Guild Wars 2

I started playing WvW about a month after I got the game because I never really knew what to do. Now it’s probably the main reason I play GW2.

I started on SoS and don’t plan to bandwagon over to BG with the rest of my guild. If I stick to SoS, we’re probably going to drop though, by how much – I don’t know.

Does WvW dwindle down in the lower tiers? Is it just as competitive?

Don’t know about NA but we are currently playing in EU T5. We also played in lower brackets as well as in T3 so i guess i can compare them fairly well.

Every bracket got lots of good guilds, players and fights as well as strategy and nightcapping. Overall i’d say that the top tiers are more about macro managing your zergs and having more coverage off primetime. There are also zergs in lower tiers but mostly during primetimes and individual player skill got more chances to shine during off primetime when there are less players on the map.

It’s a lot lower scale. Fights are more about movement and a good,organized force really does work (no matter how large or small). I’d say, before this stifling match, t8 on dr kain and et was the most fun I’ve ever had in wvw.

They’ll be out of our hair soon enough though so I look forward to more great match ups as time goes on.

I really do hope they fix commander tags soon though, the outrageous amount of people with tags is a little annoying and confusing to new players who have no idea about the /join squad function. – side rant

Play sPvP and see how you like that smaller scale pvp. If you hate it, no sorry you won’t like lower tier.

It’s a lot more than 5v5, believe it or not, we do field some average sized zergs once in a while

Along with siege placement, t8 is about communication and movement. Since there aren’t massive amounts of people, a lot of it comes down to individual skill and teamwork which is a lot like spvp but there is also a lot of roaming and movement around maps. Sometimes we have fun holding camps and other times we do costume races. There’s been some pretty epic water battles as well as golem rushes (ET’s recent fetish).

Give it a shot if you want or I can take some SS’s for you tomorrow if that’ll sway you one way or another.

I played high tier with my guild but we transered to a lower tier.
Fights on lower tier are a lot better. (most groups like 25 people.. biggest zerg like 50 players max)
Its less about who has the best 24/7 coverage and who has the biggest zerg and it is more about the battles.
A lot of good guilds on lower tiers, more then on higher tier where the main skill you need to have is having a bigger army.
No ability lag and lesser culling problems on lower tier servers. So fights are more skill based.
So if you enjoy nice battles you should defintly check out the medium to low tiers.

Small ninja teams can make a big difference on the lower tiers. The bad guys can’t be everywhere, so one golem at the Garrison water gate can get a lot done before the zerg arrives.

Tier 8 is super sexy right now. You got one big server smothering two smaller ones, but the two small ones hate each other. So, they trade punches with one another while the big server finds it all just amusing. It’s high-drama excitement down here. Also, ninja style on keeps. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome on the south side of the tracks.

In T5 its really fun

Yesterday night:

Beachtet, dass Soundeinspielungen und Musik die im Verhältnis zur Stimme etwas leiser im Teamspeak direkt in der Situation eingespielt worden sind und daher leiser sind.
Note that played music and sounds are directly played at teamspeak and are not implented.

Fighting in the lower tiers is as fun if not more so. In my experience the issue is the drop. It can be many weeks of constant floggings before a server settles in a tier that matches their coverage and that’s not fun. Personally I hope we(sos) end up settling in with ioj and sbi, would love to fight those guys again.

You will be fine. SBI had a horrible 2-3 weeks after everyone left. As we dropped down the maps were ghost towns most of the people gave up. As we moved lower more people are playing and we are actually winning this match up. So you will probably have people stop wvw as you move down but once you get into a better match up they will come back.

I would just stay were you are- don’t follow. What is to stop BG from being deserted in the future?

T7 is so much fun. Sure, there are less players, but here are the upsides.

1) Your contributions actually make a difference
2) Close knit server community
3) No queues
4) A lot less culling
5) Skill can sometimes trump numbers
6) Very few fair weather players

I’m really only speaking from my experience at GoM, but I’m pretty sure that HoD would say the same things, and also DH to a lesser extent.

I officially made a move from T1 (JQ my home since beta) to a T4 server very recently. I was looking battles and skirmishes with small group coordinated play.

I am not regretting my move at all, and have not looked back. To answer you directly I am having much more fun.

Middle tiers:
I think the middle tiers are where you have the most fun.

Lower tiers:
If you play only during primetime, lower tiers should be fun, too. The only downside is sometimes a lack of players/enemies. When it’s late in the night or in the morning, the WvW zones are often deserted.

Top tiers:
Zerg everywhere, massive culling problems, almost no room for small groups. In top tiers, WvW is about supplys and siege weapons. During primetime there are waiting queues for WvW. Fun? Only if you love zergs.

Straegen.2938:

Lower tiers are not all roses. Competition level is lower in my experience as each tier up seems to bring a higher quantity of practiced players. There is often big gaps in coverage in those tiers so a server with a medium sized guild in oceanic or EU tends to roll the entire map. Large group fights are more sparse and far less organized which can be a good thing or bad thing depending on your preference.

What server you playing?
Tier 3 -5 on europe servers have lots of good guilds running organised guild groups these days.. The time lower tier had bad organized average sized zergs running around only is over.
Guilds on these servers have more practise fighting 30vs30 or 30 vs smal zerg battles.
Because guilds on tier 1 and tier2 need to group up with other guilds to deal with eachother massive autocasting zergs of grouped up guild groups.

The main difference between a guild in tier 2 and tier 1 and guilds from other tiers is, high rank guilds play for the points , and most lower rank guilds play for the battles.
If a high rank guild looses a fight against another guild they will group up and come with 2 times the number out next fight. Or they hide in tier3 keeps untill they have enough people.
In lower tiers you will have lots of guild vs guild fights, with very skilled guilds. Who are not afraid to come out again even if they loose.

As a player from AM, a server which has been in T4-6 for almost its whole existence, I can say that I find WvW very fun. Now, I don’t know what it’s like on top servers, but from what I read here, a lot of it seems to be about very large zerg battles. In the mid-range tiers we have decently sized zergs at prime time (I have very rarely seen a zerg with more than 50 people; 30 is more the average on a good night; And there is normally only one such zerg on a map. So there’s plenty of small scale fights going on, too). During the day and late at night, you’ll see very few players and only small bands of them, not zergs. This, naturally, offers a nice opportunity for smaller groups to have a significant influence on the scoreboard.

I think the idea that the lower tiers are filled with worse PvPers/WvWers or worse tacticians, which some of you seem to have, is wrong. We just have fewer dedicated WvWers down here and more “randoms”, who are unwilling to join the community TS. And of course we have less players in WvW overall. We never have a queue except EB and own BL during Primetime (and even then it’s mostly only 3-5 minutes).

Nevertheless we have a lot of nice ZvZ or GvG battles going on during primetime. After all, to me, these battles are what WvW is about in the end. The scoreboard is not entirely without its merits, but, at least to me, it’s not the center of WvW. I gave that thought up, when I learned that WvW was too much about numbers and 24/7 coverage. Why bother with something that I, as a non 24/7 player can’t influence anyway.

jazzllanna.1278:

What is to stop BG from being deserted in the future?

BG already got kicked from T1, twice, and never got deserted… I’m sure that if BG was composed solely by bandwagoners we wouldn’t have stayed on the high tiers after such miserably losses.

However BG ain’t a place for small play anymore… So if the OP is interested in a change of play (compared to SoS), BG isn’t your place.

The lower the tier, the less culling and lag issues, is my experience. Around tier 4-5 its almost fun :-)

Yes. The bond is tighter. And you get to know almost anyone.

Lower tiers are aot more fun due to the arguments already mentioned:
Better for solo or small group play, less culling, no queues, etc.
I am very happy at the lower tiers, even though i havent played in middle or higher tiers yet. One thing you can expect though, is that you propably spend more money on siege weapons and upgrades in lower tiers than higher tiers due to the lack of accounts actively playing and contributing with coin.

I am in NA tier8 (FC ftw!) I find WvW to be one of the more fun activities in game, even on a low pop mostly pve server

I am in NA tier8 (FC ftw!) I find WvW to be one of the more fun activities in game, even on a low pop mostly pve server

There are times when being on a low tier is actually more fun. As many have said it feels like what you do has more of an impact since they populations aren’t wildly out of control. As with most places the matchups are a little disproportionate at the moment, in a lot of lower tiers there is usually a population imbalance and that makes one of the servers constantly in the lead by a fair margin week after week. If they would fix their awful rating system then WvW would be even more fun.