Guild Wars 2

Good to hear Chris, Guilds and GvG are probably the most prevalent issues that the GW2 design team are and have been facing, and it’s good to see it is finally being addressed. While i’ll leave my suggestions in the CDI about GvG, I wanted to make a point that you guys should also try and reach out to guild leaders/drivers/community organisers that have made this game type work for so long. I don’t think there is anyone who would like to see this done right more than the guys who have been going out there for so long and giving it a bash despite a very bleak outlook on the games future. You’ll also need to give them a reason to come back from Archeage, and failure to do so may result in them doubting the merits of improvements on the implemented system.

While I do expect you guys to move away from a standardized 15s/20s TDM (not that there is anything inherently wrong with TDM), I urge you to consider drawing inspiration from the current styles of combat being used. A good mix of single target and group play, a developed meta that still has a large enough tolerance in composition/builds and an evolving playerbase that has become less reliant on a single driver but a strong roster across the board.

Best of luck

“Dhuumfire on power necro = good
Dhuumfire on condi necro = overpowered”

Thank you for this thorough explanation, it’s clear to see you’ve arrived at this conclusion through controlled testing, detailed analysis and well documented comparisons.

inv plox something something

GvG against FEAR
PoV Slamarathy, Dunkmaster.
GGWP
Still recruiting the things.

morrolan.9608:

Amity.8549:

morrolan.9608:

Nakoor.1980:

T1 meta needs to change. Stop tagging up people and run tagless. 15-25 man groups only please.

What are the militia meant to do then?

Join a guild and run with them.

What if they’re in WvW when their guild doesn’t have a raid on?

-Respectfully ask any guild you are on good terms with if it’s okay to follow along
-Roam
-Join another guild in that timezone
-Accept the fact that if you can’t do those things then you’re not going to get quality time in WvW outside of raids just like any other game

morrolan.9608:

Nakoor.1980:

T1 meta needs to change. Stop tagging up people and run tagless. 15-25 man groups only please.

What are the militia meant to do then?

Join a guild and run with them.

“Good fights”
“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING THE OTHER FIGHTS AREN’T GOOD?”
-dis thread

Good fights in NA so far, OC/SEA is still pretty messy. Hoping to see some more guilds going untagged and looking for fights during the week. Also really glad to see the GvG scene picking up in OC/SEA with more guilds giving it a go.

Esqi.8496:

Thanks MERC and KnT for the GvG’s last night. Was a lot of fun.

TKG are looking for more 15v15 this week

Yeah it was great fun and we definitely look forward to more in the future as our roster builds. You guys were running extremely tight and in general it’s awesome to see more SEA/OCX guilds entering the GvG scene (especially with seasons over).

Le Rooster.8715:

Amity.8549:

It was a little bit of a slow start but ended up having some great fights tonights. Big props to FB for an incredibly tight fight, feel free to PM myself or Veld for some skrims!

<3

oh hello!

It was a little bit of a slow start but ended up having some great fights tonights. Big props to FB for an incredibly tight fight, feel free to PM myself or Veld for some skrims!

Great GvG’s tonight from KNT, CNB, CB, Omen and WM!

scootshoot.6583:

Love it or hate it this matchup becomes MERC vs Ex-MERC.

Sort of like when JQ and DB matched up for the first time back in the day after the Rawnoodles fiasco…..Good luck!

Sorry TC, no disrespect but you guys just don’t have the coverage to have a strong say in what should be a decent weekend battle amongst the other 2 servers.

no.

This place never changes

Hahaha Jerico that’s awesome

So much merchate, looks like I did my job last night.

Nightcrawler.2580:

Burl.9567:

Paxi.1386:

AFK.1854:

It’ll be interesting to see how long BG can keep up this overtime coverage strategy they have going. I’m all for competition. That way, guilds stay on their respective servers and don’t transfer out due to frustration or boredom.

LOL, why is it that when we are winning it is said that we are pulling massive overtime? Fact is our NA, Oceanic, and SEA have always been strong, but with the addition of RG and HB coming back IRON hasn’t been able to steamroll the EU timeslot. There is no overtime involved and now we match all of your coverage spots.

Quite a few of the BG SEA crew pulled OT this week. We aren’t used to seeing them playing during the EST NA time slot, but they had full zergs out into that slot.

Apparently some of BGs SEA crews were a little annoyed that BGs other time slots weren’t pulling their weight and it was voiced to many guilds to pick up their play a little which likely led to some extra motivation from BG this week as well.

Keep it going into next week. This is a really fun matchup either way.

Who are these sea guilds that are pulling full zergs during est? I haven’t notice any big sea guild force during est. Just the normal few who have time to play at that time slot.

MERC is secretly ICoa, KnT and BT, we run different tags so people don’t suspect that we’re actually robots sent from the future to rule the World….vsWorld.

I can guarantee that MERC aren’t doing overtime, this is our usual raid times. The only exception might of been on wednesday when I tagged up late NA but other than that it’s just been OC/SEA/EU as always.
We haven’t even done a CTA.

That looks normal for our necros, what are you on about!

Thanks to JQ/SoR for some cool fights tonight. Had bit of a chuckle when we fought DC/TKG and you guys were non-stopped ressing, that encounter took a good 10 minutes haha. Well done and keep up the pace all.

Thanks to SoR and JQ for making a good show tonight, I rarely tag up so it’s good to see some epic fights, special props to IRON, HIRE and Waha in particular for some nailbiting plays.

Sacrx.6721:

How is US t1 now?. Any guilds actually running in 20-30 man or is it all on 1 commander 24/7 60-100 man blobs all week?. Making usual excuse for being bad its not gvg its wvw… From reading first few pages seems fair few guilds interested in some GvG. How are the EU hours?. How is the lag etc?.

Much worse since you left in terms of blobbing, only a handful of gvg’s going on

Wolbryne.4037:

What respect I had for MERC is now gone after this pathetic show.

“All war is deception” – Martin Luther King Jr.

MERC just flexing its coordination.

Zeres.8713:

Gee tarkus, people don’t seem to agree with you.
Your actions horribly represent a respectable guild. (MERC)

Wait were respectable?!

I thought we were bandwagoning, tower hugging, 100 man mindless zergs on 3 maps that smelt bad.

It was the first I heard about it as I’ve been on fairly infrequently but I after chatting to my guys they have stated they only went over to say ‘GG’ etc, talking about the match in general. One of my guys chatted with calm little buddy, so there is your witness. If you have anything to disprove it otherwise, provide it with evidence and I’ll see it rectified. Otherwise you’re just spreading false rumours.

Do you have screenshots or names? whisper me in game

Well done to the jq defending BG hills, so many carts!

So what are people thoughts on the culling fix in terms of combat. It’s obviously great being able to actually see your enemies but has combat been less or more interesting/engaging?

Ashbringer.8172:

Vash.9183:

Ashbringer.8172:

Tarkus.4109:

WRod.3856:

^haha. Merc is FoO’s bff

To be honest I would’ve quit GW2 a long time ago if it wasn’t for FoO, they are at least fun to fight in open field and to be honest I’m only really in it for the fights. Admidedly when we’re down on numbers and have low support we do wipe a lot to FoO + DC +PuGs etc, but that is more an indication of numbers over skill. FoO is a very skilled opponent and when we have equal forces I would say that the fights are relatively even (relatively). <3 FoO, keep trucking we just get better and try to be better every night.

you know MERC is BG’s main SEA force?why dont you face FoO?

Why don’t you stay up late enough to see that they fight FoO every bloody night? Jesus. Lol. And to top it off… they’re Oceanic.

I mean “face”? not “chase”?I know they are Oceanic?and they are at GMT+10, FoO at GMT+8. FoO fight them at SOS days, every night FoO on ,we would have to attack 3lvl keep and tower, did you ever fight at asian time zone?? after 3 times wipe, they always switch to other BL, if we wanna fight them ,we have to find where they are.

We don’t have the luxury of being able to push 3/4 borderlands every night; If we’re playing for ppt we need to punish neglected keeps and not get caught up in skirmish wars that either end in bruteforcing, golem rushing or parking 70+ people on trebs with an uncouth amount of swirling winds.

Also for reference, our numbers are stretched across both oceanic and SEA with several commanders in both slots, we average only 35 most nights and often are supplemented players from other guilds. However, I had no wish to play ‘who can stay up latest’ with waha every night.

Ashbringer.8172:

Tarkus.4109:

WRod.3856:

^haha. Merc is FoO’s bff

To be honest I would’ve quit GW2 a long time ago if it wasn’t for FoO, they are at least fun to fight in open field and to be honest I’m only really in it for the fights. Admidedly when we’re down on numbers and have low support we do wipe a lot to FoO + DC +PuGs etc, but that is more an indication of numbers over skill. FoO is a very skilled opponent and when we have equal forces I would say that the fights are relatively even (relatively). <3 FoO, keep trucking we just get better and try to be better every night.

you know MERC is BG’s main SEA force?why dont you face FoO?

You mean what we’ve been doing for 4 months now?

The heretic.1052:

excellent fights tonight guy’s.

Hahah that is so awesome!

Awesome match up this week. See you all in weeks time!

I agree, the numbers are arbitrary but when they’re close it feels like you can have an impact. Your effort and performance will just slightly contribute to the collective efforts of your server, and if that slight change is the difference between victory and defeat then it’s hard not to take some sense of accomplishment away from it. Really the problem lies in the fact we’re taking hardcore guilds and putting them in a game designed for a casual playerbase. As such, the spirit of competitiveness that resides in these hardcore guilds try to find some sense of purpose in the game. For guilds like VoTF, RG and a lot of the euro’s, this comes down to open field tactics. For some guilds, it comes down to being able to assualt heavily defended keeps. For the majority of other guilds there, ours included, it is a mix of these things. The PPT is a horrible thing to put onto the stress of these players, but without it there literally exists no balance between these spectrum. Without that balance, a lot of guilds are in shambles as why to play.

As for JQ’s population I’m going to avoid this topic because I believe the horse has been beaten out of existence when it comes to opinions on the matter. I just hope that our decision to move to BG will bring people from all tier 1 servers out to play regardless of score. Morale is helluva drug.

@ Drwookie

“Were you one of the people a few pages back who were mentioning how you play for the fights, not for the score? If not, then I apolgoize.”

A quick browse of Karp’s post history would indicate that he never posted that. Which sounds about right; Whilst fights are usually the peaks of fun, it feels hollow if there is no purpose to winning (or losing).

Kalash.1803:

Thanks MERC for the awesome GvG. It was really fun. Goodluck BG in T1.

The pleasure was ours, I don’t think MERC would be half the guild it would be today if we didn’t have competition like WM and FOO. This was the most fun I’ve had in this game, ever. Big shout to to 9D for helping out.

From skimming past the majority of post it’s clear that people would rather jump to conclusions based on the minimal data presented rather than employ some sense of empathy or logical decision making. I have told the our reasing to the majority of SoS guild leaders as well as some prominent figure heads from other servers as to why the decision was made. The choice to move came from a range of variables stemming from internal guild factors, to the community, to game design and purpose. Since a lot of people have asked in game and there are probably a few who are genuinely curious in this thread we summarized as:

- We want to play where we have a more competitive battlefield on a 24/7 basis as opposed to having swings in population ratios which ultimately lead to high volatility in the scores.
- We want to have sense of buffer on server in the adjacent time zones so we’re not logging on to sub 80 ppt and that when we log off there are still other guilds operating and coming on. This really destroyed our sense of purpose in the game; Our efforts felt futile and most of leaders didn’t want to tag up or log on.
- This is a minor point as well but I’ll say it regardless. We felt obliged to taking steps to shape the game in a way that tier 1 can be competitive again. Since no one else wanted to come to us we had to suck it up and go to them.

This will be my first and final post on the matter as I has no wish to go swimming just yet.

Mighty Assasin.3816:

Thobek.1730:

its a close battle but who will win it in the end?

the excitement is overwhelming.

I think JQ will win. I could be wrong though.

I’m betting heavily on Sebulba, he always wins.

jojojoon.8607:

So much whining from a few individuals on this thread already. I don’t want to judge a server based on a few individuals but it’s just getting repetitive..

A few observations this week so far:
1) During first few hours of reset, JQ was the focus of both servers. That kept their PPT very low for quite awhile.

2) I noticed that some JQ players changed shifts. Instead of playing during reset, they’re actually playing during oceanic time zone (JQ’s weakest time zone). Very smart if true.. Playing 12 hours straight can burn you out quick.

3) Chinese New Years is this weekend. At first, I thought that would hurt the SEA time slot for all servers since typically they would need to eat dinner with family, visit relatives, etc during this holiday. However, I noticed some FOO and SEA guilds in JQ staying up really late yesterday. Some actually played to 1:30 pm PST time which is 5:30 am SEA time.

I think that is the biggest difference so far in this matchup. Checking the JQ recruitment thread, I don’t really see any large euro guilds playing in that time slot for JQ. Votf from SOS actually is the largest euro guild in that time zone. However, if the SEA group from JQ is willing to stay up that late, it gives a perception of them having lots of euro players playing at that time zone. That is something that SOS used to do – oceanics playing late to make other servers think they also have superior SEA coverage. And it is also the main reason why they were #1 for so long. Not sure why they have stopped doing that.

A lot of oceanics/SEA, myself included, are getting tired of playing till 2am+ every night just to mitigate the losses when there is a certain futility to it. Sure, we can go super late and cover euro and ask that NA do the same coverage but what will that achieve? perhaps SoS might be able to score victory one week but on a sustainable level it would quickly burn us out. Play for the enjoyment of the game, play with friends and for the effort put in by your rivals. Play to win, but know what victory means to you. For me personally, victory is wiping a FOO zerg or holding >220ppt during the SEA/EU hours. Let the chips fall where they may.

Durkon Thunderstorm.5918:

We never stopped in the first place.

No WvW reset? oh god these threads are going to continue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU

zazu.2836:

Ljiona.9142:

If you walk backwards into a portal in Lion Arch, you skip the queue and your number counts against the other server. Why you guys can’t get in….

I’ve tried every single speculation out there but I have not tried this one. since everything out there didn’t work, doesn’t hurt to try this one.

It also helps if you hold A+B+Down when you enter.

covenn.7165:

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

SoS Mercs still prove that they are the crushing force of Oceanic timezone. Sadly we do not have the numbers so we cant be everywhere at once.

SoR should have taken Hills from JQ light years ago , instead they want to take our bay when JQ is trying to take it as well. SoR must be too scared to fight JQ.

Everyone fights 2v1. That is the nature of this game and three sided fights. Most commanders do things for tactical reasons and not because they are ‘scared’. Please try to remain respectful and clean. People on other servers are no ‘different’ than you

Agreed on the 2v1 explaination. It’s only natural to pick the softest target, and as stated on my previous post, that’s SoS during the late SEA hours. Before MERC plus those on our VoIP jumped maps to SoR BL it was literally only ~10 people defending Bay and Briar (shout out OCX). There’s definitely a sense of futility in the matter.

Wrong SS.

15 char is like so long and stuff.

Score update. Had a fun time on SoR bl, JQ bl was decent as well but the lacking numbers has made us a soft target, JQ sweeping the south and SoR pushing from the north. Had a lot of fun fighting SoR this week, and they’ve been very well mannered on the forums so kudo’s to you. I feel the balance between SoR and SoS is much more even, I hop we get in a match up with out JQ, will be a really tight battle.

One of the best reset nights I’ve even been in, good fun on SoR bl.

Darkrider.7461:

Whatever happens this week, i would like to tip my hat to everyone who has put in the extra time to push hard on our server and others. We have had some great fights no matter what has been said on this forum.

That being said, all you MERC guys can you do me a favor, please leave the purple asura alone my repair bill is breaking me =).

Nitejack the portal slave of EMP

haha! I was going through my fraps footage of last night after I read this post and I think I spotted you a few times :P

After leading on sos bl for a good 6-8 hours today it was pretty intense to JQ out there. After hearing report of other maps, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it almost felt like the old HoD days. I think it’s fair that JQ were out recruiting guilds and beefing up their coverage. I’m not going to deny that SoS had better overall coverage prior to the past few weeks, and that we are just experience what our rivals had been feeling before. All that exists within the natural dynamics of the game. What annoyed me though was what felt like the lacking of large scale operations on the map. Now, I am just seeing this from the eyes of the opponent, I have no intel on the commanders on the map and I can’t read their team chat so I don’t know what they’re saying but the impression left was that they were just pushing headstrong onto sunny and garrison for the entire night. I’m used to fighting outnumbered forces, both FOO and DC are very well coordinated at large guild tactics, but the opponents I faced today lacked that discipline and cohesion. I’m sure there were a few guilds pulling the strings, especially setting up the seige defences in sunny, so I’m not suggesting it was headbutting. The point I’m trying to make, and I’m not trying to sound offensive, is that coverage isn’t simply everything; based on tonights performance there is a lot of room for improvements in overall strategy and map macro.

Hope all aussie’s celebrated hard and are ready to kick some kitten Epic fight in SoS bl bay a few hours ago, intense 3-way action and some strong presence from BG!

Glad to hear it, I look forward to what the future of WvW brings.