Guild Wars 2

My primarily WvW-focused guild is transferring to Blackgate over the next several days before the world lock down. I’d like to know more about this world.

Those of you on Blackgate – what is your WvW experience like? How big are the WvW guilds? How are the commanders, both for your guild and PUGs? Do you have strong/weak times or are you represented in WvW all day long?

Opponents of Blackgate -what is your opinion of this server? How have they performed in WvW?

People who have transferred to Blackgate – how does this world compare to your previous world?

People who have left Blackgate – why did you leave?

As at one time, an opponent of BG (I used to be on JQ), I feel they are a solid, great community of players, that fight hard! They also have the best forum score updater ever. I’d recommend them.

I recently transfered to Blackgate as well and so far I’m loving it ! There’s organised guilds fighting around the clock, a public TS server, a community website and an endless stream of enemies (Loot bags!) to kill .

I’m not gonna lie, fighting against JQ and SoS is hard, but Blackgate is holding it’s own with honnor and our commanders are quick to react and they usually priorize defense over offense( Meaning they won’t wipe at a random location and then loose the map).

I was on Devona’s Rest before I joined BG and I’m having a lot more fun here than I ever had on DR, if you spend money upgrading and building siege, you can be sure that it won’t go down without a fight !

Your best bet is to hop on our Community TS3 and speak to other BG members.

Voice.lotd.org

Alternatively you can visit the community website

Www.blackgatewvw.com

Ill be on TS in about an hr if you want to chat.

Strongest knit community of players you will find anywhere. Ask questions on www.blackgatewvw.com/forum and I’m sure you’ll get swarmed with answers in minutes.

People who chose Blackgate came here for fun and the close knit community we have. They chose it carefully and they never came in their mind that BG will win in numbers and coverage unlike other servers.. People who chose BG as their home server wants to make a difference in WVW, against different server and this is a hard path to victory..

Transferred off BG a few days ago after being there for a week.
Not as pub friendly as yaks was. Everyone is in their guilds. That won’t be a problem for you if you’re sticking with your guild. Communication between guilds was good though.

By “pub friendly” i mean, the voip. The public channels were frequently unpopulated on all maps, so I couldn’t jump in and listen. Once in a while, it’d be populated, but it was hit and miss. I’d have to go to one of the guild ones but I felt like I was intruding. Otherwise it felt like I was just following icons on maps with no direction. Map chat was kinda lacking.

It wasn’t a thorough impression, I admit, but I was comparing it to my old server on yaks on the things I liked and I was noticing it was missing; so it was difficult to see all the good things.

Went to JQ, all the guilds who use that voip appear to be on their specific borderlands all mixed together. Also map chat is better too.

HB moved from the EU servers when Blackgate were still a Tier4 server, and we got a warm welcome with everyone asking what they could do to help us. We quickly found out this was the place to call home, and to strenghten one of the servers weak coverage spots, we decided to expand to cover the EST timezone as well.

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG, instead you will find smaller guilds that are here for the fights, and dont back down when it gets rough. We have made several comebacks in several tiers, where we´ve moved from third to first place over the last few days of the matchup.

There is still progress to be made as a community, but we´ve come a long way and the community TS as well as the blackgate homepage is great tools that is used by the majority of the WvW guilds.

We got commanders who love to rally the pugs, and we got commanders who would rather run without. This is told in a respectfull way, and most people respect and follow this. That said it is a rare sight to see 2-3 commanders on a map, but if you do, you can be sure they are working together.

After fighting blackgate for ahhh.. 2 months, i can say that i dont really like them, but they have good coverage.. A few of their members like to gloat in forums, which is pretty normal so can’t really hold that against them. I do kind of miss them now, hopefully we get to fight in the future! My feelings are mixed, our breakup was so sudden!

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG,

The entire population of Thailand would disagree with that statement :P

Blackgate is a great server, you have made a great choice. I very much enjoy facing BG in WvW, extremely tenacious and they never give up. Anything that will bolster Blackgate against SoS and JQ is most welcome. Yes I’m from SoS but that doesn’t mean I can’t root for one of our noble opponents. I want to see all the three servers have a good chance. Epic battles are more fun!

Sypsy.7318:

Transferred off BG a few days ago after being there for a week.
Not as pub friendly as yaks was. Everyone is in their guilds. That won’t be a problem for you if you’re sticking with your guild. Communication between guilds was good though.

By “pub friendly” i mean, the voip. The public channels were frequently unpopulated on all maps, so I couldn’t jump in and listen. Once in a while, it’d be populated, but it was hit and miss. I’d have to go to one of the guild ones but I felt like I was intruding. Otherwise it felt like I was just following icons on maps with no direction. Map chat was kinda lacking.

It wasn’t a thorough impression, I admit, but I was comparing it to my old server on yaks on the things I liked and I was noticing it was missing; so it was difficult to see all the good things.

Went to JQ, all the guilds who use that voip appear to be on their specific borderlands all mixed together. Also map chat is better too.

Be aware however, most important communications do occur on VOIP, this is for a couple of reasons:
1) easy to talk faster than type, especially when your hands are tied up with WASD and mouse
2) some concerns have been raised of the posibility of people making alt accounts to umm, monitor our map chats and report back…
3) If it seems less pug friendly at times this may also be because the guilded commander your looking for is trying very hard NOT to draw more people away from critically important “roaming” jobs (striking and defending supply camps, yaks, etc) which are probably the 1 area we lack as a server, OR he is trying NOT to draw more people away from another (tagged) commander on the map.

being in a major hardcore wvw guild, especially one with very strict rules, isnt for everyone, and the servers 1 weakness is we DO need more people roaming and on defense (manning the siege as it were) than we currently have.

Tammuz.7361:

Be aware however, most important communications do occur on VOIP, this is for a couple of reasons:
3) If it seems less pug friendly at times this may also be because the guilded commander your looking for is trying very hard NOT to draw more people away from critically important “roaming” jobs (striking and defending supply camps, yaks, etc) which are probably the 1 area we lack as a server, OR he is trying NOT to draw more people away from another (tagged) commander on the map.

being in a major hardcore wvw guild, especially one with very strict rules, isnt for everyone, and the servers 1 weakness is we DO need more people roaming and on defense (manning the siege as it were) than we currently have.

I understand this, but what you end up having is a LOT of well communicated mid-sized guilds moving around (it’s effective, don’t get me wrong.)
But there are people who who unguilded and can’t use TS (I have heard people site lag on their computers part) or won’t due to personal preferences. These people are more or less left in the dark.

When I was on YB, I would take an effort to type out what a commander is saying in map chat so that everyone else following is an icon would know what was happening next.

If it stays eerily quiet, people have a tendency to get bored and stray. My experiences is that the BG map chat could be silent of any strategy for a full 10 minutes at a time. If you’re not asking in map chat for someone to man trebs, or repair a gate or something, why would they know?

A guild in their TS channel won’t be looking out for these small job things, so joining them won’t solve it, and even if they were, how would I know as a pub? This is where I found JQ’s & YB’s method of one big voip per map to be more effective in the respect of getting these small things done. Of course this comes at a cost of organized guilds, but there is always a balance I’m sure. (e.g., A few organized guilds in their channels, and a guild in the public channel focused on support to rally the pugs in voip & map chat.) This balance was achieved once in a while, but it was more of an exception than a norm.

Again, just a preference, there are far more things to consider than what I’m saying on my linear scale. It’s just the thing that was important to me. Heck JQ will sometimes have no one on the VOIP channel of a specific map and everything is just a few commanders in map chat, which I prefer as it’s more inclusive.

Glad to have you aboard! Your guild made a very good choice with Blackgate

Cheers

Sypsy.7318:

I understand this, but what you end up having is a LOT of well communicated mid-sized guilds moving around (it’s effective, don’t get me wrong.)
But there are people who who unguilded and can’t use TS (I have heard people site lag on their computers part) or won’t due to personal preferences. These people are more or less left in the dark.

I personally appreciate the feedback, and in fact, your post sparked a discussion on our forums on ways we may be able to improve our use of VOIP in a way that works better for the server. Much of what you experienced is very true, and I’d say there are pros and cons to both methods. But maybe we can find a balance that isn’t overly complex and actually hurt communication and effectiveness, but that also does a better job of involving and informing the solo players that are on a map.

Liquid.9672:

Sypsy.7318:

I understand this, but what you end up having is a LOT of well communicated mid-sized guilds moving around (it’s effective, don’t get me wrong.)
But there are people who who unguilded and can’t use TS (I have heard people site lag on their computers part) or won’t due to personal preferences. These people are more or less left in the dark.

I personally appreciate the feedback, and in fact, your post sparked a discussion on our forums on ways we may be able to improve our use of VOIP in a way that works better for the server. Much of what you experienced is very true, and I’d say there are pros and cons to both methods. But maybe we can find a balance that isn’t overly complex and actually hurt communication and effectiveness, but that also does a better job of involving and informing the solo players that are on a map.

Great! The best way to back at me for leaving: by telling me that you are able to take criticism and make it something useful. I hope your whole server makes me regret leaving by becoming a better community than when I left.

To anyone reading this thread and is wondering on whether to join Blackgate, I now have given it my seal of approval.

STAMPED

Sypsy.7318:

Liquid.9672:

Sypsy.7318:

I understand this, but what you end up having is a LOT of well communicated mid-sized guilds moving around (it’s effective, don’t get me wrong.)
But there are people who who unguilded and can’t use TS (I have heard people site lag on their computers part) or won’t due to personal preferences. These people are more or less left in the dark.

I personally appreciate the feedback, and in fact, your post sparked a discussion on our forums on ways we may be able to improve our use of VOIP in a way that works better for the server. Much of what you experienced is very true, and I’d say there are pros and cons to both methods. But maybe we can find a balance that isn’t overly complex and actually hurt communication and effectiveness, but that also does a better job of involving and informing the solo players that are on a map.

Great! The best way to back at me for leaving: by telling me that you are able to take criticism and make it something useful. I hope your whole server makes me regret leaving by becoming a better community than when I left.

To anyone reading this thread and is wondering on whether to join Blackgate, I now have given it my seal of approval.

STAMPED

Thank you for the approval

Lanimal.6541:

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG,

The entire population of Thailand would disagree with that statement :P

no, i agree with Smokee, well this is wvw forum so i have to and hope u dont mind.
i’ll tell u these. first, if u talking about [Thai] yes we have 500 member but we are NOT wvw focus guild.
two, only 15 of us are wvw player and plus another 10-15 when they have free time.
three, if u talking about every thai who play gw2, hmm its kinda… i dont know what to say.

Irony.5203:

Strongest knit community of players you will find anywhere.

Said every server and every guild, ever.

Being on Blackgate has opened my eyes to what a true WvW server is about. If you don’t like the game, then transfer to Blackgate and you’ll fall in love with the community. Everyone is really relaxed and you’ll hardly ever see any Team Chat raging. The community is what sets this server apart from all the other ones. If you are looking for a W3 focused server and want to have fun in an organized form, then come over to Blackgate! We hit 403 players in our TS3 for this weeks reset night. Once you go Blackgate, you’ll never go back. Believe that

Blackgate is a great server. These guys are one of the best opponents that Sea of Sorrows has ever had. You will no doubt find playing on Blackgate to be a challenge versus Jade Quarry and Sea of Sorrows, but you will always have their respect.

i love blackgate we started off on EU and we just didnt feel like we could contribute maybe it was due to poor server choice i dunno but we finally decided that US servers was the way to go we landed on blackgate and we have never looked back. At no point have we thought lets try XXX server. the community is fantastic and enthusiastic when it comes to WvW and we really were welcomed with open arms.

i have had the privilige of listening to our commander chat and i must admit its highly organised the commanders of the major guilds constantly keep each other updated about whats going on. there is no kitten wars with commanders trying to better each other they just work well together and want the best for BG

blackgate is my home even tho we have taken a beating last week with alot of the guild transfers to SoS and JQ im still proud to say my server went toe to toe with JQ and SoS and didnt back down. once you come BG you will not be sorry you did.
we wont guarntee you victory but we will guarntee you one hell of a fight

I concur. BG only have queue on reset. The rest, weekend, weekday, there is only 5-10min EBG and/or BGBL queue, the rest of BLs are free for you to action!

We welcome all NA/EU/Oceanic/SEA WvvW guilds who looking for good home and challenge

If you have any questions regard to the server , u can PM me in game / here.

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG

What happened to iCoa?

icoa are big but i dont think they are a 500+ guild

I guess Technically they are not 500+ but they are huge As an SoR Player there was iCoa Everywhere.

I guess I should contribute to the thread. As a previous opponent there is allot of talented guilds and players on BG. I would say their coverage is fairly well rounded, they may claim the are weak Na at times, I think thats not entirely true. They may not have ques in prime time on all BLs but they are not a ghost town either. Allot of their success in T2 was because they had well rounded coverage. They are also fairly good at getting all their guilds and WvWers to make pushes when they need it which is also respectable. Out of all the servers we have played against, BG is the one server I would really like a rematch with.

Lanimal.6541:

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG,

The entire population of Thailand would disagree with that statement :P

Im not really sure who’re you and which server you from but what i can tell you that we dont have 500 active members. Yes we do have 500 members in the guild list but they’re not active. Nowaday we only field 15-30ppl a night only and that’s not 500+ members guilds.

spartanx.1364:

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG

What happened to iCoa?

ICoa has close to 500 people, but as far as I know, 500 is the cap on a guild’s size; nobody will have a 500+ member guild. But nonetheless, ICoa, to some degree, is almost always in WvW.

asperbianca.3196:

spartanx.1364:

Smokee.1754:

You wont find any mega guilds with 500+ members on BG

What happened to iCoa?

ICoa has close to 500 people, but as far as I know, 500 is the cap on a guild’s size; nobody will have a 500+ member guild. But nonetheless, ICoa, to some degree, is almost always in WvW.

In the event that a guild would break the 500 cap they create a sister guild. ICoa has hit 500 before, but with a recent inactive sweep (long-time inactives) and the 01/28 patch announcement they are now at 430+.

Last night there was close to 100 online when I logged in and that was towards the end of ICoa’s primetime so players were steadily logging off for the night. They usually have roughly 30 online at any given time.