Guild Wars 2

@Actium
From what I hear, stacking somehow messes with rendering, effectively making it so people hard a hard time seeing any of the enemies. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what I heard.

@malixor Well the developers have stated that portal bombing is a legit tactic and not an exploit, even if the culling makes it worse than it should be. I don’t see how not taking a keep could be an exploit, even if it did give NSP a scare. If indeed there was hacking done to get inside keeps by Maguuma players, it was certainly a small group of kitten that nobody who plays WvW seriously on Maguuma wants anything to do with (though I’d like you to explain how you ruled out the possibility of a hiding mesmer). Hacking of this type has occurred on almost every server and it comes down to a few bad apples ruining the game for us all.

However if your righteous indignation over their actions requires you to start an alliance or make yourself out to be the defender of morality and fair play on the forums, go ahead. Maguuma has lost every match for weeks so we don’t really care about the score, and I suppose whoever’s green deserves to play the bad guy in the forums drama.

I do not know if you are ignorant or trolling. But the mechanic abused was a rendering issue, where they cannot be seen. Not to be confused with the previous invisible bug. But a clearly stated issue in which both NSP and DH have been seen, even other Maguuma people have acknowledged this. Have you even read any other post here

I’m sorry but this is not abuse. If you gather any significant number of players in one place you will get culling. You may not be aware of this but we encounter large numbers of Darkhaven players that cull purely because theres a large number of them in a very small area.

As you climb up the rankings, this issue will become more and more prevalent because you will start to play very high population servers with much higher WvW attendance than Maguuma.

We do not stack and zerg to take advantage of culling. Culling is a byproduct of stacking and zerging. We stack and zerg for unit discipline. We ideally want a critical mass of players in one spot that move as a single entity, that can split and reform without losing members in the process. There are many advantages to this kind of behaviour – everyone in the unit is focused on the same objective and we can achieve things in numbers that no individual can alone. It is supported by aoe mechanics, area buffs and combo fields in this game. Many aoe damage skills only affect 5 targets at once. Many area buffs affect more than that so there is protection in this. It is basically shoaling.

All higher tier servers will have organized presence that shoals. I think we just happen to do it very effectively with a very limited number of players and very limited timezone coverage.

How do you protect against culling? This is an issue of situational awareness. If you watch your map regularly you should be looking at all crossed swords and based on the time it takes for objectives to flip you can estimate the size of the fighting force at those locations and the direction they are travelling in. This is one method to anticipate engagement of a fighting force where culling will happen.

The second is that we use targeting reticles on our allies, not our enemies. We do this because we often field commanders that do not have an icon. We use the targeting reticle to control stack so we can always see the point at which we need to stack on. This requires a certain amount of unit discipline because all the members in each party must not reset the targeting reticle (i.e. by calling a target on an enemy, since it will take the targeting reticle off our stack point).

If you engage a fighting force that is culling or which you anticipate will produce culling, you need to cycle targets to detect invisible enemies and you need to alterate target nearest to see how far and how many are pushing beyond the visible units. Then you need to spread aoes out until you create damage numbers and inform the stack in voice comms where to target aoe.

To protect against an enemy force that you do not know the size of due to culling, you need to stack. We use tactics and protect against tactics that attempt to break a stack prematurely. For instance, we encourage all of our players to have a key bound to toggle walk, because one method of breaking a stack is to use fear, so that players run out of the stack. However, if they are walking when stacked and they get feared, they will walk out the stack instead of run, thus maintaining stack integrity. Another method to break a stack is to use area damage that is not affected by the 5 target limit. Arrow carts are a good example. You should be pre sieging your keeps and towers and deploying things like arrow carts in anticipation of an assault where we utilize stacking. But to do that you need a commander who can actually read map movement and the number of enemies + direction purely from the map. You need players that consciously try to keep max supply on them at all times.

This is no secret. It is effective use of game mechanics. I am telling you exactly how to break us because I don’t think you can on even terms. Even though I’ve told you how to break us, you still need to communication and unit discipline to execute it and I don’t feel you can.

There are many ways in which to deal with culling but it requires organisation and it requires you to play as a team, not as a collection of individuals pulling in different directions.

I think we have very good unit discipline and when we play split forces, we try to maintain as much of that discipline between teams on the same borderland. All of this information is publically diseminated on Maguuma and we encourage all Maguuma players to play with us, see how it works and why its important. If anyone from Maguuma needs help understanding the mechanics of this, please hit me up in WvW and I will show you.

Portal bombing is being used to take advantage of the player culling, it is not being used how it should be. These people are not using it to strategically place a portal to flank… They are stacking players and just taking a portal over and over in the same spot to abuse rendering. I use my portal all the time to get a positional advantage… That’s a completely different thing. Anet has confirmed the player culling is not working properly and they are working in it… Using a skill to abuse a system that is currently acting weird is pretty much and exploit.

If I was standing in a battle and all of a sudden a mesmer appeared behind me and surrounded us, awesome job. If you are standing in the same spot, spamming F to portal over and over in the SAME spot to messing with remainder… Not awesome.

Also every AoE is limited to a # of targets, catapulting a horde standing inside each other will not work… Not working as intended in my opinion (at least for siege).

Culling is a byproduct of portal bombing. You want to be portal bombing often and many higher tier servers use it far more often than we do. We would like to use it more because it is a great way to conceal numbers and it can be used to set up surprise flanks. If executed well, it can be used to break an enemy force’s discipline because it is disorienting. It can also be disorienting for the team doing the portal bomb since they won’t know necessarily know what direction they will be facing and where they need to attack once they get out of the exit portal. It is up to the portal Mesmer to relay that information to the rest of the team so they can combo field/area might and move stack immediately on exit. This again comes down to unit discipline.

Besetment.9187:

I do not know if you are ignorant or trolling. But the mechanic abused was a rendering issue, where they cannot be seen. Not to be confused with the previous invisible bug. But a clearly stated issue in which both NSP and DH have been seen, even other Maguuma people have acknowledged this. Have you even read any other post here

I’m sorry but this is not abuse. If you gather any significant number of players in one place you will get culling. You may not be aware of this but we encounter large numbers of Darkhaven players that cull purely because theres a large number of them in a very small area.

As you climb up the rankings, this issue will become more and more prevalent because you will start to play very high population servers with much higher WvW attendance than Maguuma.

We do not stack and zerg to take advantage of culling. Culling is a byproduct of stacking and zerging. We stack and zerg for unit discipline. We ideally want a critical mass of players in one spot that move as a single entity, that can split and reform without losing members in the process. There are many advantages to this kind of behaviour – everyone in the unit is focussed on the same objective and we can achieve things in numbers that no individual can alone. It is supported by aoe mechanics in this game, whereby aoe only affects 5 targets at once so there is protection in this. It is basically shoaling.

All higher tier servers will have organized presence that shoals. I think we just happen to do it very effectively with a very limited number of players and very limited timezone coverage.

How do you protect against culling? This is an issue of situational awareness. If you watch your map regularly you should be looking at all crossed swords and based on the time it takes for objectives to flip you can estimate the size of the fighting force at those locations and the direction they are travelling in. This is one method to anticipate engagement of a fighting force where culling will happen.

The second is that we use targeting reticles on our allies, not our enemies. We do this because we often field commanders that do not have an icon. We use the targeting reticle to control stack so we can always see the point at which we need to stack on. This requires a certain amount of unit discipline because all the members in each party must not reset the targeting reticle (i.e. by calling a target on an enemy, since it will take the targeting reticle off our stack point).

If you engage a fighting force that is culling or which you anticipate will produce culling, you need to cycle targets to detect invisible enemies and you need to alterate target nearest to see how far and how many are pushing beyond the visible units. Then you need to spread aoes out until you create damage numbers and inform the stack in voice comms where to target aoe.

There are many ways in which to deal with culling but it requires organisation and it requires you to play as a team, not as a collection of individuals pulling in different directions.

I think we have very good unit discipline and when we play split forces, we try to maintain as much of that discipline between teams on the same borderland. All of this information is publically diseminated on Maguuma and we encourage all Maguuma players to play with us, see how it works and why its important. If anyone from Maguuma needs help understanding the mechanics of this, please hit me up in WvW and I will show you.

Then player protection spells need to be limited to 5 people as a balance, the system is flawed. So many open world pvp MMOs do not limit down to such a small number, stacking that many players should be a negative, not a positive. Is it a design flaw? Possibly, but I’m not Anet so I won’t know their full understanding on choosing it. I guess it’s up to the people doing it to justify it, but it personally ruins any immersion in a battle for me. I believe people should be spread out to AVOID AoE, not stacking to survive it.

As to the other person with the righteous comment, maybe I am that way. I believe in good competition without having to worry about abusing flaws. Do I expect everyone to play clean? No… But I wish many would. I’ve been playing MMOs for far too long and I’ve seen many games taken down by these type of players. But, in my ignorance I seem to always try to battle it and rally people to play with “honor”. I naively always put my faith in people and I won’t stop.

Culling effects all aspects of the game. Should we not be able to jump off walls and run back through the door because those attacking the gate beneath won’t be able to see us if enough of us jump off and run back in fast enough? Regardless here’s an Anet response to someone complaining about the portals, complete with culling: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/237860-wvsw-is-unplayable-because-of-mesmer-portal-abuse/

As for the stacking, while all aoe is limited several including certain siege can hit more than five. I’m sure Anet deliberately set the number for each skill and considered how it would affect WvW balance. The system as it is now rewards players who co-ordinate and stick together, sounds working as intended to me.

Thankfully neither my opinion nor yours in the end matters, only the developers can determine what is an exploit and punish people appropriately. Usually I just report people I think are hacking or exploiting and let Anet figure it out, but next time I guess I’ll make an alliance with the weakest server and guarantee mine the win.

I’m not going to second guess what anet did or did not intend but as you climb the rankings, you will inevitably encounter all of the above. If you ever play Sea of Sorrows 2.0, be prepared to defend against shoaling, culling, portal bombing etc. on a massive scale. I think we showed them that it can be defended against. We just couldn’t do it 24 hours a day for a week and we lost pretty badly on points.

Lastly, not all aoe damage has a 5 target limit. If you want to play clever, if you want to improve yourselves as players and thus improve your teams and lift up your server, you should try to understand what aoe damage is affected by the 5 person limit and you should actively use the ones that are not to break stack. Then you should give that knowledge to others and train up your newbies so they can shoal with you.

Zerging and stacking in this game has a real bad image, like its a mindless thing. If done properly, it is anything but mindless. It is basically lots of players that unite together under a single command to overcome all weakness. It requires planning, organisation and perfect communication. A zerg and a stack should be capable of splitting up and reforming without losing any players. If you can’t do this, you aren’t doing it right.

Mandena.6109:

Darkhaven is literally the best and most honorable server.

P.S. Goons are literally the worst.

Can we avoid posts like this please? And can we please stop bickering at each other? I think we can all agree, if the Maguuma players are doing this stacking thing in order to make it harder for us to render them, then it is cheap no matter how many higher tier servers do it. If they’re just doing it for organization, then it’s fair even though it has that secondary effect of making it hard for us to even see them.

Now, how about we make this thread more positive and less negative? I’m very impressed by Maguuma’s ability to break a siege—it’s not something I’ve encountered in any of the opponents I’ve played. They’ll run out in a large zerg and destroy all siege, it’s very well coordinated and organized.

Anyhow, for those saying Maguuma doesn’t have much in the way of numbers, I’ll have to respectfully disagree. I play from afternoon well into the early morning, and I see a very strong showing from Maguuma at all times. Even during the night, when I’m fighting them, they always have a zerg up somewhere on the map, and they defend capably against our assaults.

Mandena.6109:

Darkhaven is literally the best and most honorable server.

P.S. Goons are literally the worst.

I do hope you realize that Maguuma isn’t full of Goons. The vast majority of Maguumans are from other guilds.

Just so you know, in Maguuma borderlands today I was in a public WvW orientation class on these tactics. Stacking and breaking stack was demonstrated outside South East Tower a few hours ago, as part of the lesson. We all went /sleep to return to spawn as one unit (just in case any Darkhaven players were confused about why we didn’t even attack the tower but mass suicided instead). We were in class and we still rolled the living daylights out of you.

Rather annoyingly, you took our West Keep whilst we were in class detailing our communication structure around about the time we were moving onto keep strategy and siege points. So we quickly rolled West Keep to allow the lesson to continue.

We don’t mind losing to people who play intelligently because at the end of the day, its a game and we like being challenged by intelligent, organized foes, whether we win or lose. Darkhaven does not have intelligent command and it is not organized. It can if enough of you show enough interest in learning how the game works and spreading the knowledge. If you ever play Fort Aspenwood, Sea of Sorrows 2.0 or anyone higher up the board with the attitudes on display in this thread, they will utterly destroy you.

You should be attempting to pass on good strategy and tactics to all your players so they are capable of it. It will take us time and effort and we will lose alot on the way, but we think we are building a really good community here by not leaving anyone behind.

Besetment.9187:

Lastly, not all aoe damage has a 5 target limit. If you want to play clever, if you want to improve yourselves as players and thus improve your teams and lift up your server, you should try to understand what aoe damage is affected by the 5 person limit and you should actively use the ones that are not to break stack. Then you should give that knowledge to others and train up your newbies so they can shoal with you.

Zerging and stacking in this game has a real bad image, like its a mindless thing. If done properly, it is anything but mindless. It is basically lots of players that unite together under a single command to overcome all weakness. It requires planning, organisation and perfect communication. A zerg and a stack should be capable of splitting up and reforming without losing any players. If you can’t do this, you aren’t doing it right.

Why get better when they can just join you? Much easier!

Darkhaven has come a long way now. It used to be disorganized, but now it’s starting to be more organized and tactical.

And if you want to go further, you will have to drop this whole idea that the tactics we use are abusive. Those tactics will save you against higher tier servers.

Besetment, I agree. But the biggest problem NSP has is the migration and lack of participation of fairweather players. Outmanned at primetime on saturday means your server gave up already.

Radiodread.8469:

Besetment, I agree. But the biggest problem NSP has is the migration and lack of participation of fairweather players. Outmanned at primetime on saturday means your server gave up already.

We have this problem too. We had outmanned buff during NA prime time today in Maguuma and Darkhaven borderlands. But if we build a really good community that has the means to support itself, we will make players that will bring our server up. If we have to continue losing to get more people involved and ready for high level WvW then so be it. Part of this involves letting go of ego. I’ll exert control of a borderland in the absence of a commander. If there is currently someone in command that is making an absolute hash job of things, I will follow along and let the group and the commander make their mistake.

Making mistakes is not a problem as long as everyone understands why things went wrong and makes an effort not to repeat the mistake in future. I learn alot from this game by sitting in voice comms without the game loaded and listening to people making a mess of things. The commander making the mistake has to learn for himself why something didn’t work and this is part of the learning process.

You should have no ego in this game because individuals are not important. The integrity of the shoal is important.

I understand that some people do not like losing. We try to win when we can but winning has to be fun otherwise it cannot sustain itself. We are trying to make WvW really fun and to cultivate an environment where newbies are not afraid to make mistakes as long as they learn from them. We encourage karma trains where possible, even if they are not the best means to win, because it allows players to get something from WvW that they sometimes don’t get from doing the important, time consuming grunt work of WvW play like commanding and escorting yaks. People like to pimp out their characters and get gold and karma so if there is a way to do that and fulfill objectives at the same time, we should do it.

Ideally we want people involved in karma train type play to understand how it fits into WvW play and we want them to be good at WvW too. Its no good for anyone if only a few players can be trusted to lead when we can develop leadership instincts and skills in as many people as possible. I’ve seen whole borderlands collapse when a commander logs out and thats really bad. If we have others who want to step up, they can and should and everyone else in leadership roles can take a backseat or take a break from the game.

From past experience, nobody should ruin their lives or other people’s downtime over a computer game. I have never seen ego work in any team based multiplayer game. All it does is result in schisms.

Besetment.9187:

Just so you know, in Maguuma borderlands today I was in a public WvW orientation class on these tactics. Stacking and breaking stack was demonstrated outside South East Tower a few hours ago, as part of the lesson. We all went /sleep to return to spawn as one unit (just in case any Darkhaven players were confused about why we didn’t even attack the tower but mass suicided instead). We were in class and we still rolled the living daylights out of you.

Rather annoyingly, you took our West Keep whilst we were in class detailing our communication structure around about the time we were moving onto keep strategy and siege points. So we quickly rolled West Keep to allow the lesson to continue.

We don’t mind losing to people who play intelligently because at the end of the day, its a game and we like being challenged by intelligent, organized foes, whether we win or lose. Darkhaven does not have intelligent command and it is not organized. It can if enough of you show enough interest in learning how the game works and spreading the knowledge. If you ever play Fort Aspenwood, Sea of Sorrows 2.0 or anyone higher up the board with the attitudes on display in this thread, they will utterly destroy you.

You should be attempting to pass on good strategy and tactics to all your players so they are capable of it. It will take us time and effort and we will lose alot on the way, but we think we are building a really good community here by not leaving anyone behind.

You’re a little too harsh with your words. First point I’d have to make is that we beat you with even numbers quite frequently. Unless your server is virtually deserted, you should have a very large prime time showing, and we’re still beating you.

Secondly, we are trying to learn, we’re trying very, very hard. You do realize that we’ve been stuck in the bottom 3 tiers for the entire time except for this last matchup, correct? We were the kings of a small pond. Now that we’re being introduced to the ocean, obviously we’re not hip to all the cool new things that it has to offer (such as stacking). We do have to improve, we’ve got a long way to go, but we’re determined, we will improve.

We proved that we were able to adapt, first when Yak’s Bend spanked us by night capping. Some of us cried about it, others did something about it. The HNN took over our night crew. When the HNN stepped in, we dominated the entire night (and we have dominated the night for 4 weeks, except for 3 days where we were contested by SoR). Then we saw our prime time performance being very, very weak. We could not match SoR or SF. Now look at us, we’re doing very well during prime time against Maguuma and NSP — both servers who are far stronger than SF or SoR were at the time we were dominated. Next will be improving our morning showing and organization, it’s already better than it was last week.

We are improving, we will continue to improve. We will adapt, we will learn from you and we will use the tactics you taught us to get better. We may be the new guys on the block, but we’re determined. It may not always be as smooth as it has been, we might even start losing soon, but we’ll learn and adapt.

I was a bit harsh and I apologize. It just grinds me when people accuse Maguuma of hacking and abusing game mechanics and of being undesirables when the opposite is closer to the truth. We have not had a single confirmed cheating allegation. We do not abuse game mechanics and I explained above why that is. There are some things we don’t do because we felt they were actually abusive and would be bannable. We do not use the trick to bypass East Keep outer and inner gate. We do not publicize how it works and anet should probably fix it. We do not use the trick where you can glitch players through a Garrison door when it is partially upgraded. We do not publicize how it works and anet should probably fix it.

But what annoys me more than any of the above is people revelling in their own ignorance. I’d like Darkhaven to succeed too and I’d like a good fight on even terms. It doesn’t matter who wins or loses. We can’t always have commanders on and sometimes we have even numbers but a commander logged and we have nobody left to coordinate the stack and zerg. I have seen whole borderlands collapse because of the sudden absence of leadership. So thats why we had a WvW orientation class today and anyone without an ego, turned up and turned their commander icon off (if they had one). I recognised many of the names that showed up and they will all turn into great WvW players as long as they have that ego free attitude and the willingness to learn.

With that said, when we have leadership and the numbers, I believe we are very difficult to defeat. The people we have passing on their knowledge really set this server apart. Even if we end up dead last, I’ll never leave.

The part about FA, SoS 2.0 and the higher tier servers is unfortunately true. If you want to make rank you better start learning how to stack and zerg properly, or they will kill all of you 10 times over. Whether those communities can sustain their WvW capability in the face of defeat (which is inevitable at some point) is another question for another thread.

1st off night capping. Night capping is fine. I just got my tushy trounced by it last week and night capping is still fine. People play when they play, and that means they don’t play other times.

2. Portal bombing and others things may or may not be exploiting. It’s currently in a grey area. Just because the devs said portal bombing is fine doesn’t mean they said portal bombing is fine exactly the way you are using it.

I imagine balance decisions will be made and there will be an epic flood of whining and tears long overdue. Much like thieves and stealth.

Lastly, remember that something being “legit” doesn’t mean it isn’t cheap or dishonorable. Being the #1 server that used every legal but underhanded play in the book doesn’t make you good players IMO. It makes you good at cheating the system.

Ralathar.7236:

2. Portal bombing and others things may or may not be exploiting. It’s currently in a grey area. Just because the devs said portal bombing is fine doesn’t mean they said portal bombing is fine exactly the way you are using it.

I imagine balance decisions will be made and there will be an epic flood of whining and tears long overdue. Much like thieves and stealth.

Lastly, remember that something being “legit” doesn’t mean it isn’t cheap or dishonorable. Being the #1 server that used every legal but underhanded play in the book doesn’t make you good players IMO. It makes you good at cheating the system.

I guess all of the top tier servers are good at cheating the system, then? It seems like most of you simply don’t understand that you’re a minority by a long shot in disagreeing with these tactics. If they balance what we do, that’s fine with us. That doesn’t mean it was underhanded, it means it was overpowered. Otherwise, by your analogy, playing a thief is “underhanded”.

Also, witness Maguuma’s magnificent and superior tactics:

Ralathar.7236:

Lastly, remember that something being “legit” doesn’t mean it isn’t cheap or dishonorable. Being the #1 server that used every legal but underhanded play in the book doesn’t make you good players IMO. It makes you good at cheating the system.

Consider this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Perma-Stealth-During-Combat-Thief-Glitching/first and Enenion’s response. A Thief utilising his stealth skills to full effect is an exploit. Portal bombing a zerg repeatedly is an exploit. Jumping off a wall in force and running back through the door is an exploit.

The problem is culling and it effects everyone. If your zerg can’t see or target an enemy stack they almost certainly can’t see or target you either. Your invisible moral line of what is and isn’t acceptable isn’t really much use, because where is it really? Can I portal bomb your siege twice, but if I do it ten times it’s an exploit? I can take 10 people through but not fifteen? etc etc

Skapocalypse.5236

The portal hopping is fine it’s intended game mechanic but staying in one spot to avoid AOE and abusing the rendering is an abuse of game mechanics. I don’t see Northern Shiverpeaks doing this I don’t see DarkHaven doing this. In fact this is the first server I have seen doing it. Just because other servers before us were abusing it against you doesn’t mean they were any more right in abusing it then you are now. But stay classy and say whatever you want to help you sleep at night.

Every server in T1-T4 portal bombs and stacks . If you ever move up, you will see this in every single match. It’s not an exploit in any way shape or form. Every other server we’ve fought knows how to counter it (Mag does as well), too bad DH hasn’t figured it out yet… It’s not even hard.

You low tier servers are always a laugh.

Actually, I have to agree with just about everything Besetment from Maguuma wrote. I do take issue with his one statement that “Darkhaven does not have intelligent command and it is not organized.” I do dispute that, but I also acknowledge we have a ways to go on that front because we are not perfect.

I really don’t have an issue with rendering glitches because as stated so many times, there are ways to react to them and ways to counter them. We DO need to learn those ways if we hope to be competitive in the next brackets.

Unfortunately, while we take the high road and choose not to abuse them, it is inevitable that other servers will view this as a legitimate tactic, even if they won’t admit its abusing a glitch in the game mechanics.

Nevertheless, I have heard that it’s not only commonplace in most of the higher-tier servers, they are also far more organized exploiting such glitches than we’ve seen from Maguuma.

It’s a pity your class was interrupted, Besetment. I try to take advantage of the last couple days of decent leads to organize some training with pubs too, but it’s hard. I’ve been working on rehearsing one advanced (legitimate) tactic when other servers pops drop off because small group coordination is something we still need improvement, as server that is.

We have some really good guilds, with leaders and commanders that pull off some sweet stuff almost exclusively with members of their guilds. But so far as introducing our pubs and WvW newbies to some advanced concepts it’s a challenge to say the least, especially when they don’t understand what the end result is supposed to produce.

Anyway, I’m saving some of these advanced things, practicing them with pubs when I can, as sort of the ace up our sleeve, the surprise play to call when we start falling behind. It’s the Hail Mary football toss that’s risky to try, but can produce the big results right when you need them.

But if DH players are modest enough to look at our own weaknesses, some really good advice can be taken from Besetment’s comments, even if we disagree with portions of it. We still have a ways to go, as a learning/improving server.

Now with that said, I really have no problem with any of the shady tactics because as I said before, we just have to live with them until Anet makes a ruling and corrects the code. What I DO have a serious problem with is, some Maguuma players doing things that we can do absolutely nothing about to stop or prevent. We can’t even report and the folks behind it sit comfortably in their chairs, laughing their bottoms off that their main account is safe from any banning.

On my next post I will explain how folks are setting this up, for all those nay-sayers who think I’m just blowing smoke. (I’m doing it as a separate post because it will probably get deleted by mods, and don’t want what I wrote above to be lost).

There are free trials on this game. I’ve never set this up myself, so I’m not sure of the exact conditions that produce it but basically, anyone can set up a a fresh account to go to whatever server they want.

What you do is create a new account and try to purchase GW2 using a bogus credit card. I don’t know if it has to be an expired card or one without available credit or whatever. But when the payment is declined, Anet gives the player a 3-day grace period to resolve their billing issue. BAM! There’s your trial account and Anet naturally does not advertise that. Now combine that with someone running multiple VMs, using some IP masking or a proxy to protect their own IP and you’ve got your infiltrator(s) on other servers burning supply.

Rhyis.7058:

Skapocalypse.5236

The portal hopping is fine it’s intended game mechanic but staying in one spot to avoid AOE and abusing the rendering is an abuse of game mechanics. I don’t see Northern Shiverpeaks doing this I don’t see DarkHaven doing this. In fact this is the first server I have seen doing it. Just because other servers before us were abusing it against you doesn’t mean they were any more right in abusing it then you are now. But stay classy and say whatever you want to help you sleep at night.

Every server in T1-T4 portal bombs and stacks . If you ever move up, you will see this in every single match. It’s not an exploit in any way shape or form. Every other server we’ve fought knows how to counter it (Mag does as well), too bad DH hasn’t figured it out yet… It’s not even hard.

You low tier servers are always a laugh.

Yeah, sorry for not being a high tier server. We weren’t as lucky as you, we didn’t get tons of highly organized guilds to join our server at launch. The only reason we’re even here is because we worked really hard to get organized. So laugh at us as much as you want. We’re new to the higher tiers, and we can’t help it. Oh, and by the way, I regret to inform you, if you’re from Maguuma you are now a low tier server just like the rest of us—welcome to the family.

P.S. I still haven’t formed an opinion on the subject, but the phrase “all the cool kids are doing it” is what’s coming to mind every time I hear someone (except the gentleman I was talking to earlier) describes why it’s okay for Maguuma to do what it’s doing.

Like I said before, there is simply no organized effort to do so. I would also like to know where you heard from that Maguuma people were doing this.

If indeed that has been happening I think you and other DH players are unfairly using it to tar the reputation of the entire server. Unless you are suggesting any of the guilds on Maguuma are deliberately orchestrating such a strategy, which is frankly insane.

Arius.7031:

Rhyis.7058:

Skapocalypse.5236

The portal hopping is fine it’s intended game mechanic but staying in one spot to avoid AOE and abusing the rendering is an abuse of game mechanics. I don’t see Northern Shiverpeaks doing this I don’t see DarkHaven doing this. In fact this is the first server I have seen doing it. Just because other servers before us were abusing it against you doesn’t mean they were any more right in abusing it then you are now. But stay classy and say whatever you want to help you sleep at night.

Every server in T1-T4 portal bombs and stacks . If you ever move up, you will see this in every single match. It’s not an exploit in any way shape or form. Every other server we’ve fought knows how to counter it (Mag does as well), too bad DH hasn’t figured it out yet… It’s not even hard.

You low tier servers are always a laugh.

Yeah, sorry for not being a high tier server. We weren’t as lucky as you, we didn’t get tons of highly organized guilds to join our server at launch. The only reason we’re even here is because we worked really hard to get organized. So laugh at us as much as you want. We’re new to the higher tiers, and we can’t help it. Oh, and by the way, I regret to inform you, if you’re from Maguuma you are now a low tier server just like the rest of us—welcome to the family.

P.S. I still haven’t formed an opinion on the subject, but the phrase “all the cool kids are doing it” is what’s coming to mind every time I hear someone (except the gentleman I was talking to earlier) describes why it’s okay for Maguuma to do what it’s doing.

We are fully aware that we’re on the way down and that you’re blaming us for bringing high tier tactics with us.

Apparently I need to be careful with what I say here, lest infractions get imposed.

On Friday, the Goon squad did this tactic where they stacked on top of each other. As we know, there is an odd rendering issue going on where people will not appear visible even when they’re right next to you. It gets worse when more people in small are involved, allowing large groups of people to not appear at all, or appear in very little numbers.

It gets especially bad when those people stand on top of each other, allowing zergs of people to walk around silently with people taking them for granted.

Since I am not allowed to have an opinion on this matter, that is all I am going to say.

saiyr,

I’m sorry, when did I blame you for doing anything? A quote would be great. I merely said the excuse that “everyone else is doing it” does not work. I said specifically that I haven’t formed an opinion on whether it’s right or wrong, because Besetment was kind enough to explain how it is from your guys point of view.

Kita.7819:

Apparently I need to be careful with what I say here, lest infractions get imposed.

On Friday, the Goon squad did this tactic where they stacked on top of each other. As we know, there is an odd rendering issue going on where people will not appear visible even when they’re right next to you. It gets worse when more people in small are involved, allowing large groups of people to not appear at all, or appear in very little numbers.

It gets especially bad when those people stand on top of each other, allowing zergs of people to walk around silently with people taking them for granted.

Since I am not allowed to have an opinion on this matter, that is all I am going to say.

The guardian bubble appearing out of nowhere should be pretty obvious. I’ve seen a Darkhaven tower with projectiles flying off of it where everyone was invisible. I don’t really buy your argument.

Arius.7031:

saiyr,

I’m sorry, when did I blame you for doing anything? A quote would be great. I merely said the excuse that “everyone else is doing it” does not work. I said specifically that I haven’t formed an opinion on whether it’s right or wrong, because Besetment was kind enough to explain how it is from your guys point of view.

Having such a pejorative phrase used against us seems like an opinion to me. But maybe that’s just me.

Kita.7819:

Apparently I need to be careful with what I say here, lest infractions get imposed.

On Friday, the Goon squad did this tactic where they stacked on top of each other. As we know, there is an odd rendering issue going on where people will not appear visible even when they’re right next to you. It gets worse when more people in small are involved, allowing large groups of people to not appear at all, or appear in very little numbers.

It gets especially bad when those people stand on top of each other, allowing zergs of people to walk around silently with people taking them for granted.

Since I am not allowed to have an opinion on this matter, that is all I am going to say.

The issue you’re referring to is culling, and it will kick in based on the total number of characters in your area the server is trying to tell you about. If you are fighting an invisible stack, the stack is almost always fighting an invisible you. The stack is just making it more obvious to you just how bad the culling actually is (hence people getting upset when they haven’t seen it before). A detailed explanation of culling from a developer can be found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa/c6nv7o2

Hopefully it will be fixed soon so everyone can use their portals and stealths to their hearts content without being labelled dastardly ne’er-do-wells.

Enjoy taking the high road and “playing fair” Darkhaven, you will eventually regret it. You should be thanking Maguuma for teaching you a thing or two on how to WvW at an upper tier.

I was in WvW all night, Darkhaven borderlands, and of all the zergs we encountered maybe 3-4 of them actually wiped us. Why did we get wiped you ask? because we couldn’t see you just like you couldn’t see us. Culling works both ways, we just adapt ways to be effective while its happening. Stack up, place heals, guardian bubbles, work as one solid unit, when enemy is disoriented burst out and catch them off guard. For you to say that is an exploit is just flat out ridiculous.

How can you honestly not sit there and watch people use effective tactics and not say to yourselves “Wow, maybe we should try that?”. You immediately get all pissy like little girls and assume exploiting? Give me a break. I had a blast in WvW tonight but apparently you guys didn’t…oh well sucks for you I guess. Apparently Darkhaven is so righteous and true they would NEVER use such tactics! I cannot wait until you guys hop up a bracket or two…god are you in for a rude awakening.

hobbes.6178:

Enjoy taking the high road and “playing fair” Darkhaven, you will eventually regret it. You should be thanking Maguuma for teaching you a thing or two on how to WvW at an upper tier.

I was in WvW all night, Darkhaven borderlands, and of all the zergs we encountered maybe 3-4 of them actually wiped us. Why did we get wiped you ask? because we couldn’t see you just like you couldn’t see us. Culling works both ways, we just adapt ways to be effective while its happening. Stack up, place heals, guardian bubbles, work as one solid unit, when enemy is disoriented burst out and catch them off guard. For you to say that is an exploit is just flat out ridiculous.

How can you honestly not sit there and watch people use effective tactics and not say to yourselves “Wow, maybe we should try that?”. You immediately get all pissy like little girls and assume exploiting? Give me a break. I had a blast in WvW tonight but apparently you guys didn’t…oh well sucks for you I guess. Apparently Darkhaven is so righteous and true they would NEVER use such tactics! I cannot wait until you guys hop up a bracket or two…god are you in for a rude awakening.

Are we now? Rall is a tier above us. When we faced Rall, everything was going well before the hacker issue came up. We held our own against Rall. Because of that, we plummeted to the bottom. Then we rose a tier. Then we rose another. No one knows for sure where Darkhaven’s “average” tier is. What I do know however, is that its not here.

Didn’t Sanctum of Rall also get transfers from high tier guilds that are probably using the same tactics as us?

Having such a pejorative phrase used against us seems like an opinion to me. But maybe that’s just me.

Saiyr,

I’m pretty sure that is just you. Because I said that a lot of the people who were defending Maguuma’s actions were justifying it by saying all the high tier servers do it… Which is no different than saying all the cool kids do it.

That’s a fact, if it offends you, that’s extremely odd.

@hobbes: regarding your quote, “Enjoy taking the high road and “playing fair” Darkhaven, you will eventually regret it. You should be thanking Maguuma for teaching you a thing or two on how to WvW at an upper tier.”

I was thinking the exact same thing! I do thank you for this. I’d much rather be learning it from a server we can stomp than a server that will stomp us. Yes, we are in for a wake-up call when we move up a bracket or two and Maguuma is our alarm clock right now.

You have been a blessing for us. We are grateful. Thanks for giving us the lessons, the opportunity to grow and improve, all while we retain a very good chance of beating you with fair play.

I’m not even trying to be smug about this. I know it totally comes across as smug, but I feel fortunate that DH is learning the ropes while it doesn’t cost us very much in doing so.

Kita.7819:

Are we now? Rall is a tier above us. When we faced Rall, everything was going well before the hacker issue came up. We held our own against Rall. Because of that, we plummeted to the bottom. Then we rose a tier. Then we rose another. No one knows for sure where Darkhaven’s “average” tier is. What I do know however, is that its not here.

Your night capping ability is what is saving you. Don’t worry I am not bashing it, I respect that it is part of the game. Maguuma has always had a very weak presence at night. We have always died off around 12-1am EST and dont start back up strong until maybe noon the next day. We always lose any lead we had, and any gap closing we achieved during those hours. I honestly don’t care about losing, I just enjoy WvW. It just boggles my mind that people say we are exploiting and that you should honestly learn to adapt now before its to late.

This is the part where you quote me and disagree with everything I said with some argument that could possibly be valid but most likely not and in the end we just don’t care. Maguuma wants to have fun, and that is what we are doing. If you think we are exploiting then so be it. Have fun your way and we will have fun our way.

Arius.7031:

Besetment.9187:

Just so you know, in Maguuma borderlands today I was in a public WvW orientation class on these tactics. Stacking and breaking stack was demonstrated outside South East Tower a few hours ago, as part of the lesson. We all went /sleep to return to spawn as one unit (just in case any Darkhaven players were confused about why we didn’t even attack the tower but mass suicided instead). We were in class and we still rolled the living daylights out of you.

Rather annoyingly, you took our West Keep whilst we were in class detailing our communication structure around about the time we were moving onto keep strategy and siege points. So we quickly rolled West Keep to allow the lesson to continue.

We don’t mind losing to people who play intelligently because at the end of the day, its a game and we like being challenged by intelligent, organized foes, whether we win or lose. Darkhaven does not have intelligent command and it is not organized. It can if enough of you show enough interest in learning how the game works and spreading the knowledge. If you ever play Fort Aspenwood, Sea of Sorrows 2.0 or anyone higher up the board with the attitudes on display in this thread, they will utterly destroy you.

You should be attempting to pass on good strategy and tactics to all your players so they are capable of it. It will take us time and effort and we will lose alot on the way, but we think we are building a really good community here by not leaving anyone behind.

You’re a little too harsh with your words. First point I’d have to make is that we beat you with even numbers quite frequently. Unless your server is virtually deserted, you should have a very large prime time showing, and we’re still beating you.

Secondly, we are trying to learn, we’re trying very, very hard. You do realize that we’ve been stuck in the bottom 3 tiers for the entire time except for this last matchup, correct? We were the kings of a small pond. Now that we’re being introduced to the ocean, obviously we’re not hip to all the cool new things that it has to offer (such as stacking). We do have to improve, we’ve got a long way to go, but we’re determined, we will improve.

We proved that we were able to adapt, first when Yak’s Bend spanked us by night capping. Some of us cried about it, others did something about it. The HNN took over our night crew. When the HNN stepped in, we dominated the entire night (and we have dominated the night for 4 weeks, except for 3 days where we were contested by SoR). Then we saw our prime time performance being very, very weak. We could not match SoR or SF. Now look at us, we’re doing very well during prime time against Maguuma and NSP — both servers who are far stronger than SF or SoR were at the time we were dominated. Next will be improving our morning showing and organization, it’s already better than it was last week.

We are improving, we will continue to improve. We will adapt, we will learn from you and we will use the tactics you taught us to get better. We may be the new guys on the block, but we’re determined. It may not always be as smooth as it has been, we might even start losing soon, but we’ll learn and adapt.

Easy buddy. Here you go again only giving credit when it boosts your own ego. Neither NSP or Maguuma are as good as SoR is right now nor as good as SoR was 2 weeks ago. NSP has lost manpower for 2 weeks straight, following the close loss to SoR, and I’m sure Maguuma has been facing an efflux during their downward spiral, too. I mean, we’ve been strattling the Outmanned buff in a couple of the maps all day and tonight.

I do wish you guys luck when you inevitably move up in tiers because it’s clear that NSP is going in the other direction right now (unless we get some major influx soon), but this whole patting yourself on the back thing for how far you think you’ve come or whatever is getting a bit ridiculous don’t you think? Just because you or the people on your server that you know weren’t that familiar with WvW a couple weeks ago, doesn’t mean that you learning how to WvW has affected the overall outcome of your matchups very much. I mean, DH has had threads recruiting Asian and Oceanic guilds on Guru and other forums and then you also got an influx of WvW support from our server this week. Your server is even so high in population at this time that people are having trouble switching to the server. Don’t you think it makes sense that manpower has a quite a bit to do with moving up past the ‘noob’ tiers rather than just a massive, contagious epiphany? I mean, the arguments against the culling issues and the calling for alliances and other garbage that has gone on all day is so ridiculous lol.

tl;dr: lol

Arius.7031:

Rhyis.7058:

Skapocalypse.5236

The portal hopping is fine it’s intended game mechanic but staying in one spot to avoid AOE and abusing the rendering is an abuse of game mechanics. I don’t see Northern Shiverpeaks doing this I don’t see DarkHaven doing this. In fact this is the first server I have seen doing it. Just because other servers before us were abusing it against you doesn’t mean they were any more right in abusing it then you are now. But stay classy and say whatever you want to help you sleep at night.

Every server in T1-T4 portal bombs and stacks . If you ever move up, you will see this in every single match. It’s not an exploit in any way shape or form. Every other server we’ve fought knows how to counter it (Mag does as well), too bad DH hasn’t figured it out yet… It’s not even hard.

You low tier servers are always a laugh.

Yeah, sorry for not being a high tier server. We weren’t as lucky as you, we didn’t get tons of highly organized guilds to join our server at launch. The only reason we’re even here is because we worked really hard to get organized. So laugh at us as much as you want. We’re new to the higher tiers, and we can’t help it. Oh, and by the way, I regret to inform you, if you’re from Maguuma you are now a low tier server just like the rest of us—welcome to the family.

P.S. I still haven’t formed an opinion on the subject, but the phrase “all the cool kids are doing it” is what’s coming to mind every time I hear someone (except the gentleman I was talking to earlier) describes why it’s okay for Maguuma to do what it’s doing.

If you complain about this, do you also complain about AoE through gate doors? Or hiding mesmers in keeps after a failed defense? Or other various tactics every server uses in WvW. You’re coming off as insanely whiny and inexperienced and it’s annoying as all hell.

Arius.7031:

Having such a pejorative phrase used against us seems like an opinion to me. But maybe that’s just me.

Saiyr,

I’m pretty sure that is just you. Because I said that a lot of the people who were defending Maguuma’s actions were justifying it by saying all the high tier servers do it… Which is no different than saying all the cool kids do it.

That’s a fact, if it offends you, that’s extremely odd.

When I hear the “all the cool kids do it” I picture a whiny child complaining about how they can’t do something idiotic that their friends are doing. But I guess I am a cynical person (I am definitely extremely odd) so I apologize if that’s not what you were implying.

Arius.7031:

I’m pretty sure that is just you. Because I said that a lot of the people who were defending Maguuma’s actions were justifying it by saying all the high tier servers do it… Which is no different than saying all the cool kids do it.

It’s not that higher tier servers are doing it and therefore it’s okay. It’s that this is nothing new and in higher tiers culling is more obvious and rampant, stacking is common and it’s counters known, and there aren’t these cries of foul play (well there are, but not about these things). The fact of the matter is we have to play the game as it is now, hopefully soon culling will be a non-issue and legitimate tactics will no longer inspire guilt by association in the minds of some players. Also if you want to take the moral high ground a 2v1 alliance controlled by the dominant server is an “exploit of game mechanics” as Anet have stated that the 1v1v1 format is intended to help stop one team running away with the score.

Rhyis.7058:

Skapocalypse.5236

The portal hopping is fine it’s intended game mechanic but staying in one spot to avoid AOE and abusing the rendering is an abuse of game mechanics. I don’t see Northern Shiverpeaks doing this I don’t see DarkHaven doing this. In fact this is the first server I have seen doing it. Just because other servers before us were abusing it against you doesn’t mean they were any more right in abusing it then you are now. But stay classy and say whatever you want to help you sleep at night.

Every server in T1-T4 portal bombs and stacks . If you ever move up, you will see this in every single match. It’s not an exploit in any way shape or form. Every other server we’ve fought knows how to counter it (Mag does as well), too bad DH hasn’t figured it out yet… It’s not even hard.

You low tier servers are always a laugh.

Just because someone else was using it doesn’t mean they aren’t abusing the system. By your logic just because one person cheats it’s ok for everyone to cheat. This is the problem with every online video game ever. This mentality is wrong and until it’s changed online games will always be filled with people trying to cheat the system.

BTW this “low tier server” is stomping you right now.

DH better stop attacking people through gates or I’m gonna start calling them all hackers.

Skapocalypse.5236:

Just because someone else was using it doesn’t mean they aren’t abusing the system. By your logic just because one person cheats it’s ok for everyone to cheat. This is the problem with every online video game ever. This mentality is wrong.

That is fallacious because you assume that the definition of our tactics as exploitation is factual. But nice try.

Besetment,

Thank you for pointing out our weaknesses. We are working on communications and executions right now. I have read your post about 10 times now and all I see is that you are trying to help us become better, which I really appreciate. I’ve made same posts for anvil rock before and they were rejected, I know where you are coming from. Most of dark haven are humble and willing to learn new tactics and you guys surely showed us a lot. So, big thanks bro, we won’t fail you.

See you in battle,

- half naked norn

Excuse me! I’ll have you guys know, we at Darkhaven have been in wvw for over 15 years, back in the day when Zhaitan was just a lizard, ya’ll better recognize!

Dark Haven,

My dearest brothers and sisters in arms.

Wake Up.

Learn enemy tactics and coordination while they are here. And be thankful for them even showing you this.

Fight on!!!!!!!

-HNN