Guild Wars 2

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

Tarnished Coast is currently in T1 and they follow an entirely different rule-set up there compared to where it was before you left. Many people now consider T1 less PPT (defense/objective focused) and more Blob Wars (fight focus/raid focus). As such, the lack of people you see is probably the result of a commanders/guild groups focusing on certain areas of the map at a time (hence why 40+ man blobs are there and nowhere else on the map).

I personally believe GW2 is losing players in wvw. Rather, they are focused on other things (catching up PVE content or Real Life stuff). But one thing is clear is that another tournament season or the new WvW map will bring all players back to the map and hopefully bring WvW to where we all enjoyed it a year ago.

Correction to my last statement: GW2 is not* losing players in WvW, they’re just doing other things before the expansion =P

gatsu.2813:

Correction to my last statement: GW2 is not* losing players in WvW, they’re just doing other things before the expansion =P

You know there is an edit button you can use instead of double posting

@OP: You’re not looking in the right places. It’s also advisable to join a guild that looks for those kinds of battles if that’s what you’re interested in. You don’t really do anything in WvW as a pug.

When I started reading your post I thought oh yeah typical of mid to low tier servers nowadays.

But wow, you’re on TC? And have that experience? Man WvW is deader than I thought.

My guild has just disbanded its GW2 branch… Sad days but almost everybody left so I can understand such a decision.
What a shame if you think about it, WvW could have been so much awesome if a bit more effort had been put into it and if the community had been listened.
It’s a waste of an awesome combat system in my opinion, too bad, now it’s over.

Just be glad you’re on TC, it still has a very healthy WvW population and the people there are really nice and fun to run with. You could have come back to the game and found your server in T7 / T8, where WvW is literally dead (I have an alt account in T7). For TC try playing later than 7 EST, a lot of NA players are still at work or just getting home and settled.

As for the population dropping, I’ve been playing since beta + launch and there has been a definite drop off in WvW players across the entire game. I’ve personally seen lots of guilds disband and / or move to different games. I was on a T1 server at launch (SBI) and the difference between then and the current T1 situation is like night and day. There are still good fights, but it’s not at all like it used to be.

As for why people have left, dedicated WvW players don’t want to invest their time in a game when it’s obvious that the developers don’t want to either. If there are a lot of good changes in HoT, people will come back. If it’s more of what we’ve been getting for the last couple years, expect even more to leave.

I don’t know where your looking but there are pretty consistent fights everywhere. It is a bit rough for solo roamers, especially in the last couple months I would suggest you find a guild to roll with.

You can find members from most wvw guilds at http://forthetoast.com/

If all else fails you are more than welcome to come hang out with my guild [FLOT] we are a roaming/havoc guild, so we run in small groups of 3-15 depending on the night. Feel free to pm me in game if you want to come roll with us.

@OP it’s not a push week

Johje Holan.4607:

When I started reading your post I thought oh yeah typical of mid to low tier servers nowadays.

But wow, you’re on TC? And have that experience? Man WvW is deader than I thought.

That is unreasonably presumptive and inaccurate. It is 2 AM here in middle America and I see 2+ maps queued in T1

Daze.6914:

My guild has just disbanded its GW2 branch… Sad days but almost everybody left so I can understand such a decision.
What a shame if you think about it, WvW could have been so much awesome if a bit more effort had been put into it and if the community had been listened.
It’s a waste of an awesome combat system in my opinion, too bad, now it’s over.

Problem is, its still the best game in its genre despite its flaws and its still very much alive 3 years on. Maybe your guildies left, but the population is still thriving. Enough people to go around which makes WvW awesome. I am also on FSP and we had epic battles yesterday.

I had really hoped that some games could top GW2 by bringing much needed features like the more complex ESO WvW or physics galore Archeage but nope, they ultimately suck at being fun. Most next gen MMORPG games are 1 year away. Hell the only game to top GW2 looks to be GW3 lol.

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

The reason why you see so few players on TC is because servers have been locked for months now. When players quit and no new transfer in, you generally get empty time zones, and the PuG dissapears.

With Megaserver, they could have merged Lower Tiers long long time ago.

The NA T1 servers run on a “zone” time schedule. EU prime, NA prime, SEA/OCX Prime.
All three T1 servers have a set of specific gaps where their coverage (this info is about a year old so may have changed) is absolutely near zero.

For TC their “dead zones” were 3+1.5 hours. First us late SEA/OCX towards early EU and between late NA and early SEA/OCX

For JQ their “dead zones” were 3 hours Early EU, 2 hours late EU. (their EU crew in general was quite weak and spread out)

For BG they had 3x 2 hours “dead zone” between all three coverage “zones”. BG does had slightly weaker late SEA/OCX and EU in general then TC.

Dunno about the exact current situation, but unless many guilds from the right timezones transfered, there is little chance of these zones having changed.

Reverence.6915:

@OP: You’re not looking in the right places. It’s also advisable to join a guild that looks for those kinds of battles if that’s what you’re interested in. You don’t really do anything in WvW as a pug.

I think this is what is making WvW in T1 less fun, for me at least. The map hopping, the zerg all in one place leaving 2 to 3 other maps completely bare while the enemy zerg is somewhere else. At times WvW is like EotM where it almost feels like zergs are avoiding each other on purpose. Yes the leaders are doing what they have to for PPT upkeep with the numbers they have but it isn’t exactly very fun, especially for the PUG material who basically just join WvW these days to get a couple easy daily rewards and then leave because no one says anything in map chat other than “get in TS”.

Saying one can’t do anything in WvW as a pug or if they don’t use voice chat is just writing off a chunk of those bodies who would be in WvW making everything more interesting if they weren’t repeatedly told their effort was “completely useless”. So they all end up in EotM instead where sometimes almost by complete accident you can have a really fun spontaneous battle break out or with the right comm, a really challenging adventure w/o the stress of PPT. We did this to ourselves I guess, sucked all the fun out of WvW but it seems like a waste of potential to me.

Dawdler.8521:

Daze.6914:

My guild has just disbanded its GW2 branch… Sad days but almost everybody left so I can understand such a decision.
What a shame if you think about it, WvW could have been so much awesome if a bit more effort had been put into it and if the community had been listened.
It’s a waste of an awesome combat system in my opinion, too bad, now it’s over.

Problem is, its still the best game in its genre despite its flaws and its still very much alive 3 years on. Maybe your guildies left, but the population is still thriving. Enough people to go around which makes WvW awesome. I am also on FSP and we had epic battles yesterday.

I had really hoped that some games could top GW2 by bringing much needed features like the more complex ESO WvW or physics galore Archeage but nope, they ultimately suck at being fun. Most next gen MMORPG games are 1 year away. Hell the only game to top GW2 looks to be GW3 lol.

Let’s hope GW2 HoT will top GW2 vanilla regarding WvW. I loved every change Anet added to pvp in 2014, and if only they could give the same love to WvW, imagine how great it could be!

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

Usually around 7pm alot of people are trying to defend TC Garri from the daily JQ and BG attack there. They seem to like to try and reset our waypoint at the start of NA prime.

There is also a map roaming group you can find if you log on Mumble. Most of the time you can find fights in EB but they tend to be zerg type fights. I usually log in Mumble while my game is loading so I have an idea of where to head once I get in.

If SMC is flipping easily, it’s usually due to another more important keep being defended somewhere.

coglin.1867:

Johje Holan.4607:

When I started reading your post I thought oh yeah typical of mid to low tier servers nowadays.

But wow, you’re on TC? And have that experience? Man WvW is deader than I thought.

That is unreasonably presumptive and inaccurate. It is 2 AM here in middle America and I see 2+ maps queued in T1

The only server that does that is JQ. Both BG and TC gets 0 queues by around 10pm PST

The lack of updates and improvements burned out tons of players including me (I would rather pvp than roam unless my guild is raiding or GvGing). I think it will keep losing players until the expansion is out, unless they improve the current maps and PPT system now.

Reverence.6915:

coglin.1867:

Johje Holan.4607:

When I started reading your post I thought oh yeah typical of mid to low tier servers nowadays.

But wow, you’re on TC? And have that experience? Man WvW is deader than I thought.

That is unreasonably presumptive and inaccurate. It is 2 AM here in middle America and I see 2+ maps queued in T1

The only server that does that is JQ. Both BG and TC gets 0 queues by around 10pm PST

I can confirm that, I have accounts on both BG and TC and play until 3am most nights, never see queues around that time.

A better question to focus on for those answering would be when the OP played. He’s talking about playing at release. So in that sense the whole structure of WvW is much more organised by those that participate it compared to release. Which may explain his disassociation.

In addition to answer your points about smc. Objectively its hard to hold smc while holding onto objectives closer to home for the returns that it gives you. Most people try to hold onto it but not at the expense of other objectives (usually). As such people usually use it as a supply resource.

My guild transfered to what was a T3 at the time, a few months ago for a 90 day break. Just came back a month or two ago. Had similar queues there. So if your claiming it only happens on JQ, then you are making claims with a full lack of knowledge or being dishonest. The other odd thing, is that you claim those queues do not exist, yet when I whisper a particular commander on your servers, such as the other night, to meet me on a certain map so we can get our guilds together on a map for some fun, they so no go, it and such and such maps are queued. So we have to move to one they do not have queued. I trust those commanders in this case.

Dawdler.8521:

Problem is, its still the best game in its genre despite its flaws and its still very much alive 3 years on. Maybe your guildies left, but the population is still thriving. Enough people to go around which makes WvW awesome. I am also on FSP and we had epic battles yesterday.

I had really hoped that some games could top GW2 by bringing much needed features like the more complex ESO WvW or physics galore Archeage but nope, they ultimately suck at being fun. Most next gen MMORPG games are 1 year away. Hell the only game to top GW2 looks to be GW3 lol.

+1, people can complain, they can quit. But GW2 is one of the best MMO’s left in the market that deliver large scale PvP on a multi-server basis, with good siege combat, season tournaments, server scores, weekly match makings, etc.. ESO was fun for a bit, but ultimately I came back to GW2 because it’s simply more fun. This fighting for the server thing isn’t seen elsewhere since DAOC days, and I think it helps make GW2 fun.

For people that quit to go to other games, chances are those individuals prefer running instanced battlegrounds over and over for quick & easy rewards & gear. That’s not what WvW is about, never was, and I’m glad for that. Plus a lot of people are really PvE players that dabble in PvP/WvW, and they ultimately go back to PvE games. Just look at the amount of people that play in EOTM for karma trains, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

There are plenty of people that play WvW, some quit but often they do so for personal reasons. Many come back, and many new players are still just getting into the game for the first time. That spells success really, for a game to be 3 years old and it’s still going strong. Where as many other newer MMO’s released in the past 3-5 years don’t get to live that long.

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

I play on JQ, so I’m speaking as someone who fights against TC. I can tell you TC is plenty alive, and they can summon some blobs like no tomorrow. TC appears to be able to summon a large blob earlier in the day, like in the afternoon American time. JQ is often under heavy attack from both TC & BG early in the day. If you played earlier, you would see this.

However, some TC guilds do the PvDoor only. Meaning, they go from tower to tower, map to map, avoiding open field combat. If we try to engage, they pull off, despite even numbers or sometimes greater numbers. They’ll stealth hit garrisons, golem zerg bay & hills. So what you are seeing may be this. There are plenty of other TC guilds that don’t do that, but some specific guilds do.

My suggestion is to look for an active guild that suits you. If you like PvDoor or play the ppt game, there are guilds you can join that do that on a regular basis. If you enjoy open field combat or defense, there are plenty to choose from as well on the TC side. But joining the right guilds will help you enjoy the game better. And being on comms used by your server will allow you to know what’s going on better as well.

Good luck!

Dawdler.8521:

Daze.6914:

My guild has just disbanded its GW2 branch… Sad days but almost everybody left so I can understand such a decision.
What a shame if you think about it, WvW could have been so much awesome if a bit more effort had been put into it and if the community had been listened.
It’s a waste of an awesome combat system in my opinion, too bad, now it’s over.

Problem is, its still the best game in its genre despite its flaws and its still very much alive 3 years on. Maybe your guildies left, but the population is still thriving. Enough people to go around which makes WvW awesome. I am also on FSP and we had epic battles yesterday.

I had really hoped that some games could top GW2 by bringing much needed features like the more complex ESO WvW or physics galore Archeage but nope, they ultimately suck at being fun. Most next gen MMORPG games are 1 year away. Hell the only game to top GW2 looks to be GW3 lol.

I agree with you. Note that I didn’t say WvW sucked, far from that actually, but after having epic battles on the same maps doing the same exact things for two whole years… Well things are going from epic to boring and that’s why people has beginning to quit.
Now my guild is focused on ESO and in my humble opinion this game is absolute kitten (though I loved the single player versions) so I’ve set my status on “standby” until the next gen game, as you called it, comes out.

gavyne.6847:

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

I play on JQ, so I’m speaking as someone who fights against TC. I can tell you TC is plenty alive, and they can summon some blobs like no tomorrow. TC appears to be able to summon a large blob earlier in the day, like in the afternoon American time. JQ is often under heavy attack from both TC & BG early in the day. If you played earlier, you would see this.

However, some TC guilds do the PvDoor only. Meaning, they go from tower to tower, map to map, avoiding open field combat. If we try to engage, they pull off, despite even numbers or sometimes greater numbers. They’ll stealth hit garrisons, golem zerg bay & hills. So what you are seeing may be this. There are plenty of other TC guilds that don’t do that, but some specific guilds do.

My suggestion is to look for an active guild that suits you. If you like PvDoor or play the ppt game, there are guilds you can join that do that on a regular basis. If you enjoy open field combat or defense, there are plenty to choose from as well on the TC side. But joining the right guilds will help you enjoy the game better. And being on comms used by your server will allow you to know what’s going on better as well.

Good luck!

Agree with your callout on some TC guilds prefer PvD instead of engaging enemies. What’s the fun in doing that in WvW? They might as well do PvE like replay living story episodes or something.

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

Most of the guilds that play enemy border maps get going at around 8 PM EST. Until then it can be quite quiet on those maps, with generally just the map roaming group hopping in every now and then. During that time it’s not uncommon to queue up the maps.

On enemy border maps, we try to flip the keeps, but the purpose of this is to “paper” them so they can’t get or lose a waypoint. Garrison is usually strongly defended and is difficult to flip, the two side keeps are easier targets. We may defend for a bit for the fights and maybe eek out a bit of PPT, but ultimately we can’t hold a keep on an enemy border overnight so it’s not worth putting too many resources into it.

There’s usually something going on in both home border and EB, no matter what time.

In general, the only places actively defended are home border and your 1/3 of EB. Stonemist is not “traded”, the enemy usually will not just let you cap it, but at the same time it’s not often upgraded either. An EB keep will be strongly defended though (EB is a bad map to pick if you want to get your keep capture daily done as stonemist doesn’t count for it).

I’d suggest you join the TC mumble server, you should be able to get the info in map chat.