Guild Wars 2

The idea behind this event is flawed in my opinion – it is to prevent servers from locking their own borderlands since after the removal of the orbs, this is the most logical strategy for the more organized servers. Basically this event treats the symptom but not the root of the problem.

Now let’s look at the practical problems the event causes:

1. Numerous times have we (T2) observed 50 – 60 enemy players border hop, and activate the event, instantly receiving 500 – 600 resource, taking the spawn tower and pumping the resource into 5 trebushes to bombard the nearby keep. At this point the proposed solution of ‘let them have the spawn tower’ that some people in this thread keep mentioning somehow doesn’t seem so viable. Hence we go and take the tower by a surprise attack to get rid of the trebs. Ten minutes later a new event spawns with new 500 – 600 resources and the trebs are back. It goes on and on while all that time our enemy didn’t even feel the need to take and hold a second resource camp – just the one closest to the spawn.
After a whole evening of repetition we came up with a strategy (SPOILER: Advanced WvW tactic ahead) to counter this – we broke the tower wall, destroy the trebs and left the tower uncapped. We never saw 5 trebs at once on that tower anymore for the rest of the night. Now if this is the way WvW should be played by design I’m just speechless…

2. Groups of enemy players equal to our number under an invulnerability field (or so close that they can effortlessly hide under it) has got to be the next best thing in WvW.

3. No report option for the exploiting NPC commanders and dolyaks behind tower doors is an issues since those need to be banned.

Seeing that I only looked at the event from the point where it gets exploited by a seasoned enemy force, let us observe the benefits it provides to the truly outmanned players that would strive to retake their spawn against a vastly superior force:

1. If the NPC commander dies before he reaches the spawn tower the event ends and since the NPC commander always takes the same exit of the spawn area this escalates the spawn camping to a whole new level where it is actually a requirement (another WvW pro tip). Instead of going to another border where they can do something meaningful now the forces that own the map are intentionally forced to stay even if there is no immediate threat.

2. Sorry but if you expected more benefits then you didn’t read 1. carefully enough – go do it, there’s a pro tip there, that can grant an unlimited supply of boredom to your winning forces.

In conclusion – reinstate the orbs in some manner and get rid of this flawed solution to a problem that should never have existed if they were in.

P.S. This post was designed while listening to the jokes of my bored comrades on TS during a prolonged wait for a an invulnerable siege weapon to get destroyable several minutes after the rest were already down.

Victory.2879:

Maybe someone from an organised server could get everyone on a ‘full’ map to stand in one place, count them, and the OP’s question would be answered.

I’d be surprised if each BL supports more then 80 atm, as opposed to the original idea that each would have 500!

I doubt that you will be able to even load 80 players at once on the screen let alone 166 in order to do a proper count.

Anyway, I have to agree that there are hardly 166 players per borderland per server and this is easily determined right after reset when all players are grouped at the start and there is already a queue. I would say that the number is somewhere between 80 and 120 at present (might have changed at some point). I can’t comment on Eternal since I rarely go there.

It would be best if the devs posted a statistic about this.

Let’s start from the beginning:

It was Saturday morning – the most important time of the war. Immediately after the reset IRON swarmed into Arborstone BL split into two teams – one to the east, aiming at AR territory and another one (smaller) towards the VS part of the map.

Taking the eastern keep and supply camp by the main force went smoothly as opposed to the heavy opposition, met by the smaller team ultimately resulting in a wipe. The main force proceeded to obtain the Orb, oblivious to the AR forces present in the area…

With the precious sphere in our possession we happily started heading back to the eastern keep. At this time hell unleashed upon us – a massive AR force struck from the general direction of their spawn at our main group like a storm. The heavy combat lasted through the whole journey and even though the Orb carrier finally managed to get into our keep, it became evident that AR forces in the area can match IRON’s combined power on the map. At the very same time VS forces stormed at the tower at our spawn and took it in spite of the best efforts of our second team. The supply camp next to it went down shortly after.

In what seemed to be mere seconds, our presence on the map was reduced to a single un-upgraded keep with the Orb inside and no supply. To top it off a glimpse of the score board showed that each server possessed an Orb of their own…

In no time we found ourselves alternating between retaking our supply camp (only to be taken by VS forces again and again as soon as we leave) and defending the Orb from the relentless AR attacks which quickly reached the inner keep. With the keep having holes from both sides we could not spare enough forces to retake the tower at our spawn where VS were already starting to dig in. Our second team could barely prevent us from being spawn camped by VS, let alone taking an objective on its own. The situation seemed dire…

Our doom was approaching as each AR attack reached further and further into the keep. No one could help us with this mess we found ourselves into… but the Internet God :-P The servers crashed.

Some minutes later the login race began. It was a very close call but we managed to retake our spawn tower without losing our keep/Orb (in no small part due to AR forces being significantly reduced after the crash).

Unwilling to waste the unexpected gift of fate IRON spent the next few hours fortifying and defending both positions without any significant effort put into taking other strategic objectives.

Stay tuned for the next part where you are going to see how the Internet God turned on us Sunday evening…

P.S. It’s late and I don’t even have the energy to read what I just spawned so I apologize for any potential nonsense and grammar errors – I just wanted to contribute (hopefully) to this thread before it gets flooded by trolls and closed/deleted.

EDIT: Ok, I did read it again (fortunately)

I have to apologize up front for I am about to discuss something off topic as it seems – namely the Desolation vs Far Shiverpeaks vs Kodash action that has been going on for more than five days now but has yet to be mentioned in this topic (guess I also have to include the ‘RUIN’ magic word in the first paragraph since otherwise noone is going to pay attention to the rest):

First let me congratulate FSP for yesterday evening’s epic battles over the Garrison at their homeland. I have never before died so many times on the defense as I did then – even though it may seem that you didn’t accomplish that much I just want to mention that we were so preoccupied with your attacks that we managed to lose the fully upgraded Bluebriar (I believe that it had not left our possession for the previous 2-3 days) to Kodash and deplete Dreadful Bay’s resources from the full 1700 to 700 just to prevent the Garrison from falling. I personally thought that the Garrison is lost at least 2-3 times during the evening. Also cheers to the people who answered our call for support of the Garrison! I can’t imagine that anyone who participated in the battles remained dissatisfied regardless of the side he fought on!

My personal favorite was when we gathered for a counterattack near Sunnyhill’s trebbed wall in anticipation for our mesmer to portal us behind the defending players, but we got pushed through the ledge by some FSP players, leaving him wondering why so few of his comrades took advantage of the setup.

Overall IRON had some very challenging battles this week and I personally have the utmost respect for FSP and Kodash on the battlefield. When we lose we are not ashamed and when we win, it’s a hard earned victory paid in blood and sweat.

Also FSP should not get too depressed over this week – Halloween is taking a tall on all servers, besides even if you do drop into tier 3 in time as some people here suggested, you are going to have a significant moral boost due to outplaying the opposition by a large margin. Let’s just make the most of what remains of our time facing each other.

P.S. Don’t spend all the badges you got from me in one place