Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of players complaining that the alpine BL will be replaced with no date given for a future comeback. I really like this map, so I really hope it will come back soon after the release, but then I asked myself: why would I have done in Anet’s shoes?

1) Adding three new BL to the existing four maps. No what would certainly happen? Almost no one would play on the alpine BL, because everyone would want to try out the new one. You think your coverage issues are bad? Now think about what it would be if three of your maps were empty almost all day long.

2) Adding, say, two new BL and keep one alpine BL. We have no idea on how different and asymmetrical the new BL is, but we do now that the alpine BL is VERY asymmetrical: the server with the Citadel has a huge advantage. In addition to that, here again, most players will be playing in the new BL, making the alpine a dead map and causing huge queues on the desert maps (to be fair, there will be queues anyway, even if they add three maps).

3) Have a week-by-week or month-by-month rotation between BL: one time alpine, one time desert. For all we now, that’s what they have in mind. It just seems logical that when HoT goes live the new BL are live as well.

4) Add a third BL. While this would be awesome, I am CERTAIN that Anet doesn’t have a third BL magically hidden on their server somewhere, so if they really want to follow this path, we might not see the alpine BL for a while.

The way I see it, replacing the old BL by the new ones at least for a few weeks after the release of HoT is the best move they could do, since most players will want to play on this map anyway. When the hype goes down a bit, I hope they find a good way to rotate between alpine and desert BL (they obviously didn’t figure a way to do that yet, that’s why they are so mysterious about it). Thematically and gameplay-wise, the alpine BL is very, very similar to EB, so the players who would want to play the old WvW game style will still be able to go there. My only concern is that there will be to many players willing to play WvW, resulting in insane queue times. What about you? How would you have done it?

I think ANet should follow the rout of designing for the game exactly 4 different huge Borderland Theme Maps-

• Alpine = (should get completely redesigned brought back first to com back with the same Quality, that the new Desert Map has as the new Standard for WvW)
• Desert
• Lakeshore (kind of Atlantis Style with more Focus on Underwater Battles)(EB schould get worked into this)
• Jungle (Forest/Swamp Mix with exotic wildlife Style)

These 4 huge Maps should work then on a 3 Month Rotation through the Year, basically like the 4 Seasons

Alpine = Winter
Lakeshore = Spring
Desert = Summer
Jungle = Fall

So every 3 Months the Borderland Map will change to the next one.
Edge of the Mists stays as neutral Map that can be entered at any time.
Same as like Eternal Battlegrounds, but I wish EB will get somewhen in the future redesigned and improved too, so that it will profit somewhen from all the latest WVW improvements too, while EotM stays as basically Testing Platform for eventuelly new Features.

Thaty my personaly vision about WvW, which I hope, that Anet kind of will do this with the BL Maps and the whole thing about their Rotation Plans, because, what would it make for a sense to start with a Rotation here, if Anet wouldn’t plan on releasing more new BL Maps for the future, because a Rotation between only 2 Map Themes wouldn’t make much of sense.

So my guess is, Anet will make must likely 4 Maps, if not more, so that a rotation system makes sense and is worth it to do it instead of simply enabling all players to play on all maps all the time, but that would divide too much the WvW community, so I think thats the most logical reason for why we get that rotation system most likely too.

I think 3 Months between rotations is a good amount of time, long enough to make also within that time seasonal tournaments for example.