Guild Wars 2

Enough with all the fuzz on "XXX guild transferred over and now this tier is imbalanced now", instead, this thread is aimed to help and probably (?) opens up some different views for some WvWers that would like to still maintain their server’s activness and prevent more player loss.

So, ok, here’s the case, your server has lost a large (and probably server-impacting) guild. Now that you are losing like every day, what should you do to help out the server?

Step one - Quit WvW.

Yes, that’s right, quit, get the hell out of it. The more you fight in it, the more you’ll get frustrated, and the more rage you build on, it’ll either make you quit the game completly, or hop to another server just to escape from this pain.

That’s not how this thread is about, this is about on how to keep yourself in the server, while helping it.

Step two - Get a commander icon.

If you already have it, great, just go to next step, or else this is probably one of the hardest step to do if you do not have much friends/guildies, but once you have it, you can really start impacting the server.

Step three - Gotta catch ’em all.

Go venture into the realm of PvE. Yes, PvE. NOT dungeons. Do not underestimate PvE players, some can evolve into some seriously kitten good WvW players once they get the taste of blood.

Now, one might ask, how should one do it then?

Step four - Become a PvE commander.

Who said commander must be played in WvW?

A great commander will work anywhere. I’ll use me as an example. I love PvE, and I love mass players. I am one of those PvE commanders that hosts events for the WHOLE SERVER - Orr Map Tour, Temple Speed Chest, Partying, etc.

You need to keep the players in the server motivated, and wanting to play more. And by doing so will help you pump life into this server. Once you started doing this on a fairly frequent basis, not only this will spread your guild name among others (good for recruiting), but also build a sense of trust and obedience to your command. This is how a community is formed, and I found this very critical if you want to keep your server to feel alive.

Step Five - Portal and Karma Train!

Once population has settled, and you are able to start summoning people that will listen to you and follow you around, this is the time to start to go back to WvW. For starters, I’d summon a rather impressive size of zerg to wait at the spawn point in one of the three boarderlands. Have a mesmer (or group) go ahead to the JP while you organize the zerg. Don’t worry, usually on a map that’s fully taken, patrols are slack, it is very easy to sneak in a group of mesmers undetected.

Now, here comes the fun part, once the mesmers are in place (or almost), you can start lead your zerg and march them into the JP, remember to avoid all combat as possible, with the exception of taking down dolyaks, they are good karma anyways

Once everyone has arrived, do the portal, get the JP, take the chest, you know the drill. Remember, there will be a few PvE players in your group (after all, you summoned them from PvE realm), so they might not understand the whole thing, so you might also explain what’s about to happen on the way. Congrats, your group now has a serious amount of dangerous goods (aka blue prints)

With all those free sieges, go have fun taking down supply camp + either the garrison or bay, with tons of sieges, the opponent usually will not be able to react fast enough, just when you are about to take the keep, port back to the spawn point, and trigger the break out event. If you pull it right, you can get a break out + a keep without too much resistant. And that’s a big karma boost

Now that has been done, start draining supplies - put down more free sieges that you got from JP, and grind the badges over the enemy zerg that is now reacting until your zerg got overran - After all, let me remind you, this IS a losing battle. So do not morn if the keep/tower is lost, but instead, laugh at how much you accomplished with your group, even if it’s just a short-term victory, it is still indeed, fun.

Step Six - Swap location and repeat.

Once the zerg got over ran once, just map hop. Do the same thing on the other map, but keep in mind, this time, when you start attacking on their keep, the enemy WILL respond faster, so usually on the second run, I’d go for supply camps + towers, as it’s much easier to take down, and still yields good amount of Karma

Step Seven - Repeat Step three

Remember, just because you can summon once doesn’t mean you can ignore the PvE. You still need to keep the new blood flowing, get more and more to get exposed to WvW is the key to get people to experience and hopefully they’ll get addicted to WvW.

After all, using arrow carts wiping out the entire enemy zerg is always satisfying.

Hopefully this guide can shed some light to those server who claims to be "dying"

Morningstar.6208:

Go home Chaster you are drunk.

Nah, I’m actually being quite serious and awake here.

Honestly, interaction is what makes the game fun, and it’s what makes the game enjoyable.

Soloing a boss and manage to kill it is pure skill, but without people claps and tell you good job, is rather lonesome and empty, as if you accomplished something you feel so grand yet no one cared about it.

One of the reason I’m posting this is so that I’m using myself as a case study. Kaineng was the lowest server of all times, I mean, seriously low. I had many chances that I could just simply roll up and also move to another server, but I know if I were to do that, I’m letting people in Kaineng to go rot to death.

Those who were in Kaineng back in the day should know, Kaineng was "EMPTY’. We get like only max 5 players in Lions Arch, it was quite sad. I thought to myself, “this place is deserted, can I do something to increase it’s activeness?” Like what Fubuki did, I also advertised Kaineng in many Taiwanese forum, and inviting new comers to come to this server, and hope to make them feel like home.

Once I had a soild amount of players (like 100 or so), I started to take them to WvW and start doing Karma train. That’s where most of the first timers actually got amazed on how much reward you can get from doing WvW, and since it’s not purely PvP, as there’s some PvE elements in it, it was quickly accepted across many PvE players.

Then we started to grow like rapid. Like a burst of uncontrollable energy. Friends invite friends, and people seeing an organized active guild in a dead server is like finding a holy sanctum. They just flock to get in.

On top of that, just to stimulate the server more, we tread over almost every map. Letting more PvE players seeing the SoS Army marching in Tyria, slaying world bosses, announcing events for people to participate. The more you stimulate the server’s PvE players, the more that they are most likely going to stay, unlike WvW players, WvW players want war, they want a place to fight players, so they will hop to a server that is most likely to get them the battle lust that they desire. On the other hands, PvE players want company to journey them to clear their event chain, complete their map exploration, and enjoy the screams of the jumping puzzles.

Sure, you can tell them the importance of how WvW is impacting the PvE world, but they could simply care less about it as they don’t really care if they can just mind to mine that ori node just one more time, as that’s what they are getting at reset, that little extra boost really isn’t that important to them.

Now, with karma train. Karma train is not bad. It trains one’s obedience, and to follow commanders. By doing so they are rewarded with karma and exp and gold (not to mention lots of it), yes, this is like training an animal. They follow your order, they get good rewards. Eventually people will start following you and become loyal.

And if there’s scout that came to the server and saw this? This is just going to impress them as seeing a commander able to command over 50 pugs is rather impressive, as most likely that is not what will happen in their server, not to mention that one can command and move them around as a whole with good response.

If a server is scattered, SOMEONE really need to spend alot of time to try to bring everyone together, and you do it by motivating others to play with you and build charisma, and at that time, it was Fubuki and alot of WAR members. They managed to get quite a few guilds interested in Kaineng, and some even transferred over. If I were to say, WAR is actually more credited in pumping more life into the server than me.

tl;dr: Without players playing, there’s no WvW, and to get players playing, one needs to motivate them.

I like the PVE commander icon idea keep it up

Ok now I understood what you are saying. I think I can tell pretty much the same story about Devona. But be careful we won 13 weeks in a row and moved up to T5 which we weren’t ready yet and those karma trainers that I was using as muscle ran away to their holes. We are in T5 with half the WvW population we had in T8 facing a server with 2 times more population than we had in T8 so pretty much just 1 server outnumber us 1:4 and sad part because of our fast paced reputation 2 servers teamed against us not touching each other in certain times even when we weren’t in first place. I am really glad to see kain doing good I hope I can get people back to WvW so maybe we can fight in T5 or T6 against kain with equal numbers. I really respect what you are doing. Getting a low tier server to upper tiers is a real challenge and requires a lot of work. I am just upset I didn’t get you to Devona there are not many like you understanding factors about leadership, morale, charisma and seeing the big picture.

Morningstar.6208:

Ok now I understood what you are saying. I think I can tell pretty much the same story about Devona. But be careful we won 13 weeks in a row and moved up to T5 which we weren’t ready yet and those karma trainers that I was using as muscle ran away to their holes. We are in T5 with half the WvW population we had in T8 facing a server with 2 times more population than we had in T8 so pretty much just 1 server outnumber us 1:4 and sad part because of our fast paced reputation 2 servers teamed against us not touching each other in certain times even when we weren’t in first place. I am really glad to see kain doing good I hope I can get people back to WvW so maybe we can fight in T5 or T6 against kain with equal numbers. I really respect what you are doing. Getting a low tier server to upper tiers is a real challenge and requires a lot of work. I am just upset I didn’t get you to Devona there are not many like you understanding factors about leadership, morale, charisma and seeing the big picture.

@Morningstar.6208

Yeah, I know. As I stated, zerg is not the answer for higher tier, as you will face bigger and more organized zerg. At one point that we need to start evolving, which most likely will happen after a big slap in the face after getting a defeat to awake us.

I would also suggest not to rely on a single guild for wvw.
in Mag, its more of a collective of small guilds band together on public mumble.
Admittedly it is harder to pull off due to politics but if achieved you will see vast improvements

How about you guys just transfer to FoW. Problem solved

The current state of the population imbalance means even if you can amass a decent for (for FoW thats about 20 people) the enemy servers will hit that force with50 AND send another 50 to your BL.

There has been an increase of new players in FoW PvE but its difficult to know how many. Even then its a double edged sword to gather them. If you gather and do well they have fun, its a win. They will be hooked. If you gather and all they get is a hefty armour repair bill and hours wasted. They will never WvW again.

FoW will not go down without a fight. We just have to up our game.

I will personally murder any small groups that roam in our BL. Was going to retire my guardian because of this rubbish but now it gives me more incentive to play.