Guild Wars 2

So, am just throwing this out there for some discussion.

Was gw2’s wvw mode ever meant to be hardcore, serious, end-game, or whatever you want to call it? I have played gw2 from a month after release, and have played wvw, on a casual basis, for 3+ years. I come from a long term playing time of Dark Age of Camelot, where WvW/RvR was meant as the “end-game”. It was meant for those that really committed some time to the game, and really committed some effort to getting really good in WvW. There were specific goals, rewards, and worthwhile bonuses given to players of that mode, and to their races for winning, and/or leading in WvW objectives, etc. While most hardcores loved it, the mode also lended itself to more casual players, with both worldwide RvR, as well as smaller scale map WvW, in the form of battlegrounds. No matter your expertise, or lack of it, you could still make a positive contribution to the goals of that game mode. (But yea, I won’t go into ToA, as that nearly destroyed the game…..DaoC was far from perfect)

GW2’s wvw, on the other hand, and in my opinion, was never created with that in mind. I believe it was created as a side mode to the PvE and small team PvP emphasis of the game. The fact that the devs rarely communicated with the WvW playerbase for the first 2-3 years seems to prove that, imo. The playerbase is what actually formed WvW in this game, without much intervention from Anet, imo. When there were tournaments, the rewards were so lackluster, that, at least in my case, I was left wondering why even have the tournaments? You ended up with pretty much the same sort of thing that there is now….some sort of inconsequential point total that people could, I suppose, find something to brag about. Even the glicko stuff that formed the Tiers was really nothing more than population advantages of some servers over others.

And maybe that all wasn’t a bad thing, as it lent itself to the more casual playerbase. I consider myself part of that, now, mainly due to how much older I am, and how much more I look at mmorpgs as just a diversion more than anything else. The biggest thing that initially attracted me and my wife to GW2, was how much it seemed that it was geared to the casual player, rather than the serious grinder.

So now that Anet has entered the realm of an aged mmorpg, they start to show some communication with the WvW playerbase, mainly to draw some new players in, and keep loyal players here. While that is good to see, I still wonder, is there is really any point to making WvW anything more than a side mode of the game? Add some new maps to generate interest(positive and negative, alike), change the scoring systems, tweak some things here and there, but still not adding any real purpose, besides just general fun, to the game mode. (Although, I do really like the reward tracks addition)

And now we have linking. While I initially liked that idea, it is now apparent(at least to me), that they should have just merged servers, reset glicko, and gone from there.

I still have some fun in WvW. But there are times when I find myself wondering…..”what’s the point?” And maybe that is just from my familiarity with the mode, rather than some sort of underlying shortcoming.

Overmatched linkings tend to shy away or give up easily, while overstacked linkings get horribly bored at the lack of any sort of challenges. All of that is completely understandable, imo. And I am not sure if Anet can actually change that…..mainly because of how WvW in this game was originally created. Plus, a lot of the linkings, at least imo, don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, and seem to breed some of these horribly mismatched wvw matchups. Maybe it is all just trial and error for Anet at this point….I don’t know.

Anyways, just some thoughts. Comments, opinions, etc???? Please try to keep it constructive.

And my apologies for the wall of text.

Teon.5168:

So, am just throwing this out there for some discussion.

Was gw2’s wvw mode ever meant to be hardcore, serious, end-game, or whatever you want to call it? I have played gw2 from a month after release, and have played wvw, on a casual basis, for 3+ years. I come from a long term playing time of Dark Age of Camelot, where WvW/RvR was meant as the “end-game”. It was meant for those that really committed some time to the game, and really committed some effort to getting really good in WvW. There were specific goals, rewards, and worthwhile bonuses given to players of that mode, and to their races for winning, and/or leading in WvW objectives, etc. While most hardcores loved it, the mode also lended itself to more casual players, with both worldwide RvR, as well as smaller scale map WvW, in the form of battlegrounds. No matter your expertise, or lack of it, you could still make a positive contribution to the goals of that game mode. (But yea, I won’t go into ToA, as that nearly destroyed the game…..DaoC was far from perfect)

GW2’s wvw, on the other hand, and in my opinion, was never created with that in mind. I believe it was created as a side mode to the PvE and small team PvP emphasis of the game. The fact that the devs rarely communicated with the WvW playerbase for the first 2-3 years seems to prove that, imo. The playerbase is what actually formed WvW in this game, without much intervention from Anet, imo. When there were tournaments, the rewards were so lackluster, that, at least in my case, I was left wondering why even have the tournaments? You ended up with pretty much the same sort of thing that there is now….some sort of inconsequential point total that people could, I suppose, find something to brag about. Even the glicko stuff that formed the Tiers was really nothing more than population advantages of some servers over others.

My opinion is that the original design intention (prior to implementation) was that WvW would be endgame for those who wanted open world style and large scale pvp. However the mode was unfinished when the game launched and those in charge of overall game development at the time of the launch (who are now gone from anet) had no interest in WvW therefore the mode was left to languish and stagnate. This was clearly reflected in their statements about the mode which betrayed ignorance about it and the fact that there were barely no resources assigned for ongoing development apart from what were essentially bug fixes.

That’s a very valid point, imo. So, do you think it has a chance of being rescued, given the age of the game, and how WvW was originally implemented?

as long as guilds/people are allowed to transfer from server to server and as long as servers are merged/dissolved and merged again, there will be no “point” other than (like you said) a familiar distraction.
The only way I can see this ever being otherwise is if you are joining or forming a server that is your true “home”. If you want to play on another, you have to create a new character. People will always be competitive (some more than others) and want their home server to win simply because you are an extension of it (or it of you i guess).

all fair points IMHO.

I think WVW has been seriously mismanaged from the start. In my view (and the view of many many others playing WVW), WVW is the single best and most differentiated aspect of this game in that GW2 WVW basically has no other real competitors in the gaming industry.

GW2 PVE is quite bland, and GW2 PVP in my view is among the worst of all the MMOs I’ve played. Given that I would normally classify myself as a competitive PVPer, this is saying a lot.

I say mismanaged, but one could equally well argue that WVW has been _un_managed, in that Anet has done very little to capitalise on its initial success, or to address the known issues with the game mode.

Case in point the grassroots GVG scene that was really popular 18 months ago, that Anet went out of their way to kill off/ignore. This was at a time when participation in sPVP (Player vs Point) was basically non-existent. I used to work in a major game company, I can tell you with certainty that other game companies would kill to have a grassroots competitive scene spring up in one of their games and they would have fostered the kitten out of it.

It’s really sad. I still don’t think Anet “gets it” when it comes to WVW – how much of a good position they are in, industry-wise to capitalise/monetise this game mode (WVW/sGVG) as a competitive mode. It’s surprising, because all of the indicators of the potential for success were there: DAOC being a surprise success, far outselling its most ambitious sales forecasts, the initial popularity of Warhammer, which attempted to replicate DAOC’s RVR but fell short, the level of support for CU’s kickstarter, and then the popularity of GW2’s WVW, which Anet has noted on the public record was a surprise.

Players are pretty kitten disillusioned now, and many would-be WVW players have moved onto other games or game modes because of the lack of attention.

For me, the reasons I WVW are the same as when I first started: the quality of fights are still higher, more varied, and more interesting than in Player vs Point.

It is fairly clearly stated

WvW is designed to accommodate players that would not normally participate in PvP. For instance, the high player limit means that a new player can get involved without immediately feeling pressured to contribute. In addition, objectives are available for a variety of group sizes, so players don’t need to be members of dedicated guilds in order to be productive.

Also, anonymous naming as well makes it a bit more inviting to pve’rs. Being able to come and leave as you choose also matches the fairly casual nature of Gw2, and to some PvE would be too boring anyways. So this is an extension, and possibly an endgame to some.

The way I see it, WvW was mostly meant to be the bridge to esports PvP. They wanted PvErs to be exposed to player vs player combat but in a more familiar and less stringent environment. In addition in the past, WvW performance also influenced PvE as an additional lure along with stuff like map completion. Of course, PvP didn’t live up to the hype and the game became centered around PvE, leaving WvW sort of just hanging there. And WvW at a certain point being too popular for its own good, perhaps even overshadowing esports in the eyes of some, it might have led to some degree of resentment by certain people in charge and overall not really knowing or understanding what to do with what was left.

It would seem to me that this is a pve centric game with WvW catching quite the peripheral fanbase that is unique enough to not fit into Arenanet’s paradigm of how their player base would be (pve/pvp). This is illustrated in the infamous statements where some thought we were definitely into pvde. A lot of the rest of the game is alright, but it would not have been enough to keep me around.

“Un-managed”……that is a great point, imo, scerevisiae.1972

This, too…..

ArchonWing.9480:

The way I see it, WvW was mostly meant to be the bridge to esports PvP. They wanted PvErs to be exposed to player vs player combat but in a more familiar and less stringent environment. In addition in the past, WvW performance also influenced PvE as an additional lure along with stuff like map completion. Of course, PvP didn’t live up to the hype and the game became centered around PvE, leaving WvW sort of just hanging there. And WvW at a certain point being too popular for its own good, perhaps even overshadowing esports in the eyes of some, it might have led to some degree of resentment by certain people in charge and overall not really knowing or understanding what to do with what was left.

It would seem to me that this is a pve centric game with WvW catching quite the peripheral fanbase. A lot of the rest of the game is alright, but it would not have been enough to keep me around.

Teon.5168:

That’s a very valid point, imo. So, do you think it has a chance of being rescued, given the age of the game, and how WvW was originally implemented?

Nope because they are clearly unwilling to stray too far from the current implementation yet they need to make fundamental changes.

Pretty much agree with what Teon and ArchonWing said.

morrolan.9608:

Teon.5168:

That’s a very valid point, imo. So, do you think it has a chance of being rescued, given the age of the game, and how WvW was originally implemented?

Nope because they are clearly unwilling to stray too far from the current implementation yet they need to make fundamental changes.

Yup. That is my view on it, too. At this point, I even think that it is too late to make any sort of fundamental changes, so maybe what they’re doing is the best, if not the only way to try and improve it?

joneirikb.7506:

Pretty much agree with what Teon and ArchonWing said.

As has been said about many different mmorpgs that have attempted WvW/RvR, including DaoC……..“it could have been so incredible”, ie, the potential was there.

But then again, as I have said previously in this thread, and others……I don’t think that sort of intention was ever there for GW2’s WvW.

scerevisiae.1972:

Case in point the grassroots GVG scene that was really popular 18 months ago, that Anet went out of their way to kill off/ignore. This was at a time when participation in sPVP (Player vs Point) was basically non-existent. I used to work in a major game company, I can tell you with certainty that other game companies would kill to have a grassroots competitive scene spring up in one of their games and they would have fostered the kitten out of it.

This is so true IIRC the twitch viewing numbers of major GvGs at the time significantly outstripped viewing numbers for official spvp competitions. Anet just had (and continue to have) their head in the sand.

Welp, I think you’ve officially convinced me to quit; I was going to quit but then I said nah, WvW is still fun, but after 2k+ hours in WvW, I think it’s time to call it quits. It really is unrewarding at best, and Anet seems to have their heads, as stated by someone, in the sand. I always thought I would like my programming counterpart hobby more anyway, about time I get skilled at it more than I already am.

What’s the point in playing. What’s the point in anything other than to put food into ur stomach and ensure stuff comes out as it should. Sometimes people ask what is the point in that too

I’m sry I don’t mean to be so snide. But it’s hilarious so not!

There is no point to playing…imho

I’ve already stopped playing for about a month now.

Played both GW1 and GW2 since beta/launch. I used to play 40+ hours weekly…driven by a WvW reward that ANet can’t give out…the admiration & praise shared between hardcore home world veterans.

There’s no point to continue playing when nobody OF VALUE to me can appreciate my effort & sacrifice. Same goes for posting in this forum. Nobody will miss me & nobody will care…I get that…that’s why I only cared about playing for a community of players that I Valued. My server’s identity has since been swallowed up by the Host World Server & we were left to wander as a Slave & Refugee in my mind’s eyes.

Casual players benefit when there’s a core group of players that seem to have a purpose & focus in WvW. This is what made fighting so interesting in the past…imho. The nucleus that provided this cohesive glue that kept things interesting for those joining the fight…is fading because of World Linking…as hardcore home world veterans in the lower tiers decide to quit playing.

Many Veterans that want an identity can move up in tier to a Host World Server…leaving the lower tiers without Veterans that might have otherwise helped to train fresh players from these lower tiered worlds. All players will learn & want to migrate to a Host World Server in the end. Further to encourage Severe Server Stacking & Blow Out Matches…leading to Stale Game Play. Vicious cycle as ANet refeshes World Links, which then again encourages Server jumping…which then provides ANet a source of revenue…but how long can this continue to remain viable?

WvW is now a shoot-em-up game mode…where it doesn’t matter what team you join…just as long as each team shoots & kills each other. ANet seems to be on a path to Merge down servers into several Major Alliances.

The Long Term WvW ecosystem that managed to surive since HoT launched…is in danger of becomming extinct or severly damaged by this current trend to change WvW from a Server based Community into an Alliance based Community. ANet needs to wake up & realize that many Non-Host World Communities are collapsing…many of their website forums are turning into ghost towns…a reflection of what is happening in game as well.

I’m just too tired to argue with anybody at this point. It’s just really depressing to see something with so much potential being wasted.

WvW’s health & viability will trend to decline over the Long Term even with major changes to the WvW Game Mode…we need a New Game Mode to change this…imho

I still strongly believe that a Long Term solution needs to be Player Driven…yet…ANet Controlled.

Peace,
Diku

Possible Better Long Term Solution – Google Search – wvg world vs globes

WvW is kitten and dead compared to what it used to be 3 years ago.

WvW isn’t going to be good until there is more infliction of more players.

Diku.2546:

Many Veterans that want an identity can move up in tier to a Host World Server…leaving the lower tiers without Veterans that might have otherwise helped to train fresh players from these lower tiered worlds. All players will learn & want to migrate to a Host World Server in the end. Further to encourage Severe Server Stacking & Blow Out Matches…leading to Stale Game Play. Vicious cycle as ANet refeshes World Links, which then again encourages Server jumping…which then provides ANet a source of revenue…but how long can this continue to remain viable?

Not for much longer, its continuing to decline, even in the last month or 2 its noticeable. The mode is ‘on the nose’ as we say in Oz.

@ OP

I share your thoughts. When I look at the history of the mode and the game, it seems absurd that the devs are doing this whole ‘beta’ redesign thing. They aren’t committed to actually making the mode a meaningful experience. I really could not tell you the intent or the purpose of this whole promotional skit they are putting on. PR maybe? Is it just a giant advertisement to try and attract more people to the game in face of bad sales?

There are many better things to put ur teams on that could do that. In which case it implies that resources are scarce and that ‘adding’ gizmos to an existing mode like wvsw is the only viable way they have atm.

I mean then we always got people like this saying:

WvW isn’t going to be good until there is more infliction of more players.

We always say things like this. We say that we have enough people tier 1 to add in the real ‘meat’ and make the mode meaninful, but that we can’t since the other tiers don’t have enough people yet. We say we can’t make the lower tiers better since that would ruin tier 1. Then we say that overall the entire population isn’t high enough to warrant any meaningful gameplay additions….. “you know we have enough people FINALLY, but the overall population is too low to warrant investment in changing anything….you know, its not anet’s fault. They had this brilliant game all layed out but they needed 100x the playerbase before they could actually input it” -Some kitten bulloney like that. THEY DON"T WANT TO CHANGE THE MODE. THIS IS HOW THEY WANT IT TO PLAY.

The truth is that anet designed wvsw as a run and gun (RNG) mode. Its no different a concept than those dumb little wintersday minigames they setup……the main ‘motivator’ is to simply jump in and farm the mode in the boringest way possible. That’s what they are treating wvsw like with the blob meta. They don’t want wargaming. This ain’t no RTS or 4x game…..its just a instant respawn 1 map cod experience where you are fighting for the chance to bottleneck the enemy to 1 section of the map for eez kills.

I was in WvW on my first day in GW2, that was 3 days before official release. I was very low level, but back then most of us were., some had got the 7 days before official release but they were not that much higher.

And what we got was revelation. The problem was the devs didn’t see it the same way. for a long time they just seemed to do occasional bug fixes, when they could be bothered. They obviously confused WvW with PvE, it used the same weapons, armor and jewellery.

So they tried to upgrade it, using the same tactics as PvE. The result, as many will remember was a disaster ending with the new borderlands map.

Eventually I got told of a different game that promised a WvW like experience. Well, I tried it, months on end of grind, trying to get my levels up and get equipment sorted. The only PvP I got was when some ganker killed me while I was handing in a quest, afk or farming PvE mobs.

I decided to try WvW again. Land of milk and honey it may not be, but it’s a kitten sight better than the other game I tried.

The devs have made changes, but they have consulted on them. The changes have been slow and methodical but that’s good because it allows testing. They also brought back the Alpine borderland.

Attitudes in game seem better than they have for a long time. I hope they didn’t leave it too late. I also hope that people don’t just abandon the game when it might be coming back.

Considering the alternatives out there, there is no real competition, not yet.

Diku.2546:

There is no point to playing…imho

I’ve already stopped playing for about a month now.

Played both GW1 and GW2 since beta/launch. I used to play 40+ hours weekly…driven by a WvW reward that ANet can’t give out…the admiration & praise shared between hardcore home world veterans.

There’s no point to continue playing when nobody OF VALUE to me can appreciate my effort & sacrifice. Same goes for posting in this forum. Nobody will miss me & nobody will care…I get that…that’s why I only cared about playing for a community of players that I Valued. My server’s identity has since been swallowed up by the Host World Server & we were left to wander as a Slave & Refugee in my mind’s eyes.

Indeed…DAOC, mentioned in first post, made it so that when I returned back after 5 years, theres still a lot people that remember me by my cleric name…and I was far from been most important player around…GW2, noone knows me, despite spending 90% play time in wvw

So this is what is has come to?? I have an account on FA … and was on there tonight in EB. I got killed by about 15 YB near OW.. no big deal… 15 to 1.. easy kill.. and I watched them as they took the tower… oh wait! It wasn’t just YB.. it was JQ as well… At they ran over my dead body I counted no less than 40 JQ running WITH the YB group amongst them. They weren’t fighting… they were working together.. By the time I picked my jaw up off of the desk I realized I didn’t even hit record. Seriously? JQ needs that? YB needs that? I have to say I’ve heard of these things but it’s the first time I’ve seen two servers really running TOGETHER like this.

Seriously I agree with many of these posts.. it’s time to chill from wvw…

Nikola.3841:

Indeed…DAOC, mentioned in first post, made it so that when I returned back after 5 years, theres still a lot people that remember me by my cleric name…and I was far from been most important player around…GW2, noone knows me, despite spending 90% play time in wvw

Errr… why should we remember you? Any particular reason? I dont even know what region you play in!

Either way GW2 probably have somewhere around 50 times the active player counts DAoC had when it started to fade. You sort of vanish in the masses. Still, we remember prominent players, most notably commanders holding up the server. Or entire guilds. Personally I remember quite an awesome commander we had some years back in our guild, too bad he later went his own way to create a new guild, some kittenty guild called TA or something.

But anyway… who are you again?

Teon.5168:

snip

I’m fine with walls of text – just saying.

My guess is that wvw was something between pvp and PvE – no real endgame was planned at that time and that those who developed it left the team shortly afterwards.

GW2 then put too much attention on PvE, cause you know it’s teh only folks that buy gems and stuff. Then they turned their attention to PvP, then again to PvE. I have never really talked with anyone about what they really want from wvw – I guess most of us just love the interaction with human enemies and to try to outsmart them. I didn’t like the DBL because they were too complicated and I felt I was fighting the map and not enemy players – otherwise I’d say you can throw me on any map and I’d be fine.

Now comes the irony: I started playing wvw around 2,5 years ago – things made still sense back then – I was on a rather low tier NA server so it took a while until we faced real blobs. Maybe that’s why things made more sense to me (I was a noob, frankly).

Then came range increases for classes: most siege became rather useless, then came the introduction of ferocity which made condi OP, then came the stability nerf which mad the bigger blob win, then came changes to the camera which kittened up siege and the use of field siege and which lasted several months, then came the June patch which increased the overall damage everybody put out. I think they stealth nerfed that but the damage is still too high and we haven’t had any real balance patch since (more than one year).
Had a discussion in mapchat yesterday and the consens was to remove HoT from the game. I think what people want from wvw is what they’ve had 2,5 years ago – it basically is that simple to satisfy those who really play the mode. And I’d also like a solution for the server-linking, I guess more people quit than stay because of it as a huge factor of why people play wvw is the community.

Problem with wvw balance is that it interfers with PvE. So at some point they either have to realize that they can’t balance all modes together (pvp is balanced through the runes, so it’s separate already anyway), or they have to give up on balance altogether (it kind of looks as if they did already) or they have to roll back the game to at least before HoT, better before June. At least in their minds and balance the game from there. I don’t think the traitmerge will ever work out – in case of my main class they killed all but 1, maybe 2 weaponsets and the elite weapon is none of them.

This mode had great potentials at launch but i don’t think it can become the success it could have been. Shame anet really a shame.

Dawdler.8521:

But anyway… who are you again?

Exactly my point

Jana.6831:

I have never really talked with anyone about what they really want from wvw

Freedom and community. That’s why I play it, personally. I’m not sure that I can speak for anyone else when I say this, but for me, it’s the ability to do what I want, when I want, while still feeling like I’m contributing to a bigger picture with most of what I choose to do.

I dislike PvP and PvE because there are many things I’m forced in to doing that I don’t want to do. Not doing them makes me a liability for the people I play with and that just makes me not want to do it even more. I don’t want to be the reason people around me aren’t having fun.

In WvW, there are many different things I can do and most of them will be helping my server in some way or another without restricting me to having to do anything in particular.

I’ve been in a handfull of guilds but none for longer than a month. I prefer to do things at my own pace and I’m the same way IRL. I depend on only myself and I offer my help where I can.

Being a very vocal citizen has allowed me to make many friends and has made me feel like I’m a part of a village or family within most of the servers I’ve visited. This camaraderie, as well as the freedom that WvW offers, has kept me interested for many, many hours of my time with Gw2.

What I want from WvW is community and freedom, which it already provides. With the introduction of server linking however, some of that sense of community has diminished and has been slowly taking a toll on my enjoyment with the game. When I’ll stop playing I’m not certain but at the moment, loss of identity within a community will be the primary reason for quitting. All the freedom to do as I wish has little value if I don’t feel like my help is worth offering.

If you go back and look at the PR build-up pre-launch, WvW was indeed envisaged as some kind of end-game, but then so were the three Orr maps. Things didn’t turn out quite as intended.

Megaservers really killed off the original conception of WvW, which assumed that players would retain considerable loyalty to the Server they’d chosen, in the way people have loyalty to their home town or sports team. Coupled with server transfers that concept of representing your World first and foremost (not your guild, for example) went into steep decline, although some of us still hold fast to it. Personally I’d uninstall GW2 before I moved any of my characters from one World to another.

The gameplay itself was always what other MMOs would call “PvPvE”. As much of the time is spent fighting NPCs as other players and when you do fight other players you are mainly defending or attacking NPCs or NPC-maintained structures. The clear intention was to make a form of PvP as attractive and unscary as possible for PvE players, an attitude and approach that the addition of EOTM, the Desert BLs and most of the changes to siege and skills over the four years very plainly continues.

The problem is that as time goes on, fewer and fewer PvE players have any interest in WvW and the game mode has become the province of a small hardcore of WvW specialists, few of whom agree on what they want from it. There are PPT factions, GVG factions, roamer factions, dueling factions…

The reason I find to go on playing WvW is simple – entertainment. I play it when things are happening that I enjoy and I stop when they aren’t. If we have a good match or if a Commander I like is on then I play for hours. If the match is dull or (as it usually is these days) extremely unbalanced or if no-one I like or recognize is tagged up, then I go do something else.

I’m not sure you can expect a lot more from a video game so I wouldn’t say I was disappointed. On the other hand there are things that could be done to make it more entertaining. There doesn’t seem to be much prospect of any major change, though, just some tinkering around the edges. At this stage of WvW’s life it is what it is. If you aren’t enjoying it much now I wouldn’t hold out much hope of anything very much affecting that.

Diku good post.

Cerby good posts.

Teon.5168:

As has been said about many different mmorpgs that have attempted WvW/RvR, including DaoC........"it could have been so incredible", ie, the potential was there.

But then again, as I have said previously in this thread, and others......I don’t think that sort of intention was ever there for GW2’s WvW.

I’ve made no attempt to hide that I think WvW is a casual non-competitive keg-brawl kind of game, essentially the "Beer and Pretzel" variant of PvP. And that is the impression I’ve gotten from everything I’ve read from ANet on the matter, like the text that ArchonWing quoted:

WvW is designed to accommodate players that would not normally participate in PvP. For instance, the high player limit means that a new player can get involved without immediately feeling pressured to contribute. In addition, objectives are available for a variety of group sizes, so players don’t need to be members of dedicated guilds in order to be productive.

I can’t really understand "why" they actually created it at all, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you consider their focus on PvE and PvP. So the only reason I can sit back with is that they created it as that metaphorical "bridge" between the two modes. Which obviously hasn’t worked that great.

I actually think that WvW as is/was is/was open ended enough that different people found different things they liked in it, which also means that focusing on one aspect at the cost of another will ruin the mode for others. So they’re also a bit stuck in their open design.

I think that EotM is essentially the end "evolution" of WvW, (Takes a small break for the booing to stop), it focuses very well on the casual aspect of WvW while keeping it open ended enough that anyone can find something to do. But by this time we had already built communities, and started getting hung up in the scores and stuff.

If it is one thing that the Linking has showed me, it is that at this stage I don’t care if we’re EotM’ed instead, because it makes little difference to me since the effect is about the same. If they made EotM use the existing WvW maps as well, lots of people that isn’t on a fairly big host server wouldn’t notice a difference.

(Still miss/like my old server community)

---

On to something completely different:

WvW as a mode seems to have attracted a lot of different type of players, it has functioned as sort of catch-all for players that doesn’t feel satisfied with the rest of the game (PvE+PvP). WvW is a very varied bunch.

Players that wanted larger scale PvP
Players that wanted huge battles
Players that wanted defence/siege
Players that wanted to Gank
Players that wanted more challenge (than PvE care-bear land)
Players that wanted more serious group/party/guild play
Players that wanted an actual community
Players that wanted consequences for their in game actions

etc.

Several of these are because PvE is too limited/simple, you can solo almost entire Tyria, and Dungeons become running down a formula pretty quickly as most just want to run through them for rewards. While sPvP is 5vs5 max, and gives a fairly limited amount of variety.

The question becomes, how else could you satisfy those same people? Don’t really know. If you try to make the mode serious/competitive you will end up with other problems, you will run off most of the Casuals, and limit the recruitment pool. If you make take it even more casual than it already is, there will be no more skilled groups in the game as they will be bored to tears.

I think that it is essential that they keep the kind of balance they have somehow, but perhaps give some different outlets for it? (Example, having different maps for different levels of casual vs serious)

But honestly, I’d really love to hear what ANet’s goals/design was for WvW back at launch and now at present time. What they actually wanted to accomplish with the game mode, and how they feel that worked.

/rant

Balthazzarr.1349:

~ At they ran over my dead body I counted no less than 40 JQ running WITH the YB group amongst them. They weren’t fighting… they were working together.. By the time I picked my jaw up off of the desk I realized I didn’t even hit record. Seriously? JQ needs that? YB needs that? I have to say I’ve heard of these things but it’s the first time I’ve seen two servers really running TOGETHER like this.

~

I need to have some of whatever it is you are having! How do you manage all these images :O

Roxanne.6140:

Balthazzarr.1349:

~ At they ran over my dead body I counted no less than 40 JQ running WITH the YB group amongst them. They weren’t fighting… they were working together.. By the time I picked my jaw up off of the desk I realized I didn’t even hit record. Seriously? JQ needs that? YB needs that? I have to say I’ve heard of these things but it’s the first time I’ve seen two servers really running TOGETHER like this.

~

I need to have some of whatever it is you are having! How do you manage all these images :O

Hey it’s too good to make up. I wish like hll that I had turned on recording. I have absolutely ZERO anything against JQ or YB and nothing to be gained by making this up. I honestly watched this happen. I frankly am surprised I posted this because these days I’m not caring so much for WvW as I used to. But.. it DID happen… wish I smoked that funny stuff so I could say it was just my imagination…

Great discussion so far…but back to the point of this thread’s title…what is the point? It seems that WvW needs some kind of weekly award for winning the tier, one that would draw out more players to help secure the win (of course then it would help if population balance existed). The award for the winning servers or server pairs could be similar to the meta event reward in Auric Basin where Tarir opens up the inner sanctum with all the exalted chests to loot, or the reward could be opening up a dungeon or raid wing for the following week that only the winning servers would have access to until the next WvW reset, or maybe restrict it to those that had a certain level of activity in WvW during that week. Anyway, just throwing out some ideas that might generate a bit more incentive for people to keep playing or even to give WvW a try.

Some very good posts in here.

I too share the same thoughts as a lot of people here do. WvW in a whole seems to be a game mode without direction, an attempt to bridge the gap between pve and pvp as a few others have said.

For me WvW always been has and will be about open world pvp. Fights with other players. Yea, objectives are strategic things for balling your opponents up to get good fights. Siege is an ends to mean to stall for reinforcements for a fight, or a means to open up an objective to force a fight. I think the biggest problem of WvW that there is to many pve elements to objectives with to many rewards. In turn it causes passive reward farming focused game play, instead of the rush of fights that most people enjoy.

Meaningful rewards have always been a problem with wvw. Up until recently the rewards of the mode have been a consistent joke. Thankfully the reward track makes light of the situation of rewards and the heroics vendor/provision has made gearing a little more easier. Still there is work to be done to make the game mode have meaning. Currently as a server, a guild or an individual player there is nothing to work towards. Even winning a match our current reward is gated by leveling up, and is the same boring loot that we normally get. Why do we have not unique guild hall decorations for winning servers? Why is there no rewards of resources for players to contribute to upgrading their guild halls for wvw? Why is there no value or reward in defending an objective? I mean I get bag for taking a tower, but absolutely nothing for defending one for 15minutes. I could go on. Instead, the most rewarding play of wvw, to be frank has the least amount of pvp, or wvw for that mater, its senseless objective farming focused on bags from pve elements. That needs to change.

Lastly, something that has always made me scratch my head is why there is very little support for communities to build them selves. Everything about the game mode is meaningless due to the anonymity of both your allies and opponents. Nobody knows who defends or makes contributions to the server, the only people that do get recognition these days are commanders who aimlessly lead ktrains most of the time. Which is why many guilds and players endlessly server hop; to look for a place where they can make contributions and be recognized for doing so. GvG is basically dead because of the lack of support for open gvg fights and recognition of them. So at the end of the day we have no community because of anonymity and lack of support. That’s completely ignoring the whole issue of guesting, which is a whole layer of anonymity causing community issues.

WvW is meaningless because it doesn’t have community support, it does not have good rewards, nor does it rewards encourage good fights what is what people enjoy the most about the mode.

… and remember … apparently this is what the majority voted for… server linking… I have to believe that this majority was, of course, made up of the servers with the most people… so naturally they outnumbered the low level servers who really never had a chance to speak their voices other than to say nooooooooooooo in the forums and be shot down… sigh as my tagline says…. “… used to roam”

In DAOC, you could get realm abilities ONLY in RvR, but they were useful everywhere, in PVE and RvR…if you wanted to make top crafter, you had to go to most far keep in your realm because only there top tier crafts could be done…goal of RvR was to steal enemy relics that would give 10% or 20% boost to magic or melee damage…both to RvR and PVE (making doing dungeons easier for realm golding relics, but at same time, your realm became target of other 2 realms, so you could not enjoy your bonuses without been forced to defend them 24h/day…that made healthy community where some guilds would defend realm while others would farm pve for equipment)

PVE was done purely to equip yourself for RvR

When my group of 8 would wipe 96 people, everyone on both sides would see endless deathspam in form

“xxx just killed yyy in Emain Macha” repeated 96 times, and make you proud and zerg laughed at

etcetc, I could find a lot of more good ideas (and some not so great, but all games have them )

Edit:

also there was 1vs1 (dueling), 8vs8 (groups) and zerg vs zerg warfare in theater big enough to not interfere much (and quite often 8vs8 peope would, for example, let duel guys finish duel before killing winner, or even let him go)

Balthazzarr.1349:

… and remember … apparently this is what the majority voted for… server linking… I have to believe that this majority was, of course, made up of the servers with the most people… so naturally they outnumbered the low level servers who really never had a chance to speak their voices other than to say nooooooooooooo in the forums and be shot down… sigh as my tagline says…. “… used to roam”

Any low population server people with sense of reality voted FOR it, AFAIK ET people were very happy joining BG and vice versa

To me wvw is indeed endgame content, just as spvp is endgame for arena pvp players, dungeons and fractals was and now raids are endgame for pve players, while wvw was for everyone. Endgame content is basically something that is repeatable and ultimately the area of the game you will spend most of your time after you’re done leveling.

Wvw obviously used daoc rvr as a template, and infused with elements from grand strategy games, capture, gather resources, upgrade, defend your areas, earn points for victory at the end of the campaign week, the political side was taken cared of by the players. With the points and glicko system they built it to basically run wvw matchups on it’s own.

Everything else though I don’t think anet had any fore thought would happen, the evolution of going from a points game, to creation of zergs/blobs fighting, to players just wanting to fight because of how good the combat system was, to forming guilds just for fights and gvg’s. Unfortunately anet never evolved with the changes. Wvw also came with it’s own problems from day one such as coverage times, which in the beginning they told players wvw is a 24/7 area, it isn’t fair, so suck it up.

All the while that happened Anet somewhat ignored wvw, part because they were busy trying to keep their pve living story dream going, part because they weren’t looking to change the systems they designed for wvw. Some work was done obviously in giving us eotm, wvw masteries, ruins, 3 tournaments, desert borderland, before they really started giving it some attention this year. A lot of missteps happened during that time, including opening free transfers to servers for a tournament.

So is there any point to wvw anymore? after 3 years I think many of us have come to the end of the line. Points mean nothing, the grand strategy part of the game is meaningless, population and coverage imbalances still exist, glicko means nothing but a border to keep servers in their own areas, thank you trump for the t4 wall, we’re only out there to find something interesting usually that ends up being just fights.

But even combat is a mess these days thanks to the new direction they decided to go with boons and conditions. Players are getting tired of what wvw was originally designed for, there’s little to no pride and glory left to fight for. No leaderboards, no possible way to make fair tournaments or seasons in current wvw to leave your mark on the world.

With all the movement of guilds and players, and now with links taking away server identities, sometimes I feel like I’m in the walking dead, all the red names are zombies looking to kill me, I only got my friends and guild as my fam to back me up, everyone else on my side today could be my enemy tomorrow looking to kill me to take my bag.

After 3 years and experiencing everything wvw has to offer, most of my guild gone to other games, my friends scattered on servers, down to looking for some interesting fights, if not then log out and rewatch videos of fights of yesteryear.

No reason to take wvw seriously anymore, just spend the time having the most fun you can while there’s population around for you to do so.

Balthazzarr.1349:

… and remember … apparently this is what the majority voted for… server linking…

The poll for the server linking had a very bad timing: Those who didn’t like it had already left and those who did like it didn’t yet understand the full consequences of it. And of course; EU and NA are thrown together in these polls, yet they should be seen differently.

Xenesis.6389:

No reason to take wvw seriously anymore, just spend the time having the most fun you can while there’s population around for you to do so.

I am not sure if I ever took GW2’s wvw very seriously. Maybe, at first, when I was getting aps for it(and then that ended)…….but I was never expecting a great deal from wvw in this game. As long as I had fun, didn’t get overly frustrated, and could compete most of the time, I was good.

Daoc’s wvw was very different. There was a definite point to it, and the consequences of what you did or didn’t do in RvR affected your entire game world to a point. Maybe I was hoping for something similar to that when I began to plays GW2’s wvw….maybe not….

I still play wvw because I still have fun in it. It is just that I have found that the nights where I get bored in a shorter amount of time have become more frequent. Again, as I said before, that might just be due to sheer familiarity…….the game IS getting a bit long in the tooth.

Anyways, some really great discussion and some extremely valid points made by a lot of people here.

I will keep playing wvw as long as it is fun for me. But, it is just a game, and like DaoC, as the game grows older, some other entertaining mmorpg diversion will eventually come along and pull me away from this game, just like what happened with my last favorite mmorpg.

Until then, as long as I am having fun, I will continue to play. Hope to see a lot of ya out there!

Roxanne.6140:

What’s the point in playing. What’s the point in anything other than to put food into ur stomach and ensure stuff comes out as it should. Sometimes people ask what is the point in that too

I’m sry I don’t mean to be so snide. But it’s hilarious so not!

Nah, I think it’s fine. Existential crises are for the weak minded.

External validation for achievements in a video game are desired but not always mandatory.

Nikola.3841:

In DAOC, you could get realm abilities ONLY in RvR, but they were useful everywhere, in PVE and RvR…if you wanted to make top crafter, you had to go to most far keep in your realm because only there top tier crafts could be done…goal of RvR was to steal enemy relics that would give 10% or 20% boost to magic or melee damage…both to RvR and PVE (making doing dungeons easier for realm golding relics, but at same time, your realm became target of other 2 realms, so you could not enjoy your bonuses without been forced to defend them 24h/day…that made healthy community where some guilds would defend realm while others would farm pve for equipment)

PVE was done purely to equip yourself for RvR

Those were certainly great days, weren’t they?

I still remember DaoC very fondly, and always smile when my wife and I reminisce about playing it. (And then I get really angry remembering ToA……LOL….but then again, most of that stuff is now given to you in that game…..hard to believe it is still going)

Nikola.3841:

In DAOC, you could get realm abilities ONLY in RvR, but they were useful everywhere, in PVE and RvR…if you wanted to make top crafter, you had to go to most far keep in your realm because only there top tier crafts could be done…goal of RvR was to steal enemy relics that would give 10% or 20% boost to magic or melee damage…both to RvR and PVE (making doing dungeons easier for realm golding relics, but at same time, your realm became target of other 2 realms, so you could not enjoy your bonuses without been forced to defend them 24h/day…that made healthy community where some guilds would defend realm while others would farm pve for equipment)

PVE was done purely to equip yourself for RvR

When my group of 8 would wipe 96 people, everyone on both sides would see endless deathspam in form

“xxx just killed yyy in Emain Macha” repeated 96 times, and make you proud and zerg laughed at

etcetc, I could find a lot of more good ideas (and some not so great, but all games have them )

Edit:

also there was 1vs1 (dueling), 8vs8 (groups) and zerg vs zerg warfare in theater big enough to not interfere much (and quite often 8vs8 peope would, for example, let duel guys finish duel before killing winner, or even let him go)

Balthazzarr.1349:

… and remember … apparently this is what the majority voted for… server linking… I have to believe that this majority was, of course, made up of the servers with the most people… so naturally they outnumbered the low level servers who really never had a chance to speak their voices other than to say nooooooooooooo in the forums and be shot down… sigh as my tagline says…. “… used to roam”

Any low population server people with sense of reality voted FOR it, AFAIK ET people were very happy joining BG and vice versa

I don’t agree… yes the lowest servers were very slowwww… but this kind of linking totally sucks! If I had actually had a real choice I would have chosen to permanently merge with another server and not do this linking, relinking thing.. I didn’t like the idea from the beginning and I was one of the people that was saying this kind of thing would most likely happen.. and now it has. Yes many of you love this… but many many of us don’t… and don’t play NEAR as much as we used to.

Balthazzarr.1349:

I don’t agree… yes the lowest servers were very slowwww… but this kind of linking totally sucks! If I had actually had a real choice I would have chosen to permanently merge with another server and not do this linking, relinking thing.. I didn’t like the idea from the beginning and I was one of the people that was saying this kind of thing would most likely happen.. and now it has. Yes many of you love this… but many many of us don’t… and don’t play NEAR as much as we used to.

I initially voted for linking, as I thought it sounded like a good idea, especially since I was on a server where wvw was seriously dying. And initially, linking was fun. But the novelty wore off pretty quickly.

(Edit: Although I do need to point out that I do play wvw more now than I did before the linkings when Kaineng wvw was becoming a ghost town.)

Now, at least for me, the linkings have become a bit of a head scratcher. I think that just merging servers to combat the wvw population problems on the lower tiered servers would have been a better idea. In the first place, doing that would have allowed a lot of us to rebuild a new server identity/pride/whatever you wanted to call it. And, had they done a merge of certain servers, glicko(or whatever they use to determine rankings) could have been reset, and then we could have had a good path to reestablish new server rankings, overstacking could have been more effectively addressed, server transfers would have made more sense and would have caused a lot less frustration, voice comms transitions would have been easier, etc.

And yea, I know….hindsight is 20/20.

Nikola.3841:

“xxx just killed yyy in Emain Macha” repeated 96 times, and make you proud and zerg laughed at

Ah I was on Gawaine Hibernia and i still remember Albs launching an attack on our relic keep. There was this Mana Mentalist on our server named Cylanth i think.. as everyone was running towards the relic keep you just saw his deathspam – he must have wiped half the enemy zerg – i think i still have pages of screenshots of the chat text – it was incredible.

This is another thing – you knew your foes in DaoC RvR and the key players on your server per class. They had leaderboards on the Camelot Herald for kills for each class/server/realm. I remember finally cracking the top list for my class/realm – it was a proud day.

I knew when i saw Benz (Shadowblade) or Ramirez (Infiltrator), that i was in big trouble because they were straight up killers and my Ranger was no match for them. There are no reputations in GW2 WvW (aside from a few Commanders) – it’s sad.

Avigrus.2871:

Nikola.3841:

“xxx just killed yyy in Emain Macha” repeated 96 times, and make you proud and zerg laughed at

Ah I was on Gawaine Hibernia and i still remember Albs launching an attack on our relic keep. There was this Mana Mentalist on our server named Cylanth i think.. as everyone was running towards the relic keep you just saw his deathspam – he must have wiped half the enemy zerg – i think i still have pages of screenshots of the chat text – it was incredible.

This is another thing – you knew your foes in DaoC RvR and the key players on your server per class. They had leaderboards on the Camelot Herald for kills for each class/server/realm. I remember finally cracking the top list for my class/realm – it was a proud day.

I knew when i saw Benz (Shadowblade) or Ramirez (Infiltrator), that i was in big trouble because they were straight up killers and my Ranger was no match for them. There are no reputations in GW2 WvW (aside from a few Commanders) – it’s sad.

Thats what some people don’t understand in my other post…i played numerous MMOs and DAOC (and somewhat Warhamemr Online) are only ones where I remember tons of people (and many remember me, too)…btw, didn’t Benz play on Tristan?

https://www.reddit.com/r/longlostgamers/comments/12ksli/daoc_anybody_from_the_guild_zion_on_tristanmidgard/

Teon.5168:

I initially voted for linking, as I thought it sounded like a good idea, especially since I was on a server where wvw was seriously dying. And initially, linking was fun. But the novelty wore off pretty quickly.

(Edit: Although I do need to point out that I do play wvw more now than I did before the linkings when Kaineng wvw was becoming a ghost town.)

Now, at least for me, the linkings have become a bit of a head scratcher. I think that just merging servers to combat the wvw population problems on the lower tiered servers would have been a better idea. In the first place, doing that would have allowed a lot of us to rebuild a new server identity/pride/whatever you wanted to call it. And, had they done a merge of certain servers, glicko(or whatever they use to determine rankings) could have been reset, and then we could have had a good path to reestablish new server rankings, overstacking could have been more effectively addressed, server transfers would have made more sense and would have caused a lot less frustration, voice comms transitions would have been easier, etc.

And yea, I know….hindsight is 20/20.

Pretty much in the same boat that you are, coming from GoM. The activity level is a lot higher (which is good) than it was prior to linkings, where back then I’d be the only one guarding SMC and I’d yell out when a Kain zerg (around 10 was a zerg in our tier) started hitting SMC, and I’d get maybe a couple people to come help defend. And yes, I have also been thinking a permanent merge might have been better, because as it is, no one wants to transfer to a guest server that won’t have much of an identity floating around every 2 months. With the prior 2-server linking for 3 months, it was better because coordinating on comms between 2 servers was a lot easier than the 3 and 4 server links we now have for only a 2-month stretch in T4. With that many servers for a shorter period of time, not many in my pairing are bothering with inter-server communications.

Teon.5168:

Xenesis.6389:

No reason to take wvw seriously anymore, just spend the time having the most fun you can while there’s population around for you to do so.

I am not sure if I ever took GW2’s wvw very seriously. Maybe, at first, when I was getting aps for it(and then that ended)…….but I was never expecting a great deal from wvw in this game. As long as I had fun, didn’t get overly frustrated, and could compete most of the time, I was good.

Some people took fighting seriously with gvgs, coming up with the perfect builds and comps and strategy, but that time has passed and only a few of those guilds seem to be active these days. Defenders tend to take it seriously to the point of being rude to commanders of not listening, something I’ve been guilty of because I hate when people put their tags up but won’t defend upgraded stuff, why put your tag up then and pull pugs to you? There are still players serious about ppting, even when they’re behind by 30k points, which a lot of vets know by now takes a lot of overtime to overcome, so why burn yourself out.

I never got a chance to level high enough in daoc to experience rvr unfortunately, was too busy playing eq and then wow, but always heard good stories from friends about it. Came to gw2 for wvw alone, and I’ve enjoyed the majority of my time spent in it, other than the odd times of being absolutely blobbed off maps and not being able to do anything to counter it. It’s too bad that wvw or it’s population wasn’t properly maintained, an endgame with so much potential and really no competition, left to wither away.

Just better to be chill and enjoy whatever you can in wvw these days.

Yea, I doubt if anyone will look back on GW2 wvw and say “ah, remember the days of the blobs? Those were glorious times, weren’t they?”

lol…..

Some very large mistakes have been made in WvW, they say we’re hostile, and they are right but we’re hostile with due cause. At any given time you could come onto the WvW forum and pick out 5-10 great ideas that would have been good for WvW, those ideas were ignored completely by the ego’s at Anet. Remember those CDI’s … LOL seriously what a waste of time.

In it’s current state the team needs to be careful, because of the mistakes of their predecessors we are jaded and volatile, I think there is still hope but it’s not going to be easy.

Those that are now gone (staff) were moronic, they couldn’t see the pot of gold sitting in front of them.

A good start would be to stop this linking nonsense and just merge already, it’s not like it’s going to be aby different.

Balthazzarr.1349:

So this is what is has come to?? I have an account on FA … and was on there tonight in EB. I got killed by about 15 YB near OW.. no big deal… 15 to 1.. easy kill.. and I watched them as they took the tower… oh wait! It wasn’t just YB.. it was JQ as well… At they ran over my dead body I counted no less than 40 JQ running WITH the YB group amongst them. They weren’t fighting… they were working together.. By the time I picked my jaw up off of the desk I realized I didn’t even hit record. Seriously? JQ needs that? YB needs that? I have to say I’ve heard of these things but it’s the first time I’ve seen two servers really running TOGETHER like this.

Seriously I agree with many of these posts.. it’s time to chill from wvw…

I dunno what you saw but it is definitely not server wide on JQ.

Morrolan I believe that… lol… I know people think I’m crazy… and maybe even think I’m trying to stir up trouble.. frankly it doesn’t matter to me either way.. but it did humour me a bit