Guild Wars 2

I’m afraid bringing back ABL updated with HoT gimmicks will just alienate more WvW players.

I loved ABL and don´t like DBL but HoT brought a lot more bad things than just DBL: Class imbalances, power creep, autoupgrades, change in waypoints, banners, tactivators, removal of guild upgrades, PvE grind for WvW guilds and lots of bugs. And it didn´t solve any of the issues that were already present. Bringing back the old maps is not enough to get me back in the game.

Sad to see Ruins of Surmia where they are now. Over time most WvW guilds left to other servers but there were still lots of lone wolves and several small guilds fighting. Then HoT got released ruining the game for solo players and small guilds and causing most of them to leave the game, leaving very few active WvW players on this server :-(

1. Fix class/skill unbalance between elites and vanilla classes
2. Make upgrades a manual action again
3. Bring back Alpine borderlands (unchanged!)
4. Remove all PvE inspired nonsense (banners, air ships, laser event, etc)
5. Undo stability nerf

I would list more but you asked for a top 5. I was having a blast every single day playing WvW right up till HoT got released. HoT sucked all the fun from the game for me. I stopped playing GW2 but if anet fixes the problems in WvW introduced with HoT I may return.

These changes are a step in the right direction but not nearly enough to put things right again. Fix the class imbalance (new classes vs old ones), add player interaction required for a an upgrade (after a nightcap on lower tiers everything will still turn fully fortified real quick) and please get rid of those ridiculous borderlands.

1. There used to be around 5 very active players in our wvw only guild and a couple more less active ones but I have seen only 1 guildy (once) since HoT got released
2. -
3. None, don’t have HoT
4. -
5. We used +5 a lot and now HoT has made it so we can never get it again.
6. Make basic upgrades like +5 available again to ppl without HoT and make sure everybody (including small guilds) can obtain them easily through playing wvw.

HoT took away stuff that we had and made sure we cannot get it back. So should we get HoT just to get back to where we were before? (And even then it will still be almost impossible to get the upgrades with a small guild.) It feels like a scam.

Right now in my tier all 4 maps are green and fully upgraded. Taking a fully upgraded structure takes so long that green has all the time in the world to come to defend it. So red and blue just dont bother and dont show up anymore. Autoupgrade is ruining everything. I want my classic wvw back :-(

Great post. I agree with pretty much everything OP says.

•Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

I would usually play during off-peak hours recapping and upgrading borderlands or causing havoc in enemy bl. I would play solo (taking camps and towers) or join up with other players to form small groups. Sometimes I’d tag up to take keeps or defend against larger groups. After enemy nightcap everything would be paper so 1-3 players could take back a lot of the borderland or EB corner in 1 hour. A lot of the satisfaction came from knowing that my efforts helped to get my server in a good position during peak (with upgraded keeps). During peak I’d join my wvw raiding guild (10-20 players) and we would look for other guilds to fights or join fights for keeps.

•Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

I would go EB when BL was fully upgraded or when EB needed my help. In EB usually a commander would be leading the pugs around. I’d join them or go solo taking camps and towers and finding other roamers to fight.

•Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

Navigating the new map is a pain in the kitten . Cant quickly get to where my help is needed. After enemy nightcap everything has turned T3 automatically making it impossible to do much in an hour with the 1 or 2 players that are on the map so I just won’t bother and leave.

•Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

In the past lots of small scale fighting between enemy roamers/groups trying to take structures and several dedicated defenders/upgraders was taking place in lower tier off-peak hours. Now the maps are empty because the defenders/upgraders are no longer there. The enemy roamers dont have anyone to fight and the structures are all T3 making them a pain to solo. We now need large groups to get anything done but when solo players cant do anything and leave, not enough players will be there to form a group at all, making all maps dead outside peak hours.

•In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

On my own BL the enemy would usually leave everything paper so it would be easy to take back with a small group. Now it takes frustratingly long because everything is T3 and when I try to solo a tower on EB usually some enemy pugs will have enough time to show up and destroy the siege. And theyll sit on the wall waiting for me to make a move so I’ll just leave. Seems like all the people who would jump down to have a fight have left the game now.

•How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

Loot has been very bad in wvw always but I did some TP flipping so I was always well funded. I played for the fun, not the loot. Getting an ascended chest now and then was very nice though.

I didn’t get HoT because it was all PvE which I dont care for and I kinda saw the storm coming for WvW when lots of beta testers complained about the new maps.

•How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

I wont have any more long sessions. Gameplay has been ruined for me.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Add waypoints in keeps, lots of bridges and stairs so we can get from one structure to another quickly again, remove all pve events, remove gimmicks and most of all remove auto upgrade. Or even better, bring back the old maps.

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

They come into an empty map where everything is T3; have fun soloing those T3 towers and keeps!

•In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Frustrating to navigate, dumb pve events and no enemies to fight.

•Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

For now EB but I’ll probably be gone from GW2 soon.

I’m in EU T7 and am a WvW only player. I’ve been in several WvW guilds but would spend most of my time solo or in small groups; scouting, upgrading and defending the old borderlands and would pop over to other bls to cause havoc and provoke fights when our bl would be quiet for a while. I loved those maps and didn’t go to eb often. These new maps and the auto upgrade system killed all the fun and purpose I had in WvW. I’ts just no fun anymore for solo players or small groups. I only see enemy blobs k-training now. Almost all my online friends of old seem to have left. I just pop in for dailies now and then log out again. I’ll very likely quit playing GW2 soon. I may come back if Anet ever realises the potential of WvW and acts accordingly.

btw Many people say the new borderlands look pretty but I find them ugly. I prefer the rolling green and snowy landscape of alpine bl .

HoT and previous updates took much of the fun out of WvW for me as well. I’d actually be willing to pay to play the old game (old maps, no stab nerf, no auto upgrade). But that option will never be. I played GW2 (WvW only) exclusively for years but I’ll be looking for other games to play now.

I spent most of my gw2 time in border lands defending and upgrading stuff. I had a walk in the new bl and it sure requires a lot of walking. It’s vast and empty (eu t7) and boring as hell. Distances are much to great to quickly run to tagged structures to defend it. The map looks way to much like eotm and we all know what an abomination that is. Guess I’ll make eb my new home. Today is a sad day for me :-(

Here are some events I’d welcome:

• Double movement speed of rams and catapults
• Double the damage of siege disablers
• Make golems mobile
• Make trebuchet and ballista skills ranged
• Make arrow cart skills AoE

Any of these would make a really fun week!

Looking at the nr of wvw guilds on each server which consist of mostly wvw only players there must be many thousands of players who play this game only for wvw including myself.

Apparently we do not play this game as the designers are expecting us to. Thats why we dont get the stuff we would like to see but get crap like golem week instead.

I pretty much play only wvw. Just logged in and there was hardly anyone there, just a few pvers that I’ve never seen before. Our regular wvw players are all gone. I won’t be playing again either until this crap is over.

He’s still at it. Popping up in keeps both in EB and RoS border.

T7 EU

For our server removing white swords is a desaster. We should have more people on than normal because of the holidays but I have never seen our population this low.
We dont have the numbers to scout and always relied on the white swords to tell us where the enemy was attacking. Now noone is upgrading anymore because its useless and a waste of gold. Many of our pug commanders and regular players stopped caring and stopped playing and so our pugs dont stay around long either. I can only hope that this doesnt have a permanent impact on our server and people will come back once this expirement is over.

Same here, I crash every time I click on “sell my items”

I like that I can now use my witch outfit on multiple characters and that I can now use it in combat but not being able to dye each part individually pretty much counters that because I cannot make it look the way I want to. If I change the color of my eyes (sylvari male), part of the clothes change to the same color which then looks quite ugly.

Why maintain a separate system for the old town clothes? I can use an outfit in combat now anyway. Why not simply make all town cloth skins available as armor skins and do away with outfits and tonics?

Item transmutation also has gotten a lot more expensive on < lvl 80 characters. Why not earn 3 charges on map completion and use 3 charges on transmuting lvl 80 items and 1 charge on < lvl 80 items? This would give the same costs as before the patch while using the new system.

In Ruins of Surmia I havent been able to find a single snow/dirt covered object for many days. Guested on several different servers without success until I just tried Whiteside Ridge and found all remaining objects in a single run.