Guild Wars 2

Hyper Cutter.9376:

I love the fact that the same update that gave WvW access to HoT items without having to dirty their hands in that nasty PVE they hate also forced PVE players to grind WvW.

Such prime irony.

The WvW players are so incredibly salty that they don’t even seem to grasp that this will only make their WvW experience worse. I mean just look at how much people “enjoy” PvP this entire year with PvE players joining en masse to get those achievements for the backpack

I should go to the pve forums and complain about doing too much pve for things I want

Sweet Sanity.8593:

I should go to the pve forums and complain about doing too much pve for things I want

That would be a pretty valid complaint, if this patch wasn’t the one that eliminated most of your need to do PvE.

If we are talking about legendaries I still have to pve my butt off for them. Let me know when I can get a track for map completion

Sweet Sanity.8593:

If we are talking about legendaries I still have to pve my butt off for them

Then ask for a WvW way to get Gifts of Exploration. Or even better, ask for an actual WvW legendary. I still don’t get why PvP gets its own legendary backpack, while WvW is merely stuck as being an inconvenience for people who want to get the old legendaries.

This is very true. they both get shiny things and all we get is one armor and weapon sets and a wvw tourney vender with no way to earn tickets

I still stand by my earlier proposal: a reward track for the Gift of Exploration (as a second, non-PvE way to get it) and a Mystic Forge recipe from Miyani for the Gift of Battle (as a second, non-WvW to get that). A Gift of Exploration reward track would’ve made much more sense in the first place. And Miyani already sells recipes for the other gifts required for legendaries, so adding one for the Gift of Battle also makes perfect sense. This solves all potential problems, I think. No one has to “suffer”. Contrary to all the claims of the so-called fairness of PvE players having to do WvW now, the recipe and reward track would be a truly fair solution for all.

I completely agree. I’m sick of hearing all sides of this story by now

Dear Arena.net

Next time you make this kind of changes don’t bury them in patch notes 17,477 words long, mentioning it only once in a paragraph talking about a new feature of one game mode. It at least deserved it’s own bullet point and a mirror in the item section of the patch notes.

I always read the patch notes but given how massive the 19 April patch was, and the excitement for the changes in the game modes I’m more invested in, I skipped the WvW section reading only the bolded headlines.

Yes it’s mostly my fault, but it’s a fact it was communicated in a poor manner. Even reddit mostly skipped this, there is only one thread made one month after the patch with only 15 upvotes which probably never made to the front page.

Thanks for your attention.

Akkeros.1675:

two words…..reset night

problem solved

Assuming you have max participation, you get +195 points every 5 minutes. You need 20,000 points to max a WvW reward track.

Assuming max participation: IT TAKES 8.5 HOURS TO MAX A WVW REWARD TRACK FROM PARTICIPATION MINIMUM.

It doesn’t matter if you’re playing reset night or with a random zerg, you’re not going to get points any faster. It’s ridiculous I have to grind with a zerg for 8.5+ hours to get something I could have just bought instantly 2 days ago. I want to unlock the new armor skins, not waste time on a Gift of Battle…

And Anet’s “warning” was buried in 18,000 words of patch notes. I check R/gw2 most days and read all dev posts, yet I still didn’t get the heads up.

Edit: clarification, minor syntax

There are two separate issues here:

1. Why does ANet think that requiring people to invest 5 or 10 hours in WvW (for a legendary) is good for the game? What was broken that this change fixes? Are reward tracks even the best way to gate the Gift?
2. Why did ANet decide to implement this change in philosophy for the game with so little communication?

I like WvW (not as much as dedicated WvWers, though). I am not going to have any trouble earning gifts of battle. Further, I think there could be some very good reasons to require small amounts of WvW and perhaps PvP and other often-ignored bits of the game. So I’m not against the idea.

I am, however, completely floored by ANet’s decision to just drop this on us in this way.

• If it’s good for the game, then take the time to explain why and how it fits into the game’s broader philosophy and road map.
• Offer some dates for when this change will be implemented and what other changes we can expect and approximately when.

tl;dr once again, ANet undermined their their recent progress, good will, and even the great changes in this week’s patch… with a poorly-executed implementation of something that needn’t have been controversial (or at least, not nearly as much).

You know what the funny thing is? The silence from ANETs side. They are active with wvw polls (which are completely useless in my opinion), yet this change, which upsetted many people remains unadressed. I always wonder why is it to hard for them to actually communicate with the players? Also, the solution to this “debacle” is really easy

1) Make the track more rewarding (BL key, mystic clovers, valuable materials) so that there is other incentive for doing this other just “for sake of doing it”

2) Add both vendor and reward track, so that people can choose what they want to do.

3) Return it to vendor only, because it was not broken in the first place..

EDIT: Also, I have already finished over half of the new reward track by semiAFK recapping shrine in borderlands.. And I have seen dozen other people do the same thing.. If this is what they want from people to do in WvW then I say good job ANET, you outdid yourselves with this one.

Dannyus.2518:

You know what the funny thing is? The silence from ANETs side. They are active with wvw polls (which are completely useless in my opinion), yet this change, which upsetted many people remains unadressed. I always wonder why is it to hard for them to actually communicate with the players? Also, the solution to this “debacle” is really easy

They are very selective in their communication.

I love how there is a complete silence from ANETs side. It is obvious that this change upset a lot of people (i suspect more will come in the future). I guess many of us would like to know why this change happened in the first place. I love GW2, but this is kind of spoiling the game for me. Also, why can they respond on the account bound BLskins topics (which is highly controversial too), but not respond here? I just dont get it..

Oh boy another page from manifesto goes to the bin. Also WvW tournament AP Season 1 falshback.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There are two separate issues here:

1. Why does ANet think that requiring people to invest 5 or 10 hours in WvW (for a legendary) is good for the game? What was broken that this change fixes? Are reward tracks even the best way to gate the Gift?
2. Why did ANet decide to implement this change in philosophy for the game with so little communication?

I like WvW (not as much as dedicated WvWers, though). I am not going to have any trouble earning gifts of battle. Further, I think there could be some very good reasons to require small amounts of WvW and perhaps PvP and other often-ignored bits of the game. So I’m not against the idea.

I am, however, completely floored by ANet’s decision to just drop this on us in this way.

• If it’s good for the game, then take the time to explain why and how it fits into the game’s broader philosophy and road map.
• Offer some dates for when this change will be implemented and what other changes we can expect and approximately when.

tl;dr once again, ANet undermined their their recent progress, good will, and even the great changes in this week’s patch… with a poorly-executed implementation of something that needn’t have been controversial (or at least, not nearly as much).

Unless the person buying already did some WvW previously they would probably need to spend similar amounts of time in there to reach rank 14 before they can buy the gift even without this change. I guess my point is that people should have spent a bit more time voicing their issue when that change went in … although I think that one might have been completely silent. At least this was mentioned in the patch notes.

Dannyus.2518:

I love how there is a complete silence from ANETs side. It is obvious that this change upset a lot of people (i suspect more will come in the future). I guess many of us would like to know why this change happened in the first place. I love GW2, but this is kind of spoiling the game for me. Also, why can they respond on the account bound BLskins topics (which is highly controversial too), but not respond here? I just dont get it..

The number of players who have the resources to make legendary weapons is, I’m sure, rather small compared to the overall population of the game. Honestly, Anet can probably just safely ignore this issue if they want to, which is rather unfair to the more dedicated players it inconveniences.

Honestly, if I had at least been given a proper warning I wouldn’t be complaining (although I still think it’s completely pointless to change the acquisition of [nearly] 4 year old legendary weapons.)

Firstly, I avoid WvW to the greatest extent that I can, so this change impacts me as much as anyone else of similar mind.

That being said, in all fairness, ANet doesn’t really need to address this any further.

As has been said, they made the announcement well in advance.More than a little bit of onus lies on the player to keep abreast of any announced changes given the history of like changes that have taken place. If a player chooses not to inform themselves, or is unable to for whatever reason, that’s on the player. Personal responsibility and liability for their own (in)action.

For what it’s worth, and for those that have been around since the start, this isn’t the first time WvW changes have impacted Legendaries. And, unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time any pre-announcement was given.

• World complete previously required WvW maps. That was a lot of fun for those of us that had to venture into a vastly different WvW environment where being on a low WvW participation server could mean days to weeks of waiting for an area to become accessible without having to transfer. If you were lucky, you could swap to alts to map those areas before they were overtaken. Granted, this could be seen as a positive for those of my mindset, yet was a bit of an affront with no compensation, given how much time, effort, and in some cases expense, was done to meet the previous requirements.

• Gift of Battle required rank 30 in order to purchase.
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-February-4-2014/first#post3591492

Which was temporarily revoked, to the misfortune of those that ranked up based on that, until:

• Gift of Battle required rank 14in order to purchase.
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-March-18-2014/first#post3772979

Could they have made the announcement more visible? Of course.

Was it necessary for them to do so? No, based on their previous protocols of not pre-announcing such changes. This time they did so well in advance.

Could they again temporarily revoke the change? Perhaps. They have shown in the past that they are willing to revisit their decisions. But unlike in the past, this was an announced change prior to it going live.

We’ll have to see how they handle this. But just wanted to put it out there that this was not something that should have blindsided players that, by the very fact they’re reading this, had every opportunity to inform themselves.

I would appreciate a week’s grace period where we could again buy our Gift of Battle with Badges of Honor. I seem to have missed the announcement in the Patch Notes.

Thank you.

This is a good change, Anet has always intended for people to have to do WvW for there Legendary grind, and when they put badges in achievement chests they removed the need for WvW, as well as removing WvW map completion entirely. Now that it’s a reward track people once again have to WvW.

Good change imo. Don’t really see a problem with this. People had time to get their gift of battle before this change as it was announced there will be a change. And honestly not that hard to get it.

As mainly WvW player I could cry about the PvE aspect of getting the legendary but as I got told while trying to complain about some parts of it. “Life isn’t always fair. It is fine this way as it makes you work for it.” Like where was the battle before when you could just go to the jumping puzzles and get your badges from there. At least this way you actually have to do something for the Gift.

Um Legendary weapons require grind.

It is known.

Now please move on.

I’d appreciate the return of the vendor for a certain time as well – in addition to that I would like to know which emphasis Anet is going to focus on in future.

What gamer type does Anet primarily wish for?

- those who prefer organised group tasks (raid)?
- those who focus on competitive gameplay (wvw/pvp)?

I am very dismayed and feel abandoned. 3.5 years ago I was drawn into this game and very happy to get away from raids (nearly 7 years of raid-healing). I was delighted to be in a virtual world where cooperative gaming was encouraged – no killsteals, no fighting for nodes etc.

I got my badges only due to achievement chests and was thus able to make 3 leggies slowly but steadily, am currently working on Chuka and Finitum. Well, and then I will reach the end of this road – another door closed in my face, leaving me in the situation of farming for guild hall mats until LS 3 comes out. I did what I was interested in HOT, so farming events just for the sake of passing my time is not my cup of tea. I need a goal that interests me – atm my choices are not wide.

This prospect is not very enticing for me, but if Anet has decided to promote a game for the aforementioned gamer types, I’d like to know. I am a cooperative pve-gamer and nothing will change my way how I want to play.

GW2 gave me a lot of fun and it is hard for me to currently decide if I wish to cling to a game that has changed in a way I don’t want to participate in anymore.

So, if any official reads this and wants to enlighten me, I’d be very happy to have help in my decision about staying or not.

Thank you in advance.

This is a good change, Anet has always intended for people to have to do WvW for there Legendary grind, and when they put badges in achievement chests they removed the need for WvW, as well as removing WvW map completion entirely. Now that it’s a reward track people once again have to WvW. You don’t see WvW or PvP players crying about having to do PvE map completion when map completion was removed from WvW maps.

Aitadis.8269:

This is a good change, Anet has always intended for people to have to do WvW for there Legendary grind, and when they put badges in achievement chests they removed the need for WvW, as well as removing WvW map completion entirely. Now that it’s a reward track people once again have to WvW. You don’t see WvW or PvP players crying about having to do PvE map completion when map completion was removed from WvW maps.

WvW/PvP players aren’t crying because legendary weapons have always been mostly tied to PvE (and Anet has made even made some changes to help PvP/WvW players acquire legendary weapons). It’s not like Anet suddenly increased the amount of PvE required to make a legendary weapon while simultaneously invalidating currency previously earned in PvE with virtually no warning.

Kurppa.9473:

darn anet, i have now 165k badges that i have no use for, why didnt they call me personally that this change will happen, i could’ve bought a stack of these gifts ready for legendaries i will never craft

Yeah, that’s what everyone wants. To be personally contacted.

They’ve made mistakes like this before and promised better communication in the future, and they have failed to do so yet again. Asking for a single dev post on the official forums to warn us about changes that impact currency we have spent time earning is not asking for much. Instead they bury the warning in patch notes 18,000 words long, and, big surprise, many people didn’t get the memo.

Trajan.4953:

Um Legendary weapons require grind.

It is known.

Now please move on.

The problem isn’t the grind. The problem is being forced to do the grind AGAIN.

they gave us a warning, but …

““But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.””

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

Give us back the vendor!

I try to keep up with patch notes, but missed this (and a couple others) in the wall of text that came with that particular patch.

This is going to cause trouble fro WvW with people going AFK etc. to get the gift without having to deal with all the lovely things that go along with the WvW community.
As one person previously mentioned, this wouldn’t be so bad if WvW was actually fun, but it’s not.

I’d like to see the vendor back for a week. I won’t play WvW any less or more than I currently do, but I know several people in my guild, who also missed the patch note, that will want to take advantage of it.

What do you mean again. Getting the 500 badges was too easy.

Yes – exactly – give the people actual chance to buy it old way – with REAL announcement and then change it to the new system.
Otherwise I will have to spend time idling in WvW just refreshing participation counter so I keep getting points…. yeah FUN!

Just for perspective, if you copy the the patch notes that include the comment on this issue, and put them into a standard Word document, you can find the language on page 23 of 40, in the last 8500 words of over 19000 words, in paragraph 697 of 1169.

This last patch has 4 pages, 1323 words, and 111 paragraphs, and there are 3 sets of patch notes between then and now.

The actual language includes no date but only says "when the rewards track feature exits beta testing. "

There was no warning that beta testing was ending anywhere.

I know your working hard to improve the game and that requires a lot of patch notes, but is this the improved level of communication we were told to expect after that last issue? I’d prefer to assume it was a simple oversight to not include a date when beta testing was done, after not giving a date when this would happen in the first patch notes.

Putting the vendor back temporarily is the right thing to do.

What the heck, they removed it with this patch? I just went to buy it today and can’t find the stupid vendor anywhere… I have 15k badges! Can we at least trade badges for reward track progress? I am almost ready to make my legendary… didn’t expect to have to grind WvW after all the WvW I’ve done in the past…. can you please either let us trade badges for reward track progress or put the vendor back so we can prepare for this change. I have not been following WvW and was not expecting a change like this.

Shiyo.3578:

Please just readd the vendor for a week for people who were not aware of this change.

Except ONE minute after the 7th day when it disappeared again people would flood to these forums with pitchforks and torches and go “OH MY GAWD WHY WAS THIS NOT COMMUNICATED BETTER THAT THIS VENDOR WAS DISAPPEARING AFTER 7 DAYS I CANT BE BOTHERED TO READ PATCH NOTES SO I DIDNT SEE IT THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A HUGE SIGN WITH TWINKLY LIGHTS ON EVERY MAP WITH DANCING MONKEYS AND FREE HALF FRAPPE CHOCOLATE CRAPPOCCINOS WITH FIREWORKS ON TOP TO TELL ME OMG”

I actually welcome any additional participation in WvW. At best, people discover that they actually enjoy the game mode and stick around. At worst, you’re a loot bag when you die (and that’s still good imo.)

I find it very ironic that people are using the ‘i am now forced to spend hours+ to farm WvW argument to get a gift of battle’ argument when other folks are forced to spend hours+ (more so even) in a Raid to get a legendary armor.

Both situations are the exact same. both items are, for the most part, just a bump in convenience and do not give an tactical advantage. So I will use the same argument the raid folks have given others in many, many other posts: ‘you do not need the legendary backpack. if you do not want to raid, don’t do it. Get ascended. ’ So right back at you: you do not need the legendary weapons, craft/get ascended for same stats if you do not want to play in WvW.’

All I hear from WvW:ers seems to be
“haha now PvE:ers get to suffer too”
and
“I have to do PvE for my PvE stuff! Boo-hoo”

Hear many PvE:ers complaining over how they can’t get the WvW titles without WvW:ing? PvP ranks without PvP:ing? No? Well then..

Yes, Legendary items are mostly aimed at PvE, since they are based on Lore and events that take place in PvE. If you don’t want to do World Completion but want a Legendary, do one of the new ones.. They “only” require you to explore the 4 new zones, just like the old explore WvW criteria for Gift of Exploration.
If there was a WvW (and there should be) Legendary, I’m sure it would take place mostly in WvW, just like the Fractal back takes place mostly in Fractals and the PvP back takes place in PvP.

And the extra grind to get the Gift of Battle now, isn’t going to stop most avid collectors from finishing off their current Legendary, but I know in my case it has put a hold on any future plans. It’s not an impossible grind, after all we also did the 100% World Completion, or the new Collection Achievements that aren’t done in a measly 8 hours.. They require grinding a lot of events, in a lot of different zones. They require finding and killing specific mobs, assisting certain NPCs, finishing 1 specific event in a long chain.. The collections take days to complete; sometimes weeks. Mostly due to time-gated items required (unless ofc you poop money and can buy your way past them but atleast I don’t know any people that do). It still requires hundreds of gold to aquire items needed for the different Gifts. It requires grinding currencies and materials in all the new zones, and some old ones..
So yes, when the 1 item we thought we already had in the bag; done and sorted, is all of a sudden an 8 hour boring “afk-fest” away, it kittenes us off. We’ll still do it, and I’m sure I kittened off a lot of WvW:ers by just repairing walls of SM every few minutes last night, for like 8 hours straight, but it let me achieve my goal in the least painful way so frankly I didn’t care. If I’m “forced” to WvW for the Gift of Battle (which I already did back in the day to unlock the bloody thing in the first place, since it -AGAIN- required WvW rank, not just Badges…), I’m not gonna aim to be very helpful unless it benefits me. On a positive note, I’m now very close to the “Fixxer-Upper” title. Yay?

Najten.2418:

I’m sure I kittened off a lot of WvW:ers by just repairing walls of SM every few minutes last night, for like 8 hours straight, but it let me achieve my goal in the least painful way so frankly I didn’t care.

tbh, that says way more about your character than Anet’s game design changes. But it takes all types to make the world go ’round I guess. ::shrug::

Very true.. If I feel forced I don’t play nice. I’m sure all WvW:ers don’t explore the world with a smile on their lips either.
I was already in there for 8 hours longer than I wanted to be; so minimal effort is what you get.

Hey! I want that merchant back. I dont want to play wvw to get pve item, i dont really care for wvw, i dont have internet connection stable enough to deal with other players and my pc is struggling to get 30 fps even without any action, so dont force me to play mode that i will suffer from.

Najten.2418:

Very true.. If I feel forced I don’t play nice. I’m sure all WvW:ers don’t explore the world with a smile on their lips either.
I was already in there for 8 hours longer than I wanted to be; so minimal effort is what you get.

I highly doubt you’ll see WvW’ers in PvE intentionally derailing event chains, killing an Octovine when the map is holding for another side to catch up, tagging up and leading zergs astray so metas fail, etc all because they may not like PvE. That’s essentially what you’re doing: Throwing a tantrum because you can’t get your way. Times like this make me wish I could craft a box of Pampers and a juice box. Vials of Salt just don’t seem like enough.

Shademehr.1397:

Najten.2418:

Very true.. If I feel forced I don’t play nice. I’m sure all WvW:ers don’t explore the world with a smile on their lips either.
I was already in there for 8 hours longer than I wanted to be; so minimal effort is what you get.

I highly doubt you’ll see WvW’ers in PvE intentionally derailing event chains, killing an Octovine when the map is holding for another side to catch up, tagging up and leading zergs astray so metas fail, etc all because they may not like PvE. That’s essentially what you’re doing: Throwing a tantrum because you can’t get your way. Times like this make me wish I could craft a box of Pampers and a juice box. Vials of Salt just don’t seem like enough.

What you’re describing sounds like I’m helping the enemy team take SM by calling out that the enemy zerg knocking on the door is just a thief tagging the guards. Wow. I am hardly derailing events on purpose by repairing walls that are about to break (actually keeping the enemies outside the walls ). I’m just not being extremely helpful. There’s a pretty massive difference there.
I’ll gladly join the zerg every once in a while, when I’m in the mood for it, but not when I’m stuck in there for 8 hours straight cuz I don’t want to lose my participation and get a lower tick. 8 hours might not seem like much of a grind all things compared, but it is another day of my game-time spent where I couldn’t do the other things I wanted to be doing.

^this. At least allow us to trade every day a fixed amount of Badges of Honor for 1 or 2 potions of WvW reward track progress.

While the warning was technically present in the patch notes, it was not effectively communicated, and it gave no timeline on when the switch would actually happen. There should have been notice when the reward track beta was actually ending so people could be ready. In lieu of that, the vendor absolutely should be returned for a short period of time, to accommodate the transition.

Briadonis.8907:

What the heck, they removed it with this patch? I just went to buy it today and can’t find the stupid vendor anywhere… I have 15k badges! Can we at least trade badges for reward track progress? I am almost ready to make my legendary… didn’t expect to have to grind WvW after all the WvW I’ve done in the past…. can you please either let us trade badges for reward track progress or put the vendor back so we can prepare for this change. I have not been following WvW and was not expecting a change like this.

What is your WvW rank?

Khisanth.2948:

What is your WvW rank?

With 15k badges I’m sure his rank is high enough and they did remove the merchant for everyone less than 48 hours ago.

Still no signs of communication from ANET. Clearly the transition to the new change was so bad with an inadequate patch notes /notice and communication. Seems like they only respond fast when BLTC is concerned. Cash grab yea?

Najten.2418:

What you’re describing sounds like I’m helping the enemy team take SM by calling out that the enemy zerg knocking on the door is just a thief tagging the guards. Wow. I am hardly derailing events on purpose by repairing walls that are about to break (actually keeping the enemies outside the walls ). I’m just not being extremely helpful. There’s a pretty massive difference there.
I’ll gladly join the zerg every once in a while, when I’m in the mood for it, but not when I’m stuck in there for 8 hours straight cuz I don’t want to lose my participation and get a lower tick. 8 hours might not seem like much of a grind all things compared, but it is another day of my game-time spent where I couldn’t do the other things I wanted to be doing.

If you were burning supply to fix outer SM, then you could very well have been helping the enemy, either unknowingly or on purpose.

The rest of what you’re saying just seems like you’re imposing some sort of self-rule that you have to get the GoB in a specific 8 hour period (which is what others here seem to be implying as well) instead of casually over several weeks like you would with all of the other legendary-related items. Heck, if all you wanted to do was PvE, just roll a thief/mesmer/scrapper/etc and sneak around the maps killing sentries, yaks, or taking ruins. Maybe even grab a quick camp or three when no one is looking. You’ll keep your participation up and you’ll never have to fight another player. Do these tasks when they’re a daily and get even faster rewards. A few minutes a day. A couple of hours per week.

Ok, so if this isn’t temporarily changed, there will be a whole lot of us entering WvW after a very long break or for the first time, who don’t want to be there.
We will have no interest in your WvW interests or goals.
We will be in varying stages of anger.
We will act with one single purpose which is to rank up for the Gift of Battle and most won’t care how we do it or what the affects are on the WvW community.

Since it’s been a couple years and likely many changes, for me, my question to you WvW players is what would you suggest we do to rank up and achieve our goal so we can then leave as fast as possible, without negatively impacting your goals? Remember, while some of us might be productive or helpful for you, many will not be, and some will never fight another player, so what things can we do that don’t disrupt or delay your goals?

Tumult.2578:

Ok, so if this isn’t temporarily changed, there will be a whole lot of us entering WvW after a very long break or for the first time, who don’t want to be there.
We will have no interest in your WvW interests or goals.
We will be in varying stages of anger.
We will act with one single purpose which is to rank up for the Gift of Battle and most won’t care how we do it or what the affects are on the WvW community.

Since it’s been a couple years and likely many changes, for me, my question to you WvW players is what would you suggest we do to rank up and achieve our goal so we can then leave as fast as possible, without negatively impacting your goals? Remember, while some of us might be productive or helpful for you, many will not be, and some will never fight another player, so what things can we do that don’t disrupt or delay your goals?

I am already seeing people going around capping some objectives with me for paticipation. We even run pass our enemies without engaging them. This shows what? We are all on the same page.. we are not there to fight, but get the Gift of Battle. We dont even need words, enemies know what we are there for and we know what they are there for.

I even /sleep beside a druid in one of the BL without getting hit/fight, watching him cap points and we just swap after.

If this is what ANET and the true Wvw players wants to see, their false population increase, then they have definitely succeeded. But please note, we are not there to capture objectives or win the war for you, we are just doing our stuff. We are burdens to the queue times on peak hour, dont blame us for losing your fight.

Ways for WvW-Adverse PVE’ers to get reward track participation with no (or mimimal) bad guy interaction while probably still helping their servermates:

*Repair structures (check with the other WvW’ers, especially a Commander, first as they may need the supply for defense, etc. and don’t want it burned on repairing walls or gates)

*Destroy siege (if you’re running around and see an unmanned bad guy catapult, ram, etc. kill it)

*Escort a caravan (find a Dolyak and get it to it’s final destination. Use swiftness to get credit faster by getting the yak to its final destination faster)

*Stop a caravan (kill an enemy yak, especially in an enemy borderland)

*Capture a sentry (remember you will show up as a red dot on the map to whomever currently owns that sentry so kill it fast, capture the point by standing in the circle, and then gtfo)

*Defeat veteran guards, supervisors, or quartermaster NPC’s which can be found guarding the enemy gates, escorting Dolyaks, on patrols around structures, or in camps. (Bonus kudos if you hit the gate a few times too as that puts up swords on the enemy structure so they think it’s being hit by a group. This is also known as a “tap”. It causes a bit of confusion for the enemy)

*Capture a camp (more difficult than the items mentioned above, but you can stack up most of the npc’s and burn them down before swords even pop on the camp. Stand in the capture circle and take the camp once they’re all dead)

*If you’re particularly talented, lucky, and/or the map is dead you could also solo towers and keeps but risk of discovery is huge with these two.

Final notes: use a character class/build that allows you to be highly mobile. If an enemy is sighted, and you don’t wish to engage, you can gtfo. Many dedicated WvW’ers aren’t real thrilled with runners, but at least your teammates will be happy that you’re doing the items above. Granted, you just want track participation, but the side effects are that you help out your server.

Then bask in all that PPT goodness that gives you all those Power of the Mists buffs that people love so much. lol http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Power_of_the_Mists There are rumors of these buffs eventually going away, but for now we WvW’ers are able to provide some benefit to everyone who is on our server so we’re not entirely selfish with our game mode.

Also: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Reward_Track

Have fun! Who knows. Maybe you’ll hang out in wvw, end up actually liking it, and decide to put in some more hours!