Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

I had a few minutes today and decided to pop by the forums and see what was new. It looks like quite a bit.

I haven’t had an opportunity to play the game since late November. My brother and his family are going through some life changes and they moved in with me and my family. Trying to navigate a house full of kids without losing my sanity has become a full time game in itself (and I’m losing!).

Cool to see Kaineng has progressed, and that there are still people around from the old days. I don’t know when I’ll get to play again, especially with the weather getting nicer. I can already hear my kayak calling my name. I just wanted to stop by and say hi to all of my old friends, where ever you ended up.

BTW: I’m going to be permanently deleting the Kaineng War Report archive blog in a day or so and re-purposing that account. If anyone wants to keep any of the old screen shots or videos, grab them soon. http://kaineng.tumblr.com

I hope everyone’s doing well!
Fub

dank.3680:

Well I got my butt kicked from 2 Envy Mesmers in 1v1’s early in my playtime today..

Envy has some insanely good Mesmers, one of which runs solo protecting Ferg’s side of EB. I’m leveling a new Mesmer myself. I find myself going to Ferg’s side of EB now just to learn from this guy (usually at my own peril).

I’d also like to give props to Fergs this week. You guys are working together the way Kaineng used to, and it inspiring to watch. Server wide communication and teamwork is key. Or maybe, it’s the color red.

It’s taxing on a server to go down in rankings. You lose guilds, you lose players, and people lose their fighting spirit. DR went through this about 8 weeks back when PTX and FIST left the server, and they rebounded nicely. Kaineng’s going through it now.

It’s almost circular in nature, like a log caught under a waterfall. Some guilds are lucky enough to break free and keep on floating upstream (Northern Shiverpeaks, Borlis Pass) but others get stuck in a rotating pattern, sometimes being on top, other times being pushed back to the bottom.

Ahem. I haven’t had my coffee yet.

Anyhow, nice to see Fergs coming together after your recent losses and playing together as a unit. It’s inspiring to watch.

Thanks a bunch for the reply. That helps a lot.

Hi guys,

I’m about to hit 80 on my Mesmer (possibly tonight), and had a few questions before I go and waste a bunch of money / resources on gear.

- Do stats affect phantasm damage output? If so, is the phantasmal Warlock’s nuke based on condition damage or power / precision?
- Is Mind Wrack’s damage affected by power / precision?

Sorry for the newbish questions. I feel like I should probably know this stuff by now, but this was never my main character and I leveled it almost entirely in WvW using whatever gear dropped for me so I haven’t done a ton of experimenting yet.

As for gear:

I’m fairly close to broke. Spent my money on other characters. My options to get started are to PUG through dungeons for a week or two, (I rarely do PVE), or to buy invader gear with my badges.

I’m considering Invader (Power / Vitality / Toughness), 10/30/0/0/30 or 10/20/20/0/20, and Superior Rune of the Centaur, then use the jewelry slots and accessories for more power / crit.

Also, would it be ridiculous to play with a staff and go with mostly power / precision gear? Does this sound logical or am I going in a horrible direction?

Thanks in advance for any feedback,
Fub

Ender.3508:

At what point did kaining stop fighting overwhelming odds, stop running siege and baiting people into death traps, stop doing anything that levels the playing field? Yeah, you guys are outnumbered, every server in this matchup has been there at some point or another, but christ guys you have the talent! You have an alliance, you have guilds that can and will work together. You have an amazing 10 man strike group via NoQQ (which I openly admit, I’d LOVE to run with and learn from), but it seems like the days of Fubuki rallying people to fight overwhelming odds has come to a close and Kaining is becoming something they’ve never been, a fair weather server.

I still have respect for you guys, tons of it, well the ones who fight instead of wagging their tongues on the forums. You know, a lot of DR’s leadership came out with a plan on reset to completely shut down Kain and demoralize you guys for the rest of the week. I’m just a little sad to see it worked.

I’m still around. I took a couple of weeks off recently due to a death in the family, but I’ve been back for about a week.

My spirit’s still intact. I never cared abut the scoreboard, the imbalanced population, or the losses in the past and still don’t. I hear a lot of the “new guys” complaining about how imbalanced the pairing is now. I can’t help but chuckle a little. Check it the scoreboard in this video, less than 24 hours into a matchup vs DR and NSP back in the old days:

I merged my guild into WAR about 6 weeks back, so I didn’t feel the need to promote the server any more. After seeing what the forums had turned into after the Kaine incident (the week Kaineng won our pairing), I just couldn’t stomach the idea of posting here any more. I didn’t want to be a part of all the negativity. That was never what I was about. These days I do my rallying on the battlefield.

I left WAR a few days ago to create a new guild with my wife, the Kaineng Preservation Society [KPS]. You may remember I used to sign my posts with this fictitious name when I was promoting Kaineng. I figured it was fitting.

The goal is to simply get back to our roots, the kind of stuff you talk about in your post above. Small scale 5 man groups, time tested tactics, and fun open field battles. You can rest assured that no matter how lopsided the matches end up, or how many people come and go, you’ll always have at least 2 people out there trying to be a thorn in your side.

See you on the battlefield (but you’ll have to look down, we’re REALLY short).

Fub

I haven’t posted on this forum in a few weeks, but I just wanted to take a minute and share a link:

This was Kaineng months ago. What you see in this video was everyone that was doing WvW that night. All of us, working together. Guilds didn’t matter, egos didn’t matter. We all followed one rule back then:

Server first

This was the first time I can recall us ever fighting off a launch server and defending our Garrison (back when matchups were 24 hours). It was a huge deal for Kaineng back then.

A lot has changed since then, and most of it is not good. We’ve traded honor for ego, and we’ve traded strategy for excuses. We put our guilds before the server, and create alliances that divide us. We may be losing to DR due to numbers, but that’s not the only reason. We’re beating ourselves.

Watch that video above. We didn’t care that we were outnumbered. We didn’t care that we were losing every single matchup by nearly half a million points. We didn’t care that this was the only thing on the map we owned. We didn’t care that we were outnumbered everywhere we went in the game, or that doing even the most simple of things like capturing a tower or defending a supply camp was a trial by fire. We didn’t cry and make excuses every time we lost because we didn’t give a crap about the scoreboard. In our minds, if we put up the best fights we could each night, then we didn’t lose.

Kaineng, we have no control over how many people are on DR or FC (and they don’t either). We have no control over the fact that FC and DR might both decide to be in our BL at the same time. We have no control over what time zones DR players are in, or when their prime time is.

What we do have control over is ourselves though.

We can choose to bicker on the forums about fairness, or we can do our talking on the battlefield. We can choose to stick to tactics that worked last month but don’t work any more due to changing dynamics in our tier, or we can adapt. We can choose to segregate our server into a bunch of alliances that don’t talk work together, or we can get back to what worked for us in the past:

Server first

Success on Kaineng was never about scoreboards. It was about teamwork, and good fights. If we can’t start putting server first the way we used to, then go back and re-read this week’s entire thread and know this, this is the best Kaineng will ever have to look forward to.

We’re better than this.

I’ve tried a few dung builds. They all stink.

SolarWind.5693:

For the record, Devona HAS won before. They just were not the week long ones.

I used to play on DR the first week the server was out, then transferred to Kaineng to try to help build the population up here. To my knowledge, DR has never won this bracket. They have beaten Kaineng in the past, in fact they dominated us all but the last 3 match-ups. But I don’t recall them ever beating Northern Shiverpeaks, Borlis Pass, or Fergs until this week. I don’t recall it ever even being close.

I might not be around later today so please allow me to be the first to congratulate Devona’s Rest on this week’s hard earned win. I’m genuinely excited to see you guys pull one out this week!

ktith.6197:

I had the same conversation about many people not to 80 yet…

---

What I don’t want to see, and I don’t speak for everyone on this server of course, is a void left behind should PRO move on to another server…

This post is on target for so many reasons. Your experiences parallel those on Kaineng quite a bit.

We’ve lost large guilds in the past (native guilds, 200+), and we’ve had other guilds pass through, some for as long as two weeks. We also seem to be a target server for guilds looking for a place to farm Karma. We had RMA show up. They were supposed to be here for a week, but stayed for two due to real life issues with their guild leader. War Machine came for less than 24 hours and had everyone all freaked out too.

Each week on Kaineng is something new. We’ve had a lot of other smaller guilds pass through as well. In my opinion, they can’t change the way free transfers work fast enough. I’d rather be the underdog indefinitely than deal with high turnover rates. It disrupts our sense of community.

I also hear what you’re saying about the level 80’s situation. It’s one of the reasons LaZy left our server. PVE on Kaineng is dead after level 60. Last night for instance, we had almost 70 people online in WAR, and the vast majority of them aren’t 80.

I have to say, I know Kaineng’s not doing as well on the scoreboard this week, but I’m personally ecstatic by how well we are doing. I’ve hopped out there a few times and heard people upset about the score, or saying we’ve lost our fighting spirit, but they’re doing better than they realize.

At least 6 guilds (including all of the Evermoor Alliance plus a couple others) are having little or no presence in WvW this week in an effort to help boost the PVE situation on the server and stop the revolving door. Knowing that RMA was leaving this week and that the Halloween content was coming, we figured this would be as good a time as any.

Our thinking was that if we can help boost the PVE experience on our server, people will tend to stay around longer when they transfer here. In the future we’re probably going to have a day or so each week where we dedicate to PVE.

Since the server reset on Friday, I’ve personally gotten two of my characters to 80 (about 55 levels total), visited some dungeons for the first time, and as an alliance we downed the Temple of Balthazar (a server first I’m told), the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance, and opened access to Arah. Several of our members jumped up about 20+ levels this weekend, we got some fresh 80’s in our guild and on iSPY, and now we’re all stuffing our face on candy corn and riding around on brooms.

You talk about what next week will be like for DR. All I can say is just roll with it. That’s life at the bottom. It makes things interesting though not always in a good way.

I’m personally very excited to hear PRO isn’t leaving. I can’t wait to get out there with the guys and see how we stack up. I’ve got a growing collection of footprints on my back from the few times I’ve hopped out there over the last couple of days, and I’m quite convinced some of you guys are wearing high heels.

Ender.3508:

Don’t be misled, while I did notice some [Pro] out here on the battlefield, it was a lot of [Dark] [GASM] and [RED] flipping Kains points in the EB into the wee morning.

However, [PRO] we want to coordinate with you!

This is true, I see a ton of those 3 guilds. I think I’ve only seen 1 member from Pro so far. Probably just in the wrong zones. I’m seeing RED everywhere I go now. You guys are like the old VISA commercials. “Everywhere you want to be.”

More scenes from the front line this morning. A large group of mostly GASM / RED just pushed us all the way back to our spawn point in DR BL.

5 Omega golems is an awesome site. Much more fun when you’re on the giving end though. This was a few minutes ago in EB.

haha, I did miss that. That would explain why DR looks like they have really woken up this weekend.

Now I’m a lot more excited. No one’s breaking up the band. This is going to be a really fun tier for the foreseeable future.

Matt Witter.6982:

Hi everyone!

First off, good luck to everyone on the new matches, and congratulations to Kaineng on their first win!

Thank you Matt, and congratulations to everyone on Kaineng. We should all go to Vegas this week while we’re on a roll.

Thanks for the WvW updates. I don’t really know what this queue problem is you speak of, but the other two sound really helpful.

Sirenic: I have mixed feelings about you guys going to FC. FC has traditionally been a fun matchup for kaineng, and while I can’t speak for DR, I would venture to say they’d agree. A big problem they have is when they move up a tier they don’t have the numbers to compete so the end up getting knocked back down.

If your guild puts them over the top and helps them climb the ranks, I’m going to miss seeing them go. :/

At the same time, it would be cool to see them progress. They’ve traditionally been the strongest of our 3 server match-up, and it would be cool to see one of us work our way up through the ranks. If you guys ever get top the top, I’ll be able to say “I remember when….”

Just need to get FC players to autograph my screenshots before you get famous.

I haven’t played today yet, but I was on all night last night. I made the comment a few days ago saying “sometime’s your the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.” Last night I felt like the bug, over and over again. Glad to see everyone’s fighting spirit is still intact. Looks like it’s going to be another fun week.

Thinking about riding my motorcycle out to the coast though while the weather is still nice. Might not be on much this weekend. Take a lot of screenshots / videos for me.

You don’t need to try to quote me as if it’s an insult as to why I took down the Kaineng War Report, I already explained it myself both on the forums and on the site.

http://kaineng.tumblr.com

The way you have been going about promoting Kaineng is not always positive. Some of it’s funny. I liked the Overgrown Grub video, and said as much, and even put it on the war report. That was pretty clever.

I’ve always tried to take a humble approach to promoting Kaineng, careful not to try to rub our opponents the wrong way because they’re what makes the game fun.

I’m out there every day. I don’t do pve. I’ve never seen a dungeon in this game. I haven’t even been in sPVP since beta. WvW is all I do and I’ve never missed a day. I’m still here on the forums, and I’m still making videos. I haven’t stopped promoting Kaineng as an awesome server. I just took down a blog.

I’ve supported your guild since you started going. I’m out there many night assisting the war efforts and often times I have my guild group supporting your efforts and the efforts of other commanders on the server when we don’t alliance events going. I’ve invited you to alliance meetings with our guild. I’ve even promoted your guild on the forums and on the War Report in the past, and defended you when people started attacking your threads.

The point being, my intent was never to make you or your guild or you look bad.

But I’ve been here a lot longer than you have I’ve done a lot of work try to promote our community and when I see something like this thread that I feel harms that effort, I’m going to speak up and let it be known that I don’t really agree with how it was done. You’re not the only one that’s entitled to an opinion here, and I feel it’s important that people don’t see threads like this and get the impression that this is how the entire server thinks.

And now I get to wake up and read you taking stabs at me and my guild because I suggested that one of your threads was made in poor taste?

I’m not going to retaliate because I have no issues with you or your guild. I even have a few friends in your guild, and you guys all seem like a fun bunch. I’m excited that you guys are having so much fun on Kaineng.

But I’ll be honest brother, these posts you made about me and WAR this morning, poor form. This whole thread in fact is poor form. And now you’re taking credit for Kaineng doing so well, completely disregarding all of the effort from the rest of the server? If that’s really what kind of person you are then I’ve really misjudged you.

If you have issues with me, talk to me about it. I don’t bite. If you want to have a flame war with me on the forums, you’ll have to do that by yourself.

Ender.3508:

Maybe you can answer Fubuki, has the gracious fighting spirit from the elite guerrilla underdog given way to just more of the same kitteny trashtalk that you see from EVERYONE else?

Not from everyone, no. Not from the vast majority in fact. Notice all of these posts on the forums are coming from a very small, yet vocal group of people. The people that are doing it though… what can you do? They don’t represent my opinions, we’ll just leave it at that.

The lines between server pride and distasteful boasting have been blurred beyond recognition this week. I understand people’s excitement, but I can also understand why the way some choose to celebrate is rubbing people the wrong way. A lot if it just comes off as distasteful bragging, and that’s not fun for anyone. I took down the Kaineng War Report this week because I didn’t want to contribute to it.

Still though, much of Kaineng are great people, as I’m sure much of FC and DR are great people. We’ve had a fairly unique history in the NA server population and a little pride in our accomplishments are in order. People just need to keep things in perspective, we’re still in the last tier in NA, fighting two servers that are having their own share of issues.

Sooner or later a little humble pie will get people back on track. Maybe even today.

Darek.1836:

I just want to mention Kaineng is not a smaller server. Nope; sorry, you cannot say that anymore. Just because overall server pop may be lower does not mean your WvW pop is lower- Not at all.

By saying that Kaineng has more people in WvW, you’re missing a very important point. I’m not saying this because I’m trying to make any excuses for anything. I’m saying it because I believe it can help you guys too.

Kaineng is a smaller server. Here’s why it’s important:

We put a lot of effort into taking our WvW guilds into the PVE zones and recruiting over the last couple of weeks. We’ve added hundreds of new players in our alliance, all from PVE land over the last two weeks. They came from our server, not from other servers.

I’m not trying to imply that we’re the underdogs. I’m merely suggesting that if we can do it on a medium population server, you guys can do it on a high population server.

This isn’t a pissing contest. I like facing FC. But I can see your numbers starting to dwindle down in WvW as the weeks go on. I’m simply offering up suggestions to help turn it around. This is what’s working for us. I think it can work for you too.

You do realize the match isn’t over yet right?

All FC needs is to maintain 500 points for the majority of the day to win. They’re already at +400. There’s no one on Kaineng or DR to stand in their way. Our 4 man defense just got ran over by 30 FC’s in EB.

Server pride is one thing, but this is something all together different. It’s distasteful, and if we lose you’re going to be feeling really embarrassed in about 7.5 hours and it’s going to make the server look bad in the process.

For your sake I hope a lot more people show up to help defend today because the 4 of us out there right now aren’t do so hot.

I love how you guys have already forgotten in one short week that you used to be the ones night capping your way to victory week after week in this bracket.

Since Kaineng was brought online, FC has been picking up 50K+ points every night while night capping us. When you guys beat us by 500K points (most of which was gained while we were offline), we congratulated you. We also warned you it wouldn’t always be this way. You guys laughed and told us to bring it on.

We campaigned on the forums to get more players because we couldn’t compete with only 20 people, and Kaineng was (and still is) the smallest server in NA. We recruited our PVE players. We got our guilds talking to each other. SoS stepped up and stopped all the night capping problems we were having for us. Turn-about is fair play, right?

Now you guys are getting a small dose of what it was like to be Kaineng for the last 6 weeks and out comes the tears.

Here’s a screenshot from Sept 29, when FC was night-capping us on a regular basis. Hop over to the Kaineng War Report while it’s still online and take a walk down memory lane. See how much complaining we were doing about “fair” and “honor”.

http://kaineng.tumblr.com

Kaineng’s not the reason your server is in the bottom tier, and we’re not the reason you’re getting beaten by a smaller server. If your server is behind 22 other servers in NA (all of which are using the same rules to win), you’re not doing something right.

Don’t take that out on Kaineng.

Darek.1836:

No congrats on the win Kaineng. I really wish I could, but to be completely honest you didn’t deserve it. I just see no honor in night capping all 4 maps and getting 600+ points per tick for 8+ hours a day. I really wish there was some way to fix this, it’s a new thing to me being from FC.

Applaud you guys who have stuck to it from the beginning though, good job.

Funny. When Kaineng only had 20 players total and FC was beating us by 500K points and spawn camping us in all 4 zones during prime time every night, we congratulated you on the win.

And btw, it’s not JUST our oceanic crews that beat you. You make it sound like we didn’t even show up in prime time. We’ve been out there every night putting up the best fight we can trying to make it fun. We’ve 3 capped the orbs, we’ve ran FC out of their own Borderlands, and have done the same to DR, and both of you have done the same to us. We’ve taken over EB, and we’ve watched FC and DR both do the same to us. It’s been a very even back and forth week, that has been a lot of fun for most people.

To get on the forums and complain when you lost is just poor sportsmanship, period. We’re not claiming to be anything we’re not. We’re just a bottom tier server getting out and putting up the best fight that we can.

Losing more respect for FC by the minute.

BTW: This screen shot was taken during prime time two nights ago. Could it be that maybe FC just didn’t deserve to win this time?

SniffyCube.6107:

I am not agreeing it takes skill because during the peak hours its almost always even between the three servers… somehow you fail to acknowledge that.

No, I don’t fail to acknowledge that at all. I’ve said exactly the same thing several times in fact. Maybe you’re thinking of someone else.

This is what is referred to as a strawman.

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

I’ve never called you a noob. I’ve never messaged you. I’ve never called you a narcissist. I’ve never been rude to you. I’ve never talked to you outside of the times you’ve replied to my forum posts in a negative manner for no reason, and I’ve ignored almost all of those.

You keep playing the victim card here, talking about how everyone’s always calling you names and starting drama with you, yet every time I turn around you’re starting more drama. Your post history speaks for itself, like three weeks ago when you tried to run SoS off the server.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/A-different-kind-of-Kaineng-War-Report/first

Now here you are trying to make it look like Chaster, who’s a really cool guy btw, is trying to start fights with little innocent ol’ Smilingknight.

We have two options here. Either the entire Kaineng server population is full of drama queens who only exist to try to make your life miserable, or the problem is you. The laws of Occam’s razor dictates that it’s probably not the entire server population of Kaineng that’s the problem.

Regardless of how this week turns out, this has been a blast. I hope the 3 of us can square off again next week.

SniffyCube.6107:

I’d say your magic bullet is being able to take both maps and completely upgrading them while we’re all sleeping.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed green beats you most of the time in primetime and Dr isn’t far behind.

Just saying.

For someone who claims to have left the server because he didn’t like the constant “back and forth”, you never seem to miss an opportunity to reply something negative on the forums for absolutely no reason. I think I’ve figured out the source of your problems for you.

Just saying.

And BTW, is this the same War Machine that won the very first $100K quarterly guild tournament from GW1? My guild used to fight against you guys back in the day. It was always, well let’s be honest… painful.

Welcome aboard.

There is no new infusion of Oceanic / Asian guilds that’s had any affect on this week. SoS has been here since the Kaineng was brought online. War Machine got here 2 minutes ago.

We don’t have a huge influx of prime time WvW guilds either.

We’ve recently picked up WAR, iSPY, and JAWA. When I merged my guild into WAR a couple of weeks back, they had 22 players online, most of which were in PVE. WAR was the largest of these 3 guilds to move over. My guild added 7 more active players to their guild.

We picked up XO, which I’ve never seen more than 3 players in the same place.

We picked up RMA. They are huge. They’re leaving the server tomorrow though, and have been sending out scouts to other servers to figure out where they’re moving too. They’ve been mostly inactive in WvW the last couple of days.

We’ve lost LaZy, a 200+ person guild, and KWBH who claimed to have 130+ people, moved to Devona’s Rest on Friday. RMA is already on their way out. Other guilds have left as well over the weeks.

In short, we’ve lost a lot more people than we’ve gained from transfers.

Here’s what did happen though: We simply tapped into our PVE resources, much of which has just started happening organically.

There are the PVE guilds on the server that are starting to get more and more active in PVE like DD and TGOG, both of which dwarf WAR. We also have some individuals who have moved to the server and grew guilds after getting here like KR and FTSK.

We started recruiting. WAR has recruited over 100 new players from PVE in the last two weeks. We’re nearing 200 players now, with just south of 50 online each night in prime time. About half (give or take) WvW with us.

Most of our WvW force isn’t even level 80 yet. I’d venture to guess half of them are below level 40.

iSPY has recruited a lot as well. I don’t know their numbers.

We’ve strengthened our alliances with other guilds, switched to a 150 person voice chat server, and invited everyone on board so we can coordinate with them. Our alliance has grown to 5 guilds, with strong ties with at least 4 other guilds and we’re all communicating nightly, most are on our TS server.

Recruit, communicate, compete. There’s no magic bullet here. We’re not doing anything DR and FC can’t also be doing, and you guys both have larger servers to pull resources from.

All this knowledge and wisdom you possess, I can see why it infuriates you so much that no one cares what you think.

Kaineng is home, brother.

This were different back then. The game was new. The server was newer (it was an expansion server, launched a week after the game came out). I certainly wasn’t the sole reason Kaineng has came alive recently. I just played a small part.

I don’t think I bring anything to the table that can help another server grow at this stage of the game. Believe it or not I think it was probably a lot easier promoting a last place server than it would be any other server up the ladder just because they were THE underdog, and people love an underdog. There’s first place, and last place, and everything in between.

But I do appreciate the kind words. If you ever need a new home, shoot me a message.

I used to play on DR, and I used to fight FC regularly. Allow me to paint a picture of Kaineng, Devona’s Rest, and Ferguson’s Crossing 6 weeks ago.

6 weeks ago I played on Devona’s Rest. I played there for a week. We faced FC and sometimes BP and NSP, but mostly FC day after day.

Every day the match would reset at 7:00. FC would rush SM. DR didn’t have enough people to get it most nights, so they moved on to Kaineng territory. After taking SM, FC would also move on to Kaineng Territory.

Both teams would then race to take over most of the Kaineng map because… there wasn’t a single Kaineng player anywhere to be found. Ever. WvW between these two servers were mostly World vs Door back then, with a few fights between them as FC would eventually make their way into DR’s side of the map.

At midnight DR would mostly log, and be behind FC who had the most players by far. FC would take over the rest of the map and it was game over. By the next day FC had a 50K point lead.

(Keep in mind, these were only 24 hour matches, points were recalculated every 5 minutes back then, not 15, and Stonemist was worth 50 points).

FC is a launch server, DR and Kaineng were expansion servers. Since FC was there at launch they had a lot more people and DR couldn’t really compete.

What was missing was a 3rd player. A wildcard. The only way things were going to get more fun between DR and FC was if Kaineng woke up.

A week went by of this same routine, then one night I saw… TWO people on Kaineng from a guild called Nuke. I was inspired. The next day I made this post on the forums.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Moving-to-Kaineng-Join-me/first

I joined Kaineng hoping do my part to help breathe some life into the server, but also to try to make our tier more fun. It wasn’t 10 minutes into my adventure I ran into Nuke. Turns out the players I saw were Mr Girly Man and Feralblood, both of which still play on Kaineng. My wife and I joined their guild, and off we went.

(And btw, it’s worth noting that our Oceanic guild, SoS was already on the server when I got here, though they were mostly a PVE guild for the first couple of weeks. SoS is not new for us, and they’ve been out there doing WvW every morning now for over a month).

I made a few more posts, and despite getting messages of support from Mike Ferguson and from people on other random EU and NA servers, no one seemed to be moving over.

A week later I made my first Kaineng WvW video.

That seemed to get people’s attention, and people started showing up. Some were already on the server doing PVE, others moved over after getting tired of queues. A week after that I made another:

This video shows our entire WvW community working together in our first even fight against an enemy team of this size. We pushed them back off the keep and defended it, a server first. This was a really big deal for us.

Kaineng is used to being dead last in north America. A lot has changed for us in the last 6 weeks, and most of it has happened since Friday. This is the first time we’ve ever been the blue team. This is the first when I’ve been on that I’ve ever seen us cap SM twice in one day, capture all 3 orbs at one time, have the highest potential score in our tier for any period of time, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen us capture FC’s keep in EB.

A lot of people got 100% map completion in EB this weekend for the first time ever on Kaineng.

I think a little cheering is in order. There aren’t many of the original players / guilds left from 6 weeks ago, but the OP of this thread happens to be one of them. When you’ve been dead last and unable to complete (most weeks DR and FC weren’t even aware we were out there taking things), it’s really exciting to finally be able to compete.

We’re all still fully aware we’re in the bottom tier in NA, we’re still very aware that we’re not even winning this tier, but to us this is exciting progress.

Every year one team wins the Super Bowl, and one team loses. The winning team cheers and celebrates and the losing team tucks their tail between their legs and walks sadly off the field. On Kaineng we’re cheering and celebrating as we’re walking off the field losers, and the winning team is looking at us like what the hell is wrong with you people.

Hopefully this post explains why.

Hi guys,

Just wanted to let you all know that I’m shutting down the Kaineng War Report blog. I explain why on the blog. http://kaineng.tumblr.com

Just wanted to thank everyone for the positive feedback I’ve gotten from the blog over the last month. I’ve met a lot of people both on Kaineng and on other servers in NA and EU over the last month as a result of the blog, and many of you have been quite interesting characters to say the least.

I will continue making videos in the future as time permits but they may cover other aspects of the game like tournament pvp, guild battles (hopefully), or 5 man task groups in WvW as I find this play style infinitely more fun than running in a zerg.

See you all on the battlefield!

Ender.3508:

I’d really like to see you take this matchup.

I’m not sure I follow. We haven’t looked at the score board since the game came out, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never lost, which is why we’re tied with Devona’s Rest for #1 in North America.

lol, that’s awesome. sorry I missed that. Once you get the video worked out shoot me a message, I’ll add it to the war report blog.

I’m in your borderlands, stealing your mushrooms!

I may play at different times than Kaide, but here’s what I see.

Kaineng has a prime time of about 8:30 to maybe 2:00am EST. It starts to slope off after midnight. We also have an oceanic guild that is pretty large that plays in the mornings US time. Outside of these windows, it can be quite dead in WvW on Kaineng.

Every once in a while, the stars align and a lot of guilds do WvW on the same nights. Kaineng has, twice now to my knowledge, maintained queues in 2 zones at the same time in prime time for about an hour. It usually takes between 30 seconds to 5 minutes to get in. On “normal” nights, we can sometimes hit a queue in one zone in prime time for a short while. Usually though, there are no queues at all.

Last night I logged into EB at around 7:00 to find maybe 10 defenders, and a group of what appeared to be about 40 FC taking over our side of the map. This is not uncommon. While this was going on, FC also had players in KB and DRB pushing both maps.

On Sunday morning about 9:00 when I logged in, the exact opposite was taking place, and our oceanic guilds were taking over FC’s part of the map and they were short on defenders.

Not all guilds do WvW same time. Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.

And thing are changing soon.

We currently have a rather large guild on our server called RMA. When they’re on in force, they can nearly fill a zone. They got here a little over a week ago, and it’s a temporary visit. They’re leaving us this weekend. The recent surge in our WvW abilities, specifically, the ability to fight in 2 zones at one time, was due largely to RMA’s presence.

Even with RMA Kaineng is still a medium population server in prime time. Both Devona’s Rest and Ferguson’s Crossing are listed as high population. This of course accounts for the entire server, not just WvW, so it’s possibly not an accurate representation of WvW balance.

From my perspective, FC appears to have a LOT more players than DR. Even though Kaineng is smaller than DR, I believe we have more coordinated efforts in any given zone most nights than DR thanks to RMA’s contributions. Once RMA leaves you both will dwarf us again.

Don’t expect this to dampen our fighting spirit though. You guys may always outnumber us, but we have a Delarme.

The above video is a pretty fair representation of Kaineng in two areas: During peak hours if you don’t happen to be in the same zone as the main force, this is what WvW looks like. Outside of peak hours, anywhere on the map, this is what WvW looks like.

However, if you happen to be in a populated area during prime time, WvW looks a lot more balanced. See the link in my signature for prime time screens and videos from Kaineng lately.

-Fub

Hey guys,

I’ve been keeping a blog of our WvW efforts on Kaineng now since it’s early days. If anyone’s interested in checking out our history or seeing what it’s like on Kaineng, I have a few videos and a lot of screenshots up.

I’ll have more screenshots and videos up from this week’s matchup in a day or two.

Link is in the signature, and welcome to the server to all the new people!

- Fub

I’ve been saying for about 6 weeks now that the FUN rankings are completely opposite of the server rankings. We’re having a blast in the bottom tier.

The game gets a LOT more enjoyable when you stop worrying about scoreboards and just play to enjoy the battles. The scoreboard’s not always so balanced, but the fights in prime time usually are.

Check the link in the sig.

I was going to reply to this post. I wrote and re-wrote a post a few times, but the more I did, the more I thought about Smilingknight’s actions over the last three weeks.

At some point we have to realize that this may very well just be some young kid as all evidence suggests. The fact that this thread has been active all day and no one from Kaineng has showed up to say anything good in his defense should speak volumes.

Instead, I offer you this link, inspired by Mighteous, the greatest player to ever live (or at least that’s the word on the street).

Our server played Borlis Pass last week. “They” hacked our orb twice. “They” also sent over people to spy on us. When I say “they” I’m talking about the acts of a few people on their server.

It’s unfortunate that BP has those types of players, but from what I hear, most servers do. For the most part I found Borlis Pass to honorable opponents and a fun challenge for us. Don’t let the actions of a few discredit an entire server population.

Send them back down to our tier next week. Let Kaineng and Devona’s Rest deal with them for you.

“Cheers, Xynobia [GOAT]”

Every time I see a GOAT member in WvW I think of Muhammad Ali. Greatest Of All Time!

CarelessKrow.8032:

With all the egotistical smacktalk that goes on the HoD vs JQ vs ET topic, this thread is such a breath of fresh air. It’s nice to see you guys having a lot of fun and praising each other for the epic fights.

There’s always room for more.

While Kaineng is slightly stronger than Devona’s Rest this week, we had a massive guild transfer here last week and I hear they’re leaving this weekend. We may be balanced or may be behind them again next week. That’s the ebb and flow of things on a small server. Every week is a different adventure.

I know DR has lost a few guilds themselves lately and are constantly trying to adapt to the changes like we are on Kaineng. From what I see on the forums and in WvW, either server would be a good choice.

Borlis Pass was a launch server and have considerably more players. While they fare well against us, when they go up a tier next week they’ll be struggling again. While things are fairly consistent on DR and Kaineg from week to week, BP’s WvW experience is a tale of bi-weekly highs and lows.

I don’t know if that would be more or less fun than losing every week as we’ve never been anything other than the red side on Kaineng, but I think we wear it well.

http://kaineng.tumblr.com

adion.7950:

This is Alexandion Grant representing the [RED] guild on DR.

Just wanted to say that last night was fun. We had a couple of great-well-organized groups that were able to hold the map for a while. In the end we fell to K and BP, but overall we had a blast. Shout out to the invaders that were harassing Dawn’s Erie on the little cliff behind it. They were some tough buggers.

Even with all the down talk we get, I can honestly say that I love the server and the people on it. We are learning and growing with each defeat and the victories are even that much better!

In the end, it’s just a game and we’re having fun!

Glad to hear it. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get things back on track is a group of coordinated players that are having fun despite what’s going on in the game. We’ve ran into RED a few times now. Glad to see you guys out having fun.

jeramieb.7094:

The well organized attack on Stonemist Castle last night (utilizing 4+ treb’s at Anzalias Pass) was an epic battle. Kudos go out to Kaineng for such a coordinated attack on a very hard place to take. When all was said and done we (Borlis Pass) were able to defend SM and finally launch a successful assault on Anzalias Pass, taking the keep and destroying the treb’s.

I have not had that much fun in an MMO (or any game for that matter) in a very long time.

Great battles the last few nights from both Kaineng and Devona!

Keep up the fight!

I have to say, the fight was not quite so fun from my perspective. Two hours of work down the drain due to a glitch.

When we got into Stonemist, we couldn’t see any defenders. After a few seconds the lord was gone and I was unable to even attack him. We went the entire fight seeing only one or two defenders at a time and unable to defend ourselves from invisible attackers.

Not BP’s fault of course, and I’m not making excuses. Borlis always puts up a good fight the outcome may have been the same regardless of the bug. I just wish we could get back to winning and losing battles on our own merit and not because of software problems.

I have not said anything rude or condescending to you in any one of my posts, yet you’ve done quite the contrary in each of yours. You may in fact be the most sensitive person I’ve seen on a gaming forum. No one can help you achieve any goal if you’re going to be too thin skinned to even discuss them without resorting to insults the first time someone says something contrary to your opinion.

Thank you however for your unsolicited of opinion of me. Coming from you, it means a lot.

Good luck on your efforts.

This double posted for some reason. Tried to delete one and it errored out. Sorry guys.

Maybe you’re just not playing with the right people.

Kaineng: No where to go but up!

I, uh… meant to post that in a different forum.

blush

Maybe you’re just playing with the wrong people.

Kaineng: No where to go but up!

Sumwun.3846:

After seeing the average WvW player though I just don’t think we have the proper drive, ambition, or mindset to actually pull that off consistently.

And much to the dismay of some of the all knowing posters in this tread…

..and reaching out and finding like minded people. Sadly this thread brought out more puffy chested loud people than others who see where I am coming from.

Easy tiger.

Most of the thread is agreeing with what you’re saying, and I think you’re too upset about the state of WvW on DR to realize it. Even when someone agrees with you you get defensive and sling insults. That was not our intent.

In my initial reply I told you try to get your server to stay out of Kaineng. The point was to illustrate that what you’re wanting is virtually impossible. If you’re goal is to get two entire servers to get on board with a plan to work together, you’re setting yourself up for failure. You can’t control what anyone else does. You can only affect yourself and try to lead by example, and until you get DR on board with your ideas, you need to completely forget about what’s going on with Kaineng.

I feel in your frustration, you’ve forgotten a few important details:

1) BP has more players than DR and Kaineng combined. They can be in all 4 zones at once. We can’t. And Kaineng is losing a HUGE guild this weekend from what I hear so it’s going to be even worse next week when we both face FC (who’s much stronger than BP). Teaming up doesn’t guarantee either one of us a victory over the 3rd server. One of us are still going to be in last place, and that brings me to my next point.

2) Kaineng and DR are enemies. Our job is to beat you. While sometimes it makes sense to work together strategically, we are not allies. Usually I ignore DR, but when you enter KBL you’re Kill On Sight. Sometimes I even attack one of you just because I don’t like the hat you’re wearing that day.

3) Most importantly, remember, this is just a game. Don’t let it get to you. It’s supposed to be entertainment, an escape from real life problems.

I haven’t played much this week because my father was in the hospital. They actually moved him across the state to a hospital not far from here so I’ve been able to go visit him. The time away from the computer in the evenings is a good “reset” from the silly stuff we sometimes let ourselves get sucked into when we play these games.

He’s currently on his way back home and doing well, so there’s a much higher chance you’ll be able to kill me more often in the evenings now. I’m the good looking, well dressed shrubbery seen here:

http://kaineng.tumblr.com/post/33229859125/fubuki-2-0-ive-been-having-a-lot-of-fun-on-my

Stay out of Kaineng BL. Spread the word.

Fub

Sumwun,

I’m not saying give up. I’m saying be the change you want to see in the world.

We’re already doing what you are requesting. DR however doesn’t seem to be on the same page. Show us you can make a change. I know you can do it.

Cheers,
Fub

Sundial, I have no issues with BP. I think you guys are a fun opponent to fight against. Just picking on klingon a little because he’s always boasting. He follows my youtube channel and blog so I’m hoping we’re cool like that. If not, then I’ll just have to kill him and turn him into a minion. Either way, win / win for everyone!

I’m just glad Mighteous and Klingon don’t play together on the server. That would be seriously overpowered.

As for giving you guys a challenge, we’re giving it all she’s got capt’.

We face the same issue you have. Guilds come, guilds go. We had a rather huge guild transfer to Kaineng this week, which is why we’re able to have a presence in two zones at once sometimes. It’s been a good week on Kaineng. I have it on good authority they’re leaving soon, so… we’ll see where we end up next week.

I’m sure we’ll all face each other again.