Guild Wars 2

I’m not trying to bash on your argument here, but some clarifications do need to be made.

Invictus.1503:

In addition she has supposedly seen and understand the great alchemy itself.

In some interview with a dev it’s stated that was a hallucination. I can’t find the dev interview, but I do have one post where the legendary Konig reminds us of it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/tower/Why-I-think-Mordremoth-is-next/first#post3079408

Invictus.1503:

Perhaps she was able to convince the Krait she is an emissary of their prophet (or even the prophet herself).

Plausible, one thing is she isn’t a Krait, bringing us to:

Invictus.1503:

Krait are shapeshifters after all and I’m sure she could change her own appearance if needed.

She isn’t a mesmer (don’t worry I thought she was one two until the friendly folks on the lore forum corrected me), she’s an engineer.

Invictus.1503:

The best way to get such a zealot group like that to do what you want is to convince them they are doing their god’s (or in this case their prophet’s) will. In the end, that supersedes just about anything for a group like that.

I can completely agree with that. The question is: how? Or at least “how?” without having a lame excuse? The only thing is I don’t want to see that happen because the Krait are one bad-kitten race and I don’t want to see SB dragging them through the mud.

My argument wasn’t that SB won’t be involved (in fact I pretty sure she will be); it was that either: established lore is going to be contradicted -or- there is going to be a weak explanation for it.

Let’s put this in GW2 terms. We don’t necessarily need to refer to The Witcher.

More of this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait#Culture

Slaves are penned in small chambers at the top of the structures until it is time to be eaten or sacrificed. […] The light from the slaves cooking fires serve as warning to passing ships to be wary of the krait below.

Less of this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Canach

[…] accidentally instigated the karka […] force to aid the Lionguard […] because of the hardships he went through while being hunted down […] he left for the island to aid the refugees

Qawsada.4251:

[…]

While I agree with all that you said, here’s the reality: Thaumanova will be about Scarlet Briar or at the very least another do-goody-two-shoes Sylvari. If it’s not Scarlet or Canach another Sylvari will be created for the fractal. Do I like that fact? No. I accept it and move on – just like I ignore trolls in map chat; I ignore Sylvari NPCs.

My prediction: Scarlet was studying at the reactor as part of her course at the Rata Sum colleges. Edit: It blew up during her attempt to see the eternal alchemy due to the power draw of the experiment.

Azure Prower.8701:

Why is she so popular?

She isn’t. People do the content associated with her for one or more of the following reasons:

• Farm loot
• Farm levels
• Farm achievement points
• Farm exclusive items

A hand puppet would be just as popular in that regard.

How about an icon and a decimal number.

Morrigan.2809:

since when are numbers not easily identifiable at a glance?

I think he might have been referring to roman numerals.

Astralporing.1957:

Um… Her idea of “indirect manipulation” seems to be “they work for me, because they want to live”. She’s hardly subtle. And that should not work on krait.

Exactly, the Krait would blindly fight a superior force (The Pact, anyone?) than kneel down before them. Let alone one person. They wouldn’t even do it with the intention of eventually stabbing them in the back.

To be completely honest I watched the video and it was unquestionably not an SB voice over, she may be involved in the thing but that is entirely conjecture on our part. The specific wording of the “dark allies” (and I forget what it was) really didn’t indicate that it was SB’s cronies (MA, AB, take your pick).

I’m going to take the safe route and say I really don’t know. The video and the article has far too little information about whether it’s SB involved or not. Either way if SB is involved I am going to stop caring about lore-related stuff: the Sylvari are retconning established lore left, right and center.

Rym.1469:

mad salad lady

I remember suggesting that giving us a salad person to hate might fix our perception of the Sylvari. I was wrong. While ANet have done a lot of good with this game, that race is completely broken – while I always try to provide constructive feedback I simply can’t see how that race adds anything to the lore/game at all. /rant

Nightsong.5973:

Here’s the thing… we don’t know what Mordremoth’s powers are.

There’s the theory that the nigtmare court are a demonstration of her power. I guess green glowies would defeat that theory.

I was talking about the next dragon with a guildie last night and from a practical or logical standpoint Kralkatorrik really made the most sense: of all the dragons only two have made very significant changes to the landscape, have/had lieutenants roaming the skies (look up in Blazeridge Steppes), aren’t too far away (Jormag), have an entire race of Dwarves fighting them (Primordus) or haven’t even been seen at all (Mordremoth and Bubbles). We defeated one of those dragons already.

Sirius.4510:

The hardest part about skritt would be translating stuff like… um… this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/A_Sad_Duty#Dialogues
…to skritt-ese. How do you take them seriously there?

On the contrary if the skritt are silly their entire storyline and morbid in that one instance it would add an immense amount of weight to it. At the moment that part of the storyline is very weak, I didn’t feel sorry for Ceera at all.

Narcemus.1348:

Not to mention the fact that the Aetherblades are allied to the Inquest, and I’m pretty certain that a bunch of pirates aren’t creating the ships, but they are instead most likely getting them from their Inquest allies (I refuse to believe that they stole thousands of pact airships without the pact wanting some retaliation against them).

Proof of your theory would be the hologram projectors in the numerous aetherblade instances we have been to. I’ll go with your one: Asuran tech with a tendency toward the air element.

As for the steam, not sure – maybe something to do with the steam creatures.

Drakkon.4782:

I’d love to see the Skritt as playable, specifically because of the

Not really on-topic but I have always loved the Skritt because as a race they break the fourth wall and are a reference to players’ tendencies (“shinies” are not that different from “loot bags”).

Serelisk.6573:

spoj.9672:

Its not scarlet. Its obviously the krait witch or something doing the narration. Sounds nothing like scarlet.

In the video, they mentioned dark allies, which is why I don’t believe it’s just the krait

It was the Quaggans that were evicted from WvW at the same time. Yes. The Krait and the Quaggans are now in cahoots.

Edit:

mentioned dark allies

Being unable to watch the video right now I’ll take that as an actual quote from the video; and in all seriousness it would lead me to believe it might be the largos. Players have been begging for more content about them (remember that in the personal story you were only helped by one, on top of that, the single largos was culturally obliged to help Trahearne). I don’t find them too fascinating but they really seem like the logical conclusion here.

Tower Of Nightmares

Antitoxin Spray will cleanse yourself and nearby allies of poison, torment, confusion, and toxin

Wait wait, what (emphasis mine)? Are we getting another condition? It can’t be a typo for poison as that’s listed.

That, or it will be a dungeon-specific condition.

Of course SB is back, she will be in the game for the duration of the LS. Accept it and move on. I can see her rallying the other races to her cause, but the Krait are so xenophobic that we are going to have to see some major official retconning or explanations.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Step 1: Find blob standing on the edge of a cliff shooting at another blob.
Step 2: Stealth up behind blob on the cliff.
Step 3: Use Mesmer GS #5 (or something similar).
Step 4: Watch blob all die from falls.

“Fear Me”’d at least 8 people off that land bridge in hills once. It was a glorious moment that lasted the few seconds it took the rest of the zerg to turn around and teach my kitten a lesson.

1: Guardian minizerg
2: Line of Warding or Shield of Absorption
3: Play pinball near cliffs

Just keep salvaging. Not only for the luck but also the mats. Then craft yourself an ascended weapon.

On Aurora Glade legendaries are a dime a dozen – everyone has one (yes, yes, I know this reinforces your belief that you have bad luck but hear me out). These people all seem to come from massive guilds – which means they are probably farming precursors for each other (spreading out the RNG increases your chances); so individually they all have rotten luck, together they dont (the irony here is that legendaries were supposed to be a ‘personal experience’). Furthermore after seeing so many legendaries they have basically lost their “bang” for me: unique exotics are great if you want a good looking weapon and ascended isn’t that far off of a legendary in terms of damage.

Personally, if a precursor dropped for me I would probably sell it without hesitation at this point – I just really don’t see legendaries as anything special.

deathklock.4961:

even after they said it wasnt a good idea

I do remember them saying that. I stuck around on my original server (AG, Silver League) and while the queues are dreadful compared to what I am used to; they aren’t the end of the world. I just join the Queensdale champ train while I wait and make some easy gold.

Vieteriukko.6075:

I want an alternate way to PVE to level up my alt for WWW use. PVE leveling tomes with glory comes into my mind.

I couldn’t agree with this more.

That, and some decent account bound PvE/WvW armor that can be bought with glory.

While I would like to see gold/gems that will attract too much unhealthy play.

WilliamDaBloody.2591:

Technically it would be no problem to have 100K of players on a map not showing a single noticeable skill lag (not talking lag in rendering though). It could be as smooth as when you are alone on a map all the time.

Eve Online probably has one of the finest pieces of server coding there is, and even they had to resort to a weird variant of Python and time dilation in order to pull off 60K . While 60K is a very different number to the 200 we see in-game do not forget that GW2 is a very different beast to the MMOs that came before it (and that the nature of Eve allows the servers to hand off players to each other in the much the same way that cellphone towers do).

I challenge you to write an actual MMO server. While I am sure you have experience in distributed systems (the only other area outside of MMOs that is genuinely massively parallel is real time trading, so I’ll assume you have experience in that field) games blow absolutely everything out of proportion. Even CPU cache hits/branch mispredictions become important when it comes to games – the rest of the development community can blissfully ignore issues like that for the entire careers and never have a problem.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Only problem is the clocktower is surrounded by water. And there was nothing surrounding it last year when I was looking around. You say me getting outside the area and swimming around was not intended?

Given that it is the mists and that Thorn has acquired a certain amount of power over the realm (the aforementioned projections) this itself could also just be a projection – which would explain the water/acid level issue. The real castle could be somewhere else (if he has one at all in the underworld).

Either way the mists is horribly inconsistent with water levels, leading me to believe that we shouldn’t worry about it too much (there might be some explanation for it that we are unaware of).

*Grabs experimental teleportation rifle.

I really think that 90% of the rage that players have when infrastructure problems happen is because we don’t get absolutely zero acknowledgement about it (EU, not sure about NA). That and queues, nothing you can do about that right now – any reasonable player will realise that it’s just reality.

Even I was induced to rage because I didn’t know what was going on. Did our opponents have an advantage? (last I heard from a guildie who stayed online for a bit longer was the enemy was still holding strong blobs in WvW) Or did the whole of EU go down?

You guys have a twitter account, it doesn’t take long to have someone quickly say “The whole of EU has gone down – we are working on it.” You don’t necessarily have to tell us why (although doing so would make us trust you more), just let us know there is a problem as save us the hassle of running diagnostics on our connections.

Really guys, everyone is transparent about down time – not only games. Ignoring down time doesn’t make it go away – when it happens there are thousands of players affected by it. We do notice it. Tell us that you have noticed it and are sorry – not a day later, the very minute you see it happen.

Edit: Down time is reality. Feeling bad about it is a healthy attitude, users (players) should be mature about it. Just don’t sweep it under the carpet: it’s insulting (to me at least).

sostronk.8167:

I am still completely oblivious as to why they don’t just reduce the map cap to reduce the server load.

Because people keep complaining that they should increase the cap.

Ah, if it was all of us then I guess kitten happens xD.

Thing is one of my guildies didn’t get kicked immediately and he said the other servers were still blobbing us. So it looks like it was just Aurora Glade.

Title got censored for some reason: all of Aurora Glade got kicked

Basically all of us got kicked from the game (and therefore WvW). How will this affect the WvW league?

Or do we just deal with it?

Simple: a terrorist.

They wouldn’t really have personality because you wouldn’t ever interact with them directly – you would only see him/her through the typical brief videos/holograms. An Asuran with a device that can cloak everything in darkness (read: your entire screen goes black for a few seconds) – the device has a chance of activating during all dynamic events (except for really difficult ones like Tequatl). That would get the villain under the players’ skins.

Kal Spiro.9745:

If I’d known it was a one shot deal I wouldn’t have taking it for medium armor.

Me too – I’ll try get support to put it back into a chest for me.

I think I also heard this one from WP. Either way something in your post (not sure what it was) got me thinking.

We can agree that Mordremoth is the nature element dragon. An interesting thing about nature is that it takes its time to get around to things. There is an argument that says that we don’t see trees as real living things because they outlive us on an order of magnitude, but they are living. In the same way we might be missing the point (in-character in-Tyria) that Mordremoth is on the move, simply because she is taking her time. Psychological warfare is completely plausible as a slow and reliable way to get things done.

So there you go, another reason to think that Mordremoth is behind the nightmare court – it’s completely in-character as to what you would expect nature to do. Additionally it’s also rather interesting that Mordremoth would corrupt the Sylvari first, considering that that have a closer “attunement” to her element.

If the theory is solid it also means Mordremoth is likely not going to be the next dragon we see: at the time we become “very aware” of her she will likely be behaving much in the same way that Primordus is – nightmare sylvari roaming around the landscape like destroyers currently are; or maybe not – it depends how much time she chooses to take. We may find (or rather, I hope) the entire Pale Tree sylvari race corrupted and another tree working to cull them.

I hope it doesn’t only include T1 feedback otherwise we are just going to see more zerg meta.

I think the JP is too easy for SAB TM veterans.

For the rest, however…

I would have really liked a “hard mode” for clock tower, but it’s still pretty fun (even though it’s completely unrewarding).

PvE:

1) Maps – whether it be new ones or freshening up existing ones (e.g. timberline falls – which is a ghost town).
2) RNG Death – getting rid of the situations with certain bosses where you will be killed no matter what you do (e.g. AC spider queen, run out of endurance, get hit by the immobilize, get hit by the AOE – happens more often than you would think).
3) Reward Balancing – rewards for certain things are completely out of whack. E.g. the amount of empyreal stars you get from the southsun JP with the steam vents.

PvP

1) GvG
2) Alternate game modes and how they would be released
3) Spectating needs to be a first-class citizen in PvP. At least if you plan to continue the eSports idea.

WvW

1) Commander tools
2) Penalties for zerging
3) Achievements for future leagues

General

1) Tengu
2) Tengu
3) Tengu

This thread is probably more of a suggestion thread than anything.

I have been thinking a lot about the new playable race and what they might be. At this point the people on this forum probably pay attention to this stuff and can likely not need me to find an ANet quote saying that a new race is coming “some time soonish.” Personally I am a massive fan of the Tengu, birds for some reason makes me think of ancient and wise – which intrigues me for some reason.

Let’s start with the fan favourite. Kodan. I personally like this idea far less than a wild pig becoming a playable race – I want more questions than answers. The Kodan (from what we know) are merely the genetic ancestors of the Norn. Boring. For the same reason I dislike Cantha – I can always play GW1 to go there (that’s a different argument entirely though). The concept of explanation is far less interesting than expansion – look at WoW: when they were on their last leg they brought out a new race with a completely new lore (the pandas). While I personally think WoW is pathetic, I can’t argue with that decision to re-ignite interest in the game. Either way, people will vote for the Kodan in the same way they voted for Kiel. Just avoid these guys – we don’t need more Norn – I would be seriously impressed if you could logic them into the storyline because I can’t. Your Lore forum is as active as it is because you keep leaving stuff open to interpretation, this is closing off that possibility.

The second fan favourite is Tengu. It seems as though these guys were the plan all along – pay very careful attention to where the Dominion of Winds is: it’s a great starting area (even if they have to use/abuse their neighbours further levelling). They have enough space for 1-15 and 15-25. The Tengu in terms of GW2 are very much shrouded in mystery, trying to decide who to form an alliance with. It’s a really solid premise with which to form a personal storyline. They have a lot of room to go wherever you might want to take them.

I might venture to say the Largos may be the third favourite. We know little more than ~2 instances about them so ANet would have a lot of flexibility with them. That being said, a lot about them was divulged during those few encounters. I’m not convinced that a viable storyline could be made that wouldn’t violate their ethos, maybe it could.

And then my personal favourite troll race: Krait. Man I love these guys. It’s a great way to integrate a darker aspect into the game (with the current happy-go-lucky Sylvari issue). I mean, they have slaves fighting over air bubbles they have created. So evil. It would make such a great storyline because of the conflicting nature of it: “kill all aliens” followed by “we can use the aliens to our advantage to ease our problem of the dragon.” You wouldn’t necessarily have to remove them as an enemy because you could be playing a sympathiser portion of them (Kryta vs. Bandits anyone? Except this time you are the equivalent of the bandits). Easily explained again out of the story in a book between GW2 and GW3 (the backstabbed the other races, as you would completely expect – Trahearne being too much of an idiot to see that coming, which he is, join in your fan hatred and discredit the guy).

The main question is, how do you integrate a new personal storyline? ANet has this issue whereby expansions within the same era are chronologically stable. GW2 happens at the same time as GW2+new race. They might be in cahoots with Jennah or Trahearne, or not. At the end of the day the original playable races never heard of them because they were working behind the scenes – helping out the others without actually interacting with them (or partially, treaties and so forth that the original PCs didn’t know about). For example, one of the missions could be fending off a certain amount of enemies during the siege of fort trinity. The storylines can be completely different up to a certain point in the storyline (even after Victory or Death).

Finally, this provides a great way to break free of Trahearne. The fanbase hates him, give it up. I would even go as far as to say break the fourth wall and make the new race despise him as well (explaining why they avoided him and the pact).

Thoughts?

lordkrall.7241:

Why are you assuming that Scarlet will be the main villain for all Living Stories?

• They would have to make another distinctive Sylvari to replace her.
• They said TA3 should be chronologically stable no matter when you play it. While they could logic themselves out of that situation (it’s only holograms, or something) it’s far easier to just keep her around.

Atlas.9704:

BobbyStein.2315:

Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Nevah! I shall not move along! I’m liking what I see.

I’m going to JP my kitten up the thing and proceed to AFK up there.

Seras.5702:

Seems the bosses hit MUCH harder now, making it very difficult to stay alive with my <80 alts. Anyone else?

I’m levelling my engi, and seeing as upscaled engis are so kitten ed overpowered I can’t confirm this for you. Just carry a ranged and melee weapon. Ranged for the legendaries and melee for everything else and you will be fine.

An repair station would have been nice though. A nice way to tie it in would be to have us do a quick personal mission that helps a repair merchant get into the labyrinth.

Exosferatu.2961:

kill Trahearne in the process.

All of a sudden I support this proposition.

Konig touched on it. Sylvari are very much the reason GW2 was made in the first place: all the lore puts them in a central and pivotal role in some way. Other races are probably going to continue to be completely insignificant for the duration of GW2 era (accept it, learn to hate the Sylvari, and move on). Things like dragons, gods etc. are a very remote possibility.

Additionally it’s simply not within the reach of the psyche built into EDs. They are here to consume magic. Even while you were effectively tearing off Zhaitan’s eyes and mouth he was still out to get you. From what we have been shown EDs are absolutely single-minded in their goals.

Also branded are not undead: there is probably no reason you can’t have an undead branded (heck, we even have branded elementals – which aren’t necessarily living in the first place). Joko’s forces would be immune to Zhaitan, at best.

g e o.2589:

Mak.7625:

Oh my god…wood logs sink……….

If you stick them in piles OF COURSE

Not only that, but also artistic license. Imagine completely silent Star Wars space fights – yeah not too interesting. If they were just piled up on the shore it their position wouldn’t be significant.

A story is being told: not a physics lecture.

Rage.9723:

Beat it three times in a row really easy.

That’s because you are clearly a TM player :P .

It’s definitely not worth farming (5 in-a-row got me 17 bags, I did notice better returns after repeated success although that might have been RNG coincidence). I’m probably going to do it on my other characters for the skins and then leave it alone.

When I first entered it I asked what the point of the PvP was. Obviously I got trolled – “The first position get 5g.” For a troll attempt that’s actually a pretty good idea (maybe not as much as that, but 1g could be nice).

Initially I had a “lol wtf” reaction to the achievements. I have been giving more thought to them.

Some servers (look, I’m from AG so this one is close to home) have problems with drawing in PvE players. The next problem is that when PvE players do come in to WvW they are usually an outright liability. The existence of the achievements will be an attraction to the PvE players, but they also mostly show these newbies how to contribute in WvW.

• Camp Crusher – supply denial, excellent. PvE players will probably start off trying to solo them and will quickly learn that doesn’t always work. They will form parties and, bang! Roaming harassment.
• Sentry Capturer Extraordinaire – I guess the sentries won’t be killing dollys. Or something.
• Castles in the Air – people’s opinions of SM tend to vary. This one happens to coincide with my own: SM is designed to be conquered not held. It will also teach the PvErs how to follow the zerg.
• All other capture achievements – again, teaches PvErs to join the organised efforts.
• Jumping Puzzles – well… I guess some extra siege couldn’t hurt? Bleh.
• Supplies Severed – this will not only teach PvErs about dolly slapping, but also WvWers. Really we could all do better at this and I applaud this one.
• Guard Slayer – no real purpose. This is an “automatic achievement:” you will get it by just playing in WvW.
• ? Invasion Defender – Teaches players about how effective zerker gear is in WvW. Us regulars will probably get through this one quickly in the first few days before the rest realize that they need survivability.
• Big Spender – When the PvErs realize that their zerker gear is useless they will get this achievement while they fix that.
• Mists Merc Camp Vanquisher – I struggled to remember what this was. Pointless. Maybe I will finally get those skill points :P .
• Master of Ruins – Depends entirely how you feel about the ruins. Either way this will teach people to party up and roam.
• Seasonal Mists Defense Restorer – Might cause supply exhaustion issues for commanders. Also open to players intentionally ignoring siege so that they can finish the achievement. At least it makes people aware of repairs.
• Did you notice there are no siege placed or supply spent on siege achievements? Everyone always complains about the bad stuff, but imagine they put these in? We really should really commend ANet for getting this right.
• I would have honestly replaced the mercenary camps with dolyaks defended (maybe 20-30 for achievement completion?). Yeah, yeah, the achievements are probably set in stone by now.
• Instead of the JPs maybe stuff like 20 players stomped, have 25 stacks of might, 500 minutes spent under the effects of nourishment, blast a water field and enter a portal.

We have achievements that mostly guide the PvErs into constructive play in WvW. I think the first few days are going to be an outright nightmare (mostly because of the sheer amount of zerker builds we are going to see) but as time goes on people will learn how to play WvW. Some of the PvE servers might even see some some of that population helping out in WvW in the long term.

I am going to wait and see how PvErs actually react to this stuff. It might work out well for us all.

Thobek.1730:

timberline falls

Although it’s my favorite area in the game it’s usually deserted – meaning that there would be the very real possibility that nobody would actually notice the new content.

Either way I am sure it will all be explained in the next LS. I think it might have to do with who is there rather than where there is: basically, the champion Krait Witch.

Also, having it right under our noses is a way to let us know we should start looking out for (or searching for) this kind of stuff. Now that we know they might be doing this type of stuff you might find more people head out and look for teasers after a LS update (if they keep doing this, which I hope they do).

Imagine trying this for the first time, putting the tower in the middle of nowhere and then nobody notices it by the time the LS appears: that would be a massive waste of time/money and a missed opportunity. They are teaching us first, then challenging us.

hedix.1986:

Marjory Delaqua […] back yay!

After going through the Bloody Prince’s dialog and thinking, “Yes ANet! More of this!” and then you bring back Marjory it’s starting to feel like my birthday. Can’t wait to get home and go see what she has to say.

More of all of this ANet, really. I don’t know what you decided to change in your creative process but the change is good: really good.

If you do this type of stuff to Scarlet you will probably fix her bad reputation with all of us. Just keep doing what you are doing right now.

Konig, one interesting thing you mentioned is the known fact that “dragons can’t corrupt the Sylvari through death.” From only what we have been told (excluding theories) is this the exact idea, or is it more along the lines of “dragons can’t corrupt the Sylvari – full stop?”

The wording is important, the one allows for a loophole the other does not. I really don’t personally know because I haven’t found the will-power to run through a Sylvari personal storyline (I just can’t handle them, it’s painful).

I really like you write-up Konig. Good thought-provoking stuff.

Morsus.5106:

I don’t get where all this “frustration” is coming from. I ran it for maybe 45 mins, and didn’t feel frustrated. I actually laughed pretty hard when I died some of the time. Maybe I didn’t play it long enough but I actually enjoyed it.

I also think it might be the down-time between attempts. JPs like this are something where you really need to build muscle memory – and sitting around for 3-4 minutes gets in the way of that.

I really did appreciate how you broke the fourth wall during the Bloody Prince’s monologue about his father (when he criticizes the players for enjoying King Thorn’s events so much). It was bloody brilliant.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the story you guys came up with so far. Make more use of John!

Edit: for those who don’t know what the fourth wall is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall

Like

• A really nice challenge and very rewarding (at an accomplishment level) when you complete it.
• The building getting in the way of your camera at the end creates a massive amount of tension. Quite satisfying.

Dislike

• I’m not sure what the PvP aspect is there for. Someone told me that you get 5g for winning it, and having just won it by a very large margin I got nothing – not sure if I got bugged. I know, except for the trick-or-treat bags.
• If you mess up you really sit around and wait. 2 – 3 minutes doing nothing while you could be training your muscle memory on the clocktower.
• When the match ends the game even starts nagging you about being AFK.

Suggestions

• If the PvP really serves no purpose (i.e. there is no reward for winning), scratch it – and in that case you might as well make it a solo instance.

I waited so long for a round that I got the AFK warning.

Edit: Just got into 5 clocktower “matches” in a row where it was in the final “wait for the score” stage.

Space.8053:

Underworld – The weakest on paper. Much depends on thier ‘Very High’ server population and if they can entice their larger PvE playerbase into WvW to cause an upset or two.

I see a lot in UW that I saw in the early-days of AG. They might pull a rabbit out of a hat for this one and while they might not win; I am expecting to see them upset some of the predictions. I’m actually holding thumbs for them because I have a lot of respect for them as an opponent.

Other than that I really can’t disagree with your breakdown: we have relatively few blob servers (only one major offender and some minor offenders) so the fights should be mostly interesting.

Should be fun!

Cormac.3871:

Can’t get the link to work properly, but here is the most interesting GW2 player in the world:

http://s.quickmeme.com/img/88/882f58ae05de6e9fce4c8cc5c953778969b1077038ee6c521d7262495b016f15.jpg

Never a truer meme.

Funny that the very thread that’s indicating how to take criticism isn’t providing it. “On getting criticism” implies being offered criticism in the first place. Outright insults and “your patch broke everything and is just stupid” is not criticism.

This thread is like teaching a person how to eat when you haven’t given them any food in the first place.

grave of hearts.7830:

Hate to rain on your parade,but lets all remember the big golden rules that break wvw.
AoE is limited to 5 enemies.

This depends entirely on how the AOE works on each tick. For example, Veil can be used on an entire zerg because it affects each person as they run over it (and the others have since passed through and no longer count toward the cap). I guess some experimentation should be done with static fields to see exactly how the enter/exit mechanic works interacts with the AOE limit.

That’s all irrelevant though: even if the static field only hits one player it has still done something. A small difference is very different to no difference. Additionally, if two 80 man zergs meet (and are extremely coordinated/disciplined and are stacking) and each of those 80 players drops an AOE in the correct position the other players will on average take the same amount of damage as if they were not in a disciplined group – similar to what Tequatl does to the attacking zergs (this never happens in reality because nobody coordinates AOEs).

Furthermore, the only part of his argument that is questionable is the “choke points”, “static fields”, “concentrated AOE” bit. “discipline”, “coordination” and “tactic” have a massive difference.

Maybe my opinion is biased because our PUGs are slightly above average at discipline, coordination and tactics (they are forced to be because our individual groups are nearly always outnumbered).

grave of hearts.7830:

There are a ton of goofs in the system that favor the mindless zerging,and tactics discipline and landscape knowledge cant compete with those.

I’ll leave this right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDuzRJ7uY2w

It might be “considered bad” because it usually doesn’t work. Mostly because of erratic variables/players that are not part of the “official server community.”

If you group up with another server chances are they will back-stab you, intentionally or not. E.g. Sunday night AG Garri was being tag-teamed for a few hours. We did ultimately lose it, but during that time AM’s BL became ER territory – they capped the lot.

Too risky to be viable, even if you add incentives – I’m not sure how you would eliminate that risk either.