Guild Wars 2

I’ve been on Hiatus since just after HoT release, main reasons I left were, lack of attention to WvW, horrible new maps, and all garbage that came to WvW with HoT.

I had a friend trying to convince me to come back, so I came here to do some reading. I see they have done a World Linking, can anyone give me a quick bullet point explanation of this. Can you play on your allies BL’s, is the game fun again, are Queues a problem, all that fun stuff.

I also see they brought back the Old maps, this is encouraging.

I’ll be honest I’m on the fence, Anet has proven time and again that they do not learn from their mistakes and refuse to listen to the community. Has anything changed and is there still hope for this Game mode ? Am I locked into whichever server it is I’m on (honestly don’t recall)?

oh my, you have opened up a can of worms… I’m interested in seeing the responses… For myself, I can’t/won’t say whether or not it’s “worth” coming back since that’s a personal choice. The only thing I will say is to try it and see. Worst that can happen is you don’t like it and leave again.

Short answer: YES!

(I really hope the Desert BL will not be back anytime soon, because then we will once again see a population drop)

If this game was subscription based I would say No. But since you have HoT allready you can just fire it up and check it out! Elite specs and power creep made range damage far better then it was. Although melee trains are still viable with good coordination.

Agreed with Deniara – answer is YES now that Alpine is back. I’ve already brought back several people to the game who quit when DBL came out.

Balthazzarr.1349:

oh my, you have opened up a can of worms… I’m interested in seeing the responses… For myself, I can’t/won’t say whether or not it’s “worth” coming back since that’s a personal choice. The only thing I will say is to try it and see. Worst that can happen is you don’t like it and leave again.

You’re probably right, what I really would like to know is how this world linking works, there doesn’t seem to be much detail other then glicko resets and angry low tier servers in the sticky post about it. I don’t even know if you are stuck on your own server maps and scores just contribute to both servers or if you can guest to your allied servers BL’s, essentially playing on a different server.

Stab got buffed, its nice now, I run DH, Berserker again instead of just backline, almost shelved my druid and scrapper. Necros and Eles are still good, thieves still blow in large scale fights.

Servers got merged, so many more people to play with and against, reward tracks got added, lots of changes. It is very much worth checking out at this time, they are still working on it and it still has ways to go, but there are actual changes that are very nice.

I recommend you try it out over the weekend and see. Go to your class forums or hop on TS and ask or look up some recent builds etc. before you do though, lots of balance changes to lots of classes so you may need to adjust your build or make a new one or you’ll be dirtnapping all the time and make complaints on the forums like the people making condi complaints etc.

Also, you most likely have 2 TS servers to choose from now, make sure you have info and can hop onto both. And if you left very shortly after HOT release, you may not have elite specs unlocked. The one thing that has not changed is that elite specs rule.

It is much, much easier and quicker to unlock them now then before, but it does involve a bit of PVE, specifically, you want to use the in game LFG and find a HOT maps Hero Point run and join it. That is the fastest and most efficient way to get elite spec.

Tongku.5326:

Stab got buffed, its nice now, I run DH, Berserker again instead of just backline, almost shelved my druid and scrapper. Necros and Eles are still good, thieves still blow in large scale fights.

Servers got merged, so many more people to play with and against, reward tracks got added, lots of changes. It is very much worth checking out at this time, they are still working on it and it still has ways to go, but there are actual changes that are very nice.

I recommend you try it out over the weekend and see. Go to your class forums or hop on TS and ask or look up some recent builds etc. before you do though, lots of balance changes to lots of classes so you may need to adjust your build or make a new one or you’ll be dirtnapping all the time and make complaints on the forums like the people making condi complaints etc.

Also, you most likely have 2 TS servers to choose from now, make sure you have info and can hop onto both. And if you left very shortly after HOT release, you may not have elite specs unlocked. The one thing that has not changed is that elite specs rule.

It is much, much easier and quicker to unlock them now then before, but it does involve a bit of PVE, specifically, you want to use the in game LFG and find a HOT maps Hero Point run and join it. That is the fastest and most efficient way to get elite spec.

Stab got buffed? how so? is it back to normal ? This little tid bit of info is really encouraging.

Helzy.4036:

Balthazzarr.1349:

oh my, you have opened up a can of worms… I’m interested in seeing the responses… For myself, I can’t/won’t say whether or not it’s “worth” coming back since that’s a personal choice. The only thing I will say is to try it and see. Worst that can happen is you don’t like it and leave again.

You’re probably right, what I really would like to know is how this world linking works, there doesn’t seem to be much detail other then glicko resets and angry low tier servers in the sticky post about it. I don’t even know if you are stuck on your own server maps and scores just contribute to both servers or if you can guest to your allied servers BL’s, essentially playing on a different server.

The linked servers are essentially merged for the purposes of WvW (though not permenantly, as in they can change the links if necessary in the future). So there are only the 4 WvW maps and everyone from both linked servers plays on them.

Definitely worth trying out for a few days.

Ok thanks for clearing that up so there isn’t 8 maps available between the 2 servers. Doesn’t that cause some Queue issues ?

The fact that there has been no obligatory “no, game sucks, burn any PC that has it installed” is also encouraging.

no game is without issues.. I love GW2.. love WvW… will grump when there are issues (in my mind) but will probably never stop playing. Didn’t like the DBL’s until they made the latest changes to them. Don’t care that much for the Alpine BL’s but it seems a lot of people do so it’s all good. Gonna keep going in and roaming havocing and getting blobbed to death… because it’s… fun? haaaa..

Since you already have the game, nothing lost(except maybe some time) in just trying it out again. WvW is actually pretty fun again. And there are a lot of lower tiered players that are loving the mergers in wvw, myself included!

If you liked the game summer of 2015 – it is sort of back to that stage, but with auto loot, reward tracks, and the other hot stuff like tactivators elite specs etc.. I personally think they went backward with the BL, but as others have said – try it yourself and you determine if it is worth it or not. It doesn’t cost anything.

Queues depend on the server bg-TC and guests for sure. I am not sure on the others. If you like everything, but the queues – you can transfer to the guest server in a different linking for 500 gems….

Problem is ONLY you can decide if you want to play again. ONLY you know what you like and don’t like. Everyone can give you a hundred different reasons why they like or don’t like the game.

Personally I like both maps. Different tactics needed on each map. Personally I also like PvE both in Core and in HoT. I paid the $100 for HoT and have no regrets and am enjoying myself everyday in the game. My opinion is just that, it’s my opinion. No one else has the ability to give you your opinion.

Queues really aren’t that bad, and my server is linked with TC. Rarely are all the areas queued, so you almost always have a bl to go to while you’re waiting for the EB queue. And a lot of the time the bls are more fun than EB, anyways. Depends on what sort of wvw’ing you enjoy the most.

Yea come back give it a whirl.. Saw a large population spike yesterday in the BL’s since DBL is gone.

@OP, install the game and see for yourself, other players opinion may not be like yours :P

Helzy.4036:

I’ve been on Hiatus since just after HoT release, main reasons I left were, lack of attention to WvW, horrible new maps, and all garbage that came to WvW with HoT.

Reasons to try it again:

• No cost to do so since you already own the game
• WvW rewards have been added
• New server links have increased populations by effectively condensing have the servers without actually forcing transfers
• WvW is getting some attention so more changes might occur
• Squad functionality continues to improve
• Arctic Borderland returned if you were a fan

Reasons not to depending on which HoT items you disliked:

• HoT Elites are still present
• WvW structures do still auto-upgrade but based on Dolyaks
• Guild halls still required to grant your guild passive buffs for controlled structures
• Scribes still needed if you want to create activate-able structure boons

Hope that helps. Good gaming!

TheGrimm.5624:

Helzy.4036:

I’ve been on Hiatus since just after HoT release, main reasons I left were, lack of attention to WvW, horrible new maps, and all garbage that came to WvW with HoT.

Reasons to try it again:

• No cost to do so since you already own the game
• WvW rewards have been added
• New server links have increased populations by effectively condensing have the servers without actually forcing transfers
• WvW is getting some attention so more changes might occur
• Squad functionality continues to improve
• Arctic Borderland returned if you were a fan

Reasons not to depending on which HoT items you disliked:

• HoT Elites are still present
• WvW structures do still auto-upgrade but based on Dolyaks
• Guild halls still required to grant your guild passive buffs for controlled structures
• Scribes still needed if you want to create activate-able structure boons

Hope that helps. Good gaming!

TY this is more or less what I was looking for.

As for opinions, others may differ but player opinions speak volumes considering when I left the vast majority of the forum posters were wielding pitchforks. It seems this is no longer the case, you can get quite a bit out of others opinions whether you agree or disagree.

Reasons to return:

1) WvW is actually getting attention! It’s something that Anet talks about now.
2) Reward tracks and participation bonus are fabulous additions.
3) The ABL is back! You can now have frequent sieges involving other players.
4) Stability was changed in such a way that it’s now viable to set up a melee focused squad.

Reasons to not return:

1) Skill/trait balance is still absolutely atrocious and there’s so much terrible power creep going on now. Everything hits too hard in WvW to the point where the armour/toughness stat is almost superfluous now. I’ve played WvW since release and I can’t belive Anet have allowed it to get this bad. It’s only going to get worse when the next expansion comes out.
2) The DBL is going to come back into rotation at some point, probably without any needed changes. It needs fundamental structural changes to reduce the geographical isolation of players and objectives.
3) They didn’t bother to change ABL stuff that was needed. The Skritt and Centaurs are still useless and you can still exploit siege building at Citadel spawn.