Guild Wars 2

The new fractal dungeon has been out for quite awhile now. And I’m sure everyone has seen the main chat logs filling up with more and more people begging for groups of various levels. However after sitting back and watching this progress for some time, I’ve come to the realization that Fractals is quite literally fracturing the community and player base.

It was my understanding that GW2 was striving to create a stronger community by encouraging players to cooperate and come together; instead of separate them through vicious competition. If this is indeed true, then the new Fractals dungeon is in clear violation of that ideal.

The new dungeon drives separation between the community because everyone is in a rush to collect and obtain the new Ascended gear. This forces chat windows to be filled with dozens of people begging for groups of so-and-so fractal level. Why? Because no one is willing to step down even one level to help each other. As a personal example, I had watched one day while in Lion’s Arch that two groups kept posting “LF1M fract lvl 9”. And at the exact same time there were at least 2 individuals asking for groups as well. One for level 8 and one for level 10. NEITHER the group for level 9, nor the player asking for level 10 took it onto themselves to step ONE level down. This is what our community is coming to.

Furthermore, fractals gives NO influence what-so-ever at this current point and time. Which means that the people in guilds not doing fractals are facing the consequences. For example our guild went from 6k influence a day to less than 1k because people are doing fractals. This means that the rest of us who want buffs for WvW or PvE are essentially screwed because the few of us couldn’t possibly get the needed influence in a timely fashion. (This also makes me really worry for when the new guild perks/upgrades finally get released. Because many guilds will most likely being paying out of pocket for the necessary influence.)

So is it really just me, or has GW2 really destroyed their own vision? Or have they at the very least drawn a set of lines through the player base that will inevitable drive players further and further apart?

Thanks for reading,
— Kasandra