I’m jumping the gun a bit on this, as I actually still need to get another 20 World Ranks to finish the meta achievement, but that’s ok because I’ll get those just by playing normally.
Which is something I didn’t expect to be saying a month ago.
A month ago I’d never played World vs. World. I’d only entered the map 5 times (twice to do the EB puzzle for Living Story achievements, 3 times for the laurel/badge vendor). It wasn’t that I’d intended to avoid it, I’d liked the idea since I first heard about it but I kept finding “reasons” not to start playing – during the betas I wanted to focus on testing characters, then I wanted to learn the basics, get to 80, do dungeons, do the Living Story…by that point I’d started thinking I shouldn’t try because everyone else would be better than me and I’d just be in the way.
Then I found out the Season 1 meta achievement awards a mini Dolyak and all my excuses evaporated.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I’ll do almost anything to get minis but it’s not the first time I’ve been glad something has pushed me to try things I’d normally not do, and it probably won’t be the last. I don’t know why it took me so long to start but now I have it’s definitely something I’ll be sticking with.
Of course at first I did have no idea what I was doing. I started off with exploring the map and capping ruins just because it was something I could do solo, then running with the zerg and hoping no one would notice I didn’t know what to do.
I have to admit it did surprise me how nice everyone was. I decided early on to swallow my pride, admit I was new and ask if I didn’t understand and every time I asked a stupid question in /map like ‘Why shouldn’t we attack the door when it’s being rammed?’ or ‘Why are we taking a camp without taking the towers in front of it first?’ I got at least one helpful answer (and no one giving me a hard time), which both helped me learn and made me feel a lot more positive about playing WvW.
I think I’ve gotten a lot better now. I’ve definitely learned a lot, I’ve decided I like borderlands more than EB and prefer the enemy borderlands (taking their garrison is a great feeling), I’ve learned I can take camps solo and have some idea of when that’s more useful than running with a group. I’ve got a rough build worked out.
I put veteran in inverted commas in the title because in spite of having (almost) earned the Season 1 Veteran title I think it’d be hilarious to take that seriously. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ve loved the experience so far and I’m really looking forward to playing a lot more WvW in future.
I know there’s been mixed reactions to the Season 1 achievements and the fact that it’s drawn a lot of PvE’ers into WvW, but I also know there’s been threads every so often from people wishing more people would play WvW, properly, and wanting to know what it’d take to get them to start. I can’t speak for everyone else but I can say this approach has had at least one success, and I’d be surprised if I was the only one.
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
