Guild Wars 2

Last week we barely lost 2nd place in one of our harder matchups, with 5th seed EBay edging out 7th seed CD 188k to 184k. This week we’re up by a thousand points on 4th seed BP by Sunday morning. CD fights their kitten off, no matter what the matchup.

So instead of spending our Saturday Night Drunken WvW time happily re-capping and fortifying CDBL, we spent three hours squabbling over Hills, completely failing to dent Bay, and then expending blood, sweat, and tears to pull off an epic Garrison defense against both enemy zergs. How many Omegas was that? It looked like 10?

Good fights and good fun.

Had a great time on EBG at reset and this morning on DB BL. Looking forward to a good week.

Dear Giant DB SEA/Oceanic Zergs. Discover some other hobbies. Please.

Happening to lots of people in EBG, happened to me at the moment we capped a tower, but others lost connection at random times. Black screen, D/C.

Buuuuump. Came out of the first week of Silver league with five points.

SoH had fun playing with golems on NSP BL tonight. Too bad we couldn’t seal the deal on Garrison, we got a sliver of green before the WP opened up for the 2nd time and it was just a long, painful, thrashing death after that. Nice defense, and you sure took Bay back fast.

Also, unless you always send 30 people to re-cap Vale when the rest of the map is red, it was either supernatural premonition or somebody with two accounts that scouted the 10 CD golems approaching Vale from our spawn at about 6:30 server time. We weren’t even out of the invuln zone, golems had not been spotted, and we hadn’t seen more than 10 NSP in one spot in the hour and a half before that. I’m not accusing your server of encouraging spying, just curious if it was sheer bad luck or something shadier.

We had a lot of fun last night on IoJ BL for our Drunken WvW event. Would have been nice to take a keep but a bunch of drunken CD’ers vs. large guild groups of IoJ with a lot of defensive siege is a losing proposition. You guys don’t give up your keeps easily, well done.

Also, I know claiming the enemy server only fights with 4:1 odds makes you feel better about losing on the scoreboard, but it’s a really really old excuse. There was no NSP on IoJ BL last night, but 50-70 CD still fought 40-50 IoJ for 2+ hours, and most of our wipes happened while assaulting heavily fortified keeps. That’s not ‘Mindless Zerg’ server behavior, we would have moved on to a softer BL.

Crystal Desert is currently in T5, fighting a T2 and T3 server. And we’re going to gain ranking points. Because we’re stubborn like that.

“The weather in the Crystal Desert is hot and unforgiving. The winds blow hard, making and unmaking dunes, covering up the present and uncovering the past. An examination of the sand will reveal that each grain is actually a tiny, pointed crystal. In isolated locations, larger crystal formations have been revealed by the constant, unforgiving wind.”
– The Guild Wars Manuscripts

Our Server Philosophy

Crystal Desert sees the value of all aspects of a player’s gameplay. We emphasize social interactions and communication. We believe in the ultimate experience of the game and the friendships you make while playing the game. Crystal Desert supports the philosophy that if everyone gives a little, everyone can enjoy a lot. Coordination and cooperation can overcome any disadvantage, and we pride ourselves in fighting against all odds. Respect is due to every member of our community and a pleasurable experience outweighs arrogance.

What Does the CD Community Provide?

- Community events like Vexia’s free giveaway in LA, and our Naked Nite WvW event, every Friday before reset. Check out our Community Calendar

- Communication through two weekly meetings, a Commander meeting Friday nights to plan reset strategy and an open community meeting on Saturday nights.

- A resilient attitude that, like the Crystal Desert of GW1, has survived and hardened through harsh winds.

- An elected Crystalian Council made up of community leaders and representatives who work to promote our server, mediate conflicts, moderate meetings, and organize community events.

- A TS3 server with WvW, PvE, Guild, and public channels for your use.

What About WvW?

- Skill lag? What’s that? A dedicated group of 20 players can make a huge difference on our server. Zergs happen (usually during NA prime) but they aren’t the norm. Queues outside of Friday night reset are very rare.

- WvW training is held every Sunday for various classes and types of play.

- Groups active in WvW ranging from roaming to havoc to zerg balls.

- One of our most recent successful initiatives is an open guild dedicated solely to protecting our Borderlands.

- Crystal Desert will be a contender in the Silver League.

- We have active NA and SEA timeslots.

Interested in transferring?

We welcome guilds and players who agree with our server philosophy and would be loyal Crystalians. We hope that potential transfers will be willing to learn from us as much as we look forward to learning from them. Crystal Desert does not offer gold to guilds looking to transfer.

Crystal Desert Links

- Community Website/Forums

- Community Teamspeak: ts.crystal-desert.com

Who do I talk to?

Send a message to any member of the Crystalian council, or register on our forums and post a hello : Tyrlis.8072(NA), Jess.6710(NA), Destanee.1025(NA), gypsy.7510(SEA/OC), Vexia.6538(SEA/OC).

I’m one of the community reps for CD and I’ll tell you we would not condone anybody cheating like that.

On a positive note. SoH + Friends are doing their ‘Attack of the Clones’ Theme Zerg right now. We’re listening to Star Wars music, answering Star Wars trivia, and playing alllll of our mesmers on BPBL. And drinking copiously. Come fight us!

SoH is having their Drunken WvW event right now, we’re a massive tipsy Necro zerg on BP BL. Come play with us!

Hey Os, sorry to run after one wipe on your BL tonight. We do havoc runs on Monday nights, we didn’t have our ZBall toons or specs so we wouldn’t have put up a decent fight even if we’d rezzed and come back.

SoH and friends had a good time on DHBL tonight for our Drunken WvW event. We probably could have done a lot more if we hadn’t been busy drinking and filling out dirty Mad Libs. Thanks for showing up to fight us at Vale and NE tower!

CD4LYF! I loved the video. I’m considering taking leave for a day or two that week so I can WvW All. Day. Long.

Thanks for the fights last night, it seems like we were all wrecking everybody else’s borderlands. I look forward to fights that aren’t affected by skill lag.

Had a great afternoon of fights on CDBL today. I logged on, we owned everything except Bay. 45 minutes later, SoS and SBI were racing to tear apart everything we owned. We weren’t fast enough whacking the moles, and eventually we were bottled up in NE tower.

After an HOUR of stopping trebs/ACs/ballistas/hordes of SBI from walking through the broken wall into the tower, we finally pulled off a flank and turned the tide. Another hour later, we owned the whole BL. Way to stick with me CD, I know it wasn’t pretty at the beginning. And props to the SBI that stuck out that entire fight between NE tower and Garrison… your bags were nummy at the end. And that treb I was operating inside the tower is going into the Hall of Fame, I think the kill count was three trebs, three or four ballistas, and at least 10 arrow carts.

Azure Prower.8701:

It’s nice playing a match where you can ask in map chat “where is the enemy zerg?” and the answer is not “everywhere.”

Laugh. Out. Loud. Truth.

I think you all understand the joy I felt when I was able to lead my groups into fights that were not 2-to-1 odds. SBI is the first server that CD has been matched up against in the ‘RNG’ era that isn’t ranked higher than us. At the moment of reset I was expecting people to call out Jade Quarry and Tarnished Coast, because y’know… that would just be the icing on the cake.

Yep that was us inside Hills, the closest we got to success on reset night, hehehe. We tried a few of the maneuvers but we’d dodge/trick/engage one freight train and one of the other two would show up. I’m hoping as the week goes on and the score becomes obvious, that populations will drop and we’ll be able to operate with at least a little bit of freedom.

Fiontar.4695:

I think servers mentally psyching themselves out is a fair portion of the sense of being mismatched. I’m from TC and when we drew SoR last week, I saw a couple good commanders suddenly have no clue how to strategize and others that just didn’t bother to flag all week. Our zergs ended up half the size as is normal, which made SoRs large zergs seem even more overwhelming.

That doesn’t apply on reset night, I know CD went into reset with our full force. After that, you might be right, but I don’t think the exaggeration between perceived blowout and actual blowout is that pronounced.

Pushed CDBL Garrison for nearly two hours today with no success. Sure we had multiple walls down, but we needed siege and big flanking movements just to (sort of) beat your field zerg, we wouldn’t have had a chance inside. Then we fought for an hour to get Greenlake tower on TCBL. We had three ACs up near our spawn and two trebs firing from the ruins. If that’s what tower caps are usually like you guys can keep your T2, I’ll be leaving as soon as ANet allows… But we took it! That beautiful, beautiful tower. We had over 100 PPT when I logged off! Watch out, we’re coming back!

CD has had a great couple weeks in T3, we stretched to just about the limits of our sick days and mental endurance and pulled out a couple close wins. After playing 2 hours in T2, I can tell you that we can’t hang in this tier. I’m the first one to fight against impossible odds (I kept SoH in TCBL for the first hour after reset tonight despite the 3 wandering freight trains) but I can also tell when a match is not worth stressing over. I’m not going to stress over this matchup.

Here’s hoping that after the big reset night we can have some fights we have a chance to win. Like… at least 25% of them, hehehe.

On a positive note, it was nice to take out my anger on some NAGA folks. I love you guys, but you’re red now, so you get smashed with Madam Hammer. Red is her least favorite color. Next time I would appreciate if you wouldn’t kill me so many times, though. Thanks.

Thanks YB for providing a zerg to fight against during my Zerg Ball training this afternoon. We were owned the first couple times, did a decent job during the fight between Lake and Water, and then didn’t do so hot in the fight SW of Lake. That was the first time I’ve had something resembling a GvG, hope to have more fights like that.

Good fights this morning/afternoon in EBG and YBBL, and well done to KN on their KNBL defense last night. Once you (and YB) got rolling it was tough for us to hold much.

What’s the deal with the sluggish response to our Pangloss seizure today about noon EST? We were in there for like 20 minutes, just waiting for a juicy zerg to come feed us badges… you bored us out of the hole, hahaha.

Oh my. A collective groan went up from a lot of CD’ers when we saw the new matchup. Last week was great, but we all put a lot of heart (and extra time) into pulling out that win. Most of us were hoping for something a bit easier.

That said, fun times on KNBL tonight. I’ll keep learning and fighting… and dying, sometimes.

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Who was there when CD held off a 5 golem push at Yaks BL bay twice in the early morning. That was epic.

I think credit for that goes to Daeronz, he didn’t sleep last night specifically to defend Bay all night.

This has been a great week for all of CD, we had slipped into a trench warfare mindset in T4, just keeping on and waiting for something to get better. Then this matchup brought a fresh sense of urgency and a collective rising to the challenge. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the excellent timing of the KWBH transfer, which has also brought in a new infusion of population, and while they deserve some of the credit, most belongs to the server.

I really think it might come down to the wire. I may have to turn our Thursday night sPvP into WvW…

This has actually been a lot of fun, had some good skirmishes with members of HIS and a few other guilds on KNBL this morning. Whoever that KN thief was that kept following us around… we’re all in committed relationships. Leave us alone, hahaha.

CL? Yum? Didn’t we fight you guys like two months ago? I can’t remember anything before the SoS era…

I saw some great tactics out there tonight, I look forward to learning all of your secrets and using them to beat up on T6 servers next week. Because karma, right?

It was a fun week minus the no-siege debacle on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

Glad to have KWBH on board, should go a long way to equalize the NA populations. Whether it will be enough to counter SoS’s Oceanic dominance waits to be seen.

It’s been a while since one of my groups has been schooled by a guild group as thoroughly as OG whooped us on EB BL tonight. I didn’t have my group compact and we weren’t calling targets and your five or six took out my nine or ten. Well played.

Also, FTF, it was nice sparring with you all on EB BL tonight. Cut your numbers in half, please? Thanks so much…

I’m so tired of attacking Hills on CDBL. We were inside once and couldn’t crack the lord’s room, and we were trying to get through the outer for two hours after that. By the end of the night one of my guildies suggested that we just leave the kitten place alone for a little while so all the YB would get bored and leave.

I couldn’t pick out which particular guilds it was holding the keep, seemed like a conglomeration, but you were more persistent than I. And I’m pretty persistent. But that’s an interesting (and vulnerable) new treb placement on the bridge. It took me an hour and a half to find a spot outside of its’ range that could barely splash the wall.

Several posts back, when I was all positive about how it was alright that we lost Hills because we still did a good job defending Bay, etc. etc… I’d like to have some choice words with that version of myself.

Just finished SoH’s second WvW expedition of this matchup and it was another fun time. Started out in YBBL messing with some camps, then were called to CDBL.

Helped push back in CDBL and once the southern half of the map was turning blue I looked over and YBBL was all green. We can’t have that! So we went to YBBL and after a long battle we opened both outer and inner Bay walls before rushing all the way through. Well fought.

Then we got the word that Bay was being hit hard on CDBL. I was sad to see that our portion of YBBL was smacked hard and turned green soon after we left.

CDBL was being hit hard at both keeps, EBay on Bay, YB on Hills with golems. We managed to close the outer Bay gate and spent a good 15 minutes clearing out inner Bay. We did lose Hills but hey – you can’t win ’em all, especially with big simultaneous pushes.

All in all, it was a very satisfying run, and at no point did I feel like we were faced with overwhelming numbers. Let’s keep it up.

Had a good night in CDBL, operating mostly on the eastern side of the map. That was some nice counter-treb placement inside Hills, I could never get the right combination of enough supply, the right timing, and the right positioning to take them out. If they’re still there tomorrow morning you can bet I’ll keep trying…

I would love if YB could transfer 20 or 30 of their WvWers to Oceanic time… that would even up the NA primetime fight from ‘Oh God, there are a thousand of them, we’re about to get spawn-camped’ to ‘Oh hey, they’re pushing again, let’s go have some fun defending that keep.’ And it would reduce the PvDoor complaints against our excellent Oceanic crew.

What if I offered some Black Lion Chests? Ruminant Tonics? Peach Pies?

Strippling.3524:

I’ve got to give it to CD, even though during N/A prime time we (YB) take a lot of points, they still never give up, they keep fighting until they get a foothold and then take that opportunity to regain their land.

Yesterday was definitely a test for CD. We were in YBBL in the morning, broke out, we built five golems to try and hit Hills, but you guys showed up and slammed the door on us. I had to leave all of them, unused, sitting near the waypoint… they despawned.

Then we moved over to CDBL and tried to help push that epic Bay assault through. I set up that siege nest and we had to be fighting you inside Bay for half an hour, back and forth, treb shots and cows falling everywhere. You finally closed the outer long enough to wipe out the siege nest. Sigh. Log off. We’ll try again later.

Come back later on Saturday night and the entirety of EB and every keep on CDBL was blue. We broke out on EB, seized Jerrifer’s, got wiped. Broke out again, countered a treb down inside lowlands, were counter-mortared, lost the tower. Broke out again, this time sent a crew out to seize supply camps in the rear, countered another treb down before our treb was destroyed by that kitten vista treb. I think it was around then when we saw that we had retaken Garrison on our home BL. If it wasn’t for that bit of good news it would have been tough to keep going.

Seized Rogue’s and Aldon’s, built up pressure on lowlands, kept you guys busy in the rear seizing supply camps. Finally, two hours after we started, we broke down the gate on Lowlands with golems and trebs and took back our keep. And even from then, it took another two hours of hard fighting to re-take Wildcreek and Klovan. I look over at CDBL and all 3 keeps are green. Awesome night.

Props to the YB’ers we were fighting on EB, for almost every clever siege placement I tried to come up with you had a counter ready.

What a rollercoaster kind of day. Glad to see CDBL and our piece of EB turned green by the time I had to log off. Good fights everyone.

Well that’s interesting. Glad to hear we won’t be thrown into T2 next week.

Wow, thanks to the overnight crew for showing the NA CDers how it’s done. We’ve done alright since reset but we’ve never had points like that!

Also, I’ve learned that the NW tower on SBI BL is like their beehive… tried twice last night to take that tower with 15-20 people… portal bombed twice in a row. After the 2nd time we tried the 25+ bees were so upset they took their Bay back, hahaha. I was disappointed that after I took my group out of that map so the SBI zerg could take their Hills keep away from YB, they instead just took back the western side of the map and left it that way for a couple hours.

Had some great fights on SBI BL tonight after reset working with EA, NAGA, and DC. Some of my guildies promptly recognized SBI’s All Out Assault from Aion, and I also remember seeing a decent chunk of SotB. This is going to be a much more balanced match, it will be nice fighting for something other than our own garrison.

I’m impressed by the sportsmanship everyone is showing in this thread, especially all the KN guys coming out to give CD and YB props for putting up a fight even though the whole map will eventually be blue again. I tend to take a break Monday – Wednesday so I’m fresh for the weekend, but I know plenty of SoH’ers and other CD’ers have been keeping up the fight all week. I’m excited to see how next week’s match goes.

I only had the heart to fight KN for 3 days… after the moral victories of taking CDBL Garrison a few times I called it a match and I’ll spend until Friday playing sPvP and Max Payne 3. I’ll say I was definitely encouraged by the amount of fight we displayed, and I think next week will be a good matchup. G’luck in the higher tiers, it’s brutal up there.

Today we spent two+ hours pounding on one keep, with setbacks over and over again, but we took the kitten thing in the end with a zerg composed mostly of pugs. CD players don’t come to WvW to follow the easy path, they come to win.

Waffler.1257:

Switching from Engineer to Guardian isn’t a reason for higher repair bills, switching from a good build to a bad build is. I play guardian and almost never die in WvW, and my play style includes a lot of solo/small group roaming where you inevitably run in to 95% thieves.

My repair bill is due to my playstyle and I accept it willingly. But I normally don’t come out of a BL with less money than I did going in. Until last night fighting FA in the NW quadrant of CDBL.

My guild transferred to CD two months ago and have been happy ever since. Come join us!

Welcome to Dragonbrand, I haven’t had a chance to fight you much yet, I was on the FA side of CDBL last night, but you’re sticking close in score and that shows you’ve got what it takes.

To FA and the [RET]-led zerg, I am going to love fighting you guys for about a week, during which I’m going to learn all of your tricks and tactics. Then I’d like you to all retire from GW2 and do something less harmful to my repair bill. Underwater basket-weaving sounds like a boom industry right now, I’ve heard…

Niim.9260:

South of Heaven from Aion, Lumiel?

Yes indeed! I didn’t play Aion for more than six months, but you might know Huntyre.

Im Not Braxton.6283:

GoF is a little more then 50 members. Just a LITTLE more. Like 300-400 or so.

I wasn’t referring to GoF, they’ve been around for three weeks already. So the surge this week can’t be attributed to GoF. The guild I mentioned was WOLF.

Aww, FA took back their BL? I thought our Bluelake tower would stand for eternity! Well time to go take some stuff back… SoH does a ‘Smash ’n Grab’ event on Saturday mornings, for a break from the heavy trench warfare.

CD has had a surge in players, but I only know of one new guild that transferred, and they’re only around 50 members. I think it’s all the holiday returnees coming back in to the battlegrounds.

SoH was holding the SE quadrant in FA BL for reset night, had some good fights with GODS and PTX and many other guilds. IoJ didn’t show up on the FA BL for the first few hours so we were fighting FA from 3 sides.

I’m sad that I just read through this entire thread trying to gain some insight into the dynamics in this matchup and the only parts I remember are the Sun Tzu references.

SoH and Orb are a couple of NA guilds that transferred over to CD from NSP looking for more active WvW and we found it. Some memorable points for us this past weekend were defending the SE quadrant on EBay BL on Friday night and defending Greenwater from both EBay and Mag on Saturday night. Props to All or Nothing from Friday night, you guys are insane good.

See you all on the battlefield.

Stermes.4763:

As of lately, it feels as if we don’t really have the numbers for anything. Going into 3 different borderlands to find outmanned in all three is demoralizing, but I still tried to lead a nice group of out-manned players in DH BL today.

That’s how SoH has been playing, dodge-the-zerg and claim as much as you can. It seems like the baseline NSP population has disappeared and that sometimes we’re the only show in town. And our 10/15/20 player groups can’t hold against the enemy’s undistracted horde.