Guild Wars 2

Maybe they should put a minimum rating level in so that T8 servers cant fall too far behind the pack.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I can see I riled you up….As I have said, numerous times….I played on ET, there is no great population difference on SF. I cannot (again, as I have said) really speak to FC with no prior knowledge. If you are fighting 30 people with your 5 I would say, revise your strategy my friend….

The point I was trying to make was that, when I was on ET we always whined and complained about the 40 man SF zergs…..Well looking back, the problem we had wasnt shear numbers, it was getting those people into WvW. They were there sometimes, just not that often, they were there at reset for sure…

Like I said, I cant speak to FC, haven’t been there. Maybe you are out-manned tremendously, legitimately. But my point was dont think just cause you login and play a certain time that we are 50 strong…because there’s times we cant muster 10 people in all of EB to defend an upgraded keep.

The great difference is that SF have more people than ET for more time than ET have more people than SF.

FilthyRat.4652:

I would like a show of hands how many people here have more deaths that kills, I know my kills vastly outnumber my death by at least 10 fold. Just want to see the competition I am really dealing with here, we may have a break through and it may not just be a numbers thing as all these people have claimed before.

Screenshot (no fakies) or you just failed.

Camping the JP 24/7 doesn’t count either as ….well lets just say that hiding in the jp means nothing

Create asura. Log in. Do the following:
1. type /laugh
2. type /cry
3. type /cheer
4. type /cower
5. dodge
6. get a speed buff and go swimming
If you still have any doubts after that….nah, that’d be impossible xD

“Lackin’ Coverage”

They see me upgradin’
My red borderland
I know they’re all thinking
I’m lackin’ coverage

Think I’m lackin’ coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Can’t you see I’m lackin’ coverage!
Look at me I’m lackin’ coverage!
I wanna wage war in-
Tier 6
But so far the fact is
I’m lackin’ too much coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Really, really lackin’ coverage

First in the first week with SF
Never again to taste victory
Only one to know how this feels is ET
Take a one minute break to pee
Come back to see 40 SF hitting AB
My 12:30 PM crew isn’t massive, to the contrary
The fact that they’re non-existant is quite ordinary
All of my major guilds bicker like they were married
Krakarabbit’s crazy quotes fill my library
My server web page is all totally pimped out
Nah I’m lying there is no such place
Yo Anet checkin’ which attacks are fake/real is boring
And lack of ranger stealth got me snorin’
I can only ever move up to second place
If EB green lands were a chick, I’d never reach first base
Once you see my sweet score you’ll be amazed
that FC players aren’t crazed
There’s no camp I haven’t run
Godslore is number 1
Cause 5 manning SF keeps just ain’t fun.
I ain’t got a night crew but I got a Lions Arch queue
“Veloka” is my favourite tower
fill it with 5 superior acs and feel the power
I’ll face any SF zerg in EB
But then have to abandon it to defend BL from ET

They see me roll on, my 148k score!
I know in my heart they think I’m
lackin’ coverage!
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Can’t you see I’m lackin’ coverage
Look at me I’m lackin’ coverage
I’d like to roll with-
Tier 6
Although it’s apparent I’m
lackin’ coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
How’d I get to lack so much coverage?

I’ve been scouting SF and ET
Primetime and only one FC zerg while SF zergs number three
The forum warrior within
He yells for transfers to the Glicko bottom bin!
10 vs. 50 never gets old here
The more time passes the more will come I fear
I post complaints about Glicko 2 on the forums and beg for action
Only to recieve an infraction
I can try again right now
Watch higher tier servers say “Fifth FC post in a week, holy cow!”
When we’re defending bay from SF, watch out
“30+ ET HITTING HILLS!” the lone scout will shout
Even losing our bl to ET’s new night crew!
So I doubt we’ll soon be blue
Tequatl was hitting in PvE
30 people in WvW I could no longer see!
Culling makin’ me wish I rolled thief

I’m gonna be red forever at this rate, chief
Some goofy treaty means ET and us have beef!
And now that they’re strong
They want to see us dance in a red thong
I spend silver coin on siege
and call Edwin Kern “my liege”
The FC WvW standard is droppin’
So its time to go to PVE or hit some Black lion trading post shoppin’

They see me in red BL strugglin’
They on my corpse laughin’
And rollin’ their eyes ‘cause
I’m lackin’ so much coverage
Just because I’m lackin’ coverage
Just because I’m lackin’ coverage
All because I’m lackin’ coverage
Holy cow I’m lackin’ coverage
I wanna roll in-
Tier 6!
but oh well it’s obvious I’m
lackin’ coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
Think I’m just lackin’ too much coverage
I’m just lackin too much coverage
Look at me I’m lackin’ coverage!

Looks like the Troll King got another suspension…

Ok.

Since everyone wants to jump on the band wagon of throwing pitches for every server, their own or others, I’ll thorw in my 2 cents.

Come to Ferguson Crossing

Are you a Die hard player. Do you not take death lying down. Does it take being spiked several times to finally kill you, do you laugh in the face of death? Does the fact that I am mentioning you will die, a lot, many times over, entice you to come check out what the deal is? Then FC is for you.
In Ferguson’s we can promise you brutal, bloody defeat, any day of the week, any time you want it, even at a moment’s notice. In fact if you tell our stellar commanders how and to whom you want to get killed by, they can oblige your request almost any time of the day or night.

At FC, we are on the top of our game even if we are on the bottom of the totem pole. We have fought some of the best servers around, and we take pride in the fact that when it comes to getting stomped. we are up there with the best of them. In fact, ask the last server that faced off against us, they moved to 2nd place because everyone between us and T2 was skared of them. That’s right, we faced off against some of the best servers ever, and lost brutally each time. but still we came back for more.

So if dirt naps, being overrun, and trampled to death under the boot heel of some oversized server that will one day make other servers quake in their path, knowing full well you were willing face anything, rushing to your death with wild abandon and fearlessness, then Ferg is the server for you. Wimps and Whiners need not apply.

Ferg, yes, we are all going to die here.

Come to Sorrows Furnace

Are you tired of winning and bragging about how great you are? Would you rather win and complain about it? Does the idea of overrunning the other servers on your tier for 6 weeks straight and still wanting to play the victim card turn you on? Do you feel the need to deny the people and teams that made your victories possible, by being able to outnumber and over coverage your opponents, and thus result in blow out match after blow out match. Then Sorrows Furnace is for you.

In fact, if you come to Sorrows Furnace, not only will your arrival be denied, your contribution will be as well. If that fills you with joy, and the idea of being able to whine even while winning is worth more then the winning itself. The yes, Sorrows Furnace can provide. Sorrows Furnace has been destroying it’s tier now for no less than 6 weeks straight, and still makes a fuss if other servers can get holdings on their land making claims of being asleep, or having no crew during that time, and if you want to be a part of that, come on down. We won’t admit you arrived, ever, and gosh if you leave, we will make a public parade that we are losing people in mass exodus.

Sorrows Furnace, for those that want to win and whine about it!

Come to Eredon Terrace

Does the state of confusion entice you? Do you feel the urge to blindly and rabidly follow a commander tag (Even off a cliff to your death) then Eredon Terrace is for you.

We have no tact, no order, and we depend on other people with blue Doritos chips over their heads to have a clue what to do and if that sounds like you, then ET is the place for you. Here at ET we follow directions, cluelessly and mindlessly we will brutalize anything that we are told to, once we finish capping this last point. So if you like being part of a zombie-eque brute squad, or leading one, Consider ET, in fact, we are so single-minded we will run back to a fight we just died in, simply because the commander hasn’t way pointed yet.

So, if you can’t grasp defeat, and want to know what it feels like to be on the Zombie side in a horror film, then Eredon is the server for you.

Eredon Terrace, Arrrrr Brainz!

Yes, this is all Satire and done in good fun

ungood is a genius

have my babies etc etc

Haha I love it Ungood! Good work!

SF is the only server that can win and lose at same time…

Or go to ET, they need it too.

How can guilds and individuals claim to be highly skilled, or “hardcore”, when they either sit on a winning server while it’s winning, or transfer to a winning server if they start to lose? I’m sure they tell themselves the server is winning BECAUSE of their significant contribution…but we all know that a single player or guild makes little difference in those crowds. It proves nothing, and requires little of you. Sit at the top of your tier, or jump to a higher one, just so long as you’re a part of a winning team, a small cog in a machine you really have no control over and for which you can claim little credit. That’s the coward’s way. It’s how most players and guilds have been approaching WvW since launch.

Why work for wins? Why struggle against even odds or odds stacked against you? It’s so much easier and simpler to just jump on a bandwagon that’s already rolling at full speed, and then claim credit and take pride in wins you had little to do with. Stop being wimps…get off that bandwagon and build one of your own. You think you’re good? Prove it.

Do you want to prove you’re a highly skilled player? Do you want to show the high level of organization and participation your guild brings? Do you claim to be a powerful tactician or leader? Why not transfer to a server where you can actually make a difference? Where you can claim credit and all the glory and irrefutably prove that you and your guild are one of the best in the game. You don’t do that by joining a winner, you do that by joining a loser and turning it around.

Real winners…those with truly exceptional skill… don’t ride out their careers in the shadows, as a single face in an overwhelming crowd. They don’t spend their time pushing the small loads up the hill in a place where nobody would notice if they were gone. True winners take on the toughest battles and turn the tide. They prove their skills and knowledge in a way that actually shows.

Why pay the highest possible transfer cost just to ride the coat tails of a winning server? You can’t claim to be skilled or knowledgeable or even lay claim to common sense by making that sort of move. Why not pay the lowest possible transfer cost, and move to a server where you can stand apart? Where your skills will shine. Where the contribution you make will be clear and measurable and significant?

If you think you’re a great leader, take a small server, one with tons of heart and server pride but a small population, and organize it into a successful team. Turn around a losing record and make a server competitive. If you have something to prove…if you think you’re good…that’s how you show it. I challenge anyone who claims to be a winner to prove it by actually turning losses into wins, rather than being a faceless winning_player_38902 on a server with the highest possible population.

Transfer to Ferguson’s crossing. We’ve fought valiantly against the forces of the rating system and overwhelming odds for months, and we’ve suffered from the snowball effect that losing causes in an environment where fair-weather players and guilds would rather join a team already winning than build one for themselves. If you want to truly make a difference, this is the place to do it. If you want to prove you’re good… if you are TRULY hardcore…this is the place to show it. Those left playing WvW on this server are the most dedicated, loyal, and stubborn players you will find anywhere. We refuse to give up and refuse to leave our server even with a ratings hole that seems insurmountable and the most lopsided populations in battles every day. Come play with us, make us stronger, and help us turn this server around into a competitive and popular place to play.

Build a great WvW server from the ground up. That’s the warrior’s way.

If this is how tier 1 behaves I’m going to steer clear.

You post a condescending post full of ignorance, which is quickly proven to be incorrect, so you tell people to shut up. What an elitist arrogant fool.

I wasn’t complaining about it negatively effecting sorrows furnace, I was pointing out that our entire server lacks the man power to play such games so it’s having a negative effect on everyone in T8.

I’m not sure why you think we can’t cap things, its too easy which is the entire complaint.

Seriously are you trolling me right now or are you always this ridiculous?

Is all of tier 1 like this guy?

You keep saying if we cared about defending…

I can’t say this any clearer: We do not have the numbers.

If we use scouts or keep players in empty towers, we’ll never take enemy keeps again. It’s difficult enough to field competitive numbers in tier 8, near impossible to use the little we have for luxury roles.

I don’t quite understand why you feel like you are qualified to argue with people about T8 when they fight in it every single day.

I don’t comment about tier 1 because I haven’t set foot in it, I’d suggest you do the same.

I think this is one of the largest hurdles for anyone to face when they look at the way WvWvW is set up.

“Now what do we do?”

“Where can we go next with this?”

And that is a big question sitting around because, while it seems that many of the Wv3 players are looking for something more it seems that their is a definitive lack of what this “More” should or could be.

I personally would like to see More

Maps.

Yes you heard me, if I am going to have to face the same opponent, at least give me several new maps to do it on.

Gear

Yes that’s right. I said Gear, sorry but what is there, is not enough. We should have our own gear set up in Wv3, and think about it, Wv3 is the perfect set up for grinding tokens. Think of this way, Every time you take a Point, you get a Token.

Keep, Towers, Castles, Camps, all award their own style of tokens (yay Less inventory! Not like we got much loot in Wv3 anyway, so this would at least make us feel like we are getting something)

Then we trade these tokens in for loot equal to Exotics form Dungeons and Karma. This keeping Wv3 a bit more self contained.

Karma

Allow us to Buy stuff with it. Like Siege Weapons, and order upgrades with it, as opposed to using gold. Karma is in ample supply in Wv3, give us a means to use it.

Ok those are my idea, feel free to add to the list as to what you would like to see in WvWvW and where it can go from here.

Please, lets keep this constructive, and please no bashing other peoples ideas.

Detharos. Most of what you said could have been said by someone from ET, using ET as the base, and would not have seemed the least bit out of place. Look, end of the day, we are where we are.

If that means, we have gotten tired of dealing with SF and have opted to go after each other, great. I mean, it is an open world of fighting. Currently, I don’t fault anyone from Ferg for killing me, taking our keeps, or anything else, nor do I feel any remorse for attacking them, or taking FC’s land marks. It is, what it is. Part of the game.

Detharos.3157:

I hate to say it but facts are facts, every previous week Ferguson’s Crossing was blue team because we were as a server, significantly more powerful than Eredon Terrace. We had greater numbers and coverage than ET, so much so that we maintained those 20k leads while SF had 90% of its focus on us rather than ET.

I hate to say it but, Both our lands got painted green, the Battle grounds got painted green, If Ferg received any additional pressure from SF, it was because perhaps SF viewed them as a bigger threat, that is all, there was to it.

There were no Alliances, no supporting each other, at our best, we came to an understanding of leaving each other alone was our to our best advantage. Not everyone realized that, no doubt, after all, ET and Ferg are servers, not teams, not groups, just servers, and anyone is able join the server, and anyone is able to go to WvWvW and do what they like there.

Perhaps, if Anet had put in some plan that made WvWvW their own thing, as opposed to annexed to the PvE server, so that the WvWvW could be smaller, more definitive, and for some people, limited to their guild, that might have had an amazing impact, and then alliances, NAP, and other such things could become a reality among the WvWvW Teams, with what we have now, such things, were wonderful ideals and dreams, but amounted to nothing more then that.

The reality is, here today, now, we were, and are, doing the best we can with what we have. Some days, we do well, some days we don’t.

Now, if ET got a surge of people (and honestly I hope we did, as that would be great), and that means we somehow pulled ahead and are in the lead, then that is life. There is no need to explain it, or justify it. Every side has it’s good players, it’s bad players, and yes, we all have our trolls that we all could do well without.

In the end, as you said. It is a game. And for myself, I have realized that bothering myself with this, is well.. bothering me.

It’s has become less fun the more I have gotten involved with it off the field, it is painfully apparent that the same ego and vanity that infects most PvP games also has it roots in WvWvW which, well, it is these trolls and jerks that poison the joy of what open combat could be, and that is friendly competition.

Anyway, above it all, I personally have come to realize that discussion on the WvWvW forums will not change anything.

Here is what it boils down to, we are not forced to do it, we are not required to WvWvW and the rewards .. ehh.. they are lack luster to say the least, not to mention there is no punishment for losing.

So if I am on the field, it should be for love of the game. And I needed to see that myself, hence why I had not posted on this topic for a day, I had gotten angry in the past, let my temper flair, and let things get to me, I took what should have been a silly pointless game, personally. For that, I apologize. I’m an adult, I should know better.

So if you see me on the field, it is because I want to be there, if I walk off, it’s because I don’t.

In that, if someone is not enjoying the game on their server they are on, I do not fault them for moving on, for finding a place where they can have the fun they want. I wish them well in fact.

With the coming Guild Events, I hope to be spending more time with the great people of my guild doing that. If we lose a bit more in WvWvW because a good number of people want to PvE more because of the new stuff coming out, meh, such is the fate of a game.

Anyway. I wish everyone on Ferg and SF well, I hope you enjoy your time on the field as much I plan to enjoy mine. if you guys pull to 2nd this week, kudos, if not, well, I can see you are giving a great fight, and I guess that is where the real reward is, in the battles, the fun, and the fights on the field.

It’s a game, lets try to have some fun there.

Barbarella.3209:

Firstly who broke the pact is a matter of perspective. I was there at inception and saw it the other way around. I saw Krakrabbit extending an offering of mutual non aggression towards eachother and ET raiding our maps the same day it went into effect and beyond…

Secondly… All that kitten about “spitting on olive branches” and “reaping what you sow” is just an excuse to do what you want and bolster momentum. Politicans use this tactic quite often to manipulate the public into seeing things their way.

Facts are, everyone is becoming bitter over this stale and overly long matchup and its just so much easier to pick on a smaller target rather than fight “overwhelming odds”.

I don’t post a lot on the official gw2 forums, but I do read them daily, I’ve been on ET since its creation, and keep pretty well connected with the goings on at ET. Like you said, it is a matter of perspective, so let me share mine. This might be a bit lengthy, but hopefully it gives better insight for everyone on the current situation.

When the NAP was originally proposed (poorly worded as a truce or alliance by some), ET was already mainly focused on SF as is. This was largely an attempt to try and stop FC aggression on ET while being hit by Sorrows. I don’t know what all 24/7 coverage is like, as I’m most active during NA Evening primetime, but there was a pattern of seemingly coordinated effort to stop ET’s very strong Friday reset turnout by FC and SF working together. There was a situation where I personally watched FC camp our spawn in Eternal while Sorrows took our keep right behind them, and after the cap both zergs went their separate ways. I heard several reports from different timezones and fights on other maps with similar situations, but most prevalent on Eternal Battlegrounds.

Now, being an “opportunist” isn’t a bad thing in a 3 team FFA, and I don’t mean to offend people by using the word, but I don’t feel like I have to, since what we were witnessing was less of being an opportunist and more of bad decision making for very, very short lived gains. Sorrows would steamroll FC shortly after ET was dealt with, making any sort of opportunist sort of mentality seem flawed, and Eternal would be permanently painted Green. I’m not saying everyone from ET completely laid off FC at this time either, for the most part though, our largest WvW guilds were attempting to deal with the real threat, SF, and almost always our forces were focused against them.

So, a commander from our server (ET) came to most the largest and influential WvW guilds. He brought up the idea of an official NAP. Every large WvW guild leader pretty much said, sure, we already focus Sorrows as a primary target anyway, doesn’t change our battle strategy/plans at all, really it would only help us. Does that mean that -everyone- would agree to it, or that we would contact every small WvW strikeforce/group? Of course not, but overall, Eradon Terrace has seen very, very rough times. That has more or less created a pretty stable friendship/network of communication amongst the largest long standing guilds on the server to discuss this sort of thing. We assumed Ferg had the same sort of atmosphere due to their situation being similar.

Problems happened obviously, and FC guilds apparently haven’t been growing friendlier with time like most of ours have. Apparently the person who brought up the NAP talked to the wrong guild leader on FC, because all the thread turned into was trashing of guilds and leaders (I won’t call out specific names of the FC players involved, if you dig up the thread or have been keeping up with this you’ll know). An increase in smaller groups from both FC and ET started attacking each others borders, mostly camp cappers, because of reasons like “lol truces are stupid!” sort of mentality.

Regardless, small strike forces still wouldn’t be a problem as long as the large guilds still focused on SF. On the FC side, from the very start a large WvW guild/playerbase were against the NAP, very against it. This seemingly increased large guild coordinated attacks on ET. The Final breaking point was the previous reset, when FC coordinated a very large effort to try and take over the entire ET Borderlands. Now you have no NAP, and increased hostility/reason for the players from both servers to attack each other despite SF being the serious threat.

We could try salvaging the NAP, but at this point with SF being so close to leaving the tier, I think everyone would agree that its best just to keep on doing what we always do, try and stay classy, and have fun killing each other. In all honesty, the drama seems to both have re-invigorated forces from FC and ET more than working together did. See you all on the field tonight.

It’s not so much an issue of skill access, but an issue of frustrating maintenance each time a swap is made.

It wouldn’t be so annoying if switching from 2 weapons to a 1 handed weapon didn’t put the offhand in the next empty place in your inventory instead of next to the main hand weapon. I’ve almost sold weapons because of this.

Also and this is my biggest pet peeve with switching, is having to reset autocasts each time I do. The game remembers your autocast configurations based on the most recent choices regardless of the weapon you are using. With four autocasts resetting even two of these each time i switch weapon sets is tedious after enough times. Doing this multiple times in a dungeon or wvw is just irritating.

I wouldn’t want out of combat weapon swapping so badly if they would just add some quality of life changes like remember what my last autocast setting for d/d was instead of using whatever I had set on staff a moment ago. Also if empty slot next to main hand on uneqquip = true, place offhand.

Sentries. What are they good for? Telling you where the zerg is heading?

Tier 8 can’t handle a true tier 7 server huh? Funny thing when tier 8 yielded HIGHER scores against Devona’s Rest, and then HIGHER SCORES against Kaineng than tier 7 did.

This is how we did against DR in its final week here, with numbers that were far smaller than what we had yielded in previous weeks due to the boredom:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/12#NA

Here’s how tier 7 did against the same opponent:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/13#NA

Here’s how tier 8 did against the Hurri-Kain:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/15#NA

Here’s how tier 7 did against the Hurri-Kain:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/16#NA

In both cases tier 8 did better, so either tier 8 was in both cases a stronger tier, or maybe tier 7 just has a history of having no balls.

Also, let’s correct something here. Ferguson’s Crossing, and Eredon’s Terrace easily yield 30+ zergs when we want to. My guild alone has yielded a pure 50+ [WZ] zerg on its own in its prime, notwithstanding the presence here of other large guilds like [KRAK], formerly [TTA], and countless other mid-large guilds participating.

The difference is Sorrow’s Furnace’s ability to, when it has enough interest, yield 40-50+ in three maps simultaneously with seemingly zero coordination or organizing it, its ability to in its prime, assault you on upwards of three fronts simultaneously without need of cross-guild agreements or organization or multi-guild voice chat, just random people rallying on a blue hat. Then you throw in the organized guild zergs they do have who can shift maps at a moments notice when they are in trouble else where, and a 40+ Latino/South American/whatever night-capping squad wiping your borderlands and destroying all the upgrades while you sleep, and that’s the Sorrow’s Furnace we’ve been fighting up until last week where it seems they finally have been getting bored of WvW. And that’s not even its reset night showings.

Again, tier 7 servers crushing tier 8? This is what a tier 7 server in tier 8 looks like:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/16#NA
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/17#NA

Everything AFTER this Sorrow’s Furnace yielded tier 6 + numbers (And don’t bother challenging me on this, because I’ve seen Devona’s Rest tier 5 numbers first hand, as well as Kaineng’s tier 5 pre-transfer maximum yield numbers before War Machine and 1000+ transferred there).

In the next week half way through Sorrow’s Furnace jumped to tier 6 numbers, and increased steadily til it capped at the end of the week that proceeded that one possibly higher. How Sorrow’s Furnace did against us in the following weeks is not how a true tier 7 server will do, I daresay.

Seriously though, for the last time, when we complain about numbers, its not about the zerg you field in one map, even ET and FC can do that and when they put their mind to it, shove SF out of a single map. Its about the numbers fielded in multiple maps, not about one zerg but about 3+ major zergs spread across WvW, as well as timezone coverage and how long and how often these zergs can be fielded.

Now, consider Sorrow’s Furnace. In our first two weeks, FC beat them once, ET was also close behind, and the second week they won but it was also a brilliant match-up. Assuming there was no significant fluctuation from their time in tier 7, that means any server who was closely matched with them in tier 7 would logically also provide a great match-up here also, namely Henge of Denravi had close scores to SF. Take a look at the match-up history in mos millennium for yourselves and that’s what you will see.

Half way through the third week Sorrow’s Furnace numbers shot up to eventually reach what in my opinion is tier 6-tier 5 level numbers and night-cap coverage combo. The exact source of this is unknown to me, some SF say transfers, others say it was a largely dormant portion returning from the combination of the ending of Wintersday festival and a bunch of major SF figures yelling in Lion’s Arch map chat that they need s00per backup in WvW to win more. I say probably both, masses returning from PvE and then that domination and score increase it caused probably encouraged at least some transfers and one or two major guilds from other servers(maybe some even in our own servers) looking for a stable, win-capable server to select as a permanent home since they would of been in a time-crunch. (The time crunch to transfer was on as free transfers were going to end within a week or two when SF started winning with a 250k-ish lead.) In the end result you have a Sorrow’s Furnace that in my opinion will be competent at least up to tier 6, and possibly in to tier 5 now stuck with us until they advance. Sorrow’s Furnace are in my opinion NOT a “Tier 7 level” server dominating us and somehow proving there to be a massive gap between tier 8 and 7 but rather a tier 6-5 server dominating us just like the historical trend. They are not the same Sorrow’s Furnace who were closely matched with Henge of Denravi. It’s true that there will always be some former tier 7 server falling in here at points, that DOES NOT mean that the tier 7 server will always dominate, because we see consistently that these servers are not made equal.

And that brings me to the topic of the possibility of a new member replacing Sorrow’s Furnace in this tier. If HoD’s numbers haven’t increased from the time they had those close matches with pre-boom SF, then they just might be a great match for this tier if they get bumped down. I think its worth it to wait and put it to the test before concluding that its over for FC and ET competitive WvW, because IF HoD is on the same level they were back then, then logically we would end up with matches closely resembling the first two weeks we had with Sorrow’s Furnace, which were GREAT matches.

Omne.4603:

I don’t know how you guys stay on these servers. Not bashing just props and genuine curiosity.

Fighting SF for the past month or two and Kain before that, I’ve come to expect that we may never have the numbers. We may face opposition of 50-60 in all BL. Does that mean we will back down? Does that mean we will simply wait and watch everything be taken? Not a chance, not a chance at all my friends. What this means is that we just pack extra arrows and spare swords. We are Eredon Terrace.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Tl;dr – kitten talking is fun. Let us have fun. Or not. Thanks.

There were a lot of good points brought up back and forth.

The reality is, it is good for players and people to vent, either from victory or defeat. And in some cases, polite and even playful poking builds bonds.

The downside is.

We have a Large Community: That means you have people on all ends of the spectrum, and that means you don’t really know who are talking to. They could have the toughness of rice paper, or they could be made of concrete. They could treat this game like a passing fling, or they could treat it like it was the only thing that mattered in their life. There is just much disparity in a faceless forum name, to really know what you are dealing with. This means what one may see as harmless joking another might see a grievous offence. What one might see as inconsequential another might treat as violating a sacred law.

Now, I try to joke with people, and respond to how they respond, and think that is what they want. This is not always a good procedure which brings me to my next point.

GlassCannons and StealthTanks: Now after 20 years of posting on forums, I have got to say, If everyone was built the same way, IE: if everyone’s offence was the same as their defense, we would not have as much in the way of problems on forums in general. The problem is, they are not.

Now, across about a dozen forums, some with rules, some without, what I have seen is that, Glasscannnons vastly outnumber anyone else, which means people come to a forum ready to dish out, but not prepared to take it. In fact this site, Flame Warrior really hits home for a good analogy of what you anyone could be dealing with on any day in the life of a forum poster.

So you get people that start to prod and poke, and when they get prodded and poked back, they get offended and turn hostile. In that case, yah, rules are good, better to have them then to let that kind of anarchy set in.

Accountability and Responsibility This tends to be the largest issue for anyone, across any walk of life and in any situation

I work in security, and the number of times I have had anyone admit to doing something wrong, I could count on two fingers, because I need two fingers to form a zero.

And it’s not just me, I mean, from the cop that has to deal with every speeder that won’t admit to speeding, to the computer tech that needs to hear about how the person did nothing, when they hand them a halfway and badly done reassembled tower. It’s everyone, everywhere, everyday that has to deal with rules, and the mods on a forum will not be an exception to this.

In fact, In the last 3 games I played, there would normally be a no rules off site forum, and lo and behold, the people with the biggest mouths on the main forum would be there complain about getting infractions, blaming the mods and the other posters, normally calling them names, demanding retribution and blood for their infraction/ban, etc, never once pausing to reflect that maybe they were the one to make the mistake. I personally don’t have any respect for those kinds of people, just me. When something goes wrong in my life, I don’t go looking to blame someone else.

Anyone watch the Shawshank Redemption? it seems on every forum I am on, I’m “the only guilty man in Shawshank”

Normally, when people get infractions, they tend to lash out at the poster they feel wrong them because they are not willing to look at themselves, (never mind the fact that their infraction or banning came from a third party, that reviewed their antics and placed them in the wrong) they of course accuse the other posters, normally, I laugh at this, but, I had one guy on another game of mine, who literally after getting an infraction, went an flagged every post I made on the forums in an act of retaliation to get me banned, and the result of that childish display was they got banned for harassing me. What dis they do? That’s right, they went to an off site forum and blamed me for getting them banned.

So yah. There are some real winners out there, and hard rules with good enforcers, help them go away.

Conclusion as a Company, it is an obligation to keep things proper, so when you know as a company, and a moderator, that is what you will be dealing with, there really is no benefit to relax the rules. It is better to keep the rules tight, taught and let the people who enjoy more loose rules can make their own site, or move off to another site and do their own thing.

I think, if Magumma enjoys trash talking they would profit greatly from perhaps having their own WvW Spat/Trash talk forum, who knows, you might get some people from the other worlds to kick it up with you, but normally, official sits and forums are not the place for that, too many kinds of people here.

6) As a final add-on: TROLL POLICY. Simply put, don’t feed the trolls. There are gonna be people who bash commanders, players, guilds, servers, thread creators for the simple purpose of seeking to incite strife, frustration and anger for their own personal entertainment. At times they may even go so far as to construct huge comprehensive multi-paragraph posts backing a mentality or way of thinking that they may not even subscribe to personally, simply to incite a hasty negative/inflammatory response from their target/victim. Excessive socratic questioning and ad hominem use can sometimes hint to such people’s true intentions. Best thing you can do is, ignore them or taking it even further, be humble. When someone is constantly spamming “Wow, you’re terrible.” on map chat or whatever, a response like “You’re right, I definitely have a lot of room for improvement” can often times diffuse things before they spark. And keep in mind, 90% of trolls be they forum trolls, in-game server community trolls, or what have you lack the long-term dedication to haunt a community for more than a couple of days consecutively when nobody takes their bait. A few back to back days of nobody getting upset from their comments will often cause trolls to opt out and self-destruct.

3) SUPPORT YOUR COMMANDERS. Leading is not an easy thing. And granted, there are some out there who just buy the tag to play popularity contest. But when your commanders are actually trying (And you will usually be able to tell this quite easily) to make a difference for your server and positively influence the flow of its scores/battles, try not to mock, flame and belittle them on map chat when an attack they were leading fails once, multiple times or in any such situation really. Support them, encourage them and help them to become the leader they are trying to be, because it really isn’t easy. Too often someone will barrage map chat with a comment like this: “All the commanders here are so incompetent, if it were me or XYZ guy I know leading our position would be far better, too bad we can’t afford a commander tag!”. These messages really do no good for anyone, and don’t even invoke any sympathy for the one dropping the message. Being a leader, even in an online game is often times a costly (Most active commanders LOSE money in WvW due to purchasing more siege/producing superior siege than standard players), time demanding, and almost always emotionally stressful.

ANYONE who arrogantly or pretentiously takes leading lightly and thinks to themselves “Hey how hard can it be to lead a couple of people, lol?” should try playing The Walking Dead video game(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_%282012_video_game%29). That game accurately reflects the tough reality that when leading, you make both friends and enemies even when you try to do the right thing. The situations here in may not be as extreme as that, but the fact is leaders and commanders WILL have to make decisions that may please some of their fellow server mates, but WILL also make them enemies/cause receiving of mocking, map chat and private chat harassment from others. Sometimes you can be hated for doing the right thing, and the majority isn’t always right either, and vice versa. Making calls on behalf of your server is no easy task, so people should do their best not to be drama queens or mockers and make things any more difficult for those making major decisions in WvW. Always remember coupled with this, you win some and you lose some. Sometimes you win a lot consecutively and sometimes you lose a lot consecutively, and that isn’t always the fault of the commander/commanders contrary to popular belief.

4) Encourage good sportsmanship. Let’s be honest, for all server communities, it doesn’t matter if you’re Sorrow’s Furnace, Eredon’s Terrace, Ferguson’s Crossing or any server in any other tier; The very same people who t-bag, dance and laugh on your opponent’s corpses are far too often the exact same individuals who bail out on you when you’re outnumbered or outplayed and desperately need all the manpower you can get. There’s no point defending these people, because let’s be honest, they won’t defend you when it matters. All server communities that desire a higher level of play should actively discourage such behavior. Doing these things is poor sportsmanship. We all know it takes a hell of a lot of good sportsmanship to survive multiple losses to a server/servers one-sidedly dominating in WvW, and let’s be honest if your not already in tier 1 level chances are you will experience that at some point in your WvW time. Encouraging good sportsmanship goes hand in hand with encouraging people to tough it out when the times are rough, so from the perspective of the sheer net benefit it should be carried out. Note that not everyone doing such things are “bad apples” though. Sometimes people do these things just because they witnessed others and thought it was the norm, as strange as that can sound. Privately message them, and explain to them why mocking your opponents(and/or teammates if that should somehow come to pass though I’ve never seen one of my allies t-bag a friendly corpse) is poor sportsmanship and unproductive to healthy WvW behavior. You might just successfully convert someone from being a corpse sitter/dance to someone who bows in the face of adversity and simply shrugs it off when a 10 person gank squad kills them off and attempts to humiliate them with laugh spam. Such people can stick it out through some of the toughest of situations in WvW, and individuals with that mentality/dedication are useful for any server.

5) Have fun. WvW shouldn’t feel like a job. Even the most hardcore players need breaks sometimes, so we should all cut the commanders/major guilds some slack when they take some time off from WvW.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

IT’S STORY TIME! (Should be interesting for all of you. — It’s about SF coordination)

My buddy and I decided we wanted to ninja Hills in FC borderlands from ET. I threw two catas down at west outer wall, and we both ran supply to get them up. It was time-consuming, but we really wanted to ninja this place because it was upgraded and seiged well, thus serving to be a difficult place to cap with a zerg.

We then began hitting outer wall, which was reinforced. It went down after several minutes, and then we started hitting the inner wall as well. Now, all this time, we had been updating /t chat with wall percentages and such, and we had warned them that we would need a bunch of them to help us kill lord room. So we get the inner wall down and tell everybody that we need reinforcements to help us cap the lord room.

One person showed up.

It was many, many minutes before ET showed up and destroyed our catas, killing us and repairing the walls in the process. It was baffling, considering all of that time I had been essentially spamming /t chat with “Please come help us at west Hills outer wall, we have inner wall down and just need to cap the lord room”

So yes, we failed. I brushed it off and thought that perhaps nobody showed up because there wasn’t many on this map. But then, just a few minutes after, I went to the 6 o’clock camp and saw our zerg capping it. I thought, where were all of these guys when I needed them?!

That is the people of Sorrow’s Furnace for you. You give them a golden platter full of experience, karma, and a shiny new keep that could really help us out, and nobody cares. It was so uncoordinated that it looked like bots, seeing red or blue on the map and savagely rushing toward it without any type of strategy.

Even as an SF I could realize that the real winners of this match are ET and FC. This is not treachery, this is simply a call to action. We seriously need to improve our coordination.

I had a practically typed up a booklet in response to this, but unfortunately lost it somehow between copy pastes when I got the message about exceeding 5001 characters. I’ll try again, and try to keep things more brief this time. Anyways, if you’re looking to improve your server’s WvW competency the best places to start first are probably:

1) Build relationships. Unfortunately, people rarely listen to you when they haven’t first built up a respect for you. That applies on all levels, individual, guild or entire server-wide. To build respect, you must build relationships. (Ie. good communication and becoming friends.) Apply this as much on the individual relationship level as well as the group one. Major guilds that have disagreements/arguments/constant bickering and mocking/bashing in map chat should apologize to each other, put the past behind them and agree to work together for the better of the server. Continue to aggressively pursue WvW-strengthening utilities such as multiple-guild alliances and joint multi-guild voice chat channels, promote information sharing and co-operative attack and defense both in strategy and in practical application. On the individual level, just keep talking with people, keep things positive, and always keep your eyes on the goals you or your server community set in place. Often times, its the small things that make a difference. Do your best to inspire/and teach those individuals in WvW who haven’t yet grasped the basics, don’t give up on them and hopefully they in turn won’t give up on you.

2) Resist the urge to slander, call-out and bash on ALL FRONTS in WvW. Be you the commander trying to convince your zerg that the ram rush they so instinctively desire is simply not gonna work when your enemy has 5+ unreachable superior arrow carts, full supply and a formidable amount of defenders in a tower, or having more personal disagreements with someone, or as a member of the zerg following your commander. The moment things like: “XYZ ruined this”, “You guys are idiots. Don’t listen to the commander at all, don’t understand basic tactics, don’t listen on any level. What a waste.”, “Everybody call XYZ player an ***hole because he grabbed supply from the camp we wanted to upgrade to double supply!” is almost always the precursor to every single good attack or defense effort failing due to getting lost in a needless crap storm.