Guild Wars 2

It’s a player driven mode where we:

1. Stack servers and destroy matchup variety by locking ourselves in glicko hell
2. Just generally be unpleasant towards each other even if we’re just playing the same videogame.
3. Create divisions and cliques associated with player created gamemodes and other people’s “True” gamemode (In EU there was a massive kittenthrowing contest between players who prefer to PPT and those that prefer to kill each others for funsies (Raiding Guilds/GvG* guilds)).

WvW has never been so dead as it is now. Dunno if lull between HoT overpopulation. Doubt it.

Is it us? Or have we put up with Anets blatant disregard for anything considered WvW for too long? Is our rage justified?

funassistant.6589:

It’s a player driven mode where we:

1. Stack servers and destroy matchup variety by locking ourselves in glicko hell
2. Just generally be unpleasant towards each other even if we’re just playing the same videogame.
3. Create divisions and cliques associated with player created gamemodes and other people’s “True” gamemode (In EU there was a massive kittenthrowing contest between players who prefer to PPT and those that prefer to kill each others for funsies (Raiding Guilds/GvG* guilds)).

WvW has never been so dead as it is now. Dunno if lull between HoT overpopulation. Doubt it.

Is it us? Or have we put up with Anets blatant disregard for anything considered WvW for too long? Is our rage justified?

Yes, with regard to point 1 anets design should have taken probable human behaviour into account and didn’t. Servers were a terrible design to begin with for this mode and using glicko on a small sample just as bad. developments could have been done to alleviate some issues, glicko could have been abandoned.

On 2 this happens in all pvp games.

3. Given the different pvp modes in GW1 they should have created more pvp modes in GW2, and certainly once GvG became quite popular they could have thrown some more dev resources at it to make it a proper game mode.

Stacking should be improved with the new population calculations, but it wont “normalize” for quite some time (overstacked servers will remain overstacked until people leave). Personally I still think people clinging to low tier servers are making a mistake, as a community we should migrate up, abandon low tiers and mark to Anet that they are not OK and could be removed (ie shuffle up to increase average population). If they find that all servers are full when HoT come out, after low tiers are taken out of the picture? Well just raise the entire bar a notch.

But it wont happen. Either way, WvW is not exactly dead. It is a lull before HoT, yes. The new borders should shake things up. Whether that’s good or bad for the WvW community is another thing.

2. it doesnt happen in all pvp games, it only happen in recent years. mmorpg community used to be much more friendlier and filled with much less dota/lol-like players.

Dawdler.8521:

Stacking should be improved with the new population calculations, but it wont “normalize” for quite some time (overstacked servers will remain overstacked until people leave). Personally I still think people clinging to low tier servers are making a mistake, as a community we should migrate up, abandon low tiers and mark to Anet that they are not OK and could be removed (ie shuffle up to increase average population). If they find that all servers are full when HoT come out, after low tiers are taken out of the picture? Well just raise the entire bar a notch.

But it wont happen. Either way, WvW is not exactly dead. It is a lull before HoT, yes. The new borders should shake things up. Whether that’s good or bad for the WvW community is another thing.

Lower tiers will disagree with you and so will anet.

Migrating down improves and normalizes performance for everyone. No more “5 second lag spikes” while the server attempts to calculate every floater in the area.

The entire notion that lower tiers are empty is because people who used to be on them flooded upwards during season 1 for rewards, blame seasons for that non-sense.

I don’t think WvW is dead. There are some servers that do pretty well. I know I have a couple alts on TC and GOM and there is a lot going on. GOM has a decent turnout most nights but SF is very blobby. IOJ is not doing too well, they were as high as 6th but plateaued and lost a lot of guilds to FA and YB and other places.

As for TC well its T1 which means JQ has control. YB gained a bunch of T1 guilds so they can push T1 but the way T1 fights is so odd. They seem to keep scores close even when you know if it were any other tier JQ would be winning by 150K. Glicko messing I think.

FA has no OCX anymore. Insider politics and a mentality coming into that time slot not caring for PPT just fun bags and trolling. You know how it goes, so good guilds left for Maguuma. FA will be T3 real soon. SOS has a nice OCX and YB is blobby on the level of unbelievable but T1 is locked unless JQ works it out with BG to continue double teaming TC and drop them eventually.

I think the issue too is blobs vs inability to siege walls. If we could handle 2 or 3 to 1 ratios with siege working and not being AOEd from below or ZOOM hacked or continued LOS issues by ACs you would not have as many people coming in, seeing all paper, mid to low PPT and saying time for a fractal or dungeon, I’m out. AND the spawn camping. EEK YB uses siege and trebs to cow and bomb spawn, who wants to come out to that.

Friends have gone to Maguuma and DB and seem to like them. ANET does have work to do in WvW with the LOS and Spawn camping and making siege viable to defend again.

Jethro.8725:

As for TC well its T1 which means JQ has control. YB gained a bunch of T1 guilds so they can push T1 but the way T1 fights is so odd. They seem to keep scores close even when you know if it were any other tier JQ would be winning by 150K. Glicko messing I think.

You’re obviously not playing in T1. JQ has not won for the last 3-4 weeks and is hardly ‘in control’ given our NA numbers are poor compared to BG, TC and YB.

Ok, keep it civil. We don’t know one another but this is my opinion and it’s based on what I’ve witnessed over the last month or so. I do play on TC. I wanted to see what the fascination was about T1 so it took me forever to transfer my alt there. As far as I was concerned after months of playing, FA should have been brought up to T1 and now YB deserves it. It didn’t happen for FA and I don’t think it’s going to happen for YB sadly. It would make for a better rotation.

JQ has numbers and just won a few weeks ago. BG came in third and I was surprised by how low their score was but then figured it was the effects of losing guilds to YB. But the following week BG won which sent up a red flag. I’ve noticed odd things like when a large JQ blob took QL and Dane then ran to take Durios and Umber and then disappeared. They clearly had the numbers but didn’t even go for the sentries by Lang or Bravost. I can guess where a zerg is going to go next as I’m sure most hardcore WvWers can. We called out to get ready at the inner towers and keep, we didn’t have many on, we had some siege and nothing happened. JQ and their 50-ish disappeared. We watched the Red zone, nothing, we watched the BL’s nothing. That week the scores were super close and again very odd. Never seen a zerg with the manpower not even try to paper a corner especially when they had no resistance.

And too often I see BG and JQ avoid one another with us being double teamed. Especially in our Keep (Red) where BG either stops us from going in or they clear the siege then run to take Veloka as JQ takes the keep. Again, odd behavior I’ve never witnessed on any other tier other than T1 between JQ and BG.

So are we killing WvW? I think if T1 is keeping scores close, like this week especially, then it’s not good for the health of the game. Players will go on their alts and play on lower tiers keeping T1 locked.

Jethro.8725:

JQ has numbers and just won a few weeks ago.

Yes before the guilds went to YB or the first week after. After that BG got motivated.

Jethro.8725:

And too often I see BG and JQ avoid one another with us being double teamed. Especially in our Keep (Red) where BG either stops us from going in or they clear the siege then run to take Veloka as JQ takes the keep. Again, odd behavior I’ve never witnessed on any other tier other than T1 between JQ and BG.

All 3 servers get double teamed at different stages , there’s no conspiracy.

You don’t get it. It’s ok. Read other forums about the deals with JQ and BG and keeping T1 locked up. Please.

SkyShroud.2865:

2. it doesnt happen in all pvp games, it only happen in recent years. mmorpg community used to be much more friendlier and filled with much less dota/lol-like players.

no, not really , there was always kittens in online games , i remember my days in ragnarok online , 10 years ago, the amount of trash talking and perma killing and insultig was insane , gw2 is like child play compared to that

Just this week JQ has tried to waypoint BG’s bay several times and BG has tried to waypoint JQ’s hills several times. KILL is always papering BG’s stuff in PST<→OCX gap. Hardly a 2v1.

Even last night during late SEA after papering all of TC BL, JQ and BG just decided to brawl down near the bridge at south camp (80v80, multiple guilds each side) rather than camping TC BL for ppt.

Every server gets 2v1’d, BG and JQ don’t “keep t1 locked up”.

T1 sounds like fun. Shame its “locked up”

No. We are players we are playing it. If something goes into wrong direction the rules come to help. If the rules fail or are missing must be corrected or implemented. It depends on who makes the rules, as always. A good rule makes a good player, educating it or avoiding some behaviour.

TexZero.7910:

Dawdler.8521:

Stacking should be improved with the new population calculations, but it wont “normalize” for quite some time (overstacked servers will remain overstacked until people leave). Personally I still think people clinging to low tier servers are making a mistake, as a community we should migrate up, abandon low tiers and mark to Anet that they are not OK and could be removed (ie shuffle up to increase average population). If they find that all servers are full when HoT come out, after low tiers are taken out of the picture? Well just raise the entire bar a notch.

But it wont happen. Either way, WvW is not exactly dead. It is a lull before HoT, yes. The new borders should shake things up. Whether that’s good or bad for the WvW community is another thing.

Lower tiers will disagree with you and so will anet.

Migrating down improves and normalizes performance for everyone. No more “5 second lag spikes” while the server attempts to calculate every floater in the area.

The entire notion that lower tiers are empty is because people who used to be on them flooded upwards during season 1 for rewards, blame seasons for that non-sense.

Migrating down from what? “Full” servers that has 3/4 zones without any queue 20 hours a day? The same servers that would probably collapse if just a couple major guilds or well known pug commanders left? Migrating down is pointless.

I’ve been reading forums for awhile now and I’ve seen some referencing how BG helped keep JQ in T1 last summer. And it’s common knowledge that BG lost a bunch of guilds to YB recently. I wondered if JQ would repay the debt and help BG out so they could stay in T1. It was never easy to get into T1 so now that there is a lock I wonder how BG could have a resurgence after losing all that manpower? Leading this week but all three servers still relatively close makes this an interesting week to watch. JQ still has the mega blob but finds itself in second but the megablob of YB wins by over 200K each week in T2.

Judge: “Defendant, did you do anything that was forbidden by the law?”
Defendant: “No.”
Judge: “Defendant, did you do anything that was not covered by the law, but could very well have not been allowed if someone would have thought about it when the code of laws was implemented?”
Defendant: “Uhm…Yes.”
Judge: “Defendant, did you do anything that was not forbidden by the law at the time you did it, but now, after reenachting the given law in terms of wording and not only spirit, would be illegal?”
Defendant: “Yes. But wasn´t then, so I go away home free now.”

Undermining an idea whose implementation is clear, but the wording is not, is common business practice for large companies. If big guilds somehow could socialize their investments in consumables while keeping their gains all for themselves, you can bet your bottom that they would do it. Just open any financial, or just any serious newspaper to see proof of this.

Jethro.8725:

I’ve been reading forums for awhile now and I’ve seen some referencing how BG helped keep JQ in T1 last summer. And it’s common knowledge that BG lost a bunch of guilds to YB recently. I wondered if JQ would repay the debt and help BG out so they could stay in T1. It was never easy to get into T1 so now that there is a lock I wonder how BG could have a resurgence after losing all that manpower? Leading this week but all three servers still relatively close makes this an interesting week to watch. JQ still has the mega blob but finds itself in second but the megablob of YB wins by over 200K each week in T2.

BG lost 2 guilds to YB. JQ lost 1 (TW had been on JQ for months before leaving for YB).

BG still has plenty of guilds and militia to compete in tier 1 without help from other servers. JQ isn’t “letting BG win”, BG is just out and playing, which is nice.

YB runs blobs 24/7 so it may be in actuality two BG official guilds but in their wake they had to drag a lot of other people because the size of YB is unreal. And to see BG dip in points just a few weeks ago seemed natural since ones gain is anothers loss. YB surged and BG dipped but now BG in a locked situation is surging with less people, hard not to have a red flag go up on that one.

Jethro.8725:

YB runs blobs 24/7 so it may be in actuality two BG official guilds but in their wake they had to drag a lot of other people because the size of YB is unreal. And to see BG dip in points just a few weeks ago seemed natural since ones gain is anothers loss. YB surged and BG dipped but now BG in a locked situation is surging with less people, hard not to have a red flag go up on that one.

Those would be the fairweather YB players. tier 1 pugs did not transfer en masse to tier 2, I assure you

Jethro.8725:

YB runs blobs 24/7 so it may be in actuality two BG official guilds but in their wake they had to drag a lot of other people because the size of YB is unreal. And to see BG dip in points just a few weeks ago seemed natural since ones gain is anothers loss. YB surged and BG dipped but now BG in a locked situation is surging with less people, hard not to have a red flag go up on that one.

BG was split in half by server/guild politics and infighting before the “alliance” guilds left for YB. Guilds and leaders were arguing left right and center and people were spending more time PvF-ing on BG forums/shoutbox than in WvW which caused BG to look really weak.

There were literally 20 page+ threads on TW/OnS cross server repping arguments that went nowhere for weeks.

It was a joint effort really between both players and devs.

First there were the free transfer days. These were only supposed to last 2 weeks, instead they went on for months!
This therefore allowed bandwagoners to migrate to the winning servers, adding to the coverage wars.

Then there were the hackers, who were at first very discrete with how they exploited, afraid that we could report them and their accounts being banned. Though there was always one hacker who wanted to “show off their skills” and attack smaller groups.
The problem here was there was, and still is no option to report a hacker in the game! This made players resort to the forums only to be punished for it!

Due to the devs’ not banning hackers, it was taken as a sign that it’s OK to hack. All the hackers came out of from beneath their rocks; they were no longer afraid to be seen hacking as they knew the chances of them being banned were really low or non-existent.
Two years went by and the hackers came up with even better hacks, such as invisibility, hiding under the map to attack; hiding their tag so they cannot be clicked and reported.
All the while we still did not know how to properly report a hacker! And as we found out, neither did the devs giving us contradicting “advice”.

If it wasnt hacks it was glitches. Players were about to glitch through walls into keeps and take a tower. Again it was reported on forums, again the threads were deleted, again no fixes were made for months on end! And even when they were finally fixes after so many months, they were not listed in patch notes.

Whilst all this was going on we had players with several accounts using them as spy accounts or troll accounts. These players went around building useless siege everywhere, filling up the map cap preventing that server from mounting a proper defense. Or the troll players would go to a keep, start upgrades to waste all the supply and then the zerg would attack seconds later! Again many server zergs claimed they had no idea the troll player wasted the supply just before they came knocking. This led to bad blood between certain servers.
Again threads were ignored for months until suddenly we got a post where the dev said that these trolls can play as they like, they could not control how a player plays.
So again these trolls were given the green light by devs to continue doing what they were doing!
But then suddenly earlier this year we get a new dev post saying this is now a bannable offense?! O.o Again contradicting themselves, and again over 2 years later!

Buffing Arrow Carts by 80% meant that small teams would find it harder to take a keep, therefore making the zerg the best way to win PPT.

WvW achievements which will still take 20+ years to do still not fixed since launch!

No new maps for WvW in 3 years!

Tournaments with prizes for the winners only, again making players want to join the winning servers.

Staff players only playing on T1 NA servers. When was the last time you say them on lower NA servers or even any EU server?! Again this attracted players to those top servers to hang with the devs.

Adopt-a-dev project coming back with ideas 90% of people didnt even want or even think about, making some people question what these devs actually did and who they talked to to get these unpopular ideas from!

Adding LS PvE crap to WvW maps which only got in the way!

Inviting sPvP players and guilds to test out EOTM instead of WvW players.

Inviting streamers to test the well overdue new map for WvW instead of WvW players.

Not listening to a thing said in the CDIs

Postponing WvW CDIs, how long have we been waiting for the last one? A year now?

So as you can see blame lies on both parties, but if it wasnt for the neglect from the devs, a lot of these problems should have been dealt with immediately.

During the first year there was an obvious glitch, everyone started using it, the devs didnt fix it for a year or more, it was being used by so many players that it became a legal “tactic” to use even though some still said it was an exploit. Those players who used it used the excuse that if Anet doesnt fix it, it means it’s OK; if it wasnt they would have fixed it by now.

If you think this is a long post, this isnt even half of it!

But to conclude, we didnt kill WvW, the devs did for not putting anything but the bare minimum of effort into it. Allowing players to do what they did, which just made things worse.
Just look at the current threads after the population calculation changed. How many players are complaining they cannot play with friends in T1?! That is how bad the bandwagoning is!
Instead of making those threads they should all decide that if they wish to play together then they all should move to a lower server! But no, they are bandwagoners, they want to be in T1.

Many of us saw this population problem coming years ago! I myself made posts asking how Anet will control the population, even gave some suggestions on how to allow transfers from highly active servers to less active servers.

But we got no reply. And now we know why. They were first interested in the LS for PvE, then the China release, and now the HoT release. With all this pandering to PvE they have spent less time with sPvP, and almost completely ignored WvW!

So if you read this far, well done you too are fed up with this game any only play because you like playing with your guild! And are probably gonna down a few shots now and think if you really want to continue playing, or move to another game.

And if you dont believe in the bangwagon then watch this Blackgate S1 victory video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdecWAAJcMQ

5 minutes of listing all their WvW guilds! FIVE WHOLE MINUTES!
I’m in silver leaague and listing our WvW guilds wouldnt even last 30 seconds! And the lower bronze servers, well they’d be lucky to even have a video listing their guilds! They’d be lucky to have a single large WvW guild, or just a hand full of small ones.
This is why I have always hated this Blackgate video, there was no skill involved, just numbers and coverage. To be proud of that is pretty low. If they want something to be proud of then some of them should transfer to lower servers and help balance the matchups.

It is past time for Anet to own their game.

To Orochimaru: Amen and Amen

But to put things into perspective, while it is Anet’s fault more so than the players for allowing the game mode to be set up as it was and then allowing it to degenerate, they might not have been able to help it.

Anet’s yearly earnings, ~$75-120 million, are minuscule compared to other MMOs. For comparison, WOW was taking in about $90 million/month at its peak. Anet is probably putting its limited resources into where most of the players are, and that probably isn’t WvW. Since we don’t know how many players are still active and continuing to break out the credit card at the gem store, we can only assume rough numbers here (which may still be totally off anyway). We know that Anet proudly proclaimed 3 million copies were sold in the first year from release. Assuming each NA borderland map can hold 500 people and you fill up EVERY borderland, that’s only 16,000 people (0.5% of players). Even if every hour on the hour you flipped those players out for a new 16,000 players over 24 hours, you’re only looking at ~13% of those 3 million potential players.

Now, I know those numbers in terms of players still playing the game and those logging into WvW are nowhere near close to what they are now. But I think I’m making my point in that from the onset WvW was to be a niche game mode where they knew they could only accommodate a small number of the total possible player base.

So, Anet may not be all that interested in diverting limited resources to an aspect of the game that only accommodates a small proportion of players. Actually, the only way I see them doing something about WvW is if the exclusive, high-value (gem store spenders) WvW only players become a larger proportion of the active player base and begin to quit the game altogether.

Short answer is yes.

The longer answer is, yes and no, while we are responsible for stacking servers and the likes, it is Anet’s responsibility to sheriff the game and make sure we don’t break it. They didn’t step in and prevent us from destroying it until it was to late.

And so yet again, it comes down to the question why should WvW players buy the expansions; and why should they pay so much for it when they will receive almost nothing in return?!

A lot of critic even say that after playing the game they found the end-game of this game to be WvW.

A lot of player have already left the game in the last 2-3 years, and you cant blame the players for not wanting to play a game they dont think is being treated properly or maintained.

Random.4691:

Short answer is yes.

The longer answer is, yes and no, while we are responsible for stacking servers and the likes, it is Anet’s responsibility to sheriff the game and make sure we don’t break it. They didn’t step in and prevent us from destroying it until it was to late.

Pretty much this…

I would add that even when you have players seemingly doing the right thing (like those that worked to balance T3, and continue to do so) you still can have poor results due to shakeups in the tier(s) above you and below.

Who was the designer that made the “glicko” or w/e system?

That is one root of our problems.

Lach.7031:

Who was the designer that made the “glicko” or w/e system?

That is one root of our problems.

Going back to the launch complaints, from what I remember glicko is a system (independent of gw2). ANET chose to apply it to their ratings, and the problem (again going from memory) is that it works much better with more of a sample size. (IE not 24 servers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

funassistant.6589:

Are we killing WvW?

Just look at Jethro’s posts on here and the tin foil hat foolery and you’ll get your answer. Honestly though, “we” have been doing a good job at keeping the game mode GOING! Look at the bright side of it….

For #1, stacking is absolutely necessary. You can’t build a competitive World and community on wishful thinking. It takes a lot of work keeping the community organized and moving forward. That alone is what made the upper Tiered worlds what they are. We filled coverage gaps and minimized or eliminated queues to keep the community healthy. That’s something the Dev’s can never achieve through design alone. As the game aged and player attrition took place, everyone should have moved up if they preferred large scale combat. If ones preference is for the wilderness feeling of solo roaming, then staying on a lower tier’s as it’s the perfect fit.

It’s really not rocket science folks, as long as we have the ability to, we can make the most of the mode.

bob.8632:

Lach.7031:

Who was the designer that made the “glicko” or w/e system?

That is one root of our problems.

Going back to the launch complaints, from what I remember glicko is a system (independent of gw2). ANET chose to apply it to their ratings, and the problem (again going from memory) is that it works much better with more of a sample size. (IE not 24 servers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

Yeah the system works, but not in a game like this. Had there been no Glicko, and had they gone with a simpler winner up loser down system then there would have been less movement early on. Less player movement should equal better matchups. Better matchups should equal less players leaving the game etcetcetc.

DeWolfe.2174:

funassistant.6589:

Are we killing WvW?

Just look at Jethro’s posts on here and the tin foil hat foolery and you’ll get your answer. Honestly though, “we” have been doing a good job at keeping the game mode GOING! Look at the bright side of it….

For #1, stacking is absolutely necessary. You can’t build a competitive World and community on wishful thinking. It takes a lot of work keeping the community organized and moving forward. That alone is what made the upper Tiered worlds what they are. We filled coverage gaps and minimized or eliminated queues to keep the community healthy. That’s something the Dev’s can never achieve through design alone. As the game aged and player attrition took place, everyone should have moved up if they preferred large scale combat. If ones preference is for the wilderness feeling of solo roaming, then staying on a lower tier’s as it’s the perfect fit.

It’s really not rocket science folks, as long as we have the ability to, we can make the most of the mode.

Players that preferred large scale combat did move up. But did you think it was an unlimited resource? I didn’t.

Yes.

Proof: The NA players in this thread.

Jethro.8725:

You don’t get it. It’s ok. Read other forums about the deals with JQ and BG and keeping T1 locked up. Please.

I’m on JQ, its bullkitten.

Needs more roaming and less zerg

Jethro.8725:

YB runs blobs 24/7 so it may be in actuality two BG official guilds but in their wake they had to drag a lot of other people because the size of YB is unreal. And to see BG dip in points just a few weeks ago seemed natural since ones gain is anothers loss. YB surged and BG dipped but now BG in a locked situation is surging with less people, hard not to have a red flag go up on that one.

BG have had players come back to the game cause they had motivation thats all.

Jethro.8725:

You don’t get it. It’s ok. Read other forums about the deals with JQ and BG and keeping T1 locked up. Please.

Nah, he is right, you do not have the slightest idea what your talking about.