Guild Wars 2

Planetside 2 is a lackluster freemium game.

Told you so.

Gotten quite a lot of fun already for my 60$ over the last 3-4 months(or w/e), I’m sure the world won’t end if people across all servers are getting a little bit bored and trying out different games out there. GW2 is a very casual-friendly game, and PVP is very easy to find.

I’m personally gonna check out what the fuss is about with DFUW.

Wasting karma on WvW invader gear is pointless considering the exotics available in the “Orr” zones. The Cathedral gear is on-par with Invader badge-gear.

Take objectives in WvW. This gives you Karma (a lot of it at L80). Alternatively take a Karma booster before you chug your Karma jugs from your monthly/daily. Go to the Cathedrals in Cursed Shore/Malchor’s Leap, when they’re open (there’s a PVE event chain for each one, randoms usually open them fairly regularly) purchase exotic gear for 42k karma per piece.

A bit of advice; no reason to stick to a particular set, just mix-match the gear that gives you the stats you want.

Alternatively collect badges of honor, with a good guild you should be breaking ~150-200 badges per session.

0 gold and 0 PVE needed whatsoever.

I think PvPers on all servers without exception are getting a little bit bored of the same old bouncing between A-B-C on 3 identical maps + 1 slightly bigger map. No doubt a lot of PvPers gave Planetside 2 a spin, some didn’t like it some did and are probably still playing it, I’m sure a lot of PvPers will give Darkfall a spin in a week or whenever it releases.

I’d love to hear about concrete new improvements to WvW, instead of usual cop-outs and PR-vetted ambiguous statements about the distant future. If it takes until february to figure out what that is thats fine, its not like there’s a sub running.

Worse then before. Being in charge of a warband is a horrible responsibility when you can’t rely on what your eyes see on the screen. I walked my ~20 man group into a 60+ clusterkitten that didn’t render on my screen until we were in the middle of them, very much brown-alert time.

There’s very little “open” terrain, objectives are 15-30 seconds between each other. Largely no point in actively defending objectives because you can get back to the keep faster then the enemy can take it, unless they’re packing 5-6 golems.

Existing WvW maps could benefit from some redesign. New maps would be welcome as we currently only have 2 real maps with rotating spawns. Culling is a constant gamble as you’re always 50-50 if those 20 guys you see on screen are 20 guys or 100 guys.

Too much PvE focus atm. Vertical gear progression with very little horizontal (out of 100 people 70-75 in cookie-cutter Cathedral gear, other 25-30 didn’t figure it out and wasted money buying on TP).

Bottom line, WvW has constantly evolved since game release as players/servers developed new tactics/strategies, ANet hasn’t kept up the pace with the players who are outplaying the game development and running out of content.

ANet needs to make money. There’s nothing in WvW that makes money, its the PvE stuff on TP gem store that makes money. That’s where the focus is, either we deal with it or find another game.

Personally I prefer games where all the gear ingame is player-crafted and you drop your gear every time you die. Makes every death and every kill more important.

Like others explained, BT’s global strategy isn’t decided on petty factors like “BT dislike Server Y so we will focus them”.

We focus down the biggest “danger” in the match-up, and adjust our focus accordingly during the match. If some server is strong enough to get into T1 they’ll get here on their own – we don’t make any effort to make that happen.

I’m sure we have a lot of bad apples on our server (I’m probably one of them! :P ), but the majority of BT is united in opinion that we must fight harder then everyone else and respect our enemies for the fun and challenge they provide us with every day.

Personally I think that VS and AS should make a french alliance again and really try to beat BT into the ground. Some people on our server might whine about it, but a vast majority of us that enjoys the fights with you would enjoy the challenge being the underdog in the match-up.

20-30 man group, thats small scale.

Personally I was quite happy with the fights last night (26th) in Blacktide borderlands, some fun encounters with PSY and SR and fun wipes at Redwater Lowlands. Nice to see more guilds from Blacktide taking to the field after the weekend break, Ruin transferring cost us a few guilds but now they’re gone we’re building back up to our previous numbers.

All according to plan. Carry on comrades!

Some very good fights today in BT Borderlands, thanks to all enemies for providing entertainment.

See you tomorrow for more fun fights!

CIR (not CiR, not Cir, if you want to nitpick) is having a lot of fun in WvW. It’s challenging and enjoyable to fight against VS and AS. Thats all we’re interested in, and we’ll take this over any steamroll week like the previous matchup.

Thanks for all the great fights, see you on the field!

Last night was perfect example why we play WvW. VS and AS are the best servers in EU to fight against atm and we’re going to have our work cut out for us.

Loving the challenge, hopefully we’ll be fighting for 1st place until the bitter end on friday.

A number of WvW guilds, including my own, have agreed not to participate in this WvW week. We believe BT can achieve 1st place without us, and we don’t want to be associated with xenophobic trolling of French servers.

After this week is over and PS2 comes out, we will review if the situation has changed for the better in WvW and consider our options regarding BT.

While a lot of us Blacktiders that fought from T4 to T1 have taken a break from WvW for various reasons best not mentioned, I think it should be mentioned – and often! – that VS is inspiration to all servers in GW2.

Why? They know they will lose all in morning – they still fight hard, not for 1 week or 2 weeks, they fight like that for 4 weeks now. That is what you call dedication to your server! Hell, some guilds couldn’t even handle it for 2 days nevermind 4 weeks and ongoing!

The Blacktide Commissars.

Don’t know about other “elite” guilds, but CIR is quite bad and rubbish at PvP, if you lose to us you should probably cancel your subscription.

Blacktide actually fought Ruin’s much glorified zerg in first few days of our arrival in T1. It went something like this in our WvW leader voice-comm:

Guild A in Red zone: Just wiped Ruin can’t find them anymore Deso is outmanned now they hopped
Guild B in Green zone: We see Ruin, they just start attacking supplycamp
Sacrx [RG]: dont wipe them we’re moving to green
Guild C in Green zone: Sorry they alrady wiped, deso outmanned now
Sacrx [RG]: i told you not to wipe them
Guild D in Blue zone: Ruin here scout see big zerg come out of warcamp
Sacrx [RG]: if u wipe them be4 we come i kill you!
Guild E in Blue zone: we bomb them they die!
Sacrx [RG]: kitten!

Blacktide is XAOC, WIC, XT, HP, HoM, CIR, ThUn, DkR, HRSY, INT, RG, GF, NUG, ZD, SFRJ, ANN, BT & few smaller guilds who help a lot.

You will probably see some other guilds with Blacktide tag, but unfortunately due to lack of friendly fire and transfer policies, there is nothing we can do about it (despite how much most of us would like to).

To clarify a few things;

In our talks between guild-leaders on Blacktide, I have not heard a single positive opinion about Ruin transferring. The only not negative thing I heard was from Xaoc leader Maxs who said he doesn’t really care if they transfer or not, and then went back to his favorite past-time of building a lot of golems and running around blowing things up.

When they transferred to Blacktide a number of our bigger WvW guilds wanted to immediately transfer to either VS or Desolation to stomp them like we did in first days of T1 after which they stopped playing and started transferring.

After much talk we reached the conclusion it’s pointless to transfer because;
a) If they decided they can’t hope to beat us and must transfer to avoid us, they will simply follow us around
b) We put in too much effort and emotion into fighting with our friends on Blacktide to reach T1

As their own leader said, Ruin is irrelevant on Blacktide. Most of the guild leaders seemed to agree with this sentiment. They will be ignored by a lot of guilds and most of Blacktide population already formed their opinion after seeing the chestbeating from before when they could out-cap the EU FR servers followed by meek transferring when they couldn’t out-cap Blacktide.

T1 will now be boring, yes. But, it would have been boring if Ruin didn’t transfer as they couldn’t make any difference against us like they don’t make any difference under us.

Some guilds will transfer from Blacktide, some will stay and sooner or later some other hungry server will rise in ranking and dethrone us from 1st place. It’s how the game works, for now we are 1st – through the effort of all of us who fought since T4 and T3 and T2, not through effort of marginal guilds that get wet for french meat sticks.

All have fun and I hope you get as good ezloot bonanza as we got in first days of T1.

The culling was absolutely ludicrous and the lag was horrible. Botched event and great reason to the free trials not to throw money at Anet.

Only a matter of time before WvW guilds start transferring off Blacktide. I’ve had too many guild leaders PM me about new server to conclude otherwise. Nobody except few guilds seems to be willing to tolerate Ruin bandwagoning.

Thats a good point a few guild-leaders already raised, we will instruct our members on Blacktide to keep their toons logged in Lions Arch with auto-cast on to prevent logout throughout EU night. Can’t stop them transferring, but can make it a nightmare to transfer.

Ruin leader approached us about transferring to Blacktide before this matchup started. We discussed and rejected their offer, informing them about it. As we didn’t want them on Blacktide before, we don’t want them on Blacktide now.

Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to stop them transferring anyway, short of boycotting WvW on a server-scale until they leave.

Good job vizunah, glad to see you seized the opportunity on the table.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/3

This is the last week we played on Gunnar’s Hold. After sitting in a WvW meeting for 4 hours listening to 30/40 guilds talk empty words and the same 6-7 guilds showed up for the actual push at 6 AM as always.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/4

We spent the next 3 days scouting Blacktide. Despite Blacktide losing by 60k to Desolation at the time, we (those 6-7 guilds showing up for actual pushes) still transferred on Monday – some before some after. Middle of the match, but we still made Desolation sweat a little bit when we helped Blacktide close to ~10k.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/5

First week we could play on Blacktide from the beginning. Much drama about this match-up.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/6

Second week we could play on Blacktide from the beginning. Great battle against FSP Russian guilds, which later transferred to Blacktide.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/7

Third week we could play on Blacktide from the beginning, with help of great WvW guilds from FSP, and RG who transferred in the middle of the match, we steamrolled the match-up.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/#EU

Latest match-up in T1.

Summary:
We transferred to a server that was losing it’s match-up. We helped build it up and progress in ranking, as the first and biggest benefit we had some of the best fights GW2 can offer.

Nidhogg.2950:

I do not understand your reference to an older post, and why would I guarantee that KISS wouldnt leave? Im not even in KISS, let alone in a position to make such guarantees. Who would guarantee that a guild wouldnt leave?

Nidhogg @ KISS forums, 18 hours after CIR already transferred to Blacktide
http://www.sickalliance.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3333 (topic deleted after we made an official post that we transferred)

“Several guilds have been approached by the Blacktide guild [Xaoc] to see if they might be interested in transfering to Blacktide. So far the guilds Ive heard about this have declined.

Recently a guild member brought the following post to my attention:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Blacktide-Battle-reports/page/2#post394625

In there the warleader of Unnamed inquires about Blacktide, giving the impression that Unnamed might actually be interested in transfering. Likewise, CIR has let it be known that they are ‘voting about moving server’.

I can assure you that these guilds will not move to Blacktide, whether you feel relieved about that or dissappointed Ill leave up to each of you

For one thing, CIR isnt a democracy,The vote is a sham. They also will not move without the support structure as they do need the very people they look down on.

Should CIR/Unnamed actually transfer to Blacktide then they would not remain there long, Xaoc is different from what they think and I doubt they will feel at home next to a giant like Xaoc.

Since neither CIR/Unnamed are playing in the Russian time zone they also wouldnt benefit much from the Xaoc support.

The reason both guilds spread the rumor they are moving is because they want other guilds to tell them they cannot leave because they are doing such an awesome job. Their leaders have no real intention of leaving, just spreading the word that they might unless Gunnars starts doing things more ‘their way’. Ive been the head diplomat of CIR and if they were truelly moving they wouldnt go about it like this. Communications between them and Blacktide wouldnt be out in the open like this but on comms and internal forums, the public posting proves they will not move. Their leaving would also not impact the server to the degree that they think.

So for better or worse, CIR and Unnamed are here to stay"

Sounds pretty guaranteeing to me, you obviously possess a very in-depth perspective on the guilds you’re speaking for.

Unfortunately, XAOC was exactly what we thought (and in CIR’s case, remembered), and we benefited quite a lot from XAOC support like they benefited from ours. It impacted our old server to the degree we thought, and in a lot shorter timeframe then we thought. No worries tho, I did say you’d figure it out eventually.

For example, I can imagine what happens when a casual PvX EU guild moves to a mid-tier NA server, mid-tier meaning dead in NA off-hours. Should be entertaining, dont forget the mass-mails!

The “core” was ripped out when those 6 main WvW guilds left GH Slips, as we said then it’s only a matter of weeks before the few remaining guilds find their own servers and KISS moves on to somewhere where they can be carried again.

Though they were quite vocal about hunting us down and destroying us, I expected them to transfer to Desolation. Even Snort said a prayer to his dark irish gods every night before bed for such a miracle.

A different continent is quite funny though. Wannabe Ruin Mk2?

MagnusLL.8473:

Syndic.4762:

It’s no secret we have been prioritizing Desolation because we expected a lot bigger resistance from their American players and guilds.

If you seriously believed you’d face hundreds of NA players on Desolation, you’ve been misled. As it has been already stated multiple times, the only significant NA presence on Desolation (so far at least) is Ruin, and even during the best nights they never had enough numbers to fill more than one map. If you can bring 100 players (total, on all 4 maps) to the table, you’ve already outnumbered Desolation’ s night team. And even if you had zero night presence, your morning numbers would have been more than enough to completely undo their nightcap and lead you into afternoon/prime time with a point lead.

Sorry for not being able to provide a significant challenge to offpeak BT players, but we can’t wave a magical wand and make WvW players appear out of thin air

We went about it logically, Deso night-team > Vizunah night-team = Deso poses biggest danger with American players. Conclusion, all guilds must prioritize Deso to compensate for US timezone hours where we expected your server to dominate points.

When Ruin contacted us about transferring we assumed not everything was “in order” on Deso, but on off-chance it was some elaborate plan we still went ahead and prioritized you guys.

As expected, our (Blacktide) weakest moment is monday when swap happens between “weekend” playstyle and “weekday” playstyle.

During weekend some smaller guilds were resting while big guilds were pushing, we have now accumulated a respectable lead and a lot of the bigger guilds are since sunday already resting as many people as possible for the weekdays to come.

It’s no secret we have been prioritizing Desolation because we expected a lot bigger resistance from their American players and guilds. Since we have no American guilds, this seemed most logical choice, also a lot of our people weren’t very impressed with very bad metagame propaganda from previous matchups.

So far the battles have been very enjoyable and Vizunah has been – as all national enclaves do – punching hard above their weight. Your spirit and morale is big credit to you after last 2 weeks.

Tonight is crucial as all servers swap from “weekend schedule” to “weekday” schedule.

Good luck to all servers over remaining days of match-up, lets have some quality fun.

VS is definitely the one with more fighting spirit atm, did not expect it after last 2 weeks. It’s clear they’ve built strong community on their server and as I said before this match-up, it’s not without reason they are in T1 for so long. JoL is also fun to read, always entertaining to get the other guys perspective (love you too FSeeker).

Thx for great battles in BT borderlands.

Out of curiosity, is there any community forum out there where WvW can be discussed without so much moderation?

I just realized this pairing started on 9/11. I forsee french memes in the making about this match-up.

Great fights with VS in Blacktide borderlands, enjoy the lead and have fun beating Desolation in points. We didn’t like those loudmouth news either.

Yoke.4671:

haha ruins long time plans didnt last long did they, good by sunny day deso pvpers. No Qs for any BL again and everyone moaning at each other about the 100 reasons why we are losing. Its the drop from t1-t3 all over again, sunny day pvpers and guilds stop Qing and will prob all go to blacktide. sad to see it happen twice in space of 6 weeks

No point in any guilds moving to Blacktide. We are a WvW server in the true sense of the word, our queues are already 40 minutes – 1 hour long throughout the day on all borderlands.

At this point no self-respecting WvW guild would move, indeed we’ve turned numerous inquiries down (like with Ruin) because we understand that primarily we’d be assimilating our competition and making the game boring for us, and secondarily we’d be making it more frustrating for the hard-working WvW guilds on Blacktide to face increased queues because of fair-weather guilds joining only after we arrived in T1.

Naturally we can’t stop anyone from moving, but it’s a bad idea for more guilds to move. I doubt many Blacktiders would look kindly on it. We’re fine as we are, the game is only fun when we are forced to work our kitten off in every pairing and fight for every point.

There are “zergs” of randoms following a commander, and theres a “zerg” from 1 guild. Watch what happens when 2 meet, use a stopwatch and time it. Competent guild built around a “group spec” will wipe any size zerg of randoms if they have the critical mass (~20-25 people).

NoShelter.3817:

Regarding RUIN:

I can’t speak for the guild (I’m just a member), but I will tell you that personally (and this view is shared amongst several other members), I am backing off GW2.

In just a short time, we’ve dominated every bracket. The US bracket is utter garbage, and the EU bracket is amazingly fun, with great servers and players.

Our battle culminated with the french alliance. We stayed up too late, played too long, we made our wives angry, but we won. I feel like I’ve beaten GW2 and there’s nothing left to do.

My fire has gone out. Blacktide is a great competitor, but we’ve already beaten them. There’s no competition left.

Also, the developers really dropped the ball. The culling issue is an absolute game-breaker for me. That needed to be fixed weeks ago. When I see 2 goofy holiday content patches coming out while culling is still happening, it tells me it’s time to find a game from a company who has their priorities in line. Also, wvwvw needs more maps, more variety, more everything.

On the 20th, many of us will be going to planetside, and we’re keeping a close eye on the developement of elder scrolls.

I go where the massive multi-realm battles are. As a member of RUIN, I storm a game, conquer everybody I see, then move to the next challenge. Getting locked into one game (like I did with WoW) for a long period of time just ends in misery.

I don’t know if thats why you are seeing a lot less of my guildmates on this week, but that’s why I’ve barely played.

I don’t quite understand, before the match-up your guild was asking us about transferring to Blacktide, we rejected it and now you’re quitting the game? Ah well, to each their own I suppose.

Respect to VS for putting up a great spirited fight yesterday again, your forums are a pleasure to read. Lots of talk about goons and bob tho, nice to see other bittervets from New Eden are around.

The Moletariat of CIR kills Ruin’s commander.

http://i.imgur.com/Ox92C.jpg

We learned alot from FSP guilds when we fought them. This is just another thing for us to learn from Desolation this time. Nothing is an exploit until ANet says so.

Thanks for all the good fights so far guys, it’s been very fun. Respect to VS guilds for being very active and skilled despite whats been going on in T1 last 2 weeks. Most servers would have crumbled after 1st week, you guys are sticking it out and fighting hard.

Nothing is won yet, week is long and just starting. We only executed 1st step of the plan, if we execute remaining steps as good as this we will win. If we slip up and relax we won’t win.

Cautionary note to new transferees to BT, victory is what we proclaim when scoreboard says we won. Respect and learn from enemy, then kill every last one of them. For the motherland!

VS seems to be doing the smart thing and playing against Desolation for 2nd place. It’s still early to tell, but it could pay them huge dividends in the long run if VS manages to get 2nd place and if Blacktide continues our march to 1st place.

Just now Deso and VS are starting to push forward as our BT overnight players are logging off to sleep in preparation for tonight. Two-three hour window until our Euro guilds start forming up and entering the field, will definitely be interesting to see the score tonight.

Great fights so far keep it up guys! Good luck to whoever wins!

9:15 CET

BT 17,301
DES 8,164
VS 5,032

Good fights tonight. Minor issues with skills non-responsive but very fun fights in BT borderlands against VS who stayed up late.

GJ all BT guilds for plan execution. Red flag of our motherland flies proud over WvW.

The ability to kill other people cannot get boring for me. The only thing that would add more flavor to it would be if player names were visible and if players had some tangible loss when dying rather then just respawn & run.

More varied maps would be nice, 3 borderlands look identically the same which gets boring over time (I quite like the tropical areas of GW2, would be nice to have some in WvW, desert areas too).

As a leader of one of Blacktide guilds, I would be happy with 2nd place. Week is long, much can change in 1 day. I’m sure Desolation & Vizunah are in T1 for a reason, we will just have to see whose reason is stronger.

We have 3 points of view;

- WvW is 24/7 and ladder should reflect that.
- Ladders are regional and NA guilds shouldn’t play on EU servers and vice versa.
- Players should sort it out themselves and figure which 24/7 servers will dominate each ladder.

Either way, I fully agree that FR/GER/ESP servers are at a severe disadvantage because of their localized player-base. Perhaps removing the FR/DE/SP tags would help these communities attract overseas players?

It’s really a shame what’s happening in our match-up Blacktide/Elona Reach/Riverside. We’re beating them in prime time by a small (50-60 points) margin, majority of our points come from 24/7 presence that those German servers can’t even think about competing against.

Comparatively, what Vizunah Square and Arborstone were doing versus Desolation (alarmclocking 2-3 hours before work) as their only option to counter strong US guilds, only serves to burn out the hardcore playerbase that cares about WvW and weakens the competition in the whole ladder.

Things need to be tweaked for sure.

How would the NA ladder look like if the french/german community (as I understand you’re the ones having most problems with this) transferred to a mid-tier NA server and do what Ruin did on the other side of the pond? The possibilities…

EU and NA players are already transferring between continental servers / data centers. Nobody is asking for removing EU and NA tags, just merge the ladders so we can compete on a 24/7 ranking not in some imaginary “continental primetime” when off-capping determines the winner in each match up.

/signed.

24/7 WvW needs 24/7 ladder.

Lets fight for world ranking in world vs world.

Yes, one or two good US guilds that can hold 1 borderland and get stuff done between the EU going to bed and the RUS waking up would be perfect.

Next week we will be up against Desolation and Vizunah Square in T1 of the European ladder. A lot of people probably aren’t fond of the mud-slinging that’s been going on in T1 over the last two weeks.

If the enemy quality difference between T1 and T2 is as big as it was between T3 and T2, I would be very very happy with a 2nd place. We’ll have our work cut out for us fighting the best of the best in the European ladder.

Then again, it is winter and you know what they say about the russian winters…

Last week neither FSP or BT cared much about Elona Reach, we were mostly focused on beating each other due to Russian rivalry.

4 prime-time WvW guilds transferring over to Blacktide shouldn’t make that big of a difference. Perhaps its both an internal and external problem?

Either way looking forward to next week.