Guild Wars 2

Orbaggedon IMHO started the whole process of what we are seeing today.

I feel the summer of 2013 was perhaps the best times in WvW. Then anet released blood last and it began. Season 1 just killed servers tbh.

You could argue that the complete lack of developer attention started it but even with that all aspects of WvW thrived until blood lust.

Post your thoughts and definitely speak up if your home server became a victim

tournamet, free server transfert and achievements kill wvw
EOTM is just a farming map

First problem is there is no GM in game, cheaters can cheat all day every day and never get banned.

Second no one working to make WvW better at least that we know off.

Stagnation is killing WvW

Everyone knows where to drop siege, offensive and defensive.
Everyone knows who’s going to win the matches, with few exceptions.
Everyone knows population and coverage beat skill.
WvW builds for each profession are mostly stagnant.

After being off the game for a month this is what i noticed and reinforced my opinion of the game.

GW2 mechanics and limitations was what made the game decline.

-Small maps where groups can cross it in 2 minutes, siege from keep to keep, full stacked blob vs small server(coverage).

-Keeps and castles are just AB shrines with walls after cap you leave to recap or going to recap other lost tower.

-Walls go down extreme fast, due reinforced wall is weaker than reinforced door.

-Many bugs where catas hit non “castle areas, as far away from wall” and will still it the wall, and will not mark the swords.

-IF exploits are being adressed or not.

-Autmaned and Queue sometimes gets borked up (not shure about this but had several strange numbers experiences in the past).

-Megaserver, harder to recruit or call army to BL.

-WvW was launched for casuals pvp for pve players

Also

Stagnation is killing WvW

(…)
WvW builds for each profession are mostly stagnant.

offtopic(non wvw content)
-Game model way to much “themeparked”, and thats very limited as its a closed box almost not allowing new implementations, it gets bored after some time (LS was a proff of that, as only gathered DPS mindless fest for obtain skin reward, story arc was almost irrevelent or confusing the way was introduced to the zerg blobs).

Swamurabi.7890:

Stagnation is killing WvW

Everyone knows where to drop siege, offensive and defensive.
Everyone knows who’s going to win the matches, with few exceptions.
Everyone knows population and coverage beat skill.
WvW builds for each profession are mostly stagnant.

That’s how bloodlust started it because it killed one of the main methods players came up w/ to combat stagnation.

Add in seasons that promoted server stacking that killed entire communities
Add in repeatedly messed up patches/changes that discourage WvW as PvP
You get the idea, but it all started w/ Bloodlust

The game honestly needs a WvW over haul patch because WvW >>>> sPvP

There’s no contest in what the majority of players choose. The only reason people PvP now is either

1. Reward Tracks
2. Self delusions of grandeur in thinking a kittenty conquest mode equates to skill

It’s all been Anet’s fault and I wish A dev would come on an accept responsibility for this disaster.
This issue started before bloodlust and season 1.
“The seasons”, in general, started the decline of WvW.
Making the rewards for the top tier so much better than the lower tier, caused the mass migration to 3 or 4 servers on the top.
If Anet made the reward for each of the “division winners”, before the start of season 1, the same, this would not have happened and there would have been more of a balance.
Now it’s too late!
The damage is done…
A tier 2 or lower server NEVER had a chance to ever compete for first.
and some top servers had fat wallets to entice guilds to move.
Free or next to free transfers was a joke.
Allowing of huge population imbalance.
trolls on servers that nothing is done about, even after hundreds of complaints.
Still Anet is silent….

Problem #1: Class balance. ANet has never given a [censored] about class balance in WvW. We’ve had the GWEN meta for going on 1.5 years now. I’m not sure a server has ever found a use for Rangers since the game came out. In a game with hundreds on each side, you only need 2 Mesmers per zerg. This isn’t the first game to have large scale PvP like this. Why does this one have the worst balance?

Problem #2: Population Disparity. Not just in overall population, but coverage as well. And again, ANet has ignored this issue since day one. Why aren’t servers being merged? Will the mega server approach to cloud server design make its way to WvW? Or should we just wait for GW3 before balance can be achieved?

Problem #3: Stagnation. The WvW map has changed slightly since launch, but the changes made were a failure overall. No one cares about blood lust. WXP is horrendously designed. Siege hasn’t changed. There’s still no ‘point’ or reward for WvW.

Habib leaving (huge).

CDI’s that have resulted in no action. Raise expectations a bit, then do nothing. Good thinking.

Not doing anything to make large group combat more diverse than pug omniblobs with numbers or hammer balls.

Not doing anything to make small group combat more diverse than power builds with mobility advantages or condi bunkers.

Tacitly feeding the stack to win mentality because many players buy gems to transfer.

Not being more imaginative with the tournament format to create more interesting matchups week to week. I think the tournaments are a good idea to try to get more PvE players interested in WvW, but the upside is wasted with bad matchups and burnout.

I think I’ll be leaving this game soon if there aren’t some outstanding changes in wvw.

azureazure.5381:

I think I’ll be leaving this game soon if there aren’t some outstanding changes in wvw.

If there’s no news of big changes in WvW after the end of this season, i’m done with this game.

What started the decline was Anet never doing anything about Nightcapping.

From then on, the strong servers cannibalized the weak, and everybody mid tier and below got a horrible experience. Even six weeks in, players started to abandon their servers to flock to the winners, where loot was easier and wins were assured.

But even that only applied to people who primarily cared about WvW.

When anet decided to give more and better rewards to players based on server placement in season 1, that really sped up the movement to big servers. (A related, but now fixed problem was bad pvE scaling on world and living story events that made easy events on big servers very frustrating or even incompletable on small servers)

What is needed to fix WvW is for anet to realize that (1) there is a problem with night capping and (2) tat the moves anet has made has made the problem worse, not better.

There are a lot of annoyances but those don’t really cause an overall decline versus a bit of dissatisfaction or frustration.

The key issues are just a few:
1. WvW hasn’t changed much. (It may be time for a new map. New Frontiers really put sizzle back into DAOC when they did the same).

2. WvW rewards miss. They don’t do enough to make a dedicated team powerful enough to take on a casual blob. Consider given trait points at each major rank bronze, silver etc up (FOR WVW ONLY). Whatever it is a smaller group of silvers should take on a larger group of bronzes and both should do well against a larger group just getting started. That will help bust up zergs and create individual pride.

3. Server Pride. Because the maps are the same for each team and because there is no tie back to a particular race or alliance, it is much harder to build pride especially with the more PvE focused people who play a bit of WvW but couldn’t tell you who commands different servers. A relic system that would impact PvE easy or difficulty or change loot drop rates would immediately get people interested in winning.

No obvious, visible rewards providing incentive (outside of server pride/bragging rights)… see: DAoC DF dungeon. Moot point now with Megaserver structure.

From day one, I never understood how the concept of transfers was allowed to co-exist with a server vs server design. I understand folks wanting to join friends if they rolled on a different server. For PvE. It’s an established selling feature in multiple MMO’s now. If ANet had allowed PvE account transfers, but any character that had stepped foot into WvW was prohibited from joining WvW on another server, forcing a reroll/re-gear and removing all the accumulated WExp, including what is now account bound everytime someone tried to transfer, might have helped. Somewhat.

/shakes head

edit: for explicit zeroing of Wexp when transfer occurs.

- coverage > all
- same maps since launch (change to center and new orbs actually helped for a while IMO)
- mixing of PvE’ers with casual PvP interest and hardcore mass PvPers from DAoC

Free transfers 15 chars

Coverage combined with server imbalances makes for unbalanced and stagnant WvW …. Outside of the diehard players many others simply tire of its same old same old and for many servers its becoming nothing more than a map completion requirement.

Map stagnation.. so you made a few mods to place the bloodlust points in BL’s.. whoopadeeedoodah….. that made maps sooo much more interesting didn’t it

Outnumbered Buff is nothing more than a joke and does nothing to balance out the game mode during matchups

PPT – became irrelevant pretty much straight away.. many of us simply do not care about it anymore and simply look for fun fights instead … WvW offers no incentive to defend anything so the zerg choo choo train merely runs a rotation… EotM highlights the lack of understanding of how to better the game mode

Build diversity is all but non existent within WvW .. not everyone wants to be a hammer wielding stunlocking maniac who hides within a 30man+ blob protected by the AOE caps and plentiful condi removals.

No point in upgrading anything anymore other than your own keep for WP.. fully upgraded walls and doors are sliced thro like butter with all the OP siege masteries and 20 + golem rushes during your nightcapping exercises.

Hacking and exploiting has been going on since day 1 and recently reached new levels of trolling with our invisible friends, door stealth hacker etc, etc… unless it effects the TP it gets no attention.

CDI threads largely ignored and swept under the carpet

Rewards .. meeh I take it or leave it

Tournaments used as carrots to boost gem sales through server xfers.. only aids in widening server disparity and creation of toxicity surrounding server stacking.. both from opponent servers and your own server ( nothing wrong with server movements imo.. that’s to be expected for many reasons, but I guess gem sales weren’t hitting bean counter targets so natural movement has been fuelled artificially and its killed many servers.

Enjoying the discussion so far

Remember though a lot of which has been named was dealt with by us players. (Coverage wars, class imbalance, being ignored, etc.) Thru all that WvW thrived due to the most important aspect of an MMO

Community.

Once that starts dying ur game follows

What is killing WvW? Not being able to talk about matchups for one. The first game I have played where talking about the game is not allowed on it’s own forums!

This WvW “tournament” has drained everyone. 9 weeks of nothing but 2v1’s. You are stuck either farming a server that doesn’t show up or you’re that server. I’m against seasons, tournaments, or whatever you want to call them until it becomes more about skill than coverage.

I don’t think WvW is dying though. In T1, its very much alive but we have a lot of commanders that have put in overtime just to make sure we have commanders for most hours during the week.

This is why:

1) Rotating servers had something to do with it; no community developed.

2) Same map for every server.

3) The zerg: the prevalence is one of the most embarrassing aspects of of WvWvW. Never have I played an RvR game where it is “cool” to be in a zerg (more then 1fg )

4) No true progression in WvWvW.

5) No way to make viable amounts of in game money or acquire good gear.

6) AOE hit cap.

7) Too much censoring of the matchup forum, then killing it.

8) Being able to speak and group with your enemies in WvWvW

9) Server transfers

10) In summary, close to zero attention to this component of the game in every sense.

Bonus: A random number generator backbone, too many currencies, time limits on craftable items, daily laurel limits, dailies to begin with, account bound/soul bound/ bound on equip/bound on acquire etc., too much partitioning of game modes and too much standardization of every aspect of the game. Too much effort watering down and standardizing all game modes that there is no time left in the work day to fix the core issues I listed above.

ionix.9054:

This is why:

….

8) Being able to speak and group with your enemies in WvWvW
…..

I kinda like this, I don’t mind chatting for a min with someone after a good random fight.

Many came to WvW to play as an army against another army, including the organization, politics, alliances, guilds etc etc.
The real problem of WvW is the server transfering. Building up a server, a community takes a lot of work, and this work can easily be destroyed by transfers which you cannot in anyway control.

This means a lot of guilds who originally played PPT lost motivation to play as a whole server, as a community, as their hard work would resort to winnerteam joiners and queues. This means guilds will just focus the main aspect of WvW, the fights. They move silver league and forget about PPT worries, siege worries etc. Totally understandable.

The problem of this is every new player who becomes hardcore and wants to fight hardcore will have his best options to play in silver. This means the new generation of players don’t get to enjoy the other aspects of WvW, the politics, the siegeing, taking t3 garrisons while bathing in the blood of your enemies, competing in something that’s much bigger than you or your guilds individual perfomances.
And this means there’s not many left to continue the serverwide-competing (maybe in NA it’s a bit more competing and exciting than EU).

It would be interesting to hear what would make the guilds who travel to silver league become interested in trying to compete for being #1 server. If it was my game I would be worried that some of the guilds who care most about fighting, improving etc was all avoiding being in the top servers.

Decline…

1. Population decline. Is gw2 having the same or even more population compared to day 1? Nope, of course not. People complain about empty servers when these servers used to be so filled during day 1. This reason alone answered everything you need to know about WvW decline and it is not just WvW declining. The game itself is declining.

2. Why is population declining? This have been discussed over and over again, resulting in nothing conclusive. There are just way too many reasons and factors.

Bombsaway.7198:

3. Server Pride. Because the maps are the same for each team and because there is no tie back to a particular race or alliance, it is much harder to build pride especially with the more PvE focused people who play a bit of WvW but couldn’t tell you who commands different servers. A relic system that would impact PvE easy or difficulty or change loot drop rates would immediately get people interested in winning.

Relic system, reminded me of certain games I played. Those games are so hardcore that will put gw2 so-called hardcore players to shame.

SkyShroud.2865:

Decline…

1. Population decline. Is gw2 having the same or even more population compared to day 1? Nope, of course not. People complain about empty servers when these servers used to be so filled during day 1. This reason alone answered everything you need to know about WvW decline and it is not just WvW declining. The game itself is declining.

2. Why is population declining? This have been discussed over and over again, resulting in nothing conclusive. There are just way too many reasons and factors.

This.

WvW decline because the entire GW2 population is declining.

Anet keeps adding throw away content rather than actual permanent content.

Anet isn’t adding ANYTHING at all to WvW and just expects the population to grow.

Anet needs to realize they have THREE populations here: PvE, WvW, PvP. Do NOT assume PvE —> WvW/PvP. That is NOT how it works.

All things are in a constant state of decline. There has simply been -nothing- put in place to reverse/halt/slow the decline of WvW. The most significant changes the mode sees are in population migrations, which almost certainly work to hasten the decline (as T1 gets pumped full of grouchy babies and Ts1-X get drained).

The reset bug hahaha-.-

The whole S2 season is too long.

EOTM was the real nail in the coffin. It was what most of us hoped would revitalize and add something new to WvW but it ended up being a PvEers K-Training wet dream. Considering its was the only real major WvW development in the past 1.5+ years who knows when we’ll see something else.

1. Theres no incentive that means anything to wvwvw players.

2. wvwvw is intended not to be balanced, but it’s now more unbalanced than ever before.

3. zerg mechanics coupled with downed state and aoe cap mechanics. 3 fold problem.

4. siege mastery has made it worst than ever.

5. Server stacking 3 quarters of the wvw popualtion is stacked on t1 and t2. And anything below t3 is basically a ghost town except during NA and even during NA there are no ques.

6. Stale mach ups that last forever because of 5. You may love your low pop servers but its part of the problem of not have great server rotations cuz there is no one to fight on your servers and servers with higher pops destroy you.

7. EOTM was a good idea if this game just came out que times were crazy on every server now it fills a void that no longer exists and just bleeds more casual players away from wvw.

8. Stale maps was it mentioned that the scenery is pretty old now and the tactics of using that terrain are well established.

easily the main one:

• stagnation because of neglect

breaking it down:

• no meaningful class changes, it’s GWEN or GTFO.
• stagnant build meta, most people still using same build as last year.
• failure to address the zerg > * problem.
• killing matchup threads, almost as much fun as the actual game.
• lack of support for GVG format.
• reward giveaways in sPVP.
• frustration of dev resources being wasted on bloodlust camp changes that noone really wanted.
• rampant EOTM karma-training.
• pop imbalances because of incentivised server transfers to maximise $$$.
• GW2 pop declining.

on the positive side, Archeage is looking awesome.

Decline started way before EoTM or Seasons or Bloodlust-Ruins. It goes way back to 2012 when in the months following release there were PvE content patches every fortnight, and the release of fractals, and WvW players asked “what about us?”.

The response was “there’s a big wvw patch coming end of december 2012”. So wvw players waited patiently. But come december, this changed to “big wvw patch coming january 2013”. January came and went. “don’t worry, it’s coming in february”. February nothing.

March comes, “it’s finally here guys, the wvw patch you’ve been waiting for”. Culling removed. Wxp ranks added. Meanwhile, PvE has another massive content update.

This is what did it for alot of people. We waited patiently for 6 months, being told ‘our time will come’, watching pve getting massive updates every 2 weeks. We were hoping that having to wait so long would at least mean, when it finally came, that the ‘wvw patch’ would be awesome. But it wasn’t. Sure, removal of culling was nice, but it hardly compares to fractals, a dozen living story content updates, and hundreds upon hundreds of bug fixes for dungeons. And there was the realisation that, if that was ‘the big wvw patch’, that we couldn’t expect anything else for a long time either.

That’s when people realised wvw was not something ANet believe in, and since then all discussion around wvw has been framed differently. It’s no longer “ooooohhh, I wonder what they’re cooking up”, it’s just “ehhhhh, I wonder if we’ll get any scraps accidentally flung our way”.

scerevisiae.1972:

on the positive side, Archeage is looking awesome.

Actually looks like total kitten. Combat is like straight from runes of magic and graphics are about same level.

Ragnar.4257:

Decline started way before EoTM or Seasons or Bloodlust-Ruins. It goes way back to 2012 when in the months following release there were PvE content patches every fortnight, and the release of fractals, and WvW players asked “what about us?”.

The response was “there’s a big wvw patch coming end of december 2012”. So wvw players waited patiently. But come december, this changed to “big wvw patch coming january 2013”. January came and went. “don’t worry, it’s coming in february”. February nothing.

March comes, “it’s finally here guys, the wvw patch you’ve been waiting for”. Culling removed. Wxp ranks added. Meanwhile, PvE has another massive content update.

This is what did it for alot of people. We waited patiently for 6 months, being told ‘our time will come’, watching pve getting massive updates every 2 weeks. We were hoping that having to wait so long would at least mean, when it finally came, that the ‘wvw patch’ would be awesome. But it wasn’t. Sure, removal of culling was nice, but it hardly compares to fractals, a dozen living story content updates, and hundreds upon hundreds of bug fixes for dungeons. And there was the realisation that, if that was ‘the big wvw patch’, that we couldn’t expect anything else for a long time either.

That’s when people realised wvw was not something ANet believe in, and since then all discussion around wvw has been framed differently. It’s no longer “ooooohhh, I wonder what they’re cooking up”, it’s just “ehhhhh, I wonder if we’ll get any scraps accidentally flung our way”.

This has certainly been one of the root causes. arenanet knows full well that without content updates peoples interest dwindle.
And then theyve made wvw a low priority since forever, so not a shock that peoples interest is fading. And this has been happening for a long time now.

Big QQ about queue’s ended quite a while ago, it was already largely a non-issue before season1 even hit. Season1 pumped up people joining because of achievement hunting pve zerkerlings, but right after queue’s dropped dramatically again.

I remember full well that queue’s the first 6 months were almost constant, queue’s every night going upto an hour easy.
But it hasnt been like that for a long time, because simply less and less people play wvw.

And yeah, i remember the massive disapointment as a wvw player. How little updates and fixes we got, and what we got was not in touch with what wvw was (commander siegerazer…)
It was more then abundantly clear that wvw was a low priority, and the “big wvw update” was little more then a massive grindfest system. Simply put in place to exploit the skinner-box principle and keep people playing without anyone really knowing why they even still play.
A platform that more grind-goals could easily get tacked on at a later date.

Junkpile.7439:

scerevisiae.1972:

on the positive side, Archeage is looking awesome.

Actually looks like total kitten. Combat is like straight from runes of magic and graphics are about same level.

each to their own. I’d take a good sandbox MMO over themepark anyday.

I must applaud everyone so far

Not one person has blamed thieves yet

/clap

On a serious note I think many have made great points about zero development support.I agree thats been a growing bubble since 2012. Tho I say we players conquered it mostly until the team started to legitimately kitten with us

Probably the biggest thing that killed wvw is the tournament. The tournaments did nothing to help balance server population. Instead it promoted stacking a couple servers while destroying several communities in the process.
Besides that:
Stagnant matchups and same maps since launch.
CDI from 5 months ago with 0 changes.
Reintroduction of bloodlust, which nobody asked for.
Eotm, which was a total failure.
No support from devs (eg. gvg).

It’s really sad too because wvw I think could have been gw2’s strongest feature. It’s definitely what keeps me playing the game. 2 years and 4.4k hours later, it’s the only place where I still haven’t hit my skill cap and is really the only end-game content.

What started it is two things.

1. Failure of Anet to recognize/acknowledge issues that were brought up as early as Beta (e.g. population/coverage issues).

2. Now this one may be a bit controversial but I think the alliances made by the players in the beginning were a very bad idea. The Titan Alliance and Ascension Alliance plus a few others stacked on a few servers at the beginning. And TA was superior to all and basically started the server stacking issue. And combined with the free transfers in the beginning made for a very bad combination.

Oh yeah, make that 3. Thieves

Free transfers – particularly to higher tier servers – is where it started.

For all the noise Anet were making about no pay2win in GW2, they sure did a great job of implementing it in WvW right from the very beginning.

decline started whit wxp-bonus-dmg to arrowcarts

made wvw annoying and a waste of time

+1 to so many posts in this thread.

If only ANet cared about the game like the players do. Ah well.

Romek.4201:

decline started whit wxp-bonus-dmg to arrowcarts

made wvw annoying and a waste of time

I agree on the AC part but I think it was before wxp.

I was always ok with the siege in game because you could counter it.

It does allow for some cheap play tho

Personally I think Bloodlust is a good thing. When you’re on a server that cannot compete with the other servers numbers, gaining points through bloodlust can help even the playing field.

Usually the other bigger, blobby servers don’t take time to stomp because their sheer numbers will take you out before they have a chance. Taking time and promoting stomping with bloodlust can actually make a big difference.

I will not say what, but when instead. It was after the Orr makeover was done that made it the pleasant cc filled place it is now. Where every mob has way to many cc abilities. Feel free to extrapolate the what from that.

Stagnation. There is nothing new WvW has to offer. People get bored of the same stuff over and over again.

Some ideas:

New maps: Design new BL maps which will rotate randomly each week. (ie: green is never the same BL map every week)

New Environment Mechanics: Spice it up a bit. Give us realistic day/night cycles (you know, actually dark at night). Maybe some environmental effects which effect both sides (like fighting a war in a blizzard or desert heat wave).

Give us some build diversity. New skills, new traits to play around with. Have options, not just the standard zerg metas.

New mechanics in general. Both from NPCs and playstyle.

Make defense rewarding and fun.

Give better incentive to do well for your server. And not in a way which just makes people stack in high population servers all the time. Like, if a lower ranked server beats a higher ranked one, it gets some unique rewards.

Grant higher rewards for capping higher tiered keeps and towers. Also, give individual bonuses for helping to upgrade and defend objectives.

I stopped WvW after I listened into some discussions on planning who was getting what place this season in tier 1 on TC mumble. Tier 1 season 2 was staged from start to finish. It wasn’t a fight, it was just trying to maximize how much prize tickets Anet had to pay out. Literally nothing else to it. Shocking twist: the plan I heard proposed on week 1 is exactly how the season played out. Not exactly interesting unless you’re more entertained by middle school math texts than The Silmarillion.

Guess it’s not really shocking since Anet’s long game for keeping WvW alive was adding virtually (or literally) impossible to earn achievements. Don’t think WvW will ever really work in GW2 until they take a closer look at the system they took so much inspiration from. If Anet wanted an arcade shooter on rails version of world PVP they should have designed their own system. There’s a lot of things they chose to ignore from RvR that really hurts the experience and is keeping any actual fighting from ever happening. Here’s just a few things that stand out to me:

In DAoC RvR levels much more meaningful, you actually gained a bit of character power instead of being able to carry 5 more boards and set doors on fire.

Structures and sieges had considerably more health. In DAoC they were literally hundreds of time higher than they are in GW2. This made sieging a structure feel like sieging a structure, and not knocking on a door for 45 seconds to get 20 silver of salvage.

Really my biggest problem with WvW is how realm match ups work and how they are so easily influenced by the players. There’s no war when the enemy is usually just the loot pinata you picked. Take away the player influence in match ups and you take away the reason to collude with the enemy to fix match ups. Fluid realm match ups just sours the whole pot, shows that Anet will never consider WvW serious content. They seem afraid their players couldn’t handle real pixel wars. In their design the real conflict is trying to game the system, not trying to game the enemy.

The only thing I think they got spot on was EotM, reminds me a lot of Darkness Falls from DAoC except no one loses access so there’s a lot more chance of running into big old zerg fights of PVErs vs PVErs, which is endlessly amusing.

Season One and the removal of Matchup forums as the end of WvW for me.