WvW Thoughts

[Ingmar]

Sport PVPers are already not WvWing for the most part I suspect. The crowd that WvW attracts is a different bunch of people.

Point being, the people who would leave WvW for this, already left. WvW is not going to empty out for this.

[Nebu]

Sport PVPers are already not WvWing for the most part I suspect. The crowd that WvW attracts is a different bunch of people.

Speaking personally, WvW felt much more like a PvE raid or a board game than typical PvP in an MMO.  Not saying that in a bad way, just wasn't my cup of tea. 

[tazelbain]

Point being, the people who would leave WvW for this, already left. WvW is not going to empty out for this.

Rendering bugs, night capping, and bad scaling on the other hand....

[Ingmar]

The only one of those that will keep most people out is the rendering/culling bugs, which are indeed really obnoxious. The average player does not give a shit about night capping as long as he has people to fight during his own playtime, and the gear scaling will cease to be an issue in the long term.

[Venkman]

This is one of the first MMOs to come along in a very long time where I thought I'd be playing for more than a few months before the next shiny. But it's giving me all the WoW/Rift/TSW yayas without a fee to keep me from over analyzing my investment (though I did an /age and realize I put more time in the last four weeks than in all three Mass Effects and most expansions... but who's counting?!)

I bring that up because the implications of their focus on ePvP rev generation will only become obvious many months from now. In any other MMO, I probably wouldn't care. But with one I like so much but which is also young enough to make a considerable course change (rather than pull a TSW-style oh-shit-now-what), I could see myself being one of those "wtf did you change <class> <ability> to make it <broken|gimped> in PvE just for your little PvP players?!"

Bookmarking for posterity 

[MediumHigh]

WvWvW was always meant to be "casual" but as Ingmar says it attracts two different types of players and there is obvious limits to "how many people can play." The only thing keeping SPvP back is the game mode, there is a lot of cutting teeth over the capture the node game mode, as far as the spvp crowd is concerned. I can see the point of the current set up, being objective based allows for less focus on skill balance, class balance, or inventing minor objectives that aren't a mini game that crowd will whine about regardless. League of Legends gets away with a relatively unbalanced game that way...well not really...  I wouldn't expect this to do much except bring the debate of Team Death Match (with minor objectives) vs Capture the Nodes to front and center.

[Draegan]

WvW was never thought to be as "casual".

[Fordel]

WvW is about being inclusive. The initial huge QQueues were (are) fucking that up though.

[Nebu]

WvW is about being inclusive.

The existence of the commander compendium seems to fly in the face of equality though.  It smacks of "you are all welcome to WvW as long as you're willing to be a pawn"

[Fordel]

Yes?

Not everyone can be the QB in a football game either, I don't understand your point.

[KallDrexx]

Most of the people "being the pawn" don't have the ability or care to coordinate everyone to focus the battle.

Those that don't like "being the pawn" get a group together themselves and go roaming.

Not seeing the issue.

[Tmon]

When I'm running solo I like popping into a map that has a commander icon, it makes finding a focused group a lot easier.  It doesn't guarantee that the group is focusing on the right thing or fighting the right way but it's still better than trying to find the zerg by readiing the map chat.

[ffc]

My experience with the commander icon was running back and forth between two gates. We would rush the enemy, get stopped at their gate and get whittled down, then they would chase us to our gate where we would do the same. Over and over. By the second over I learned to actively avoid the commander icon.

[Brogarn]

Two nights ago I found a bunch of bots underwater killing Kraits. I didn't realize what was going on at first. I had been chased into the water by a couple of guys from another server. Me and someone else took them out, but I'm thinking I'm surrounded by guys from the third server. So I start attacking but they're not attacking back. Then one targets me and starts auto attacking me which I easily avoid. About then my brain finally settles down from the adrenalin "OMG I'M SURROUNDED" pump and I realize what's going on. So, I use my mesmer underwater ability to start pulling them all closer to me then use all my glamour skills that I can underwater to get them confused so they're pounding their own faces. Then I kill off the remaining aggroed Kraits and continue on my way. I was of course chuckling the entire time. It was the first time I've seen this.

[Ingmar]

People are happy to be zerglings in WvW, yes. The commander thing works out really well in practice actually.

[MediumHigh]

WvW was never thought to be as "casual".

ArenaNets own words. If it was serious than there wouldn't be levels or mobs to kill or a pve title track attached to it. Yes ArenaNet put a lot of thought into something that was suppose to be for pubs, there that type of company.

[sachiel]

People are happy to be zerglings in WvW, yes. The commander thing works out really well in practice actually.

Coupled with the fact that JQ has a public TS server for use, I've enjoyed being a zergling/running solo on our server.  And seeing where commanders are on the big map is a huge +; you can tell exactly what keep and which door they're hitting.

[Draegan]

WvW was never thought to be as "casual".

ArenaNets own words. If it was serious than there wouldn't be levels or mobs to kill or a pve title track attached to it. Yes ArenaNet put a lot of thought into something that was suppose to be for pubs, there that type of company.

If you say so.

[sachiel]

Rendering distance in WVW seems to be much better. 

[Outlawedprod]

No competition, so better leave before it shows up.

Jade Quarry is the new Henge of Denravi.  Look for Stormbluff Isle to get blown out this week.  Not sure about now but awhile ago in the JQ vs ET vs HoD matchup JQ had everything across all WvW maps.

[tazelbain]

The talented people on HoD appear to be spreading out to the tier 2 and 3 servers.  The bandwagoneers are probably going to go to JQ! 

[Ingmar]

Yeah I wish they had turned off free transfers before we grabbed the top spot.

[sachiel]

Yeah I wish they had turned off free transfers before we grabbed the top spot.

I really don't care if we take 3rd this week and drop to 2nd tier.  I like the people on this server, and know the ones in TS aren't going anywhere no matter what rank we are.

[KallDrexx]

Wow in this matchup my server is in there is NO ONE playing WvW.  For reference my server (Blackgate) was #7 when the matchups changed on 10/5, so we aren't even below half way.

It's 6:50pm and I went to all the battlegrounds.  In all 3 server borderlands there were about 3-5 dots (literally) at the home base and literally a max of 2 battle swords icon anywhere on the whole map.  Chat is pretty dead throughout.  And for reference, our server owned a good 3-4 towers and 2 keeps on each of the maps, so it's not like we were losing and getting beat down.

I couldn't see how things were going on the eternal borderlands because, well, that's the only WvW with a queue.  It's pretty pitiful how hard it's getting to find a fight, any fight, right now.......

[Fordel]

The culling bugs dropped interest all around. It will take a little bit to get back up overall.

There's also a lot less activity once a match is 'decided' after the first few days.

[rk47]

WvW replay



No, actually I did went with a guild. Sorta organized, but not really enjoying myself.
We did around 4 hours before I gave up following the zerg and just log for lunch. It's like playing Battlefield 3 with infinite tickets.

[tazelbain]

The tier 2 slugfest has been amazingly fun.

[Brogarn]

The tier 2 slugfest has been amazingly fun.

I think RUIN left ET? Haven't seen hide nor hair of them. The CD - ET - IoJ fight has been fantastic this go around because of it. As of last night, no one server was pulling ahead.


Just checked. Looks like our night crew owned face. We have all three orbs and 20k points on ET in third place and 10k points on CD in second.

[Zetor]

A lot of the 'leet' guilds have moved to Blackgate after titan alliance imploded.

Needless to say, Tarnished Coast got matched up with Blackgate this week. Good times (not)

[Threash]

The free transfers thing rather than helping the queues is causing a lot of bandwagoning.

[rk47]

The free transfers thing rather than helping the queues is causing a lot of bandwagoning.

Exactly. But really, why are we doing this again?
I just don't have the time to invest on a 12 hours weekend watch over some keeps really. And Crystal Desert was leading during my early hours but then got smacked around when the rival servers got a shitload of population into the Borderlands. I sincerely can't see any realistic counter to this. No matter how good you are, if 50% of your server population rather do something else than WvW ( I had no queue when I went into the Borderland) you're simply shit out of luck.

Spot any friendly player?

[KallDrexx]

A lot of the 'leet' guilds have moved to Blackgate after titan alliance imploded.

Needless to say, Tarnished Coast got matched up with Blackgate this week. Good times (not)

This is pissing me off.  I log in on BlackGate and 2 of the maps we own 100% and there's no one to fight, and the other 2 maps have long queues..

[Threash]

Yeah, people complaining about getting night capped aren't the ones who should be complaining.  The score is completely and utterly meaningless, not having anything to do is what really sucks.

[tazelbain]

I don't understand the score is meaningless augment.  Many, many people care.  Queues are dramatically shorter on servers that are losing.   Score is basis of the ranking system. If scores are jacked up, then the ranking system is not going to properly match servers.  Players are flooding the servers with the highest scores/ranks.

Since A.net released the formula for the ranks, we now have a reasonable projections of the next round.   IoJ it just broke into tier 1.  No way we are tier 1 but the scoring system favors our Oceanics.

[sachiel]

I don't understand the score is meaningless augment.  Many, many people care.  Queues are dramatically shorter on servers that are losing.   Score is basis of the ranking system. If scores are jacked up, then the ranking system is not going to properly match servers.  Players are flooding the servers with the highest scores/ranks.

Since A.net released the formula for the ranks, we now have a reasonable projections of the next round.   IoJ it just broke into tier 1.  No way we are tier 1 but the scoring system favors our Oceanics.

As long as you put up a better fight than HOD/ET, whose populations have been decimated from alliance drama, there won't be any complaints from the JQ side.  SBI's been pushing pretty hard, and I wouldn't mind a SBI/IOJ double team effort against us.  We have a pretty strong oceanic presence as well as SBI's from what I've seen.  Most of us don't want to see the other sides crushed into hopelessness; it gets very boring.