Guild Wars 2

Just for fun speculation about Devon’s oft cryptic responses – what does he mean this time? He said in two seperate posts that both the Krait and the Quaggans are going bye bye. Now what do you suppose is going to happen?

Will the new orb mechanic be on the central island?

Has there been some environmental catastrophe like when the Jade Sea was formed in Cantha and the surface of the lake will now be solid?

Are they going to drain the lake so that you’ll have a crazy new rugged terrain to fight in?

Or is that too ambitious. Are they just going to get rid of the Krait and Quaggans and leave the water empty for us to fight in to get to the central objective?

In a February interview with Mike Ferguson, he actually eluded to changes to the lake that I think we may now be seeing in the map update to the Borderlands. Here is the snip …

It’s very difficult to increase the size of the maps due to technical limitations, however we are working on some changes that will address many of the concerns about the borderlands, particularly the lake in the middle. We have quite a few big plans in store for the borderlands that we’ve started working on so we can hopefully start revealing more about that in the near future!

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/196tgh/jeuxonlineinfo_made_an_interview_with_mike/

My bet is they’re going to totally remove, or at least greatly shrink the lake down to a moat like body of water surrounding some kind of objective and the side that controls this objective will receive some kind of buff (orb buff replacement).

Oh man, and I just made my Kamohoali’i Kotaki.

They are pulling plug…

Kill the Quaggon by dropping map specific keeps on top of them that differentiate red, blue, and green BL’s from one another. Each keep can upgrade to have a Skyhammer Asuran death ray that uses a player’s supply to fire instead of a way point upgrade, and all the guards, workers, etc. are servitor golems.

In addition they’ll be able to each summon a world specific dragon lieutenant upgrade for their keep lord based on their world: blue gets Jormag, green gets Tequatl, red gets the Shatterer.

I bet its a king-of-the-hill type control area, maybe even urban-sh so there are some fun LOS plays, that gives the controlling team stat bonuses.

I think it will be designed to promote small-man fights over the area.

The lake will probably still be largely there, but there might be a few smaller islands surrounding the urban area in case you need to set-up seige to help with control or break the enemies’ control.

it will be a massive jumping puzzle, and when you get to the top there will be fixed siege units that can bombard hills, bay and garrison, which you can power up with gems. also there will be a trading post NPC there so you can buy more gems in case you run out.

-ken

LOL! What about the elephant in the room?

“We have quite a few big plans in store for the borderlands that we’ve started working on so we can hopefully start revealing more about that in the near future!”

Let’s see now, February to August is six months. Hhmmm …

Isn’t it obvious?

They’re going to drain it, destroying the ecosystem, forcing the Krait and Quaggans to move on or die. There will be subtle Hollywood undertones geared at educating youth at conservation and mother nature. This is Anet’s way of giving back. It’s living story at it’s finest!

Just don’t fall in the empty lake. There’ll be no more swimming out…

It’s going to become a multi-story treb park.

I really hope a large underwater area remains. I won’t get angry, if the quaggans or krait will be gone, but the completely remove one major aspect of game (underwater combat) from WvWvW, that would be a sad decision. The tiny pond in Eternal Battlegrounds really isn’t enough.

I really hate jumping puzzles, so I hope there won’t be anything even remotely like that instead. We already have separate jumping puzzles in WvWvW. No need to add more.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I really hope a large underwater area remains. I won’t get angry, if the quaggans or krait will be gone, but the completely remove one major aspect of game (underwater combat) from WvWvW, that would be a sad decision. The tiny pond in Eternal Battlegrounds really isn’t enough.

I really hate jumping puzzles, so I hope there won’t be anything even remotely like that instead. We already have separate jumping puzzles in WvWvW. No need to add more.

Holy mother of… some one that enjoys underwater combat?! Must mainly play a mesmer or a ranger…

I won’t miss the big open water areas what so ever personally. It’s taking up prime middle of the map real estate which could be used for far more interesting things.

Wotah.2975:

Oh man, and I just made my Kamohoali’i Kotaki.

Yeah, I just made Frenzy.

Why do they keep removing aspects of the game? I understand the want for some new territory and changes to the map, but to totally eliminate underwater combat?

Sigh

Deniara Devious.3948:

I really hope a large underwater area remains. I won’t get angry, if the quaggans or krait will be gone, but the completely remove one major aspect of game (underwater combat) from WvWvW, that would be a sad decision. The tiny pond in Eternal Battlegrounds really isn’t enough.

I really hate jumping puzzles, so I hope there won’t be anything even remotely like that instead. We already have separate jumping puzzles in WvWvW. No need to add more.

I agree with this 100%. I understand a lot of people love JPs and hate underwater combat, but there are those of us that love underwater combat and hate JPs. There should be room enough in this game for everyone.

Underwater combat is already sorely lacking any type of respect in this game as is. Just because people don’t like it and don’t spend the time learning it doesn’t mean it isn’t still a viable aspect of the game.

It will be a bad decision to totally remove underwater combat from WvW.

It won’t be totally removed, you will still have Bay keep and the little lake by water camp

There will be a big crater, a hole blocked with hair.And a plastic plug and chain.

It will dry up and asurans will start breaking speed records in it.

The krait will eventually get round to dealing with the quaggans. The lake will be filled with rotting quaggan corpses. This pungent biomass will occasionally congeal into a dragon that, when killed, will drop an orb. Controlling the orb will allow any players in the team to throw up (similar to the zhaitaffies) and apply “Torment” to anyone who stands in the resulting pavement pizza.

In all seriousness I think we may see some mechanic that is designed to aid the attacking teams. What would be interesting (not necessarily a good idea) is some MOBA-esque position that spawn waves of NPCs to assist you.

Given this is ANET and its about WvW which means they wont put much effort into it, my predictions are:

1) Quaggan and Krait mobs removed, the objective on the island will now be the Orb equiv. Stand in circle, win orb style bonuses for X many minutes before someone else can stand in circle to take it back.

2) Same as #1, but remove the water and its hole just make the entire lake a big flat area.

The more I think about it, the more I’m not sure if its going to matter because as the days progress I’m starting to dislike the state of WvW more and more.

I get it its a designed for the Zergs, but we were told that smaller groups would be able to break up the Zerg, and that doesn’t seem to happen.

Ideally I think I’d like to see multiple Capture and Hold Nodes, but I can’t come up with a mechanic that would prevent the home world zerg from idling there when they own everything on the map.

At any rate I’m interested in seeing what they do, so I can rage about it later.

I REALLY hope the don’t remove too much water…that’s basically the only way for a non-kitten mesmer to escape from someone…

Aberrant.6749:

Holy mother of… some one that enjoys underwater combat?! Must mainly play a mesmer or a ranger…

Well, people on my server have given me nick name “Lord of the Lake” or “King of the Lake”. If they remove the lake I will be soon king of nothing.

Some go even overboard telling that I am the best underwater fighter in EU. I am really not that good. Surely I win almost all the 1 vs 1 fights, but that also happens above water if I get to use the terrain to my advantage. In fact underwater fights often end so the enemy swims away and flees to dry land, where I CC him and kill.

My main is engineer and I do not play cheap gimmick builds. I play balanced hybrid build, which is actually not good in anything, but okay in everything.

I meet a lot of enemy rangers in the lake. I would argue that rangers are the most common profession as underwater roamers, probably because they have 1500 range + pet and lick wounds is so powerful that you need to CC the pet away from the downed ranger to actually kill him. Warriors, elementalists, thieves and mesmers are also common to fight against in the lake.

The map is designed so that you can avoid underwater combat. So the game is not forcing that those who don’t like it. Which is good. But if it were to replaced by dry land, where to have that underwater combat fun? (please don’t tell me pvp).

I am still dreaming about the underwater fortress. Great epic battles outside and inside that underwater fortress and no siege, besides golems (which move slow as molasses). Finally siege free warfare. Yum!!