Guild Wars 2

Espybuns.1890:

Is there something I’m missing about the whole notion of “server loyalty”? Why does the term hold any value? A server is simply a server; shouldn’t that loyalty be directed to the friends you have on that server instead? If your fun is being compromised by staying on a particular server—or you feel that more enjoyment could be had elsewhere—then for what reason do you have to remain apart from your friends?

Speak to them; convince them that it’s just a bullkitten concept. We paid money for the game; you shouldn’t feel like a certain fallacy should prevent you from enjoying it as much as you should. In the end, it’s quite possible that this meaningless pride is just going to be detrimental in the long run.

Server loyalty is a strange thing. Every one has a choice if they want to leave, and they may feel that their goals differ and they wish to find more like-minded people.

For me, I’ve gotten used to the community, not just WvW but also in PvE. I like seeing the familiar guilds and my guildies around. It’s more meaningful for me to advance with people I’ve come to know and respect.

As long as they stay, I have a reason to continue in Crystal Dessert.

Haydenstar.8142:

We still haven’t reached a final decision yet. We are sad that we have to leave, but ultimately we want a great WvW environment. This week’s WvW in CD has just been very demoralising.

Hayden, if that’s the reason you’re thinking of leaving, would you reconsider? Remember the fun WvWs CD has had in the many weeks prior.

The community didn’t just change. We were never always #1, but we enjoyed great fights and learning from other servers we fought. Even when sieges took 4 hours, we continued on.

This week is an anomaly. CD was left to fight 2.5 servers, and rather than prolong the fight against near impossible odds – I think many felt the same and decided to just speed things along.

All those things you were looking for .. it’s already in CD, and I look forward to WvWing alongside you again!

Toggles.1783:

All these claims about being “WvW” or “pro” or “good” or what have you then the first sign of possible trouble and they leave one after another to either stack up an already strong server that’s winning or they all bandwagon onto a server that will be winning through sheer transfer numbers all the while plugging their ears going ‘nah nah nah nah I can’t hear you over the sound of my PvP excellence’.

Can you believe my guild leader even tried to spin some crap about “knowing true loyalty”? As if I’m having a lack of loyalty because I want to be loyal to the server. hOkay.

Whatevs man, my bottom hurts now and I’m mad.

I haven’t heard of a mass exodus of guilds in CD. 1 has moved, another is looking to move. And when people say 200-300, it’s just the names on the list, not the actual people representing that guild. The actual number might be closer to 20-30 people.

I still bump into the other guilds when I PvE, kill dragons and crawling through dungeons. We have faced overwhelming numbers before and we were quite happy to fight those and guilds stayed put.

FAJita’s size since the merger is definitely overwhelming and not meant for this current tier. A better use of time and resources would be to speed them up to tier 2, like what they seemed to be doing to us in our last match up, until they interestingly gained a large proportion of IoJ’s WvWers.

Once the shift is done, people will return, knowing they can have more meaningful fights.

Crystal Desert is the unofficial server for Singaporeans – we yell ‘Huat ah’ when we’re fighting dragons and then swear in acronyms when we only get blues.

There’s always lots of dungeon running going on and we use our dungeon loot to WvW. All good.

Of course, we also have a very active NA and Eu crew, but I don’t play in those timeslots, so can some NA and Eu players please share your favourite things about CD?

Hey Haydenstar, sorry to hear that Val is looking for a new home. Val’s presence has always been comforting on WvW – because I knew that things would get done with you guys on. I have also had fun supporting you guys whenever I could. Thanks for continuing to fight even when we were severely outmanned and our guilds kept on fighting. With help from Val, CD is where it is now.

I would really prefer if Val didn’t leave. But if your heart is set on leaving, TC should be a good choice. I’d rather you join them than some server full of trolls. You and your guildmates deserve the best and I hope to see TC become Garnished Dessert!

You have to be nice to join TC. :P

Played against TC in WvW and they were challenging to play against. Strong strategy and communication seems to be their key. They were fun in the game and in the forums.

Also played fotm with some TCers because I was in Lion’s Arch overflow. My guildmate and I were a bit slow and died a few times, as we were quite inexperienced. I kept expecting them to rage quit, but they were patient and cool with it.

Then my guild mate received a call for a job interview and they patiently waited for the 5-10 minutes until she was done.

TC is one classy server.

Crystal Dessert was always stronger in Asian/Oceanic times because most of our player base is there. Since then, we’ve had an infusion of NA guilds, which helped balance out our defense across timeslots immensely.

The guilds have always been quite dedicated, often holding out until the next timeslot appears to defend.

However, for some unknown reasons, this week has been quiet during Asian primetime. Complicating the matter, FA has had a huge injection from IoJ, forming the FAJita server, and now probably has the population and coverage of a T2 server. Given some time, they should move up in the ranks to T2 where they belong.

Still, if people enjoy playing in a server that enjoy a balanced PvE and WvW experience, do come and join the server and our guilds. I’d say we’re more similar to the Garnished Toast.

Zoel.9154:

can you imagine the FA/CD/Magoonma thread?
Threadageddon incoming.

Just don’t feed the trolls. If you ignore them, they starve and die. Thank you.

Niim.9260:

With the best of the CD WvW guilds transferred off or in the process of transferring off, it looks like CD will be another unfortunate casualty in the ‘end of free transfers’ stampede Sorry to all the cool people on the server, of which there are many that I danced and hung out with over the last few weeks.

So far KH has transferred to TC. Which other big guilds are planning to leave?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Hey FA, you guys need to talk to Obey, FDIC, and Pro about killing people just doing the JP. I get past the dark room and the arena thanks to DB being kind enough to leave me alone (love you DB) so I can get through, only to get killed by those guilds even after doing the standard /bow command (Note to those guilds, this means the player isn’t going to attack).

Ryu, it’s a PvP zone. If it’s red, people will kill it.

Just the other day, our number of our CD players let 1 FA mesmer past. The FA kicked off our portal mesmer from his perch after getting to the top. That’s what you get for being kind.

I log on, and there’s 10-12 of us vs 2 massive forces of 30-50 (hard to tell with summons/illusions and pets) and I can see a number of people thinking it’s pointless.

So off I go pve. I prefer WvW when the 3 servers have scores between 200-300. Even playing against TC, I don’t remember round the clock coverage this strong. We at least had a fighting chance during Asian primetime.

Will sit it out until FA goes to tier 2/1 where they belong for their size now.

I’ve noticed that our Asian/Oceanic WvW presence has dwindled down, to the point where the NA presence seems stronger. I suspect a combination of factors:

- Some have gotten bored with the game and would only come on when there are special events.
- School has started.
- Chinese New Year is around the corner. There’s lots of preparation to be done, spring cleaning what-not.
- Ungrateful pugs who insult commanders, but don’t bother to spring for upgrades/ siege.

Dolores.5471:

Oh god so many posts!
I feel like someone needs to summarize this past weeks in a few lines, perhaps I could try to:

Great summary Dolores. Like you, I am tired of the posts that keep going around in circles, repeating the same unsubstantiated things.

I miss playing with TC – they always had some good lessons to share and were always game for roleplays etc. That’s something everyone can learn from TC. They got class.

Toggles.1783:

CD has weathered a lot and shown that it has a solid core group of people that I’m happy to share a server with.

I agree. I’ve really enjoyed wvwing with our server. All really great people, and patient too.

Kerithlan.1659:

I’d just like to interject on CD’s behalf here: Tarnished Coast is always full (and one of the first ones to fill up). Most of our population doesn’t participate in World vs World. I imagine the same is true of every server. Population means nothing for the top 15 servers. It’s a matter of getting some of that PvE population into WvW.

That’s a very good point. I have noticed that our dedicated commanders and WvWers weren’t around much in December (e.g. Titan War). They have since returned. My guildmates also preferred to PvE and participate in the festive events during that time.

That’s not to say that we don’t have transfers. A few guilds, such as GoF, have joined CD and they have been a much welcome addition to our WvW crew.

I also noticed an improvement in our defense. Fast responses to requests for help, and our people are splitting off into smaller groups to scout and to do smaller objectives than run with the main zerg. We have people who are willing to spring for siege weapons and upgrades. Also since the comments about commanders leading repairs – that is happening too.

That said, we still aren’t very subtle. We still have pugs who like to attack gates (despite being told not to), which alerts the other servers. Our elementalists could carry focuses for swirling winds to protect our siege. We could also do with more Mesmers, since the time warp skill helps tremendously when using siege. (e.g. in a group of 15 last night, there were only 2 mesmers).

Can we please not talk about which server is more elite, or more strategic. There is no way to resolve the argument, and it’s just a waste of time.

FA and IOJ has shown ingenuity and skill in battle – as has CD. We’ve all got our share of good commanders and newbies. Please just leave it at that. Thanks.

FA – wonderful tactic tonight. Getting the breakout event commander to attack the tower and distract us while you ninjaed Bay with 5 rams. How the hell did you get that up so fast with about 10 people?

Really enjoyed playing against ioj the past match. Its really hard to take territories from you!

Niim.9260:

It is also important to make sure that their effort is not wasted. Nothing like running supplies, repairing walls, taking out trebs hitting tower, setting up siege, protecting its dolyaks, etc and then when it gets attacked no one responds to defend. If your the person that just spent 2 hours of your time away from the fight, gold in upgrades and siege, how likely are you to bother again?

I agree fully with this. It’s very frustrating to make sure everything is upgraded to tier 4, only to have it capped because some rookie commander thinks ‘it can be taken back again’. Some do so, but don’t bother with siege or upgrades so it gets taken away again in a few minutes.

Lack of support from fellow players can make people become jaded, or worse, leave the game.

Hekatombaion.4320:

There are a lot of defensive tactics that CD just isn’t picking up. I’ve seen a few of us doing them, generally coordinated guilds, but we’ve got fairly large gaps between those when it’s just a commander running around with whoever they could scrape together.

In large part I think a lot of our commanders have just stopped trying to do defensive work because when they do tell people to run supplies to repair a gate there’s only two players doing it.

The bigger guilds are great in CD. They coordinate, and aim their strikes. When they are around, CD shines with decisiveness in offense and defense. For example, SMC gets set up lots of trebs, ballistae etc by these guilds, and it would take hours of sieging for either server to finally take SMC.

Unfortunately, once they leave, we are left with newbies who don’t carry any supply or siege. I think all WvWers need to:

1. Carry siege and supply. When under attack, build a cata to repel rams! Put a dent in their golems! Use that freaking oil! IOJ and TC can quickly populate the walls of towers and keeps with ballistae and arrow carts until the zerg can’t even get close to the walls.

2. Commanders can lead the zerg to supply, and bring it back for repairs. I have seen TC and IOJ do this immediately after fending off attacks, and their walls and doors quickly repaired to 100%. If you politely ask ‘can someone repair the walls?’, no one will respond. Neither will anyone stay to repair when they know you are off capping profitable structures.

So yes, there’s a lot of work to defending properly. To magically grant free buffs so you can fight larger, more-prepared and coordinated forces would be the unfair thing to do.

Ohoni.6057:

Oh, yes, I don’t mean to diminish their accomplishments, I just don’t think that aspect of play is good for the game. Players should obviously use whatever tactics ANet allows them, I just think this is a sort of tactic that needs some better limitations or counters.

There are a lot of limitations to this. How many people would willingly switch BLs just to help you build siege? Golems are not cheap either.

Ohoni.6057:

Then IoJ came out of nowhere, and without flipping a single camp they would show up at keep doors with a half dozen golems and roll it over in about thirty seconds per gate. By the time I was packing up for the day they’d managed to take over each of the major locations over the course of about thirty to forty minutes. I know I don’t WvW a whole lot, but isn’t that messed up? I mean, there should be some sort of prep time involved or something.

IOJ’s very good, fast and coordinated with setting up their siege. They also post players to keep a lookout for incoming zergs or siege. This helps their response time and they are giving us a good show of what an upper tier server is about.

For golems, I guess the same principles apply – having siege weapons ready, and having people on the lookout helps tremendously with your defense and response time.

I don’t know what that FA group of 5 is doing. Same thing happened about 8 hours ago. They could easily take their side of the map, but instead, they wander into the west side, and kill lone players.

Happy new year guys!

Cogbyrn.7283:

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

When I left for work today I told Jonnyman to take SMC for me.

Drunk scottsman does not disappoint.

Only a 12K difference between us and CD. You guys sure that’s enough to get you through the weekdays?

It wasn’t last week

CD? Let’s kill IoJ as well. I want both of their dead bodies to litter the ground around my feet.

Last week? Didn’t help that most of our ppl didn’t show, being Xmas and all. Strangely enough, FA population seemed to swell. This week, same thing might happen for New Year’s day. We’ll see tomorrow.

We’d love to hit IOJ when we can, but when we were seiging IOJ yesterday, FA was doing all sorts of funny things, like blocking our keep wp for fun. One group of 5 went into SMC when the wall went down, only to be wiped by both sides.

FA is like a cat. Every time we engage IOJ, FA wants to play, otherwise they just sit in their towers playing with their trebs.

Last I checked, IOJ leading, CD second and FA third. But per tick it’s:

IOJ : ~270
FA : ~270
CD : ~175

I don’t know how to record videos

You do realise always calling for nerfs will just result in a downward spiral of nerfs from developers.. until we’re all fighting each other with fists.

Mian.1945:

The reverse is true in T3. CD are flat out brilliant at supply denial/control and IoJ hasn’t really adjusted to that yet. They manage NPC camps effectively and continuously retake supply camps. They also upgrade more. The flip side is they are much weaker than BG or SOR when it comes to tower/keep flipping. If you saw 20 BG rock up outside your tower, unless you had big reinforcements 2 mins away you were going to lose that tower. With CD you can hold them off much more readily or even bust their siege with a few good pushes and arrow carts. If you pushed out of a keep against BG you’d meet a wall of steel. CD seem to fall back more easily allowing you to hit their siege.

PS: Last few nights Oceanic time CD numbers have been completely bananas, is it always like this? I haven’t seen those sorts of numbers fielded since release day. There have been more than a few fights where I couldn’t see the grass inside the control circle of a camp due to the sea of red name tags.

From experience, CD can hold a seige for hours until the opponents collapse from exhaustion. That’s also why we like to recapture supply camps, so we can build more of the seige that you guys destroy.

Sometimes when Titan is around, watch out for the 10-20 Golem Army.

The crowds are bigger during the weekend, so the hordes should thin down a little during weekdays. We also have a bigger Asia/Oceanic population vs our Europe/US populations.

Stealth is working fine, except for culling.

You’re just annoyed you can’t kill thieves easily when they should be hard to kill. Play a thief, and you’ll understand how easy it is to get killed playing thief.

Has been fun playing with TC and FA. Good luck in Tier 2, TC!

Wait till you run into L69 mobs when you’re in a L15 area.

I like the bell game and snowball mayhem. The puzzle not so much. Try it!

I think troll worked.

Liked the point about commanders getting their group to repair gates and walls. Seeing many new commanders lately – they left whatever they defended without repairing walls or gates. I spent a good half hour trying to repair things by myself while asking for help. The only time people came by to repair was when it was along the way.

Tip to commanders, no pug is going to stay and repair the gate when you’re off capping towers and camps.

I’m very sad to hear the news about TC too. Too bad the major guilds can’t ex-communicate them or something.

Wow, that would be great. I look forward to mowing down whole groups of 40+ with glass cannon build, 8-10 stacks of might, culling and spinning dagger.

Jan.4830:

But Zergs learn over time that some shineys get your killed, and other shineys get you karma, and badges, and points.

I agree. Most people would know within a few moments if someone is worth following. If not, then they can learn after they get killed a few times.

You, sir, have excellent rhyming skills.

Maybe TC and CD should merge. We can call it Garnished Dessert.

Appledainty gave out ruminant tonics to all who participated, regardless of server, so people could all walk together as Yaks, in celebration of the respect we held for each other.

FA came, apparently, not just with people, but with ballistas, and they butchered the herd. I think many participants chose not to fight back for fear of hurting the other participants in this peaceful walk.

Regardless, I thought it was very meaningful that the participants could put down their weapons after a week of WvW to walk in solidarity. Gives me hope that people like that exist all over the world.

CD, TC or Ehmry are good communities for you.

I play on CD, which is mostly Oceanic and European. We do have a NA presence but it could be improved. We also have several strong guilds, most of which will pay for upgrades, siege etc. Our commanders are competent and getting better every day.

TC and Ehmry are stronger in NA times. Their players come across as more mature than some of the servers I have faced, and both are very good with , defense strategy and tactics.

You may want to spend a week with each before deciding.

Don’t know if many of you know about the WW1 (yes, before WvW, there was World War 1) Xmas truces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

To me, the Dolyak walk was like the Xmas truce. In the spirit of Xmas, it was to show that despite fighting each other, we respect each other. Especially TC, which has been a great server to fight and learn from.

And I’m very saddened to hear that FA knew about it, and instead of taking the opportunity to capture towers and keeps, which is the aim of WvW, they decided to grief people who were inspired by the Dolyak Walk.

I respected FA to a certain level before, but now it seems like you guys are more similar to Magooma.

I like the post-WvW march with the Yak. I think FA and TC have been wonderful opponents. Also, it’d be nice to walk alongside each other in peace and harmony to mark Wintersday.

Diehard.1432:

Just want to say that I am enjoying the Tier 3 so far. Props to both FA and TC for giving us a good fight. T4 (Mag and Ebay) was just too easy for us, and they cried a lot when they were outmatched. I hope Yak’s Bend can cope with all the whines

Popped by the current topic, Ehmry bay isn’t participating in the forum QQing at all.

Just keep setting an example, I’ve learned. A month ago I felt like I was the only one on the server bothering with it. Even on my own it bought our groups a significant amount of time. Elementalists in my guild caught on, and now we’re regularly chained to trebs and keep walls like slaves. Pubs end up cluing in not long after, though the awful wages and living conditions usually deter them.

I can see it being nerfed some time in the future, honestly. That will be a sad day. I think it adds a certain element of strategy, as it is, which is a good thing. Plus, there’s nothing more satisfying than catching four treb shots in a single block. Nothing.

Yup, it looked so good when TC blocked all our trebs, it inspired me to create my ele just to do that, but still low-level and squishy.

This was the same reason I mentioned in my previous posts, that CD-FA alliance would benefit TC as a whole. It’ll help us get out of our safe zone and learn to defend on both fronts and push the enemy. We’ll have a chance to learn new tactics. And if things work out well for either servers and actually close the gap and manage to push us to 2nd place, we’ll learn from what we did wrong and improvise in the next matchup. Or if we manage to stay on top, we’ll have an increased morale and momentum and atleast stand a chance to maintain ourselves in T2 if we get there.

Not sure if CD has that much to share, since you guys are obviously advanced in your tactics. One of which is using ele focus skill 4 to protect siege and keep walls. I don’t know why our eles hardly ever do that. We just sit there and let the siege get hit by other ballista.

Kerithlan.1659:

I love how this entire topic has devolved into pot shots against Tarnished Coast. And here I was about to complement our opponents for keeping us busy in our EB third all morning/afternoon. Typical.

Its not the whole forum. The conversation so far has been civil and respectful, except for one or two QQ posters.

Kudos to the CD NA crew as well, very fun and challenging to play against. Your asian zerg, on the other hand…I’m sure you guys have heard enough about them =D God bless their spirit, but they play like they are still in tier 4.

You may wish to commend the guilds directly, rather than NA/Asian, as those guilds may comprise players from different regions.

Yaks Bend and Ehmry both have more mature players, and good strategies. Was enjoyable playing against them, win or lose.