Guild Wars 2

Magiofdeath.2745:

Really? How do you think other games’ thiefs/rogues cope? They can’t stealth mid-combat and if they can, damage breaks it. This is a weak argument. A very weak argument. Try again please.

Your quote should be “stealth breaking on damage taken would make thieves actually learn to play well without facerolling their keyboards” but I guess that would kill most players, because no skill people want easy wins.

WoW Rogues can use “Vanish” to break off during mid-combat. Also WoW rogues only took damage from AoEs while stealthed whereas everything damages a thief while in stealth in this game(as long as you are in range). Not to mention channeled skills still doing damage to stealthed thieves whereas in WoW this was not possible.

If you are going to make an argument based on previous games you better at least know how they worked otherwise you just look silly.

I used to think thieves were OPd so I rolled one and now I know their weaknesses and most skilled players do as well.

However, that said I do think that the GC Basilisk/Steal/Backstab build is a bit overpowered and needs to be toned down.

Dante.1283:

Sureshot.6725:

I won’t even go into the complexity of your proposal or the law of unintended consequences.

Server communities would be destroyed by this proposal. The majority of the game population is doing well as you mentioned yourself. The problem you describe only impacts low pop/low participation which are the minority. The majority should not have to sacrifice for the minority as that wouldn’t be fair.

ANet has been upfront all along that WvW is not intended to be fair or balanced. That said they do try to keep matches as balanced as possible with the Glicko rating system.

I know you have good intentions but there is this phrase. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Fortunately ANet seems to be ignoring most of the player suggestions and sticking to their vision and philosophy. After all I bought the game based on their vision and philosophy and not those of a bunch of forum warriors.

Clever, respectful and to the point. I like your post. But you are basing all your thoughts on one error. It isn’t the majority. The majority is the unbalanced servers. Just go by the numbers, I am not making this up.

Your original post stated:

“We are talking about low population or low WvW player participation/support/backup on certain servers.”

Hmmmm…..I’m pretty sure the majority of servers are not low pop/low participation.

Do I have a reading comprehension issue or do you have an issue communicating clearly?

Johje Holan.4607:

Sureshot.6725:

Caliburn.1845:

This is the natural and anticipated result of the Glicko system.

And it is a bad thing that will destroy the WvW community pretty fast. And I can sum it up in one word. Stagnation.

<facepalm> First there were threads about how the rating system wasn’t resulting in competitive fights quickly enough or would simply fail to do so. Now that populations have stabilized and they have been proved wrong we have a different mindset predicting equal fail because the Glicko rating system is working as intended.

Thankfully people with these mindsets are not managing game development.

I hope you’re right Sure but I fear Caliburn is… stagnation is bery bery bad. And without free transfers there’s nothing you can do to escape it.

Oh I’m sure for many he will be right but what is the answer? Without a rating system people will be complaining about unfair matches.

The point is there is no perfect solution that will please every single player. However, competitive matches based on the ranking system are the best solution to an imperfect virtual world.

I won’t even go into the complexity of your proposal or the law of unintended consequences.

Server communities would be destroyed by this proposal. The majority of the game population is doing well as you mentioned yourself. The problem you describe only impacts low pop/low participation which are the minority. The majority should not have to sacrifice for the minority as that wouldn’t be fair.

ANet has been upfront all along that WvW is not intended to be fair or balanced. That said they do try to keep matches as balanced as possible with the Glicko rating system.

I know you have good intentions but there is this phrase. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Fortunately ANet seems to be ignoring most of the player suggestions and sticking to their vision and philosophy. After all I bought the game based on their vision and philosophy and not those of a bunch of forum warriors.

Caliburn.1845:

This is the natural and anticipated result of the Glicko system.

And it is a bad thing that will destroy the WvW community pretty fast. And I can sum it up in one word. Stagnation.

<facepalm> First there were threads about how the rating system wasn’t resulting in competitive fights quickly enough or would simply fail to do so. Now that populations have stabilized and they have been proved wrong we have a different mindset predicting equal fail because the Glicko rating system is working as intended.

Thankfully people with these mindsets are not managing game development.

Bedstain.6735:

I like WvW. The game is young so it can only get better.

Same.

Not saying it is perfect as it has its issues, however, it is much better overall than DAoC and Warhammer Online imho. I won’t even include SWTOR in the mix as its world PvP was so horrible it got yanked with the exception of the deserted Tatooine area.

Anyway hopefully a new game will release soon and the ‘wanna be devs’ can go infest their forums with whining about everything that doesn’t meet their personal expectations.

Quite frankly a lot of the problems with WvW stem from its popularity. Those of us that appreciate GW2 will benefit from a smaller population and a better overall community.

This game is already somewhat AoE centric in WvW and increasing the cap will only make that worse.

Also there is no guarantee that increasing the AoE cap will result in less zergs. There is this thing called the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences’

I challenge you to define what a zerg is?

In addition, I happen to like largescale battles. If I wanted predictable canned PvP with small even numbers I would SPvP.

style.6173:

Remove the 5 player AOE target. Problem solved.

Which introduces a new problem. WvWvW will become AoE centric and everyone will be running around with the strong AoE classes.

Scilly.9315:

Sureshot.6725:

Scilly.9315:

Sureshot.6725:

Who is ‘we’? Is that a french mouse in your pocket?

Game is still new and I’m sure they will develop and add things over time. There is no substitute for the WvW we have now so I’m thankful to have it and look forward to more in the future.

your correct on one thing, there is no open world pvp game that does not allow you to see your enemy during a fight, or hit all the enemy attacking you.. both reasons why its a flop… you should check out some real open world pvp games.. it might broaden your attitude towards this game

Weird are we playing the same game? I don’t have issues hitting players unless I’m out of range, blinded or they dodge which are game mechanics.

Anyway I’m up for considering other MMOs with open world PvP as long the following apply.

- They do not require a subscription
- Do not feature a continuous gear grind where gear is king and skill/build is second.
- Does not require macro/3rd party utilities to be competitive.

I’d love to hear of one that meets those simple requirements. I’d even be willing to waive the subscription requirement.

DAOC requires a sub, and once you get geared you dont need to regrind it… you dont need a macro to win. Its also skill based and your aoe attacks will actually hit everyone within the aoe.

My point was you hit a limited amount in guild wars so a group of 5 would only hit 25 people out of 50 in a zerg yet the zerg would hit all of us… that promotes zerging and thats what causes the culling issues..

You got me. I enjoyed DAoC back in the day until they added the ability grind that is RR, so I left for Shadowbane.

I’m done with continuous grinds of any kind =)

I’m not saying this game doesn’t have its flaws but I’m willing to be patient for improvements and having a blast as it is now. I’d probably be less patient if I was paying a subscription. I know I can take a break from this game and come back without being left far behind because of level/rank ability/gear grinds.

Edit: As for zerging there was plenty in DAoC as well. Also the last thing I want is for WvW to be AoE centric so I support the caps strongly. I don’t have a problem avoiding zergs and still having fun.

I run solo, I run with small groups and sometimes I join the zerg. Zerging is choice that most make because it involves less risk and thoughtful play. However, some times I want largescale fighting so I choose to join the zerg.

Culling is an annoying but hardly game breaking in terms of enjoying the game.

Scilly.9315:

Sureshot.6725:

Who is ‘we’? Is that a french mouse in your pocket?

Game is still new and I’m sure they will develop and add things over time. There is no substitute for the WvW we have now so I’m thankful to have it and look forward to more in the future.

your correct on one thing, there is no open world pvp game that does not allow you to see your enemy during a fight, or hit all the enemy attacking you.. both reasons why its a flop… you should check out some real open world pvp games.. it might broaden your attitude towards this game

Weird are we playing the same game? I don’t have issues hitting players unless I’m out of range, blinded or they dodge which are game mechanics.

Anyway I’m up for considering other MMOs with open world PvP as long the following apply.

- They do not require a subscription
- Do not feature a continuous gear grind where gear is king and skill/build is second.
- Does not require macro/3rd party utilities to be competitive.

I’d love to hear of one that meets those simple requirements. I’d even be willing to waive the subscription requirement.

@Fatum

Sounds like you wan’t SPvP. This is PvP where the numbers are always even and predictable.

WvW by its nature is unpredictable. Sometimes your the zerger sometimes the zergee. Sometimes you run solo and get good solo fights and some times not. Some times you can get a small elite band together that moves fast avoiding the enemy zerg while taking objectives and taking out smaller groups they encounter.

Most people that complain about the zerg have only themselves to blame. Choose to run with the zerg and zerging is all you will experience. Of course choosing to play outside of a zerg takes more effort and involves more risk. To each their own…

Who is ‘we’? Is that a french mouse in your pocket?

Game is still new and I’m sure they will develop and add things over time. There is no substitute for the WvW we have now so I’m thankful to have it and look forward to more in the future.

Absolutely agree with OP except that I haven’ t been bored with GW2 enough to return to any of the obsolete and stale MMOs. In fact, I have uninstalled WoW, SWTOR, Tera and Aion. I look back now and realize I only put up with the nonsense in these MMOs because I lacked a choice.

I now have a permanent home with GW2 although that is not to say I don’t have some issues with ANet. For example, forcing us to group and do a dungeon just to complete our PERSONAL story is probably the worst experience I’ve had with GW2.

oZii.2864:

There is no conclusion by opinion this is a place created to keep the redundant threads from popping up all over the thief forums. Very smart move.

You can see there is no right way in here.

You have people that say I don’t mind the burst just remove the stealth/limit it.

Then you have people that are fine with stealth but don’t like the burst.

Then the people that are fine with how things are.

How do you create something to keep all those parties happy? Impossible

This^

I thought thieves were OP until I rolled one to 80 with best gear available and realized they have their own vulnerabilities that good players have learned how to exploit.

One glaring weakness ,which I’m still unsure about whether ANet intended, is that channeled attacks continue to hit after stealth which not only continues to damage us but also points out where other players should land their AoEs.

Well its been almost a week and ANet has not responded to the question. So without a straight YES or NO I think we can take this as a possible some day way in the future but not being considered at the moment.

Sure would be neat to just be able to solo along with other NPC legendary fighters from the Orders. That way I wouldn’t be forced into grouping and dependent on others. Also would make my character more important within my own personal storyline.

Daemon.4295:

Probably not, like any dungeon it is designed for five players, I doubt you could get to the final battle in less than four players (maybe three if you’re good and very patient).

Are you using gw2lfg.com ? If not, this will make the world of difference in finding a group for any dungeon, it only took me two tries to find a full Zhaitan party.

PS: If you are really really stuck, just ask on the forum and I’m sure people would be happy to help you out.

I appreciate your input and we actually did get a group together at one point.

First, we had to spend I don’t know how long just to secure the area. Then after I don’t know how long we got everybody in a group.

After a few afks and getting some replacements for drops we finally enter the dungeon.

We get through to the first boss but our group can’t drop him. We get him down to near half health but then the boss heals himself back up. This goes on for about 30 minutes. So I ask another player why won’t this boss die and he says ‘we don’t have enough DPS’. I think to myself ‘Holy Trinity’.

I look at the clock and realize we have spent 2 hours now trying to do this last part of the personal storyline and we are now failing at the first boss mob (for whatever reason) so we left to eat dinner and never return.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I am personally glad that it is how it is. I would have been very disappointed if the big, bad, super-boss of the story that we’ve been told is super scary and super tough to handle were killed by just me and my lonesome. I was actually quite relieved that it required I find some other people to complete; it made the experience much more satisfying.

I never said alone. I just said without other player characters. There were plenty of tough encounters where I had help from NPCs during the personal storyline. Why couldn’t that pattern continue? Why should I have to be bring total strangers into my personal storyline instead of continuing with the NPC’s that had my back the whole way through?

It just feels devious to be able to fight all the way through what is supposed to be a personal storyline with the support of NPCs and then suddenly be forced to group with other players and do a dungeon to finish the last part.

Heru.5427:

My biggest issue with the new system is how random and unpredictable it seems to be. Sometimes it works amazing, but just as often it’s way worse than the old system. The old system was at least predictable and you could plan around the eventuality of there being more people on the screen than you could see. With the new system it might just suddenly decide to stop rendering all your friends mid fight making it harder to keep cohesion within a group.

This^

I was one initially reporting it was better but more experience with it shows it either works great or is worse than the previous system.

I think I would rather have predictable bad over unpredictable bad as you can adjust your play to predictable bad.

Roll it back for now imho

Shimond.2478:

If you’re so opposed to playing with others, why are you playing this game? It’s never been advertised as a single player game.

You do realize you can play with others in an MMO without being forced to group and do a dungeon to complete your supposed PERSONAL storyline.

There is all kinds of content, particularly in this MMO, where you can play with others without being forced to group such as the heart and DE systems not to mention WvWvW.

The issues here is a PERSONAL storyline that runs through about 20 different questlines that are all soloable and then the last one suddenly requires a dungeon run and forced grouping.

How does that make any sense?

Quote:
It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game
~Colin Johanson

Will we ever be able to complete the personal story solo or with one friend?

When I got through to the final part of the personal storyline I was very surprised to find that it could not be soloed since every single quest prior has been soloable.

My son and I are wondering if we will ever get to fight the dragon. Given the state of the game population it is difficult to get anyone to do this and two is not enough.

I’ve played many MMOs with personal storylines and never once were they not soloable. Anyway it is not a huge deal to me as a primary PvPer but my young son was quite disappointed.

Not sure how forcing us to group and do a dungeon fits with this quote..

Quote:
It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game
~Colin Johanson

Kraggy.4169:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

It’s a dungeon, so it’s not soloable,

Which sucks hugely and is a nasty surprise for those who didn’t realise GW2 was a ‘forced grouping’ game at the point it matters.

Yea this seriously ticked me off and created a great deal of distrust with any further PvE content. I mean you go all the way to the end capable of soloing and then BAM …you must group.

Played a lot of MMOs with PERSONAL storylines and never had one that forced you to group to complete your PERSONAL storyline. Basically its wasted space I’ll never experience I can tell you that.

I actually read it and like it. It will fill the niche of siege buster well.

What about tank vs tank damage? Seems logically that players would try to protect their siege with tanks.

Culling is much better. I hope ANet is careful about the feedback they get in here. I think some of those saying it isn’t better were in fact those abusing it and are hoping to get it reverted back.

Agree with OP. Culling is much better than it was and please do not revert =)

Absolutely! Been Dragonbrand since day one through the ups and downs and never once even considered a transfer.

Sansarah.3076:

Believe me, if there was a proper hardcore world pvp game. A lot of us would go there. Unfortunately, there is none. I would be one of the first to switch.

I guess you haven’t heard of Darkfall Unholy Wars. I ‘m assuming though that by hardcore you really mean hardcore and I have no idea what you mean by ’proper’ but it sounds highly opinion based.

The downed state has its place in WvWvW and players rezzing others are put in a very vulnerable position while rezzing.

I get frequent 1v1 and 1v2 all the time and manage to impale plenty of players. In fact, often in a 1v2 once I down one and see the other player go to rez it brings a grin to my face (unless they have traited for improved rezzing qualities).

In any case, downed state is here to stay although it may be tweaked as much as anything else. So your options are find another game or play SPvP if you cannot live with it in the absolute sense.

First and foremost, I’m not even agreeing that zerging needs to be fixed because to fix something you need to accurately define it.

Ask 10 people and get at least 5 different definitions on what constitutes a zerg. The only commonality I find among the various definitions for zerg is that one side was heavily outnumbered.

Second, I see a lot of comments stating that lifting the AoE cap will resolve zerging. In this context it seems to be defined as a smaller group could take out a larger group if the cap was lifted.

However, as the larger group would still be able to AoE and bring more AoE to bear being the larger group, I fail to see how this would fix so called ‘zerging’.

I must be missing something.

I’m excited about them implementing paid transfers which is long overdue.

Being able to freely transfer across servers has created numerous issues in WvW as documented in these forums. Finally, communities will stabilize and the ranking system can actually begin to work properly. Transferring will still be available but will instead require serious consideration particularly for larger guilds.

Thank you ANet!

Esoteric.5490:

Tekren.4580:

They won’t do that just like how daoc added titles people that had a million kills didn’t get there points grandfathered in. They had to start from 0 like everyone else. Which in my opinion is the right thing to do.

I disagree. Players who have busted their tail for months would be on the same level as someone who abandoned the game or has never WvW’d before. That’s nonsense. I spend countless hours in WvW daily and all of us would have nothing to show for that. ANet would have to add it retroactively if it isn’t original design because I promise you that there would be an uproar.

Just wow! “..have busted their tail for months..” or “..spent countless hours in WvW daily and all of us have nothing to show for that”

This is the kind of mentality that is scary. This is a game which is supposed to be about good competitive fun and you turn it into something akin to work. I’ve gotten plenty of entertainment and great fun out of the game and continue to do so.

I’m all for additions that provide more depth to the tactical and strategic elements or modded maps etc. but not additional skill or gear grinds.

The obsession with progression and rewards for doing something that is supposed to be enjoyable is deeply disturbing.

Ouch!

I’m a former DAoC player and I left it because of the additional grind added by RR in order to stay competitive.

The last thing I want to see is another grind just to stay competitive. WvWvW will need an influx of new players and the ability to retain casual players that feel they can at least compete without a whole new layer of grind. Adding anything that jeopardizes this risks ruining the WvWvW environment as a whole.

Tread very carefully ANet.

The Goat.1940:

Ping.5739:

Tarjaic.5269:

Great game, and i must say i don’t understand why you disparage our NA so much we seemed to do more than ok against you guys during prime time. Not to take anything away from our amazing night time brothers. Looking forward to next week.

And remember those two weeks when our nighttime crew went to vacation? Dropping tier=doing ok?

Ping, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

I was thinking same thing about this Ping guy. He has got to be one of the trolls I have on my ignore list.

Perhaps he doesn’t know about this site. http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/35/

Plok.6145:

pigtaro.2749:

Prop to commander Edgar holding us together in EB when our numbers are so few.

Prop to commander Kelvin n SBullet for leading the charge to cap BP Valley. Amazing 5 trebs high up on the ruins.

Prop to commander Xiir leading us to total victory in EB.

A great end to e day after lowland was flipped in e morning. I am sure when I wake up in e morning later, the major colors across all 4 maps will be Blue, and e war continues… Good job everyone, including our ‘enemies’. Looking forward to killing more of u tomorrow. Cheers.

Awesome job fighting nobody!

Wonder how all those BP/DH players that were on the field fighting hard would feel about this comment.

You must be pretty full of yourself to make a snide and petty comment like this. Glad to see you are on the other side.

Edit: Just noted you are a leader?? LOL…impressive leadership skills!

Well from my experience the Breakout event has been well received by the majority on my server although many would like to see some tweaks on timing (which I agree with).

Personally, I like it because it creates action where none existed and I like action =)

I’m not bored and still having loads of fun in WvWvW.

I’ve yet to get all the rewards available from Honor Badges.

Winning WvWvW gives the entire server population rewards already.

This game has only been out for a few months and February is only two months away from now. Thus these cries of doom and gloom and desperate pleas for immediate action to save WvWvW just make me laugh.

Now there are some good suggestions in this thread for improving WvWvW I just hope they don’t add any more rewards as there are enough already.

I’m all for new maps, tactical tools and even cosmetic rewards like capes or guild rank boards but item/stat rewards hopefully remain as they are or you can count me out.

The last thing I want to do is feel compelled to chase a carrot to stay competitive in WvWvW. The carrot chase is the main reason I looked for alternatives to WoW and SWTOR and thankfully found GW2.

Yea after fighting thieves for awhile now in WvWvW they are definitely OP regardless of the cause and they look like they are super fun to play.

I just experienced a thief rip through about 15 players trying to cap a supply point and he took down players here and there with impunity while preventing the cap. The thief did this regardless of the fact that we were laying AoE all over the place and the guards were already dead. Any other class by themselves like that would have been dead in under 5 seconds.

So yeah I’m definitely rolling a thief for the lulz of it

Yea …adding something like RR would be end game for me. As in I will leave this game if they do.

I left DAoC because they added an additional RR grind after the level grind.

One of the reasons I bought GW2 was because they stated they would NOT add additional layers of grind to the PvP except for cosmetic things. This is done purposely so that causuals and new players will never feel like they can’t catch up. Also if players take a break from the game they will not fall behind.

I can only hope ANet politely ignores suggestions like these and sticks to their core design philosphies as these are what make GW2 unique.

While these design decisions are not popular with everyone their is a large loyal playerbase that does appreciate it. Becoming a grindy MMO would be a big mistake and place in them in the dime a dozen category of MMOs.

First off this solution is not simple. What you are asking for requires a good deal of coding and adds an additional computational load on the server farm which will impact performance. Not to mention bugs in code like this can cause serious side effects that would make the balance issue insignificant in comparison.

Secondly your proposal is not the only possible fair solution. In order for matchmaking to work properly it must have time to gather metrics. Heck we just got off daily rotations.

How about having some patience to give the matchmaking system the time it needs before prematurely passing judgement. It will certainly need some tweaking but you need data first in order to make informed decisions on what tweaks are needed.

Also implying that the only people against your idea are those high ranked servers is sad and narcissistic.

Your idea is simply flawed which is why is was not used in the first place nor will it be used in the future.

I could and never will go back to any of my older MMOs. I tried to play them in between betas and just couldn’t stand it. The only one out of them (WoW, Rift, Aion and SWTOR) that gave me any real sense of enjoyment was SWTOR .

From my standpoint their drawbacks and tedious time sinks were just overwhelming after playing GW2. I realized just how much of my play time was wasted in those MMOs doing things like getting from point A to point B, forming up groups, transferring items among alts.

GW2 major selling points that have me hooked include:
1) Players naturally work together rather than competing for resources or mobs
2) No constant gear grind. Play at your own pace and just enjoy the game.
3) The PvE environment is dynamic and amazing looking.
4) The combat action flows well and there are no lengthy CC & stuns
5) The WvWvW environment is just amazing. Nothing since DAoC or Shadowbane has been able to capture this style of play and realize just how much I missed it.
6) Shared bank space for the account
7) One click access to Trading Post (Auction House)

For me the game has truly been revolutionary in that it removes all the tedious BS associated with most MMOs while retaining what is best about them. I just play and have a good time so no turning back for me!

I’m agreeing with what Cosian said and I’m glad he did so I didn’t have to type it

Imho The only valid concern might be server matching but it is still way to early to judge the system as it hasn’t gathered enough metrics. We are just now finishing up the daily rotations and will be starting weekly soon.

I think what scares me the most is that Anet will listen to the vocal minority that sincerely think their suggestions are great for the game while the silent majority wonders why the game changed for the worse and simply stop playing. Hopefully they will keep in mind that we bought their game and their vision and NOT those of forum posters.

Also competition is alive and well in WvWvW (not to mention glaringly obvious) with the current reward system.

JemL.3501:

No need to give the name to start reporting.

The action, when and which world was its very helpful to start with, Logs are very easy to check.

This^ ( You may not be able to see the names but ANet can)

I’ve yet to experience any of your examples of cheating in game myself although I have run into some rather nasty thieves teleporting all over the place and hitting very hard but its apparently just their normal combat mechanics.

Sorry but I think a lot of people are jumping the gun here.

I prefer to wait and see how well the ranking system works in putting servers with a strong off-peak presence or higher populations against each other.

I assume by population you mean the average population participation rates for WvWvW. (Quite a few servers have large overall populations but lesser WvWvW participation ratios and vice versa)

Anyway we are just now finishing with daily cycles and will soon start weekly cycles after which we will get 2 week cycles.

There will never be perfect balance in a 24/7 game but if there are still mad
imbalances after the 2 week cycle starts then I would say let the discussion begin.

Not saying that these concerns are not valid as I think they are and potentially adjustments might have to be made in the long run. However, I think we need give the system time before coming up with solutions to problems that may not exist once the system has enough metrics to work with.

TL:DR
I’m not going to judge a a system before it has had time to gather the necessary metrics to work as intended. Thus I’m going to practice the difficult task of being patient

Malleusx.6092:

Orbs are seriously flawed and not thought out. They need to be removed.

I’m thinking something else is seriously flawed and not thought out but…

Anyway orbs are just extra fun things that give slight buffs to players and have little or no impact on WvWvW as compared to organization, skills, strategy, tactics and enemy numbers.

They do add a nice element of challenge, fun and change of pace given they are mobile objectives. If they didn’t have any benefit at all they would not be in play as much. I feel it is pretty balanced as is.

Huh?

Well my number one reason would always be for the fun and thrill of battle found in WvWvW.

However, if gear governs your purpose in a game designed to entertain well then you should visit the karma merchant where you will find FINE/EXOTIC gear available that will change at 5 level increments and thus always level appropriate. The gear available progresses as you do all the way to Level 80.

Are you serious? ANet is really forcing us to do a group event so we can complete our PERSONAL story?!?!? If this is true I’m seriously disappointed in this design decision and this is content I will not experience. Wasted space as far as I’m concerned.