Guild Wars 2

As someone who has frequented this forum for the past few months, I Just wanted to that I have never seen more posts from the devs than there have been the last few weeks. They have answered questions in a respectable and personable manner since a rather explosive event three weeks ago.

Granted, this all comes in light of the coming patch. But we cannot deny that they have been more personal and less vague in their responses to our questions and concerns.

I, for one, am appreciative of the obvious turnaround in public relations—however slight. It shows a maturity in management, and in the community developers. This forum especially has received the most attention and warrants at least a modicum of appreciation from its members.

Thanks.

Fort Aspenwood’s Recent History: An Objective Point of View

The Bad Blood between Crystal Desert and Fort Aspenwood/Isle of Janthir:

The bad blood between the two servers started in the early weeks of the tier 3 matchup when Isle of Janthir came into tier 3. After 1-2 weeks of fighting, a specific guild from CD (which I will not name here), began accusing FA of double teaming them. When IoJ fell to second place, this same guild decided they wanted payback on FA and routinely attacked the borderland—their forum warriors berating the server publicly.

Last week, IoJ and FA were both on the cusp of falling down a tier due to Dragonbrand’s stalwart success in tier 4. FA and IoJ fought desperately to take second place to secure their continued existence in tier 3. The fights were good, and mutual respect on the forums kept it civil.

Fearing defeat, a number of FA guilds got together and decided to do a Thursday night ‘push’. They collected on a community teamspeak server (mostly abandoned for months) to finally get some cross-guild organization on the server.

That same night, before the offensive began, we received word that many IoJ guilds were jumping over to Kaineng—but some of our rivals decided to come join FA. Our Thursday night push became a celebration and retribution on CD for their past forum trolls. Since most of the guilds on IoJ that were transferring to FA were going to be oceanic, we decided to show our new oceanic partners what their North American presence could do.

The Isle of Janthir transfers—again—were met with the same derision as to be expected from the same forum warriors that accused FA of double teaming in the first place, leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth about the overall server attitude at CD (although many others from CD were very friendly, it did little to offset the loud voices of these forum warriors)

The Fort Aspenwood Community Reform:

So now there’s a very active community teamspeak server which has just started up again. The WvW community in FA started literally last week. Up until that point, it had just been several different guilds working different timezones completely independently. The IoJ transferred guilds moved over to the community teamspeak channel and immediately started to help build this brand new community.

Fort Aspenwood is no longer the same server it was last week. The influx of new guilds/players is coming to join us because we’re not an ‘old guy’ server. There are no bullies on the block, or clear community leaders. This is, in all respects, a brand new server. New names and faces show up in teamchat every day—and it gives everyone an opportunity to be a part of something different. Something fresh.

The Future:

Fort Aspenwood has great coverage across most of the timezones. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where queues are a regular thing (This is a new thing for us). I am not trying to argue that Fort Aspenwood has become ‘elite’, and I definitely don’t want to count our eggs before they hatch, but I firmly believe that the way things are headed—Fort Aspenwood is on their way to tier 2. We had some great fights with CD/IoJ and I foresee many more for Dragonbrand. I hope this squabble isn’t leaving a bad impression on DB—as you guys definitely belong in this tier.

In 2 weeks, I foresee this tier stabilizing, and the fights will get far better.