Guild Wars 2

2009 AGDC Panel Discussion: http://www.lotd.org/showthread.php?t=26464

We told a wide audience of developers and community managers about the dream MMO, and mine was this….

DAOC 2.0 with the following:

No Trials of Atlantis grinding
With DAOC New Frontiers RVR system
WoW’s solo friendly leveling
Warhammer’s Public Quests done right
Warhammer’s Guild Leveling system with better rewards
AOC’s Guild City Building concept (not in GW2)
COV’s sidekick system
PVP Arena’s with multi-server queuing
Detailed PVP stats (Not in GW2 WwW or SPVP atm)
—-by player
—-by guild
—-achievement recognition
PVP progression systems for items
PVE systems with 5-10 main raid content
Titles and trophies that provided passive bonuses
Gear that has durability and wears out

Ok, Arenanet needs some props because they got a lot of our list right!!!

Quick Siege History

In early DAOC the Keeps and Relics changed hands too frequently, and were unrewarding. I’ll call that the vanilla siege environment because its a straight up zerg the keep down as fast and often as you can to flip territory situtation, and generally not associated with many individual player or guild rewards. It is very similar to what people are saying about WwW now, and why past siege based games went to the Window of Opportunity (WOO) system. WOO’s have their own issues such as 2 AM sieges, and just prove that no siege mechanic is perfect. If sieges are too easy then stuff changes hands all the time, if they are too hard then people get bored, and if they happen in off peak hours most people can’t participate.

DAOC (pre New Frontiers especially), Shadowbane, Age of Conan, Warhammer, and AION all tried the vanilla and WOO siege formates for mass PVP, and essentially they all failed due to what I listed above (in addition to waiting to long to fix broken mechanics or exploits!)

What Can GW2 WwW Do Over The Long Haul??

1.
You need individual and guild level pvp metrics so people can stand out. DAOC had individual and guild realm point rankings. You could match up who you were fighting on the other side (to some extent) by reviewing those, and GW2 could do it too because people are comparing the servers that get matched against one another.

2.
You need to reward players for actually killing other players instead of flipping keeps and sitting behind arrow carts/trebs from miles away. Warhammer’s zone control strat that required player kills for Victory Points was a good mechanic, and some formula for player kills should be going into the WwW overall point total.

3.
Protecting supply lines is strategical and should also be factored into the overall WwW point total.

4.
Reduce point totals for keeps, towers, castles, and resource camps, and add in point generators from the other things I mentioned.

5.
Seven day matches are too long, and I think 3 day matches should be ideal.

Right now it appears to revolve around keeps, towers, castles, and resource camps instead of the whole combat picture, and since there are no individual or guild rankings for WwW then the whole server gets labeled as good or bad.

WwW History

Honestly there hasn’t been a good 3 faction PVP game in a long time, and most players are used to 2 faction PVP. In 3 faction PVP it really is a big King of the Hill match, and it is up to the PLAYERS to politic and strategize to decide who comes out on top of every 3 server match up. In the end the result is winning, and less about who works with who or not.

What is beyond the control of the players though is the fact that WwW generates points with ways that cannot be solved if the point system only revolves around capturing keeps, towers, castles, and resource camps. Actual combat, protecting supply lines, and other “active” things have to be put into the overall point spread, or you just end up with people sitting in keeps all the time while night capping in off peak hours to win the 3 server match.

LotD will fight either way, but I do feel that WwW needs major mechanical changes for long term viability as a PVP option for this game.