Guild Wars 2

Ivarr Wolfsong.2986:

I totally agree with the OP ( Percival <3 <3 <3 ).

OMG I was on Percival as well! MIDGARD!!

BrickFurious.7169:

I’m honestly not trying to be pedantic here, but I’ll repeat myself again in different words: Calling the oasis event a “PvE event” is not only nonsensical, it’s not helpful at all in describing what you’re really complaining about. You think it is clear that when you call it a “PvE gather quest”, that we should understand the criticism you are trying to level, and it isn’t clear at all.

Any event in which I fight non player mobs to drop pieces of loot that I then carry to a Non-player character in order to get a reward of a non-player action in which a giant automatic lazer does damage is more than reasonably called “PvE.” It doesn’t matter that others players might show up to this event. The event does not depend on any opposing players to show up, and can be completed solo. I know, because I did it.

The oasis event is an objective, in a PvP map, where enemy players can interfere with your ability to complete it. By that very definition it is not a PvE event. In a PvE event, the only enemies that can interfere with your ability to complete it are computer controlled characters or computer controlled environments.

OK, you don’t think I’m using the term PvE correctly. Fine. So I will make up a new term to name what I am talking about. I shall call it Doober vs. Flumpy (or DvF) Since I’m making the term, you can’t come back and tell me I defined it wrong.

So now I can tell you how I define DvF. For that, I refer you back to my previous posts.

This seems to be your true complaint, and it is clearly stated (thank you). You bury it in all your talk about “WvW-focused players” and “PvE events” and its value is nearly lost because of that.

You keep telling me what my “true” complaint is, which is insulting. I keep rewriting more than this, you keep responding by telling me, “no that’s not really what you mean.”

(1) I don’t like DvF activities in my WvW experience. Ever. My problem is not only that the single oasis event is too impacting. My problem is also that it exists at all.

(2) I also don’t like the gimmicky (my opinion, other’s disagree) environmental effects in the zone. Any time the landscape and environment becomes its own “character” in a WvW zone (when the land can rise up and block you with rock walls, or winds knock you down, or dust stealths you, or portals are set up like mazes, or the landscape is complex enough to create travel funnels or barriers to direct access) I hate it. I don’t want to battle the environment (in this case literally the environment) I want to battle other players.

I’ve written this in every post I’ve made and you’ve ignored it and said I only care about oasis in ever response you’ve made.

(3) The new BLs clearly seemed designed with the intent of breaking up large map forces. I hate this as well, and never wanted it. I said previously I know that this point is a lot more contentious, and lots of people disagree. But my opinion is that WvW is for large scale army battles. Doesn’t mean there’s never a role for a small group or a solo scout – it just means that the main thrust of WvW is large server armies of players vs. large server armies of players. It means there will be player imbalance at times. But in my opinion, that’s a price worth paying.

I also wrote about this in both of my previous posts.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Selwynn: I’m one of those who would self-identify as WvW focused, and I personally think WvW needs more merging between PvP and PvE. I think there has to be a way you can incentivize both types of players to participate in WvW and contribute meaningfully if you direct them with the appropriate carrot. I hate saying it, and I don’t understand it, but so many MMOers don’t play MMOs for fun, they play for reward. I think that reward needs to be guided, and can be guided, so both sides find enjoyment.

I also don’t think the laser event is rewarding for both types of players. It only really matters for PvP players (making an objective easier to take), as a PvEer could receive the same reward for the same locations just zerging around at a different time. It isn’t that the event is solely PvE, because it’s technically a competitive gathering event. You can run over and sabotage other groups of players to keep them down while your world continues to gather. It’s just that nobody really cares that much, because 5 mins after something is taken because of the event, someone else will probably take it back anyway.

I worry that if you make the game too PvP-only, what you’ll get are only PvPers. In my experience, especially in larger-scale PvP, PvPers quit regularly if the going gets too tough. They transfer guilds, transfer worlds, leave the game and blame it for their “loss”, or they try to stack the deck in their favor, removing competition.

PvEers aren’t infallible by any means, but with the right events, they would serve as a target both for attack and defense. Ideally, it would be like a caravan roaming through the wild. It’s a target for being attacked, and therefore it should have defense.

The main issue is that you have to make WvW more rewarding than PvE training in the direction of something PvEers want, so they risk the failure of not getting it all the time. Also, if it gets really popular, you might deal with queues again.

I just honestly think WvW will continue to dwindle unless they make the map feel more like an open world environment, complete with players who don’t necessarily want to fight.

I’m not trying to convince you, just sharing the opinion of someone else on the WvW spectrum. Personally, I exclusively want to be fighting people. I just also want WvW to feel more like open-world, and less like a big sPvP map (which it does actually feel to me, even with the maze-y maps and NPC-defended objectives).

Yeah, I don’t agree with any of that. BUT it was well stated, and rational. Just polar opposite of what I want. Weird too, cause its polar opposites of what any WvWer I know wants. I’m on JQ, in cross guild voice chat daily, and on server boards and wow – you’re the first person I’ve ever read or heard in my community who wants WvW, the one place in the game that is designed for open world PvP, to have more PvE in it.

But… you explain yourself well. Thanks for that.

BrickFurious.7169:

cillard.3986:

BrickFurious.7169:

What more PvE? I see this complaint thrown around so much, yet I highly doubt everyone means the same thing when they say it.

Your entire post is one giant disorganized complaint. You make a direct reference to the oasis event, and then you sort of complain about shrines. That’s it. That’s what you call “increasing the PvE to biblical proportions”. Holy drama batman. Next time try attacking those two issues directly instead of making me wade through the TL;DR morass that was your post.

And map layout design itself is not PvE. I don’t care how complex the map is. It is the “E” in which PvP takes place. You can complain all you want that the map is too complicated. I disagree. Whatever. But saying that making a map design more complex is “too much PvE” is ridiculous. That doesn’t even make any sense. How could you possibly measure the amount of PvE in a map’s design? What do you do, count all the cliffs? There certainly aren’t any more random mobs in the new BLs compared to the old ones, so you can’t possibly be talking about that. If the new maps make you walk farther, that’s too much PvE, is that it? For crying out loud, at least be more specific with your complaints instead of this random, generic whining.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this forum.

So why do you bother, if your only contribution is to attack the person and their method of complaining instead of the issues they raised. It isn’t that hard to get the gist of what that person is saying.

Because I don’t actually know what the OP is complaining about. His entire post boils down to “too much PvE” (he repeats it over and over). The gist I’m getting is that he doesn’t like the new map because it’s too complex, and he doesn’t like shrines and the oasis event. Why doesn’t he like shrines and the oasis event? Because it’s “too much PvE”. I have nothing to go off there. I can’t argue against his subjective opinion; if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it, that’s fine. But he’s trying to make prognostications that the new BL will be the “death knell” of WvW.

Why do I bother? Because I’m desperately searching for substantive criticism of the new BL on this forum so I can try and figure out why many people hate it so much. I’m sure Anet is doing the same so they can sort through feedback on possible changes they should make. And this post offers none of it. This forum has been deluged with poor quality complaint posts and it’s frustrating.

I’m sorry my post struck you as rambling and incoherent. I’ll try to be more clear, however I have a suspicion that this really isn’t about “not making sense” and more about you disagree with me. Which is fine.

So, my apologies that in my frustration I exaggerated about PvE content in WvW. Let me try to be more precise. There are groups of players that define themselves as WvW focused. That is where they spend 90 percent of their gametime. Of people who identify WvW as their game focus, I cannot name one who would ask for PvE events in WvW. It’s the last thing on earth we would want. The Oasis event is the ultimate zone-wide event, and completing it has potentially extreme consequences on the WvW of the map. The laser destroys paper keep doors, takes reinforced doors to 20% and fortified doors to 50%. All without any WvW involved. How is this accompled? Through a PvE gather quest.

That to me is a huge slap in the face to WvW-dedicated players. It is the last thing on earth WvW focused players would ever desire. And if you are primarily a PvE player who casually drops into WvW for time to time, the PvE event in Oasis is mediocre and sub-par to PvE activites to be found all over the entire rest of the game. To me, allowing a PvE event to have such tide-shifting impact on WvW is fundamentally at odds with what WvW is about.

The PvE event is a big frustration. But another one is the map design that includes, in my opinion, a ton of environmental gimmicks that interfere with server vs. server combat and make me feel like I’m striving to “beat” the landscape more than I am striving to beat other players. To me, that’s a similar but different complaint than complaining about a PvE event that includes killing a bunch of monsters for a gather quest. This is about a map design that treats an map-area for WORLD vs. WORLD combat like a pve leveling map. I don’t want to run into earth barriers, or portal mazes, or environmental stealth fields, or be trying to solve the puzzle of how to get up three levels of verticality and then over a chasm in order to reach my objective. I don’t want to be “challenged” by the environment. In WvW. the environment should basically look nice and stay the frick out of my way, not asserting itself as a “character” in my WvW experience. Other PLAYERS are the only characters I want to be influencing my WvW experience.

I do understand how another person might not see these issues as distinct, but I do.

The last thing I’m critical of is the design philosophy of “breaking up zergs” why I feel like the new maps have as one objective. Now, there’s lots of different of opinion on this one, even among full time WvWers. I get that. But I believe that WvW means WORLD vs. WORLD. Large scale, raid vs. raid battles. WvW is not just SPvP on a bigger map, in my opinion. I understand that zergy combat can be frustrating due to numbers imbalances. I also argue that in the long run, the challenges of population and force sizes are part of the overall fun. Again, WvW isn’t designed to be artificially balanced matchmaking.

I’d also like to point out that if you are simply running around following a pin, not in a team or guild that WvWs and not willing to participate in voice comms, then your overall experience of large scale fighting is going to be pretty dull and frustrating. Participating in voice comms with what we on JQ call a “main force” is anything but "mindless zerging. It’s some of the most interesting and potentially tactical large scale fighting around.

My and my friends sometimes go roam in 5-mans or less, and that’s fun too. And yes, we have to avoid the main force (“or a mindless zerg, those exist too”) but that’s just part of open world WvW. I don’t actually believe that most dedicated WvWers seriously want that to change. The new BLs however go out of their way to force that change. And worse still, they do that mostly by environmental gimmicks and PvE events that periodically destroy what players have worked hard to capture and keep through a PvE laser that has no player vs. player component to it at all.

That sucks.

Now, you disagree? Totally fine. I can completely respect that. And I may not be the best writer in the world. But don’t come back and say I have no point or its all nonsensical gibberish. You just don’t agree. You might have a better argument than I do for your opinion. That’s also fine. I can accept that too. But let’s just get real here.

This is also why everyone now floods to EB.

Fortunately for me there are enough fun things to do in GW2 that I can ignore the ones that aren’t.

So, just like I did with old legendaries, I look at the requirements for HOT legendaries and simply say, “nope.”

I won’t have legendaries, because the grind to get them is not what I consider fun. But I’m OK with that, and happy to let people who do want that sort of thing to have at it.

The big point you are missing is that the rewards were to be available last tuesday. It is now seven days later. Not only is the issue not fixed, but there is also pathetically low communication and no ETA.

And your response to the frustration about the indefinite delay on content you hyped and sold for months and that people worked to get for nine weeks? Is to say the community is being unfair to the poor developers who have lives on weekends.

It used to be, than when a company effed up on its deliverables, there WERE NO LIVES until their eff up was solved and fixed. That’s how people developed loyalty to a company or brand. Every day a company failed its delivery promise to the customer was another update to the community describing EXACTLY where they were in the process of fixing it, even if the news wasn’t great (i.e. we’re struggling to identify the problem, here’s what we’ve been doing today….)

YOU broke it, YOU put your barbeque on hold and fix it. YOU gave us a delivery date. YOU ought provide daily summaries of the updates to fix your failed delivery promise.

If software gaming companies functioned more like this, I would be oh so much less upset about delays and problems. I cannot understand for the life of me why MMO developers cannot get this through their heads. I logged into the forums several days this week just to see if their was an update. I was much more willing to be patient if the issue was hard to fix. What has gotten me more and more furious is (a) the lack of communication and then (b) the smarmy, snide response to the outrage over lack of timely updates with the whole “sorry, but we have lives” tripe.

Almost all of the ongoing problems with the WvW matching system (season or otherwise) can be traced back to same critical mistake:

Free server transfers went on far too long, and created a culture in which server hopping and stacking were the norm. When free transfers stopped, you could still transfer using in-game resources and thus the era of severs and guilds stockpiling gold to encourage hopping and stacking was born.

I said from day one that every day free transfers continued, the long term health of WvW would be undercut. When the switch as made to gems and gold for transfers, the health of WvW deteriorated further.

What makes me angry is that this was all so completely predictable. And I refuse to accept that Anet can’t come up with other ways to make a lot of money that don’t have such a negative impact on the structure of WvW.

90 days after release of the game, free transfers should have ended, never to return. After that point, server transfers should cost real-world cash, and a fair amount of it. A decision to transfer should be weighty. A guild deciding to switch servers should be a major and difficult deal. It shouldn’t be this culture of hoping around on a whim.

I picked JQ in beta, and I have never transferred. In situations where a several population is low, ANET could allow for targeted transfers to specific servers for the purpose of merging. But that’s it. Before GW2 implemented this absurd transfer system, no one thought they were “entitled” to frivolous transfers anytime they wanted. It was a culture that Anet created, and it has done substantial damage to the health of WvW.

WvW is the only reason I have played GW2 all this time. WvW was what I was searching for for over a decade, ever since Dark Age of Camelot. And GW2 has been incredible. WvW is still fun, but only when the mechanics of a deeply flawed system aren’t getting in the way. And that keeps getting harder and harder to ignore.

Anet, you did this with a policy on server tranfers that quite frankly has boggled my mind since day one. Every week free transfers were still around I kept scratching my head wondering how on earth you could think that was good for the long term integrity of the game. When you decided to let people transfser through gold/gems I sat in stunned disbelief. How could anyone not see what effect this was going to have on WvW matchups?

WvW is such an amazing thing, really done well in this game. And that is all being undercut by a critically flawed transfer system and culture. You could still take steps of clean it up. I hope you do.

Waage.2047:

Any chance DB have some solid EU guilds for my to kill?? If not i will have to burn all of JQ to the ground in a fit of rage.

JQ kind of lacks EU unlucky so DB your my only hope.

Me and my rag tag group of people who are staying up way past their bed time get regularly crushed by you! Believe me, we all wish we had better EU coverage hehe

EnRohbi.2187:

Fuzzion.2504:

If DB was never prepared for t1 then why did RAW come to the Tier1 threads and make grandiose claims such as “see you guys soon”.

Because he got overzealous.
It’s a thing, that human beings tend to do when they’re excited about things.

Just like human beings also focus on one statement made by one person for months at a time and let hate fester while they hold onto a grudge against an entire group of people who had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Hey EnRobbi, try responding to my post above and see if you still want to talk about how it was just “one statement” and that’s somehow the only reason why anyone is upset.

Think again.

Bel Aleabeth.7501:

Holy crap… As a DB native, I am just excited to have a good match up and see how real servers play WvW. I don’t expect us to do great this time, but this is the best way to learn. Though, I find it interesting that a few JQ members are acting like they are the best thing since sliced bread when BG is clearly owning everyone. It should be an interesting fight the rest of the week. Hopefully, DB can learn a thing or two so we can be can get up to par with the rest of T1.

I love your attitude going into the match and hope you have a great time.

I for one, don’t at all think that JQ (or myself) are the best thing since sliced bread. We have a very big coverage hole through one timeslot, but even if that weren’t the case, BG and SOR would be adversaries that deserve respect, since both have beaten us more than once and we have beaten them.

The reason JQ has so much energy around beating DB is not because of transfers of JQ players to DB. It’s because of the way that those transfers happened, which included some of the most disgusting, deceitful, mean-spirited, narcissistic junk you could possibly imagine. Many of the leaders that transfered and not a small number of the people that followed went out in a full-on scorched earth style.

They not only trashed the community and those who stayed behind to lead, but they actively continued to berate and trash talk their former guild mates and server community. In our guild, former leaders sabotaged the guild forms deleting posts and attempting to lock out admin accounts, posted insulting personal attacks at the people who did nothing but volunteer to step up and try to salvage the mess they left behind, and continued to actively undermine my own community’s attempts to move forward at every turn.

I’m not a mean person, I don’t want these people to suffer for suffering’s sake. I actually don’t want them to suffer at all. I want them to be held accountable for their reckless disregard for the human beings behind the avatars, the real people that they lied about, slandered and hurt. I do not want them to be rewarded for being narcissistic ego maniacs and actively trying to see that my guild family failed.

I’m so pleased that we did not fail, instead we have a better guild community than we ever had, we are respected in our server community not because we are god’s gift to WvW, but because we support and respect our other guild partners rather than treat them like tools. And we are growing, to the tune of 20+ new members in the last four days. I’m proud that all their efforts to undermine us failed.

I know there are great people on DB. I don’t paint you all with the same brush. Having said that, you happen to be the server that these people chose after acting like the most colossal kittens you can possibly imagine. Because of that, you can hardly blame us if we are highly, highly motivated to crush DB and experience some satisfaction doing it. Mind you these ex-JQ leaders were the people promising that with their brilliant leadership DB would be T1 in a matter of weeks (because its all about them) and how superior their brilliance was to an entire server.

I just can’t apologize for being glad to watch them fail. But it has nothing to do with thinking that we are the best WvWers ever for feeling superior to anyone. I’m just extremely glad that their egocentric idiocy is not being rewarded. I hope you can appreciate that, and I look forward to seeing you out there.

Sel

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

I can’t imagine why people would leave EMP.

I know right? We are fun AND funny all at once!

And apparently, neither can the 27 people who applied in the last four days!

We love our own like a family, and we are ferociously protective when anyone – including past leaders, lie about our family, steal from our family, sabotage our stuff or slander our family or the community in which we exist.

I would hope that you have the same kind of fierce love and loyalty from your own guild family of comrades in arms. If you don’t, consider applying.

gebrechen.5643:

I don’t understand why DB is talking about “their” garrison. I see an EMP banner there not an RE.

OMG that’s spectacular.

I know who you are.

Cryptik.7298:

Selwynn.2758:

nOCter.4263:

[RE] respectfully invite both blackgate and JQ into our garrison. We welcome any fights.

You welcome them to your garry because its the only thing you and your “Legendary” leaders have managed to hold.

Enjoy your 60 point tick. Clearly, your superior talent was all DB needed to rise to #1.

Selwynn, this type of talk saddens me a bit. It seems these forums have stripped away the class from more than a few people I used play with. Friendly competitive talk is one thing, but outright disrespect from either RE or EMP is something exclusive to these threads. I speak for the silent majority of people in RE that look forward to fights between former guildies. Not as outlets for misguided hate, but as competition between friends , regardless of the outcome. These forums are the reflections of individuals, not guilds as a whole. You would do well to remember this.

Cryptik, when you have people transfer without talking about it to anyone then ordering everyone to do the same, then refuse to come talk to the guild about it, claim to hold one BL for JQ on resent night then fail to show up, sabotage your guild site by deleting posts, locking people out of access, and the like, strip the guild of gold, publicly trash the remaining leadership just trying to put the pieces back together, then have those people rep up in your guild to talk trash and embarass us in our own community and actively, deliberately try to work to see the people that stayed on JQ fail and their guild fail…

…..THEN you can lecture me.

On the other hand, all their efforts failed. We are better than ever before, with the richest guild community I’ve ever been apart of. We’ve rebuilt the respect of our community which these people systematically destroyed for the sake of their own egos. And, we will happily kick DB’s kitten all week. Welcome to T1. Time to put your money with your colossal mouths are.

nOCter.4263:

[RE] respectfully invite both blackgate and JQ into our garrison. We welcome any fights.

You welcome them to your garry because its the only thing you and your “Legendary” leaders have managed to hold.

Enjoy your 60 point tick. Clearly, your superior talent was all DB needed to rise to #1.

I have never had a problem with disconnects ever, and I’ve played since beta. Since the last patch I am disconnecting every 5min to 30min.

I DC in PvE, I DC in WvW, I DC just standing still and not doing anything.

You pretty much broke my game and I’d pretty much like to get it fixed as quickly as possible.

After all the hype about new matching system, what do we get?

The exact same SOR / BG / JQ matchup we have had for months and months.

Yay.

DB, there’s some old wisdom that you should really take to heart when it comes to [RE] — just remember if they’ve done it to others, one day they WILL do it to you.

I’ve played on JQ since beta. I’m proud of my server community and I won’t leave for another server. I certainly won’t trash the JQ community, berate officers of your own guild, steal the guilds money and leave for another server, actively try to recruit out of the guild you betrayed and talk down and belittle the folks that chose community over narcissistic ego…

…unlike some I could mention.

From my perspective, the departure of the bandwagoners and egomanical freaks is a wonderful thing. I’ve never felt more closely connected with the community that remains, or within our own guild. I’ve come to love these people. And from that, I have more fun than ever.

Think about it, what do you get for being ranked #1? Nothing. Do you know what I want most? Fun fights with a community that isn’t full of fair-weather friends or kittens. I wish more people would remember what JQ was like back when HoD was #1. Those were some of the best days ever. Then came the massive bandwagoning transfers as we went #1. JQ was still a good place, and I’m loyal either way, but a lot got lost with the influx of fairweather kitten warriors.

I would rather have the #1 NA community than the #1 NA WvW ranking. I actually think we can have both. But if not, so what? I want great fights with great people. And after the behavior of some of the people who have jumped to DB’s ship, I can tell you must certainly that I would kitten on DB if it was on fire.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Allow me to sum up this thread with a few observations:

“My guild isn’t active anymore, so that means the game is losing players as a whole”

“I can’t find random groups to do dungeons with anymore, so that means no one wants to run dungeons”

“I’m making my claims about player activity declining as a whole. based solely on my own lack of being able to do stuff I wanna do with random people”

How many fallacies can we find here?

There’s another factor here too – if T.E.G is a gamer used to putting in 10+ hours a day, then he is going to notice that it seems like fewer people are around know. Know why? Because that’s not normal. LOL

Lots of people who play till 6am local time start to go “where’s everyone gone” because sane people still play GW2 but have resumed other parts of their lives as well. People who in the initial zeal set aside things like, you know, lives to play non-stop now play daily for 2-4 hours instead of 8-10.

The hardcore powergamers are always the first ones to feel “bored” and wonder where everyone went. They never seem to consider this point. EVERYONE ELSE WENT TO BED

Viking Jorun.5413:

Maybe his server is Kaineng and he just doesn’t know why the largest 5 guilds on the server moved away. Posts like these wreck the morale of players, and lead to even more people quitting the game (not that GW2 is suffering, contrary to your unprovable claims). I hate when people post things like this.

This is the first time I’ve been on the forums in three months. And I’ll likely not be back for three more months. I broke my rule because I was eating some dinner and thought I’d read a bit while I did….. my rule is this:

Never, ever, read the official forums of ANY mmo that you enjoy.

The people most highly motivated to post are people who have some gripe or rant. People having a blast generally don’t bother posting.

It is a FACT that the population of GW2 is changing, people are not playing the same ways or in the same areas or doing the same things. It is also highly likely that the fully predictable population spike of the first six months is over and moving toward something more generally stable.

But dying? Maybe. I certainly don’t see it on my sever.

I’m actually surprised more people are impressed by the monthly events and multi-part evolving world stories Anet has put out. I’ve never seen anything quite like that in any other MMO I’ve played, not with the clockwork monthly consistency or on that scale.

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t begrudge you at all if Anet adds some new instances to explore that are rich and elaborate. I hope they are more like the vanilla dungeons and less like Fractals tho but that I totally personal taste. Given that I spend 90% of my time in WvW these days after putting 3 toons to 80 (1 at 60) – very happily so I might add – I’m fine with whatever on the PvE front.

As long as it does not turn into WoW. Gear treadmills and progression raiding pushed any sort of meaningful pvp out of that game. Progression raiding is a full-time development task. Right now you have some nice PvE and a big creative world for leveling, but the “end game” is centered around WvW and sPvP. That’s by design and I think its perfectly FINE that we PvPers get ONE good MMO that does that out of a sea of a billion PvE MMOs not to mention the most successful PvE-focused MMO in history.

If people aren’t getting enough PvE content in this game, my personal wish was that they would go to another game. Actually let me put that a better way, cause that’s rude. I wish that Anet would continue to make me feel like its endgame emphasis is on PvP (sPvP and WPvP) – because that is such a RARE thing for MMOs and me and my friends absolutely love it.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

Jski.6180:

GW1 was not an mmorpg so to compare it to GW2 is a bit wrong.

Some people disagree with that…I am one of them. It wasn’t directly an open-world mmorpg, but it was definitely still there. I mean really…mmorpg stands for what? “Massively multiplayer online role-playing game”, correct?

• Massively – There were large number of players who played – check
• Multiplayer – You formed parties and guilds and achieved things with them – check
• Online – check
• Role-playing – Well I was playing a character I created, so – check
• Game – check

If it isn’t an mmorpg, what was it? GW1 is definitely comparable with GW2 in many aspects, especially user interface and such, which is mostly what I was referring to anyway.

The near-universally agreed on definition of MMO includes: persistent open world. Even Anet disagrees with your broad definition, describing GW1 themselves as “not an MMORPG” When they described GW2 prior to release, their starting point was to talk about how GW1 fueled their desire to make “a true mmo.”

I wish that everyone who posted on these boards had their Server automatically tagged to their signature. People’s perspectives are influenced by a lot of things, and what server they play on is certainly one of them.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

• 1 – I believe activity is a large role in whether or not a game is dying. If half of my guild is going inactive, as well as every single other guild that I’ve talked to as well (like I said above, except 475+ guilds) have been drastically losing activity, that’s a sure sign of a game dying.

Define “dying.” No game, of any type stays at launch level population/activity. Is guild wars heading to shutting its servers down, or to a stable population level (hopefully of players actually focused on its designed end game, sPvP and WvW. )

• 2 – Another sign, as pointed above, is dungeon running. Hardly anyone runs dungeons anymore compared to what it used to be, and I don’t really think you can argue with that. I don’t count people sitting in Lion’s Arch afk dancing with their fractal backpiece and legendary as being active.

Dungeon running isn’t designed to be the long term end game that gives you endless fun, despite the fact that some people want it to be. sPvP and WvW are. And although I am a hardcore WvWer and do little sPvP, even I’ll concede that sPvP is really what Anet would like to see take off as an E-Sport. If Anet is successful it won’t be because they added another kittening dungeon for pvers. Three years from now, if anyone is still playing GW2, it will be because they’re playing sPvP e-sport style. (I can only hope the find someway to do something similar for WvW, but I don’t think that is their top priority.)

• 3 – I never said GW1 was, or is, better than Guild Wars 2. I said there are amazing aspects of Guild Wars 1 that were never included in Guild Wars 2, and it is a shame that some things they did right in their first game, they completely messed up in their second.

They didn’t “mess” them up at all. They made a game that isn’t to your taste. I played GW1 as well, and I prefer GW2 by leaps and bounds. In fact, I’ve played (takes a deep breath) DAOC, AC2, SWG, COH, L2, WOW, AOC, AION, RIFT, SWTOR and probably missed several in that list and I can say, without a doubt, GW2 is by far my favorite MMO of them all.

Thanks. That was simple enough.

That we were all supposed to be waiting for….. ?

Here are some facts.

FACT: JQ has been in T1 consistently longer than any other server in North America. I believe its been T1 consistently longer than any server in the entire world, but I have to check that.

FACT: Since official game launch, JQ has been out of T1 only twice, and only for one week at a time.

These are things that I am proud of as a member of JQ. But our competitors also have things to be proud of. For example, I’m pretty sure SOS has held #1 position for more consecutive weeks than any other server, including us. I’m not positive on that, but I think so. So if that’s true, that is a very notable accomplishment that I salute.

For those upset about the significant amount of guilds that have chosen to make JQ their new home, I say: I understand your frustration. Some of you are worried that match-ups will become so lopsided that they are dull and uninteresting. Some of you are worried that it will impact morale on your own server. And some of you are just poor sports.

But I urge you to try not to be hypocritical. It’s ok to be frustrated, but its not ok to say ridiculous things. You and your server can and do actively recruit. You and your server welcome as many passionate, skilled world vs. world guilds and players as you can get. You have never and would never put an artificial limit on anyone interested in becoming a part of your community.

I understand you are frustrated, but the simple fact of the matter is: we all tried to recruit, we all courted many of the same guilds, and at the end of the day they chose JQ. They chose. And I’m proud of my server because, I know by their own statements on why they chose JQ that it is the quality of our community that won them over. I’m very proud of that.

I would prefer it if you were able to say, "I’m disapointed that we got beat in the recruiting race, and I’m worried that fights will become lopsided and not be as fun anymore. " That would be a very mature and reasonable thing to say. But crying “foul” and finger pointing because our community was more appealing and our recruiting efforts were more effective – that’s just sad.

I used GiB last week as I just discovered them and our guild was having hilarious fun annoying the crap out of the enemy with them. Seriously I think there were tears of laughter at some point.

But, they were ridiculous. We all knew it. And I would actually be upset if they were not removed. I never expected them to be around for long which was why I had no problem having a little bit of fun in the meantime.

Those defending their use look pretty silly. Everyone knew they were ridiculous and that they wouldn’t be around long.

At the same time, the few people that have called it an “exploit” are idiots. When a class uses a skill that is generally considered to be overpowered it is not an “exploit.” It is an overpowered ability that needs fixed. When someone uses a consumable such as food which is considered to be way too powerful – that too is not an “exploit.” It is an imbalance that needs fixed.

GIBs were imbalanced because they could be so powerful for people who had lots of power and precision. But they were freely available to all, they were used exactly as they were designed to be use (click on them let them run after tragets and blow up) and they were allowed to be used in WvW.

You may feel they were OP (because they were, even I know that) but it was not an “exploit” to use them.

Good that they nerfed them however. We all knew that was coming.

Last week I was pretty irritated at some of the posts trivializing our victory by suggesting it was only possible because of holiday absences, etc. To be fair there were also many honorable congratulations messages as well.

This weekend, SOS responded with an absolute vengeance, and showed that their objections were probably accurate. I commend SOS on an incredibly dominant weekend. For some reason my own server felt in much more disarray this weekend, whereas last weekend it felt like we were running like a well-oiled machine. Either way, your colossal force on the battlefield reminded me just how far we have to go on our undying efforts to dethrone you from number one.

I love Jade Quarry, and I’ve been there since beta, and never switched servers once. There’s no community I’d rather be a part of and no place else I’d rather be. I’m proud of the fact that JQ has been in T1 longer than any other server out there. But I also give proper respect to SOS who has been highly dominant since arrival in T1. They had a hiccup last week, and responded to that hiccup with crushing, crushing force.

I hope we catch you in the days to come. And I promise we will never quit fighting for your place at the top. /salute.

Good luck today! EMP will see you on the battlefield!

Archonis.7249:

Man, these QQ or helping people QQ threads are getting annoying.

I am about to just go to every other profession’s forums and QQ about certain builds that I am weak against. Maybe I can just stop learning to play and have the Devs make it easier for me.

If you are running around solo in WvW, it is a good chance that you might die if you run into a BS thief. Why? Because the Thief which is designed to have one hell of a burst probably hasn’t seen someone in at least 1 min. Which means his OMGERD! combo and GCDs are up and ready to stomp you.

This is true, but its also why MMOs should stop making thief type classes. Because everyone who is not a theif cannot stand being killed in 0.0001 seconds before having any chance to do anything – that’s not “fun.” So they cry and cry and cry until the devs nerf theives into the ground, making them unplayable and useless, making theif players miserable.

extreme burst type archtypes should just be done away with in favor of more creative class types that are fun, but rely on a combination of toughness and damage and not insta-kill power.

sil.4160:

Pray tell, who on SOS is attempting to dismiss JQ win this week? Theres been nothing but praise. Stop imagining things. We’re not SBI :p. JQ is really strong this week, and this may be the new norm

Thanks. I refer respectful wins, and respectful competition. Winning one week does not alter the number of weeks we were beat by SOS or SBI. Great competition, good fights, really fun stuff.

Please stay energized – I look forward to more awesome epic contests!

AFK.1854:

I’m from JQ and I’m a bit embarrassed by some of the posts here. While we’ve definitely improved, and I’m proud of our server, it’s stupid to dismiss that this all happened during a major holiday.
Go JQ!

This makes no sense. It is a major holiday for everyone. Not just people from Jade Quarry. It’s the same holidays for SOS and for SBI.

I don’t think anyone has any right to gloat, and some posts who have been talking trash look like complete idiots. Thankfully, they are in the minority. I commend both SOS and SBI on excellent battles. The truth is we three servers have been battling hard for months on end, and we’ve all earned the right to be in T1.

Having said that, the notion that somehow whoever wins this week is less “earned” is absurd on its face.

An open letter from one dude with an opinion to SOR.

Title fixed.

PS – However, I will say to anyone: please, bank on your “night crew” to get you by in T1. Please.
<3 Jade Quarry

I am not impressed by your performance.

We had 95% of active members online out in WvW Friday and majority representation all day and night today in WvW.

It’s what we do.

Join us!

That’s awesome !

Scott Free.6253:

Hi.

As the title says we (not the multiple me’s) but a few friends and I are looking to find ourselves a permanent home on a new server. I say permanent, as I type this post with much inner turmoil, since we are dedicated players finding ourselves looking for a more competitive and friendly environment. We have debated a server move for over a month and with recent events we are ready to find ourselves a new home.

We are not opposed to moving to an EU server as we all are from NA, but know the importance of night crews. We are looking for the following:

1. An organized guild with friendly and respectful players.
2. We participate in PvE (dungeon runs, events, you name it), but our passion is WvW. So an active WvW presence is preferred.
3. We are not looking for handouts or “the winning team”, we fight/earn what we have, and are willing to do the same along side our new guildies/server.

Please leave me a post or a pm with some information as I will be checking back regularly as we plan to make the move soon.

Thank you for your consideration.

I believe this is exactly the home you are looking for, friend:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Emp-rium-EMP-JQ-s-International-WvW-guild/first#post954267

Come join us in WvW right now and through the weekend, if you like what you see we’d love for you to make EMP your home!

Provac.3598:

JQ doesn’t lack Oceanic imo. We actually lack NA primetime players.

This is the truth. We actually lack Thurs – Sunday coverage from about 6pm PST to 2am PST.

But its getting better all the time. In my personal opinion, JQ have some of the most talented WvW players, and groups of players in the Guild Wars.

The community tight and friendly. And remember that JQ has been in and remained Tier 1 longer than any other server around.

The only issues we have are that we dont have many monster WvW guilds to give us a constant foundation of coverage, and JQ community seems to be a bit more distracted by “shinies!” than SOS. The PvE monthly Events have kicked our servers WvW kitten every month so far. Then we regroup after.

I think I’ve been with EMP (formerly Elite Solidarity) for about a Month+

Finding the right guild can be really difficult, and EMP has been excellent. The people are fun and get along well with each other. The leadership is good with very good WvW knowledge.

EMP is a WvW focused guild, and if you are looking for such a guild with a particular emphasis of large-number, well-coordinated WvW siege warfare, EMP is the place for you.

Pirlipat.2479:

Warkupo.1025:

Its’ a natural tendency of ANY game forum to mostly contain people who are currently frustrated with some aspect of the game. Its’ simple logic, really: People enjoying themselves usually continue to enjoy themselves. They aren’t going to stop playing just to let you know about it. People who are frustrated want a place to vent their frustrations, so they come to the forum where a bunch of other people are doing the same place and find justification in doing so.

While there is usually a good point or two in every rage-induced post, its’ important to keep in mind that frustration tends to be accompanied by over-dramatization. Don’t take anything you see on the forums too seriously. Most “veteran” mmo players already know this, but its’ important to reiterate it every now and then.

So you are frustrated about the game or what are you doing here? The point is I was on the forum before actually because I felt like I had to “defend” the game for what it is/was. So when I now have some issues with some aspects now it just does not count because it’s negative?

No dude, of course it counts! Try to avoid black/white thinking about this. The official boards, by their very nature are going to predominately contain concerns, criticisms or even outright frustration with the game because (a) its human nature to take more action when you have a problem with something than when everything is going great and (b) people know the devs are here and hope that they might be heard by them.

This is a good thing in some respects. But the trouble with internet boards is that emotion and hyperbole run really high. So when someone who does not frequent the forums a lot comes and says “Wow I was really likely the game a lot, but it sounds like everyone really hates it” that is the person to which I woulds say, remember that the boards can be a little bit skewed given all the things I just mentioned. I’m NOT saying criticisms are wrong (or right for that matter.)

I’m saying that internet boards are not exactly known for balanced objectivity or nuance.

tonyl.5063:

GW2 isn’t dying, but it’s population is dropping. The game was marketed towards a lot of players in other games, but it just doesn’t deliver for that type of player. There’s people who like raiding, there’s people who like getting more and more powerful, there’s people who prefer the direction TERA took on this combat system, where you CAN really play as a tank or healer / support. Not everyone likes the roll away from everything or run in circles / abuse mobs inability to walk over a 6 inch high wall style of combat.

And these people are all going to stop logging on when they realize the game just doesn’t have content for them. At the end of the day, GW2 is going to be a niche community playing it. It’ll be successful, but in the same way GW1 was.

It’s just not an MMORPG player’s MMORPG.

I agree with your second paragraph, for the most part. I think GW2 has the potential to be a pretty big “niche” game. Bigger than GW1 at least. But I do think the main thing that will kill it is if ANet tries to be all things to all people. If Anet is willing to get back to / stick to its guns in what it said before release —

— that GW2 wanted to do something different from progression raiding and stat gear grinding, that 5-man explorable content with cosmetic rewards and an “endgame” that was heavily, heavily build around PvP in both world vs world and competitive PvP (with the long term plans to turn both into sustainable eSports) —

THEN I think GW2 will succeed and have a very nice, satisfying run as a game for a good lifespan.

But then I can’t agree with your last statement. I consider myself to be just as much of an MMORPG player as the next guy, having played over 20 mmos over a 12 year time span. What you are describing are the reasons YOU play MMOs. You can’t speak for everyone.

This is not a progression raider’s, holy trinity lowers, state based gear farmers MMO. I do not mean any of those things negatively – it is completely and perfectly fine to love to play that way.

But its also OK to be pve adventurer who prefers single or small team group scaled content, accomplishments and “power” measured by things other than gear stats, someone who prefers flexible and adaptable classes as opposed to more hard-defined roles and who sees an MMO’s endgame as PvP. Those people have also been around for a long time, either playing other MMOs or playing the big ones like WOW but dreaming of the day when one would come along that really fit with their own hopes for MMORPG gameplay.

Can’t really judge one over the other, and it doesn’t really matter which group is bigger. WOW proves that progression raider/wow MMORPG format players are the largest group of MMORPG players out there. That’s OK. Games don’t have to be big in numbers to be amazing.

But Anet really really needs to focus on catering to ITS market because THAT’s what will make for a sustainable game and game community.

I know this is really hard for people to understand, because it comes up in every game. Content Development and Bug Fixing are two completely separate groups of people.

So I hear what I think you mean which is, “please demonstrate to use that fixing existing bugs is your top priority.”

But even if bug fixing was priority number one, it would not mean that no other development would be happening at the same time.

For example, perhaps the guys with the expertise and specialization to work on the rendering/culling issue are not the same guys who have the expertise in puzzle content design.

So just because you see something else coming into GW2 does not by itself mean that bugfixing isn’t a priority. If stopping the delivery of all other updates to GW2 would make bug fixes happen faster, then fine. But I don’t think it actually works that way.

Max Lexandre.6279:

I waited years for GW2 and played also GW1.

But for me Far Cry 3 deserved to be in the top, GW2 is fun, but it as it’s madness things that make it boring at the endgame when we done plenty everything of PVE, I was hoping for more content for have fun for more time. I HATE repeat things, and when the game became Farm and Grind at endgame, It killed me.

ANet has made some missteps with its management of ongoing high level content. In trying to cater to players coming from both the GW1 side of the universe (which includes other non-progression raiding, PvP emphasis games) and trying to milk the cash cow that is the bajillion progression raiding players from the WoW side of the universe (which includes other progression raiding games) — ANet has right now ended up catering to neither.

Then by rushing out content that added another gear tier without making it accessible through ALL gameplay types (exploring, PvP, crafting, karma, in addition to instance farming) they fragmented the community. The introduction of Fractals had a very chilling effect on the game overall, and for the last month the game has felt a lot more like a repetitive treadmill in which the only thing the mindless masses are ever doing is spamming for fractals in Lion’s Arch.

It’s taken away from the health of the community by diminishing all the other explorable instance content in the game, and because the top gear rewards only come via Fractals, it has driven a wedge in the community between WvW and PvE oriented gamers.

What Anet needs to appreciate is that they chose a design path that they can’t change now, and that choice means the game simply can not possibly be all things to all people. If they keep trying to be that, they really will fail.

Anet chose to have no progression raiding. They chose to do away with the holy trinity of group formation. They chose to have limited gear tiers and chose to make endgame “loot” rewards be cosmetic rather than stat based. They chose to have a handful of 5-player dungeons and [i]chose to scale PvE instanced content to 5-man groups.

By these choices, they declare that the reason people will be playing GW2 a year from now, if they are at all is its Player vs. Player content - just like in GW1.

But then, after all these core design decisions, the game releases and Anet scrambles to hook Wow-players. Every major update to the game since release has been PvE focused. Then they rushed now a new “tier” of gear in a completely obvious ploy to suck in a base of people who historically want all the things Anet is not: progression raiding, stat/tier based rewards, trinity group dynamics, etc.

This currently the most significant challenge facing the game. Anet has to stop trying to be all things to everyone. Anet made some choices in game direction long ago, and the entire game is built right down to its very code base from those choices. Anet needs to stop trying to be all things to all people and play to GW2 strengths.

refocus on PvP – both sPvP and WvW. Your game is designed around these two things being the enduring “endgame” for players. Play to those strengths and accept that people looking for pve progression raiding games will go somewhere else.

EACH major content update should include content for PvP, whether its large or small. There should never be a month in which WvW/PvP are ignored, because this is where Anet can create a more unique and successful “endgame.”

having said that, I don’t “hate” PvE. But I also don’t consider it a viable “endgame” in GW2 because of the way GW2 is designed. Instead, PvE at 80 is about fun and exploration – a diversion when you need a change of pace from the ACTUAL endgame….

….So add 5-man explorable dungeons every 2-3 months with new cosmetic and exotic level rewards, with the full understanding that no one is expected to “grind” that new dungeon as the one and only thing they do ten times a day. Explore it with your friends a few times, or long enough to get some cool skins that you would like, then move on. Keep changing or adding to existing dungeons (either in rewards or content changes) so that it feels like players constantly have many, many viable dungeons to choose from.

- What happened to Dynamic Content? There was supposedly a whole team of developers who were going to be regularly removing Dynamic Events that had been in zones a long time and introducing brand new Dynamic Events…. where did that go? It would be amazing to be exploring with an alt and run into completely different dynamic events in places you have been before.

It is very important to remember that official game forums almost NEVER accurately represent the quality of the game OR the majority opinion of the actual playerbase.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of good things can come from discussion on the official boards.

But it is also full of hyperbole like “the game is dying!” The game is not dying, it will not be “dead” anytime soon. But just like all other games before it, the bandwagoners will drift away from it, and the community that has made a more permanent choice for GW2 because they’ve settled that its the game and the community they want to invest in for some time will remain.

Honestly the golden age for most MMOs is at least six months after release or more. Even MMOs who have not been financially successful were still far better games after the initial wave of professional MMO-hoppers (and forum gripers) washed through. Thus, I’m very excited about what the next year of GW2 may bring.

It’s not that I have no criticisms or desires for improvement. I actually have some big ones. It’s just that I have learned from over a decade of experience with MMOs that you absolutely cannot judge a games quality by its official forums.

In fact, if you don’t have thick skin and you find that you suddenly feel more “bummed” about the game for no real reason after you’ve been to the forums – seriously try boycotting them for 30 days and see how much your sense of enjoyment in game goes up.

We’re here. We fear. Get used to it.

:)

Excellent, friendly guild that actively works together to accomplish big things in WvW.
Selwynn Swiftblade, EMP