Guild Wars 2

• Anything and everything. I play/played WvW with each existing class and i do/did any WvW possible role (scout/sieger/upgrader/dolly runner, roamer, enemy zerg stalker/spotter, “right arm of the commander”, commander, zerg fights and guild raids).

• EB has always been more “let’s all zerg around!” than Alpine BL map, apart from that it never affected my style while doing any of the forementioned roles ^

• My style changed with new BL map due to the map changes AND due to general WvW mechaincs changes.

• The borderlands have not impacted my build/s at all.

• In my experience (aka over 5k hours spent in WvW) capturing an enemy structure can take 1 minute just like it can take 40 minutes; it really depends everytime by how big/organized are the attacking and defending groups. However, i can say that capturing stuff in this new BL is way easier for reasons i’ll link later on.

• WvW loot looks still the same: awful. Any reward obtained in WvW after X hours of play is incredibly lower compared to PvE rewards gathered in that same X hours. And for people who play only WvW the HP gain system currently going is simply unfair.
  (Not to mention that this^ actually incites people to go mindless karma train around just to rank up quickly, and that kills the whole sense and strategy of WvW).

• Again, don’t pretend like the change was just “a map”, because it is not. They changed a lot of core WvW mechanics. Altho i am not happy with the new BL i can live with that. But i know that with the mechanics changes WvW will become a brainless fest. At that point i’ll quit GW2.

• I’ll just mention the real importan ones: remodel the areas of the map that are awful for WvW purposes (nonsense cliff, heights etc) make keeps smaller.

• They will be raised in a WvW with 0 strategy mechanics that incite only to go karma train…And they will actually enjoy thi mindless fest, because that is all they’ll know….I feel sorry for all future new WvW players.

• It really depends by what you mean with “veteran”. A “veteran” h24 karma train zergling won’t care about these mechaincs changes. But a real veteran player that know what WvW truly is meant to be will hate the new mechanics (yes, again, it is about mechanics, not the borderland). A scout, for example, will see that his role is pointless, the new mechanics incite to discard defense and go karma train, and he’ll quit WvW (it alredy happened to the most dedicated scout i know).

• I don’t know in which map you’ll be more likely to find me. Since defending is pointless and i have to grind to get the elite specialization i will follow the mindless karma train wherever it will go. But you can find me in any WvW map really, if i am not too bored of it and i went to glide in HoT.

Well, there you go, i gave my feedback based on the format you wanted. I hope that helps.
But, i’d love if you could read my more in-depth opinion about WvW changes in my thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/The-real-4-main-issues-with-the-new-WvW

—For me, the biggest fails of the new BL map are: (I’ll be adding more as I play the map more; and adding wins also)

1) WvW devs adding “events” to this map; the kitten kitten kittening events in a WvW map are the —->PLAYERS battling other PLAYERS<—- the end.

1 fix) Remember the giant lake in the old borderlands with the PvE event snake-people? It got removed (thank you) and replaced with something (ruins) that wasn’t perfect but was actually semi-useful that players could do for or against other players. Please remove the “canon PvE event”, please. I wouldn’t miss the dredge, frogs, ogres in EBG either (or make them perma-hostile to everyone).

2) Personally, I struggle to tolerate the fact that there are even sentries, guards, claimers/keep lords that aren’t actual players.

2 fix) Remove all “fighting NPC’s” from the map and let actual players fill those roles and locations. Want to have a “sentry” at a choke or crossroads? Let it be a player that actually enters a tiny tower/shack where they can see their surroundings (love the sentry radar thing btw) and be unable to attack/be attacked as long as they are occupying that spot. When they leave it? It goes neutral. Want to have a tower to defend a small area of the map? Let it be an actual player that takes on the role of the claimer/lord and directs the upgrades of the tower (claimer/defender tag instead of a commander tag? with appropriate, objective tier-linked “lord” buffs for that individual; the sacrifice for that kind of power is you’re not going anywhere not even out of the room). When it’s unoccupied or has no player to claim it and direct it? It degrades tiers and goes neutral if someone else doesn’t take over then nobody gets PPT for that objective. Want to have a keep? See previous statement about towers; better yet, why not be unable to get a tower in the area around the keep until you’ve managed to claim, hold, and upgrade the keep? But server X doesn’t have as many players as server Y and can’t hold as many objectives to get as much PPT? That’s already the state of WvW.

TLDR: —-Sorry if I went off on a soapbox there. I’m just saying let actual players fill the roles of sentries, guards, claimers/lords. The score would be more honest and actually have a better sense of being “earned”.

I’m chasing a rabbit here but… could we ever have leaderboards for Servers/Guilds/Individuals with corresponding rewards for Servers/Guilds/Individuals. e.g. game play rewards for actual game play like 24hr boost to magic find, gold, Wxp, etc. ( guild boosts like a 24hr Hero Banner; 24hr personal boosts that are already in game, power, armor, etc.)

Fellfoot.8156:

2 fix) Remove all “fighting NPC’s” from the map and let actual players fill those roles and locations.

What a horrible idea. Low player density would become even lower. You do realize how many NPCs there are on the map, right? If players had to fill their roles – even assuming minimum manning – the entire border population would be preoccupied. No one would even be able to fight. If you just remove them all objectives would be dull as all kitten as you would just kitten into empty capping points and even emptier keeps.

People that like the border and see “hope” in it seems to think we can cram 300 people per side in there to fill it up. We cant. If we could, then Anet would only need 1 border and everone would be happy.

Best part about new maps is how long it will take golems to travel, this will remove the build 5 omegas and push mindset of some night crews

@Dawdler Yes. You’re right. It’s not a good solution, but an idea to get people thinking. Thank you for giving some feedback. Perhaps do something along these lines only for replacing the “canon” thing with a crossroads tower/keep?

WvW was great as it was before, why mess everything up?

My constructive feedback is, Anet must have restore old maps, old upgrade system etc, cuz everything sux big time, making me sick

@Fellfoot : I’m not ok with removing all npc, but I agree with you. It’s player vs player, not npc… They should not give the job to npc because there is not enough players… The solution is not to add more npc but to remove server to concentrate people on the same map !

The next step is npc attacking tower ? building siege and killing lord ?
I love the idea to see tower loosing upgrade if no one care about those structures.

We need human playing the game, not more pve and automatic stuff. And if lower server will loose population, it’s just a natural regulation ! Just allow free transfer from lower server to highest for 2 months and then close them.

Fellfoot.8156:

@Dawdler Yes. You’re right. It’s not a good solution, but an idea to get people thinking. Thank you for giving some feedback. Perhaps do something along these lines only for replacing the “canon” thing with a crossroads tower/keep?

There are enough things to cap…

I would say replace it with something completely unexpected – a quaggan city with traders, crafters, etc where cross server /say chat is available. A neutral zone. Quaggans would instakill any player attacking another player from out of combat. There would be a portal from spawn there, with the flaw that Quaggans act like sentries so you cant stealth a zerg in.

What, I’m being serious, lol.

I totally understand being the bottom server in a match. That’s where one of the real horror’s of WvW opens it’s jaws and consumes your will to fight. I’ve been there many, many times over the years. Then when you’re getting stomped over and over you find yourself even more outnumbered due to people losing to numbers. So, what have the WvW Dev’s provided for the server(s) in the match that are hopelessly outnumbered… They gave us the “outnumbered” buff.

—How could the outnumbered buff be improved to help the brave souls willing to stand and fight? Would adding a celestial type stat buff to it help without being OP? My only concern with doing something like that would be that players become “hooked on having a stat crutch” or something to that effect.

A neutral zone! I like it. Why not have a moot there? Trash talk and then go fight?!

Quaggans, Tengu, and Forgotten… you know what would be the most appropriate structure… a Balthazar temple?

Solo scouting, capping camps or following PUG commander.

Never play EB, don’t like the map.

Not been any combat so fare in new map.

Take you 20min just to get to the camp or tower because its all small corridors everywhere

Few players so fare, this map is much smaller were you can move its all tunnels and different levels so the place you can use is much less.

Remove 50% off the mountains and corridors so there is more open fields and less chock points and make it easier to get to Keep, towers, camps.

Barricades players should be able to build not automatically popup.

Good luck getting anything major fixed. They had a chance to do so long before expansion release, but completely ignored everyone from the invited WvW guilds that beta tested and provided feedback.

I hope they will do something about it, but I wouldnt hold my breath given the history of wvw neglect.

• Normally pug it and run with the large pug group. Sometimes roam and BL Defense.

• Same in EB.

• Can’t really say how I’d spend the time in the new BL since everyone’s PvEing it. But it is too complex. Its like a combo of Rata Sum and The Black Citadel. I hate those two cities.

• How the new BL’s could be improved:
  • Take a giant bulldozer and fill in all the canyons.
  • Take a giant wrecking ball and knock down the keeps. Take the bulldozer and push dirt over the debris and plant some grass so its rolling hills.
  • Build new keeps atop the rolling hills. Simple keeps. Like castles. No lava. No invisible sandstorms. No jumping pads. No etc.

1) Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
I normally do WvW in a guild group that is normally around 10-15 man. We normally seek fights and to improve from doing so. We usually look around for fights while getting used to the new map in general.

Right when the middle event came up for people to collect items from PvE mobs with gears above them and to bring them to certain NPCs, we got hit hard by lag to the point that fighting medium-sized groups was extremely difficult due to skill lag and getting hit by things that do not show up (granted, some things we might just not recognize just yet due to the new skills that came with HoT). Therefore, we dread that event appearing since. Last time we decided to finish it asap to get rid of the lag only to have another event appear that has significantly less lag <insert PvE-disliking guildies’ complaints here>.

Our driver also needs a google maps; we kept getting lost.

2) Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
Everyone prefers to be in EBG due to less possible lag, we also get to run normally as we already know the map. The issue is that there seems to be an increased amount of lag compared to before where fighting just 1 blob causes the same amount of lag as 2 blobs from before. We only have those blobs to fight else we’d avoid the enemy blobs as much as possible; part of it may be because everyone is trying to get into EBG to avoid the BLs.

3) Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
Hard to judge, I want to judge after the lag is hopefully mostly removed. So far, numbers and cc (soft and hard crowd control) are king.

4) Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
The new borderlands makes it difficult to find other groups to fight plus more linear fighting styles. Sometimes it makes me feel like it’s like 2 sumo wrestlers going at it. Old stability may give smaller groups a better chance to survive the 20 hard-cc/enemy that larger groups can dish out as there is less striping that way, plus it’s even harder to avoid the cc in the more enclosed areas on the new maps. Right now I myself would rather avoid BLs due to the lag since I prefer fighting to train, fighting to defend, etc. compared to people whom may prefer to use other mechanics to defend.

5) In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
I did not pay attention to this yet.

6) How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
Less fights, less ability to win due to skills not going off, and needing time to learn the map is making it hard to kill people to get loot in the first place. I play WvW for fun as it is mostly a money-sink to me; I do PvE in my spare time as there is also lore for me to find there (plus pretty scenes).

7) How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
If I’m lagging, I’m out for the day; right now every day I actually do WvW I lag so I don’t stay long.

8) In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
Fix the lag first, then I can be able help more; right now I do not believe I have enough to judge. Some WvW people also highly dislike PvE content for the events and mobs; the events also give good notifications but can also be distracting in that way. People also use websites to keep track of timers, perhaps only commander tags can see lord timers on their maps?

9) Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
If I’m in WvW, I’m most likely with my guild. At this rate, most likely EBG or waiting in queue.

Hope this helps!

Is there actually something gonna happen or did this thread went to the background already?

It is too soon to talk about the new borderland. I believe the WvW community should stop whining and wait for a couple of weeks till things have calmed down with HoT.

Make the new desert borderlands part of EOTM (it is perfect for karma train) and bring back alpine. WVW doesn’t need fancy mechanics, it is the large battles we love, not destroying gates and running around. IMO even alpine had too much running around and not enough fights. I would have been happier with a small map with only 1 keep per team which is worth loads of points, at least there would be fights… if we wanted PVE we would play PVE mode

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

-In the afternoon i did smaller scale combat, scouting, dolly escorting(while mining on the side), fliping T0 camps, basicly preparing the borderland for primetime, where i would tipicaly join commander in large scale fights(without lag hopefully), pusinh T3 keeps to get rid of those pesky waypoints, for which there were preparations(killing dollies, trebing trough afternoon).

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

-EBG tends to have higher % of commander coverage, and u are not generaly defending outside of your corner. Otherwise its the same

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

-You cant starve keeps out of supply to not only stop it from upgrading but halting enemy pushes before they even start becouse u cant realy build 10 omegas if u dont own a keep.
Also when there is a larger fight it tends to be in some corridor, not even a choke(door length). Such fights are not interesting, melee pushes and melts on all AOEs(no one has enough stability and invunrability to push 1200+ range of choke) while backliners cant even follow(generaly even less survivability than melee), not to mention focus party.
Cant run with R and check out map at same time cus ill likely die from falling damage.
Try to treb fire keep(gl).

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

-I dont think there are gona be differences in builds becouse of this, especialy in guild scene. We even refused to use venom wells, not focus on using knockbacks/fear specifily to push someone over the edge. But if fight happens near a cliff, well u tried to knock someone down even on alpine.

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

-Definetly takes longer(acctuly a good thing), but thats mostly at undefended objectives(not realy good), cus unmanned keeps/towers should be relativly easy to capture, but this is not realy the problem.
Problem is that if u are fighting on one side of map and than come to the other everything has atleast cannons up if not more, for free!!! I always liked taking care of a keep and to make sure it upgrades as it should.
Also getting things from oil/cannon/mortar/waypoint line and wall/gate one at the same time is not good, it should stay as it was with you having to chose what u want first instead of everything.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

-This questions is out of place. You could never sustain yourself in wvw, but its not the problem with siege or upgrades but acctuly getting geared up. As a wvw only player i would probably get ascended armor only this year(i play since headstart) if i werent lucky and got zap in forge.
Come on only changing runes can cost 50g.
As for elite specialization, 400 HP was a lot to much, as for 250 HP its still a lot to only wvw mode it, cus some days u can only get 1 or less ranks. I got chronomancer by using teleport to friend consumables on day 1(while liquid WXP was removed, lel, give it back 20min bonus is inefective), just to avoid the horrible(personal opinion) pve experiences.
Hero point badges(dont know what their called) should be account bound, so i can acctuly try some alt elite with 1% map completion while not activly karma training with that class.
You cant get gold in wvw, you can only get 1 special skin(mistforged), even this is extremly limited, cus there was no turnament in eternity. Even in spvp you have reward tracks, to get some special things.
You cant even build war room upgrades by only playing WvW and war room only aplies to WvW.

How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

-It wont, ill just be in EBG.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

-More flat ground->open field fights,easier to traverse
Less gimicks->fire hound, shifting walls(even more chokes), stealth(lol), auto turrets(maby when outnumbered)
Lords->remove pve stuff and tune them down, u cant even have lord room fight with so powerful CCs

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

-If Alpine was sopposably confusing this is inacassible to new players.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

-Basicly what i sead trought the whole post.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

-EBG

Midlle event could be transformed into a single cap circle(with notification in advance that it will activate, similar to stronghold channeling) that disables enemy waypoints(other than spawn) on that map for lets say 20-30 min. Just brainstorming, maby ill see it as a bad idea tomorow, but well whatever it is it should have some value and should be detirmened by simple open field fight.

Edit: Waypoint only at T3 keeps, pls, for any team.
—-

There is a whole lot more that can be discused, but its getting late and since i answered all the questions, now im just hopping someone from WvW team acctuly reads it.

Sry that i didnt bother to go trough what i wrote, but yea its late.

Again, thanks for all the great input, folks! Staying civil will help us get our point through, like it most likely did when the hero point grind was reduced as I had noted a number of forum regulars from here making some great posts over there as well.

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
I did a bit of everything. Sentrying, building siege, roaming, zerging, and commanding

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
Basically the same, except I didn’t command on EB all that often

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
With the new maps, I log in, open the map, immediately feel my stomach drop, log out, and go play GTA Online.

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
On the old maps, it was mainly about capturing chunks of areas that connected together, the north, the SW, and the SE. You’d hold the area closest to your spawn, and then push out and capture the other areas until you held the whole map

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
attacking the walls took about the same amount of time, gates seemed to take considerably longer

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
I’ve never been able to sustain myself from what I get in WvW. WvW has always been a massive gold sink, and nothing has changed.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
With the new maps, look for a tag, join the karma train, spam 1, wave to the 2 enemy players you see along the way.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
Simply put…. they don’t. They took out what they had right from the old maps, and went full steam ahead with what they had laughably wrong.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
I used to spent 95% of my time on the home borderland. After spending a couple hours going around to each of the areas to see how defensible they are, and then tagging up and taking each area on an away borderland, I’m sorely disappointed in the new maps, so I’ll probably end up going to EB for an hour every few days, though that will most likely end up tapering off over time

Phantom.8130:

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
I’ve never been able to sustain myself from what I get in WvW. WvW has always been a massive gold sink, and nothing has changed.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
With the new maps, look for a tag, join the karma train, spam 1, wave to the 2 enemy players you see along the way.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
Simply put…. they don’t. They took out what they had right from the old maps, and went full steam ahead with what they had laughably wrong.

^^^^this^^^^ +5

Phantom.8130:

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

Well, except that this cant be “fixed”.

What you describe is a new map, not a fix. This isnt photoshop, you dont mark an area and select rotate 180 degree then its done. Changing one area requires all the other areas to change.

Its not that I dont agree with you (I do, the objective layout is horrible), its just not a fix that Anet can do given the map that we have.

Dawdler.8521:

Phantom.8130:

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

Well, except that this cant be “fixed”.

What you describe is a new map, not a fix. This isnt photoshop, you dont mark an area and select rotate 180 degree then its done. Changing one area requires all the other areas to change.

Its not that I dont agree with you (I do, the objective layout is horrible), its just not a fix that Anet can do given the map that we have.

Oh, believe me, I know. I’ve done map building in the past. They’d pretty much have to rebuild each of the areas to fit the landscape they were moved to. The problem, though, is that this isn’t anywhere close to the first time I, and others, have told them of the problem with the layout. We’ve been saying it for years now. I know at least one thread even had pictures of how the layout needed to be. As well as why the layout needed to be that way, and why is absolutely shouldn’t have been the triangle, square, circle design they already had. Hell, I even offered to sit down with any dev and spend 8 hours (if needs be) just explaining everything to them, and basically spoonfeeding them all the information that they absolutely need to know to make a functional WvW map. That offer is still an open one. I’ll sit down with any dev, and spend as much time explaining things to them as needed. Though I did tag up one time, and let a dev lead our zerg. Sadly, that dev just ran around and got map completion, then left. None have taken me up on my offer to help them fix things.

I had hoped when they advertised the new maps as having structures placed in strategically important locations, that they wouldn’t have been flat out lying. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Not only are they not in strategically important locations, they’re actually worse off in that regard than the Alpine map was. At least there, the northern towers could treb back the garrison if it got golem rushed. Now they’re completely isolated from the one area they’re supposed to help defend, rendering them 100% useless. The southern towers have pretty decent interiors for defending, but…. once again, they’re useless to the keeps they’re supposed to be helping to defend. But, hey, Anet got a ton of cash from all the expansions that people bought, so I’m sure they’ll consider the whole thing a rousing success across the board.

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

I was roaming, leading pug groups of different sizes (EB, BLs, map jump), havocing and rading with 15-30. I did everything except escorting dolyaks and afk scouting (mby 10 mintues and i bet i lost a keep). Helping in upgrades, sniping dolyaks, taking defended keeps in prime time or off time, fighting blobs, fighting roamers, dueling in OS, trebbing garrie from towers and ruins, camping enemie north camp with few guys with balistas and rams.
All this in t1-4 EU. (though i started from Vabbi =))

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

It’s been not much time for new bls, but EB is just ez map for understanding or palying and it has not much of tactical play included in it. On eb you just go fight for useless sm forever, defend your stuff and poke enemie stuff or map jump from eb elsewhere then back to sneak enemie keep etc.

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

Defence is much easier now if you have a few people.
Easier to find enemie on the map dew to sentry system etc.
Shortcuts on new map has better ways to get to some places if you know them.
Terrain is semi-flat and gives much more oportunity for tactical play if you willing to do so.
Much more could write, but overall i enjoyed alpine bls and enjoying dessert bls alot.

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

Still stab meta is stupid. It’s there and you need stab to move on in aggressive range for melee.
Ranged got more opportunities for positioning.
Fights inside keeps or towers are much more fun if enemies are not using siege, ALOT of space to juke.
My scrapper crack all crappers.
It’s early to say about meta much. RIP warriors though..that is very sad…

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
Undefended – almost same. Lord is stronger only.
Defended – you better think twice if you breached inner to go to lord room or stay away from that CC machines. Lord has a huge impact ona fight right now, what is good.
Smaller group can much easier defend tower or keep, same if smaller group wants to attack smth, it’s harder to find out where the hell they trying to breach through.
More ways of tactical plays.
Harder to force weaker enemies to come out and fight, though it may give them more morale to get off the walls. Will see.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
WvW is much more unrewarding right now as it was before, very unefficient to play only wvw now. Siege, food, gear etc costs more then you get from wvw. It’s bad and good on the same side.
Bad – you need to leave wvw to play wvw at it’s fullest.
Good – SW farm train won’t make a step in wvw.
Elite spec system is fine, with lowered hero points cap.
Account bound (that is not intended, but they better leave it as it is) hero points from wvw is a great thing.
So i can run a a day in wvw then do HOT maps hero points for 1-2 hours and i got my elit spec for pve/wvw.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

More sentrys could have been added, they working out great shwoing of the enemies on the map.
Gliding?) Would think twice of adding it, but it’s crazy and fun idea at the same time.
Nerf to siege dmg vs players and mby buff vs siege, so you could kill siege vs siege easier but not siege vs player, what can be frustrating sometimes.
More if thoughts wil lgo with more hours spent in wvw. We yet need to discover how we will play the new maps.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

They wil lbe lost and play EBG for half a year or more. It’s insanly harder then before to udnerstand how the map works. Some better guides at the starter NPC could take a place i guess.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Expirience is differnt for different people, depending on their playstyle, expirience etc etc etc. For me – it is great. It’s very fresh and fun to explore it and find a ways to play the new maps.
Roamin was fun.
Zerging was fun.
Taking structures…hmm i got enough of it in my previous expirience, but it was fun finding the ways to open this or that walls/gates etc.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

Wich wvw map?) New borderlands for sure. If it’s nothing i can find in an hour in new bls then i go pvp or lvling elite specs etc. Though i found that ppl coming back to wvw and playing new maps in our matchup (Tier 1 EU) and it is great fun to explore them right now.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the new maps, apart from the PvE event which should not be there.

The only problem is the attitude of the players to change. They don’t like it, Period.

In only a week they have managed to pass judgement without, in many cases, spending more than an hour or two on the new maps, plenty of time to come to a reasonable conclusion it seems?

People have cried out for change on this very forum, which, admittedly is populated by whiners in the main, and now the changes are here, all they want to do is whine some more.

If these maps had been in game from day one people would have been wetting their underwear about how great they are, but human nature, and gamer’s nature being what it is, it is more a case of …….

“I don’t like it, I don’t know what is wrong with it because I haven’t played it enough to find out, but I don’t like it so please remove it now”

Maybe as an older player I am not from the age of entitlement where I expect everything to be exactly as I want it.

The solution is simple….adapt or leave, don’t come come to the forum with your petty complaints. Sure, WvW will suffer for a few weeks but the game is still bigger than any of you and it will recover and get along just fine without you.

tichai.4351:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the new maps, apart from the PvE event which should not be there.

The only problem is the attitude of the players to change. They don’t like it, Period

Dont like it? The total loss of the strategy is not just “not liking it”. Towers no longer serve a purpose because they do not threaten keeps and keeps no longer serve a purpose because they have zero area control. If you do a deep analyze of the fortification layout in desert border compared to alpine, you will find serious design flaws on the size of being the reason for capping things – which incidently have nothing to do with the irrelevant PvE event.

Both alpine and eb share this fundamental WvW design philosophy, while EoTM and desert do not. Coincidence? No. Its not about “not liking it”.

I have already given feedback in this thread, but here are few other things I have noticed about the new map.

The distances between camps + towers and towers + keeps are so problematic that I don’t see any other way to remedy this issue than a complete redesign of the new map. Let me explain:

The new maps were supposed to encourage small scale vs zerging, but I feel they might actually do the opposite.

1. The supply camps are now located too far from the keeps and towers. Previously I could easily solo build a ram on the SE tower, but first flipping SE camp and then coming to SE tower. Kill all the guards, start building a ram. Go back to resupply and then build again. I could do 2 supply runs and get the ram up before the guards respawned (3 minute time). Now this is no longer possible. Of course there is always the way to catapult the wall down, but nevertheless now it takes longer time for 1-2 players to get enough supplies to build one ram and catapult. You can no longer +5 supply camp or keep. The slowness of things is horrible in many ways as the main interest for many WvWvW players was the fast paced epic action. Now if the game mode continues to offer lousy rewards and things happen slower than before, this will lead to the slow death of the game mode.

You can still get things happen fast, but that requires a larger group. Even in EU tier 1, there often isn’t more than just 1-2 players on the map. I can imagine the situation is even worse at lower tiers.

2. The towers offer no strategical advantage besides creating a barrier, which enemies must circle around. Previously it was a very common tactic to build a trebuchet on SW tower to attack Bay. Or build trebs on NE or NW tower to attack the Garrison. One could also build a counter treb to take the wall down of these towers from Garrison. Now the distances are just too far to reach the enemy keep.

3. All those shrines just add unneeded complexity to the map. And make players to spend even more time to do pve mini events instead of fighting against real human players. The middle oasis event is soloable, but it is so slow and boring to do alone. The side which has most players has massive advantage and probably wins the event. And the skyplitter cannon is way too overpowered: not just destroying the gates, but also enemy players near them.

My suggestion: either remove all those pve events or make them so that they offer no strategic advantages for attacking or defending, rather give them pve rewards like a rare item + crafting materials.

The new keeps are way too big. Previously you could alone see more than half of the keep by just standing in one high location. The smaller keeps lead to interesting fights.

Now all those epic Garrison, Bay and Hills defends, which could sometimes last 1-2 hours and required to summon help from other maps are gone. Oh man those good old times! I am surely I am not the only WvWvW players, who actually enjoys a WvWvW which offers epic fights. Now the focus has shifted more towards players vs the environment and I really mean things like environmental hazards.

Final note: Comments like “adapt or leave” and “stop whining” are very toxic to the gaming community. You can check my post history. I haven’t asked for new maps. I was asking for better balance and better rewards. I wanted to get rid of the imbalancing stat bonuses. And finally the ruins of power are gone (good!) and condition duration is just +/- 20 % (great!). I dislike the auto upgrade, which doesn’t even require human interraction. It was very vital role for people to do it manually and now there is often just too little things to do in WvWvW, besides harvesting the nodes (great addition).

I have always been totally fine with the old maps, even having them for next 10 years (I doubt GW2 will live longer than that). I never liked gimmicky design, excessive verticality and jumping puzzle alike pve maps, like EotM or the new borderlands. Simpler is often better. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.

tichai.4351:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the new maps, apart from the PvE event which should not be there.

The only problem is the attitude of the players to change. They don’t like it, Period.

In only a week they have managed to pass judgement without, in many cases, spending more than an hour or two on the new maps, plenty of time to come to a reasonable conclusion it seems?

People have cried out for change on this very forum, which, admittedly is populated by whiners in the main, and now the changes are here, all they want to do is whine some more.

If these maps had been in game from day one people would have been wetting their underwear about how great they are, but human nature, and gamer’s nature being what it is, it is more a case of …….

“I don’t like it, I don’t know what is wrong with it because I haven’t played it enough to find out, but I don’t like it so please remove it now”

Maybe as an older player I am not from the age of entitlement where I expect everything to be exactly as I want it.

The solution is simple….adapt or leave, don’t come come to the forum with your petty complaints. Sure, WvW will suffer for a few weeks but the game is still bigger than any of you and it will recover and get along just fine without you.

Thanks for your input, but I’m afraid a lot of that is off topic. This thread is labeled [Constructive Feedback] Desert Borderlands, not [Feedback] Player Attitudes. If you wish to discuss that, please find another topic. The goal of the thread is to discuss how one plays WvW and provide an evaluation of such on the maps. How other people approach this, and in particular your own evaluation of their mentality towards life, is a red herring and incredibly toxic. Again, we have many other places for that kind of stuff.

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past.
Supply runner. Build siege, stand watch. Scout where needed, join the vanguard when required.

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds.
I rarely leave our homeland. My rare visits to EB were following a tag.

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
Compared to Alpine: No siege to build, no positions to guard, wandering around is dangerous and not rewarding. (Dangerous due to environmental hazards. Not people. Haven’t seen any people.)

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past.
At least the Alpine fortifications looked like something we ourselves had built. The new constructions appear to be Escheresque warrens built like the Winchester Mystery House.

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
Insufficient examples. One session with a group of five taking a tower took longer because we got lost in it.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past?
Not to sound precious, but the reward was the activity, participating in the defense of the realm, working alongside the other defenders. The loot was sufficient to pay for arrow carts and armor repairs, more or less. I would like to be making progress on my equipment upgrades, but apparently that is all compartmentalized.

How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
Given the current state, there won’t be any long sessions.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
Beautiful, lots of work, but seriously overdesigned. This was a clear case where ‘kill your darlings’ needed to be ruthlessly wielded. I personally don’t like tech invading my medieval magic world, but giant lasers? Force fields? That is well beyond my ‘willing suspension’. In short, convert to adventure zone, start again with a more organic design plan.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
Day One: Port to main keep. Fall to your death several times. Day Two: discover the exit to the main keep, begin exploring. Fall to your death several more times, now with lava! Day Three: Learn to use map. Bonus points for determining what is inside a keep and what is outside. Die to random critters finding vistas and points of interest that apparently no longer have a purpose. Day Four: see another living person! Die by falling trying to get close enough to kill each other. Day Four: discover the nice crafting area, so not a total loss.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
As stated by others: Not at all. Other than the crafting area.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
Pre-HoT: SoR WvW map, defending the homeland. After HoT: Doing map completions elsewhere, with an amount of forced effort to do the tedious HoT Jungles, also overengineered.

In sum:

Look, I tried. Am still trying. But just adding a couple of zergs won’t change the nature of the map, which to my view is just vastly cluttered and entirely impersonal.

It is a great advanced adventure zone. A great place to visit, but I don’t want to live there. I want a homeland that feels like ‘home’, not an unwelcoming barely habitable alien landscape we’re attempting (and failing) to colonize. There was some wasted space in Alpine borderland. The area between the Citadel and North Camp, for example. And note what was there: People. Houses. A Moot Hall. The stuff we were defending. To be sure, there were issues. Who was responsible for permanent mortar placements? How about a one-way portal door from Citadel to Garrison? If supply camps are vital, why aren’t the towers built on top of them? Why no Starbucks upgrade (at least in the north towers). But I could live there, and I had a place. I could park myself in Woodhaven or Hills, build the siege and work the upgrades, listen to the vanguard in the field, give reports, and feel I’ve done my duty for a time. New map: I am a transgressor in every part of it. And extraneous.

Reposting some feedback from another thread:

To paraphrase the feedback from a guildie of mine there is no flow to the map. There are lots of different choke points but they don’t funnel groups from different servers into common areas for fights or as someone else said make towers and keeps organic obstacles to be taken before proceeding forward in a lattice like structure used by other massive pvp games. They have overdosed on the choke points and paths leading to groups just bypassing each other completely.

The PvE obstacles are really not organic whatsoever, they are just artificial annoyances. And the event only works if the map has at least 2 relatively even forces on it.

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past.
  I would run solo or small roaming groups usually. I would look for people to fight usually taking towers and camps and sometimes keeps to give people a reason to come and play. in terms of defending and upgrading i would the cost usually scared me off but i would normally do keeps because the waypoint was so nice to have the mobility around the map, and towers when i knew other teams were capping towers often that way the tower would then give me enough time to get there and fight the attackers before they broke through.

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all.
  its basically was the same except less tower and keep capping because there was more players. In eternal you had to dodge the zergs more and there were often more roamers.

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands. It is important that with the new borderland auto upgrades came with it. the terrain of the dessert border has a lot of vertical or obstacles that you must either break down or run around. along with its increased size you have much longer travel times. the npc are much harder making solo capping tower very difficult and the npc all like to spam stuns making i feel like stability is require. lastly when on another borderland the only notification you get when something is under attack is only the north keep which makes it difficult to hold those keeps

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role. there is more of it. it not any more important than it was before.

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past. it takes much longer to take objective because of the scaling difficulty and the auto upgrade system.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW? it was never good and still cant sustain the cost of wvw

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW? negatively, more pressure to cap things harder to cap thing takes longer to travel takes longer respawn

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
  smaller
  less vertical
  npc that buff nearby players
  weaker npcs
  more condensed keeps
  clearer maps

I’d like to write a longer response (I’ll come back later for that), but one thing I need to mention about the current WvW borderlands is that I was looking forward to expansion content, not replacement content. I’ve mentioned this on other threads, too – it would work as an additional map, or even as a part of a borderland map rotation (the borderlands would be much more interesting if each borderland was a different map, and the server based on each map cycled per round), but completely replacing the classic WvW gameplay and layout was a hard pill for us WvW players to swallow (some of us were going to live in our borderlands for the rest of our lives, with the hope of invading other maps in the future). Automatic upgrades remove the sense of achievement from upgrading towers/castles (some of us were proud dolyak defenders), and we play PvE or Heart of the Mists for NPC events.

All in all, the new borderland map_could_ work as a borderland rotation map, but it is designed more like an alternative map, like Heart of the Mists. And it would possibly even shine as that.

Will this even be read, responded to, considered and prioritized?

The problem with the new map and the WvW experience at large is not very difficult to understand and after 3 years of critique it is fairly well defined. The real problem is that they have not been prioritized and instead we have seen Anet delve into other things while throwing out some half-hearted- or unfulfilled promises of commitments that have, arguably, had more of a negative impact than a positive one over time.

The map:

Anet should have a gander at the current industry-leaders of map-recyling over at Wargaming. When people ask for new maps, they ask for something that will shake up the routines, not something that completely alters the gamemode like EotM or EotM 2.0 (DBL). A good way to introduce new maps is to build upon popular elements on the existing maps and changing details, such as the blink- or siege coverage spots everyone has learnt. We don’t need restrictive elements that stops players from facing other players. New maps, as a focal point for design, was, ontop of that, something that the community held in low priority, even though it was shoehorned in with the expansion.

Everything else:

John Corpening had most of the issues noted down in his post a couple of months back. The only problem with his post is that we haven’t heard or seen anything since even though there is a general upset with the new map and the state of WvW at large.

The most common issues are: Far worse or less interesting rewards and progression than the other game modes (skins, titles, finishers, income etc.). Direct balance issues with regards to server population and group sizes (the stability nerf was a major culprit here). Indirect balance issues with regards to gameplay (players-structures), timezones and score/goals. General concerns about class balance (though, I would argue that GW2 and WvW overall has had one of the best class balances I’ve seen, even though there may be some issues or exceptions, it is an inescapable topic and something this game has handled relatively well throughout its time – most classes have had some role in WvW).

Was in WvW today with my guild for about two hours. Historically, we usually raid about 3 hours, then have an “after raid” for however long people stick around. The entire two hours I was with my guild today, we never left EBG. We had a few decent fights with another server, though. Mainly because we were denying them (what we believed to be a guild mission) taking a camp. We farmed them for a few rounds then moved on and let them have the camp. We capped all of EBG before I had to leave for work. Historically, we always secured our own BL map before anything else. The home BL always had priority over any other map. That is no longer the case with the new BL, at least for now. Two hours on Teamspeak and no mention of BL map. Two hours in EBG and no mention of nor reports or support requests from the home BL map. This is sad. We’ll be raiding again tomorrow. If anything changes I’ll update again.

Edit 11.4.15: Today was worse than yesterday. No fights/resistance in EBG, no fights resistance in BL.

•Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
Typically small groups of 5 or less. Most tasks centered around maintaining our supply line if on our BL and suppressing opposing supply lines if on other BL. Mostly taking supply camps and fighting other small havoc groups .

•Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
On EBG more time was spent in small havoc groups disrupting zergs or small scale fighting. It was different in the fact that we weren’t necessarily attempting to keep supply running or disrupt opposing supply.

•Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
In the new borderlands it takes twice as long to navigate the map. We are more likely to pick a section of the map (N,S,E,W) and defend it or take it over if on opposing BL.

•Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
I have found that most often if I encounter groups of opposing players we are outnumbered by a good deal as it seems that larger groups are brought into the BL due to it’s increased size. Defending is not necessarily any easier either. Have not had opportunity to use the environment to my advantage other than to run away from larger groups.

•In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
The time involved to take a structure has at least doubled. taking a camp is a far longer process as well. As long as a tower has not been upgraded to fortified walls or gates it can be taken or at least breached before an opposing group can get there. The travel time in the new BL makes it very difficult to get to a tower that is being attacked and defend it.

•How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I haven’t noticed an overwhelming difference in loot other than newer exotic drops. The elite specialization has taken far longer than anticipated, and I’ve come to realize that unless I spend a much greater amount of time in game I will not be able to get the elite that I am pursuing. With the current lack of interest in WvW it seems unlikely to attain many goals strictly in WvW.

•How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
It has caused me to play far less than i had in the past. The lack of participation in Wvw is disheartening and the fact that I can not compete with those who have played enough to get their elite unlocked makes it far more difficult.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The new BLs are just too big to navigate effectively. Either making short cuts to towers or additional WPs in my opinion are the only ways to make it viable for combat over towers and camps. Additionally it feels so much like EoTM that I think some are hesitant to even try to learn the map. I think the BL should have it’s own feel and not be modeled so much after EoTM.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
I think that a new WvW player would be a bit lost unless they had spent some time in EoTM to understand how the map really works.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps. The new maps are frustrating. There are so many dead ends and turns to nowhere that require somebody to spend a great deal of time in the map to even understand it to a small degree. They are far and away different from the previous maps and while that isn’t a bad thing, they have become far too confusing to navigate.

•Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2? EBG

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

Sometimes ran solo, sometimes as a small group (2-3, usually, sometimes a little bigger), and sometimes with my guild during raid (15-ish). When alone or as a small group, we’d snipe yaks, tail enemy zergs and call their locations while picking off their tail, flip camps, pick fights with the people upgrading, contest wps, gank people checking on wps getting hit, camp the north camp and kill people coming to flip it back. We’d also sometimes poke towers and keeps with trebs or catas to pick a fight.

As a 15-man, we’d look for where the enemy zergs most likely were and pick a fight with them.

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

I hate EB since it’s always been either a zerg or nothing at all. Even the enemy “roaming groups” were 10-ish people. So if I was on that map, it was usually because my guild was there trying to pick a fight with the zerg. If I was alone, I was contesting wps for our zerg while the BLs were dead, running around the towers ordering upgrades, or walking yaks.

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

Either dooring with the zerg or running around solo or in a small group looking for a fight and never getting one. Those maps are dead and aren’t particularly friendly to non-zergs anyway.

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

Previously, you had chokes and open areas where you could choose to engage in. It worked great regardless of your group size because you could always push for the fight being where you could actually fight it. If you didn’t want to fight on a bridge, you just didn’t cross the bridge. You went around and forced the fight elsewhere. If another group tried to come up behind you and aj, you could reposition to either run or reengage in a more fair fight.

Now, on the rare occasion there is a fight, it’s just a boring choke fight. Not really any options on how to engage.

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

Previously, roughly 5-10 minutes to solo build siege, break a wall, and take a tower. Slightly shorter for 2 people. Longer to take a keep, of course, from having to break two walls. But didn’t take too long because if I was alone, I could just guild cata it and only have to run back for supplies once. As two or three people, we wouldn’t need to run back for supplies at all.

Now, I think about how I’d have to run back for supplies 3 times vs just 1 (or 1 vs 0 if I have a friend), and how + 5 is gated behind a huge amount of pve grind, and how towers could just auto-upgrade while I’m running supplies to hit them, and how it only takes one person to get in the tower to stop us because cannons are such an early auto-upgrade, and how everything’s always t2+ thanks to the auto-upgrade, and don’t even bother because it’d take too long. Those barricades everywhere aren’t helping, either.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

Running around an empty map taking nothing but camps doesn’t make anything. There’s nothing to do. All my old roles are gone now—I don’t need to scout; the sentries do it for me. I don’t need to snipe or escort yaks, everything auto-upgrades anyway. There’s no one running around upgrading the objectives on the maps, so there’s no one to fight while roaming.

Hell, I made more when I had to buy upgrades because at least then there were people to fight trying to stop me, so I got loot bags from them.

As for pursuing other in-game goals while playing wvw, there’s guild missions. But that’s about it. No flax, no sand, no shovels, no ley line sparks, and some of that other crap we need to upgrade guild halls makes it a little hard to get our hall up to a rank where we can claim anything and actually gasp have a +5 without spending all our time in pveland. But I guess Anet just wanted to keep claiming that all wvw’ers are just pvers anyway.

I wasn’t surprised by any of this, though. When Anet said that they’d heard the roamers, scouts, and sentries complaining about kitten loot for such an important role and wanted to do something about it, I figured Anet meant that they’d nerf the importance of the role rather than address the pay. And that’s exactly the route they went.

I do really like the new gathering nodes, though. Finally, we have access to most of the old ingredients. Now we just need access to the new ingredients, toxic spores, and quartz.

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

Used to spend nearly every hour I was in-game in wvw. Back then, I didn’t need to pve to get what I needed in wvw, outside of certain gear appearances and food ingredients. Now, I pop my head in long enough to see if the map looks dead then leave. If I’m there for guild missions, I stay longer. But it’s usually pretty dead when doing them, so I leave afterwards. Nothing else to do.

Besides, those shovels and sparks and guild ranks towards +5 aren’t going to farm themselves . . .

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Revert back to the old map, get rid of auto-upgrades, get rid of automatically having wps. At the VERY least, require yaks to reach the objective, and require a player to actively select the upgrade to implement it before it begins building, even if the cost of the upgrade is removed. Making it easier for people to just camp in towers all day doesn’t promote a healthy pvp format.

And, this shouldn’t need to be said, but less pve and NO automated turrets. WvW is still a pvp format; make people actually have to fight people. That crap shouldn’t be an easily available crutch at every single point on the map, especially open field.

The parts that were changed weren’t the parts that were broken.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

Don’t bother; just go to EB.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Don’t bother; just go to EB. Or hell, eotm. At least there are people there who aren’t in the zerg. Granted, they’re uplevels trying to reach their zerg and rarely fight back, so it’s not a particularly engaging fight, but it’s better than nothing.

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

Silverwastes or Tangled something-or-other, because need that kitten to upgrade guild halls, and wvw deader than before the xpac.

ArchonWing.9480:

Hello …

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I understand what this means now. For me personally: It is worse. It is horrible. There just isn’t any way to truly describe the bank-sucking-void-of-a-gold-sink WvW is. Seriously, it sucks… and don’t feed me that “drip, drip, drip” loot coming in kitten. I can spend the exact same amount of time in a PvE map and get a “flood, flood, flood”. Does my inventory get full during a guild raid? Sure it does. Does my inventory get full farming a PvE map? Sure it does, in 1/3 the time!

Fellfoot.8156:

ArchonWing.9480:

Hello …

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I understand what this means now. For me personally: It is worse. It is horrible. There just isn’t any way to truly describe the bank-sucking-void-of-a-gold-sink WvW is. Seriously, it sucks… and don’t feed me that “drip, drip, drip” loot coming in kitten. I can spend the exact same amount of time in a PvE map and get a “flood, flood, flood”. Does my inventory get full during a guild raid? Sure it does. Does my inventory get full farming a PvE map? Sure it does, in 1/3 the time!

Well, I think the new maps in PvE finally found a decent balance between participation and consistent rewards. WvW has always been the opposite, and while I understand people don’t come to WvW for that kind of stuff, armor and weapons don’t exactly craft themselves, and nor does siege.

It doesn’t drip, it leaks.

I don’t want to answer a lot of these because it will quickly go tl;dr.

1. In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

There are a lot of mechanical fixes, I could go on for a while. I just want to start by mentioning the worst offender.

The #1 problem with the desert borderlands is that the defensive walls north keep can get from shrines help attackers a great deal. Attackers can trigger the walls, defenders cannot. This means that off map attackers (who don’t need an advantage if they’re in a position to be practically spawn camping) get an advantage and the defender is punished for owning too many shrines.

either remove them, or make them into Line-of-warding style abilities that don’t affect defenders. If the latter, greatly reduce the number of them.

2. How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

Loot hasn’t really changed one way or the other. I lead raids and my guild and my server trust me so, a great deal of stuff (siege, food, etc.) ends up just given to me from other people, so i can’t tell if it’s sustaining.

I don’t like the way elite specs unlock in WvW— it’s anti social. I think if you get a proof you should be able to use it on any character because of the social dynamic.

When someone wants to unlock, say, daredevil, but the group needs someone to play (insert class here), it puts them in the position where they say, gee, am I being selfish? Will people be mad at me? etc. etc.

ArchonWing.9480:

Hello WvW Community.

As there seems to be quite a few concerns and comments on the new maps we’ve just gotten, I’d like to gather up some feedback in a single place and ask a few questions.

Please format your post to answer these statements. You don’t have to answer all of them. Please stay on topic and do not make negative comments about other posts even if you know they’re totally wrong. Do not make passive aggressive comments about anyone. Please do not include salt in your post.

This thread shall be ongoing, so if you have had a change of heart for any reason, you may continue posting, but obviously don’t spam it every day.

All views in my post will be of a player located in NA, who plays from 7am EST through 3pm EST. (So in GW2 terms later OCX to early EU.)

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

A typical day would have consisted of various things based off of day, however it did range from day to day. Running with groups of apx. 15-30. (Not including the group of 20-30 on another map.) I’ve commanded in the map, followed commanders, ran havoc, scouted locations, sniped yaks, escorted yaks, upgraded objectives, and attacked/defended objectives, and open field fights.

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

For myself, there weren’t many changes between EBG and the Alpine borderland maps other then placement on siege, and map politics. As well as movement and the PVE’ing for the dredge/Ogre’s/Frogs on EBG.

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

On the new Borderlands I log in, run around, find little to no enemies. No one is pinning on the borderlands as much. Keeps are very hard to scout efficiently as a solo scout, and the map is not very friendly to moving to scout a location quickly if you aren’t near it. All upgrades are automatic, and do not even require a player to start them. We have cannons at the start on an objective as well. No groups want to defend borderlands so I no longer build siege. There isn’t much need for escorting yaks anymore. There are no open field fights and barely anyone on the new maps at all, so to be honest I rarely stay in them for long. (I think the most I’ve spent since HoT in the BL maps has been 30 minutes at any given point, as opposed to pre-hot at 6-8 hours.)

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

In the past pre-hot there would be open field fighting anywhere on the map. Depending on which groups would be battling it out would change the nature of the combat style. (As certain guild groups run different spec’s then others, as well as different composition from PUG groups.) People would work together to pinch the enemy between multiple groups, or use high ground advantage/defend high ground advantage.

As for the new borderland maps: Changes unknown to combat due to lack of players in map since HOT and many veteran’s taking a break until WvW is fixed.
Guess: More will run Stability possibly though due to the nerf on stability to being “stacks” a few months back that could be a mute point.

As for knocking people into Lava/off cliffs, that would be more likely done by small groups of players just messing around then larger more organized guilds. As the larger and more organized guilds prefer to have an actual fight among groups. Most of the guilds looking for fighting in wvw will more then likely avoid the new borderlands due to the terrain. It’s not good terrain for fights other then the middle section if you could consider that a “good” area for groups to fight…Though even the middle is not very good for fighting in my opinion due to the terrain.

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

In the past it would depend on the size of the group running, though now it seems to take 3-4 times longer to break walls/gates and some walls you can break have unbreakable walls behind them now. In addition killing the lords now is scaled (which I like) so killing the lord takes more time. As for giving an accurate estimate of time, more would need to play to attack/defend the borderlands to give an accurate timing comparison.

Currently gates/walls are harder to break, and lords harder to kill. However it is easier to take objectives due to no one defending as they did on the borderlands Pre-HOT.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I think the XP/WXP are fine. The loot is the same/comparable to pre-HOT, however severly lacking compared to PVE game modes. I do think that when you do gain a WVW rank the chest and open it the currency should be “Account wide” and not “soulbound” As WXP is account wide, not character bound. I see no reason as to why someone would have to play their character (or transfer the wvw rank chests to their alt) to gain the points for their elite specialization. I do think the elite specializations being obtainable through WvW is a great addition to the game. I also think all new gear sets which you have to grind in pve for should be added to WvW for players in WVW who do not wish to go into pve to obtain.

Right now by playing WvW only mode player is very slow compared to anyone playing a PVE mode of the game for the following:
Leveling
Gaining HP’s for elite specializations
Crafting Ascended gear
Crafting Legendary weapons
Gaining any of the new gears
Gold/money gain

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

Right now it has been impacted as I no longer play WvW for 6-8hours a day after work. (I play about 1-2hours max since HoT, then log off and play other games.)

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Flatten the terrain, remove the PvE events. Make route clearer for new WvW players. Remove upgrades from starting without player interaction. Add in invisible walls to keeps/towers, and add wvw gliding mastery(If keeping terrain as is.) Make entrances better to be seen to keeps.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

Currently I see the new maps only confusing new WvW players, and bringing in some players which only want to do the PvE event if there is no enemy which will fight them. Other then that most seem to be avoiding the new maps.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

I do not think the new BL’s work for veteran WvW’ers.
The new BL’s feel broken/chopped up and not fluid, PvE mechanics, and so on cause many to not play the new BL’s.

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

Since HoT, I am in EBG more then any map at all.
Before HOT I was in all maps equally.

Easy to read constructive feedback…

Bring back the old maps.

Give the old maps a face lift in a future update.

Give some cool specializations.

Reward levels comparable to pve.

Neeto rewards and gear only obtained in wvw (I bet the devs will do ascended and legendary runes).

Sorry I’m not using the format in OP, just needed to get this out. Whether devs read it, it’s up to them.

The good:

-40% run speed for 5 mins via shrines, this should be a thing on all maps.
-Harvest nodes inside towers/keeps.
-Beautiful landscape and structures.

The not so good, things should be changed/tweaked/modified/removed:

-Cripple, knockback, knockdown, burn, etc… gimmicks that have more to do with PvE than PvP. Those things annoy the crap out of players when they’re trying to have a legitimate fight. Devs have placed so many of those things that even when groups try to drag each other out for open field combat, we are still having to deal with some of these annoying Player vs Environment aspect of the game.

-Vertical terrain, too many spots you can’t cross or jump down. This is great in PvE because HoT introduced gliding. But it’s as if devs forgot gliding isn’t available in WvW. Either enable gliding, or fix up terrain. It’s just yet another aspect that’s annoying to players. Some of these things are not l2p issues, they are simply annoying.

-Every corner of a keep is a choke point. Everywhere you go, choke points. I understand the design idea was to give players a chance to defend. But it has gone overboard with choke points. So now not only do people have to push through hot choke points while getting rained on by siege, they have to worry about getting knocked into lava, knocked down to their deaths, burned by more npc’s, etc.. It’s just a bit too much.

-It takes too long to find action. This is how you lose PvP enthusiasts. Even in FPS games, the most popular maps are always CQC maps where you can find action without spending too much time running around. People go into WvW wanting to fight other players, believe it or not. They don’t go into WvW and think, “hrmm, which npc’s do I want to farm today? Which monument do I want to go visit?”

-The laser event… please just turn it off. Like players asked you to turn off the golem event 1 day in and you didn’t listen, that golem event hurt WvW population for quite awhile. Please listen to the players, turn off the laser event. Not only does it not fit the spirit of World vs World, Player vs Player combat. It creates terrible lag where players warp around and skills wouldn’t fire off properly. This is what it looks like when the laser event starts: https://youtu.be/KCmoZNwlRdQ

==

Honestly I appreciate the devs wanting to change things up and try new things. Progress sometimes is a good thing. But some of the things we find in desert borderlands just don’t make much sense. I understand devs have these ideas about how players would play in the new borderlands. Sometimes us players theorycraft how things would work out as well with new builds and skill rotations and such. But a lot of the times things don’t work out the way we imagined in our heads when played out in real time.

I don’t care if devs make mistakes. I only care to hear how they’re going to fix their mistakes. You know in WoW’s WoD expansion, I went back to the game when WoD first launched because the devs sold us this “PvP heaven” called Ashran. Devs had this grand idea about how Ashran was going to play out, and how it was going to be like the old Alterac Valley. I’m sure some Anet devs follow other games and perhaps even play them. Ashran turned out to be a disaster. It was a glorified PvE raid zone where players avoided each other to farm for loot. Needless to say I came back to GW2 for true “large scale PvP & siege” experience. Blizz devs never admitted to their faults with regards to Ashran, please don’t be like them. Admit you’ve made mistakes and tell us how you’re going to fix them.

These maps are too large for the current WvW population. Merge some servers, or create a “battlegroup” type of setup where population of individual servers no longer matter. The imbalance issues have gone for far too long. No server should be transfer locked because natural attrition occurs to guilds. Unless you really want guilds to die off in a game called “Guild Wars”, you need to let people transfer to wherever they want to go to. This way guilds can replenish their ranks over time.

WvW players want to fight each other more than they want to bang on doors or have their fights disrupted by all sorts of PvE gimmicks. We also need new reward tracks & more coins. WxP means little to nothing anymore. Start considering giving us a way to convert WxP into mastery exp. Better yet we could use new WvW-specific abilities, titles, rewards, WvW specific armor skins, etc… We really need more coins because I’m always so poor since I don’t dungeon farm. WvW guilds would love ways to upgrade their guilds/guildhalls through activities in WvW. With HoT expansion you’ve given PvE & PvP players incentives to play those modes. You didn’t quite do the same for WvW.

All in all, people like this game, they want to like this game. This is one of the few games on the market that offers fairly good large scale RvR with siege gameplay. Don’t let that go to waste, you need to take care of this game mode. There’s no reason this game mode should be put on the back burner, no reason at all. Nor should you assume this mode can’t be profitable.

Dont get why you want rewards, for me its enough off a reward to kill enemy players, manage to defend building against bigger number off attackers and so on, the problem as it is now it’s even worse than it was on old map for defending.

Shadow.3475:

Dont get why you want rewards, for me its enough off a reward to kill enemy players, manage to defend building against bigger number off attackers and so on, the problem as it is now it’s even worse than it was on old map for defending.

Rewards provide more incentive and draw people in like lemmings…

Swagger.1459:

Shadow.3475:

Dont get why you want rewards, for me its enough off a reward to kill enemy players, manage to defend building against bigger number off attackers and so on, the problem as it is now it’s even worse than it was on old map for defending.

Rewards provide more incentive and draw people in like lemmings…

.. and then the inevitable map spam cries for ktrain …

Swagger.1459:

Shadow.3475:

Dont get why you want rewards, for me its enough off a reward to kill enemy players, manage to defend building against bigger number off attackers and so on, the problem as it is now it’s even worse than it was on old map for defending.

Rewards provide more incentive and draw people in like lemmings…

You may want lemmings. I want players who desire to play WvW.

@ this issue
First off, just because it’s not a problem for you, it doesn’t always mean it’s not a problem for everyone. Mind you, that was a single question out of the bunch and a few people did voice their concerns. But again, this isn’t PvP where there is almost zero upkeep cost.

Oh and this thread too: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Devon-Comments-on-WvW-Reward-Balance-Issues

What you folks may call “lemmings” may be potential WvW players that might not have a desire to play WvW for the content but could play it. I cannot for the life of me understand why people have been bemoaning that WvW has not enough players but assume that people who don’t play WvW currently could never become interested and are going to destroy their (already dead?) game mode when it’s been pretty clear that things like PvP reward tracks were brought in with a certain thing in mind— and PvP players need even less than WvW players.

If you’re seriously going to look down on ktrainers, EOTMers, and pvers and whathaveyou and refuse to integrate them into your community, then I am going to have no sympathy if you (the same person) complains about lack of people to play with. If you don’t have these complaints, then that is fine then.

But that’s just from my personal experience.

•Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

I would normally run with a guild group around 20 people. Sometimes solo roam. With guild group look to take towers and find fights. Mainly look for other groups to fight with. When solo roaming just flipping camps and fights.

•Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

My play style was about the same for the BL’s to EB. Guild groups looking to find fights. Maybe focus a little more on flipping keeps and towers. Solo roaming style was the same. Camps and fights.

•Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

I have spent only a couple hours in the new BL’s because they are to big to roam by myself and its not often a big guild group will go on the new maps. When I have gone on the maps we try to do the same thing but with much less success. We look to flip some towers and keeps and don’t find many groups to fight. And when we did it was a siege war not an open field battle.

•Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

In the past I wanted open field battles or fights within a keep. Not battle standing out of a keep looking at the defenders. I don’t mind taking time to get a keep or tower. But I would like a nice fight once I got in the keep. Now you either cant get in the keep or tower or no one is there to defend. In the few open field fights I have been a part of I feel I need to go to HOT to grind out my elites and get the specializations completed before I can be competitive. I don’t like to worry about falling off a cliff when I am trying to get to an objective that’s why I don’t go to EOTM. If I wanted to run around cliffs and use transformations or have the environment effect how my character runs around I would go to EOTM not the BL’s. But now its all included into the new BL’s.

•In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

Now it is EOTM style taking an objective. Drop as much siege as possible just to get the gate or wall down at the same rate it only took a couple of the same type of siege it did before. Comparing to dropping the same amount of siege as before then it would take about double the amount of time in the BL’s

•How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

The wxp seems to come quicker then it would before. However that is only if you are able to take objectives. I could see the new BL’s being a great way to wxp train, but that is not what WVW players such as myself want to do. I only want to go and have epic battles and this has not helped it any. It has hindered it. I have to go to the new PVE maps to grind out my elites. And as a player that would switch classes to enjoy all the play styles that will take a while. Just playing WVW is not going to help me purse any in-game goals.

•How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

It has impacted it that I don’t spend multiple hours in WVW anymore. I will play it for an hour maybe and then I get frustrated at how little people are on or how we are unable to complete any tasks. I have found myself grinding more in PVE then I want.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Compact the map.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

Frustrating, hard to learn, unable to take objectives, waste of time.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Frustrating, hard to learn, unable to take objectives, waste of time.

•Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

EB or grinding in the new HOT PVE maps.

Please note, that this is prior to me joining a PvX guild when I was in strictly fight guilds for over a year.

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
  15-25 man group. We ran into 40+ man groups to “zerg-bust”, because it was a fun challenge. We routinely helped capture objectives. We also performed open field fights against groups of similar size and skill away from siege or those wishing to interfere.

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
  It did, sort of. We mainly went to block enemy opposition to getting to our main zerg. Again, we zerg busted. If we could slow down the main group, or preform SEAL TEAM SIX goals of sneaking around. We called Anvil and Hammer tactics.

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
  The only thing one can do in the new maps is PvD (Player vs Door). The new maps are empty, people really are only going there to explore, but do not see anything going on. And since they are so huge, with so little playerbase on those maps, it gives the true impression of a desert that is empty.

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
  Please see above response

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
  In the past depends on opposition. If there was no opposition, and it was a T3 Tower, I’d say at most 5 minutes. Depends on the seige being used. I would say, it took a group of 4 of us, with regular k-mart ram less than 5 minutes to take a T1 Tower Currently.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
  Rewards and loot are laughable. We routinely, in the past, had to run 2-3 hours a week in PvE (which we did not know much on how to do), just to sustain food/oil costs. Not to mention build changes if the meta switched.

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
  I can’t spend more than 30 minutes on those maps now. They are beautifully designed. fun to explore, but the purpose of WvW has faded with the new maps. When there’s nothing going, there aren’t coordinated efforts with people you fight with to take objectives, it’s rather boring. And it bores fast. If I wanted to play alone, I’ll go play some PvE.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
  Smaller, less PvE events and mechanics. Make it skill based.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
  N/A

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
  N/A

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
  IF I happened to get into WvW that day, probably Eternal Battlegrounds.

The problem really isn’t the map. Giving players a new map when they wanted new things for WvW, wasn’t really going to help the situation.