Guild Wars 2

One of the more glaring examples of lack of good thematic expression for the Necromancer, in my opinion, is in the personal storyline. One would think that, being a necromancer, one would be extra interested in the Risen, or would even offer some kind of input regarding Zhaitan’s awakening. I mean, we summon flesh minions and suddenly people are intrigued by some rising dead bodies. I feel that our character is too passive in the whole matter.

Contrast this to Diablo 2, where when you play a Necromancer all NPCs are suspicious of you.

But I’ve come to accept that it is how things are done today, when monetization, gameplay mechanics and audience broadening trample any attempt of building atmosphere.

I agree that the first statement, about bosses respawning, didn’t deliver. Just warp to any map that spawns a dragon and you will see people asking “how long until X respawns?” and it in fact respawns at rather predictable intervals.

About villages staying rescued it’s more that there is little consequence to them being rescued or not than a recurring event resetting things. Because of how you can teleport around, the map turns out to be really small. A town being captured only means you will have to teleport to another one in order to buy supplies/sell stuff and there is no difference between villages about that.

The biggest annoyance a point being contested can offer is not being able to enter a dungeon or buy some gear. And in both cases you don’t complete the event so you can do those later, you complete the event because you want your reward immediately.

Think it this way, they have this colossal list of bugs that need fixing, and what happened is that the bugs were submitted separately, and ended up apart in it, when the assigned programmers went over to it they fixed one of them, but didn’t ‘reach’ the others.

What it does tell, however, is like you said, they are rushing through it, and that the bug list is probably quite huge.

1: On the issue of flip-flopping:

I agree immensely with the feeling that bases are changing hands too fast, and I believe it has to do with a major overlook in the design of WvW mechanics, and that has to do with the importance of supply and supply camps.

WvW has objetives to groups ranging from small (scouts) to large (keeps and castle). During development, we were told that these would enable both small and large groups (and guilds) to have fun (and do meaningful things on the battlegrounds).

The problem is that, while it is really easy for a small group to capture a camp, it is also fundamental for a medium or large group to do so when on their way to a larger site. This makes it impossible for a small group to hold a small camp because more often than not you will be overwhelmed and defending it. Ideally, each objective should have its importance tuned so that only groups of similar strenght would consider fighting over it.

This being said, there should be a good, direct reward to lone players accompanying an organized group in a siege. This is to prevent the zerg from mindlessly rushing small-value camps just because they are easier to capture.