Guild Wars 2

I did not say that the community opinion cannot be extracted from the forum. Of course it can.

I only said that the noise-level in the forum is much higher, such that it is cheaper, to let someone else do the filtering.

Did at least some of you noticed that we (or some rather “loud” of us) are the reason why we have worser forum rules and no developer interaction anymore?

Instead of wasting time sorting out the massive amount of troll-garbage in the forum, they seem to seek and follow new way of community interaction. The german community manager founded a round table with large guilds (1 per german server) and their 2nd topic was WvW. Here is a link to the protocol http://forum.gw2community.de/Thread/1028-Protokoll-Runder-Tisch-24-07-14/?postID=9055#post9055 Main version is in german, but on the bottom is a button to an english version as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-achievements-without-Season

What I especially like on this linked idea is: There is a competition for the achievements, not only farming.

A weapon skin (or black lion ticket) for the top 100 players in the overall achievement could be a nice additional reward

That was a One time Action when the match-making procedure was buggy, and they finally started to believe us that it was buggy. Shortly afterwards random was added to fix the bug.

Now the score slowly adapt your change to loose you favored enemy increases from week to week.

And if this doe not work there is the next season, where bigger adaptions can take place faster. Only problem is that in-season and in-between-season strength of servers is rather different due to the reward bandwaggoning.

How to get map completion

1. Open at http://www.gw2score.com
2. Select your Server
3. Go to the server statistics page
4. Scroll down to the Tick graph
5. Select hourly average and
6. see at which time of the day your server has the highest tick
7. Plan to be in WvW next day at that time for 1-2h earlier till 1 hour later
8. Join your zerg (in TS) and PvD all the maps

Should work on nearly every server that is not totally lost in it’s current WvW match

E.g. if you are on Elona like me http://www.gw2score.com/server/Elona-Reach shows that we tick highest from 5am till 9am be there and complete WvW map completion.

And they do not make match ups, thats done:
90% by you, i.e. how you play, and 10% by a random roll

If you want to push arbor up: Loose higher

2 copies? Fragmentation?

Here is a possible proposal how to do AvAvA: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Edge-of-the-Mists/3695388

But in the meantime I think that gw2 hasn’t enough player anymore for 24/7 matches. And I would prefer https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-combine-the-best-of-WvW-and-EotM/4181942

And concerning pure random teams: it already exist namely EotM, just add EB and BL maps as choices. And replace the server-color team assignment there by a method that makes teams more balanced in size. In EU currently green as always more player than red and blue together which makes fights rather boring.

So what? Make your own alliance!

In any case, if there will be alliance, there should be random-wvw as well, for all those that are to lazy to find or found an alliance for their needs.

So here is how to handle it:

Mail screenshoots/videos to the support:
https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new
A side has many people, the more people send reports the likelier is it that something happen. If you do things in the forum, be very careful to not violate the rules, i.e. especially avoid name calling. It took a while for the case I linked above from the german forum, but finally it stopped, I guess ANet talked to these people, and made them clear, if they continue they will be banned.

If your G/AL supports that you have to think about the question: “Am I really in the right guild/alliance?”

Guilds can kick member, so whats the difference? Is it abused? How long does a guild exist, if it does so? Project that to an alliance, a WvW-alliance is only successful if it manages to unite several thousand people, abuse is watched by the people and to much abuse let an alliance collapse faster than a server today.

Kapina.9012:

Won’t happen if you are on Underworld server for example. We’ve been same colour for 3 months (?) now. It is pretty stupid that person has to change server to get his/her world completion.

PS. please arenanet, change Underworld’s wvw color already. Nobody cares if green is supposed to be the best server or whatever. Underworld just doesn’t have enough people to rise the ranks to get into blue/green corner of wvw…

Nothing should be easier than WvW map-completion in T9, a 5 people party some hours in the night and you completed all 4 maps and gave your server a 695 score.

PS: Buy some rams in the AH and ask your guild to run the +5 supplies buf during the night

PPS: I guess you will not have to fight any person only doors and NPC.

Zaxares.5419:

The only way this can be prevented is if we have real time GMs watching WvW, ready to ban offenders.

The only way are guild/alliance wars where the guild/alliance leader kick them from their match.

Probably, because 3-sided matches and coverage are shaky things, it depends strongly on who has best coverage when, and if a server has undisputed coverage or not.

Simple example
Server A is strong strong during 8h of the night and strong in 8h of the late afternoon/evening
Server B is strong during 8h of the day and strong in 8h of the late afternoon/evening

Who wins?

Does a third server influence this?

dbgfeller.8120:

I think this thread will be deleted soon because they don’t like it if you talk about problems here…

I don’t think so, if you avoid name calling in the screen shoot and post you can talk about this topic.

https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Screenshotprotest-gegen-Griefing-im-WvW

SilverSparky.1053:

Sorry but this made me laugh. 10/10 seige usage.

If you like this you will like the one’s in the thread above as well.

Urejt.5648:

Underwolrd is red since the begining of 2013. Always last. Always weakest server. When will we get free transfer?

Wrong. You were green 4 weeks in March 2014, and blue two weeks in Feb. 2014.
http://mos.millenium.org/servers/history/22

And in 2013 you were not the weakest server, your highest rank in 2013 was 14.

And if you finish this week like you started it, you will have a ~30% change for blue next week and a very small (maybe 1-2%) to be green.

Guesting in WvW/EotM would be an invitation to place spy-account on your opponents, that show commander movements (happens often enough even without guesting), therefore it is good that it is not possible.

You can of course always transfer to a server with the wanted color, but this requires a bit of understanding how matches are made, as you cannot enter WvW in the match in which you transferred. Or go to the lowest tier were a 5 people party should be able to conquer everything during off time.

This may help to solve your problems if you don’t like to transfer:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/A-window-of-neutrality-in-WvW-for-mapping/4203244

Because it was the by far most likely match with 84% chance.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-wishlist/4212905

Matchmaking is, for each server:
Take the rating R e.g. from http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups (or https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/wvw). The rating represents your servers ability to make score, i.e. it’s manpower coverage in the 24/7 matches, which is roughly how many people on your server play at off-time, especially at night.
Take the Deviation from https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/wvw
Roll a random number RN between -1 and +1
Match rating MR = R + (10 + 0.45*D)*RN
Order all servers according to their MR.
MR rank 1-3 play T1 (highest green, middle blue, lowest red)
…
MR rank 16-18 play T6 (thats you)
…

With a deviation of around 140, the max rating gap between two servers, that can be bridged by the random modification is 146 (-1 roll resulting in a -73 modification for the higher, and +1 roll with +73 modification for the lower).

The high probability that you are matched together results from the combination of 3 things:

• You fit the match-aligment (1-3, 4-6, 7-9, …, 16-18, … 25-27).
• The rating gap between Baruch and Arbor is 140 it is rather unlikely that one of you roll into T5
• The rating gap between RoF and Miller is 80, an exchange may happen, but is not very likely.

style.6173:

@OP:

If you want to play against NPCs, you might enjoy PvE more.

Most in WvW seem to like PvE outside prime time, the people avoid each other and only fight doors and npc’s. But what if it is harder to take down an outmanned automated defense than actually fighting people?
They start fighting each other again instead of running their circles to avoid each other.

But probably it is much better to just put maps that aren’t needed by the current amount of players to sleep.

Or to entirely redo WvW matchups such that it needs much less people to have fights instead of PvD.

I guess balance is something we can talk about should we ever get it

Currently PvD is overpowered, this would be a way to stop it.

And if you only get automated defense whenever you are outmanned, there is another way to counter to strong defense: Go to a map and fight where the enemy is NOT outmanned.

urieldhynne.2743:

Merge dead servers.

Dead Server + Dead Server = Double Dead Server?

Would be a better buf of outmanned: all your siege is manned by npcs and auto firing if there is no human, would make PvD a challenge.

Samstein.5269:

PPT, rankings and coverage means nothing; to alot of the players in the WvW communities.

Yeah they are meaningless, and much to many noticed that now and stopped looking for them. Exactly this is the difference between the former lively WvW and todays dead WvW. As it means: If you do not play for points, any play of WvW outside 20:00-23:00 CE(S)T is a waste of time, there are rarely fights, mostly PvD for points and the individual rewards cannot compete with PvE nor EotM.

So yeah: Start ticking 695:0:0 at 23:00, tick like that till 20:00 and none cares, beside the very few that still play for points.

And that is SFR’s problem: Most of them are already at SFR so there is none left to fight. (I did not said you recruit, nor that SFR ever wanted them, they just came either to win or to get the best league rewards or to flee the emptiness of their former server. But now they are all there and the enemies are missing)

The best strategy for any server that plays against you is currently: Loose as high as possible against you, the higher you loose the less likely it is to play against you next week again.

If all that are interested in off-time play of WvW are transferring to SFR you see the result: no enemy left.

As long as it stays like that no one should waste time to play against you. A week break till the opponents are more interesting is just right.

I don’t expect you to transfer away from “winning” as long as ANet does not enforce more balance and adapt match capacity ( less time and less space on the maps) to the reduced interest. Competitive 24/7 matches on 4 maps never really made sense (no server ever had 24/7 queues), but with the current player numbers, it’s completely meaningless.

PS: Here on Elona we rarely have 4 maps queue during reset, rarely 2 maps queue on prime time, and just 10 to 30 people running around at other times, and we are still rank 5, I don’t really want to know how it is below us.

pepper.6179:

wait…are we doing anet’s job?

No, their job would be to extract and unify and finally implement these things. Our job is to formulate our needs.

Unfortunately we are much faster in formulating needs than they are in realizing them.
Such that when they finally realized things we once wanted, we don’t have a need for them anymore.

• New Map = EotM, cool, a lot of people wanted a new map.
• To many queue = Overflow map, cool, a lot of people complained about hours of queue.

but unfortunately no one had a queue any more when EotM got finished, with the known disastrous result of depopulated WvW.

Season achievements you cannot do on any world anymore as the season is over.

Current achievements are only do x of that to get a reward.

For a competitive game mode like WvW competitive achievements would fit better
Here was a proposal for that https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-achievements-without-Season/4077952

I think they could even slightly change playstyle and with that add variance to matches, e.g. One week achievemts let people focus on dolyaks, others on defense and others on offense.

1) enforced balance of teams, if the winner is c.lear from start, there no sense to play the match, and in far to many matches the winner is known ahead.

2) To much PvD is the result of to many map for to few player most of the time, freeze maps when there are to few players in the match to fill them.

3) scheduled world boss runs gives you a guaranteed rare every 15 min, and quite often several plus exo, EotM gives more karma, badges and even WEXP. Living story gives you achievements every two weeks. WvW is mediocre rewards in any respect, make it at least leading in one respect.

4) I am sure, most of us totally forgot/ignore the bufs your world gets with increased score. Make them more effective, such that people care about them, don’t apply them to anyone registered on a world, but only to the ones that worked for them. Do not apply them in the current match (current buf based on current score), but apply them in the next week (buf during the week, based on the final score in the last match).

Legendary crafting is the most rewarding thing in gw2 at moment, you earn around 700 gold per crafted legendary, unfortunately it needs WvW map completion
(1 complete exploration let you build 2 legendries)

And world completion is the only part in legendary crafting where you have to leave Lion Archs AH/MF (ok, dungeon coins, but you can buy them in the LFG tool as well). PvE completion is work, but reliable, but on some servers you cannot complete WvW-maps for weeks if not month.

Why don’t give them the chance to buy their map-completion? It harms none and it makes WvW more interesting to ANet if it earns them more gems.

How about a gemshop item (1000 gems)for that purpose

Parlamentary Flag

For 30min you get a white flag, you turn neutral and can neither attack nor being attacked by any player and all your chats are disabled, beside /s where you see and can be seen by all sides. You cannot be in any party. You can also walk through all doors. If your flag runs out you are ported back to lion arch.

PS: yes I know, we will have spies with Parlamentary flag telling their comrades in TS about enemy troup concentration and state of defense. But hey, if someone likes to sponsor game development with 1000 gems for these limited Infos he is welcome

PPS: it will make legendaries a bit more expensive.

Rimmy.9217:

The bulk of us, based on posts on those multitudinous threads, are by and large happy with our low-tier dynamics.

That’s why I did not proposed to merge servers, but to build two leagues. One league with low-tier dynamics and one with high tier dynamics. Obviously it’s neither a good idea to enforce the same population to both kinds of teams nor to let them play against each other, so they are permantly separated, and separately balanced.

More or less I proposed to keep the lowest two tiers in low-tier dynamics and
reduce the number of servers above, i.e. t1-6 (7 in EU) are very imbalanced and a reduction from 18 (21) to 12 servers would make sense there, as some servers may have queue on 4 maps in primetimes, and others, only on 1-2 maps, and if they play against each other, the rerult is bad, and if they are frozen in their tier due to the existing imbalance, the matches become stale.

WvW-Rebalance

1. Unassign everyone from a server
2. Set 12 large scale (max map population as it is now) league WvW-Teams for NA and EU ( 2-3 German, 2 French, 1 Spanish, 6-7 English for EU) each
3. Set 6 small scale (half max map population as now) league WvW-Teams for NA and EU (1 german, 1 french, 4 english for EU) each
4. Make WvW-Team selection optional, i.e. only if you want to play WvW you have to be assigned to a WvW-Team (You only have to assign to EU/NA as PvE/EotM/sPvP player).
5. If you did not enter WvW for 14 consecutive days you become unassigned
6. There is no WvW-Team transfer, if you want to join a different WvW-Team you have to become unassigned by not entering WvW for 14 days.
7. A world that has 10% more player (total played player hours would be even better) assign than it’s league mean it is marked as full.
8. If you are unassigned you can join any not full world.
9. No one can join a full world.
10. Optional: Joining a team cost 500 gems, the first join is free.

EotM:

• You are assign by mega-server mechanics to a team on a map (not only to the map, while the team is predetermined).

Language for mega-server gets an explicit option and is no longer inferred from server.

The main motivation of my proposal is
- Eliminate coverage as the one and only factor of wining
- Eliminate PvD as the main (20 of 24 hours a day) play-style.

WvW has that few people interested in it now, that 24/7 on 3 maps results in a population density that is outside 3-4h pimetime a day much to low for interesting fights. And not even in primetime all 4 maps are full anymore, only in the reset evening there is a chance to have fights on 4 full maps.

So why should these uncompetitive fightless PvD-hours be part of a match?

Reduce a match to where competitive play is possible. 4 hours on 1 (randomly selected) map.

Organize 4-5 ppl from your guild that need map-completion as well and a bunch of rams and meet at some off-time of your match (3am? 5am? 11am? depends strongly on your match and tier). You should make map-completion within 1-2hours and rarely meet an enemy and at least outside T1 never a zerg.

You may “abuse” it to play today’s GvG there if you like, but it’s intended meaning is that of MATCH between 3 sides as EotM and WvW is currently. So you may have scouts, defence-forces, more than 1 zerg, … And yeah, if servers cannot handle what will happen there, it should be adapted to what is possible.

The reason why the zerg is the most-used meta is
a) people are to lazy to organize better (smaller cooperating groups)
b) offensive is over-weigthed against defense
c) AoE mechanics, where many people around you helps you to avoid being hit.
d) zerging is the most individual rewarding thing.
a) and d) are improved in this proposal over WvW/EotM I think, improvements to the others would be cool, but thats a different topic.

But I am in doubt that the 100 people blob will be the winning organization in this game mode. If I would be map-commander, I would try something like a 40 ppl fight-group, 2 groups of 20 ppl for capping towers/keeps, 5 2 ppl scout/camp/bloodlust capping groups.

Concerning the Gems: ANet need a reason to do it and something to replace the server-transfer income.

Overal: It’s a game modus that play’s like today’s reset-evening restricted to 1 map.

Preface

WvW is less and less attractive as it hasn’t enough players anymore for it’s match-duration, it’ unbalanced teams matched together and it’s total dependency on pure manpower.

EotM on the other side is uncompetitive, mostly unorganized and without identification.

Why not take the best out of both worlds to make a new game-mode?

Proposal

A new mode Guid vs Guild vs Guild is added. (Small guilds may form a meta guild to participate)
Match duration is 4 hours.
Match location is 1 map out of EotM, EB, BL (more maps may come later) selection of map is probabilistic, based on guild preferences and a random roll.
Each guild may have up to 100 people on the map at each time, all members of the guild may play.
Winner is determined as usual by score ticker, BL maps get score by blood lust stomping as well.
Based on match outcome a Glicko rating of a guild is computed. A guild participating the first time get a score of 1500.
A guild ranking is published on the leader board.
A guild not playing at least once per week gets it’s rating adjusted towards 1500.

The day is divided into 8 slots a 4 hours, I don’t know what’s the best alignment, maybe a 19:00-23:00 CE(S)T slot is a good idea for EU (other slots accordingly).
Guilds may register for any slot they like, the PC shows how many guilds are registered for that slot (but not which). Registration may be for any and as many time-slots as you like up to 1 week (or month?) in the future.

When there are at least 3 registrations for a slot at least one match happen. If there are not by 3 dividable registrations, participants are selected by random.
This happens 24 hours earlier, such that guilds know early enough to prepare for their match.

To be registered a guild has to deposit an amount of gems, a fee (similar to PvP map) is subtracted every time a guild is selected for a match.

Edit for Victory’s remark: No drops (Exp, Wexp) from player-kills, no events, only the ticker is rewarded. Every player of a team that is in the match during a “tick” get’s a reward based on the ticker his team has that time (karma/wexp/exp/gold based on tick amount and 1 item exo or rare for highest tick, rare or green for 2nd, green or blue for 3rd). At the end the winner guild is rewarded (influence, 1st get gems for match back, gold, …) based on the achieved score.

advantages

Competitive organized fights with team identification.
Equal rewards for a team members independent of the job done for the team, but
more (longer) commitment gives more rewards.
Individual rewards for the tick-winner are a bit better than participating in a world-boss, tick-loosers ones worser.

disadvantage

WvW and EotM may loose even more players or are demoted to be a training ground for guilds without a current match.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups

Very simple: freeze some of the Maps when there aren’t enough players to fill all of them.
Less space = less need for scouts = more fights on the objective that are scouted.

For some reasons (i.e. because it is most of the time enemy controlled and/or it always trebs your offensive towers or you just because you hate it ) you think the match would be better, if Stone Mist Castle would cease to exist.

To blow it up you have to

• conquer it and claim it with a guild
• deposits the bomb there
• pass up a second where it it not contested such that the claiming guild can start the timer
• defend it till the 10 min are over and the bomb explodes.

Everyone can blow up SM, you can blow up everything on enemy borderlands and in enemy thirds on EB. You cannot blow up anything on your border nor in your third of EB.

But yes, to blow it up, you have to conquer it first.

@Offair: Yes it did Finally you can try to blow WvW away if you do not like a specific match

But more serious: A lot of people want new or modified maps, with such an option you can play for semi-permanent (valid for this match) changes to the maps different for every match.

Guild wars 2 isn’t set in medieval where Honor and Glory are the alleged reasons of war, but in in the beginning of the industrial age. Time to give it a bit of the terror that is the essence of wars since them.

Atomic Bomb

The old Orb-places on borderlands and the Obsidian Sanctum (as it once was: only reachable from keep-cellars, but the exit for all is in the new gvg arena and it brings to to the middle between spawn and your keep) chest generate one atomic bomb every 8 hours.

This bomb can be taken there and transported only by walk – it explodes immediately killing all around, if a WP or portal teleport is tried and if the player transporting it is downed – to

• any controlled tower or keep on an enemy borderland
• any controlled tower or keep in an enemy third of EB or to controlled SM

similar to the former Orbs, it can be deposited there.

You cannot deposit it in a tower or keep on your own border and you cannot enter a keep or tower in your own third with it.

Once it is there, and the objective is uncontested it’s timer of 10 min can be started by the guild that claimed that objective. If the owner of the objective changes, it disappears. The count-down is visible for anyone currently online and registered on any of the three worlds of the match regards of where the player currently is. (i.e. WvW, PvE, EotM, PvP). Before the timer ends it can be disarmed by enemy players (but not by friendly players) that reach it and are not interrupted for 10 sec.

If it is not disarmed it explodes after the 10 min. As a result everyone inside is killed, everyone on that map gets 5000 shock damage, all destructible walls and doors of the blown objective are destroyed (and cannot be repaired), the area inside the inner walls is radiated for 500 poison damage and inside the outer walls for 250 normal damage per second, it has no lord and does not generate score till the end of the match.

Optional: Fallout

For every blown objective on a map there is a chance of random fallout somewhere on the map. If an area is hit by fallout for this day, it makes 100 damage per second to anyone inside the area.

Remarks
Up to 21 bombs per map can be used over the week, enough to blow everything beside camps away. But do you really want to blow things you control away? Some strategic choices are added this way. But even if you want to blow something this is not easy. Hard fights are needed to make it happen.

It will definitely add suspense to matches, it will definitely make defense more important, it may blow away karma-trains, or it may not change anything, if no one want to use it.

I guess the timer has one (hidden) sense:

Get rid of all instances and find out how many maps are needed to fit all players in.
The alternative would be that you get kicked out of a half full instance when there are to many half full instances.

That was RoF’s last week opponent probability: (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Matchup-wishlist/4149841)
Ring of Fire
0.000000 Seafarer’s Rest
0.000000 Desolation
0.000000 Kodash [DE]
0.000000 Riverside [DE]
0.000003 Gandara
0.006663 Augury Rock [FR]
0.006596 Jade Sea [FR]
0.017376 Elona Reach [DE]
0.111197 Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
0.715113 Vizunah Square [FR]
3.254675 Baruch Bay [SP]
4.297732 Far Shiverpeaks
8.163974 Gunnar’s Hold
9.456009 Piken Square
14.502537 Aurora Glade
71.134178 Drakkar Lake [DE]
53.366071 Arborstone [FR]
14.949119 Dzagonur [DE]
10.832412 Blacktide
6.549312 Miller’s Sound [DE]
2.637033 Fort Ranik [FR]
0.000000 Ruins of Surmia
0.000000 Fissure of Woe
0.000000 Vabbi
0.000000 Whiteside Ridge
0.000000 Underworld

An increase in variance means that more extreme matches become possible/more likely. (And as a consequence closer matches become less likely.)
You already have a chance from Gandara till Fort Ranik, with increased variance like before season 1, you would have a chance of SFR till UW. And believe me do you don’t want to fight SFR or UW, not even Vabbi or Gandara.

Concerning the gap: It was build by glicko because it was adequate, it will disappear/reduce when it is not adequate.

Maybe the adaptation rate of Glicko is to konservative, but increasing variance is like increasing the caliber of a mortar shooting on a flying sparrow. It doesn’t increase your chance of a hit, but it ensures an increase in collateral damage.

You forgot that variation is a two sided thing. If you just increase variation, they may as likely roll down extremely as they may roll up.

The only way to climb is gaining rating by winning, and so far they not even passed RoF nor Drakkar, so they may gain rating by winning against you, they get more, if they win more decisive.

So, if you wan a get rid of them: Loose more decisive.

1) a better scoring: activity (and with that also amount of player) based, and activity needs to include defense, if it based only on offense it’s bad as we have enough PvD already.

2) less teams (as there are less players) with enforce team balance (a cap on max amount of players or an individual penalty for being on an over-populated world) and a more adequate alignment of available objectives and currently in-match players.

3) Rewards at least as good as EotM and PvE. E.g. why have these Boss-schedule 1-press events a guaranteed rare, while WEXP boxes do not? Why does PvE have biweekly achievements, while WvW has only unrealistic ones and the tournament achievements twice a year?

Quite a lot of matches are bad, but that’s not the fault of the match-making,
that’s the consequence of league and it’s WTJ-transfers.

If there are no 3 servers that are balanced (or if they are missaligned in the 3-way matches) there are no good matches, whatever match-making you use.

And any league ANet makes only increases imbalance.

There I liked my weekly achievement proposal more, especially as it is not only “Do X of that”, but a real competion “Do more of that than others”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-achievements-without-Season

I fear the OP has a point!

To get something new in WvW we need two weeks Scarlett, afterwards the maps looks a bit different than before, e.g. Like Kesex hills or Lion arch. Maybe they even fix one or the other bugs we all know, when PvE players start to complain about them

Otherwise will will get no change et.al.

Should not have much influence on the economy, if
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Siege_Masters_Guide
could be bought by either a skill or a WEXP rank point
and it sounds like a good idea for me.

Spica.9308:

Will slightly higher volatility and randomization hurt? or how about
a ratings reset balancing quarterly or semi annual?

Depends if you think one-sided t matches hurt.

With higher votalily you will have more of them, and they will be even more extrem.

On the other side, if balance would be improved, you will have less of them and you will even have more variance as servers will be closer together.