Guild Wars 2

Thank you Mishi.

If any good may come out of the mess this week, tonight’s score might be a perfect example of why exploits will ALWAYS do more harm than good in a competition like this. Embolden the enemy while simultaneously hurting your own team’s morale. People who choose to cheat for short term gain or just for kicks rarely understand this. I suspect the butt kicking SoR is handing out tonight is no coincidence.

Indo.8629:

Way to say you’re not going to do it again and you’re sorry, yet exploit again the very next day, same mesmer, same guild.

Nothing has changed.

Who are you talking to?

Doomdesire.9365:

Well if you think about it…they have to log in and requeue unless it’s a low pop server :P

There are no or very short queues on any server at the moment. It’s not a deterrent to this behavior anymore, which is why posts about it are coming up more often (and as time goes on and more players find out about it).

Nonetheless, I agree. Players who use Alt-F4 to close the game client should remain in the game world for 30 seconds if it was done while in a WvW zone. This could be an area of frustration for players who experience a client crash, but I personally think it’s a small price to pay to eliminate this behavior in WvW.

Indo.8629:

And I’m being vocal because quite frankly BG needs to be made an example of so that all the legitimate servers and guilds out there manage their player base better collectively so we can have good fights.

So in your view, an entire server should be made an example of due to the actions of a handful? So it’s death by association then? Also, how exactly do you suggest a server manage every single player better? The issue is being dealt with both publicly and internally. Many on BG, like myself have apologized, even when we weren’t even remotely involved. What more do you want?

@ Indo

Your opinion has been noted, and noted, and noted again. It’s a huge bummer what happened. But it did, matters are hopefully being taken care of appropriately, and hopefully it doesn’t happen again. Now, can we move on with the match before yet another thread gets locked?

LOL! Did the game make the “whah whah whaaaahhhh” sound when you failed? =)

Haha that’s really funny. So sneaky!

Also, nerf short server names. They can hide behind huts better and have a clear advantage. =)

Targeted grenades would kill them in PvP (WvW particularly), unless they were also updated to heat seeking grenades. Without the ability to lead grenades at a target they would miss every time if that target was moving.

I wish I could understand why people continue to call out an entire server for the poor actions of a few. The generalizations that take place are truly unbelievable.

Sars.8792:

good fight at bay in bg bl!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbvtp1YBgmY

Thanks for the video. Also, LOL your guys were bagging on my post over your voice com. I’ll admit that was pretty blatant regarding the portal. I still stand by what I said previously about the server not condoning it though.

Coldviper.6794:

All of these blackgate are now guilty of cheating. This server apparently have no self respect taking advantage of these ports coming exploiting mesmers. Pathetic blackgate, pathetic.

Calling out an entire server for cheating based on the supposed actions of what could have been one, or only a few people who were actually involved, is misplaced and incorrect. Keep in mind that if a player sees “take the portal” in chat, they likely will, without any idea of where it’s going or how it got there.

Like all servers, BG doesn’t condone cheating and takes reports of it happening seriously. I’ll make sure someone that has the ability to look into this sees your post and screenshot. Your shot doesn’t necessarily prove anything (screenshots rarely do) but at least it’s something to go on. If indeed some form of exploit took place, I’m personally sorry it happened.

Ouch. IoJ wiped off all 4 maps today. You guys were really holding strong this week too, even during your coverage gaps. This slot is arguably BG’s strongest time period against both servers, after Oceanics go to bed and before NA logs on, which is the EU primetime where BG still has solid coverage. Still, sad to see IoJ drop to 0 PPT, even if it may only be a short while.

Nice video man. It’s nice to see it from your point of view, rather than what I’m used to, which is being on the receiving end of the freight train that is the LoD 2H Charr Warrior horde. I’ve been leaped on by like 4 of you guys at the same time. In case you were wondering, yeah it hurts … a lot.

Reslinal.2359:

Part of the reason it seems BG has better coverage is because we are doing a server wide push started Monday. So a lot of guilds are calling everyone and doing over hours. I imagine the coverage difference will become less when the push is over. We don’t want to give up #1 spot in T2 without a fight:)

Yeah this is a good point. There are people on BG playing right now that might not have been without the call to arms that went out on Monday. The normal coverage difference may not be as big as it appears right now under normal circumstances. Playing when you don’t really want to only lasts so long.

ghostchipz.2341:

a very simple sloution to the teir system could be this

- 1st place go up
- 2nd place stay were your are
- 3rd place go down

you would get 2 new servers to battle each week or is this too simple

I think it sets up the chance for too many blow out matches, which is worse than playing the same servers each week.

Indo.8629:

Unless there’s another shakeup of the servers, T1 and T2 are probably staying the same for a while.

Yep I’d agree with that. Moving up and down tiers requires winning and losing by larger margins than what’s happening right now in T1 and T2. JQ losing 40 rating doesn’t help if BG also loses rating for winning a match, but not by enough of a score differential to gain rating (I’m not calling a BG win btw … the match is far from over … just using the current scores for my example).

Overall I’m cool with this though. This is the rating system doing what it’s supposed to do, and should create fun competitive matches more often than not, even if it’s against the same servers week after week. This could cause the whole experience to get stale though. I guess time will tell.

Indo.8629:

The zerg is mighty with BG 24/7. How did you guys get kicked from T1?

Just outplayed? Your coverage seems pretty good.

Pretty good yes. Not good enough, consistently (which is the key word here) though, to match SBI. When SBI wants to win, they will win … that about sums things up right now. We got dropped out of T1 because BG on the whole basically gave up on T1. Many guilds still fought their kitten off, but the casual militia stopped playing, and SoS gained enough rating to get in. Then they WON, creating a pretty solid rating gap between T1 and T2.

HabibLoew.2590:

Loot bags despawn after 3 minutes.

Too short given current mechanics in my opinion.

1) If loot bags are planned to keep current mechanics, the timer needs to be at least doubled to 6 minutes, although 10 minutes would be better.

2) A better option all together is to have loot bags automatically go to the player’s inventory as non-stackable containers in WvW zones. Being non-stackable, inventory management is still a factor, but loot doesn’t rot like it so often does in WvW due to the nature of large open field skirmishes.

If neither is within the scope of Anet’s vision, at least have Badges automatically sent to the player’s inventory. The number of Badges that have rotted in WvW since release is probably astronomical.

ComeAndSee.1356:

I’m not sure if people quit or moved on to other servers. I remember when all Tier 1 servers had 1 hour++ queues.

As Bob Dylan once said … “the times they are a changin”.

T1 won’t see 1 hour+ queues again until the fabled WvW content patch. At which time everyone will come back to WvW to see what the hubub is about, then probably vanish again unless the patch brings meaningful long term change for the better.

I’ll admit I did it once. Mostly because these 4 players chased me half way across the kitten map before finally catching up to me which made me rage. I felt crappy about it though.

Alt-F4 should leave your character in the game for 30 seconds if in combat, even if the client closes. Problem solved.

Knowing Smokee and [HB], this was most likely them screwing around and having fun than any kind of meta. They’re a group that likes to spice things up as often as they can.

A small team on IoJ did a nice job of using this to ninja Greenbriar from BG on Saturday night. Someone at Greenbriar called out “10-15 IoJ at Greenbriar but they may have run by”. After clearing a small run at Greenvale, I asked in map chat “How’s Greenbriar?”. The reply was “clear”. A few minutes later the wall was down and they capped the tower. Turns out they were stacked up and hiding in a little nook that drops down a hill and had set up 2 or 3 catas in there. I got there to drop some grenades on their heads just as they broke the wall. It was pretty sneaky and well played.

Flow Drive.5094:

There’s only one way to kill the bandwagoning, DEATH TO FREE XFERS!

Yep very true. Which they won’t do until the guesting feature is implemented.

Haldunius.7864:

Where they took last place and lost by almost 200k points. As I said, T3 with a tiny potential for T2.

I was more replying to the statement “Blackgate was middle of the pack until a bunch of guilds jumped from their previous servers to yours.”

Maybe we have differing opinions on what “middle of the pack” means.

KnightFire.2597:

Kita you’re either delusional or have no idea what’s going on with your server because Blackgate was middle of the pack until a bunch of guilds jumped from their previous servers to yours.

Did you even look at Kita’s signature? He plays on Darkhaven. This rant and his mention of Blackgate was probably prompted by a WvW guild that transferred from DH to BG this week.

Also, for the record, BG had climbed to the #6 spot in the rankings, and played in a T2 match with SBI and IoJ the week starting on 10/12, which was BEFORE any of the transfers in from HoD and ET.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/3#NA

rook.4625:

Not good timing…

Why? Last time I checked, all servers are receiving the new content patch, so every server has the same potential disadvantage in WvW due to players chasing shinies.

Gracen.6451:

My guild left Blackgate because fo the server hoppers and the long queue times. We are loving the move to Devona’s Rest and look forward to helping them rise from the bottom

Long queues? I haven’t had a single queue on any map for at least the past 4 weeks, except for about a 4 hour window immediately following the reset on Fridays. Even then, the queue for EB was 30 mins or less. I’m not trying to ding your decision to move servers, but don’t say it was because of queues. There aren’t any.

Orikx.9671:

LOL…As someone that plays both of those classes these are just minor inconvienences. All the people that cry about those classes are still going to be crying just as much.

The best part is the big FU aNet gave to all the people that cry that Portal needs nerfed. The increased Portal cool down did nothing to change portal tactics in WvW. It was more of an sPvP nerf. ANet basically said shut up and quit whining about Portal nerfs, it’s fine, ROFL. I love it.

Gonna bookmark this in case one day portals do get nerfed. Not because I want them nerfed, but because of your reaction that they didn’t (yet).

They should be disabled outside of WvW. Period. All it is for many is “look how much gold I made”. Then those people zone into WvW to dork around with their tags on and draw all the solo players looking for leadership and direction. There are way too many players in the game that have the Commander tome and have no interest in WvW whatsoever.

Nothing like 1-shotting a rabbit with the throw skill in a downed state to rally and kill the guy who should have just killed you. Yeah it’s silly and very likely an oversight that hopefully gets fixed in WvW. Regarding regular NPCs, I doubt that will change unless major changes are made to the downed state mechanic.

HabibLoew.2590:

I can’t say too much just yet, but we’re doing some work related to rewards and character progression in WvW even now. It will be a little while before we’re ready to talk about more details though. Rewards, progression, and incentives for play are hot topics around the office. We all care about this stuff and once we have some more details hammered out we’ll let you all know what we’re up to.

In all honesty Habib, you guys may want to consider giving some snippets of this information ahead of time, or at least craft a response to those passionate about WvW regarding the upcoming event content and new dungeon gear. I’m personally pretty neutral on the whole thing, but there are a lot of WvWers that are really upset about having to engage in PvE in order to be sure their gear is on equal footing to their opponents.

Roberlord.8423:

So much for a fair fight. Fort Aspenwood was using a hack elementalist. 6 of us were hitting her and she wasn’t going down. In addition, she had pretty much every buff in the game (regen was stacked 10 times) when no one else was near enough to buff her.

I think FA should be disqualified this round for cheating.

Report and move on. Also, if you think one alleged “invulnerable” player can change the outcome of a match in WvW in any way you’re mistaken. Proposing to disqualify an entire server is anger talking, not sense.

I’m not sure you’re understanding the rating system. It’s designed to do exactly what you’ve found to be enjoyable, not solely to move servers up or down. The balance of power does shift based on many factors, so the rating changes happen to take this into account, with the ultimate goal of matching three equal servers in terms of coverage, numbers and leadership, as often as possible. However, as you eluded to, sometimes servers that are on the border of two tiers, can flip flop between blowing out and getting blown out, but those circumstances should be the minority over time.

Interestingly enough, every server except SBI could use more participation in your time slot. I’d say scout around, pick a server that you feel meets your current objectives in the game, then send over 5 or so scouts to check it out for a week. If you like what you see, move the rest over.

The only challenge you may have, depending on your server choice, is with the servers that are consistently listed as “Full”. Every server drops to “High” at some point during the day, almost every day, but it can make transferring more of a hassle depending on your choice.

Good luck!

Syphen.1980:

you would have to throw your score the rest of the match and SOS would have to score a lot more to push you out. Your ratings are fairly close but if you keep gaining points they can’t close the gap quick enough. I have been watching the ratings on http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA which uses the same rating system ANET uses to predict next weeks matches.

right now BG is 2,049.038 rating
and SOS is 2,044.519 rating

You’re missing a key thing here. That projected rating is based on BG having 520 PPT as of the last logged score. As we know, it didn’t stay that way, and may only be that way for another 3-4 hours of this match. BG is dropping to #4 on Friday. And as a player on BG, I couldn’t be happier. Next week will likely be a much more enjoyable match.

It wasn’t magic guys. Our EU guys got out in force today, coordinated a bit and had a good time that involved a golem army and other stuff. Based on how Red the maps were flipped, I’d guess the SEA guys on SBI decided not to pull a late nighter to cover the EU gap and were getting some rest today. But EUs are now going to bed and BG’s typical EST coverage hole will start to give some ground. However, I’m hoping this turn ignites a fire under NA and we can hold some of it tonight. If not, ah well no bigs. It was fun to follow today and finally brought some excitement back to the match.

I’m not sure on the best way to go about it, but WvW definitely could use more carrots to keep people participating when losing. I think a good start would be to revamp the Badge system and create some PvP specific equipment skins that are different and actually cool looking. More gear options to buy with Badges would be nice as well.

WvW can be stressful and emotional sometimes. There needs to be something in the reward system to offset that. Otherwise, players that get frustrated or fed up tend to move to an alt, farm karma, or just log off and watch a movie.

Lofty.8759:

it’s official, BG is dead. Few major guilds just left, including HB in their Euro timezone.

Once again, just another attempt by someone to stir up drama towards BG. None of the above has any truth to it. Carry on folks!

Good and bad in my opinion. Good for obvious reasons. Bad because it made the BL maps nothing more than capping points, and made WvW a bit more boring. Hopefully they come back in some form in the future. They just need to find a way to balance them so they’re not overpowered but still worth grabbing and defending. Oh and remove or limit the ability to exploit them of course.

Talesslaser.7813:

You can use turtles all you want…noone on SBI/JQ hates you for it, we respect that you developed a new tactic to fight against. You were a little kitteny coming into the match, but I think over the course of the week all the servers gained respect for each other. It’s not a problem anymore. Except for one thing. Don’t kitten complain about 2v1. You might not notice it, but it happens to everyone. T1 isn’t some kiddie fight where if you’re getting attacking by someone the other server is going to help you by attacking the other server. People will do whatever they feel benefits themselves the most, be it not attacking certain towers, or both attacking the same target, and it’s something SBI has just come to accept. Complaining about 2v1 will do NOTHING except make your server look like spoiled crybabies.

Again. BG didn’t develop the stacking tactic. It’s used on EU servers regularly. It just so happens that the group that started using it against you guys was the EU Alliance that transferred to BG a couple weeks ago.

Regarding 2v1, I’d humbly ask that you cut BG some slack on this one. This is the first time in T1 for the server since September 1st, and is the first competitive match the server has had in weeks. Players whining about 2v1 either don’t fully understand the flow of battle in WvW or don’t understand situations where it’s in the best interests of two servers to focus on the leader. 2v1s CAN happen, or are PERCEIVED to be happening. Either way, it’s legit and the core of BG WvWers understand this.

Shift Focus.9083:

Yeah I agree with elderan… the turtle bomb won’t make your server any better looking to other servers, call it an exploit, clever use of game mechanics, but at the end of the day all it is is a cheap tactic that’s taking advantage of an over-looked aspect of the game with the AOE Cap limit of 5 players in 1 clumped up area.

I guess all the players on the EU servers, who use this tactic regularly and have used it since beta, are cheap then?

Just to clear something up about the Beastgate nickname.

Players on BG did not give us this name. It was born out of the HoD/NSP/BG match that took place during the 24hr format. This was the big long awaited clash between Titan Alliance on HoD and Ascension Alliance on NSP (they were on NSP at the time), and BG surprised them both by being extremely competitive in the match.

Here is the first post on the gw2guru Stonemist Castle forums where the nickname Beastgate was used. It was posted by a non-BG player ….

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/58683-new-match-up-again/#entry1864809

Here’s the quote for those that don’t want to click the link …

Chamcham wrote:

Blackgate, more like BEASTGATE, Everyone was counting them out.

This was all the way back on September 1st, and the nickname just caught on and stuck.

As a WvW player, you should understand that this will help stabilize WvW server populations a bit until free transfers are disabled completely. This is better for the game, and better for the long term health of WvW.

First, much respect to WM. You guys earn it on the field which is where it matters.

As a player on BG, I’m sorry about the issues that transpired regarding the orbs. I hope you guys know that if the core of the WvW players on BG could do something about it, we would. Please know that the majority of players on BG hate it as much as you do, no matter the source.

Regarding morale when it happens, I get where WM is coming from. They understand that the orbs do not have a huge impact on success or failure. However, WM is serious about WvW, and that means dominating their opponents. If there is something to take from their opponents, they want it all, and this includes the orbs. Something tells me that if the orbs only provided PvE buffs, they would still want them all and would vigorously defend them. To put in effort and emotion, then have that work stripped away by a cheesy player is beyond frustrating.

Thankfully, Anet does take it seriously and I have no doubts they’re working on solutions. Until a solution can be implemented, it’s something we all have to hope doesn’t happen too often, and if it does, try to handle it as best we can.

Here you go …

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

SoR is probably your best bet right now.

Vitrol.1576:

Friday night wasn’t “many weeks” ago… just saying.

I meant prior to this match, which started on Friday. Prior to this match, it had been a long time since there was an orb incident from the server. I’m of the opinion that a player or players transferred to Blackgate for this match to intentionally grief the server and cause drama.

It’s a bummer for sure, and hopefully it can be dealt with.

You demoralized SBI guys should realize that there hasn’t been an orb incident from Blackgate in many weeks. I highly suspect that it is being done by some jerk intentionally trying to hurt the reputation of BG, and has nothing to do with wanting to win the match.

Silly rumor. No BG guilds were involved in that match at all, and had nothing to do with the turnaround.

What happened was War Machine and SBI’s other Oceanic/SEA guilds. They pushed hard, worked an overtime shift and flipped the map overnight late Wed/early Thurs and held it through the day until SBI’s primetime crew logged on. SBI was able to to hold the +PPT lead long enough to pull ahead on the score and JQ rolled over.

That was it. No shenanigans. Nothing. SBI wanted it and they got it.