Guild Wars 2

Initially I had a “lol wtf” reaction to the achievements. I have been giving more thought to them.

Some servers (look, I’m from AG so this one is close to home) have problems with drawing in PvE players. The next problem is that when PvE players do come in to WvW they are usually an outright liability. The existence of the achievements will be an attraction to the PvE players, but they also mostly show these newbies how to contribute in WvW.

• Camp Crusher – supply denial, excellent. PvE players will probably start off trying to solo them and will quickly learn that doesn’t always work. They will form parties and, bang! Roaming harassment.
• Sentry Capturer Extraordinaire – I guess the sentries won’t be killing dollys. Or something.
• Castles in the Air – people’s opinions of SM tend to vary. This one happens to coincide with my own: SM is designed to be conquered not held. It will also teach the PvErs how to follow the zerg.
• All other capture achievements – again, teaches PvErs to join the organised efforts.
• Jumping Puzzles – well… I guess some extra siege couldn’t hurt? Bleh.
• Supplies Severed – this will not only teach PvErs about dolly slapping, but also WvWers. Really we could all do better at this and I applaud this one.
• Guard Slayer – no real purpose. This is an “automatic achievement:” you will get it by just playing in WvW.
• ? Invasion Defender – Teaches players about how effective zerker gear is in WvW. Us regulars will probably get through this one quickly in the first few days before the rest realize that they need survivability.
• Big Spender – When the PvErs realize that their zerker gear is useless they will get this achievement while they fix that.
• Mists Merc Camp Vanquisher – I struggled to remember what this was. Pointless. Maybe I will finally get those skill points :P .
• Master of Ruins – Depends entirely how you feel about the ruins. Either way this will teach people to party up and roam.
• Seasonal Mists Defense Restorer – Might cause supply exhaustion issues for commanders. Also open to players intentionally ignoring siege so that they can finish the achievement. At least it makes people aware of repairs.
• Did you notice there are no siege placed or supply spent on siege achievements? Everyone always complains about the bad stuff, but imagine they put these in? We really should really commend ANet for getting this right.
• I would have honestly replaced the mercenary camps with dolyaks defended (maybe 20-30 for achievement completion?). Yeah, yeah, the achievements are probably set in stone by now.
• Instead of the JPs maybe stuff like 20 players stomped, have 25 stacks of might, 500 minutes spent under the effects of nourishment, blast a water field and enter a portal.

We have achievements that mostly guide the PvErs into constructive play in WvW. I think the first few days are going to be an outright nightmare (mostly because of the sheer amount of zerker builds we are going to see) but as time goes on people will learn how to play WvW. Some of the PvE servers might even see some some of that population helping out in WvW in the long term.

I am going to wait and see how PvErs actually react to this stuff. It might work out well for us all.

I especially agree with your last bullet. I do not think achievements are a bad thing just because they encourage pvers into WvW, however they should more as you say be aligned with constructive play.

Mists Merc Camp Vanquisher
What is it? What merc camps? Centaurs/Skritts/Ogres/Dredges?

I think the achievements need to be time gated. Anything to remind all the PvE’ers that we have 7 weeks to do the achievements, it is not necessary to flood reset night, which in my opinion is one of the worst nights to experience WvW.