t have to rely on the developers, that’s why I’m optimistic. Although I’m sure they do have further plans for PvP.