Guild Wars 2

A major issue with WvW is population/coverage imbalance (common to MMO open world PvP). Since Guild Wars 2 already has Server Guesting with immediate but temporary player transfers in its design (though it currently excludes WvW), I suggest enhancing Server Guesting to provide the following WvW Mercenary Guest mechanic:

1. A Mercenary is a player from a WvW winning server invited by a player from a WvW losing server to help in WvW as a temporary Guest.

2. A player who wants to be a Mercenary to help a losing server must first Guest to that server, and then must accept a Mercenary Invite from a player who’s home is that server (this enables WvW for the Guest).

3. Players can only accept a Mercenary Invite while their home server is winning in a 3-way match (in first place).

4. Players can only invite a Mercenary while their home server is losing in a 3-way match (in second or third place).

5. The total number of Mercenaries in WvW is capped (at the cap, Mercenaries can no longer queue for WvW and no new Mercenary Invites can be accepted).

6. The total time a Mercenary has in WvW is limited (Mercenaries are ported to Lions Arch as a normal Guest upon time expiration of their Mercenary Invite).

7. Mercenaries are always last in a WvW map queue (they only enter maps with no queues or a map with only Mercenaries left in the queue).

8. A Mercenary Invite is a level 80 item which is a player reward for WvW and/or is purchased like siege weapons.

9. A Mercenary is tagged as “Mercenary” + their WvW title.

Additional restrictions could also be added such as limiting how often Mercenary invites could be accepted by a player within a given amount of time.

The above mechanic would encourage a controlled flow of players from winning servers to losing servers needing help. It may also lead to interesting cross server temporary alliances.

Can’t say I favor the idea. A sever that’s losing will, ideally (under the upcoming system) tend to get matched with other servers more its level. Having mercenaries running in and out of servers takes us to the bad old days of unpredictable server rankings due to too much player movement.

Like okay, we’re losing, so we bring in mercenaries and now we’re winning and we gain a bunch of rating and next week we get creamed even worse because the mercenaries all left. Now we need even more, better mercenaries than before and if we win again, the problem just gets worse.

It’s better to make any player movement be more of a long-term investment than something that can easily change from week to week.

I do not think this is a good idea personally. Thanks for sharing however.

WvW needs more a more dynamic system, while this will just create stale matches.

It’s also a recipe for ranking manipulation on a MASSIVE scale.

A great for instance, DB is winning in T2 and is threatening to go up a tier. JQ is losing in T1 and is clearly the weaker server. DB can send it’s folks to JQ to help them beat BG, ensuring that they’ll face weaker opponents in T1.

Or another example, SoS is in #1 in T4 and will move up soon to T3. If this system was in place they would make sure that KN dropped down over YB, so they could abuse their nighttime coverage even more.

No, this idea is a disaster in the making; not even counting the fact that some servers actually might “hire mercenaries for real” and hire specific groups to help clinch a leap.

YES YES YES… but the mercenary player has to play 1 of 2 options.. the female gaurd or the male charr guard.. huh? huh? lol I would do it all day erry day