Guild Wars 2

As a career low-pop server player, the lack of swords made a HUGE difference in our play this last month. We could actually influence something before a horde of zerglings descended on and face-rolled our much smaller numbers.

It was pure guerrilla warfare at its finest, so naturally, the blob-fests hate it. Look, if you have a high population server, you darned well ought to be able to sacrifice a few of your personal points to guard a place. If my low pop server could manage to station guards at Hills, Bay, Garri, and even towers in the south, you high-pop zergfests darned well oughta be able to do the same.

Funny thing is, it did work once or twice when I rolled up a new character, a few times, actually. Then, zippo. Pops up, lingers a few seconds, then gone.

Anvil Rock chiming in from 23rd in NA… going against 18 and 19. The lowest tiers will remain in the cellar as long as this continues, and the exodus will only exacerbate the issue.

No one likes losing all. the. time. Yet here we are, outmatched before the game even starts. And I won’t even mention the poor folks over in Sorrow’s Furnace at 22nd, facing off against NSP (16) and DH (17). Five and six ranking levels above them.

I can’t speak for them, but I can’t honestly say that WvW is a lot of fun being point-farmed by blobs.

Chris & Team,

Thanks for this discussion. Here are my thoughts:

1.) WvW: The population issues seem pretty prevalent – as an Anvil Rock player, we’re constantly up against vastly superior numbers in WvW, yet there’s no real option for any kind of dissimilar warfare to impact the larger forces other than momentary inconveniences that are easily remedied (reclaiming a camp we just flipped, for instance). I have some ideas (I’ll spare the details here) wherein WvW can provide opportunity for servers in ways proportionate to the troops they’re able to field, as well as some thoughts on the existing rewards structures.

2.) WvW Rewards: Currently, server players are able to reap the rewards of successes from WvW, which is a fantastic idea. However, there’s no reciprocity – a PvE-only player achieves the same success chances granted by WvW success as does a WvW-only player. That needs remediation – there’s no incentive for a PvE-only to actively participate in WvW, when they’re rewarded the same as those who do.

3.) Let’s break up the swarming hordes. Certainly, there is a time and place for deployment and engagement of such chaotic masses.

Thanks, guys. Looking forward to the discussion!

So I’m curious, and interested in players thoughts on this. It’s been said by more than one player that WvWvW is war, and war isn’t fair. I think there’s a large portion of the WvW community that would concur.

There’s some mechanics in place, however, that minimize the warfare aspect of WvW, and that’s been something I’ve wondered about for awhile. The Seasons rolling out finally motivated me to develop this topic.

Specifically, we’ve all been exposed to zerg karma trains. On Anvil Rock, we have some very good Commanders who excel in taking our rag-tag guerrilla forces into places, wreaking a little chaos and havoc, and bugging out before the generally larger opposition returns for some vengeance of their own. We never seem to hold on to points for long, but when we’re organized enough, we can generally flip camps and towers readily enough. If we’re lucky and have done so enough to keep supply for the other side a question, we can take keeps. Stonemist is a welcome victory, but not one that happens often for us, at the moment. In open-field, if we’re evenly matched numbers-wise, we generally do pretty well.

It’s too easy to blame lack of active WvWers for AR’s issues, but in looking at some of the things that have happened in the past few weeks, it’s hard not to blame lack of participation. We’d had some pretty nice successes for a server that until recently spent many a period of time Outmanned on any map you cared to check, and at prime time. A few diehards carried the torch until many of us got in there to contribute. For us, all the evidence we needed was plain to see recently: NSP stomped a mudhole in both GoM and AR, holding all of EB and their own Borderlands, in addition to a sizable portion of both GoM’s and AR’s. Success on that scale is what we expect going up against a server ranked as high as NSP is in comparison to ours – we just didn’t have enough to counter both them and GoM. We’d hit one keep, knock the door down, and get stomped by the third side’s zerg. Certainly not what anyone would consider “fair” but war is war. Good on them, frankly – they save the resources by letting another server do the work, then move in and take the weakened position. That’s sound strategy.

So here’s what I’m wondering: There appears, from time to time, strategic aspects to the WvWvW scene, but those seem few and far between. Certainly, a large marauding zerg, while great for flipping (and reflipping) camps ad nauseam and the supply ripples that causes, it doesn’t defend anything.

The question I’m wondering is, assuming higher tiers have better participation, are those tiers stationing a garrison force to hold positions against attack? Or do they also just rely on zerg-might to swarm a position to reclaim it over and over again?

I can’t help but wonder if the resources being spent to take the same positions over and over again wouldn’t be better spent upgrading and reinforcing it once, and staging a force to hold (or delay the attacker long enough for more defending troops to arrive) instead.

It seems like there is a strategic element missing from WvW, and I wonder why that element doesn’t seem to be a factor, when it could be a force multiplier in the right hands.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your thoughts.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Beside that, forums like these are mostly visited by whiners. No matter what ArenaNet does they will find something to whine about.

And sadly, anyone who comes in to the forums with anything that even looks like praise is mostly shouted down by all the self-entitled complainers.

Let’s face it. The grousers and complainers gain traction because of the simple fact that there are so few voices of reason to counter them. I hate to admit it, but it’s one of the main reasons why I post so little here. Why should I – or for that matter, any reasonable person – subject themselves to the abuse of a crowd of self-important gloryhounds? I left that drama behind in high school, or so I thought. I’m working on changing that, though. If we want the forums to be anything other than a gripefest, those of us with good things to say need to post more.

The levels of abuse heaped on anyone with anything nice to say about the game, the development team, or any other positivity about the experience we do have is patently absurd; I commend those who dwell here, especially the devteam who must constantly be bombarded with so much negative nonsense around the work – yes, WORK – they’ve put into this that they must constantly battle walking on their morale.

Faranox.4217:

Less raging, more raiding!

Heck yeah, Chops. That’s the spirit!

enigma.9142:

DR is in the same spot. Great players, but then they go to sleep and there’s no one. Not sure how to solve it. The other night we were fighting hard for a keep from FC, all the while there were groups doing a temple and farming champions in frostforge. A lot of people play this game because they like the gold and item loot. You can do that decently in WvW but not nearly as well as farming champs.

All that said, would you guys hurry up and go to sleep so AR can have its garrison back? Thanks. (Much love – you guys deserve mad respect for showing up with as many as you have – AR could use those numbers!)

Dsybok.1405:

AR is playing well this week, and did so last week as well. I am much impressed with the improvement, suspect you got some transfers into AR.

If they continue to play this well, the problem will solve itself.

Don’t know about transfers in, but I do know that, at least until about midweek last week, we were at least keeping things a little competitive. Somewhere around Wednesday, though, it seemed that both GoM and AR left you guys the field, and you ran with it.

Last night was infuriating, though. AR basically just left our own BL to you guys and spent more time grousing in /m about what channel to use when you’re busy being overrun at a 10-to-1 ratio. I swear, sometimes it seems like we try to lose.

Enough already. The glory-hounds are gone, the disloyal and dissolute have fled for other pastures, abandoning the home they dearly loved so much to give so much to, and to carry the weight of all by themselves for so long before getting tired of it. Enough of the hypocrisy, and the self-aggrandizement.

I’m proud of us on Anvil Rock – the ones who are still here. We have selected community over convenience. We’ve struggled through grievous losses of people we once trusted. What’s done is done; just the fact that the “defense” rationale for leaving has been restated so often within this thread says all it needs to.

For we few who remained, we yet have work to do.

Lately, we’ve been doing that work, and doing it better each day. This week we face a tough test – FC ran roughshod over us in the latter half of last week, when GoM started to struggle as well. This week, we face FC and DR, and this will be a fight. Each of these servers has something to prove.

AR, we’ve proven what we’re capable of with far fewer people out in the field than any other server. We’ve faced – and held against! – overwhelming numbers again and again. What’s remarkable isn’t that we get defeated – anyone can do that. What’s remarkable is how many of us step back up to fight again against those odds. What’s remarkable is how dedicated those of us who remained have been to the work to make our server better. What’s remarkable is that we don’t get shelled back to our Legendary Defenders to stay for the week. What’s remarkable – what’s really downright incredible – is the WvW players on Anvil Rock who are there RIGHT NOW, today, this week, giving their all in a desperate, seeming futile struggle to get just a little further.

When this server gets its act together, these people are going to be unstoppable, because the ones who are there at that point are being tempered in this hell right now.

Any and all of us who want to garner the benefits accrued to our server by our success in WvW owe it to our servers and to ourselves to contribute SOMETHING in the WvW arena. We have good commanders who are trying – at their own expense in many cases – to make the situation better.

But good though they may be, they can’t lead an army of no one. And that’s where AR’s players come in – PvE AND PvP. Each brings a different skillset to the field that, collectively, creates power and utility.

No one has any reason to change anything about the WvW environment as it’s been created. AR, if we want to change it, WE HAVE to be the ones to do it. To that extent, I agree with every single post here that says, in short, “Quit griping and get on with it.”

I don’t care who left, or how big they are. I also could care less about any single one of them. They chose, each and every one of them, to abandon the server. Good riddance to ‘em. They’ll be gone from the game as soon as it ceases feeding their ego-measuring-devices. Whatever. Or they won’t be. I could care less.

Anvil Rock needs players who actually care about each other in the Anvil Rock community. And you know what, AR? It’s happening. I’m seeing more and more of the same, familiar people in WvW, more often. The same commanders, with loyal, non-guild troops. We aren’t topping the charts – yet – but with a few more people who care about both their own fun and that of their server, we’ll see AR start this climb out of the cellar. We need to use the resources we have at our disposal to maximum effect – fora, VoIP servers, Teamspeak/Ventrilo, etc. We have the talent, and the tools. We just need to put them together.

And I, for one, will be glad to leave those who abandoned us behind when we pass them.

Until that time, we will continue our fight guerrilla-style, disrupting supply, flipping camps, forcing one of the other servers to respond to its own borderlands, allowing the other to fight fewer foes.

We may not be able to win right now, but we will continue to work as hard as we can to improve, and just maybe make it harder for one of you on other servers to win along the way.

I suspect that I won’t be, but if I have to be out there alone, I will be.

Maybe make him a sylvari?

I like the overall idea.

Nice ones, Yata – 8/10 minimum.

Kára Svipul, female warrior.

Coriolyss, female guardian.

What absolutely stinks about this for me isn’t the bugs – I overcame them, and progressed through after the same truly upsetting experience everyone else has posted.

People are going to take this comment however they choose, and that’s fine. But what really, truly got to me about this was that the sequence’s glitches completely destroyed the pacing and intensity of the story, and at a critical time. Up until that sequence, the mission built nicely. Then, WHAM! Intensity comes to a dead stop while overcoming the technical difficulties.

And right there near the end of the whole personal storyline. Guys, this one needs to be a priority. My experience showed that it’s not a progress blocking bug, but I don’t know that it wasn’t my own tenacity that kept it from being one.

When our fire brigade was dispatched, we responded to the fire in good time and good order. Upon arrival, we discovered a typical, average stone and wood residential structure already fully involved – much of the wood visible was burning fiercely. The residents were already out, of course. Cute little girl being worked on by the Emergency Healing Teams. All we had to do was fight the fire. That’s when we really noticed what was wrong.

As a Divinity’s Reach firefighter, I’ve never seen anything like the Roe house fire. Stone just isn’t supposed to burn like that. Never seen anything like it, even the big evacuation of the Canthan district – I mean, even then, things did what you’d expect ’em to. Fires started, wood and cloth burned, rocks and bricks fell straight down. It was bad, sure, but burning granite? In an ordinary house fire? All my years in the Department, I never did see a stone house burn so totally.

jatobi.1756:

Lynx Rufus Californicus.2958:

jatobi.1756:

Lynx Rufus Californicus.2958:

All the self-entitled whinging going on in here, I’d be tempted to cancel the whole durned thing. Sheesh.

It’s a good thing you’re not a company. You’d go out of business too fast.

I hear you. For some reason, my whinometer was pegged before I even got in here.

In honesty, though, working for myself is the best thing I’ve ever done.

How long did the business last? Couldn’t have lasted long with the mentality of yours.

“Wheres my product?”

“It’s gone, I give up, you whine too much”

…yeah, I see that going real well =P.

Why is it that poor behavior from customers is OK, but problems in developing or rolling out a complicated addition to an online game – without killing the servers to do so – isn’t? They’re basically looking at this as an upgrade to an automobile – while it’s still running. You’re suggesting that a company just give in to the whines – and when the product they release is flawed, they eat it for that, too. Given that kind of customer mentality, it’s a wonder anyone even tries in the business in the first place. There’s a point when you make concessions, and a point when you fire the customer. Given the whinging by many in this thread and others, the game’d better off without ’em.

jatobi.1756:

Lynx Rufus Californicus.2958:

All the self-entitled whinging going on in here, I’d be tempted to cancel the whole durned thing. Sheesh.

It’s a good thing you’re not a company. You’d go out of business too fast.

I hear you. For some reason, my whinometer was pegged before I even got in here.

In honesty, though, working for myself is the best thing I’ve ever done.

All the self-entitled whinging going on in here, I’d be tempted to cancel the whole durned thing. Sheesh.

True of Anvil Rock server as well. Same horde of maybe a half-dozen or so, running a circuit, all sans armor (after they get killed by the Champion Cave Troll when whoever starts that fight runs like a bunny out of the cave, the troll follows and mops up the rangerbots, wiping out whatever armor they had).

Guild: Dreamers of the Dance [DoD]
Server: US – Anvil Rock

Reporting same issue as others in regard to inaccessibility of Guild Stash and other Guild resources. Guild members and I are informed by NPCs that membership in a guild is required, even as we are showing up in the Roster as Representing.

Further, issues with Stand Down/Represent toggling: If a member elects to Stand Down, a map change is required before they can Represent again. Note that this change does not restore access to Guild resources.