WvW Thoughts

[Zetor]

Some queue data from the current 1-week matchups

Some of the servers (like HOD) have absolutely ridiculous queue times... but many servers have basically no queues at all. The graphs are also interesting as they sorta reveal which servers have the best 24-hour coverage.

[Falconeer]

The chart also shows what we feared: on some servers there's a borderland with a huge queue and the other two have a tiny one. If we could queue for all, or know the length of it, everyone's experience would be greatly improved.

[Miasma]

I hope they decide not to go to two week matches.  It seems that if one realm gets dominant the other realms give up after a few days.  Once the dominant realm gets all three orbs in upgraded keeps you're basically screwed.

[tazelbain]

I don't see what the point of anything over 3 days.  Upgrades and orbs pretty much guarantee that the winning server becomes entrenched by the point.

[Crumbs]

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

[Tmon]

I don't see what the point of anything over 3 days.  Upgrades and orbs pretty much guarantee that the winning server becomes entrenched by the point.

Yeah, two weeks seems far too long.  We are currently getting our asses handed two us by Crystal Desert, we had a good push yesterday, but their off hours contingent wiped out any gains.  There's not much point in jumping in other than I'm trying out WvW only leveling on my Guardian.

[tazelbain]

Well on IoJ, we are in the similar scenario and it looks we are going to be fighting JQ and CD tonight, which is only slightly better.  As a single player there is no point, you need a zerg.  As a small vent group you can still still make decent badges and karma/xp and good fights.

[Tmon]

I actually did pretty well as part of the general zerg, especially once I got a wand and a staff so I could fight with a little bit of stand off.  The thing about CD is that they have a large EU presence so they are able to scoop up all the keeps and such during US downtime.

[Brogarn]

Well on IoJ, we are in the similar scenario and it looks we are going to be fighting JQ and CD tonight, which is only slightly better.  As a single player there is no point, you need a zerg.  As a small vent group you can still still make decent badges and karma/xp and good fights.

Glad to be done with Ruin and Eredon Terrace in general. This will probably suck as well, but I'm happy for the change all the same.

[PalmTrees]

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

I was fighting Ehmry last night, first time in WvW to finish my monthly. Just a constant back and forth taking/losing the same tower in the borderlands. Everyone just talking about how it would be nice to fight a server that didn't outnumber us so badly. Never saw any from the third server. At least our keep guy (or whatever it was) was bugged so we couldn't lose that.

[Miasma]

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

It can last.  The entrenched group gets stronger and has high moral while the others stop playing.

At some point on the weekend I'm going to try and find a server which is completely dominating and transfer to it just so that I can run around and get all the POIs to get my 100% map completion.

[tazelbain]

Did that with NSP Wednesday night.  Funny thing was the guy constantly yelling in map that they needed help a X tower. Ya, dude, you are +680 with a mathematically impossible to lose lead, the situation isn't that dire.

[tazelbain]

Transfers are going to restricted once ever 24hrs tonight.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/Free-World-Transfers-Limited-to-Once-Every-24-Hours

[Crumbs]

Welp, transferred to Ehmry Bay to be with some old school gaming buddies.  Found that we were controlling the majority of everything.  At first I thought, "cool," but then it was, "er, wait, there's nothing to do is there?" 

The upshot is that it can't last.

It can last.  The entrenched group gets stronger and has high moral while the others stop playing.

At some point on the weekend I'm going to try and find a server which is completely dominating and transfer to it just so that I can run around and get all the POIs to get my 100% map completion.

Don't we eventually get matched up with other servers though?  It's not the same 3 servers all the time.

[Miasma]

Oh I thought you meant within the server match.  Right now it resets every week, they say they want to make it every two weeks.

[Furiously]

I don't see what the point of anything over 3 days.  Upgrades and orbs pretty much guarantee that the winning server becomes entrenched by the point.

Yeah, two weeks seems far too long.  We are currently getting our asses handed two us by Crystal Desert, we had a good push yesterday, but their off hours contingent wiped out any gains.  There's not much point in jumping in other than I'm trying out WvW only leveling on my Guardian.

As a player on CD the bonuses we are getting are pretty nice right now. I am fearful for the next matchup. And yea our European presence is huge.

[Brogarn]

Don't want to jinx it, but IoJ seems to have gotten a good match up. Much fun was had last night and we're in the lead... but not ridiculously so, which means the other realms should hopefully not give up and we can continue the fun. Plus, we didn't lose everything over night. Good stuff so far, let's hope it continues.

[Zetor]

The new matchup for Tarnished Coast isn't all that bad either. We got Maguuma again (everyone hearts the goons  ) along with Emhry Bay - which seems to have better coverage than either of the other two servers, but it's a much more balanced fight overall unlike the Dragonbrand roflstomping of last week.

Of course it's still way too early in the week to tell...

[Genev]

Gunnar's Hold is up against Desolation and Augary Rock
We completely eradicated them last night ons erver switch, but it looks like that made them decide to gang up on us :(
We're leading in points, but i think we might actually not win this one if this keeps up

[Falconeer]

Oh, you are on Gunnar? Interesting. You are going down, baby. From Desolation with love.

[Simond]

The new matchup for Tarnished Coast isn't all that bad either. We got Maguuma again (everyone hearts the goons  ) along with Emhry Bay - which seems to have better coverage than either of the other two servers, but it's a much more balanced fight overall unlike the Dragonbrand roflstomping of last week.

Of course it's still way too early in the week to tell...

Oh god damn it.
Go away, Tarnished Coast. 

[Dark_MadMax]

Some queue data from the current 1-week matchups

Some of the servers (like HOD) have absolutely ridiculous queue times... but many servers have basically no queues at all. The graphs are also interesting as they sorta reveal which servers have the best 24-hour coverage.

I am from HOD (i started there , not trasnferred, and it was medium pop for first week) and I gave up entirely on www. Mark said only "3%" people dont get in. - maybe across all servers , but I wasnt able to get in unless I sit 8+ hours in queue (which most of the time I dont). So well I stopped queing entirely.

[Evildrider]

Some queue data from the current 1-week matchups

Some of the servers (like HOD) have absolutely ridiculous queue times... but many servers have basically no queues at all. The graphs are also interesting as they sorta reveal which servers have the best 24-hour coverage.

I am from HOD (i started there , not trasnferred, and it was medium pop for first week) and I gave up entirely on www. Mark said only "3%" people dont get in. - maybe across all servers , but I wasnt able to get in unless I sit 8+ hours in queue (which most of the time I dont). So well I stopped queing entirely.

Yarp HoD has some redic times.  And that's even with Angry Army taking their 500 ppl to another server.

[Miasma]

So is there no central page to see what the current matches are, like who's against who and what colour they are?

[Genev]

Oh, you are on Gunnar? Interesting. You are going down, baby. From Desolation with love.

Sadly enough, our beloved CIR can't be everywehre at the same time, or we'd show you how owning is done.

[Nebu]

Can one of you WvW enthusiasts explain to me the point of WvW?  Are we just zerg humping to gain some server bonuses for a fixed window of time?  Are any of these bonuses applicable to effectiveness in pvp?  I tried WvW seriously for about a week and it really started to grate on me.  It was follow-zerg-to-tower, beat on door, rinse repeat.

I feel like I'm missing something deeper.

[KallDrexx]

Can one of you WvW enthusiasts explain to me the point of WvW?  Are we just zerg humping to gain some server bonuses for a fixed window of time?  Are any of these bonuses applicable to effectiveness in pvp?  I tried WvW seriously for about a week and it really started to grate on me.  It was follow-zerg-to-tower, beat on door, rinse repeat.

I feel like I'm missing something deeper.

If you want to enjoy WvW get a roaming strike group going.  Even a small group can do a lot of damage to a zerg when flanked from behind, and there are quite a few other roaming groups / guild groups to run into.

[Miasma]

Only point to WvW is to have fun really.  Getting the orbs gives your server a PvP bonus I suppose.  There is more deepness in the large scale grunt work like feeding supply to keeps to upgrade them and make them really hard to retake, but that kind of thing isn't very fun for most people.  The high end serious business realms have whole teams running supply to get keeps upgraded, then they take another keep and poor supply into it.  Eventually they creep along the map like this and own everything.

[Crumbs]

Only point to WvW is to have fun really. 

This.  Plus if you stick with the groups who are going for the objectives, you can get good chunks of xp/karma/silver and nice items.  Last night, even with the repair costs of dying 10 times, I still came out on top moneywise. 

[Draegan]

I'm going to shill my new show: http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/09/23/gw2-podcast-s01-e02-week-of-914-guest-archaos-of-ruin-gaming/

All WvW stuff and a bit of news and videos in the beginning.  Still working out the production kinks, haven't done a vidcast yet so this is my first go at it.  I need better lighting and a better camera position.

[KallDrexx]

Wee, pretty sure they broke loot bags, cause I've killed about 20+ enemies, most of with in small skirmishes or solo, and I haven't gotten any loot.  The only bag that dropped was from a control point npc......

[Threash]

Getting them pretty regularly atm.

[KallDrexx]

Then I"m just unlucky, because I literally WvWed for 45 minutes and got 1 badge from an npc, literally no loot bags from players.

In other news apparently I was wrong (and an idiot).  Remember when I said I'm 80 and getting upscaled?  Apparently I'm not getting upscaled, it's just that my realm owns the orbs that give +150 to the stats.

[sachiel]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10m938/anet_takes_a_stance_of_nightcapping_all_is_fair/

[tazelbain]

That means in the long term players are going to lose interest in WvW beyond world completion and legendaries.  Why pour time, sweat and money into taking and holding objectives when other team is going to take back over night when they aren't defended?  You can't stay up all night every night. There is a limited amount of off-hour guilds.  There are 6 servers who have a strong off-hours presence in NA. All of top 5 do. And the only server that can field 24hr coverage is number 1. That's not a accident. Timezones > player effort. People are going quickly lose interest in playing a NA game were NA players have structural disadvantage.

EDIT: Imagine LoL were IPX was out of a finite pool every half-hour.  You'd get shit return IPX playing in primetime and awesome rewards in the dead of night.  No one would be defending it to fair with "LoL is 24-hr game! L2P!"  Before you say IPX is a reward, score is not. I feel very rewarded with score, and I regularly count how much score my group generates for the team.