Guild Wars 2

Niim.9260:

I do not think folks are demoralized, so much as taking a week off. It takes a lot of effort to fight SoR all prime time and try and keep your points ahead far enough that it wont be erased by DH farming our guards all night. Lot of folks put in a hard effort last week and now they are attending to other things or just having fun killing folks

Demoralized fits your description of the situation almost perfectly. To be completely honest, Sorrow’s Furnace isn’t even doing too well against Darkhaven during primetime, so I’m at a loss as to why you wouldn’t say “a lot of effort to fight SoR and Dh”. Sorrow’s Furnace will take the lead on occasion of course, you server is far more populated than both SoR and Dh, you have a queue even when you’re demoralized! Darkhaven rarely has a queue, when it does it’s only in one borderland generally.

It seems to me the problem isn’t really with people taking a break, because you’re actually still outnumbering us during the day. So the problem (I think) does not lie with less people in SF playing (because you still outnumber us regardless of less activity), but more with it being less important to fight because you know Dh will take it all back and gain another 5-10k points overnight.

@Ashanor
I’m not from Sorrow’s Furnace, so I can’t speak to specific details of the server. I can tell you, however, when they’re playing at their peak they’re virtually unstoppable (in our matchup). They’re (for the most part) great sports and they have a good population without it being ridiculous like HoD and JQ (this means less queues, but probably a small one). Overall, while I’d love it if you came to Darkhaven instead (can’t help but mention that XD), Sorrow’s Furnace would be a great server choice for you and your friends.

I think SF is getting a bit demoralized by the night capping tbh. I disagree that it’s an issue in this specific war, but I do understand how it could be really annoying. SoR is a very resilient server though, so it looks like this one will be DH vs SR. I hope SF can get back in the game though, we actually were ahead of them for a lot of primetime today.

@Anlyon
I agree, and similarly, we all know that Darkhaven can not (usually) keep up with either server during the day time. We do on occasion, but we’re clearly not as effective as either of you when we don’t have the massive organizational or numerical advantage.

All three servers have strengths and weaknesses. If we were all the exact same, it wouldn’t be fun now would it? Props to both other servers, you’re both great and I <3 you.

Rashka.7304:

Arius.7031:

(…) Honestly, Rashka, I think I’m just not explaining my point well enough. I agree that we outnumber you guys in 99% of the fights at nighttime, I just think that this is due to the fact that the zerg absorbs almost every single WvWer playing during nighttime. (…)

That part is not true. While we held SoR garrison during that orb incident our points were steadily decreasing because we lost ground in EB/SR. While we were trying to defend our border from the DH zerg we lost Bay keep in SR which held the other orb we had. And we did not lose the keep to SR, we lost it to DH.

You don’t organize 99% of your troops, “just” a decent amount on one map. The rest is more than enough to wipe out any opposition on the remaining 2 maps, assuming you cleared DH border first.

If you don’t believe it, watch the point progress and where you gained ground. It is in all borders, at the same time. Unless you are doing some insane map hopping at awesome speed DH has zergs out on every map, not just the one you are in.

No, we do not have enough to dominate every borderland simultaneously. Sanctum of Rall has actually taken its borderland and our borderland while the zerg was taking EB before (twice). We don’t have enough to take multiple borderlands at the same time, as long as one of you guys puts up even a small fight. Generally speaking though, we zerg your team until it gives up, and then we can single out Rall who usually puts up a decent fight.

You’ll actually notice, there’s the main zerg taking major ground, and then the occasional gain in another area. There is no other zerg, there’s the zerg and a defense force (sometimes). I wasn’t on at this period of time, but was the zerg in your borderlands?

Seriously, transfer to our server for one 24 hour period. Find the zerg at night time, then go to the other borderlands. I’ll come with you. You’ll find that we only have a couple people in each borderland usually.

“I’m not complaining though. It’s a 24/7 game. I just don’t know how you can enjoy taking the same towers with minimal opposition each night.”

In the same way that you guys take it back from us in the morning XD? Also, if you stick with that zerg for the entire night, you’ll level up probably a dozen times at 80, and get a few gold as well as dozens of thousands of karma. The rewards — regardless of the fun — make it so worthwhile.

Anyhow, yeah, I personally like that our servers have different strengths. No one can deny that Darkhaven has a decisive advantage at night. I believe it comes from our organization, we gather people from every zone into one to get a good zerg going. As Actium pointed out above, we’re almost always outnumbered until that zerg gets going. Even then, I bet we’re outnumbered in total number of WvW players, we just have them far more concentrated.

Honestly, Rashka, I think I’m just not explaining my point well enough. I agree that we outnumber you guys in 99% of the fights at nighttime, I just think that this is due to the fact that the zerg absorbs almost every single WvWer playing during nighttime. I think the only difference between our servers really, is that you guys are missing the half naked Norn. When the Norn speaks, people do. If you guys had a leader or two who could get everyone to work together, Darkhaven would be out of the race chances are. I think overall we have a similar amount of players at night, just that ours group up together and stay on for longer periods of time due to the success.

Rashka.7304:

Arius.7031:

@Niim
Hey, I understand your point. One might be tempted to say that we just overpower everything at night with numbers… but that’s not the case at all. Ask any DH member who plays at those times, and while a lot of the times we do just roll on over everything, we actually get into battles where we’re outnumbered too at times. The fact is, we’re just far more organized. Our commanders embolden us, and we’re willing to charge right into enemy groups even larger than our own. This gives us a massive edge.
(…)

Do you really think it is because of your organization that during the night DH manages to skyrocket from 100ish to 650ish per tick… in 1-2 hours? Let’s face it, both SoR and SR have little nighttime presence so DH just PvEs through all four maps simultaneously with little resistance.

That’s ok, it’s part of the game, just don’t kid yourself.

Yes, in fact I do. Not only have we multiple times ran into groups LARGER than ours, we’re so successful because we’re quick and organized. Most any pug could not do half of what we can in the same amount of time. And, let’s face it, Sorrow’s Furnace has a far larger population than both SoR and Dh. So to be completely frank, I think you guys outnumber us no matter what time. We don’t have loads of oceanic players or anything, that night group is mostly North American in fact.

Anyhow, I think Sorrow’s Furnace actually outnumbers us greatly during night time. I just think they’re all off on their own in different maps, whereas we’re all in one zerg in one map.

In fact, what’s odd, is the only time that SF truly dominates the other two is during the morning. If you’re there for primetime, it’s usually a close fight and Sanctum of Rall is usually the one in the lead. So honestly? Even if you were correct, you do the exact same thing, except for you outnumber us consistently, whereas we (if you’re correct, I doubt you are) outnumber you for like 6 hours…

GenericBox.1923:

Rift declined fast? Again, using Xfire, it declined by just under half after a 3 months – About 45% decline in 3 months. Like I said, games will always decline after 3 months.

SWTOR and now GW2 have declined quicker is not a mimic of this standard – GW2 has declined by 75% in 1 month, SWTOR was probably something similiar.

1. Amount of hours played =/= amount of players playing. Correlation does not imply causation (less hours played does not imply less people playing). Again, there are many reasons why less time may be spent playing. There are also many reasons why less people would be playing that would occur regardless of whether or not the game is doing well.
2. You’re comparing P2P to F2P, which while I understand (and in some cases it can be) it’s important to recognize the difference. P2P compels people to play, F2P does not. There is not the same sense of urgency to get on and play as with P2P.
3. X-fire is not a trustworthy nor accurate representation of the statistics at all. Not only does it appeal to select groups (FPS gamers, and WoW types), it’s based on hours played not amount of players.

Anyhow, I don’t doubt that your Rift statistic is accurate. I would, however, like to be able to verify it for myself.

" -People took time off to play GW2 (weeks for some) – they are now back at work during the day.
-Students are back to Uni-work.
-This is a busy time of the year for a lot of people.
-Most people don’t play 24/7 a month after release if they played a lot.
-People might have gone back to splitting their time between GW2 and other games they like.
-Most people only have time to play during the evenings as they have families and work." -Ditrah

1. Newer games tend to have more new players. Why? Well because, they’re new, more people are new, and less people have had adequate time to hit a higher level (70-80 in this case).
2. The older a game gets, the more people become high level. Thus, obviously, less people will be in lower zones. Regardless of population growth, less people will be in lower zones a month or two after release — because they’ll all have hit a higher level or quit. Either way, they’re gone. Why do you assume it’s because everyone’s quitting?
3. Because players are less preoccupied with leveling. When a game is newer, people want to be one of the first to max level. I know, I was one of the first to max level in ToR and Diablo 3 for that very reason. However, the older the game is, the less important it feels, thus people are more likely to do less rewarding tasks (e.g. sPvP, WvW) in order to have more fun.

The truth is, there are multiple reasons why this is happening. One should not simply throw one’s hands up in the air, and assume the game is dying.

Edit: I’ll add a few more for fun.

-Most people buy MMOs at release. Thus, obviously there will be less newer players when compared to near release.
-Many high profile games have been released recently (MoP) which could distract from GW2.
-It could simply be a decrease in time spent on the game, not in amount of players.

GenericBox.1923:

I know the standard decline for MMOs after release, I’ve played WoW launch, SWG launch, Rift launch, SWTOR and now GW2. There is a predictable pattern of player behaviour.

It shouldn’t be within a month of launch though, it is usually a 3 month point that the decline starts, before players return around 6 months.

This game won’t work like other MMOs because it doesn’t have the subscription incentive (people don’t feel driven to play it because they are paying for it) – so nothing can be said yet of its longevity until the 6 month point.

But until then it is declining much more rapidly than any of those other launches.

Okay, two of those are irrelevant. WoW and SWG were healthy releases, starting small and growing from the bottom up. We’re left with Rift, SW:ToR, and GW2. Let’s analyze these shall we.

Firstly, Rift. Rift is actually pretty much the standard by which how modern MMO launches work. They start of moderately large, then they crash, and they crash hard. Rift did maintain a healthy base for a little while, then it went down hard and fast. Since then it has somewhat stabilized, yet it is still in a slow decline.

Secondly, SW:ToR. Were you active on the SW:ToR forums? For about two weeks after release, there was virtually no whining. Then suddenly, everyone was whining. From that point onward, data indicated SW:ToR’s population was dropping to a large degree. It has been in a state of decline since that point, and that is why they’re now transition to F2P. If you were active in SW:ToR, you know full well it started declining either by or before the end of the first month.

Thirdly, you’ve completely ignored the multiple responses to why this issue is persisting, which I will reiterate in my next post.

Soulwatcher.2604:

Dusk puff your chest out and beat the war drums its not going to change anything.
A good example is FFXI the game peaked at 500k players. How ever every single zone I visited from 2004~2007 was packed to the max with people. People were coming and going in that game 24/7. The fact that that’s not happening here presents a real problem!

This is exactly the problem with how people view MMO’s. MMO games are not the same as they used to be. Games like FF11 were so successful because MMO’s were not old, they were not everywhere, good ones were rare and special. This is no the case. By all standards of judgment, most MMO games released within the past few years are better than games like FF11 and SWG, yet they’re not growing anywhere near as fast. It’s because MMO games themselves have changed. You can’t use an 8 year old MMO to judge how a modern MMO should work. That does not work for multiple reasons.

Now, since you’re so clearly versed in how MMO games work, let someone who is equally verse tell you how every single modern MMO release has worked (Rift, Age of Conan, SW:ToR, Diablo 3 [if you can call that an MMO], and every other one) they start out with huge populations. Old, successful MMOs like FFXI’s population was built from the ground up, they started small and got bigger. Modern MMOs do not, instead they start big and shrink. After a month (in most cases), people reach endgame, and lots of people start quitting for various reasons (some don’t like the end game, some have already done the same style of endgame in another game and are bored of it, some just don’t like the game). The truth is, MMOs are not how they used to be. You can’t compare them.

“There is nothing to claim my 4 year old nice can tell you that there are less players in the 1 to 70 zones then when I first started. That sad fact as many people on this forum have said many of the lower level zones are a ghost town. If this game was gaining and not losing players there would be people playing in those zones.”

Hmm… well you see, there are actually three explanations for this.

1. Newer games tend to have more new players. Why? Well because, they’re new, more people are new, and less people have had adequate time to hit a higher level (70-80 in this case).

2. The older a game gets, the more people become high level. Thus, obviously, less people will be in lower zones. Regardless of population growth, less people will be in lower zones a month or two after release — because they’ll all have hit a higher level or quit. Either way, they’re gone. Why do you assume it’s because everyone’s quitting?

3. Because players are less preoccupied with leveling. When a game is newer, people want to be one of the first to max level. I know, I was one of the first to max level in ToR and Diablo 3 for that very reason. However, the older the game is, the less important it feels, thus people are more likely to do less rewarding tasks (e.g. sPvP, WvW) in order to have more fun.

So yeah, even if you had evidence for this claim (which I disagree with from the start, I see in — in the really low level zones especially — tremendous amounts of players).

Darkhaven is a great choice. We don’t have a massive night crew, our server is actually underpopulated compared to that of our competitors. However, our population is very dedicated, and very organized at night time. We usually take all of the maps away, not because we outnumber people, but instead because we focus our population and have a much higher degree of organization.

And yeah, Sorrow’s Furnace and Sanctum of Rall are both really good opponents, it’s a very even match between the 3, there is no roflstomping by one, here’s the current scores:

Sanctum of Rall: 41, 211 (230)*
Sorrow’s Furnace: 41, 211 (145)*
Darkhaven: 39, 385 (320)*

See what I’m saying? It’s like the best matchup possible.

@Niim
Hey, I understand your point. One might be tempted to say that we just overpower everything at night with numbers… but that’s not the case at all. Ask any DH member who plays at those times, and while a lot of the times we do just roll on over everything, we actually get into battles where we’re outnumbered too at times. The fact is, we’re just far more organized. Our commanders embolden us, and we’re willing to charge right into enemy groups even larger than our own. This gives us a massive edge.

I get that it can appear like we just zerg everything, and we do. Thing is, Sorrow’s Furnace Zerg’s everything during the day. So does SoR. Also, anyone else noticed that Dark Haven has been keeping up with both other servers during the day? It’s the morning when we lose everything, because that’s the awkward spot when nobody is on.

We outnumber you during the night, and we out organize you. You outnumber us during the day, and you out organize us. It’s fair, because DH is a less populated server overall. This is evidenced by the fact that Sorrow’s Furnace is full right now, and Dh is not.

Anyhow, I encourage players to see these things before passing judgment. Dh may have more people during night time, but we have less during the day and morning.

robot.9134:

1. Mob tagging – I like it but this is not unique to gw2.
2. Reviving -Works great for gw2. Needed for non holy trinity.
3. Rewards – Not unique to gw2 but im pretty sure wow has started this too…
4. Avoid – Needed for non holy trinity.
5. meh…
6. Holy Trinity – still exists somewhat. People actually like healing and tank roles still and they still do them in this game. Groups still ask for them. I’ve seen it quite a bit in chat actually.
7. Pvp gear vs skill – I wouldnt say one is better than the other. It completely depends on the players playstyle. Some players like that other aspect of character growth. Also I’ve played both types of pvp but I’ve never cried that someone with better gear “had no skill” even if it was true….it just made me want to down em all the more.
8. Scaling – broken. No reason to do it.
9. Opinion.
10. Wow and gw2 have very similar gear grinds. Its token and mat based pretty much. The major difference is the diff the gear stats have on game play. It has a larger impact.

1. This is not a “what is unique about GW2” thread, this is a “10 things that GW2 did better than WoW” thread. So it being unique is irrelevant.

2. Yes, but it provides more variety for all players involved. Making it so everyone can rez ultimately makes the game a little more interesting for everyone.

3. The uniqueness is completely irrelevant, it does not matter in the slightest. And no, WoW does not reward you for everything. Virtually every task you complete in GW2 will give you exp and other rewards. GW2 is the first game that I’ve played, that you can safely level up in different ways (WvW, progressing through PvE the normal way, grinding events etc.).

4. It still makes gameplay more enjoyable.

6. This does not mean there is a holy trinity. A holy trinity forces you to be a part of it, you don’t have to. You can choose to specialize, and become a decent tank, a decent healer and so on, and more power to you if you wish. The difference is, you’re not restricted to those. This makes all classes welcome, no class is really shunned (generally speaking).

8. It’s not as useful as it could be, correct. However, you can still get valuable things at 80 in level 10 zones, it’s just less likely. Thus, while no working perfectly, it still provides a significant increase to the fun factor (by making mobs a slight challenge), and making it so you can get moderately valuable things in the process. It’s still an upside, even if it’s not perfect.

9. How could anyone disagree with this? Sure it’s opinion, it’s also opinion that Mass Effect 3 looks better than Chrono Trigger. Some people like antique feel. The system itself is, by any system of measurement, better.

Overall, to me, it seemed you weren’t interested in the truth of the matter, but were instead interested in defending WoW. That’s fine, I respect that you may like it more. But there’s no reason to be dishonest. It being unique or not is irrelevant, the things mentioned are better in GW2 than they are in WoW, for the most part.

“Ask anyone on at those hours, and they will tell you the legend of the half naked norn.”

Yeah, Darkhaven essentially has a half naked level 8 Norn that makes sure we take over during the nights. I’m not joking nor exaggerating, a half naked, like level 8 Norn, ask any Darkhaven night time player. The only reason we take over is because we gather everyone from all of the borderlands, instead of spreading out. In fact, sometimes we’re outnumbered by Rall and we still take everything over, because we’re organized.

Anyways, watch out SF, Dh intends to win this time around! Good luck and have fun SF/SoR!

The Dh/SoR/SF matchup has been amazing. SF is clearly going to beat Dh by 2k points, but it was still an amazing match. Really, Darkhaven is really organized at night time. You’d be surprised, we don’t actually outnumber others. Their numbers are just spread out over borderlands, ours are not.

This truly was a really fun ride. I get that some people could be upset about Darkhaven night capping. We don’t have the population of Rall or Furnace, but we have a very organized night crew (most of which live in America, by the way).

Anyways, great match you two, <3 SoR/SF from Dh.

Kryptonite.9376:

Uhh because fun is not a goal, rather an adjective used to describe something? Are you stupid?

This being an MMORPG, progression is usually the most fun part. The feeling of power growing and accumulating new skills and abilities.

When you figure out how to sit there and do “fun” you let me know how I can do the samekitten

Talk about it in the sense of “having fun”, and it’s a noun. You can “do fun” by trying to… “have fun”. If your goal is to have fun, you can achieve that by playing this game, or doing anything else that is fun. And so having “fun” is a very doable thing. Your point is either pure semantics and thus completely useless, or you’re completely wrong, and thus completely useless.

Don’t play stupid semantics games, it makes you look like an idiot (especially when you call others idiots).

I’m a player from Darkhaven, and I just wanted to say, good luck guys, hang in there! I had some fun times with Anvil Rock players during the whole Yak’s Bend incident, and I think you guys are cool people. I hope you guys can get in your groove, because you’re not a bad WvW server, not at all.

squiggit.2357:

Seems like a smart tactic to me. Rather than split your resources on two fronts, collude to strength both your positions.

We had this happen the other day on Sorrow’s Furnace, where both Sanctum of Rall and Darkhaven stopped attacking each other to siege our keep and towers from multiple directions at once. It worked really well and the keep we’d been holding for a long while fell within an hour.

I don’t recall us (Dark Haven) letting up on Rall. I was busy PvPing last night in our borderlands and EB for a while, and in both cases we were still trying to hit Rall whenever we could. In fact, I think we’re targeting them more because they keep taking our orb. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there was ever any kind of cease fire type thing between our servers.

Angelus
Time, resources, balance, higher priorities… there are many reasons why they may not wish to create different maps for each borderland.

62 Mesmer – 8.5/10

Deductions for:
- Sound bug that happens when you have too many players, especially bad in WvW
- WvW queues
- Some balancing issues
- Combat is a bit too slow, things should die a little quicker

All in all, I really love this game a lot so far.

Darkhaven – 33, 260 (205)
Sorrow’s Furnace** – 32, 688 (260)
Sanctum of Rall* – 32, 472 (230)

Very, very good match between these 3 servers. I’m Dark Haven and it’s just absolutely an awesome battle.

Dark Haven – 30k
Sanctum of Rall – 29k
Sorrow’s Furance – 28k

Sorrow’s Furnace is catching up at this moment though. It’s really, really competitive and it is a blast! So good news for these servers at least.

On the Yak’s bend issue, they played fairly well, I’m not trying to diminish their wins. However, for the past 4 days at primetime we’d take a lot of stuff back, we’d take almost enough of the map back to be even with Yak (starting with absolutely nothing) and then we’d wake up and it’d be gone. Yak has a good oceanic population I guess. Really though, Anvil Rock and Darkhaven preformed quite well when the numbers were even. Well played to all sides.

Drudenfusz
Yeah, last night Dark Haven really beat back Yak big time, taking 1/2 of EB and 1/2 of our borderlands, yet when we got up we had lost everything again. Not really their fault but it is annoying.