Guild Wars 2

Brief history of my server, Maguuma. So I started on Jade Quarry, then moved to AR and eventually to Mag. When i first came to Mag it was a decent t4-t5 server that could hold its own and had open field fights with siege. Roaming was still a thing too! Then we got more numbers as guilds came to us but nothing substantial yet. We got a decent foothold in t4 and some guilds from one of the servers (Yak’s Bend?) ended up coming over as well. That’s when we sort of saw an influx of guilds and in about a month we shot up to t2. We then bounced between t3 and t2 for quite sometime and then the “wonderful” first season of the tourney rolled around and because of our standings in the past we were in gold league. Well by this point it was back to most of the original maguumans (with exceptions of course) and we were facing servers with 2-3 times our numbers for 9 weeks straight. Now don’t get me wrong, we could hold our own in some instances and we did a bit better in season 2, however this is where i personally saw the decline. Many of my friends transfered, or stopped playing due to their distaste for the blob v blob crap that has arisen. So the decline i would say didn’t happen after an update, but rather once everyone bandwagonned to one server for rewards.

I’m not sure if this is the sort of thread Anet is likely to read and take a lot of heart from but, I’ll just say what everyone is saying.

Lack of attention.

It lacks the development time, the communities fall apart, it stagnates.

EotM pulls new players away from the primary maps. Guilds have trouble recruiting new players and everyone piles up to the last few servers with lively match ups.

And Anet just neglects it. We’re told it’s too much work to have match up threads so I guess we’re left to assume that WvW is just too much work to maintain as well. There’s no communication.. just a lot of closed threads.

Cheating, stacking, off hour coverage… all just makes the matches less fun than they should be. Doesn’t seem to be much concern about it though.

Most people I know play for the WvW. Sure they PvE some too, some more than others but, there’s less and less of the old guys from release left. I don’t see a lot of new guys coming into it.

another reason are the rewards are absolute junk
a rank up chest gives like 2 masterworks 10s and badges
the best u can buy with badges is exotic armor
pvp has reward tracks which are way better and the rank up chests are better even if barely
pve is like 2 rares minimum at a boss
so wvw needs better rewards

joe.9815:

another reason are the rewards are absolute junk
a rank up chest gives like 2 masterworks 10s and badges
the best u can buy with badges is exotic armor
pvp has reward tracks which are way better and the rank up chests are better even if barely
pve is like 2 rares minimum at a boss
so wvw needs better rewards

Yeah… Except you get a wvw chest around two times an hour or even more often, in PVP it’s once per 30 solo arena games or 20 team arena games… assuming 50% winrate of course, but in any case that’s a lot of time.
And I get 20 silvers on average(15-25) as well as a rare in every 2nd rank-up chest. Once in a blue moon I may even get an exotic or an ascended item.

For me it was being forced to play one way …by both the community and the way rewards are distributed. Many many players like the Scouting…defending…upgrading part of the game. That play style loses money at the end of the night…gets very little eperience….and gets mocked by the community. You can even get hate tells from both your server and the enemy server ….“WTH you doing by defending!?!?. You are slowing down the karma train” Those type of players don’t last long in this game.

ArenaNet is what is killing WvW. I don’t think they expected it to be as popular as it has become and expected most to play the terrible (imo) S/TPvP mode. With that in mind i don’t think they really had a plan going forward for WvW.

The lack of content for WvW has been shocking. One rather terrible map since release is just not enough. They changed a few parts and removed the water which i think was the right move. They could really shake up the maps each season, changing them up.

Like having a different dragon rage across the maps changing them. With changes being something to do with the dragons. Like they could have Mordremoth go around and ravage all the maps, causing earthquakes and shaking up the whole map making it look totally different and such.

They have struggled so far to curb the constant zerging and blobbing that occurs. This is the biggest issue the mode has in my opinion. Having certain servers just swamp all maps. A certain Server ignored another server and then swamped it with what had to have been 50-60+ people, took the whole map in about 15-20minutes and then left….

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The lack of content for WvW has been shocking. One rather terrible map since release is just not enough. They changed a few parts and removed the water which i think was the right move. They could really shake up the maps each season, changing them up.

Actually, I found EotM to be a fascinating insight into what Arenanet are capable of. Ironically, we don’t need a map so intricate, complex and packed with features and content. We simply don’t want or need a lot of what EotM contained. Keep it simple! Arenanet don’t have to spend that many resources on WvW, especially if they are then going to ignore WvW for months and months on end.

Forzani.2584:

For me it was being forced to play one way …by both the community and the way rewards are distributed. Many many players like the Scouting…defending…upgrading part of the game. That play style loses money at the end of the night…gets very little eperience….and gets mocked by the community. You can even get hate tells from both your server and the enemy server ….“WTH you doing by defending!?!?. You are slowing down the karma train” Those type of players don’t last long in this game.

This also goes for me. I like defending, I like small scale, I like havoc, but then there’s that commander on map saying “everyone to me”. On top, the mindless blobbing is rewarded, and more strategic (skillful) play is pretty much ignored in terms of rewards.

Also, the lack of guild facility is truly depressing.

Hard to say. For me server loyalty was a big deal. However with the mega server, everything is the same, where as before different servers had a different feel to each other. WvW comms cant go and make a rallying call in their server any more—as it doesn’t exist.

Server transfers at the start of the season fed on players fears of losing, so they transferred out, leaving the rest of us to cope, the blame for that is set firmly at anets feet.

EOTM—-mite as well call this Queensdale champ farm MKII, and btw, the related hostility towards people trying to actually play wvw (oh—the horror) on EOTM has come over from there as well (don’t touch my karma!) How many people have heard from a EOTM comm—-‘I don’t defend, we swap keeps—more karma!’

Map diversity—-coming up to nearly two years now, and the maps are roughly the same. Why they never introduced meaningful map rotations (by that i mean completely new, different maps—not just going from one corner of the same map to the other!) ill never know.

I sincerely feel sorry for any dev put onto WvW development. Previously it was hinted at a whole slew of new shiny stuff, never to see the light of day. I cant help but feel the powers that be stopped it before it became a reality and starved it of support, making it a poison chalice.

Svarty.8019:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

The lack of content for WvW has been shocking. One rather terrible map since release is just not enough. They changed a few parts and removed the water which i think was the right move. They could really shake up the maps each season, changing them up.

Actually, I found EotM to be a fascinating insight into what Arenanet are capable of. Ironically, we don’t need a map so intricate, complex and packed with features and content. We simply don’t want or need a lot of what EotM contained. Keep it simple! Arenanet don’t have to spend that many resources on WvW, especially if they are then going to ignore WvW for months and months on end.

I actually like the map design of EOTM. What i don’t like is the fact that it has become nothing more than a Karma farming area, just like Queensdale and such. It’s used to farm Karma, Gold and such.

the map itself is visually very nice, and the set up is quite nice as well. I just don’t like all the NPCs that promote farming and blobbing NPC events….in a WvW Mode -.-

displacedTitan.6897:

I just dont understand peoples rose tinted glasses of DaoC. That games RvR had tons of problems too, everyone here pretends it was pure gold.

The reason people dont make “hardcore” games like that anymore is they dont sell, no one wants to play a game where months of work is ruined by a few kittens in 20 minutes. I personally thought Shadowbane was the pinnacle of large scale PvP but a game like that just doesn’t sell and for good reason. Note the way PvE doesn’t look like original EQ anymore either.

Many people learned to fear my 2H Axe Cent Warrior

Wind lord greaves and commander rune made for a VERY fast character

you know it’s in bad shape when after 100 posts, not one person is saying “WvW is great just as it is” – at one point you couldn’t say nothing about nothing without someone jumping down your throat. Unfortunately, my predictions are coming true. Ironically, the biggest indicator was how they treat everyone on the forum.

The art is great though, i have to give them that.

ETOM is bad because winning on it matters little, the random NPCs hold no tie to anything on your server, it’s just random mobs. It looks pretty but that’s about it.

atheria.2837:

melodey.4652:

Oh look, Chaba is still QQing about HoDs transfers. It’s been how long now? I know I’m not the only one bored of your posts here and the unofficial forums too. FA is great, FA is gold, HoD sux, we get it.

He doesn’t have the grace to just admit that there’s something wrong when servers buy guilds.

Money isn’t what wins seasons – hard work and dedication do.

Stacking wins seasons.

Either because you get free transfers to flood in new players. If not then you could buy guilds. If not enough gold then you make underhanded deals and double-team.

I dont understand this “holier then thou” attitude. Its all unsportsmanship behavior, thats not technically against the rules. And it all comes down to “we have more people then you, so you lose”.

you know, I didn’t really think much about posts like this. I always attributed them to people wearing tin foil hats.

But I have to give it to them… they were right. WvW has been on a decline from ~6 months ago and it’s very noticeable. T8 is a ghost town and guilds are moving up at a rapid rate. There’s zero incentive to play on an empty server… and, because of this, a snowball effect has occurred where most guilds end up moving up in tiers to be around other players… so the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The icing on the cake was to allow players to go to a silver tier for seasons. This bled the remaining players out of the tier 8 servers, leaving very few. The players that did stay in t8 and emptier servers ended up staying in the servers mostly due to the community. They would see the same players over and over on a daily basis and would be able to communicate in map chats or run some sort of server only event. That was destroyed with megaservers. Now, a lot of guilds (even in silver) have a very tough time recruiting while players just get bored and end up leaving. This whittles everyone down and causes them to “panic transfer” to servers with a large population. The issue with this is a lot of players are in well established guilds on said servers, and the incoming guild’s core isn’t as large because of people quitting and lack of recruits and they end up falling apart. There are some success stories, but they’re becoming rare. It’s a cycle that bleeds out players.

All in all, stagnation has also taken effect. I’ve had a lot of friends in other guilds / guild leaders who have just gotten bored of the game mode and quit. What happens to the players? A lot of them disperse but most of them end up quitting the game.

Not that anyone cares. It’s not like this will be read by any movers or shakers.

You know, I’m sitting here bored, not in WvW, reading this stuff.

So many things that have been said time and again. I could contribute my 2c, like all the little things that add up. I’m also comming up with all kinds of great ideas and solutions to all these problems that would work. No doubt about it. It would solve server imbalance, night capping, all the biggies. I thought about starting a new thread to share my ideas.

But, really, what’s the point? It isn’t going to change. No one cares. The changes that I’m thinking of are BIG. It would require lots of work. That will never happen. And if it ever did happen, it would probably take too long, and most of the people now left in WvW would have gone.

Can we get some of the Carbine devs to work on Gw2? They seem to at least respond and listen to the community instead of listening to themselves talk between each other on the kittenter.

The design of castle/keep/tower walls is terrible and has been mentioned a number of times. Enemies on the ground can easily hit you but if you are on the wall you get the “obstructed” message. With the AOE cap a well organized blob can go around the outside of the wall and destroy most siege with relative impunity. With the design the way it is now, Troy would have fallen in 9 minutes versus holding out for 9 years.

If it is meant to be siege warfare then it has failed miserably and is more akin to a corrupted Blitzkreig warfare where the number of attackers take the place of the tanks.

There’s little I can add to the list that hasn’t already been mentioned. But the two biggest things that I feel hurt WvW over the long haul are A. Poorly designed, implemented, and far too long season format. I get it, they wanted to do something to spark some interest, but the path to hell is paved with good intentions. B. Megaservers. I understand why they did it. I’m not even sure I’d even argue against it now, for various reasons. But there’s definitely a sense of loss that a community doesn’t ‘own’ their hubs anymore. I always looked forward to logging into LA and seeing all the faces of people I recognized from WvW. Now it’s as many strangers — if not more — than people I know. And everybody is spread out between the main hubs, now. Which is neat, in a way, because it makes the GW2 ‘world’ seem a bit more full, but it also definitely kicked out the legs the wvw community.

As an aside, does the HoD/FA dumb kittenery really have to spread to every thread? Yeah, we know, people are kitten everywhere and it sucks. But try to keep it out of topics that really have nothing to do with what’s going on there. Cool? Cool.

The decline started when there was no clear vision for WvW, then WvW was used to promote guildwars upon release. Then came Culling (iow failing to optimize)After that the Orb nerf made the gameplay more boring followed up by cheese builds and mindless mobs going for karma. Culling was “turned off” and replaced with skill lag and unresponsiveness all over. Next a decision to improve WvW gameplay or adding diversity to the concept was replaced by WXP and some stupid buffs to pretend to have some progression in the development of WvW.. To top it off EotM was dredged out of the depths of failed ideas and implemented as the future/test grounds for WvW and soon after that it was forgotten and set aside for SEASONS! So people could match up against stacked servers full of bandwagoneers that only step foot in WvW for the shinies. Don’t blame them i wouldn’t step foot in EotM or a borderland either after 2 years of the same stale unimaginative maps an gameplay.
So where did it go wrong? Ill conceived idea’s, unfinished maps,gameplay and well thought out mechanics published, without holding onto the MDA that any game creator should recognize as the holy bible, upon release made the hype that guildwars2 has created seem like lying to it’s customers.

The gw2 staff has been playing catch up ever since with all the best intentions and wishes but when you have to start building a full MMO from a karkas with limited resources that are consumed by gemstore priorities it can take a while before you can see any result.

I almost forgot the numerous exploits and failed mechanics overlooked when a patch is introduced breaking the balance, if there ever was any.

(in a nutshell)

Stupid condition dmg, weak in zerg, way way to strong in small scales, he who spams condi’s quickest wins ( no skill spamming all condi’s in first 3 seconds of fight and running away untill their dead ). Forceing people into blobbing

Completely ignoring game breaking hacks/exploits since day 1, removeing any post and not informing the community that you are actually attempting eradicate these.

Edge of the mists – Pve karma train

Terrable class balance decisions over and over again ( fire the bloke who makes these decisions, get a monkey an pay him 7 banana’s a weeek an probaly do a better job )

AoE limit, only able to hit 5 people at a time but 40 people can all pile on an kill in split second, they can all hit me, then i should be able hit them all back ( this would kill blobbing, have group 10 AoEing hell outof 50+ blobs would soon sort blobbing out)

WvW Tournaments, 9 weeks of hard work, people putting in extra hours than they would normally, getting less sleep, wakeing up ealier to put an hour or 2 in befor e work and getting a kittening kitten reward, Spvp tournament play a few 20 mins matches and win a legendary for first place, we get a wepon skin

style.6173:

Actually, someone did bring up a good point earlier… removal of the matchup threads was a dumb move by ANET. Getting people passionate for their servers is a good thing. Instead people have gotten bored and moved onto new items.

I’m still hoping that the rumors of new WvW leadership are true. The last guy had a poor vision for where WvW could go. My hope is that someone else can take us in a better direction.

Dude, did you ever read those threads? I am happy they are gone, it was nothing more than people sh*tting on each other, accusing each other for 1v2’s and hacking. Calling other people names, being childish in general…

I think we can simply just blame Jade Quarry for everything.

Chris.3290:

I think we can simply just blame Jade Quarry for everything.

even though i am no longer in NA, i wholeheartedly support this notion.

1. Too much of the same.
Borderlands are the same. They can’t make different maps because that would make it unfair. Would be cool if they gave all borderlands a special make-over, like: one jungle, one volcanic and one ice style.
I also think that wvwvw could use some new mechanics. Something like the orb of power we had in the past?

2. There is no room for tactics.
Lets face it: zerging is the best way. Sure you can try take something with 5 men, but hey whats that? Oh, it’s the enemy zerg.

3. Stacking, zerging
Many players don’t mind stacking and zerging, but a big part of the playerbase (i think a mayority) doesn’t like it.
They lose their individuality in a zerg. They are just one of the zerglings.

4. Difference in player ’’level’’ too big.
There are wvw guilds, zergs, little groups and roamers. Many wvw guilds beat the crap out of enemy zergs (or groups). Many players in zergs dont have time to be in a wvw guild (or just don’t play wvw so much). It’s not fun to be wiped all the time, so they leave wvw.

5. Offensive is best.
Wvw is atm all about attacking castles and getting loot and wxp for it. There is little reward for defending.

6. Match up forum.
-

7. Wvw tournaments take too long.
Many wvw’ers just dont have the energie to continue all the time during a wvw tournament. Anet needs to make the tournaments shorter.

Just what i think.
Sorry for grammer and stuff.

1. EotM is the worst thing to happen to WvW ever.
My friend who just purchased the game got to level 80 in 3 days there… i’m sorry but that is so game breaking and unfair to the people who truly had to grind it. I wonder why this is not considered some kinda PvE event rather than a WvW one since you fight NPC’s more then other players seems a better way to categorize it. You earn exp, WvW exp, and loot way to fast i have gone up 30 WvW ranks in a few days in normal WvW that would not be possible, so you have destroyed the ranking system that let us know if a player has experience doing it or not…thanks. Hardly anyone on my server is doing WvW anymore cant find 1 commander or group(later hours at least), meanwhile if i go to EotM I’m put into one of the overflow servers that is still packed with several commanders on screen and tons of players after the $ train….so thats where all the WvW players are now. Now a few complaints about the map itself, its so linear it makes me sick one wrong step off the path and back to the start(that’s probably the most challenging thing about the map), get in a fight with another group and always have a death fall close by…good idea. NO MIDDLE SPAWN POINTS….EB has sm so cmon.

Ways to fix it? NERF NERF NERF…. The map should become a top part of the normal WvW zones and when you fall you enter the other map and if you miss water or try to land inside enemy keeps die. Another better option, only allow access to EotM if a map you desire is full and you must wait to join, then it forces you to join that map automatically when its available.(Honestly when i heard of EotM i thought this was its purpose to allow you to play some when the WvW maps were full)

2. Duel system
I know we already have PvP, but it lacks the true feeling you have playing outside of it in normal PvE and WvW zones. I really don’t appreciate having to develop two different styles of playing just so i can 1v1 someone when it could be the same if the gear/stats matched. So why cant we have a simple Duel system so we can fight another player wherever they are and what ever level they are or area scales too. This would be most beneficial for WvW since alot of the players their would accept duels more-so then PvE players and they don’t have to change their gear or play style to accomplish it. Furthermore PvPers would be more interested in WvW since it would have some form of PvP action but different entirely from what they are use to. Lastly you could sell a permanent item to initiate Dual challenges from the gem store so anet would be happy about it and i know i’d buy it.