Guild Wars 2

How do you feel about the Great Lord Flame Ram?

Does Arena Net have a training course where employees are taught how to answer questions without answering anything at all?

We know you are “evaluating” and “taking feedback” and “expanding features”. I would really like to know if you are going to be like Robert Hrouda who actually tells the community what is in the pipeline or continue the trend of an impenetrable veil between Arena Net and the community in regards to WvW.

My question got ignored (or un-noticed!) and is quite important to a lot of guilds that attempt not to run in a huge blob of zergdeath. Any response would be much appreciated.

quite honestly, hes answered more posts even if most are not relevant or the standard Anet replies than the whole WvW team did in the last month,

so i like him for now

Please give us the option to disable Titles, in large battles they cover a lot of my screen space with information I dont really need :/

Will we have “Vision of WvW” blog post soon? Since change of team leader is quite a big thing. So it would be great if Devon would post extensively about his view of WvW, its part of the game, future plans and direction he wants to take it.

Passing the torch or passing the buck?

Should I even bother asking if you guys are planning anything for players who don’t like to zerg, or should I just give up and accept zerging as the only playstyle you support?

DevonCarver.5370:

This has been fun and I’m really quite excited to be stepping up to keep carrying the torch where Habib has so ably taken it. I hope you all continue to enjoy WvW and look forward to providing many more things to keep you coming back for one last SM cap. See you on the field!

I am not sure what you are talking about. Outside of the change to culling, WvW has not really gone anywhere at all, more forgotten and ignored then taken somewhere. We have a very basic and uncreative leader board, a joke of a WXP system, and it took over 7 months to get more then one type of armor for WvW. Lets not get started about the skins…

Welcome to the job, I hope you are setting the bar a bit higher than it has been.

I hope habib shared those cookies with you ;(

But what will ferguson’s crossing do without you

no but honestly it’s really sad to see you go guys. you will be missed and thank you for all the work you put into wvw

and devon sorry for the wall of text mail

Welcome Devon,

I wanted to thank you for answering some of the questions our community has cleverly brought up to you and hope that the open correspondence between our playing community and ArenaNet grows even more so in the future. Once again, welcome and remember don’t feed the trolls

Is your intention to promote small group play in WvWvW over the zerg vs zerg meta that we have seen so far?

did they name Devona’s rest after you,

J/K

MikeFerguson.8921:

Something quite different indeed.

GvG?

MikeFerguson.8921:

Something quite different indeed.

Dueling? Domestic GvG’s? International GvG’s? Euro T1 vs. NA T1? Reimplementing Orbs of Power? Another Map? A cape for being in T1???

DevonCarver.5370:

gassy.8975:

1. Please allow us to disable the really annoying titles below people’s names.
2. Please give me permanent invulnerability in all WvW maps. But just me, nobody else.

Thanks!

1. Our goal is to make the WvW gameplay experience as good as it can be. To that end we are always taking feedback about changes and deciding how best to turn that into action.
2. I just checked in a change to give this to you. But it won’t activate until you run into the next group of 5+ enemies you see and /dance. If it doesn’t work the first time you do that, it’s probably because the group wasn’t large enough, so try with another group until you are invulnerable.

This guy is amazing!

Oh, and be sure to video or screenshot it so you can send it to Anet if it doesn’t work.

DevonCarver.5370:

Is he stepping down or was he poisoned by the cookies sent by tier 8? Who can know for sure? I’ll try and be as visible a presence as Habib, although his shoes are impossible to fill. I can guarantee an increase in the number of charr related puns, so get your punning dictionary out and let the fur fly!

Welcome Devon!

We are preparing a batch of cookies for you as I write this. Pray, we never have to send them !

DevonCarver.5370:

Is he stepping down or was he poisoned by the cookies sent by tier 8? Who can know for sure? I’ll try and be as visible a presence as Habib, although his shoes are impossible to fill. I can guarantee an increase in the number of charr related puns, so get your punning dictionary out and let the fur fly!

Oh my god, are you Winston Charrgehill from Maguuma?

MikeFerguson.8921:

So I don’t know if this is the best place to do this (and it probably isn’t), but Habib started it..

The most recent update has finally realized most of the hopes and dreams I had regarding world versus world all those years ago when we first started talking about it around the office (somewhere in the 2007 or 2008 area). Wuv has been near and dear to my heart ever since, and I’m extremely proud of what the wvw team has created in that time. Wvw has been my primary focus for a couple of years now, but now it is time to hand the keys to the castle to someone else, Devon is that someone.

Devon and the rest of the wvw team will be fleshing out the new systems we’ve introduced and taking care of a lot of the long standing issues that we can tackle now that the great culling dragon is dead!

I’m extremely excited to see how the game will evolve and improve over time with Devon leading the way. He’s an amazing designer and I’ve seen the list of updates the team is prepping for April, I think most of you will be extremely pleased.

For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this is completely unrelated to any news elsewhere. I’m still at Arena.net, but the next time you see my name it will be for something other than world versus world. Something quite different indeed.

Until then..

I’ll see you on the battlefield!

is anet team still playing in sbi? i wish i see more gm ingame

i have high hope for wvw and the culling fix was a great achievement .

I hope we will see some air fight in a major patch, there are already plane and helicopter everywhere in the pve world, will need them in the wvw world

Habib Loew.6239:

Hey there Wuvers,

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you Devon Carver, the new coordinator of the WvW team. Devon is an excellent designer and is passionate about WvW so I know that both the team and WvW are in good hands. As I step away to focus on other projects you’ll be seeing more of Devon here in the WvW forums so please give him a warm WvW welcome!

I’ll see you on the battlefield!
:habib

Noooo ! I was planing to send you and Mike T-shirts with this on them but you already abandoned the ship :(

Welcome Devon to the madhouse.

Habib its been an astounding run and I’m sure you deserve some sleep now after all your hard work.

:)

Can’t wait to see what the future brings… now somebody lock the door and put the shackles on before this one gets away!

A heartfelt welcome to you, Devon! I’m excited to see what you and the rest of the team will bring to WvW in the future! Thank you for taking the time, as well, to respond to some of the questions here.

Habib and Mike, you have both done fantastic work to get WvW to where it is today and it is something to be proud of. I’m very much looking forward to your work on other projects, whatever they are!

Two of the most vocal and welcoming developers I’ve ever seen both leaving at once?? What kind of mess is this? Sad times

Will you guys not be responding to us on the forums now that you guys have a top secret project?

I don’t really expect a reply, but trying cannot hurt…

Any chance off-peak capping and its extremely unbalanced effect on final scoring will be tackled in any way, shape or form?
Or, to put the question in another form: are there any plans to give us matchups which aren’t already decided by Monday morning?

Since its a new era…..can we start calling it “dub vee dub” instead of “wuv wuv”?

Hello ! i have questions for you

1) will you remove, one day, the 5 man limit on AoE? like RTS or other WvW MMOs, it can punish the zerg and blobs (if you pack too much you explode under aoes) everyone ask for it !

2) i ask since the beta the possibility to show enemy names, it’s important to build a PvP community. Will this come one day?

3) any plan to put guild name on castles, or something to identify it much?

4) will you remove the possibility to rez killed people, and keep it just for downed? (anti zerg measure too)

5) will you give the commanders a war horn to make an epic noise like Lord of the ring rohirrims before a charge?

Are you planning to show the wxp and rank bar over current xp bar or something like that?

Welcome Devon,

i have to say that i don´t envy you if you look at the current state of wvw. I hope that you aren´t a scary person when you think about the amount of work.

-Performance aka skill lag in high populated zones
- Usefulness of the commander function in regards to structure and communicate properly with the groups that build your squad. which leads automatically to→
- A useful raid or squad ui, come on, really every other game does that better
- Making small scale possible and useful. Right now the biggest mega blob wins and you encourage that play style.
- Equipment progression for ascendend gear.
- Class balance, i don´t even start talking about that because only this could fill pages as bad as it is now.

These are only a few examples. I wish you good luck and hopefully we see some results in the not to far future.

Hi devon, nice to have you on board.
I just came back to gw2 after the big WvW update and i must say i like it!
The only thing that really annoys me is that skill lag.

Habib Loew.6239:

Hey there Wuvers,

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you Devon Carver, the new coordinator of the WvW team. Devon is an excellent designer and is passionate about WvW so I know that both the team and WvW are in good hands. As I step away to focus on other projects you’ll be seeing more of Devon here in the WvW forums so please give him a warm WvW welcome!

I’ll see you on the battlefield!
:habib

Thanks for your work, Habib, you will be truly missed in this subforum. You did a great job of making the quirks and foibles of the technical implementation of WvW understandable. This is something that is far too rarely seen in game development, and many companies would even forbid their programmers doing so.

(edit: Also, I like the implication that there is “something big” in development that requires your and Mike’s attention.)

~MRA

Here’s hoping the next WvW update is PvP-related

Great Job with the culling fix. This is a whole new beast after that fix. We will miss you Habib and we welcome Devon. Alot of work still needs to be done for sure but keep the ball rolling.

MikeFerguson.8921:

For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this is completely unrelated to any news elsewhere. I’m still at Arena.net, but the next time you see my name it will be for something other than world versus world. Something quite different indeed.

Guild vs Guild / Guild Halls!?

MikeFerguson.8921:

For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this is completely unrelated to any news elsewhere. I’m still at Arena.net, but the next time you see my name it will be for something other than world versus world. Something quite different indeed.

If this is GvG we should have a cookie truck delivered to Mike’s house.
Oh god please let this be GvG

Much appreciation to Habib + Mike! You guys are awesome, sad to see you leave thank you for the countless hours spent trying to improve WvW, as I’m sure Devon will in the future

Welcome Devon, excited to see your plans for WvW and how things develop in the future – one question though: Is there any chance at all that the people who’ve been grinding away and playing wuv vee wuv for ages can get some sort of influence on WvW ranks? I’ve put all I had into the game and leading and commanding all the way since release, every day I woke up ready to play and help organise the server, until eventually I got my commander icon by kind donations from those I was trying to help. Basically, I really hate that people who’ve spent so much time and effort on WvW have to start on exactly the same footing as all of the PvE dudes with their legendaries and ascended gear, multitudes of gold etc. but without the above… I don’t want to have to go into the game and spend ages grinding for the titles so I can look like a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, when I’ve done 2k hours of it already and because I’m employed and I invest in solo roaming more often in my spare time than leading zergs, I’m way behind everyone I know, despite being quite high anyway – kills are counted since the beginning, as are keep caps/tower caps etc., surely we could get like 10 WXP per kill, 30 per cap or something like that (?), so those who’ve played WvW for eons aren’t screwed over in comparison to the PvErs with all of their rewards.

Devon
If you don’t start bullying and targeting people with fractions to their accounts, and if you don’t remove people’s posts because they are not obviously praising the game. Then you will be doing us all a great service.

Hello Devon!

Glad to see someone new and excited to expand upon WvW, keep up the good work there at Anet!

To put my two cents in on what would be great to add to the current game as it stands…how would you feel about

1.) Expanding Commander utility and UI options – Add the ability for commanders to give orders to those folks in their squad, say like a pop up message that appears on followers HUD somewhere on the upper screen if a commander wants the group to retreat, form up, or push. Something that can get more attention than the tiny chat box in the corner and enable a commander to actually wield his/her forces more effectively. As it stands I think most people know that handling the zerg is often a lot like herding cats!

2.) New ways of organizing Commanders – Allow the commanders or the server to dole out different colors for their tags (rather then just a blue dorito, maybe green or orange). That way you can have multiple commanders operating (and more importantly – cooperating) within a borderland without confusing everyone. A simple changes like that would be an immense benefit for tactics and coordination.

3.) Speaking of tags and confusion… Siegerazer really needs to be updated so we don’t have confusion with a defending commander and an NPC that one shots your followers.

Anywho, these are just a couple of ideas that I’m sure are already being pondered within the Dev team. Like I said before, keep up the good work and I hope to see and hear more in the coming months! Good luck to everyone on the battlefields.

- Zhokora

DevonCarver.5370:

Terrahero.9358:

Quick. What is your personal vision for WvW? And what appeals most to you about gameplay like WvW?

My personal vision… it’s hard to say. I find that the thing about WvW that gets me excited to play it every time is that the challenge is different each time. I’d like for us to continue to add new ways to play WvW and new wrinkles that make it what it should be. That means we will continue to add new abilities and expand the existing ones. It means we’ll continue to work towards quality of life improvements like removing culling and the nameplate visibility. To be honest, while WvW is an amazing game type, there is always something I think we can improve and I hope to keep up the work towards the goal of making GW2 WvW the most amazing MMO experience around.

Having the vision and mission clear is important. From what you say, it seems you do know what you want out of wvw.

Never posted here, but just thought I’d add my 2 pennies. I’ve played a lot of MMOs and I must say that GW2 is the most bug-free and stable game I’ve ever experienced. Play is responsive and crisp (except for my kitten F2 pet ability!), and large scale combats work really well. True, massing zerg vs zerg is plagued by choppiness, skill lag, etc, but the play far exceeds other games.

Removing culling was fantastic and the solution actually works. A tremendous feat—one that was worth the wait to do it right.

I look forward to hearing about new developments in WvW which is the only reason I play the game and the only reason I pay $ to the gem store. I need to keep stocked on food and I constantly play with new builds and equipment configurations.

No need to pay $ for playing sPVP, by the way…so maybe you all want to give WvW the priority. It makes $ense!

MikeFerguson.8921:

For all the conspiracy theorists out there, this is completely unrelated to any news elsewhere. I’m still at Arena.net, but the next time you see my name it will be for something other than world versus world. Something quite different indeed.

Admit it, you’re both being relocated to sPvP to finally give it the attention it deserves!
Hope I’m not too optimistic :P

“Something quite different” doesn’t really sit right with this theory though, hopefully you’re not just becoming the Glorious PvE Team #486 (not to discredit PvE, but sPvP needs you guys!).

MikeFerguson.8921:

(snip) and I’ve seen the list of updates the team is prepping for April, (snip)

Oh, do tell. Yea, yea, I know, as soon as it’s ready.

But seriously, you are planning more updates for WvW in April, besides fixing keep exploits, etc?

Does this mean Anet might be taking WvW seriously for a change now?

Account bound blueprints. Nuf said.