Guild Wars 2

Over the Betas, a number of casual, community based guilds gathered at the site, hengeofdenravi.com with the intent of establishing it as a server with a close-knit population, that would consist of guilds sharing events, and weekly runs. The plan seemed solid, and a tentative chain was built between these guilds, some as old as the betas of Guild Wars 1.

Unfortunately, even the best laid plans can dampened. Unexpectedly, the Titan Alliance, a hardcore WvW alliance of 17 guilds (at the time), moved to HoD and quickly filled up the server not just with their numbers, but also masses who wanted to take advantage of the server buffs, and WvW wins.

In a matter of time, HoD quickly became the server to beat, with WvW queues up to 5hours. And as much as it felt like we ought to be celebrating with every win, most of the other guilds that had moved to HoD took little to no part in WvW because of the atrocious waiting times. Over time, we just collectively decided to avoid WvW all together, and stay in PvE.

Then without any notice, and just within a week, the lead guild of TA quit the alliance, and all the guilds scattered. With the scattering of TA guilds, so did anyone else who had joined the server for the bonuses. Quite suddenly, the community of HoD found ourselves alone, and completely untrained for WvW, especially when facing other tier 1 guilds. Many entered WvW for the first time, at such a late stage in the game, and were mostly frightened away by how brutal it was on our meagre numbers.

For months, HoD suffered an excruciating fall, finding ourselves outnumbered constantly, and zerged at our spawn. And over this time, map chat remained bleak and pessimistic with talk about transfers. Yet amidst HoD’s dark days, some members of the community began fighting back, slowly and steadily. Learning to play WvW the hard way against huge numbers and well developed high-tier strategy.

Before long, the kitten-fights gathered popularity among some of the community, and a WvW core team was established. We lost and died often, but by that time, HoD had become so accustomed to losses, it had built some form of immunity to any disappointments. The chat on map also steered towards the positive, probably because the people who only intended for victories had departed, leaving only the seasoned and incredibly loyal members of the community. It also lured in members of other servers who were looking for an underdog-type situation of beating-the-odds.

The original chain of guilds gradually increased with more and more guilds banding together to work towards a better HoD. And finally the dream of HoD being a community based server with shared events, and a tight-knit population was realised following several server meetings, and continued relations between the leaders of guilds and more outspoken members of the community.

HoD’s descent has finally ended in recent times, and we have found ourselves comfortable and competitive at Tier 7, opposite other great servers such as Gate of Madness and Darkhaven – enough to take a win last week.

Small team tactics are in place on a daily basis, and our prior experience from defending against much larger servers do come into play every now and then. We have also grown a wonderful team of commanders, who run WvW lessons and battle-mentoring every so often. Our community runs quite evenly through international timezones, as well as our coverage in WvW. And our server-wide weekly events cover different zones.

From time to time, HoD has some fun in WvW; like forming a line of naked-dancing norn in a tower being bombarded by the enemy, and having its commanders line up at the top of a vista while invaders swarm below. The community mumble is also always rife not only with tactical discussion, but also jokes and other fun-chat.

Today, HoD is evidence that there is life after an exodus, having finally found its place and the community it strived so long and hard to achieve.

*If you would like to find out more about us, simply visit the community page at http://hengeofdenravi.com. *

We welcome all able-bodies, from beginner to veteran, young to the old, casual to the hardcore. And be assured that we are a casual server, and no schedules or patrol charts will be imposed upon you. Play as you like, be it WvW or PvE, and we understand when real life comes first. The community matters more than gathering a win.

With that being said, we hope that we will see some of you in the coming week, and all the best in your final choice for a server!

Henge is, and will always be my GW2 home.

I was literally shocked the first week I was on the server after I transferred from Fort Aspenwood. I went to a “losing” server by WvW standards. After about a week worth of play in WvW, I noticed anything BUT the sense of defeat among the community. In fact, if you didn’t check the score, open up your map, or read the weekly wvw thread, based upon the map chat, you’d swear we were winning by a landslide.

Not only that, but people even start to recognize you. Even after a few days, people had an understanding of who you were, and how you liked to spend your time.

This is an excellent community to spend your time playing with, and I look forward to seeing new faces in ALL aspects of our server.

Hello from Far Shiverpeaks

As you may know our story is quite similar.
Our ratings may have become worse after our drop to T7 but our community has become stronger.

I was one of those people who joined WvW after the halloween exodus when the que’s were gone. It wasen’t a pretty sight to first play wvw and see your server loose every week. But i stayed and i never regretted it.

When you hit rock bottom you know that anyone still with you is loyal and will be there till the very end. We will never be as strong again as we used to be, but we also don’t want to be. Higher tiers doesn’t mean more fun

Good luck to you guy’s

Henge of Denravi was my first home and I never forgot it. I love this realm and the most part of players in there. Good luck, guys!

Darkhaven had its exodus of guilds and players as well, but now that we hit tier 7, things really got better and I’m so glad to be fighting against amazing servers such as yours and Gate of Madness.

I wish the best of luck to you to all of our servers, see you on the battlefield!

I’d like to dedicate a song to you.

I’d like to offer congratulations to HoD. It’s been a long hard road, with ten weeks of losses by an average of more than 350,000 points. I started WvW on HoD right around the time that streak started, and even though we were losing, even though I only have the time to be in WvW for a few hours every week, the commanders and other warriors on the server were (and continue to be) welcoming and respectful.

Low tiers don’t mean low skills; it doesn’t take long to figure that out when you see HoD (or other servers at low tiers) play. Low tiers mean more small group tactics. Low tiers mean individual contributions count for more. Even my part time contributions.

I’d also like to compliment DM and GoM for some great matchups over the past couple weeks. WvW is truly an entirely different game when the matchups are working.

Sincerely,

Sura Qilaq, Guardian
Dahlia Kauri, Necromancer

Thank you for all the kind comments! I hope HoD’s tale can be a beacon for all servers who’ve recently suffered massive losses and are going thru some dark times. Loyalty pays and your server will recover like ours did. Just keep plugging at it and don’t let anything get you down

Revenge of the Henge! My first home and will always hold a place in my heart. Thought I would never leave the server but couldn’t take the glacier-like pace at which glicko was putting us where we belonged so I bolted. I’ll always have my eyes on HoD, cheering you onward and upward. I could see myself transferring back one day.

I’m not one for long speeches, or rambling monologues, but I feel at some point it’s important to give my two cents on the kind of place Henge of Denravi is. The server means a lot to me at this point, and I feel I’ve earned my place in saying my bit.

HoD has been my guild’s home since launch. When we originally joined, we kept mainly amongst ourselves, as we were an old group from GW1 (We number about 60, among which everyone recognizes everyone else). We discovered we were now part of a server that was dominant in WvW with multi-hour cues and a massive coordination effort. Ultimately this encouraged us to keep to ourselves, WvW was impossible to get into, things were beyond our scope and quite frankly we felt like a small stone being thrown into a big pond. So it goes.

As with all things, this wouldn’t last. As with many others on the server, we were shocked to discover one morning that TA had broken up, and our server was now in a freefall. As of 2 weeks later, we often found WvW to be completely empty. Over the next months we would often joke when we captured a tower that whatever group effort we were apart of at the time was “Literally all of Henge”, as our Commanders could rarely muster enough effort to lock down more than 1 or 2 towers at a time. So went our painful months long slide down the ladder.

Throughout this time, we’ve been told, both as a group, and individually, how much fun we weren’t having by a lot of people. We were told our server didn’t understand WvW, that we should bail from the sinking ship, that we just needed to try harder and get “our fairweathers” to play. My personal favourite was one occassion where someone (from a server that shall remain unnamed) told me that a 12-hour defence of DB wasn’t a “fun” WvW activity, and that I needed to learn how the game was supposed to be played. It perhaps goes without saying that we on HoD are quite good at making our own fun, and we stayed upbeat for months through the repeat thrashings.

As the weeks passed, our core of veterans strengthened. We’d see the same people out there every night slogging forward. Our guiding attitude was perhaps best summed up by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky Balboa: “It’s not about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”

Not only that but my guild got involved. The community was smaller, closer knit. We made connections, we made new friends. This was a place we were happy to be even when we were losing, because you know what? These people got it. No, we didn’t have 400 people in the Mumble at once, but the people who were there were kitten worth talking to.

Now, things have changed, we’re in competitive match-ups. From the months of slogging forward, we’ve improved. Our community is now strong and unified. The guilds on the server may not be massive, but they’re dedicated. I have a list of people I know I can call on any given night to get the job done. Not because they have endless supplies of people but because I’ve seen them get the job done again and again, even when we’re 400k in the hole.

That’s the HoD I’ve cut my teeth on and that’s the HoD I plan on staying with come hell or high water.

i honestly did not think i would enjoy Henge of Denravi when i first transferred here. it was right at the breakup of titan alliance. i was used to that tier 1 mentality, and watching a server implode made me immediately think of switching to another server, but instead i was like “hey, atleast give henge a shot, a week or 2, if you dont like it, leave.” prolly one of the best decisions ive ever made as far as gw2 is concerned

the community as amazing, simply a pleasure to be around, everyone is always willing to try dungeons they have never done, or head into wvw which they have never experienced, or whatever it is you wish to do. there are always new guild events going on, from care packages (gifts for participating in wvw, kind of like a small bonus for playing) to races, community keg brawl, dungeon runs, you name it! alot of creativity and time has gone into not just creating events for your own guild, but invite people you dont even know to come! to join the experience. ive met so many fantastic people here. and yeah sometimes there are arguments, and yes we dont always get along. but theirs so little drama, the arguments are not even worth mentioning or remembered a day or two later!

also this server has so much POTENTIAL! After a long slide, were finally getting back on our feet. tier 7 is our home, for now, and i have such a strong feeling that one day were gonna rise about that. we have countless people working hard to improve our standings in wvw, despite a lower count of players. And dedicated commanders who either came from a high tier server like myself and decided to stick it out to help train newer players, or to teach some more experienced ones a couple new ideas, or commanders native to Hod who, after time and time again of failing and trying again, have learned from their mistakes and are now making smart decisions, their is constant server training going on, for any individual that chooses. we make smart decisions, use map chat wisely, have a server forum page/mumble used for coordination, and more importantly were a CLEAN SERVER, very few being trolls, little to no hacking or exploits. we have the quality to be a good server, all were lacking is a little bit more training, and the numbers to be able to fully put in affect all the plans we aspire to do, and the wvw dreams we all keep working so hard to achieve.

so coming from someone who did transfer to HoD. please give it a shot until the 27/28th, its a chance i promise you wont regreat. youll meet some very fantastic folks, and you and/or your guild will be welcomed with open arms, and open to new ideas, concepts for pve/wvw/spvp/ whatever you choose! the server has the chance to be one of the best in gw2

all it needs is you
Regards
Havvik

I greet you HOD from Desolation,

Like some other servers that had the same issue….one tip from us all that survived and are rising….you got your stable tier now…build up from there like you doing now make a solid community cus this is your time. Make sure you involve everyone…..your spvp people to pve to ofcourse wvw….get all of them together….that is how you can avoid the next hit….cus you will get another if you rise again……this time be rdy for it;)

GL with everything.

Desolation /Salute you.

Not on HoD, but respect to you guys that were there from day one and went down with the ship. With all the fair weather zerglings and bandwagoners in this game, it’s nice to see folks with some server pride sticking through the hard times. Best of luck.

From Crystal Desert (from this week on will be going through what you guys at HoD experienced).

<3 the posts here. If I have to choose another server it would be HoD. I hope I can say the same thing about my server one day.

Thank you all for the respect you’ve shown.

just a bump to congratulate a couple of new transfer guilds =D hope to see more of you in HoD

Dalure.4691:

that is how you can avoid the next hit….cus you will get another if you rise again……this time be rdy for it;)

Let’s hope paid transfers will minimize any more of such imbalances.

Talia.7412:

Dalure.4691:

that is how you can avoid the next hit….cus you will get another if you rise again……this time be rdy for it;)

Let’s hope paid transfers will minimize any more of such imbalances.

I hope so Talia:)

Like Talia, Havik, Vallena and others here, I absolutely love calling HoD my home server.

I’ve been there since the first open beta weekend in May 2012 (we were one of the smaller servers during betas as well). In that first few days, I met a lot of new friends – most of whom are still active on Henge of Denravi today.

Where I didnt enjoy the WvW gameplay when the server was rolling over others, I feel much different now. The current match is still anyone’s game (at 11 eastern on Friday morning) with less than 900 points separating second and third places.

As for PVE, most zones feel alive now. Even in situations where there are fewer players, you see the players that are there grouping and inviting others to play alongside them. And they are respectful and friendly as they do so.

I can count on one hand the number of times Ive seen someone behave like an elitist on this server – and mot of those people left months ago.

I love it here.

It was weird reading about HoD’s fall from my perspective as a Jade Quarry Commander.

All too often we can lump servers into a stereotypical category of “lowlife hackers who deserve whatever comes to them” and we forget about the great people at the core of any great server.

Congratulations on your community and I wish you all the best, I know how much of a relief it must be to have finally developed a community that you know will be there through thick and thin.

Again, Congratulations and best of luck!

Servers can and will rebuild. As a member of the Dragonbrand server we were one of the first to suffer from this event in such a massive level. So i wish your server well.

Good luck

I don’t much post on the forums. However when I see a thred like this I feel moved to post.

My guild and I were not on HoD at the start of the beta. However, we quickly learned that the server that we were on was not for us. There was too much… kittenry… for lack of a better word. We have always been very pro-community and where we were, community just didn’t exist. Before launch day — for a myriad of reasons — we decided to make HoD our home.

We played WvW from the beginning and obviously were in our own little bubble because I wasn’t aware of “the whole TA thing” until they were breaking up. Even with the loses and slide down the tiers, it never ever occured to any of us once to leave the server. And honestly, I didn’t get the whole “alliance” thing anyway. In our minds, our server IS our alliance.

This seemed to be the mindset as well from the other members of our server who stayed. Even in WvW, in those weeks of freefall, the consensus always seem to be that if we couldn’t win, we could at least have fun. Those weeks only brought all of us closer together.

I agree with the posts of my fellow Denravians in saying that we have one of the strongest and tightest communities ingame. I love going into almost any area of the game and recognizing most of the player names and/or guild tags. In my mind, everything we went through was worth it to get to where we are now.

Havvik Nightseeker.3485:

just a bump to congratulate a couple of new transfer guilds =D hope to see more of you in HoD

Wait, we got transfers?

I just transferred over and so far I’ve been impressed with the WvW community. It seems active and organized compared to the world I came from.

Grimm.2906:

I just transferred over and so far I’ve been impressed with the WvW community. It seems active and organized compared to the world I came from.

Excellent! PM me in game, Braddock.5430 or – Krag Oversteen or Llopp

Grimm.2906:

I just transferred over and so far I’ve been impressed with the WvW community. It seems active and organized compared to the world I came from.

welcome looks for milk and cookies be sure and stop by the community site Talia.7412 linked in her post and introduce yourself

For the first time since we the collapse of TA, Henge of Denravi has gone up a rank this week. Great job to everyone involved!

Welcome to HoD Grimm!

And I agree with Eve about alliances. I’m glad that the entire server has come together as one unit instead of being split into several alliances, or getting ruled by a dominant party. I like that every guild chips in without needing to be told. I guess we all really feel our stake in this server.

I’ve been in HoD since guild wars 2 beta week 1 first day and I will never move I remember days when i would hit B and see the pie all one color “us” now it seems like were mostly fighting DH and GoM. I would like to see the good old glory days when we were all that people talked about.

Been meeting lots of new people and guilds lately. Just wanna wish you all a very warm welcome, and thank you for choosing our server

One more day until the patch!