Guild Wars 2

Remember before the release of HoT, many WvW players expected a massive influx of players that would come back to the game mode upon HoT’s release. People thought this would go some ways towards fixing the population balance issue. And one of the big worries was hot to retain these players once they did come back.

We now know there was no massive influx (to say the least). So why was this not predicted? We did have a preview of the new BL, and though people didn’t like it, there was no expectation that it’d be completely empty of players.

Was it the changes to guilds and WvW upgrades? The autoupgrades? The huge grind required to play the new professions?

Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?

I think this is the perfect storm you mentioned.
Our server even had a meeting about what to do with new people and how to keep them “on board” once the newness wore off.
Reality: entire guilds consolidated or quit. Empty BL for most hours “i play” which use to have 15-40 during my play time (depending on day of the week).
The pve gating for 2 of the aforementioned reasons in your post i think were the nails to the coffin.

Nobody who understands wvw at all thought there would be a mass influx of players. We knew the maps would be awful as soon as we saw the previews. The few people they let beta test told them it would be a good pve map, but not a wvw one. Anyone who spent their time in wvw upgrading and defending could have told them that autoupgrades were a horrible idea. We knew revenants would be ridiculous as soon as they told us it would be a heavy armor class with 1200 range and group support.

Everything added by anet to wvw after they removed culling has been bad. This entire failure of an expansion is just the culmination of bad decisions. They never had any idea what wvw players wanted, but they also never had the resources to completely ruin it, until HoT.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Remember before the release of HoT, many WvW players expected a massive influx of players that would come back to the game mode upon HoT’s release. People thought this would go some ways towards fixing the population balance issue. And one of the big worries was hot to retain these players once they did come back.

We now know there was no massive influx (to say the least). So why was this not predicted? We did have a preview of the new BL, and though people didn’t like it, there was no expectation that it’d be completely empty of players.

Was it the changes to guilds and WvW upgrades? The autoupgrades? The huge grind required to play the new professions?

Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?

Its an interesting point, maybe players have simply moved on to other games and have no desire to come back and the effect of this was underestimated. That plus all the above didn’t give them much motivation to come back

I still have contact to some players who left for TESO or other games long ago. Some were still interested in GW2/wvw and asked me about HoT and the new maps and..
Well.. what could I say? Empty deserts with PvE-stuff all around, k-train on EBG and everything below T2 is dead. You think they will return? ^^
The last good decision was removing the orbs…

Bao Lin Nda.1042:

I still have contact to some players who left for TESO or other games long ago. Some were still interested in GW2/wvw and asked me about HoT and the new maps and..
Well.. what could I say? Empty deserts with PvE-stuff all around, k-train on EBG and everything below T2 is dead. You think they will return? ^^
The last good decision was removing the orbs…

That’s interesting.

The general thought before HoT was that tons of people would come back on launch day to check out the game: simply because the B2P model means they can do so for free, so they have nothing to lose.

But it seems despite that, people still waited to see how HoT would be received before deciding to reinstall (or not). And when it landed with a big thud, they never even bothered.

Perhaps power of B2P being able to bring players back to the game after quitting has been overestimated? Or at least: Anet so disillusioned their WvW customers that even the power of B2P couldn’t make up for it?

Bao Lin Nda.1042:

The last good decision was removing the orbs…

sigh….

Sad but true.

I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.

On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.

The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.

Some of my prediction from before HoT , as many can remember on this forum were:

1) Treacherous heights and traps, linear choke points and " environmental involvement" = EoTM gimmicky PVE type maps that people will hate and refuse to play on. The day they described it I came on here and ranted because I knew exactly what that meant and begged them not to go there. People told me " you cannot know that is what it is and to wait and see."….. WELL NOW WHAT?!! It is what it is, and what I said it was the day they announced it. I had threads deleted by Anet over me going off about that. LOL

2) I predicted we would get a very short burst of players, but then it would go back to the way it was because the same reasons people left the game in the first place are still here and in the end " they are over it" already. Players have moved on to new games, it would take drastic reduction in grindy or tedious game play to bring players back with actual incentives to want to play again, and they pretty much did the opposite of that with HoT, so of course that is what happens when people come back, realize they are more behind than ever so there is no point in grinding to catch up when what will they actually have to show for it when they do? Making the game less new player/ causal friendly only ensures the game dies faster because people do not want to feel like they are " playing catchup" like missing a week of work when they play a game, they want to sit down, wind down from their day and just enjoy it. Making guild upgrades and such harder, making the game more grindy with professions and such does the opposite of that, so people will get bored easily because that is not what many consider fun. As long as the game is not new player/ causal friendly where you can log in and compete and play no matter when that is, population will just continue to decline over time.

I don’t see that my understanding of how this works or where this is headed was that far off.

Some of what they didn’t delete from back then..
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Anyone-going-to-purchase-the-expansion/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/EoTM-is-the-future-of-wvw/first#post4805158

Lord Kuru.3685:

So why was this not predicted? We did have a preview of the new BL, and though people didn’t like it, there was no expectation that it’d be completely empty of players.

The assumption of the existence of returning players was coming primarily from people who don’t retain relationships with many (or any) gamers who have exited GW2. Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.

I believe that the set of former players contains many people who left as groups, and they took those relationships with them, leaving most current GW2 players to form new relationships with other current GW2 players, instead of continuing maintenance on the old relationships.

The majority of current GW2 customers (people who play, are generally happy with it, and talk about the game often and in optimistic terms) are the cream of the crop for ANet, a company that seeks to retain its ideal customer. They are the ideal customer in that they are loyal to the point that they will hold that loyalty in spite of all, come what may.

Therefore, those customers fail at imagining why former customers are not returning, because the failure is an issue of perspective. The customer that has played GW2 for years and still plays usually doesn’t comprehend the perspective of the customer that left the game a year ago and vowed to never look back. They certainly don’t comprehend that there are whole guilds of people that collectively left the game as a guild decision, and that returning would also be a guild decision.

I don’t believe that most people who expected a “mass influx” of fresh blood have actually asked many former GW2 players about it.

It’s also extremely likely that people were simply imagining that a big and heavily marketed event must necessarily lead to big success, just as has happened in the past, with thousands of people logging in for the first time during ANet’s 2012 and 2013 Free to Play Weekends.

Maintenance of the GW2 customer base now and going forward is entirely a game of holding onto current customers and pulling old customers back into the fold. Gamers that are hunting for new experiences are not in the market for GW2. ANet has already captured the bulk of any fresh blood it will receive.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Was it the changes to guilds and WvW upgrades? The autoupgrades? The huge grind required to play the new professions?

Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?

Partly the latter, but there were many people like myself (I’ve seen them posting here about it) who chose not to pre-purchase, because we either refuse to pre-purchase a finished product that isn’t limited by physical distribution scarcity (that’s me) or we didn’t trust that HoT was something we would feel good about paying full price for (that’s also me).

In those case, many of us saw HoT from the outside and decided we didn’t want in; that the base game is good enough for what we’ll do with it, and it’s more important to be a “didn’t buy” data point than a “did buy” which would effectively lie about our acceptance of 2015 GW2 as a product we’re happy to support.

Another thing is due to the absurdly grindy requirements in relation to guild hall upgrades that guilds were not out in force as much in WvW therefore if players did look in on WvW and find no commanders there they probably just left and didn’t come back. Also the hero point grind didn’t help either probably.

Virtute.8251:

Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.

I wonder if this is a GW2 specific failing, or a failing of the whole idea that B2P games can easily entice old players to return because it’s “free.”

Probably a bit of both, but the latter reminds me of when an old girlfriend wants you back but you’ve already forgotten about her (and if you’re smart, you know that whatever broke you up before is going to do it again).

“A new map everyone will probably dislike, traits thats totally gonna mess up the balance and lag thats never going to be solved. Oh and the same stale matchups. Sorry.”
- May 5th response in a thread called “What is the future of WvW?”

I failed to see the icing on the kittencake though, the kittenty autoupgrades and guild hall.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Virtute.8251:

Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.

I wonder if this is a GW2 specific failing, or a failing of the whole idea that B2P games can easily entice old players to return because it’s “free.”

That would be a dangerous idea for a company to bank on. I’m not sure that ANet honestly believes that. Perhaps some of their customers do. I would argue that ANet more probably believes that they actually are delivering a raft of great things that continuously add desirable value to the product, and that it is that continuing service that they would point to as the thing which drives loyal and repeated sales. They wouldn’t say that it is easy, but they would say that they’re succeeding at it.

The players clearly disagree, but the signal-to-noise ratio appears extremely noisy to ANet, to the point that they’ve delegated the noise volunteers, and they seem to believe that this entire sub-forum is noise.

My own experience says that for me B2P held me in the system longer than I would have tolerated ANet as a subscriber. However, ANet also did not collect gem sales from me that would equal a 1:1 with what I may have paid in a subscription model. I’m not sure which model would have capitalized on me more.

I do suspect that I’m a bad example for both models, in terms of monetization, because I have a low tolerance for displeasure in subscription, and a high resistance to impulse purchase of vanity and convenience items. Neither model succeeds against me when the product is failing its purpose more often than not in my judgement. In other words, I’m not the ideal customer. I’m a hard sell.

But if you really want to analogize customer behavior to lover’s quarrels and breakups, there is always “hell hath no fury”.

lil devils x.6071:

It is what it is, and what I said it was the day they announced it.

https://youtu.be/9kRpS8mwJ14

Personally I didn’t think that many would come back for WvW, I mentioned it to a few friends how many do we really think will come back to their servers? 50? 100? certainly not 3-500 that most servers really could use. The only servers I expected to fair well were JQ and maybe BG, who have not had any major implosions and not that much population moving out over the years. There are a few servers that have imploded over the years, some multiple times, and guilds have been constantly moving up in tiers for 2 years.

There was nothing new for WvW other than a new borderland and auto upgrades, and when you really think about it how many players really left because of the old borderland map? I think the majority of them left because of other reasons which the expansion did not fix such as the ppt game and stale unbalanced matchups.

I think players were under the assumption that just because it’s an expansion they expected players to come back in droves, it happens time and again with WoW, they were down to 7 million customers, went back to 10 million with the last expansion, and now down to 5 million. But that’s mostly because of PvE.

Problem is when you don’t fix the major problems with WvW and players see how much of a mess it is from these forums with almost no developer post, what’s the point of coming back? I mean the borderland map was FREE and still barely anyone came back for it. Instead WvW has probably lost more players in the last month than it had in the last year.

First week out and the borderland was already empty. I at least expected it to get a couple weeks of play, since it wasn’t fully tested in beta, it only had two tests, with the second test being a real desert because most players from the first test didn’t even know they had access to the second one, a clusterduck on Anet’s part.

Guildhalls also are a major roadblock with it resetting WvW guild upgrades while doing damage to small guilds. I’m sure a few have left the game disgusted with how that turned out. GvG guilds at least have their arena to screw around with.

Spvp is getting a lot of support these days too, they’re even getting their own legendary back piece to create, nameplate additions to show off, new league running. I’m sure more players are leaving wvw to focus on that too, cause really, there’s nothing left in wvw other than zerging it up in ebg for some fights.

Virtute.8251:

My own experience says that for me B2P held me in the system longer than I would have tolerated ANet as a subscriber. However, ANet also did not collect gem sales from me that would equal a 1:1 with what I may have paid in a subscription model. I’m not sure which model would have capitalized on me more.

I do suspect that I’m a bad example for both models, in terms of monetization, because I have a low tolerance for displeasure in subscription, and a high resistance to impulse purchase of vanity and convenience items. Neither model succeeds against me when the product is failing its purpose more often than not in my judgement. In other words, I’m not the ideal customer. I’m a hard sell.

You’re not really getting a free ride though. You’re kind of working for Anet as a “playmate” to their real customers: those who exchange cash for gems. This is an integral role because probably only a small minority of people do buy gems, and if only they were around, the game world would be too empty and deserted.

That’s why cash shops that give big gameplay advantages are so dangerous: if you drive off the “freeloaders,” the actual customers have no one to play with and they leave also.

I think HoT is a problem in this way. HoT players have an enormous advantage over core players (OP new professions, guild upgrades, new gear sets, gold-making-opportunities, etc.), and that’s going to drive a lot of core-only players to leave the game. But that empties the game world more — at a time when Anet can’t afford the game world to be more empty.

Xenesis.6389:

Guildhalls also are a major roadblock with it resetting WvW guild upgrades while doing damage to small guilds. I’m sure a few have left the game disgusted with how that turned out. GvG guilds at least have their arena to screw around with.

Except the arena is way too small, severely limiting viable compositions, the “invisible” barrier around the ring obstructs the camera making it impossible to see the other team properly from the starting position, and the color and shininess of the floor makes it difficult to distinguish nameplates quickly.
I think most GvG guilds would strongly prefer OS still. No one really got what they were hoping for with the guild hall..

The problems that drove people away were not addressed so expecting old players to reinvest and new players not to run for the hills is a bit naive. GW2’s B2P nature might be attractive to players but it also means that Anet can put in less effort into keeping MMO players. Hence the new expansion has thin content that is gated and stretched . It also allows Anet to be especially hush hush with their road map because there are no subscriptions to be cancelled (As a WvWvW player, would you be paying a sub for GW2 even as far back as 2 years ago?).

I believe this is why they’re are insisting on hitching their cart to the MOBA wagon because the game’s marketing will take on a life of it’s own due to players being competitive and invested and could prove to be more effective than yet another company plugging a product. More potential people to make impulsive gem shop purchases. I also have a suspicion that if the eSports attempt really takes off, PvEers could find themselves getting less love as their content requires bigger maps and more of them, more activities and goals to chase etc. Though, I’m curious as to how thorough of an overhaul is in the works for WvWvW but I would be lying if I said I have my hopes up.

Whatever Blix said (except maybe expectng old playuers to come back or the influx of new players).

I think a lot of players were on the fence deciding to come back or not depending on how HoT turned out. I know at least 2-3 guilds and 50+ WvWers who were deciding on coming back but saw the crap shoot that HoT was and didn’t even buy it.

People also expected a rise in WvW activity due to guild missions but that hasn’t really happened either because there isn’t much need to do WvW missions when you can cap out on favor doing PvE.

Virtute.8251:

My own experience says that for me B2P held me in the system longer than I would have tolerated ANet as a subscriber. However, ANet also did not collect gem sales from me that would equal a 1:1 with what I may have paid in a subscription model. I’m not sure which model would have capitalized on me more.

I do suspect that I’m a bad example for both models, in terms of monetization, because I have a low tolerance for displeasure in subscription, and a high resistance to impulse purchase of vanity and convenience items. Neither model succeeds against me when the product is failing its purpose more often than not in my judgement. In other words, I’m not the ideal customer. I’m a hard sell.

But if you really want to analogize customer behavior to lover’s quarrels and breakups, there is always “hell hath no fury”.

I think that you probably underestimate how much of the playerbase are this type of customer.

I too am probably far from Anet’s ideal customer since I can count on one hand the gem purchases I’ve made in 3 years, which if memory serves were primarily for character and bank slots, not vanity items which I have no desire to purchase through the gem shop. So comparing to a subscription model I would’ve only paid for a few months of game time over 3 years (minus a few breaks). Were GW2 using a subscription model I would’ve left a long time ago (and likely not come back), but being B2P I’ve left and come back a few times with no risk. Additionally I never purchased HoT since I’m a WvW player and it wouldn’t have been worth the money for merely access to new class/specs.

I suspect they recanted on their plan of not release any expacs, but instead releasing new content via living story, because they weren’t generating enough money through gem sales. I have no issues with purchasing an expac as long as it delivers something I feel adds value worthy of the price tag. But when you have issues in WvW stacking up since (before?) launch going unresolved over a month after a release of an expac, which only made matters worse in the process, I’m not in any rush to buy said expac. Give me a retail box worth my ~$50 as an almost exclusively WvW player and I’ll buy it.

The grind is necessary to make it look like HoT has content.

I will not speculate about others, just talk about what I expected from WvW pre HoT:

After the blog post about the tactical buffs, I was looking forward to focusing on Dolly and Camp upgrades for my guild. We could have faster, stronger dollies to help out with upgrading structures. Camps could get the chilling fog to slow down roamers, while we run back and save the camp, leaving our enforced dolly, who could probably fend off an attack for a while.

When HoT appeared, the first thing in WvW I noticed how fast dollies run now, so why using speed buffs at all? Another thing was the inability for us to claim a camp, which always is a boost to morale and we wanted to get that +5 Supply buff as soon as possible.
The sobering experience came quickly.
War Room stuff required a lot of other Guild Hall upgrades (not really a problem, but a delay). Camp claiming required another upgrade (wait, that was for free before). Tactics not only required an expensive unlock, but an insanely high mat cost for each “charge” you create. I was really that naive that I thought the tactic would be reusable after an internal recharge timer expired. And the +5 Supply? One of the last things to unlock at all.
With GH upgrades requiring Flax and Sand farmers in VB, Potato farmers in Metrica and character progression a hunt for mastery points, the WvW priorities dropped.

Right now I can’t really do more with my Badges than before the update. The daily chest turns into an automated consumable buff (which I use in HoT for my XP gain for mastery progression) and most of my guildies that formally at least dropped in for a few easy dailies are ignoring Veteran kills, Shrine & Sentry caps altogether, because they find the map too confusing (a vertical map that does no show clear paths to get from A to B really did not help at all).
My guild has turned away from even considering those overpriced tactics and will go for the claim Auras max – but other upgrades are just more useful (e.g. the Barkeeper potions).

PS: Has nobody wondered, why it is more expensive to unlock Tower Claiming than Keep Claiming, when it comes to the amount of Runes of Holding?)

msalakka.4653:

The grind is necessary to make it look like HoT has content.

I think it goes deeper than that now. Looking at the pvp league system grind is inherent to everything anet do now.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?

All these small and big mistakes is probably the right answer. After more than 3 years of playing GW2 (right from beta), personally I think Anet don’t care about WvW at all. In fact, it sometimes seems like they even want to completely destroy this strategic game mode and change it to another casual-friendly easy-mode map (for example removing upgrades and implementing autoupgrades without needed supplies). It seems like they have 2 main target player audience: 1) PvE casuals (and in this case, I think GW2 is probably best MMO game nowadays for these players), and 2) ranked-sPvP enthusiasts (Anet is trying hard for whole 3 years right from beta to constantly advertise this game mode, they are praying that sPvP will become an e-Sport, and they want it to be as reputable and world-wide known as for example League of Legends).

As for WvW game mode itself, I don’t believe that Anet will recover WvW to be again a game mode suitable for strategy and tactic enthusiasts. A map where you can kill other players? Yes, you are still able to do that in WvW. A map where you can precisely plan your strategy, for example wreaking havoc in enemy supply lines to deny your enemies to be able to improve their last stronghold with cannons and mortars, and many other big strategies and small group tactics? Not anymore.

Lord Kuru.3685:

You’re not really getting a free ride though. You’re kind of working for Anet as a “playmate” to their real customers: those who exchange cash for gems. This is an integral role because probably only a small minority of people do buy gems, and if only they were around, the game world would be too empty and deserted.

That’s okay. I’m not acting as a true adversary to ANet. I do as I will, and counsel others in respect to their needs, not mine.

Lord Kuru.3685:

That’s why cash shops that give big gameplay advantages are so dangerous: if you drive off the “freeloaders,” the actual customers have no one to play with and they leave also.

True, and perhaps that is part of why I instinctively have no interest in free-to-play games on Steam.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I think HoT is a problem in this way. HoT players have an enormous advantage over core players (OP new professions, guild upgrades, new gear sets, gold-making-opportunities, etc.), and that’s going to drive a lot of core-only players to leave the game. But that empties the game world more — at a time when Anet can’t afford the game world to be more empty.

True as well. As a core-only player I don’t bother with PvP now, and can’t enter the new maps. This is by design. In the same way, there are Tactivators and siege weapons which I can’t interact with. On day one of HoT launch, they had an obnoxious BUY HoT NOW red text response to them in the UI.

It was in that moment that I logged out and increased by Camelot Unchained backer pledge instead of buying HoT: a decision which stands unchanged today.

Sagramor.7395:

Virtute.8251:

But if you really want to analogize customer behavior to lover’s quarrels and breakups, there is always “hell hath no fury”.

I think that you probably underestimate how much of the playerbase are this type of customer.

Maybe, but experience has taught me that a thing like GW2 is well enough designed that hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly willing to take it as it comes.

Sagramor.7395:

I too am probably far from Anet’s ideal customer since I can count on one hand the gem purchases I’ve made in 3 years, which if memory serves were primarily for character and bank slots, not vanity items which I have no desire to purchase through the gem shop. So comparing to a subscription model I would’ve only paid for a few months of game time over 3 years (minus a few breaks). Were GW2 using a subscription model I would’ve left a long time ago (and likely not come back), but being B2P I’ve left and come back a few times with no risk. Additionally I never purchased HoT since I’m a WvW player and it wouldn’t have been worth the money for merely access to new class/specs.

I suspect they recanted on their plan of not release any expacs, but instead releasing new content via living story, because they weren’t generating enough money through gem sales. I have no issues with purchasing an expac as long as it delivers something I feel adds value worthy of the price tag. But when you have issues in WvW stacking up since (before?) launch going unresolved over a month after a release of an expac, which only made matters worse in the process, I’m not in any rush to buy said expac. Give me a retail box worth my ~$50 as an almost exclusively WvW player and I’ll buy it.

Precisely.

However, among my WvW friends and guilds, there is a clear trend. The majority that did not leave the game did buy HoT and did begrudgingly complete and repeat the PvE quests for the various things. They are only now more solidly returned to focusing on WvW and GvG as their only thing.

A solid 30-50% of them straight up left the game, regardless of whether nor not they bought HoT. I’m referencing a few hundred people in that percentage.

The on-going league play is now doing that to the PvP community, too.

Sadly there’s a lot of good points raised in this thread.

I’ve been a casual player(limited by RL commitments not a lack of enthusiasm for GW2) since the original Beta tests. As someone who has variable playing time available and often at off-peak hours, my WvW experience has been mostly solo or small groups. I’m happy with this really, as I find zergs tend towards “spam 1 and tag as many targets as possible”. My play tended to be defensive, upgrading and scouting, with occasionally tagging up to recover my home BL. My friends list is mostly other players who do the same and we would help each other.

The expac launch removed the reasons I played in WvW and stole my hard earned +5 claiming. I didn’t see either of these coming – in fact I felt disappointed because the implication was that my +5 claiming would be available as a permanent bonus.

I also feel that the way-pointing in the new map has destroyed the feeling of “home” and for me it’s no longer a borderlands but simply another EB map. Again this is something I didn’t anticipate – I thought the new maps would work the same way as the old ones, after all that had been ok for 3 years.

Looking at the future there are rumours that Anet are working on a major update for WvW, but there seems to be no official news or community consultation. I’d like to believe the best and make positive predictions but I’m no longer sure that will happen. I get the impression that the people making the decisions don’t actually understand WvW and are either afraid to ask for help or just choose not to. That’s a real shame and a problem – WvW is a fantastic game mode and was the end game for me.

Overall I’ve gone from having fun to feeling excited about new content to feeling lost and now slightly worried because they’re threatening more new content. This doesn’t do much to encourage my participation or spending.

Faenar.8036:

As for WvW game mode itself, I don’t believe that Anet will recover WvW to be again a game mode suitable for strategy and tactic enthusiasts. A map where you can kill other players? Yes, you are still able to do that in WvW. A map where you can precisely plan your strategy, for example wreaking havoc in enemy supply lines to deny your enemies to be able to improve their last stronghold with cannons and mortars, and many other big strategies and small group tactics? Not anymore.

I must disagree here. The ability to blow up supply when an objective flips makes it easier to starve enemies. Granted, it’s 500x too expensive right now but I’m sure that’ll change one way or the other. Meanwhile, with the less open maps, it’s much easier to effectively place supply traps. Also, since objectives almost always have supply, it’s less of a sacrifice to use it in a trap.

For example, I and a team of 3 other people managed to hold firekeep versus 25 enemies earlier today. We did it via the use of supply traps, sneaking behind enemies to build ballistas and making use of built in siege when we got a chance. In all, we killed ~6 catas, 1 golem and several rams. If the enemies had attempted a strategy beyond simple blobbing, they would have gotten through. Instead, they sieged for about 45 minutes then gave up.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The huge grind required to play the new professions?

I just cashed in my saved up bonus rank reward chests in EoTM and run around new HoT maps for hero challenges. This took a few hours the first time and then maybe an hour per char after that once I knew my way around and had a mastery or two.

It’s intimidating when you don’t know the system, but you ask in game, here, or reddit and you cruise on through.

If the new BLs were active, I’m sure I could have grinded it out in blob v blob with no problem. The grind is part of the psychology that keeps players attached to their characters, like it or not.

Sviel.7493:

I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.

On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.

The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.

+1
If players had been able to “play” with stuff right away it would have mitigated the problems to an extent. As it is players began either leaving the game or grinding PvE, and then leaving the game.

As an aside, I also believe that ANet wants WvW to become more casual-friendly than it used to be. “Don’t bother learning the old intricacies of WvW. Just jump in and play.” This thought process, should it be true, is not exactly conducive to keeping people interested. It turns the old guard off, because they’ve put their time in learning siege spots, chokes, and tricks. Without the old guard to show the newbies around the newbies just blob up, and quickly find out that WvW without any strategy or tactics is boring(and unrewarding).

Kaiser.9873:

Sviel.7493:

I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.

On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.

The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.

+1
If players had been able to “play” with stuff right away it would have mitigated the problems to an extent. As it is players began either leaving the game or grinding PvE, and then leaving the game.

This is probably a big factor.

When you take out all the people who went to grind PvE, all the people who quit the BLs, and all the people who just plain quit the game, the population fell to below the point where good gameplay could be had.

So as those coming from PvE trickled back in weeks later, the gameplay just wasn’t there anymore and they didn’t stick around for long. In this way, the population never got back to the critical level where good WvW gameplay can happen.

At this point, how many potential returnees are there left, still grinding PvE? I suspect not enough to bring populations back to the critical threshold even if they all came back at once.

Of course, even if the PvE grind requirement didn’t exist, all the other “features” of HoT probably would have done WvW in… just a bit slower.