Guild Wars 2

Its been made somewhat clear that on our big run days, we usually end up guesting over to another server, and that you should be in TS to get the info as soon as you can. Honestly, you should be in TS anyways, as it is pretty much needed for coordination.

And yes, I specifically remember asking for people to move over to crimson and seeing Strawberry and Orion go. Thats the kind of sacrifice we like to see!

Attuned just got our first official (post patch) kill on the wurm on the previous run.

Let me just say, I am proud of all the people who participated. People were listening, and reacting very well.

I’m sure that in some way, the accounts of people who call a server home must count for something. At the same time, the amount of people currently playing must also count.

My reasoning for home server accounts is due to the fact that all of the populations in NA are listed at Very High. I think most of us can agree that some of these servers don’t have many people active at one time, at least not enough to class a very high, whatever number that means. So, the home server accounts must have some effect.

However, at the same time, it can’t ONLY be home server accounts. My reasoning for this is the population fluctuations you see at server dead hours. If it were ONLY accounts that called somewhere home, we would likely see alot more full worlds, and fluctuation wouldn’t occur during off hours.

I don’t think its a marketing ploy, because if it was, then why aren’t the EU servers all at very high, all the time? If it was because of a marketing ploy, or an attempt to keep up an illusion that gw2 is active (which it definitely still is), then all of the EU servers right now should be listed as very high, right? However, looking at them right now, I see some mediums, highs, and very highs, but not one full.

I don’t know what the exact mechanics of server population size are, nor does it truly matter to me, personally. I understand that some people are hurt by the fact that their servers have no one on them, or that the people there just don’t seem to care. I agree that it would be nice to know exactly how server population is calculated. However, flaming at each other over it/saying Anet sucks/Throwing Kittens at each other really solves nothing.

Lets look at a few things here.

First: The Gem Store is, aside from people’s first time purchase of the game and server transfer fees, Anet’s ONLY source of income from GW2.
Addendum: Gems also serve as an important economic tool in removing gold from the supply when people purchase them with G, as does the TP fees.

Second: Since the Gem Store is an important source of income, Anet needs to incentivize the items that are there. This means, in some way, they must be better than what can be bought in game. So far, this has been in the form of things like cosmetics, minis, upgrades, fun tools, and, in this case, unlimited use gathering tools.

Thus far, these picks have only been used because they are cool looking, and have the inifinite uses. This has not really been a problem for most people.

What seems to get everyone’s kitten into a ball of yarn is the fact that this new pick has a chance to gain sprockets. Not the fact that the pick is infinite, and thus you won’t be needing to buy new picks every now and again, but that it MIGHT give you some sprockets. From what I gathered while looking through this thread, it’s because people are thinking this is a sign of doom, gw2 is going to be p2w, etc.

The presence of the pick is going to keep the price of sprockets LOWER than if the pick wasnt there. The more ways there are to get something, the higher the supply, the cheaper its going to be.

Again, this pick hasn’t really changed the game to p2w. The only advantage you get is a chance for sprockets, which can also be gained from the sprocket node if you completed Origins of Madness. As you can gain the same advantage by using free in game items, its not a p2w.

(Insert line about being able to change G into Gems here)

Also, how on Earth does a pick that might give you sprockets herald a booster for increased ecto or precursor drop rates?

Lets be honest here. Fighting in a squad of 40-60 people (depends on what strat you are using), against a boss spitting AOEs all over the place, and several other mobs around you, with people desperately zoning in and out to try and get in to the main?

Pretty stressful on a connection.

I myself have run into this problem, with my home world of Borlis Pass. Not going to stop trying to organize it though.

….I just shed a tear at that beautiful tale. It is just that perfect.

nekretaal.6485:

OP is on the right track, but the Marionette is already dead on my server (Borliss Pass) for 80% of the day. The wurm died the second day and Tequatl has been dead forever.

1. Content needs to scale so that groups can make a realistic attempt with 40-50

2. Content needs to have a legit chance of success or some sort of carrot reward on a fail (Wurm fails awarding one champ box or even less are insulting)

3. One shot mechanics need to be minimized (OP said this, but perhaps didn’t realize how many players get one shot by boss 3 or 4 AoE even while loading into a chain)

Scaling the content so that only huge zergs can complete it is killing the Borliss Pass community. We are the median server (half of servers are smaller than us) so I can only imagine that it gets worse the further own you go. There’s no guarantee enough players will show up so

1. the dedicated players will guest away to other servers where they lack 3rd party voice chat information and thus are little better than leeches to the big servers, who take spots from big server players.

2. Borliss Pass main server attempts don’t have the dedicated players and so fail more often and lack for players more often.

The number of players required to beat an event shouldn’t push up against server limits, that’s what’s causing the overflows and waits.

Ah, a fellow Borlis Pass player! I agree with many of these points. The primary point that I agree with is that the bosses really do need to scale better with player numbers. Not to the point that you could complete a boss with only ten people per boss, but without requiring that you hardcap the map to even have a chance.

Honestly, the only reason I went to BG was to learn strategies to kill the wurm, and then come back and try to lead BP to victory (“FOR THE PASS!”).

Also, they can’t make the reward for partial completion too good. As we learned from the Clockwork Invasions, if you can get decent loot without even completing the event, people are GOING to farm the event, and not even try to complete it.

This is to OP (wouldve quoted, but then message would be too long)

Let me making something clear first. I do somewhat agree with you. More bosses based on either Mario or Wurm, with actual mechanics rather than “Zerg here” would be great. I would like bosses to actually require conscious thought, instead of the almighty power of zerg autoattack.

My issue is your request that they not be based on the wurm. You do realize most of your points also apply to wurm? These points are in no particular order.

Wurm appears regularly (It and marionette swap hours, soone hour is mario, the other is wurm).

Wurm may not be so much reliant on an individual, Ill give you that, but more of what a squad does. Heck, zerging a wurm is a quick way to fail, since its invincible until you stun it with its particular mechanic.

Room for error? How about that, “If one circle fails to kill their warden, the entire attempt fails”? Wurm has more space for error than that, albeit, not much.

Crit damage and precision are HUGE for the Wurm battle. Yes, that first phase, wurm is structure, and thus no critting it. However, those mobs around, that need to be cleared away? Those can be critted. Phase two wurm, where you have to kill the head in two minutes, and it is a legendary creature? That can DEFINITELY be critted.

Single mechanic? The three wurms EACH have their own mechanic. These mechanics aren’t necessarily easy, but neither are they complex.

One inexperienced player cannot make the event fail. For starters, Mario, more than ANY other boss, suffers from this. One person messing up in the warden fight screws it up far worse than one person messing up than any other boss in general.

Loot for partial completion. Each wurm head you DECAPITATE (not kill, just cut off), you get a better chest. One head-bronze, two-silver, three-gold. You get loot for partial completion.

Various different roles? I don’t seem to understand how that applies to Mario. You are a zerg, repelling mobs from a path. Each path is literally doing the same thing. Yes, there is building of defenses, but more often than not, people build those and drop their wrenches. Inside, you are fighting the same mob the rest of your group is fighting. In wurm, there are DEFINITE roles. You might be on a dps team fighting off the mobs, so objective teams can do their thing. You might be on a condi team, taking out the husks. Maybe you are a keg runner for cobalt, stacking the bombs so people can hit the wurm. There are SO many roles to play in wurm.

One hit Kill? Seriously, what boss in the game has one? Not Mario, Not wurm, not anything that I can think of. Yah, there are some hard hitting attacks, but nothing that is guaranteed to kill you regardless of what you do.

Condis not being useless. I love that Anet decided to make condi classes way more important with these bosses. On wurm, you are pretty much screwed if you do not have condi teams. The husks that wander around the area, ccing you and being a general pain? They have SO much armor, that a full zerker, critting him? Yeah, he’ll do 40 damage crits. They have a relatively low health pool, so condi classes will mess husks up so bad. A necro with Epidemic is worth his weight in gold on wurm.

Accessibility to casuals: Ill give you that mario is more easily accessed. However, people should still just be able to pay attention to strategies being discussed.

Why is everyone hating on coordination via TS? In Marionette, in the battles I’ve seen, the commanders were still on TS, and urged everyone around to get on too. People seem to think that coordination is terribad, and should NOT happen. Is it really so bad that people want to be able to chat while still fighting?

Siege equipment….Why is this a plus? Not ragging on you, just curious.

Ill give you the points on stun, accesibility to casuals, and scaling (wurm has scaling bug), but all of those other points also apply to wurm. I’ll agree wurm is a bit hard, but I believe mario is a bit too zergy. A happy medium would be nice.

PART 2

Closer towards V-Day, we turned our attention towards editing builds to maximize our DPS and survival (That phase two wurm head, where you have to kill a legendary wurm head that is fond of crippling people, running you over, and constantly moving). We came together and created suggested builds for each class, down to what types of weapons, and what traits were good ideas. We put these builds in a online gallery so that anyone just entering the map could see it, and change their builds if they wanted to (our builds are still up at tinyurl.com/wurmbuilds, if you too want to see what we came up with for each class).

The last thing we did was create teams for each wurm by a drafting system. We would have three commanders stack on each of the escort paths, and would have players stack in groups by class. Each commander would then request a certain number of a class, for example, “Can I get 5 elementalists at Cobalt”. In this way, we evened out the teams for each wurm. Commanders would then subdivide their class into groups “Can I get a guardian, a warrior, 2 elementalists, and a mesmer in a party for a DPS team”, or “Can I get some condition necros and rangers into a party for husk killing”, or even “Can I get five people who haven’t been assigned to a DPS squad on a party for running barrels”. This assignment of jobs made it so that people knew just what they were supposed to do, and shortly after we started doing this, we beat the wurm.

I just realized that I have veered slightly away from the point on why the server is psychological (got so excited to write down exactly how we won), and for that I apologize. The TL:DR of this is this: We didnt kill the wurm on BG because it is a superior server. Half of the people there weren’t even BG natives. We killed the wurm there because it has become an unofficial gathering server for those who actually CARED about beating the wurm because they wanted to beat the challenge that was the wurm, rather than because of loot or achievements. If all of those other servers, my own included, would stop thinking that they CAN’T kill the wurm, and drank some Liquid Believe, then maybe they would do better. Anet isn’t supporting one server over the other. The reason they keep doing those streams of servers like BG fighting the wurm isnt to showcase that BG is better. What they are showcasing is the sense of COMMUNITY that we are showing while fighting the wurm, rather than our superiority.

As for me, I’m going to try and break the sense that only Blackgate can beat the wurm. While I am going to try and transfer to BG (because I made so many awesome friends who are natives of that server), I am also going to start going over to Borlis Pass, and start trying to get the wurm killed there. Come and join me there!

Librari, signing off.

(This post will be split into two pieces due to length. I apologize for it being so long, but I feel like all of it is important)

First off, this is Librari, the Font of Knowledge (and saucy dances) speaking.

Before I attempt to refute the server design as being bad on Anet’s part, let me talk really quick about TS. Is it listed in the game requirements? No, of course not. Does that mean that there should be nothing that requires even an ounce of coordination? No, of course not. If you want to be technical, TS (Teamspeak, a voice chat program, for those who didn’t know) is not required for the wurm battle. I suppose it is possible that a well-oiled group could beat wurm. You could even coordinate through map chat if you had to. What TS does is simply make that coordination EASIER. All you need is some commanders who know what they are doing (preferrably with mics), and no one else even needs a mic, just the ability to listen in on TS.

The lack of wurm killing on so many servers is not because Blackgate is just teh best. Really, the whole concept that the only Blackgate (or one of the other “best” servers) can do it is more psychological than anything. Let me try to explain this through my experiences.

My home server is Borlis Pass. When the boss was first released, I did truly try to beat it there. However, I quickly realized there were some problems.

First of all, we never capped the map, hard or even soft. At most, 60-70 people came there, most of which would’ve been BP natives. Regardless, we still tried to fight the wurm. Of course, it was hard at first, we were trying to figure out the strategies for fighting each wurm, and many people were also interested in fighting marionette, as it is a boss thats supposed to only be around for a while, while wurm is permanent.

However, over time, I noticed a disturbing trend. People would hop into the map, ask which wurm path has a specific achievement, then stack on that path. Also, as we failed again and again at the wurm, people started asking that we only do one wurm, so that we would get guaranteed loot, because that loot at the end of the boss was what mattered to them. Everyone considered that beating all of the wurms as an impossible task, and so rather than try, they settled for the Bronze Wurm chest. Also, more and more people stopped coming, but instead went to Marionette, as that boss was easy to fight (Zerg, zerg, and more Zerg, rather than stun mechanics).

At this point, I decided to try guesting over to BG. There, things were different. For starters, the main map was full most of the time. Most of the people there weren’t even BG natives, but guesters like me. I went into the TS, and instead of a single channel for Origins of Madness like the BP TS had, there were channels dedicated to each wurm. And the people in these channels were ACTIVE! The time in the TS was spent either building or editing boss strategies, or spent in humorous discussion, such as how to keep oneself awake with ice. Most importantly, everyone who came into the map actually BELIEVED that we had a shot at the wurm, rather than thinking we better only go for loot.

Also, the people were DEDICATED to killing that evil son of a wurm. I know that some of them even stayed up for 36 hours at a time trying to help build the strat, or lead the teams.

Everytime we lost to the wurm (and we lost a lot), rather than get depressed (okay, too depressed) about the loss, we would look over the fight, trying to figure out what we did wrong, and how we could fix it the next time around.

When the commanders of the attempts started to run low on cash (Since we spent all of our time on wurm, there wasn’t time to dungeon run, or build cash in general) on buying pots of food, sharpening stones, and what have you, people would actually donate gold to a fund for buying more food. When we started trying to edit our builds so that we could try to maximize our damage on the second phase, people would also donate money to those in need. We even ran gold raffles for people in the TS (trying to lure everyone in the map to TS). When the commanders ran out of G for that, people, yet again, chipped into the fund. This kind of selflessness surprised me, as I would never have expected to see people seperate themselves from hard earned money, so that others could afford trait resets, or pots of curry butternut.

This is Librari, aka bookstore. I know I wasn’t there for the final kill (those of you who were there know of my terrible luck with ferries), yet, I still feel like a part of this. Those days spent arguing over everything under the sun, from straits, to builds, to ice rubs on certain areas of the body. The complaints when we got so close, but couldn’t quite cut it. I feel proud of everyone who stayed to fight the wurm just because you felt like it was taunting us, rather than because of a achieve.

Now, all I want is to see those heads die myself, and get my title (now that the wurm is dead, its time to achieve run).

Now all that’s left is to go out and spread the knowledge on fighting the wurm to the other servers, from FsP, to BP. The Librari is open for business!

I glanced through the thread and saw several things that need to be clarified. These are in no particular order.

One thing is the complaints about getting twenty people to do something at the same time, and how it is impossible. I actually found it to not be too hard at all. For example, on Borlis Pass’s wurm practice runs (where we would direct everyone to one wurm per event, to get familiar with the mechanics), things rolled smoothly getting people to do the objective. The key was spending the 10-15 minutes before event start calmly explaining the tactics to everyone who showed, and ensuring everyone knew the mechanics. We almost managed to take down 2 wurms in one event this way (We, weird as it sounds, melted the cobalt wurm WAY too fast, nuking 25-40% of its health bar in a single stun section, panicked, and ran over to red) and will probably be able to take all three soon.

A small point of clarifcation on the blue wurm btw, you don’t actually have to place all the bombs at a single moment. The barrels actually despawn somewhat slowly (ten seconds maybe? I’ll make sure to check if I get the chance), so if you had 14-17 people running barrels, it would probably work.

Something else I’ve seen complaints about is that of the mob swarms (I’m looking at you Amber Wurm!). The only response I have to this is that every group needs to have roamers, people who kite/kill the mobs. The prime focus of these roamers needs to be those Worm Eggs. Of all the mobs, it seems to be the larva that are getting the most people killed. If roamers would get the eggs, things would likely be much simpler.

The no loot complaint has been brought up and replied to by so many people. Yes, the mobs (and champs) drop nothing at all, probably so people don’t farm them and ignore the event. Honestly though, if the reason you are coming to the event for loot, which is understandably, a huge draw for some people, until we get the fight down, you may be better off on the champ train, as much as I disapprove of the concept. If your joy comes from conquering complex mechanics, this boss is probably for you.

Another thing is that this boss is something for just the elitist crowds, high pop servers, the 1%, etc. In my opinion, this is not true. Is this boss hard? Yes, yes it is. Is this boss yet another boss that simply gets auto attack 1 zerged to death like 87.5% of the bosses in the game right now? No. To be fair, bosses, again, in my opinion, should be…different than common mobs, in that they are fought in a different way. Back on topic, I believe that anyone can come fight this boss, and probably succeed. The important thing to do is to either A.) Know what the boss is going to do before hand, or B.) Just show up at the boss, and someone will probably go over the tactics before event start. Yes, I understand that some people are going to come into the event not knowing what is happening. In that case, just keep an eye on the chat, and you will probably get the gist of what is going on.

The time limit. Honestly, I believe it is a bit hard, but entirely doable (Wouldnt complain if we had 5 more minutes, but we don’t HAVE to have that). I completely disagree with the removal of a time limit. With no time limit, the boss becomes effectively trivial, and would in fact encourage more zerging, which I see as a negative

I know there is definitely more I can say on the matter, but this post is getting somewhat long, so I’ll cut it off here.

(Because I’m lazy and haven’t made a signature addressing it yet…This is Librari, for those of you who were there yesterday in our practice runs)