Guild Wars 2

It needed to be more tactical where you had to plan a campaign across the map. Instead you just ran around the map flipping the most vulnerable points.

A little birdie once told me they had planned on a little dungeon in the middle of each map, but scrapped it.

Sounds like a smart bunch.

Fawe_sl said:

Players like exclusivity... A dungeon like in DAoC might have worked. I think there should be portals in every Keep & Stonemist that takes you to other Battleground maps. Which means these other maps may only be accessed by 1 server, or all 3 servers, depends on who controls the keeps. Exclusivity is a big hook, it worked with EQ for years. Players enjoy controlling zones & maps. There is little incentive to control things simply for the +points, controlling a map & its content is a definite hook.

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In my opinion, that's basically the core of the problem with WvW. Most of what is at stake is very superficial. The various Powers of the Mists are all passive and easy to overlook. Aside from that, it's mostly bragging rights, something whose novelty has unsurprisingly worn off over time. The new ranks really do very little to remedy that since they are just a new layer on what is already there, and again, very superficial. 5% increase of damage to guards? Whoopee!

Exactly. The new abilities don't really inspire a person to play more. They are just some added fluff. No one really notices 5% extra damage, very uninspired.

I've been doing a show about WvW for GW2 for almost 20 weeks now. Originally I was hoping to make a sportscenter type of show where we can discuss what happened during the week as if we were on ESPN. With the success of GW1's pvp, I thought it would be pretty cool. Boy was I wrong. There is absolutely nothing to talk about. Sure some guild moved servers, or some server ended up winning T1 or T2 or there was some drama on the forums, but in the end there isn't anything concrete to talk about.

You can't track server progress on the web. You can't show the ebb and flow of points per tick. There isn't anything to analyze. So poor job on Anet to not have leaderboards or point tracking with some web app. So I can't really report that unless I was on every server and copied points down once an hour all week, or relied on outside websites to do that, but those are ultimately trolled by people and aren't reliable.

In the end though, no one would really care how the points flowed. There are hardly any signature moments during the week. There are no turning points. Essentially it boils down to who gave up first.

I could report that on "Tuesday so and so server lost this keep! It was the linchpin of Server-X's campaign to win that week!" Because territory, camps, keeps etc are flipped at will, there is really no point. Multiply that out over 3 identical maps and then one main map, it's stupid.

Ah well.

The patch is not that bad, at least they really did fix 80-90% of culling, and the skill lag is not that bad without culling. I won't say I am very happy about this patch, but I am cool with it so far even they didn't really add new feature except WvW system for WvW...

It's not a bad patch at all, it does some great things for people still having fun. It just isn't enough for me. This was supposed to be "the WVW patch" and it just added another experience bar with some passive abilities tied to it.

I wish they'd gone withGuildwars and had leaderboards etc for guilds too when it comes to wvw. It would add competition if you could see that your guild(members) has captured x camps and defended y keeps while killing so and so many opponents and held a guild-claimed keep/tower7supplycamp for z hours this week/since beginning (of the tracking).

Draegan_sl said:

It's not a bad patch at all, it does some great things for people still having fun. It just isn't enough for me. This was supposed to be "the WVW patch" and it just added another experience bar with some passive abilities tied to it.

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Is there anything for this game on the horizon in terms of future patches? Is this game declining in terms of population or is there plenty of PvP going on? Also, I never hear anything about Open World PvP.... is there such a thing in GW2?

Game population is pretty steady, I think. WvW population is slowly lessening. It's trending towards more casual play imo.

I have no idea what's coming in future patches. I've heard what they've been trying to do on the PTS, but I can't say what. They had some really cool things that haven't made it to the surface yet.

Open World PVP is essentially WvW. Depending on your server, you can usually find some decent fights if you stay away from the retard zerg vs. zerg that happens most of the time. Some people like ZvZ though.

But if you want PVP you can find PVP. I have no idea how robust the sPVP community is, I don't really hear much about it.

Draegan_sl said:

Game population is pretty steady, I think. WvW population is slowly lessening. It's trending towards more casual play imo.

I have no idea what's coming in future patches. I've heard what they've been trying to do on the PTS, but I can't say what. They had some really cool things that haven't made it to the surface yet.

Open World PVP is essentially WvW. Depending on your server, you can usually find some decent fights if you stay away from the retard zerg vs. zerg that happens most of the time. Some people like ZvZ though.

But if you want PVP you can find PVP. I have no idea how robust the sPVP community is, I don't really hear much about it.

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I appreciate the info and I am beginning to wonder if it is better for me to just try it out. I really wasn't impressed with the betas so I passed but I keep a PvP itch and LoL isn't satisfying it.

You think it's worth a box copy though? If I get 3 months out of it I am happy given there is no monthly fee.

I personally thought it was worth the cost of the box. I had fun at least leveling. Others couldn't make it past level 10.

I really liked the combat system, it was a hybrid between WOW and TERA. I like the soft targeting stuff it has. However I don't know if you'll get 3 months out of it strictly for PVP play though.

There have been some hints towards and April Fool's event next week (something they did in GW1), so there is that to look forward to. I've found the previous events to be some of the best I've seen in MMOs.

Honestly, I'm not sure the goal is retention for these events anyways, but a way for the game make some money. These events usually coincide with many new items added to the Black Lion Trading Company, most of which are only available for the duration of the event. Some events have also added new items that can only be obtained in chests, encouraging people to buy keys. If all the event does is get people to come back for a couple weeks and maybe spend a few dollars on keys or a new weapon skin, I'm sure ArenaNet is pretty happy with the outcome, and judging by how many people I saw running around with the purchased minipets during Christmas and Halloween, this seems to work pretty well for them.