Guild Wars 2

Spvp= Structured PvP, basically the same as Wow arenas 5v5 on capture point maps, like Arathi basin, but much smaller.

As for pvp in both games, wow doesn’t exactly have power creep as gw2. You’re placed in brackets to your level, if you’re level 110 you’re playing with expansion players who all have access to the same, if you playing the base game up to level 100 you’re playing with those players, not the 110 players so whatever they got won’t affect you. The problem with Wow is they revamped classes this pass expansion and have some work to do still on balancing them, the developer for pvp seems to be kind of an idiot as well so meh.

For gw2 you can play spvp right away as you’re always boosted to level 80 in there, gear doesn’t matter, all accounts play in the same pool, free to play vanilla and expansion accounts. But the difference is free to play or vanilla players don’t have access to elite specs, which are all pretty much better than vanilla specs, so expansion players have an advantage in that.

So what? 15 mins of play time is nothing. Still highly doubt even 1/2 of them play wvw regularly. Let’s not forget wvw is 24/7, they’re a NA company so most of their employees would probably be playing in PST prime leaving the rest of the zones empty.

They will lose every match, there’s really no point to putting them on their own server other than wanting to put a permanent target on devs on that server. Most of them don’t even currently run the Anet guild tag, doubt they want to form a server that basically slaps that on them that every time they go into wvw.

You’re better off asking them to do adopt a dev program part 2.

Aurora glade is the 15th place server in EU, last place, most likely has the least amount of players and coverage. You’re currently facing a server two tiers higher than you, maybe players are on a break.

Here’s a thread for you guys to recruit desert happy players.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Desert-Borderland-Map/first#post6556916

Exactly how many employees do you think they have to play as their own server? They would get killed in ppt, would be outnumbered in every map in every zone. It wouldn’t even be a match, it would just be two servers head hunting them the entire time, can’t imagine that would be fun for those employees.

The wvw team supposedly already plays as a group on random servers every week.

morrolan.9608:

neven.3785:

I play wvw because i love the RvR aspect of the game. There is nothing else out there at the moment that promotes this type of play.

Yes there is, ESO. Its RvR system is superior to WvW in fact. However its combat is not as fluid as GW2 though. On the plus side it has far more dev attention paid to it than WvW and has senior devs working directly on it.

This is what I’m going to be checking out this weekend, it’s free to try until april 18th. It’s funny was watching some videos last night of builds for zerg busting, and there are aoe bombs in the game that allow a small groups to ambush and demolish big zergs with the right timing.

Half the problem here is we have those threads that Gaile mentioned on a weekly basis, and players really need to stop with them. The my server is dying, why is my server locked, when are we getting unlocked, we need new tournament, why does our one server have to face 6 servers!, delete this map for this other map, look who ran away, look who tanked, look who bought out guilds.

All it would take is some research and frankly some common sense for these people to figure out stuff, instead of coming in here every week asking the same ridiculous thing over and over and get the same answers over and over, to the point where it turned into a running joke.

Now to the other part of Anet’s communications, they feel they are doing enough on that end, there’s nothing we can do to change that. I will point out something though, a year ago we got two devs in here who posted on quite a lot of issues, and it promoted quite a lot of positive discussions. One of them got shipped off to living story without a word, the other has cut back on posts in the last few months. A lot of us feel like things have just gone back to the way it was before the expansion.

The forums are here for us to discuss problems with the game, hopefully in a productive manner. Positive communication can only be maintained by having both sides involved, you cannot expect players to come in here to pure their hearts out on issues, hear nothing back and expect them to stay positive about the entire situation when they see their game mode continue to die in front of them for 4 years.

Finally, yes WvW is dying, when you take 24 servers and fold them into 12 to get the same population you had a year before, that’s dying. Deny that and hide your head in the sand if you want, but that’s not going to help fix anything, just lose more players.

Hevoskuuri.3891:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Aury.1367:

Maybe thats because people feel like anet has canceled the whole WvW-support. I saw I got aggressive and salty the last months. No reason to act like this in PvE. But WvW is just depressing.

I am sorry if players feel that way. I see it in posts, sure. But I believe we’ve made it clear that the game mode has not been abandoned. That was confirmed quite recently when a dev made some comments about upcoming changes. Unfortunately, the thread devolved into dev bashing, and the OP asked that we remove it.

I feel that while things may not be perfect, they are not as dire as some forum members paint them. Continuously dwelling on the negative isn’t necessary or productive and it doesn’t represent the true nature of the game mode.

Thank you Gaile for this wonderful post.

All this ranting about the state of WvW on the forums is complete nonsense. The game mode is most definitely not dead, it’s been running stable for the entire time GW2 has been alive. Many players have quit the game, sure, and that shows, but the population is still generally huge, which means people are having fun with the gamemode.

Mechanics-wise, nothing has really changed. WvW today is not any worse than WvW 4 years ago, quite the opposite. All the improvements have made it only better. The mode hasn’t changed for the worse, but the community has. Everyone is so salty these days. I never hear or see complaints in-game or anywhere else, just here on the forums. My guess is, the people who rant here don’t actually even bother to play the gamemode, they just like to be loud and demand more things.

Sure, with GW2’s old engine and balancing difficulties, WvW is not perfect, and will always need polishing. But take a second and think about this: despite the lag, balancing issues, poor rewards and salty complainers, literally hundreds and hundreds of players still log in every single day and form queues in WvW on almost every server. Dozens of WvW guilds raid every single night. The gamemode is far from dead and abandoned, and people are loving it. Personally, I’ve never had more fun as I am having now.

Post like these trigger me so hard in wanting to correct you, but whatever.

Sarika.3756:

The sad part is that there is a specific set of forum posters who are most likely to derail a thread from something constructive into match-up. They often add jabs at whichever server they don’t particularly like, and that stirs the pot. Maybe it’s not just the threads that need a time out, but some of the posters most likely to derail things down the match-up rabbit hole?

Admittedly I’m one of those trolls. Although my post tend to post facts with side jabs. Frankly I’m tired of seeing the same threads about certain servers show up here, or the weekly thread on tournaments which every single time ends up with like 20 replies of why not. The ones who need a break are the ones posting exactly what Gaile came here to post about, we see it every week, enough already.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Namer.9750:

I believe that a lot of these threads and posts are an outburst against what the majority see as an utter neglect of the game mode. Whether this statement is objectively true or not doesn’t matter, perceptions do.

I understand. I do appreciate that while we know we’re working on things, and know what we’re working on, the players do not. Our policy is not to give a future-looking accounting of works in progress but to analzye, gather input from players (through a variety of means including frequent reading of the forums), develop, and release.

Most players have been around long enough, or know the company well enough, to understand how we work, but it’s undoubtedly true that the desire for more info can drive people to posting unwisely. Nobody likes to have their post removed, and we all benefit from a better forum climate. So I’m hoping a few comments in aid of “prudent posting practices” will not go amiss.

Here lies the biggest problem that anet keeps skirting around the issue of developer participation, anet always states the excuse of talking about future content, when there are many issues and topics that players would appreciate a word on. Stuff like bugs, balance, or even mechanics. Tyler Bearse seemed to be on track with that in his limited time with us, even got the long standing issue of building siege in citadel area fixed. Spvp forums seems to have more of that than the wvw section.

Future content news is not the only developer input we ask for. I can understand not talking about future content, but not saying little to nothing at all for long periods of time on everything.

The number of links and not actual world wvw population is what wins you matchups, you heard it here first, well ok maybe second, the yb guy should be next.

Limodriver.4106:

blame MAG for the downfall of BG since they made 4+ guilds moved to lower tier.

Mag should blame Mag too for also chasing 4+ guilds off their server.

Maybe BG needs to stop running away, smell some roses, and just enjoy wvw for a change, there’s no need to manipulate glicko anymore, no need to super stack time zones, no need to ppt opponents to death, no need to hibergate, no need to run into eotm when things are tough.

Wvw isn’t the same thing it was 2 years ago, being the number one server is meaningless, and every other server has taken their bumps and bruises and fell out of tier one.

We’ve been hearing BG is dying or dead for a while now, and yet they’re still competing in tier one, need to stop coming in here and crying wolf already. Tons of servers under you in worse positions to better claim they’re dying or dead.

Swagger.1459:

BG players are fatigued from all these double teamed fights with linked servers.

LoL that’s pretty hilarious, thanks for the laugh.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Inoki.6048:

If not, then just destroy it completely by giving teleport with guns shooting radiating spider web to every class and make all look like hulk-coloured unicorns with devilish horns, beer backpacks and weed logo on their chests so all can be happy.

no idea wtf a beer backpack is but there’s plenty of goofy back pack skins.

Whoa boy do I have something that will delight you today… included the other one in case they meant bear instead of beer.

http://www.mmorpg.com/guild-wars-2/columns/paying-homage-to-world-vs-world-with-a-gem-giveaway-1000011671

They have a little write up about wvw and a giveaway for screenshots in wvw.

To enter our giveaway, all you need to do is post a screenshot in the comments below of your favorite character in World versus World. It’s that easy! One entry per person, and it must be in World versus World to able to win. We will announce our winners this time next week, so you have 7 days from now to capture your character at their very best! The three prizes will be awarded for the following:

First prize – 3600 Gems. In true MMO fashion, we’ll let RNG decide this one, randomly drawing one extremely lucky contestant’s shot as the grand prize winner!

Second prize – 2400 Gems. To celebrate our amazing artist, Vasburg will be choosing an ‘artist’s choice’ for the best-looking shot entered.

Third prize – 1200 Gems. This one goes to whoever can give us the screenshot that best exemplifies the dynamic, community and combat driven battlefield of WvW. Think guild groups, think great big keep fights, think flashy finishers!

That’s it! Good luck to everyone that enters, and if you want to check out some more work by the talented Vasburg for inspiration or just to admire some great work, check out http://www.vasburg.com/ for brilliant art works!

Good luck to those that enter.

Justine.6351:

How many ways can it be said,

*they know people want these skins and the triumphant hero armor set
*they don’t know how they will implement them yet

They said that like a year ago. It’s not that hard to implement. Since it doesn’t look like tournaments may be back, they could go the reward track route.

Can even have multiple tracks to do to get 4 ingredients and dump them into the mystic toilet to get the weapons or armor.

Anet: What? people still play wvw? they all should be in pve by now.

Tournament to see who has the best coverage.. yay.

24 hour tournament once per week starting on reset, run it over multiple weeks to create a season.

Ok.. what was tested in there?

You guys do know you can target tactivators by using the target nearest ally command right?

Oh noes BG losing by 7 points lets take the rest of the week off it’s stupid.
Server whines about competition every time they’re losing now, so sad panda what that server has turned into.

If you’re moving to be with friends it’s basically a one time fee then, unless y’all plan on going around the servers in 80 days. There’s already 500 gem cost on most of the linked servers, just the main servers are at 1800. If you lower that cost I’m sure a whole more accounts will be moving.

ArchonWing.9480:

I know! We can’t do stuff like this then.

Still the best lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m90hUvVhSDE

EremiteAngel.9765:

I’ve had the chance to roam from T1 to T4 on TC who went on free fall.

My experience is as below.

T1 has odd occasions of perma stealth condi thieves. But very rare.
T2 has the most perma stealth condi thieves.
T3 on odd occasions too, similar to T1.
T4 has zero perma stealth condi thieves.

I’m in T4 now for about 2 weeks and have not met a single perma stealth condi thief.

Because they got nerfed 2 weeks ago when their main damage source of needle trap was made to reveal with damage…

atheria.2837:

Willkilliam.5012:

Eotm has been there for quite awhile and it was a basically a beta test for new things to implement in WvW but now it just sits there and count toward servers populations. If you go in to Eotm all you see is K-trains and that doesn’t sound like beta test to me. SO why not get rid of it?

Wait, WHAT?

WvW and EoTM populations are connected STILL?

No wonder the populations are counted WRONGLY.

Anet, you are more abusive than any other MMO past or present.

If true, the game can be fixed to a huge degree by making sure one mode can’t affect the other.

How very evil! Stack EOTM, your server gets a bonus that others can not hope to fight at all?

The next MMO that doesn’t abuse players is going to make a lot of money and gain a lot of players from this game immediately.

I nominate this for the wvw mistaken freak out post of the year.

Last relink was Feb 24th I think, so probably like Apr 28th is the next one.

Willkilliam.5012:

Eotm has been there for quite awhile and it was a basically a beta test for new things to implement in WvW but now it just sits there and count toward servers populations. If you go in to Eotm all you see is K-trains and that doesn’t sound like beta test to me. SO why not get rid of it?

Eotm wasn’t a beta test for anything, don’t know where anyone got that idea, I don’t remember anything being thrown in there before wvw.

It was developed to help deal with heavy map queues that happened in the first year of wvw. It turned into a k-train since it was mostly uplevels in there and nothing is upgraded. It still is an area to level, just not as good as before.

expandas.7051:

It’s very easy for me to say that the superior alternative would be to address the community outcry against the Desert Borderlands, game mechanic changes, and skill balancing at the time- in short, to fix their game.

They could have increased the rewards for playing the game mode a la PvP season 5.

They could have discouraged server stacking and omniblobbing by tweaking map population caps and the outnumbered buff to give substantive advantages.

For whatever reason they chose the arguably simpler and faster route of just pairing servers together which introduced its own set of challenges.

They weren’t able to “fix” their game for four years, I don’t think it would be reasonable to assume they could have fixed it post HoT mess up. They fixed the desert borderlands problem, well to most players anyways the hardcores just want it deleted. Game mechanics and skill balancing still haven’t been touched much in the last 18 months, that’s stuff anet doesn’t want to spend time on.

They did increase rewards with the reward tracks, but yeah could have done better since then, they’ve never treated wvw fairly against the other game modes.

When links came around they had all the main servers locked, that’s not discouraging stacking? Players cried about it and eventually they started opening up. Players did stack on the lower population servers for certain links, which would be ok in my book because that meant shifting populations to the smaller servers, some might leave after the relinks, but some might have stayed as well. In the long run that was one step in helping spread some population back to those lower servers, until main servers remained opened which shot that to hell.

Lower map caps wouldn’t have done kitten, let’s be real here, most times it’s 1 tag up on a map and most people will flock to that tag or the orange swords. We would still have blobbing, just on multiple maps now. Nothing but hardcore limitations will be needed to force most players into smaller groups.

As for the reason why they went with links Tyler had explained it..

Tyler Bearce

We had/have another, much more elaborate, solution to world population imbalance. However, we decided to table it (perhaps indefinitely) in favor of World Linking for three primary reasons:

1. Time – We felt we needed to improve the world population situation as soon as possible. Any solution that was likely to take 6+ months was off the table.

2. Acceptance – Our two ‘quick’ solutions were World Linking and World Merging. We went with World Linking because we felt players would be more likely to approve it, due to it better preserving the identity of all original worlds, and being more flexible than a more traditional World Merging solution.

3. Complexity – World Linking and World Merging are both fairly easy to understand solutions. This ties back to points 1 and two, but a complex solution would have taken longer to implement, and have been harder to get players to understand and accept.

Links eventually got them thinking about having more smaller sized servers, which could have helped balance out populations by having more pieces to put them together. The players disagreed of course.

Perhaps if they had acted sooner and not wait six months after the expansion to actually fix wvw, and actually went through with the rumored battlegroups, things would have turned out better than links. Just pretty obvious Anet doesn’t not care to spend that much resources and time on wvw for years now.

LetoII.3782:

Used to get a kick out of Blackgate’s TS.
They were of the opinion that Mag had some trick to get extra people onto maps.. As the whole outnumbered excuse wasn’t flying when they queued everything.

I suppose if any server were knowledgeable and experts in that field it would be them.

As for Mag kdr, when you have reset night in which all three server have the same amount of players in ebg, because for sure every server has a queue on ebg for reset. And mag is carrying something like 18+ kdr for ebg alone, that’s not them outnumbering sides, that’s them one pushing enemy zergs.

Stop worrying about their kdr and starting looking at playing better, cause when even mag’s pug zerg with no commander can wipe a guild and their zerg, you have problems to look at.

Dawdler.8521:

Xenesis.6389:

My havoc group use to tackle t3 towers and keeps all the time, but it’s not something that’s doable these days unless the enemy is out to lunch because of the changes from HoT.

So then all your havoc team did was karma training? Because otherwise the rest of ypur post make no sense.

Old T3 towers in the early days of GW2 is pretty much T0 today.

Huh? what the hell is T0?
There’s T1 and then the two upgraded levels.

No we didn’t k-train, we tackled towers that would get to T3 more often than not, namely the north towers in alpines. We also took T3 keeps under under 3 mins, the white swords timer which would open waypoints again in the old days. We did that with 5-8 players but had to resort to using guild catas, golems, and sneaky play to avoid zergs descending on us every time we hit something. It’s not like we had the luxury of 3 other allied groups running around taking stuff.

We use to have a thing called karma train fridays, in which all 3 servers would go to a map take everything in a circle, which meant everything was T1 for the entire day. You really think that scenario wouldn’t happen again by permanently nerfing structures to T1? You won’t break up groups unless you have tags running around leading them, and even that will not happen because it’s easier to flock to more popular tag/commander and run with their zerg. Players won’t even bother with defense if you can get in before they can kill your siege.

P.S You only need to look at reset night when maps are semi-full from all 3 sides, and every structure is T1 status and see how many groups are running around taking stuff. Most times it’s 1-3 groups depending if you’re defending or attacking, but most times of those times it’s one big fat zerg going around.

Level 60 minimum is only on the free to play accounts that require at least one character to 60 to unlock wvw for the entire account.

OP has the expansion, they should be able to enter wvw from level 2 if they can find their way to lion’s arch and through the wvw portals. Or wait to unlock the wvw panel on the menu bar, which I don’t exactly remember when that is, maybe around level 20. You can also get to lion’s arch through the spvp panel, which would port you to heart of the mists, the hub for spvp, and then you can take the lion’s arch portal there.

As for going in wvw under 80, you will always be boosted to level 80 as well as the stats from the gear you’re currently wearing, in fact sometimes you can stack certain stats like power and be able to boost that stat slightly above normal. I believe the lowest you can start getting exotics is from level 30’s.

Just a warning that many players in there are already level 80 and using level 80 exotic/ascended gear runes and sigils, which would give them the advantage in stats, as well as unlocked all their skills and traits, which is also a huge advantage. So don’t be discouraged if you’re getting beat up pretty fast. You can also spend some time in eotm(edge of the mist) to get a feel for easier wvw fighting.

Also since you have the expansion you probably got the free level 80 boost, which would permanently boost one character to level 80, as well as provide you with a full set of level 80 exotic armor/weapons/runes/sigils for that character. The boost can be used as a trial so you can try different classes and see what they are like at 80.

expandas.7051:

More common are the laments of the self-described “fight” guilds fielding 20-odd players in open field and their frustration of always getting “a—jammed” or “blobbed” down by the map zerg of the hour.

I think it is to fair to say that for these players, the influx of players and elimination of many matchup tiers made the possibility of having clean engagements and winning outnumbered fights more difficult- before you factor in arguments about post-HoT skill balance and the like.

Why would you blame links for bringing server population back up what they were just before HoT landed? Getting jammed or blobbed existed years before links. The problems you hear about for smaller groups stem from the changes to combat from HoT, less players are willing to run solo because class balance has become a joke. How many complaints have we heard by now about thieves, mesmers, druids, dragonhunters with broken dps or unkillable specs. It’s harder to get outnumbered kills because of combat changes that made conditions even more cheesier than before, numbers just make it worse, but the situation forces players to run those numbers to win.

I do understand the complaints of those that stayed in the lower tiers in order to get those smaller fights, and how much of a shock it would have been to be thrown into t1 for the first links, because naturally anet would start links off by just folding servers from the lowest populations to the biggest populations. Eredon Terrace players were not happy to be with Blackgate and t1 apparently.

I have made a couple suggestions already to either build separate tiers for each type of player, the blobs t1, the small to mid zergs t2/3, the roamers havocs t4, back when the glicko wall was still around. More recently I have suggested to just take the 3 lowest population servers and stick them in t4 with no links, and then add links to the rest of the servers.

expandas.7051:

Whether it was intended or not the implementation of linked servers knocked down the support pillars of each community that was slowly erased. It removed any incentive for the scouts, roamers, and defenders, sometimes playfully referred to as the “homeland moms” to keep participating.

Your server now existed in name only, and each cycle of relinks only diluted the familiar names you remember. On the flip side, if your community was the guild that you played with then links probably had little or no effect in this regard.

I don’t fully agree with this. There were other changes that killed havoc groups as I outlined in the other post. Scouts and defenders basically got removed with HoT introducing automatic upgrades, sentries, and watchtower. Desert borderlands was a pain that no one wanted to play on, so why would anyone bother building siege and tapping it every hour when the map was empty for the most part? Besides of which the main servers still had their “homeland moms”, why would they quit from links?

Keeping track of siege was a pain since the keeps were basically giant mazes and easy to lose track of siege placements, no one wanted to spend 15 mins running around a keep trying to keep everything tapped. Let’s not forget the stupid decision not to have waypoints in the side keeps other than emergency waypoint. Everyone dog piled into ebg for 6 months which meant zergs were operating in there most times, and people eventually went with that flow.

Roamers were left but they have started to die off because frankly with the changes with HoT and elite specs, it has made it boring and in some situations stupid to bother roaming when 75% of the time you meet a thief or a mesmer out in the field. Do I mention ghost thief here? Havoc sized groups still exist if you really want to call them havoc, more like gankers taking advantage of roamers 4v1.

Guild buying and stacking was already a big thing before links.

Now again I say look at the alternatives to links and tell me it wasn’t the best option at the time. Every other option would have been more damaging to servers and their communities. Does anyone honestly think if links was not done and servers left alone, that we wouldn’t have more of than half the servers dead of players? Even roamers would have been moving up. Links left communities the option to keep running, players just chose not to care anymore that their server name was not in front of another. Communities were already dying before links because of HoT.

expandas.7051:

Not to interrupt the revisionist history nostalgia trip but do you think it would be possible to stay on topic and discuss linkings?

Are you referring to my post? Because I do discuss links in them. If you want to discuss links then what’s your input?

Balthazzarr.1349:

I believe that HoT in itself didn’t hurt WvW. What really hurt WvW was bringing something as big as HoT in while at the same time completely changing WvW with new borderlands that were almost impossible to navigate.

Bottom line to me is that linking seriously damaged WvW more than it helped. Do I have an answer? No I don’t know what the answer would be. So I figured out how to live with what has been done and have some fun again because frankly I still really like this game and the people I know in it

You can believe that if you want, but the desert bl was only part of the problem, the expansion brought a lot more changes that affected wvw badly in the past year and half. We’ve had alpines back for almost a year and wvw is still in terrible condition.

• Guild upgrades moved from base accounts to HoT accounts, upgrades for the wvw part of the grindhall, players were then forced to pve to reacquire those upgrades, of course the bigger the guild the easier that was to do, but it was also time gated with resources. Let’s not forget the expense of scribing. Guild level 37 was required to regain our most important upgrade in the +5 supply aura, who the kitten cares about magic find aura?

• New guild upgrades that broke certain parts of wvw, watchtower, smc airships, smc stealth water, banners, shield generators.

• Guild catapults nerfed in supply cost, this was a staple to havoc groups, but it also allowed zergs to get through walls much faster.

• Elite specs which forced players to upgrade for because they were in every case better than vanilla specs.

• Introduced new broken specs, stat combinations, and runes into the game.

• Trait changes of june 23rd 2015 which were the first step into the revamping of classes and combat for the expansion.

• Stability change which broke melee front lines and turned the game into pirate ship meta for 6 months.

• Combat change to focus more on conditions and boons, which at first produced boon sharing meta for more than 6 months, now still condition heavy with epidemic bombs.

• Desert borderland which was left in for far too long before fixes were made, and alpines returned. Rotation of the maps should have been their first thought when bringing another map into the game, not shoving it down everyone’s throat until players left.

While linking has it’s own set of problems, the alternatives were bleaker.

• Servers left to rot on their own, which they would have, and be in the same state as they are today. I was on Ehmry bay a mid tier server when HoT landed, the expectation for most on that server were there would be a lot of returning players, it didn’t happen. Instead for the next few months activity in the forums and TS went down before links even happened. Once links happened it was pretty much the last call for a few guilds who decided to move up in tiers, the glicko wall was also a problem at the time.

• Merge, which would have instantly deleted half the servers. And frankly with all the movement guilds have made in the past year would have put servers back to square one of being unbalanced in population. Maybe even in worse shape than today, at least we can rotate servers every 2 months to try and fix the damage players are currently doing.

• Battlegroups which would have probably taken 6+ months to implement and possibly destroy every single server and it’s community, depending on how it was implemented.

Identity is one of those QoL things they should have worked on early on, to help those link servers keep some pride and purpose. But at the time I believed links were suppose to be a temporarily solution that they could implement quickly and not months down the road, now it seems like it will be the permanent solution.

At the end of the day, it’s up to players to keep in touch and keep community going. At this point a lot of players have left the game or turned to their guilds as their community for the game.

Dawdler.8521:

Or you could simply nerf fortifications and siege so that small groups are encouraged to spread out, rather than always having ample time to respond to the 2 hours it take to siege something because there are two people inside sitting on arrowcarts making it impossible for anything but a 50 man to do something.

I wish they would make an event week where all objectives are T0 permanently, no superior siege available, but with keep waypoints.

It would be so much fun.

All that will do is promote k-trains. Having easier targets to hit will not spread out groups when it’s easier and faster to take stuff and kill players with bigger groups. The biggest reason to have upgraded reinforced structures and siege, is to delay the enemy from entering until the defending side can muster enough numbers to counter them. You take away both of those and everything will just get run down by zergs. Also siege isn’t a problem if you go the the gate or wall that’s not protected, or I dunno actually not be lazy and desiege the area first or don’t build in dumb areas.

If you want to keep those structures at t1 you need to constantly hit them, which of course would be faster to achieve if you spread your forces on multiple objectives, only thing is most players won’t do this unless there’s a tag up to lead them. This was the biggest value of havoc groups on the map, but they’ve been chased away from the game for the most part by now. My havoc group use to tackle t3 towers and keeps all the time, but it’s not something that’s doable these days unless the enemy is out to lunch because of the changes from HoT.

There’s major trolling potential with this.
Guild A goes in to cap a tower, but Guild B from the same side runs in to help cap, only that puts them over the threshold to kick agony on and start killing everyone.
Guild A goes in to cap a tower, but a group of wandering pugs run in to get the cap too cause Guild A has their commander tag up, only that puts them over the threshold to kick agony on and start killing everyone.

Now you’re also forcing players away from areas and rewards and punishing them when they have no control over how many are in an area at any given time.

If you want try adding negatives to try and keep group sizes under control in certain areas, then I would probably suggest something like reducing player power in an area when they start to stack. So in a tower area if more then 20 players are in there then everyone takes a 5% stat reduction, if it’s more than 30 then 10%, more than 40 then 15%, more than 50+ then 20%.

But overall I’m not really for punishing players that way. As mentioned in the post above, it’ll cause more toxicity and players will turn on each other, guilds will definitely only want to run by themselves.

Trajan.4953:

I appreciate your sentiment and I probably failed to echo it in my original post.

Servers were in terrible shape and something had to be done. Linking IMO had some disastrous effects overall. One cannot just brush off the destruction of communities with a flippant statement. Most communities had websites, councils, war chests, Teamspeaks etc etc etc.

All I can see from the Linkings was a slow ignominious death of proud communities rather than a fast server merge that may have been less damaging in the long run.

Water under the bridge at this point as the whole wvw population has shrunk to a manageable level. Albeit an ever shrinking and unhappy one.

The other alternatives were merging or changing the system to alliance battlegroups which would have destroyed those communities completely by taking away their servers. Links provided an opportunity to keep all the communities, even if half the servers weren’t going to be main servers anymore, but that was up to the players to maintain, communities were always up to the players to build and maintain.

It was either that or let servers die completely on their own, and I believe if left alone half the servers would be dead ghost towns today anyways. Over time we’ve seen players and guilds leave the game and server pride erode, with the stale gameplay catching up to long time players, they started to rely just on their guilds as their community for the game.

I wish we could just go back to vanilla gw2, the first couple years, HoT did major damage to wvw.

Now exactly what condition do you think servers would be in today without linking? Because a lot of them sure as hell were dying before links and already had major guilds moving up in tiers, I can imagine a few of them would have been absolutely dead even in prime time. Even the top tier servers right now look like mid tier servers from two years ago.

Lets not forget a lot of things from HoT has driven away players in the year and half, including combat changes which is the backbone of a fun wvw experience. A lot of people have also been moving as last ditch efforts to make wvw fun for them again.

We can fully blame links for the deconstruction of communities, but I think that was an inevitable direction for many servers anyways. Links also bought those communities time from complete destruction of a merge, it’s really up to players to keep communities going no matter the changes, but as we can see a lot of players chose to move on in and out of the game.

Swagger.1459:

Just curious, why would you submit a ticket on a known issue that has been discussed, and responded to by the devs, many times?

Why would you create a topic about what anet is working on wvw when it’s been known for some time since the last poll and mentioned by the devs a couple times since? And we’ve been told many times they won’t discuss future content.

Aury.1367:

Grimjack.8130:

Aury.1367:

Every spawn has 3 exits, youre only getting marked when going the middle way.

Very not true. I know for a fact you will always get marked going to Danelon from Blue Spawn if Langor has a watchtower. I would assume there are more, I know Bravost “woods” area will mark you unless you cut up the first switchback near the drakes.

No youre not, just pass by Quentin Lake. Also this is about leaving spawn, not heading camps. EB is a different matter. OPs problem are prolly watchtowers on a servers home borderland. As invader you have 3 entrances on ABL.

First of all, the op was talking about EBG spawn towers.

Second of all I’m sure grimjack is talking about going to danelon from blue spawn through langor, in which case you would be marked going around that tower as you’re right below it you don’t have a choice there. Not to mention that guard if it’s the enemies would detect you as well. That side isn’t the best way to go to avoid detection anyways.

The problem is the watchtower area of detection is obviously too wide. Hell NET in alpines use to detect enemies down on the road to NEC. This is a problem that they probably can’t fix since towers have different sizes and heights, unless they figure out the largest one that needs covering and adjust the area for that. The area of detection really just needs to be just beyond the walls, not a kitten mile away from it.

Dawdler.8521:

Look we have already had this discussion.

“Anet please make guilds relevant and encourage small guilds!”

Anet removes all exisiting guilds features and locks them behind a 20K gold paywall

End of story.

Try to get more and you will need a trophy from the Shatterer just to claim a tower (note, trophy is consumed on claiming and has a 2.6% drop chance).

2.6% rop rate? that’s pretty generous.

SniffyCube.6107:

You know what they’re going to do with this right? If they do anything at all they’ll add some bs siege with unlimited hitcap or some Eotm style bs.

cuz they’ve been sooooo in touch with the community over the last few years

You are wrong sir, the expansion will be bringing more bigger sized guild missions.

What? you want to form alliances to 2v1 the winning server?
THIS IS MADNESS! That is not how wvw works!

[5-4-3] 4 lyfe! play for second or go home!

P.S
On a more serious note, I’m all for putting pressure on the top server constantly. I suppose the only way to actually get a proper 2v1 in wvw (focus on the winning server not the losing one) is to force sides to be allies, since players are too lazy to do so on their own by reading the map and scores.

Essentially it comes down to making the third and second place servers “links” of each other every hour. Not sure if anet would be able to do that on the fly every hour, although I suppose they do something like this already with the taunt mechanics, so they can switch player friend/enemy status on the fly.

I would not give players access to either sides of structures though, because my friend for this hour could be my enemy the next hour, and imagine the trolling that will happen with supplies and siege.

It’s Super Adventure Box reward track week for 3 weeks!, what more do you want?

Also, lol friendly fire would be funny for about the first hour, then people will log off for the week in annoyance.

They need to just say kitten it and switch to eotm or alliance populating, cause every day servers are dying. Played on 3 servers over the weekend, well tried to, it’s dead boring now. A lot less commanders to go around these days, 1 tag on 4 maps is depressing. People need to give up on server identity it just isn’t there anymore, need to stop clinging to that while players continue to leave wvw anyways.

Unfortunately that does not work for wvw.

Fantasmer.1032:

Darkness.9732:

I will never buy the expansion. No matter what

No one cares.. really.

You apparently care… you just ress’d an 11 month old thread to say that.

Kite.2510:

“The team that controls Stonemist may now send invaders into other worlds’ dungeons and raid instances. Invaders will be represented by a red glow.”
Sending red Phantom invaders to Fractals would be fantastic… and by giving an excuse to stay near and defend a WvW base for once no less! The odds will always be stacked against the invader as he’ll have to deal with 5 players, and the system could prioritize sending him to instances where the players clearly have the uper hand and are finishing it with little effort. A seasoned pvper will always find ways to make the most against the unprepared.

/snaps fingers
Aw shucks too bad ghost thieves got nerfed, this would have been an excellent time to use them.

Swamurabi.7890:

It should have said, " Entrance into SAB is now in Eternal Battlegrounds"

That would have been hilarious, the general forums would have blown up, permanent queue on that map for 3 weeks.

Flame rams and arrow carts are still around.

You only get credit if they are holding a siege blueprint at the time of death unfortunately.

Incase anyone missed the april fools list
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-1-2017/first#post6542907

WvW

• Now when ArenaNet claims an objective, all players inside the objective are invulnerable.
  * World-linked all worlds in NA to Blackgate and every world in EU to Far Shiverpeaks.
• Killing members of Yak’s Bend will now count toward the Yakslapper title.
• The tides have risen in the Eternal Battlegrounds. All combat is underwater.
• The team that controls Stonemist may now send invaders into other worlds’ dungeons and raid instances. Invaders will be represented by a red glow.
• Epidemic target cap is now unlimited in WvW.
• Siege adjustments:
  Removed trebuchets.
  Removed catapults.
  Removed shield generators.
  Removed ballistas.
  Removed siege golems.
  Halved damage on flame rams.
  Doubled damage on arrow carts.

If that isn’t proof they read the current forum topics I don’t know what is!