Ronin.4501

Oakhearts? Dredge? I've never encountered either of these types of npcs in either the Alpine or Desert borderlands?? Or were you referring to that OTHER map...the bad place?? If that's the case, there's a simple solution!! Stop going to the bad place!!!

> @"TheDeafGuy.4519" said: > Thank you :), also what server did that happen to? Stormbluff Isle. Our main "fight" guild left the server because they didn't understand that there needs to be some semblance of balance between fights and ppt...and when no one ppt'd, the server dropped to T4, and they couldn't find any fights. ;)

> @"TheDeafGuy.4519" said: > Will a Medium server be like a ghost town in comparison to a Very High server It won't matter since all servers are linked to at least one other server now. So odds are if you join a Medium server you'll likely be linked to a Full server as the host. The only way that changes is if you have a large number of players transfer off after the servers become linked, which is unfortunately the situation my server is dealing with now. Our server was Full and linked to a Medium server, and after a large number of players transferred off our server, we're now a High server linked to a Medium server. But re-links are every 8-10 weeks (with Anet you never know...) and it eventually re-balances. The other thing to remember is that outside of 1 server (at least on the NA servers), none of the populations remain static for more than 4-6 months as players transfer hoping to stack this server or that so they can "win" the game. ;)

Here's the sad reality; There likely will not be another WvW update/balance patch/new map/etc. coming for WvW...EVER. What little resources Anet/GW2 have left will be fully devoted to the next expansion, reason being it's make or break time for both the game AND the company. If the expansion doesn't generate a LOT of revenue for the company, GW2 (and GW1 for that matter) will die and so will Anet. A lot of the blame falls on Anet for the way it chose to generate revenue, focusing ONLY on gem store transactions and ignoring micro-transactions, which largely fund other games/gaming companies. In the short run that was good for WvW players like you and me, but in the long run it's led to the demise of the company. Rather than forcing free-to-play accounts to pay for access to things like WvW and PvP, they focused all their micro-transactions around the Living Story. Furthermore, Anet only receives maybe 25-30% of the money spent in the gem store, with a small percentage going to the 3rd party company running the transactions and the majority of the money going to Anet's parent company, NCSoft, which in turn uses the profits on OTHER games, not GW2. And even if Anet completely dissolved its relationship with NCSoft, odds are contractual agreements set forth a long time ago will still result in NCSoft still receiving most of the money from the gem store. It's a sad situation, but it is what it is. And if you don't believe me, see how long this comment stays around after I've made it. In years past this comment would have been removed within a short period of time after I posted it and I likely would've received some form of punishment as a result. Now, it's all too likely nothing will happen and this comment will remain...because Anet simply does not have the resources available to bother policing the forums as they once did, and it's entirely likely that there isn't a single dev left working on WvW these days.

I say if you want WvW match-up threads, start posting them yourself. Anet hasn't been moderating the WvW forums for at least a few months (based on how long all the "HACKS" threads stay up after servers/guilds/players get called out) and it's been close to a year since the last time I saw a dev even bother to post on the WvW forums. Start your own thread and see if it stays up for the duration of the week!! (I'm betting it will). Just don't be disappointed when you only get a handful of responses from the T1/T2 match-up threads and no responses for the T3/T4 match-up threads. If you read through these forums enough you'll notice it's almost always the same 5-10 players commenting. ;)

Rather than respond to the OP's comments, I'll respond to the title. And the answer is: NO. Based on the lack of moderation in other threads where servers/guilds/players have been called out in posts/comments (which is a no-no), I'd say that Anet has given up on WvW with the exception of gladly taking your money for server transfers.

In previous years I had gotten quite a few Ascended drops from WvW; mostly rings but also several armor chests as well (and maybe 1-2 weapon chests). However, over the past year I've gotten maybe 3-4 Ascended rings and 1 armor chest. I don't know if that's due to RNG or Anet stomping on the droprate (as they like to do quite often). That being said, I can't imagine anyone actually plays WvW for the rewards. A day spent in PvE will probably yield as many rewards as a month spent in WvW.

> @"PrinceValentine.9320" said: > Oh yeah? Guess what squad brought SoS to 1st now on VP on Tier 1. Do you guys even command pugs or you're just so used to running with your guildies? People will not follow you if you're not popular. You're not popular enough for me to know you and I've been playing with SoS for some months now. I don't think anyone from your guild can even get the same number of followers that this ele commander is constantly getting, to follow you. Quickrain's not on SoS so I guess the joke's on you? Or maybe you're just a joke? For someone accusing another of being too self-important, maybe you should try being a little more self-aware?? A lot of veteran commanders pay attention to other commanders who aren't on their server. Clearly this doesn't apply to you.

My earliest memories of WvW mostly revolve around the culling; Nothing quite like running around with my small group of friends and then suddenly, inexplicably, we're all dead...only to see a zerg suddenly appear all around us. I also remember when ranks were first introduced (which may have been a while after the game started but at this point the first few years of the game have all blurred together) but weren't yet account-wide, so I was routinely trying to play 3-4 different classes daily to keep my ranks close for each toon. But I think my fondest early memory (and probably only a few weeks into the game's launch) was when the group of friends I'd come to the game with all decided we would level up a character only in WvW, and so the six of us set out as level 2 uplevels and encountered a warrior/mesmer duo who were both level 80 (remember the good old days when you could see which players were uplevels in WvW?) and they promptly slaughtered us (the traiting system was different back then; I'm not sure if we even had access to the first tier of traits yet). Good times. Another fond memory? It wasn't IN WvW but here on the forums; WvW Match-up threads. Were they toxic? Sure! But it also made every week that much more interesting. Everything was much more personal. You had a real dislike for certain servers and guilds and genuinely looked forward to fighting them. It was usually a large factor in why winning mattered. You weren't going to move up a tier if you won or down a tier if you lost. You were going to face the same opponents the following week. But you wanted to win, just because it meant those other servers were also going to lose. Good times.

Good Grief!!! There was a time when you could make a tongue-in-cheek post and at least some of the commenters would realize it. Does anyone really think Anet is going to punish servers for the actions of a few players for hacking, or anything for that matter? But I think the fact that there are multiple threads being posted within days of one another shows that the issue is starting to get out of hand again (the hacking was pretty bad in the first year of the game too). I thought @"subversiontwo.7501" had a pretty good suggestion, but as @"Voltekka.2375" showed, even then the community largely ripped the idea. It really makes me think that Anet has lost control (or the will) to deal with these issues at this point, which doesn't leave me with a lot of hope going forward that things in WvW are ever going to improve (and I can only imagine that when the next expansion comes along it will only get worse).

17 toons, all level 80 with at least Ascended gear. But only 3 have a set of legendary armor.

There's no such thing. It's a question of whether or not you have points allocated in your WvW Rank & Abilities in siege mastery. It was originally coded into the game when WvW masteries didn't exist, so if you DON'T have any points allocated, you will see the Wintersday effects. If you DO have points allocated, it will look the same as it does the rest of the year.

> @"Dawdler.8521" said: > So what exactly would stop people on servers to simply create new f2p accounts on the enemy servers they meet and then hack both of them just to trigger the server >punishment? And what are those servers going to do? Well they have to send their own hackers to counter-hack the server that hacked so the matchup isnt unfair. See Subversiontwo's response. Sounds like a pretty damn good idea tbh. @"LetoII.3782" said: @"mindcircus.1506" said: Seems as though reading through the 8-10 comments made prior to their witty remarks was too difficult, as I've already mentioned at least once the OP was sarcasm. Get back to me when you're able to read more than a few paragraphs without getting confused.

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > > Because they tend to be the most visible matchups. Theoretically because of the larger populations. > @"LetoII.3782" said: > > Because in less populated matches there's less of _everything_ > There is a population disparity between T1 and T4, but not so much between T1 and T2, if at all. And although there have no doubt been complaints about every server hacking at some point over the last 8 years, probably 85% of those complaints have been centered around 1 server in general for the past few years. At least on the North American servers. I honestly know nothing about the situation on the EU servers outside of player complaints over which language should be spoken on which server.

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > So.., When Anet gives the ‘server’ the ability to take some form of ‘action’ towards said hackers then sure. > > Of course, that’s an even WORSE idea as people that aren’t liked by a server will be ‘voted off the island’ > > Now, if alliances were somewhat of a thing, then an alliance could require their guilds to kick a member that was shown to be hacking. > > How about...., Instead of punishing servers, (which would be an admission of Anet that hackers exist on the server) they just ban them? You know, like they are supposed to? First, Alliances are never going to happen. Alliances = Servers 2.0 ie. same bad population balance as currently exists. Second, Anet banning hackers would be GREAT, but you're more likely to catch the Toothfairy than you are to see Anet do something productive at this point. And I find it rather hilarious that so far all the responses seem to take my OP seriously. But clearly what Anet is (or isn't) doing now isn't working, because it's STILL an issue 8 years later (along with a myriad of other issues that have been present since the game's beginning that have never been addressed). So instead of complaining, does anyone out there actually have a USEFUL suggestion for how to address this issue? Maybe this is why Anet doesn't take these forum posts seriously? Because everyone complains, but very few offer any kind of solution. > @"LetoII.3782" said: > When last I checked some 5 years ago, the hack I know of had over 10k downloads. > > It's not just one or two servers But yeah, it kinda is. I'm on a NA server that routinely goes from T4 to T1 and back every time we get a new link. And it's almost exclusively an issue up in T1. Why is that?

> @"V Winter.5371" said: > So in other words, all I have to do to completely wreck an enemy server is transfer and then hack? Sounds good. Sadly, that's what it's come to, yes. At least until most of us quit the game when something better comes along (and the future is starting to look like something better will be coming along sooner than later).

> @"Yuffi.2430" said: > You are right - this is a bad idea. > Punishing a group for the actions of an individual never works. But here's the thing. Currently the entirety of the servers playing against the hacker's server ARE being punished as a result of Anet's allowing the hackers to continue on unpunished. Anet seemed to take these issues at least somewhat seriously in the first year or two of the game. Now they simply allow it to continue (And if they are doing something, why does it keep happening OVER and OVER and OVER?). Anet needs to DO SOMETHING. My idea is a harsh response, but it seems like anything less just results in more of the same. And again, it seems to be players from the same communities each time. Anet, DO SOMETHING.

> @"subversiontwo.7501" said: > What you describe, as some players being able to form communities while others are not, is a good thing. It means that at least someone can have/do something (and it suggests to those who do not try that they should try). It means that anyone can try because there are no arbitrary obstacles in the way of trying (like having to give Anet your money just to try to do something for their game). The "anything but an alliance" will at least be a recruitment pool, something you can build a community from since all those players without guilds or alliances then are free to recruit among. This way new communities can be born. If they do not want to be recruited into anything then they do not deserve to be apart of something and they can stay in "anything but an alliance" for all they like, it becomes their choice. > > All of this is the reason guilds quit but it is also the reason why guilds transfer. You say that guilds have always transferred but guilds have always transfered to A) match up B ) escape dead weight on their own server and C) avoid matching up with dead-weight servers. They do all that to get and create content. You can look at the servers today and make up your own mind about if they are successful or not. > > Now, I'm not overly familiar with NA, but if this War Machine left SBI, it is quite likely that what made him leave was to get away from players who felt entitled to his content and stood in the way of him being able to form squads with his friends, get on maps with his friends or let them come to his server. If 97% of the population followed him that only reaffirms that. I don't know, but your description makes it sound like he left to get away from the likes of you. > > War Machine probably didn't want 97% of the server to follow him around anymore than other popular players want 97% of their servers to follow them around when they transfer away from them. However, under the current system they can not stop them. They can just transfer again when things get bad, so they do. They can be toxic to drive them away, so they are. They can be exclusive to keep them out, so they close and they can just stop caring and ride the wave out like ArenaNet and the "anything but an alliance"-players they funnel into the mode, so here we are. > > "Alliances won't fix anything" sounds like "anything but an alliance" to me. If anything, the communities that were created in this game (almost entirely built around servers) have long since died, and the notion that after 8 years they're suddenly going to start reforming because of Alliances is...rather unrealistic. And maybe things are very different on the EU servers, but the primary reason you hear guilds leave one server for another on the NA servers is "better fights". And if you pay attention long enough, you'll see those very same guilds tend to transfer servers every few months because they never seem to be able to find these "better fights". And War Machine was not a single player but rather a HUGE guild with 400-500 players. And they left because they had held SBI as the top WvW server for several months and wanted to see if they could bring up one of the bottom ranked servers, Kaineng. And when they got bored of doing that they ultimately left GW2 behind, leaving both SBI and Kaineng in shambles. You seem to believe that the majority of players in this game are noble and caring and wanting to establish a community; I on the other hand, see the larger part of the WvW community as players who care primarily about themselves and possibly their guildmates and getting their loot, but things such as server pride have long since gone by the wayside. Again, maybe the players on the EU servers fall more under your description, but over here on the NA servers I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any sort of a cohesive community within the WvW population. > @"Yuffi.2430" said: > @"Ronin.4501" You still don't seem to get the basic idea behind Alliances. > At the moment Anet tries to "balance" the WvW matches using combinations of one or two (or very occasionally three) servers. They have two general sorts available - big population and small population. There is little scope for rough adjustments let alone fine tuning. > > The concept of the Alliance update is that Anet would be able to use guilds (of which there are many more and which vary much more in size) to "balance" the populations for each side. You are right that there will be all sorts of guilds, and some will have purpose and drive and others will be groups that play together. > > You are however completely wrong when you suggest that it will be up to the players choice of guild/alliance to balance populations. I expect that, if Alliances ever happens, Anet will move individual guilds and alliances around a lot as a consequence of player movement and transfers. However, and this is the key thing you don't seem to have understood yet, WHERE the guilds/alliances get moved to will not be a choice we get. For example, if a match-up becomes very one sided in population because of people moving to a particular guild, Anet can move that guild to the side with the lowest population and rebalance the match-up. > > Of course, a lot will depend on what the algorithms actually do, and that depends on whether alliances is ever fully realised. But as I said before, it should give a better overall balance of populations leading to more even matches and more fun for most players. This is what we continue to hope for. Let's think for a moment about what you're saying. Anet will balance the match-ups. Anet, who can't balance classes, can't balance population, can't balance a teeter-totter, but they're somehow going to balance Alliances??? And let's assume for a moment that they DID balance things the way you say, by moving guilds around at their whim. Do you really think the community would accept that? Outside of perhaps the top tier of alliances you'd have a MASS exodus from the game by the remaining WvW players. I'll say it again. I think the notion of Alliances is dead and buried and never ever coming back.

> @"Yuffi.2430" said: > @"Ronin.4501" You're seeing "Alliances" as "replacement Servers" and that's not the case. Alliances is actually about guilds as a base unit for WvW. > I agree that some players would try to stack in a good guild (so they can be part of a successful alliance) however players themselves control guild membership in a way that doesn't happen with servers. > If the Alliances WvW update ever comes to be, Anet will use guilds and alliances of guilds to make the population for each side in WvW. This is a much more flexible system because guilds vary so much in size and this granularity will allow Anet to create more even population sizes for match-ups. This is something that has been seen as a major need in WvW for years. > > I foresee many more complaints about "elite" guilds requiring specific builds, or kicking players who are inactive or incompetent. > There will likely be some large open or pug guilds, and some dedicated guilds (probably smaller). In theory each existing server could make a Guild with that name and continue the situation as it is, but I doubt this will happen. There will still be the drama of guilds leaving alliances and going elsewhere, so in that sense there will be more of the same. BUT the big difference is that we as players will have a lot more control over who is in each Guild/Alliance. Anet will still set the links between alliances and guilds, and this is where it is important the system used works properly. > > For example, a secondary benefit of Alliances, if Anet get the algorithms right, is the matching system could pit fight based alliances against other similar guilds/alliances so these players will get more of the play style they enjoy, and similarly match PPT guilds against other PPT guilds. Small guilds and single players will fill the gaps. The stats to do this are already available to Anet. > > In theory, Alliances (which is really Guilds vs Guilds) should give us more enjoyable matches and more even overall populations. This IS a thing worth hoping for (we've been asking for this for years). Of course, in reality, it actually needs to happen to be of benefit to players, and as you say it needs to be balanced separately from PvE (although there are signs that Anet is possibly moving to make this work?). > > GW2 is the game I've spent the most time playing, and I still enjoy playing. I'd like to continue to enjoy WvW, so you'll have to forgive me if I, and others, choose to hope against all expectation and current evidence. I'm going to guess you haven't been playing this game for more than a few years if you truly believe that allowing players to create alliances will balance out WvW populations. First, it's the players (and guilds) that have been causing the population imbalances and server stacking from the very start. I still remember when War Machine left SBI and literally 97% of the active WvW population followed. For a few months thereafter, SBI would be lucky to see 5-10 players across all borderlands (we still had Bannok/Djixie pugmanding in EBG). Guilds leaving a server and creating population imbalances has occurred regularly in the 8+ years that the game has been in existence. The only major difference now, which leads me to my second point, is that there really aren't that many WvW guilds left. The WvW population is largely built on pugs these days, with a few large guilds and slightly more medium and small guilds sprinkled about. The notion that all these random players are going to somehow form cohesive alliances that balance out the population is simply inconceivable. And even if you were able to manage to cobble together a few decent alliances, you'd still be leaving a much larger portion of the population to then put together the remaining alliances which would be anything but an alliance. I think Anet realized that Alliances was a bad idea from the start, which is why we haven't heard anymore about it for years. That being said, like you, I do still hold out hope that things can be turned around in some fashion or another. If I didn't I wouldn't still be playing the game. However, my level of hope has significantly dropped after years of neglect and mismanagement by the WvW team (and Anet in general).

I have to laugh at the players here still holding out hope for Alliances. Seriously, the Alliances idea was bad from the start. Instead of players stacking servers you'll have players stacking alliances. You'll end up with 2-3 strong alliances and 20+ crap alliances. Same kitten different day. As for any WvW position, it likely entails cleaning up the messes the PvE devs create everytime they make a change in PvEland which in turn creates yet another god-awful imbalance in WvW. With that seemingly happening every other update, who'll have time to work on anything else? Again, same kitten different day.

The only other recommendation I would make is to get yourself a set of legendary armor if you haven't already. Otherwise you're likely to burn through quite a few sets of armor as you determine what stats work best (or best for you). The alternative is to do the Triumphant Armor reward track over and over and over to give you multiple sets of armor (whereupon you can select from all the various types), but the downside is that it's exotic armor (but still worthwhile for testing builds as the drop-off from ascended/legendary isn't too steep).

Normally I would disagree with the OP regarding this post, but there are 2 factors regarding downstate that have me wavering; First, downstate balance for classes is even worse than regular balance between classes. Necros downstate attacks are almost stronger than they are when the necro is alive, and at times it seems that no matter what I do, I can't get the ranger's pet to stop reviving while in downstate (depending on the pet, but also because the pet functions for a ranger in downstate are STILL buggy and exploitable EIGHT FREAKIN' YEARS after Anet realized it was an issue). Meanwhile a warrior gets a single hammer toss for a 2s interrupt...and then they die. I don't think I've ever lived long enough in downstate as an engineer to use the bomb. Second, because Anet's (or rather Amazon's) server lag has become so bad of late I'm seeing more and more players go into downstate where they aren't in the actual location they're being shown on the screen. A few times this has happened in a camp where I'm seeing the player in downstate outside the camp but somehow the camp is still ticking for them. I either have to choose to hunt for wherever they might actually be downed (in one case my attacks were going off and into a cliffside wall (NWC on red BL) or sit in the circle to prevent cap and in the meantime allow the enemy player to fully revive. If Anet spent some time resolving these issues, I'd have no problem with a player in downstate capping an objective, but I have about as much faith in Anet resolving the Middle East conflict...