Guild Wars 2

I remained hopeful. I tried to be positive. Tried to keep the morale of my server up. But it wasn’t enough. We were a low pop server to begin with, and now the HoT changes it’s killed us.

Just after release of HoT, we lost a significant guild to a higher tier server. Saturday we lost our largest guild to a higher tier server. Sunday another guild plans to leave. Next weekend, the second largest guild is voting on leaving. Yet another guild has started deliberating on leaving and we expect them to do so.

The new maps and the changes to WvW as a result of the HoT expansion have killed us. The new auto-upgrade mechanics have decimated the borderlands. We were a low pop server to begin with, the new borderlands made that almost impossible to hold the borderlands objectives for any period of time now. We just don’t have the coverage.

With the departure of all our larger WvW guilds to higher tiers, looking for larger populations to help fill the maps, those remaining are completely demoralised. From tier 5 a few months ago, we’re about to hit T8.

Combined with the absolutely ludicrous changes the Guild Hall has forced upon us which are clearly disadvantaging smaller guilds, we’ve practically given up on WvW. The Guild Hall alone is so expensive that those of us in smaller guilds are never going to be able to gain anything that would help us in WvW as we did before. The ludicrous level 37 requirement for +5 supply? Are you seriously delusional?

Today one of the co-leaders of my guild informed me that he is not playing anymore. He’s not interested in PvD and hates that we’re being forced into PvE. He hates that the maps feel so completely empty. With the departure of the larger guilds, and the descent to lower tiers, that’s only going to get worse.

Being curious, I checked the guild roster. There are quite a few players that haven’t logged in to the game in between 2 and 3 weeks now. Our guild is dying. Our server is dying. Our community has given up and is either moving away, or quitting the game entirely.

So thank you, Anet. Thank you for destroying the game I enjoyed. I never played PvE or PvP. It was WvW I enjoyed. The chaos of unstructured skirmishes. Not blobs, but skirmishes. And now you’ve destroyed that for us. My server is a ghost land and WvW is merely where you go to get your dailies now.

I’ve kind of lost my groove in the game. I’m a casual solo player. I have a life away from my computer that requires more attention and effort than trying to keep up with a game.

I loved Guild Wars, all 3 campaigns. I liked the way the story was fluid and you could progress through it at your own pace. I really like that about Guild Wars 2 as well. Except, its just one story. I am not in anyway trying to diminish the epicness of the story as a whole. But after doing it at your own pace, it suddenly ends and you get thrown into this enforced race to keep up. But you’re not keeping up with a single cohesive story arc, you’re chasing a series of short stories with no real cohesive back story that feels rushed and ad-hoc.

3 Guild Wars campaigns, an expansion, the books, the wikis, the community, all built this massive backstory of lore that could have some kind of impact on the current history of the game, and you throw us the Aetherblades and Scarlet?

I’m not a hard core player. I work 6 days a week. But I like good stories. I will play good stories. The game doesn’t even have to be a great game if the story is good. I play solo because I can’t devote honest time to a guild. I played through Guild Wars because the stories in the game were fluid and made sense within the lore. There was also a personal sense of being able to achieve something on my own, even if it took me longer than people that were progressing through the story far faster than I ever could.

The time limit on the Living Story, and the sense of missing out on bits of the story, frustrates the bejeebuz out of me. I don’t much care for the trophies or even the achievements. But I’d like to be able to follow the Living Story at my own pace, feel like its actually building or fits within the lore of the game, and get a sense of achievement for playing through a complete story.

(Secondly… Completely off topic… Can we please get rid of the RNG for things like Black Lion Chests or Mini packs. I don’t mind buying the outfits, picks/axes/scythes, other goodies and more. But I like to know what I’m getting before I buy it. Not get a half dozen of the same item that everyone else already has multiples of. If you’re going to have RNG items like that, make it worth the cost of entry and stop putting anything less than Rares (or something) in them.)

I love the game in most other respects. I love the Hearts, map completion, daily and monthly achievements, the scale of the game for different sized groups, the leveling system, world events/champions/dragons/bosses… Hell, I even love the gem store a little too much.

But I have hardly played in the past couple of months because I just simply cannot devote the time it now requires, just to keep up. Let people fly through the stories and get the achievements and the titles and the items associated with those stories, but unless you make it possible for someone like me to keep up, you’re on track to becoming that game I play on my day off when its raining and I have nothing else to do.

coglin.1867:

I don’t know about that. I literally took every keep on the BGBL last night with a 5 man team. They eventually brought their EB force over to try to take it all back.

If you will post a video of your group failing to take a keep, I will post a video of us taking that very same keep. My experience suggest it was an issue with tactics or player skill, and not the maps or mechanics, as I haven’t had issues with my group doing what your claiming cannot be done, and we did it just last night.

How long did it take you to get a fortified keep? I have done many 5 man attacks of fortified keeps with these changes.

You drop 1 superior ram at outer, finish it. Leave one person to start hitting the gate while the rest resupply so you can build a second. When 2 rams are hitting the gate, the 3 not on rams resupply to make sure you have enough to start inner. It takes you about 10 minutes to get through the outer gate with 2 superior rams. Once you’re inside, you have 4 people with 60 supply total, so you can build another superior ram. Leave one person hitting the gate while the other 4 go resupply to drop a second ram and build it. Thats another 10 minutes or so before that gate goes down.

In that time, chances are a defender has shown up to investigate, and either built defence siege, or are attacking from a strong upper position (the causeway by inner supply at lords room of Fire keep can drop AC fire on your head at the gates and walls, but you have to get to a very specific spot to fire back with a longbow ranger.) If you lose just one ram, you’ve effectively doubled the time it will take to get through that gate. More time for more defenders to answer the call.

Your alternative? Once every few hours (if you’re lucky enough to be on the map at the time) you might get to PvE your way through the Oasis event which might knock the gates down a bit and reduce the time it takes to get through them. But they’re still fortified and you’re still 5 people with very little supply.

At least with +5 you might have had a chance to get a superior and a paper ram built without having to run and resupply.

And the most annoying part? Chances are the borderland was absolutely empty for hours prior to your arrival. Chances are no one had been near those keeps since they were flipped and they simply auto upgraded. When you have a low population and can’t cover both BL and EB maps 24/7, a 2 hour gap is enough to lose your entire borderland and have it fully fortified against you when you do get the opportunity to play.

Yeah, it is possible to 5 man a keep. But stop being spurious with your facts.

Buy leather gear, throw it in the forge, salvage the results, profit.

There is very little you can do against this. SBI going down was a deliberate thing, just as CD going up was also deliberate.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

After reading through the comments and feedback, and some deliberation among the team – we have decided to adjust Crystal Desert by +300 for this match only, making them more likely to advance out of tier 4. Next week we will adjust them to +200.

Phlogistn.7893:

Running a havoc guild previously. Anet has destroyed WvW for smaller guilds. We can’t take objectives because we can’t hold enough supplies, which we can’t upgrade because building a guild hall takes large guilds with multiple players working constantly. No one enjoys playing in the borderlands, EB is queued ridiculously. Did any of the Anet developers run with any smaller guilds while “testing out” WvW ? Or was it all zerg. I mean…even pulling the repair merchant from the EB keep and making us go to spawn.

gg

Yeah, it feels like they never actually played WvW themselves before they implemented the changes. Or if they did play, it was solely in blobbing zergs rather than havoc or roaming. The new changes are clearly designed for at least 10 to 15 player groups or bigger. Can’t speak for other servers, but on ours, most of our groups were rarely above 5 people.

It just seems like Anet went “This will work on the big servers” and then ignored the lower populations and how this would affect them. Which is depressing.

Worse yet is the complete silence from Anet since HoT release regarding any of the issues that the WvW community has brought up. I’ve been checking every day hoping for at least a simple acknowledgement that they’ve heard what’s been said. Not action, just an acknowledgement. It has now been 3 weeks and the best we’ve gotten has been the harvesting nodes being nerfed? Wow… Priorities.

If they just said something, anything, that suggested they were at least considering the issues, that’d make a HUGE difference for a lot of people.

Got to agree. This is crazy. Ever since server linking started, Glicko has been worthless. There is no value to the scores and the matchups are completely random.

Either extend server linking to a decent period such that glicko makes sense, or remove glicko entirely and base matchups on something that actually makes sense to the game now.

There are some of us that do actually play for PPT and do enjoy winning. But the perpetual k-train? Might as well go to EotM for that crap.

Previously you needed level 80 centaurs to get these. Those were only in the Alpine Borderlands given the Harathi Hinterlands is mid 40s.

There is currently no source for the heavy supply bags needed for the War Room supply drop upgrade. Thus the reason the price was over 10g each last I looked.

My guild has given up on the war room at this point. For what it offers, the returns just aren’t worth the effort and cost. Pretty much focused solely on the Arena and other useful upgrades for the time being until the costs become more reasonable.