So, am just throwing this out there for some discussion.
Was gw2’s wvw mode ever meant to be hardcore, serious, end-game, or whatever you want to call it? I have played gw2 from a month after release, and have played wvw, on a casual basis, for 3+ years. I come from a long term playing time of Dark Age of Camelot, where WvW/RvR was meant as the “end-game”. It was meant for those that really committed some time to the game, and really committed some effort to getting really good in WvW. There were specific goals, rewards, and worthwhile bonuses given to players of that mode, and to their races for winning, and/or leading in WvW objectives, etc. While most hardcores loved it, the mode also lended itself to more casual players, with both worldwide RvR, as well as smaller scale map WvW, in the form of battlegrounds. No matter your expertise, or lack of it, you could still make a positive contribution to the goals of that game mode. (But yea, I won’t go into ToA, as that nearly destroyed the game…..DaoC was far from perfect)
GW2’s wvw, on the other hand, and in my opinion, was never created with that in mind. I believe it was created as a side mode to the PvE and small team PvP emphasis of the game. The fact that the devs rarely communicated with the WvW playerbase for the first 2-3 years seems to prove that, imo. The playerbase is what actually formed WvW in this game, without much intervention from Anet, imo. When there were tournaments, the rewards were so lackluster, that, at least in my case, I was left wondering why even have the tournaments? You ended up with pretty much the same sort of thing that there is now….some sort of inconsequential point total that people could, I suppose, find something to brag about. Even the glicko stuff that formed the Tiers was really nothing more than population advantages of some servers over others.
And maybe that all wasn’t a bad thing, as it lent itself to the more casual playerbase. I consider myself part of that, now, mainly due to how much older I am, and how much more I look at mmorpgs as just a diversion more than anything else. The biggest thing that initially attracted me and my wife to GW2, was how much it seemed that it was geared to the casual player, rather than the serious grinder.
So now that Anet has entered the realm of an aged mmorpg, they start to show some communication with the WvW playerbase, mainly to draw some new players in, and keep loyal players here. While that is good to see, I still wonder, is there is really any point to making WvW anything more than a side mode of the game? Add some new maps to generate interest(positive and negative, alike), change the scoring systems, tweak some things here and there, but still not adding any real purpose, besides just general fun, to the game mode. (Although, I do really like the reward tracks addition)
And now we have linking. While I initially liked that idea, it is now apparent(at least to me), that they should have just merged servers, reset glicko, and gone from there.
I still have some fun in WvW. But there are times when I find myself wondering…..”what’s the point?” And maybe that is just from my familiarity with the mode, rather than some sort of underlying shortcoming.
Overmatched linkings tend to shy away or give up easily, while overstacked linkings get horribly bored at the lack of any sort of challenges. All of that is completely understandable, imo. And I am not sure if Anet can actually change that…..mainly because of how WvW in this game was originally created. Plus, a lot of the linkings, at least imo, don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, and seem to breed some of these horribly mismatched wvw matchups. Maybe it is all just trial and error for Anet at this point….I don’t know.
Anyways, just some thoughts. Comments, opinions, etc???? Please try to keep it constructive.
And my apologies for the wall of text.
), artifacts, scrolls, etc. Every one of those things impacted the overall play of RvR.