Guild Wars 2

One problem of WvW, I think, is deserted BL maps even on T1/2 servers resulting in a great inequality between a few servers that can cover all of these maps for a large amount of time with a lot of players and those who can’t. Having the EBGs (quite) full and one more group that try to cover the three remainig BLs won’t compete against the two(?) servers in EU that are able to cover all of the maps with a decent amount of players.
Of course, anything that can be changed in WvW wont fit the perceptions of all players, so the following suggestion surely won’t be much loved by Deso and FSP players for example as the are able to get that full coverage working. On the other hand, this suggestion would perhaps result in a greater spread of players to lower populated servers which might even be resulting in a tendency of player-based server strenght equilibrium.

So here’s the idea: Just give us the EBG and one BL map per matchup consisting of three rounds each with every server taking one different starting position each round. The War score points of each of the three matches would just have to be added to get the final score of a matchup determining a winner.
Two maps are much easier to fill even by low populated servers and there’d be a huge incentive for players on servers with a high WvW playing population to switch to “lower” servers in order to avoid queues. This could be easily combined with the possibility to join on in EotM only if there is a queue on both/every map (as I understand it, the way EotM implementation was meant anyways). Furthermore a free- or cheap transfer to lower (WvW-[?])populated servers should be made accessible to contribute to a more equal WvW map coverage for all servers.

What I’d desire from the devs would be some kind of thread/post with their views of what they want WvW to be like or what they criticise about it’s current state (technically, not in terms of “amazing” or such) and a list of approaces that aren’t realisable for the amount of work that would be involved with them’d be too large (e.g. completely new maps as I have read in other posts). This would allow a more distinct discussion about approaches that could be realised and, additionally would cope with the community’s desires to get a signal of the responsibles that there is a noteworty interest in improving/advancing WvW and including player’s opinions in that process.

Currently, as I see it, there are two incentives regarding WvW which take effect apart from each other:
1) Loot from kills/rank chests, etc.
2) War score

At the moment 1) is dominant and as for the rewads for agressive, large-blob playstyle in contrast to small group roaming, scouting and defending objectives are (much) smaller, the much criticised karma-training is encouraged in a way that it almost becomes the sole rewarding kind to play WvW at all. I’m not just talking about, or demanding greater rewards for defending etc. (as there still are problems like botting) but the efforts of fewer people trying to do so are negated by large zergs that simply do not care or even see it in a positive way to being able to recapture an object and again claim type 1) rewards for that.

Of course, giving higher rewards for defending could reduce this problem in a certain way, but apart from (again) the bot problem and the manner in which this can or can not be controlled, still the discrepancy between the two reward types remains.
As long as this dichotomy persists, people will always tend to play WvW in a style that isn’t about winning a matchup but about reward type 1) and the time, it takes to claim a certain amount of it (in terms of forts/keeps/etc. per time unit).

There are a lot of good propositions regarding the “karma train problem” concerning rewards and/or game mechanics in this thread and I’d wish that some of them would just get tried out on a base of shorter (e.g. 4-week) tournamets/seasons because the only way of sorting this problem out lies in practise rather than theory.

As for changing game mechanics like, for example the AoE cap, the often criticised circumstance of WvW not having changed in any way from the start on would be adressed and people would have to develop new strategies facing different settings of rules.

As for rewards, I believe, things can only get better for the existant rewards completely negate the way WvW should work in terms of a stronger linkage between type 1) and 2) rewards and being a competitive PvP success-/ rather than loot-oriented game mode.
I’d even go so far to try removing in-match capturing rewards completely for one season and see what happens to WvW participation. For the greater rewards for defending ended in a failure, this might even be the last logical, reward-based step granting the possibility of changing WvW playstyle. Furthermore, rewards could also be granted every 15min-turn on a basis of war score points and individual player participation (e.g. determined by the amount and quality (gold/silver/bronze) of non-rewarding events completed).

There’s a lot of possibilities – I’d just like to see them trialed so that the community can give more specific input about their experiences with them resulting in a better learning process to improve overall WvW experience.

Concerning EU servers, you might wanna check out vabbi.