Long time WvWer here. Something that always bothered me was that WvW is supposed to be a “competitive” aspect of the game, but it never felt that way. It is also surprising that WvW achievements are also listed under the competitive play category. Also, reading comments in the forums with people asking for balance seem absurd, because if it’s truly competitive, then there should be no administration intervention to balance things out for the losers. Here is a list of things I noticed and some suggestions.
1. WvW dedicated maps – competitive or no?
WvW had dedicated maps. In a sense, it performs like PvP, except the participants are not randomly selected and there is no queue to balance out the maps. If there are dedicated maps in WvW as there is in the present, then why not make it function more like a large scale PvP arena where there are queues? This would solve your “balance” issue. It would function somewhat like faction wars in GW1 factions.
2. But if we make WvW a queue system where each match would begin if enough people on either team joins, then people will scream “oh no, what happened to server identity, what about server pride, what about ‘meaning’ in WvW?’” Well…
Then here is another suggestion. Scrap the whole idea of WvW dedicated maps. Why not put in game pvp into play. We can have something like node wars in BDO. It would be a tribute to the title of the game, as this game is afterall, “guild wars.” Guilds will control portions of territory in Tyria, and guilds can fight to claim lands and fight for them in the open world. Since gw2 is already an instanced world, these WvW guild wars would occur between guilds and large groups in once instance of that part of the open world. In addition, this would not mean this experience would be exclusive to guilds, per se. Rather, being part of a guild would allow more organization, and thus perhaps give an advantage, but guildless players can join the fray as well. This would inject not only competition, but a sense of identity and purpose to the game mode.
Right now as the game stands, there is neither competition nor identity. With the new items and rewards track, WvW has been reduced to nothing but a grind fest.
It is truly a sad excuse for competitive play, a slip shod job, and one that truly feels like a bone thrown to appease a small minority of the player population. If arena net truly lives by its own mantra of caring about the player community, and legitimates the use of these forums, as a player I hope this message will not be overlooked.