Guild Wars 2

Hi! If you can, please message me in-game at some point. I’d like to help the HoD community.

During our 2nd completion of the Triple Trouble Wurm event, we encountered a bug that I have not seen before. The entire phase 1 of the event went perfect. So perfect that we decapitated all three heads at the same time. Instead of clearing the first timer and succeeding the event by moving to phase 2, it kept the first timer for the decapitate window (the 60 second timer) and placed the head kill timer (the 2 minute timer) in the event window as well. The first timer (the decapitate window) continued to time out to 0 and flagged the entire event as failed. Edit: I’m being corrected. We decapitated all three heads before the original timer reached 0 (hearing 14s left on the original timer) and it only popped the 60s window timer while still counting the original timer down.

Edit: Would like to mention that the heads did pop out of the ground as per normal for the phase 2 portion of the event.

Note: It seems very strange to prioritize the event fail in an event such as this.

It seems like it’s impossible to do, but you can still do it. The key thing to remember is that the people in Bloodtide Coast won’t be there the entire time. Once they enter LA, you can get your people in.

With the Feb 18th patch, a new invisible wall was introduced on the ledge between the Amber (yellow) extractor and the Cobalt (blue) extractor. From all intents it seems there was a fix implemented to stop the players from accidentally walking up a ledge near the Amber (yellow) extractor but was extended too far and clips the (normally) walkable ledge.

Zaxares.5419:

Which servers and times do you attempt Wurm on, Pexx? I’m already with TTS, but I can’t always make their scheduled runs, so being able to drop by during one of your training runs for more practice is always nice.

Our scheduled runs are Wed & Sat of each week starting at 1hr before server reset. We try to show up a little earlier to get people into TeamSpeak and invite guests to join us. Because our scheduled runs work with a lot of core members, we usually figure out servers to guest to (we prefer the leeway that main maps can afford). Our training runs are mostly done impromptu through-out the week on BG main, and they usually start at, or around, server reset. The training runs are open to all, as we want to get more people familiar with the event and let them experience the content the way A.net intended.

Attuned [Att] has two scheduled days for wurm, as well as training runs throughout the week. Our recruitment is temporarily closed while we finish setting that section up, but we are always willing to have people join us in serious attempts and training runs.

Kalarchis.8635:

Come to Fort Aspenwood! We just decapitated our first wurm head tonight; had about fifty running Crimson and we’re really getting it down now. We started an FA-only guild for organizing big events like wurm and it’s growing fast (also non-rep so other guilds can join with us.) Schedule is runs Mon-Wed nights at the 7 PST spawn, but we may do it more often now that we’re making headway!

That is great to hear! We wish you luck, it sounds like you guys are making great headway!

This thread makes me laugh, if only because people are arguing “play with the build you want vs play with the build you want”.

We are trying to dumb down the strategy in Attuned as well. The main problem I see is that, unlike Teq, it’s three individual groups that have sub-groups. Because the very nature of the fight relies on timers, it’s harder to communicate between the sub-groups. This also doesn’t account for the fact that each of the three wurm commanders need to be in direct communication with each other to determine when is the appropriate time to initiate the last burn, and in what order (depending on when circumstances change so fast in such a short time). This is what makes VOIP so important for the event.

I realize that the commanders can just sit back and bark orders. As one of the commanders, I dislike leading just by voice and prefer leading by doing (I find it also helps with my situation awareness).

Also, the margin of error for several stages means that the players participating need to be on-top-of-the-ball or risk something going wrong. It’s easy for pugs to join in, but being wildcards, that can throw an entire plan into disarray. In some cases, a difference of five or ten people not doing what is needed can lead to the entire event failing. (Or, in the case of phase two, a single person dying/not dodging/using auto-attacks only can actually mean failure to kill the head.)

Plus, without tight organization and people listening on TeamSpeak, they can’t hear my lovely voice and wonderous singing.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Sorry, no.

The plan isn’t to attack Lion’s Arch, it’s to attack what’s under Lion’s Arch.

So she’s a “super smart” girl. She uses a device that literally turns off blocks in her mind, thinking that’s a good idea. The result is that something malevolent gains access to her psyche. In an effort to fight back against this thing she has done everything up to this point.

She invested in the Thaumanova Reactor in order to find a method to track it. She paired the Dredge and Flame Legion in order to gain technology to take advantage of that method. She paired Inquest and Sky Pirates to gain access to easy transport. She stole the Watchknights for a tireless assault force. She paired the Krait and Nightmare Court for a way to kill it.

Now everything is just coming together.

What she’s doing is still not good, even if she manages to kill a Dragon. She chose the worse possible way to go about it, the most violent, narcissistic and crazy path. She could have worked with people and helped everyone, but she’s not trying to help anyone, just herself.

This. Many times, this.

It’s just that the way in which it was presented caused a lot of confusion or misconceptions about the entire story up to this point.

I’m still eagerly looking forward to the culmination of the story.

Rezz.8019:

Actually no. You never announced it in map chat. No need for false claims. And you left at least 50 people behind 5 minutes before event start. Those people were very, very disappointed, they spent 2 hours waiting for that event.
Anyway, next time respect people and tell them whats going on and don’t leave them waiting for so long just to ditch them.

Except that it was said in map chat. It’s not the fault of ours if people were AFK or were not paying attention when we said that we would be making an announcement and to not be AFK so they would know what was going on. This was said in our guild chat, over TeamSpeak, and in map chat several times over the course of the wait. Heck, the target guesting server was leaked over TeamSpeak and map chat before it was even said in our guild chat.

Good job, Deso! Is it not a great feeling to still get the kill with this whole “illegitimate kill” thing hanging over our heads? All of you are talented and dedicated folks and I wish you luck on more future kills!

We had a dev with us on our run, and they logged it when it occurred.

To clarify, it’s how they fixed the “invulnerable head not despawning at the end of the event” bug. Previously, if you brought a head to 0% HP with condition damage after the wurm gained the Slick Skin debuff, the game would stop the wurm from dying by placing it at 0.01%. But because game mechanics and event mechanics conflicted, the wurm was considered "dead, but not dead to the event because of the way Slick Skin worked, and became detached from the event. So after the event failed, the supposed-to-be-dead-but-not wurm would not set to the fail condition because it had become detached from the event. Ergo the bug where you would have the head up and mobs constantly spawning.

They fixed this by reattaching the wurm head to the event. So now both the game and the event register the wurm as “dead”, even when it’s clearly not, and then proceeds to “kill” the wurm, resulting in an update to the event tracker saying that the particular wurm in question was dead and ready for phase 2… but the event was “failed”. This resulted in the fact that you would get the rewards for killing three heads, but still not move on to phase 2.

Another point is about the timer. On our [Att] run when it happened, people got confused and thought that timer that expired and didn’t credit the 60 second window for the event. It did, because the other two wurms had already burned to 0% and the window timer was the actual one that expired (I had to rewatch the video just to make sure of this, myself).

So the bug is actually a fix. Just not the kind of fix we were expecting. I would assume it to merely be a bandaid until the event can be tuned proper.

I hope this explains things.

I think they would be generally considered to be “forgotten” in terms of lore. Say, like an old automobile in the middle of an overgrown field that you don’t discover until circumstances require you stumble upon it again.

Maliel.8362:

Those daggers are great for Heartseeker thieves… get it?

I laughed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You don’t fail because a player failed to dodge an attack, or was fighting poorly.

Actually, several times we have failed because several people didn’t dodge an attack or didn’t use their consumables. When you are at a time where you literally have 1% HP left on both heads (after one had died) during phase 2 and missed it because 5 or 10 people went down after getting hit with a flop… You kinda failed because of that contributing factor (amongst other things).

It’s a hard fight, yes. But it’s not impossible. It just means that everyone involved needs to buckle down and commit all their skills to succeed.

I still think the weapons need a particle effect.

BG and friends have only killed it once. We instead worked on refining our strategy and testing things for the better part of a week now. We’ve gotten close many times now and know that we can do it.

I know that, personally, I am ready to discredit our kill. We want to do this legitimately, and have been working to that effect.

That said, however, it is still great that other teams are organizing and making successful attempts, even with the bug. Each group going for the event completion has put in a lot of time and effort. It would be silly to discredit everyone’s (all groups involved) efforts and time just because of the revelation of what is really happening.

TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/Mumbler does make the fight easier, but it is supposition to say that it is required. I had to organized more people in harder fights back in the days when VOIPs were unreliable and laggy, at best.

The event can be completed without VOIP, but it would require coordination, effective map chat usage and exact knowledge of the event by all parties involved.

Not something I see happening just yet.

Sword. Greatsword. Longbow. Shield. Hammer. In that order.

Jabberwock.9014:

There is nothing inherently wrong with what we did, because it is almost literally the only way to win currently. The coordination needed is still immense.

Almost, but not quite. We’ve gotten really close legitimately several times now, we are just tweaking small things to clench it. The coordination is still immense, though.

I’ve stated before, but all current and future BG (now Attuned [Att] guild) and friends runs will not be using this bug for our attempts.

Every kill, including our BG kill, has been with the scaling bug.

However, our guild (previously BG and friends, now Attuned [Att] guild) attempts have been very close to downing the wurms without the scaling thing. We refuse to abuse this “mechanic” because it’s not how the fight was intended.

Skady.5916:

i dont even see BG doing it anymore

We started hiding our attempts due to people guesting over just to achievement hunt.

Personally, I think there is a way to influence phase 2’s flow. But that’s just it. It’ll only be influenced. We won’t be able to actually control the flow of that fight. But that’s fine. Now it’s just about strategy refinement and getting everyone under my charge to listen and follow directions. Since we figured out the trick to phase 1, all it is now is to refine phase 2.

Hammerguard.9834:

That new bug where the plague carriers don’t drop the buff? That one was introduced on Tuesday, it happened yesterday.

Old bug, we’ve known about it for a week now.

I’m pretty sure I know what the improvements were.

They are probably bug fixes that we have discovered in the past few days.

I’m sad that the skins don’t include heart particles that radiate off the glowy heart bit.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Nope, the head tries follows a pattern (getting to one of several potential resting positions). Players have to stay away from it when it runs.

This is quite false. I’ve seen enough of phase 2 to see that the head does not follow any confirmed pattern of movement (through position or distance).

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

It’s not luck based. You are just not playing to the mechanics. The slime behind the head, tells you to stay away from it when it runs and not to chase it. Just do what the games tries to teach you and you will be fine and get the kill.

As for playing to the mechanics of the fight, you are mostly correct. The wurm head has several mechanical tells to indicate the flow of the phase. We are still testing and analyzing to determine if there are any mechanics that we may have missed (this goes for both phase 1 and phase 2).

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

The wurm will stop at several possible fixed locations, BUT if too much players are already standing there (or are too close to the head) it will move on.

I can confirm that the wurm does not stop at fixed locations. It may seem like he does, but the position and the distance the worm travels is sporadic at best.

Kyron The Wise.6507:

such as how to keep oneself awake with ice.

Okay, I admit it. I laughed at that.

Qaelyn.7612:

That’s what I just said. They can’t control the players, but they can control the content. There’s a mismatch here and that means the problem is with the content.

No, that isn’t the point. There is no problem with the content. The problem lies with the players who don’t want to adapt to the content because they choose to ignore how the designers intend the game to be played.

Qaelyn.7612:

This is a meaningless statement. Any content can be “fine” if it is properly matched to its intended audience and supported by functional gameplay mechanics, especially relating to grouping. This one falls short.

It doesn’t fall short. The content isn’t challenging if players took the time to actually figure out what is needed. It’s not brain science, yet players are constantly crying foul because they don’t want to learn or improve.

Qaelyn.7612:

I never made any such complaint, so I really wonder why you appear to be quoting me but responding to someone else.

Really? Because your entire argument seems to be a complaint that because players won’t learn their stuff, A.net should make easier content. Also, I’m quoting you because you quoted me. Tic-for-tat [sic].

Qaelyn.7612:

I mostly see people making a real effort, often to the point of becoming exasperated. The content is not properly balanced for the casual playerbase at which it is aimed, and that’s a problem Arenanet — and Arenanet only — can and should fix next time around.

And why are they becoming exasperated? Because the players aren’t pulling their weight. I have never seen someone pipe in map chat, “Sorry guys! The devs made that singular mechanic, that this singular encounter has, too hard that I couldn’t figure it out!” Why? Because the player would then realize that they have no clue what they are doing or that they have no clue how to play their profession.

Qaelyn.7612:

Your claim that it is “not even that moderately challenging” is categorically false. You personally may find it easy to win a platform but the design means that an overwhelming percentage of others also have to win platforms, and that’s not what is happening. I can’t remember the last time I failed on a platform personally, but I am currently somewhere around 1 for 20 on overflow runs. Most other people I know have similar experiences.

It’s not false. It literally is a singular mechanic for each of the five different stages of the platform, with a singular outside mechanic that can interfere. Most jumping puzzles have harder content mechanics. You constantly are trying to defend people that do not want to improve, because they were carried so far that they saw no reason to. And now you want to bring the content down to their level. It’s absurd!

Qaelyn.7612:

So, sorry but you are simply, flatly wrong. An event that fails most of the time cannot rationally be described as “not even moderately challenging”. Players are not going to become dramatically better at this if they haven’t after a week, and they haven’t. It’s mistuned, and it should be fixed.

Again, ask why it fails. It’s not that the content is hard. It’s not. Each of the lane defenses is brain-dead killing content. The platform portions are close to brain-dead because of their two mechanics you have to deal with. It’s the players who don’t want to deal with having to adjust to that content is why it fails. Then it keeps failing, and people decide that since people keep failing it that it isn’t worth their time. So then you can’t complete it because they leave.

It’s not a problem with the content. It’s a problem with the players. Just because those players don’t want to improve doesn’t mean that A.net should bend over backwards to cater to that crowd.

To give a fair example, it would the be same thing as a man saying, “I didn’t want to learn how to read, so all authors should make their books into audio tapes instead.”

I was the commander of the Crimson team. I’d like to say to all of my members that they did an excellent job in both phases. Everyone did what they were told and kept that pressure on. It was a great effort by everyone involved, including those who guested from other servers.

Thank you, again. Those who listened. Those who stayed. Those who stepped up. Everyone came together and contributed.

Also, thank you to Desolation and TTS for working with us in a lot of instances and offering their perspectives and input.

<3 you Blackgate. See you at the next kill!

Qaelyn.7612:

What you and others don’t seem to get is that we, and Arenanet, have no control over what other players do. Only over how the game works.

That argument works both ways. What you and others don’t seem to get is that we, and A.net, have no control what other players do.

A.net designed the content. The content is fine the way it is (barring bugs). It’s completable, and has been completed by every server. Just because people are not wanting to join in and work towards continuing the content, or people are not putting the effort to get better at the game, doesn’t mean you have to complain to the devs that those people aren’t putting the effort to it.

Then, in the end, people complain because A.net designs easy content that can be completed by everyone, their mother, their dog and their unborn children. Complain about it being too easy, and then they design content that is (not even that) moderately challenging, and people get mad because they can’t do it because XXX reason.

Shiren.9532:

You have all the serious players guesting on Blackgate now (and others flat out transfered there – it’s the only full server in NA). This event is dead on most servers for a good chunk of the day. Players are guesting to a handful of servers (or specifically one) and their home servers are devoid of people. I did the event yesterday on my main server and we didn’t get past lane two because there wasn’t enough people in lanes 4 and 5 to stop the champions. This is my home server.

Blackgate and similair servers are privileged to be where they are, that doesn’t absolve the content of the very real issues impacting on most other servers.

Again, this is a player issue, not a developer issue. Just because more people are on the highly populated servers doesn’t mean that players are not to blame. The players who constantly leave and guest to be on those servers are who you should be talking to.

It’s not an issue with the event. It’s an issue that players try their hardest to do the least amount of work and contribution; And, to do that they guest over to servers that have the most success to leech off that success.

Is it a scam? Most likely, yes.
If it was, was it successful? Nope.

So no report can be made. This is the equivalent of a person walking up to you and asking for enough money for a bus ticket, you saying no, and him walking away.

All the OP wants to do here is give a friendly PSA.

To the OP:

Uh…. what?

Seriously, though. Yes; the content is designed to be moderately challenging and requires players to utilize their classes to a better degree (and movement and damage avoidance) than normally seen. But this is not a developer problem here. It’s the exact opposite. It is completely a player competency issue.

I’ve read the response by Josh Foreman and I completely agree with his thoughts on the structure and feel of the event that was intended. We need more content that isn’t as brain-dead as 90% of the players are mucking it up to be. We need players to get better at the game. The game only stagnates if we don’t. It sounds to me like you just want this event to be another “loot pinata” affair and not a fair accomplishment that it currently is.

(Barring bugs) Does it suck that we have to rely on other players to not suck? I can see that being a yes. But, at the same time I can see that it sucks that players are not trying to get better because the community constantly tries to trivialize content by not trying to get the players to actually learn their classes and the actual mechanics of the game.

Demonizing the devs because they are wanting their players to improve (so they can bring out more fights and encounters with interesting mechanics such as the Marionette and the Great Jungle Wurm) is entirely counter-productive to the progress of the game.

Meglobob.8620:

I like marionette but with a 100 player pug your chance of success is near 0%, no matter how hard you try.

Yet we did it (and do it) on Blackgate quite constantly… so it’s not 0%.

Amineo.8951:

Wurms head in phase 2 needs 3min instead of 2 at the very least, Anet have to understand that Desolation victory is based on luck too, that’s why they have trouble killing the wurms again, we don’t want to kill it only once, but everyday like Tequatl, we definitely need more time for the heads.

Yes and no. I think the 2 minute counter is fine, but the problem is that it is not a full 2 min counter to kill the heads. The counter is actually 1 minute and 53 seconds because the counter starts at the time the heads pop up for phase 2, but are invulnerable for 7 seconds after.

thehipone.6812:

After finishing Cobalt escort, the commander asked people to stay back, well away from the cobalt wurm spawn point and we only ran in after the wurm popped out of the ground. The burn went RIDICULOUSLY fast and it ended up dying —> failure. All my other attempts, people usually rush in and stand around the spot where the wurm pops up and the HP has seemed to be much higher to the point where the burns barely scratch the thing.

The thing about this is, it is not 100% that it will happen in these circumstances all the time. We’ve seen the scaling go up and down several times no matter what position people took on the map. We’ve had singular groups of 60 in the immediate area around the wurms and the scaling seems to be able to go up or down on whim.

Right now we go in and try to gauge what might happen (we think there may be a correlation to the level of the mobs in the event to determine if the scaling changes) and often test damage in the burn durations to see if it will be an overburn or a bulky scale.

Fafnir.5124:

The ability to kill wurm is random due to his scaling. Everyone at this time are using the same strategies. And % you can dps per burn phase all depends on the bosses scaling. So currently success is a random occurrence and this equals a very poor design. Anet mentioned fixing it with the next LS patch but what about all the hours we spend trying to figure out a glitched boss when we are fighting for first win. What does it say about the difficulty Desolation had to face to get poor rewards.

We never go in expecting the downscaled version to be in our favor. We’ve determined what type of damage A.net had in mind on the wurms during the vulnerable durations and do know that it is completely do-able with their vision (and have made it to phase 2 constantly) of how the event is supposed to proceed.

Is it nice when downscales? Yes, but it’s equal blessing and a curse and something we just have to work around for now.

As for the rewards? A lot of us are split on that. I think the loot tables are nice, but a large majority agree that the rewards are poor for the time and organization required for the event.

I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that “World Firsts” breed an overall toxic environment for the community and the game. I like that it breeds competition and focus, as well as coming together for strategy and tactics.

As one of the commanders for the Blackgate effort on the wurms, it was exciting to rush against TTS, Desolation and Far Shiverpeaks in attempting this kill. I won’t deny that when I (we) saw that Deso had gotten the kill that it saddened us, but at the same time I was happy and grateful that they did because they showed that, 1) It can be done, and 2) It can be done different ways.

Desolation did a great job. End of story. They deserve the praise and the accolades for defeating an extremely tough encounter.

I can tell you that Blackgate still hasn’t given up, though.

From all of the Blackgate Wurm commanders, congrats! You guys did well and deserve it!

We’ll catch up soon!

A lot of debate on what actually happened on that Crimson burn phase. Personally, I think that TTS should have gotten the kill. But, I can also see some things in the stream that might be against it. The wurm did bug but if that was a cause or an effect of what happened remains to be seen.

Zayd Akira.1942:

well there isnt really anything else we can call them.,

“Biconics” apparently.

Why is there not a vendor in our home instance that sells the starter town clothes in case we want them back again and deleted the ones we started with? I’m sure this has been suggested before!

The cold never bothered me, anyway.

The human women no longer run like they have a stick up their butt, and instead run extremely similar to human men. I’ve also heard that female characters with large breasts suffer from bouncing mammary syndrome.

Personally, I prefer the new running animation. I also don’t have a model with a large chest, so I don’t see the other part.

What gets me now is the amount of negativity because the first thing people assume that will be addressed is a nerf of gear. They don’t have to touch gear to fix the current disparity between gear builds.

The problem is that the current mechanics limit players because their builds were either too strong (control builds), couldn’t be as effective due to limitations placed upon them (condition builds), or doesn’t provide enough bonus to outweigh a pure damage mindset (support builds).

If the current boss mechanics are addressed (like I specified earlier: Defiant, Condition Cap and Bulk) and tested in-depth, that’s when you should look at gear or actual combat mechanics.

I think one of the things the game needs the least are aggro mechanics. I think it is counter-intuitive to the game and serves no purpose with how the combat plays out. It also lends itself to a “tank-aggro-hold” mentality and soon people will rely on it and cry that it’s too unforgiving and want a healer class. Then, BOOM! We’re back to the tank-healer-damage trinity mentality.

There are ways of handling the current meta that do not have to change the way combat unfolds that much, or alter the stats and builds of players, from what is currently present.

I have to agree about the fact that zerker/sin meta is too strong. I also have to agree that nerfing (or buffing) gear is not the way to go. In fact I think the majority of the complains could be summarized in three points:

• Defiant – One of the biggest problems that plagues the current meta. Defiant should have never been a complete invuln for CC for the duration of the stacks. It should have been a percentage reduction on CC abilities per stack (i.e. 4 stacks Defiant equals 80% reduced effectiveness of CC) or something similar that didn’t completely force a DPS mindset. There also needs to be a cooldown period after Defiant has been stripped before it can be gained again.
• Condition Cap – The second biggest problem in the current meta. A condition cap essentially tells players that, “Hey, we’re gonna cap the damage you can do if you play this way.” That’s not cool. Either increase the stack-size on conditions (in PvE) to 100 or create a “condition overflow” mechanic so that anything over the cap is reduced in effectiveness, but not ignored.
• Bulky Bosses – I understand the intent on higher HP pools for bosses, and even higher HP pools when scaled up. The problem is that this type of combat is pretty backwards. It further reinforces the zerker/sin meta because the bigger hits are more effective at peeling the HP than anything else. If anything, Defiant should work on damage much like I suggested earlier where it is reduced in effectiveness until the stacks are stripped.

I think by fixing these problems with similar solutions it would greatly improve the quality and diversity of the game. One of the biggest problems I’ve seen in the past with how the game is being handled is that players are being punished for playing [the meta] certain ways. That should never be the case.

I don’t care about flames. As well, I am not breaking it down further. I wrote this to get my point across, and if people cannot read it in it’s entirety, then the entire point of it is lost.

It is also none of my interest whether or not the majority of the “community” has the attention span to be thoughtful or constructive enough.

10. No more spikes. I am totally serious here. Stop with the spikes. Spikes do not make you legendary. They make you look like a cactus.

If you manage to make it this far, I thank you for reading through my points. I do realize that many (if not all!) of the things I wrote here have been said before again and again. But I am a staunch believer that if enough people talk about it, and raise their voices about it, that eventually someone will listen and start taking them seriously.

I do enjoy Guild Wars 2, and I hope that it can last in the long term with a healthy and vibrant community. And while I do wikitten could be better, I do like the content that they have in the game currently. Arena.net did create an enjoyable experience to many people, contrary to what other people say. I, personally, will continue to keep on playing for as long as I feel the content provided captures my attention. It is up to Arena.net to bring in the content and fix the issues they have with both their game and their upset player-base. So come on, Arena.net. The ball is in your court.

NOTE: I am not posting a tl;dr of this. I feel as if it is not needed. In order to raise our concerns and problems with various items of the game and it’s direction, we need concise and clear problems and suggestions. Being curt or short with what we want or want to see is not the way to show our support. Arena.net needs to see that we are willing to listen and convey our thoughts in a manner that respects them.

8. There needs to be more game types. This point is for PvP, but again, can be targeted towards the other two portions of the game. PvP suffers from a lack of varied competitive environments. Point-based capture objectives are fine, but when there is no alternative it quickly becomes not so fine. At least two more game types are needed in order to provide enough variety to PvP to capture the attention and game lifespan for many players. These two game types are team deathmatch (Guild vs Guild) and domination. Many people advocate dueling, but I feel as if that is something completely different than a PvP match-type, and should be in it’s own separate dueling arena instance.

Team deathmatch fills a giant void in the current game types that would help a lot of people feel more comfortable about their time PvPing. This type of game allows players to jump in and out of a match and not have to worry about outside objectives getting in the way of what they really just want to do: fight each other. The maps themselves do not have to be overly designed other than a few obstacles and team respawn points (or even random ones).

Domination follows along the lines of team deathmatch but adds the component of maintaining a certain objective. By holding onto a single point, this gives each team a reason to fight and work together. If team deathmatch is about roaming, domination is about staying stationary. This gives a varied feel over deathmatch than the usual kill mentality.

9. Fix the aesthetics. As we reach the year one mark of the game, I feel as if there are many smaller bugs and glitches that should be resolved to help alleviate many minor issues. Most of these are small things but lend itself to the feel of the game and further complete it. Some of these things touch upon streamlining the UI, while others are more graphical in nature.

Armor clipping needs to be fixed. I realize that not all things can be fixed in this category. But many armors out there clip horribly with each other or the player models. The Hall of Monument bracers clip through hands, chest armor, or both. The Pit Fighter heavy armor pants for females clip horribly through their legs. Many leather armor boots clip horribly through different pants models. Charr horns are cut off when they equip certain head gear. Every character goes bald when they wear hats and helmets. There are many more armor-related issues that need to be resolved to maintain attachment and desire to both characters and armor.

The UI needs to be streamlined for less clicking. The Trading Post should remember your search filters when switching tabs. The Guild interface needs various options for seeing when someone was online last. Various confirmation dialogue boxes are needed for many different activities (like crafting) while some aren’t even needed at all!

The game engine still needs core optimization. With all the new content and data being introduced to the game, it’s starting to show on player’s PCs more and more. Many players have bloated .dat files because the current client doesn’t delete or truncate old content. Graphical power still needs to be less CPU intensive and moved over to GPU. Various sound bugs still crop up through the game. These need to be fixed!