Guild Wars 2

I heard last year they added rewards halfway through the festival. Is that accurate?

This is a great idea. I’m on SoR and we are likely to get our brains dashed open in Silver. It would be lovely if ANet tweaked the ratings to compensate for those servers whose rank isn’t reflective of their current WvW populations.

I’m willing to consider moving at this point, individually. My server (SOR) has become a place where I can’t really get a fight during the times I can play. I do like WvW sometimes, but not if I comprise 1/2 of my home BL’s standing army.

I predict the serious WvW folks will continue to switch to whatever servers are on top. The people considering the free transfers I imagine enjoy WvW but not enough to shell out 22.50 / 1800 gems. They want a change of scenery but not for an extreme cost.

As someone on SoR, I can’t complain. Our only fair matchup right now would be against a person in a coma. Can’t expect ANet to accommodate that.

tl;dr

A lot of guilds left at once. Many people got burnt out and/or wanted a change of scenery.

TC was the destination of choice for many people. Adding a few guilds to TC rounded out their WvW population nicely. As you see from the current WvW scores, the improved TC is holding its own in T1.

Now SoR is in the process of rebuilding its WvW community.

One of the complaints I’ve heard regarding using PPT as a metric is that it over-rewards servers with massive populations and large off-hours guilds, to the point where it can make more sense for some EU guilds to join NA servers if they want to be most effective. This can be a bit frustrating for some people.

I had an idea where maybe twice per month, after Friday reset you would be put in a 2-day mini WvW tournament with whichever servers you’re best matched.

At the end of that weekend, the winning server gets some kind of reward (A bundle of Badges of Honor, a gold or two, a chance at past Living Story rewards, a Tome of Knowledge, maybe a unique WvW-themed skin or two as long as I’m dreaming) and everyone else gets a participation chest. Player participation would be measured by checking if they did X number of WvW Dailies.

The shorter timeframe would break up the otherwise endless aspect of WvW nicely, sort of like how soccer leagues often break up the regular season with a tournament or two. Casual players would have a set time when rewards for WvW are a little better than normal, in the way that people gravitate towards Living Story areas when the rewards are good (Lion’s Arch). Low-population servers would have an influx of players, some of whom might discover they really enjoy WvW.

I think those items are mainly meant to be bought with cash. I do think the prices are a bit stiff, though. $2+ for a 15-minute crafting table, or a one-time armor fix, is just not worth it when it takes maybe 60 seconds to teleport back to and reach an armor repair person if you know where one is.

The prices for the infinite picks, bank slots and other permanent items seem okay to me. I feel like ANet is losing out on a lot of revenue by making their temporary boosters so expensive, though.