Remember that ultra-casual MMO that just came out? Hey turns out more people queue up for the PvP in that game than the number of people who raided in WoW (by % of the population). Who could have predicted that? Answer: Not Anet. Whoops.
And hey, it’s not like a queue of 300 or 400 people is that bad anyway. Oh right, only 100 people get in at a time, so a queue of 3x or 4x the total size might be a problem. From personal experience it makes setting up a guild night of WvW a blast…
That said, I’m sure it will get better once everyone hits 80, because at that point you have access to the wonderful world of GW2 dungeons. Wait what? Everyone hates your dungeons and is doing anything possible to skip them while you do everything possible to stop them, even while at the same time you acknowledged that the rewards suck? Whoops x2.
The good thing is Anet planned ahead, and allowed anyone who wanted to bandwagon on the winning side to do so for free, which I’m sure is making everyone on HoD really happy. But hey, please transfer off a server with coordinated WvW and derp around with the derps near the bottom. Instance derp access everyone!
I’m sure tons of guilds are going to take Anet up on that offer, especially considering the amount of effort that went into setting up servers like HoD and JQ in the first place. Silly us for thinking Anet planned ahead for people playing their endgame in a game that almost instantly puts you at endgame and gives you basically nothing else to focus on (playing Barbie is not doing it for PvP players, weird).
Hardcore Casual 
Torchlight 2 is great!
Still having fun… don’t have a single character above 45 yet. Not worried about endgame since every MMO ever made has a terrible end game when it releases.
No monthly fee… take a break and play something else and come back. Get 100% world completion then try and complete a legendary weapon.
Still stuff to do.
I would be willing to bet that being a boss on top isn’t any more fun than being a derp on the bottom, though.
Depends on what you are looking for I guess. I like WvW to be organized units moving about and using more advanced tactics, rather than just random groups or one big zerg running around at-will. I also like having small-scale fights (when they happen) to be between players who are invested and interested in PvP, rather than just someone casually queuing up.
Oddly, the 90 of us running in our guild keep having fun in the WvW nightly.
But we aren’t that uber and our sense of tactics just aren’t up to snuff, the whole concept of defending our keeps and attacking their keeps and defending/cutting supply lines is beyond us.
Our 5-10 man groups dedicated to harassing them on the way out of their rez points aren’t very useful and even the groups doing the jumping puzzles to get “free” siege gear are scrubs.
The guys and gals who are charged with attacking their siege gear never succeed and we haven’t puzzled out how to get the NPC events working on any battleground. Weather machine? WTF?
I was willing to wait a week or two to let Arenanet try to figure out how to get the tiny population that is playing this game balanced on the servers. Of course, Arenanet sucks, can’t build games, can’t make servers work, and its probably luck that the queues do seem to be improving.
Oh, we are enjoying the PvE, the crafting, and the sPvP. I’m sure we’ll stop enjoying it all very soon.
Back to the zerg!!
“But we aren’t that uber and our sense of tactics just aren’t up to snuff”
Keep working at it and as you improve you will push your server into a higher tier, which will motivate everyone to further improve as you find tougher competition.
“Oddly, the 90 of us running in our guild keep having fun in the WvW nightly.”
No, it’s not odd at all. Your definition of “fun” is just probably different. And that’s perfectly fine. I’m happy for you. Keep zerging and blogging about it!
I also agree with you that you will stop enjoying it at some point. Probably sooner than you think.
I was teasing…..as I’m sure you knew. We zerg when appropriate, we do cut supply lines, defend, and attack keeps. We have a group dedicated to killing rezzers, we have groups of our “best jumpers” getting siege gear. We have teams that attack their siege gear, etc. It is fun. Will we stop enjoying it soon? I’ve no idea, but I’m optimistic. We keep discovering stuff to do. As an example, our strategies for keep taking are evolving. Different keeps require different strategies and depending on how other players defend the keeps it changes yet again. Small groups can disrupt and harass big groups. Keep constant pressure on supply camps, force the opponents to send big forces to take back their supply camps. Distract them and at the same time attack two towers/keeps.
Its not perfect yet….the queue was hovering at 3 hours, but in the last weeks we’ve seen it improve. Its clear the servers are more stable and Arenanet has been above board in what the issues are and are working to fix the issues.
We don’t get everyone in most nights, but we get a lot in. You queue up, do something else and enter when the queue forms.
If you have a small force, do the jumping puzzles for the free siege gear, attack the supply camps, put siege equipment up and hammer the walls, vanish when a big force arrives. Hit the water, etc.
You get lots of drops, karma, and gold. Fun times.
I get what you are saying. Getting 9 people into WvW on a given night on JQ seems impossible, let alone 90, which is the main issue. Once inside the game itself is pretty decent.
Yes, I understand. The servers “built” for WvW like JQ and HOD have queue issues. We were sitting at 3-4 hours, but the recent server changes seem to have made it a lot better. We had 5 minute queues yesterday at peak EST times and 1 hour later in the evening at peak PST times. Not ideal, but better. I do think it was foolish of AN to allow people to swap servers free and as much as possible, but they were trying to unload the busy servers. The game is still new…../shrugs
Playing on a server with a moderate to high degree of organization is definitely funner. On JQ we have a few commanders who I see out in the borderlands everyday or manage to control the chaos to take key objectives like the garrisons and hold them.
I can’t imagine how it would be equally fun to be on a server that lacks organization with a bunch of derps bouncing around randomly until they explode. Since the derps are trying to bandwagon to winning servers, the organization on the winning servers is dilluted by a bottlenecked queue of those derps trying to pile in, and at the same time creating old servers where they can’t even reach the population cap in the borderlands to be competitive.
It is problematic on many fronts.
I was wondering this. I mean, wouldn’t it be better for the top players if all the other top players weren’t on the same servers? Would you not be more likely to run into opponents who are invested in PvP if those players didn’t decide before launch to all play on the same server?
If you look at server rankings in the NA, there are basically four top servers, and then everyone else. This becomes very clear when one of the top four gets placed in the second-tier group; they roflstomp the other two servers and get back into the top grouping. Rinse repeat.
The top-tier battle is solid when you get in, so that part of the plan worked as expected. We underestimated the queue issue and Anets ability to prepare for it.
Given the queues on all four of those servers . . . . . seems like these guilds could spread out to several more servers and still be fighting against interested, experienced pvp guilds. I get that no one wants to be the guild to move, losing all influence and upgrades, but I don’t think it would water down the pool. In total there can be 400 active players, and there are still enormous queues on these servers, so the numbers seem pretty straightforward.
There may be some stomping going on, but I think Maguuma is down in that second tier, and the goons are there. Probably wouldn’t take much to make that server a consistent number 5. And it would benefit the experience significantly for players like yourself if there were at least 6 top servers — then there would be fewer games where you feel “knocked into the second tier” and “rofl-stomping” your way back.
The question is, who would move? No incentive to do it. Plenty of penalty.
what no reference at all to the best mmo of all time, darkfail?
I think it goes without saying GW2 ‘world’ PvP is not in the same league as what DF does, but that would be like complaining that Pong does not stack up graphcially to Crysis 3.
Well, it’s true, even Darkfail version 2.0 – This Time For Reals looks pretty crappy based on published screenshots. But compared to Pong it’s great.
Yak’s Bend has been totally dominant in WvW all this week. You can barely see the slivers of the other two servers on the pie chart. Mrs Bhagpuss complained that it makes for poor WvW and she’s right, but it makes for great Frontier PvE.
I spent a couple of hours there the night before last, explored most of our own frontier map, got a couple of skill points, saw half a dozen vistas, finished all my PvE Daily tasks bar two events and did a shedload of gathering. Those maps may be too small for WvW tactical purposes but when your server owns them and you can wander at will for as long as you like, turns out they’re as big and detailed as any other PvE map.
Not that I wouldn’t prefer a much more even three-way for the next round, but, hey, lemons/lemonade and all that.
I’m on Stormbluff Isle (chosen by my guild) and I think I’ve managed to play WvW twice.
PVP aside, is this a consensus agreement that it maybe better to level in a typical theme park Holy Trinity type game and be forcefed the usual PVE raiding material like most games or is this something ArenaNet can figure out how to fix? At what point do we start to see people going BACK to WoW once more because the end game is there and long established?
I would not say forced into raiding, but you need content that is not one-off stuff like most of GW2. I have a post brewing about it, but wanted to finish up a few things in GW2 before finishing it.
You’ll see people going back to WoW next week when there is new content.
I’m not even going to read enough to find out why there is a fucking *queue* to PVP. That is the most asinine thing I have heard yet.
I guess I’m spoiled by the insane amounts of logic that comes from a single-shard MMO.
Yes its that good that a month after release people still wait in line to get in. I’d rather that then this blog inevitably being about how much less interesting and complex strategy-wise then X mmo is (X = 0 in this case).
People are still playing it after an entire month? Sounds like the best game ever.
Our guild tried to field a WvW group tonight, but after an hour or two, we only had two people from the group in-zone.
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Reblogged this on Gigable – Tech Blog.
Having not played GW2 yet I’m wondering if they have any other pvp? Perhaps implementing the actual “guild wars” that Tera has might be a good start for servers that want it. What about battlegrounds, do they have them either?
As for queing for the WvW what I would try would be for the que to give priority to preformed groups in terms of getting them in. The rest of the individuals would not be placed in a standard que but be placed into an RNG that might let them get in within 5 minutes or not at all that day. In additional if their technology allows them raise the number of players allowed into the zone.
Join a real guild SynCaine. You know one where members actually sign up before they’re supposed to be in the WvW area when your guild event begins.
Queues isn’t the real problem, the real problem is the fact that their technology isn’t able to load all players on screen. Last night my guild was assigned to turtle business (which is where you stand on top of eachother and heal/buff/aoe the shit out of anyone). It takes the focus of the enemy zerg and you can basically go 25vs100 and not lose while other guilds take shit.
We were probably 40ish and at one point we were holding of the main zergs of both enemy servers… Thing is though, because the technology is so shite it loaded maybe 10 enemies at maximum. Fucking retarded.
Shit I’ve once been banging on the top keep door and only noticed the enemy was there because suddenly around 40 people dropped… We won that fight without me ever loading a single enemy, just the bodies.
Hey go figure. They base their game design around Dark Age of Camelot, with PvP as the primary end game, and then are surprised when people PvP, like in DAoC.
They need to get rid of the pop cap and make zones bigger.
Syncaine, are you whining now that GW2 has succeeded beyond ArenaNet’s wildest expectations? Take a chill-pill! All these problems will be addressed. Hell, even your favouritest MMO ever, World of Warcraft (by hours played) had more teething problems when it first launched.
“GW2 has succeeded beyond ArenaNet’s wildest expectations” – could you provide a link to a real info about it (i.e., where they describe what were the ArenaNet’s WILDEST EXPECTATIONS and what the actual numbers are? Thanks.
Sure, Xyloxan, you can find it here!
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Hey remember Guild wars 2, that ultra casual mmo with levelling content harder than anything WoW has ever had since TBC? The levelling content that people are still doing? The zones where there are overflows on low pop servers due to this, Wheras for years only high pop servers even had a few rerollers or new players in starter zones mid expansion?
Hey remember gw2 dungeons? That no one did during launch BECAUSE they wanted to experience the world, not skip it all like post TBC wow players did with the new LFG? Oh and those dungeons where you can actually die? Something most wow players never experienced in dungeons and raids post tbc unless they were shockingly bad? Oh yeah. And remember those vanilla wow world bosses that took 40/80 people to do for awesome rewards, but we’re taken out in cata cos they were STILL too hard? Well guild wars has them, but they’re harder.
And pvp? Remember Wintergrasp and Vanilla east plague lands? Imagine that x100, that’s wvwvw. Except their are four zones! And remember black rock chain fights? Jump puzzles in wvwvw provide the same experience. Remember Ranked bgs in vanilla > sPvP but without ridiculous gear advantages, same goes for wows arena too ( except who likes doing that really ?)
Finally, I’m not too fond of gw’s end game, but it’s better than anything else at the moment. Bring back Vanilla WoW/TBC and I’ll play it in a heartbeat. But it seems like the OPs buggier about gw2’s success – Do you know why it has succeeded ? Because it’s not the ‘ultra casual mmo’ at the moment – WoW is. Don’t believe me? Go ask the pandas no doubt kitted in epic gear already, whilst in gw2 exotics led alone ascended (epic) are had to get, fuck, If you have a legendary you are laughing. If you have one in wow, what’s the difference?
How about you give guild wars a try? Fuck, you might even like it. And if you don’t you have it for like, unlike say….WoW!