Okay, so let me preface this thread with a disclaimer that I don't intend to come across as salty, whining or just complaining a whole bunch about WvW. I genuinely would like for this thread to act as a place for constructive and progressive discussion about the future of WvW and the direction it should take. If you don't feel as if you can contribute to this thread in a similar fashion, please try to refrain from posting at all. Thank you.

So I reached out to an ANet Dev in-game to try to get their views on the idea of Unlinking the servers, since this seems to be a fairly hot topic amongst the community right now. Naturally, they were hesitant to say anything due to ANet's current stance on the matter or lack thereof. So rather than just bombard my thoughts and opinions directly towards the Dev, I've decided to write this on the Forums & Reddit where I will then direct said developer to view it and hope that they respond, however, I also invite all of you to weigh in with your own views too.

Right, so first of all, it seems to me that there's a pretty big divide over the idea of Unlinking the servers, with the main arguments for and against the topic being Server Identity & Population Issues. Personally, I'm on the Server Identity side of things but I'm trying to look at it from a wider angle than that. So I asked myself, "Why do I care so much about Unlinking?" The answer is simple: I've been playing WvW since the first Beta Weekend Event, I've seen and played through every iteration of WvW up to its' current version and I miss the old days. I miss the old tier system, even for all its' faults. I miss being a part of a community that was built on Server Identity. & I miss how seriously people used to take WvW on a weekly basis, toxicity aside of course.

Now if like myself, you consider yourself a WvW Vet, I'm sure you probably do too. But therein lies our biggest problem. Right now, the WvW Community is vastly different from how it used to be. Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died. Over the years, with WvW stagnating and the long communication drought with the Devs, we have lost a lot of those original players. But with the changes that have come in over the past year or two (Pips, Reward Tracks, F2P, PoF) we've gained a whole bunch of new WvW players who don't know any different from the way WvW is now. In fact, a lot of them enjoy the current version of WvW and are likely to be the ones against unlinking the servers, but who can blame them? Not us, that's for sure. Add that to the fact that PvE players can now run in WvW more casually than ever for their Rewards and you'll probably find that the odds are pretty stacked against us.

"So what do we do? "

Well first off, it's no use for us to kick and scream about the opposition. They like WvW the way it is right now and they seem to very much be in the majority of voices heard by ANet. So if ANet is hearing from them that everything's great with regards to WvW, you can bet your ass that they're not going to change a thing. Meanwhile, all we seem to have are a bunch of regurgitated threads and polls banging on about unlinking the servers every week without much afterthought for what happens next.

I think we really need to evaluate what we're asking of ANet by unlinking the servers. The whole idea of the Linking in the first place was to patch the glaring population issues we had with the old system. So to go back to that would be disastrous for everyone involved. Sure, we'd probably get our beloved identity back, but it wouldn't be long until we're stuck in the same situation we were before the Linking happened. ANet wants to avoid that at all costs and we do too. Thus, we need to have a reasonable discussion as to how things should progress after the unlinking and come up with a proposal that ANet will be able to take seriously. It's all well and good screaming and hollering for an unlink, but what good is it if we're only going to land right back at square one?

This is where I believe our biggest dilemma lies. The ability to come together and talk things out as a Community. Right now, the WvW Community, if you could even call it that, is shattered. We've got several factions pulling in all different directions and nothing is getting done or discussed for that matter. This, I believe, is why ANet plays a lot of its' cards related to WvW so close to their chest, because they can never gauge who they're going to piss off by announcing new ideas. Now I've heard rumours, as to whether or not they're true I don't know, that ANet would love to invest more resources and appoint more than one dedicated developer for WvW to help address all of our various wants, needs and opinions. But why would they go through all that effort if they're only going to be pulled from pillar to post and hounded by a fractured WvW Community, who can't even vote on polls without them devolving into a big old salt-fest?

Now I can already hear a few of you:"Why should we be the ones to have to do something?""This is ANet's game, they should fix it first."Etc.

But my point here is this: The WvW Community has always been difficult to cooperate with, a fact that was highlighted by the Desert Borderland debacle. ANet invested a lot of time and effort into that map, going so far as to reach out to specific WvW Guilds to play-test it, and we shot it down completely. Now, who's fault was that? It can't be ANet's, since they were supposedly following the feedback from their play-testers. So It can only be us. Why? Because WvW has never really had a central voice, a person or group of people that listens to the Community and uses their platform to speak to ANet like Wooden Potatoes does for PvE. We're just a bunch of separate WvW Guilds, with our own agendas, who only speak up when there's something to complain about. We don't have our own space to come together and discuss WvW matters as a group, we certainly don't utilize the one we've been given at least. (I suppose you could mention GW2wvw but that was mostly full of trolls and shit-talking)

"So where do we go from here?"

Well, it's up to you guys really. Either we can continue to bitch and moan about 'the current state of WvW' and hope that ANet finally does something that'll please everyone (unlikely) without any sort of feedback or direction from us? Or we man the hell up and start coming together to hammer out what we really want from WvW and in which direction we want it to head in a manner that ANet can cooperate with?

A lot of you will probably try to shoot me down from the get-go, spouting some over-used statement about how "ANet never listens to us!" But that's the exact kind of reaction I've been talking about. I look around the WvW forum and I see a hell of a lot more communication between us and the Devs than we've ever had before, so why not capitalize on that for the future, rather than moaning about things that have happened in the past?

I think we also need to accept that there are always going to be opposing sides to every idea or decision related to WvW, especially where our current Community is concerned. But if we can just work together as an actual Community, there's no reason why we can't all agree on a compromise that suits both parties in the end.

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.

You lost me here.

@SloRules.3560 said:

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.

Felt the same way, but I looked it over just because. Found nothing substantial to move wvw forward.

@SloRules.3560 said:

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.

Same!

However I'm pretty sure most people on these forums, are being just as serious as the Devs. are. :trollface:

Far as linking goes. I don't even think links was supposed to even try to fix the population issues of WvW. In my opinion the only thing linking servers as. Was a tool for ANet to use to subtly nudge P2W players to buy gems, and transfer to the next FotM server for easy wins. Which in fact cause the problem to cascade faster than before. I remembered because I was there. I was in 2 fight oriented zerg busting guilds on Db. One of the guilds tried to follow me to ESO against my warnings. Lo and behold what I warned them would happen came true. Needless to say the left ESO within 2 weeks and went to BDO. Which was even more grindy, than they lefted for WoW and I never heard from them again. The other fight guild I was in died from the proliferation, of boring overwhelming zerg tactics become the absolute META.

Also the biggest problem lies with the devs, not giving WvW the attention or resources it need to be fun for players. At the moment I dare say with confidence, that there really aren't any actual WvWers left playing GW2. Most of the players that now play's GW2 WvW is nothing then PvEers looking for easy legendary armor. Hence look at their behaviors. I mean most players only come to WvW to K-Train ( which is PvEing.) Or will only take fights when they have huge number advantage over you. Or the ones who just camp stealth for easy ganks.

I don't really see a divide in players through actions. I do see a divide in WvW players through these text threads. I'm a man of actions speaks louder than words. And with the proliferation of K-Train or hide type players in WvW. Doesn't Screams anything other than PvEers farming for PvE rewards.

I not going to take about balance, since that's horse has been beaten to the a plup. ANet flatout failed itself and consumers with it's WvW and PvP packages. And instead of putting effort into turn that failure into a success story like Eve Online, ESO, and FFXIV has done. ANet just folded it's cards and walked away.

Therefore as players we should not expect the current status quo to change in our favor. We can not force the devs. or publisher, to care for something they don't want to. Therefore any serious discussions that we have, over WvW and PvP modes are for nought.

Honestly at this point if you are a WvWer or a PvPers in GW2. All I can say is good luck and enjoy the lifestyle of a 3rd. class citizen. Because that's all the attention ANet is going to allot towards you. To think that they would magically up and change their tune, is nonsensical at best.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@SloRules.3560 said:

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.

You're looking for an all-fix answer without even trying to contribute yourself. But thanks for reading, I guess.

And if you can't see the sarcasm in the "Spam 1" remark then it's probably for the better that you don't.

I agree with the OP - people push their agendas and it diverts efforts for common change. For example, linking happened; the people who post against it need to get over it. We got the DBL dropped on us. I hate the DBL (even tried to like it pre- and post- laser event) and wish they would get rid of it. But, it's here...I have to accept it. Everyone has something they don't like about WvW.

Maybe the WvW community would have greater success if they tried incremental change to existing things in WvW instead of radical changes (get rid of linking, get rid of DBL),

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:Okay, so let me preface this thread with a disclaimer that I don't intend to come across as salty, whining or just complaining a whole bunch about WvW. I genuinely would like for this thread to act as a place for constructive and progressive discussion about the future of WvW and the direction it should take. If you don't feel as if you can contribute to this thread in a similar fashion, please try to refrain from posting at all. Thank you.

---

So I reached out to an ANet Dev in-game to try to get their views on the idea of Unlinking the servers, since this seems to be a fairly hot topic amongst the community right now. Naturally, they were hesitant to say anything due to ANet's current stance on the matter or lack thereof. So rather than just bombard my thoughts and opinions directly towards the Dev, I've decided to write this on the Forums & Reddit where I will then direct said developer to view it and hope that they respond, however, I also invite all of you to weigh in with your own views too.

Right, so first of all, it seems to me that there's a pretty big divide over the idea of Unlinking the servers, with the main arguments for and against the topic being Server Identity & Population Issues. Personally, I'm on the Server Identity side of things but I'm trying to look at it from a wider angle than that. So I asked myself, "Why do I care so much about Unlinking?" The answer is simple: I've been playing WvW since the first Beta Weekend Event, I've seen and played through every iteration of WvW up to its' current version and I miss the old days. I miss the old tier system, even for all its' faults. I miss being a part of a community that was built on Server Identity. & I miss how seriously people used to take WvW on a weekly basis, toxicity aside of course.

Now if like myself, you consider yourself a WvW Vet, I'm sure you probably do too. But therein lies our biggest problem. Right now, the WvW Community is vastly different from how it used to be. Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died. Over the years, with WvW stagnating and the long communication drought with the Devs, we have lost a lot of those original players. But with the changes that have come in over the past year or two (Pips, Reward Tracks, F2P, PoF) we've gained a whole bunch of new WvW players who don't know any different from the way WvW is now. In fact, a lot of them enjoy the current version of WvW and are likely to be the ones against unlinking the servers, but who can blame them? Not us, that's for sure. Add that to the fact that PvE players can now run in WvW more casually than ever for their Rewards and you'll probably find that the odds are pretty stacked against us.

"So what do we do? "

Well first off, it's no use for us to kick and scream about the opposition. They like WvW the way it is right now and they seem to very much be in the majority of voices heard by ANet. So if ANet is hearing from them that everything's great with regards to WvW, you can bet your kitten that they're not going to change a thing. Meanwhile, all we seem to have are a bunch of regurgitated threads and polls banging on about unlinking the servers every week without much afterthought for what happens next.

I think we really need to evaluate what we're asking of ANet by unlinking the servers. The whole idea of the Linking in the first place was to patch the glaring population issues we had with the old system. So to go back to that would be disastrous for everyone involved. Sure, we'd probably get our beloved identity back, but it wouldn't be long until we're stuck in the same situation we were before the Linking happened. ANet wants to avoid that at all costs and we do too. Thus, we need to have a reasonable discussion as to how things should progress after the unlinking and come up with a proposal that ANet will be able to take seriously. It's all well and good screaming and hollering for an unlink, but what good is it if we're only going to land right back at square one?

This is where I believe our biggest dilemma lies. The ability to come together and talk things out as a Community. Right now, the WvW Community, if you could even call it that, is shattered. We've got several factions pulling in all different directions and nothing is getting done or discussed for that matter. This, I believe, is why ANet plays a lot of its' cards related to WvW so close to their chest, because they can never gauge who they're going to kitten off by announcing new ideas. Now I've heard rumours, as to whether or not they're true I don't know, that ANet would love to invest more resources and appoint more than one dedicated developer for WvW to help address all of our various wants, needs and opinions. But why would they go through all that effort if they're only going to be pulled from pillar to post and hounded by a fractured WvW Community, who can't even vote on polls without them devolving into a big old salt-fest?

Now I can already hear a few of you:"Why should we be the ones to have to do something?""This is ANet's game, they should fix it first."Etc.

But my point here is this: The WvW Community has always been difficult to cooperate with, a fact that was highlighted by the Desert Borderland debacle. ANet invested a lot of time and effort into that map, going so far as to reach out to specific WvW Guilds to play-test it, and we shot it down completely. Now, who's fault was that? It can't be ANet's, since they were supposedly following the feedback from their play-testers. So It can only be us. Why? Because WvW has never really had a central voice, a person or group of people that listens to the Community and uses their platform to speak to ANet like Wooden Potatoes does for PvE. We're just a bunch of separate WvW Guilds, with our own agendas, who only speak up when there's something to complain about. We don't have our own space to come together and discuss WvW matters as a group, we certainly don't utilize the one we've been given at least. (I suppose you could mention GW2wvw but that was mostly full of trolls and kitten-talking)

"So where do we go from here?"

Well, it's up to you guys really. Either we can continue to kitten and moan about 'the current state of WvW' and hope that ANet finally does something that'll please everyone (unlikely) without any sort of feedback or direction from us? Or we man the hell up and start coming together to hammer out what we really want from WvW and in which direction we want it to head in a manner that ANet can cooperate with?

A lot of you will probably try to shoot me down from the get-go, spouting some over-used statement about how "ANet never listens to us!" But that's the exact kind of reaction I've been talking about. I look around the WvW forum and I see a hell of a lot more communication between us and the Devs than we've ever had before, so why not capitalize on that for the future, rather than moaning about things that have happened in the past?

I think we also need to accept that there are always going to be opposing sides to every idea or decision related to WvW, especially where our current Community is concerned. But if we can just work together as an actual Community, there's no reason why we can't all agree on a compromise that suits both parties in the end.

It’s good that you decided to post here, as opposed to continuing to pm a dev while (s)he was playing. Players need to stop doing that and start using the appropriate channels of communication.

You are completely wrong about... “Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.”... The percentage of competitive gamers, and pvp minded players, is pretty big out in the video game universe. There is a market for it that anet tried to tap, but kinda failed to deliver to players... Why did it fail? Because pve was always that the main focus of this game, and wvw and spvp were used as selling features only... and these areas didn’t receive the resources necessary to grow.

I understand your point of coming together as a unified community, but we already tried that long long long ago... It’s all on the dev team now, and what is it they need to do???

-Fix their game engine because it’s obviously not up to the task to host mass numbers of payers fighting in the same area. Compare gw2 zerg play to say... Camelot Unchained in the works, with a custom built engine capable of having around 300 v 300 v 300 players fighting in the same space while still maintaining a decent 30 FPS...

-Professions, skills, traits, utilities, cc designs, stealth designs, support roles, the UI... all need to be blown up and remade. The dev team can make unified designs that are good for, and balanced well, for every game mode (pve, wvw, spvp), but that just have to do it.

-WvW not being treated like a side show feature, compared to the the pve side. That means continued development with making a better “Mist War” that players care about and want to participate in... Not having the same old stale and boring maps and “stuff” we have had since launch. If the devs devoted even 1/4th the effort into wvw and spvp development, as that do for pve, these modes would be in much better places.

-Overall glacial pace of development needs to change going forward if the dev team wants more players and better financial reports... Arenanet has 400 employees, but it seems like only 100 people are behind this product... Takes this team forever to produce, and that causes players to lose interest fast. The slow pace also generates a public perception that anet doesn’t care enough about certain modes, and that’s not a good reputation to carry because it loses players, referrals and gem sales...

-Better communication, open testing servers, and testing feedback boards... so the community can get involved BEFORE anything launches.

...The community has already done their parts, it’s all on the devs shoulders now. I’m sure the community is willing to rally again if the devs step up their game.

OP, you're going to have to translate your British humour for the Muricans.

There's always been a culpability issue for WvWers, but I agree we need a unified voice and an accurate measure that goes beyond the forums. I don't think the forums actually give an accurate reflection. Too many agendas.

@SugarCayne.3098 said:OP, you're going to have to translate your British humour for the Muricans.

There's always been a culpability issue for WvWers, but I agree we need a unified voice and an accurate measure that goes beyond the forums. I don't think the forums actually give an accurate reflection. Too many agendas.

I figured it would have been glaringly obvious that "Badges, Bags & Spam 1" was sarcasm, but evidently not. My bad I suppose xD

I think what you are saying OP is, be straight forward and communicate(without salt and whine) with the Devs , also we should all agree on the same things, am I correct?Ok, then I say, End the Pirate Ship meta, Fix the balance for professions and condi /power and fix the lag for better large scale battle experiences.

First, thank you for the well constructed post.

Second, part of the problem has indeed been Anet, for the desert borderland it took them well over six month post release to get fixes done on the map to make it more playable. We've seen ideas are almost a no brainer to implement, such as megaserver obsidian sanctum, and not even one word from them. I'm not going to deep dive into this, as in the past year they have recently implemented many other ideas tossed around previously by the community for years. There's still a ways to go to make wvw a better place, and it's certainly up to the community to present those ideas to Anet in proper form to be heard.

Third, we are indeed a divided community. A community mostly made up of "me" people and not "we" people. Players who think only they know what's best for their own wvw, and not what's best for the community as a whole. You can see this many times in almost every thread, there is no real discussion or compromise to ideas, mostly extreme yes or no. I've seen it on topics I've brought up and why I won't bother to bring up anymore ideas of my own.

We have players here that outright asked to delete the desert borderland, giving no consideration to those that do indeed enjoy playing on it, or no thought to the massive amount of time Anet probably spent on developing it for "free", instead of continuing to work with Anet on improving the map. I understand the frustrations of years of not being heard, and the desert map was just another example of that happening again, where they didn't bother to listen to much of the beta feedback and then dragged their feet for six months as wvw crumbled after HoT release. But the year after that there's been a huge effort made on Anet's part to make wvw better, we should look at that and stop looking so deep into the past.

There's also too many one track minded people roaming these forums, it's all about "balance" and nothing else, shooting down ideas because of reasons the wvw developers don't even have control over, why bother posting in the wvw section of the forums?

Lastly, this may just be me, but I think wvw development currently is at the end of the line at the moment, with not much else in the pipeline to develop since the majority of items stated for release last year have been delivered. Only things I potentially see in development at the moment is a new map, megaOS if they read about it, or another population control system like the old alliance system they had scrapped for links. Am I wrong? Notice we haven't even gotten a "priority poll" in quite some time?

If I'm not, then we're going to have to work together and come up with a "top" five or ten list of things we would like to see developed. Or I guess we can continue to chicken scratch just about balance.

@XenesisII.1540 said:(snip)

If I'm not, then we're going to have to work together and come up with a "top" five or ten list of things we would like to see developed. Or I guess we can continue to chicken scratch just about balance.

Not shure how that would work, probably the first things players would TOP would be the thing Anet wont change.

@OPI miss the old tier system as well, but that no longer works! and it never worked that well....

If this topic is all about unlink the server, that would not be a good thing, servers are basicly concatenated/trimmed in temporary way, WvW, IF servers combined already have huge dead timezones and server A ktrains on B and C dead timezone then its B Ktrain while probably C will never be able to ktrain, well the fact is that the word Ktrain implies something is not working as in there no fight or lack of, dont forger that fight with the current class skill design provokes tons o lag, fps drops etc.So.. if u unlink servers some server will be suffering from huge population gaps and that they cant even play wvw, cause after some tier up.. the population gap is way to huge, even with linked servers, by the other and most server would mostly try to cap empty structure and avoid figthing, theres would be mostly roammers but still lots of structures to take easy, and avoid fights. ( it wont be good if that happens....trust me ive been in mmo's that ended with low populatin taking castles )

The problem with unlink servers is that another solution is neededm and i dont think Anet wants even to spare time coding for WvW to be truth. (wvw was suposed to be a spvp for pver's show gimmicks and stack for rewards....) so i imagine Anet is quite happy with the dullness of the gamemode for wath is suposed to be.

I think theres alot of mistakes to Anet to take it to lightly as they are doing (it looks like it), but that is just my opinion, for some they love to PVD a empty server and say that is very skilled thing to do, well... each one to each own right??

So, imagine that dev's unlink the servers and most server become deadzones(obvious thing), wich already some links are... with lots of stuctures to take.. @OP u think this is a good thing?Doesn't that will force changes again later, with the same issues we had before?. Cause lack of players was what caused the link systems.

I think players are not picturing the real issue here, and not noticing the redundancy of the changes to older problems.

@Crazy.6029 said:I think what you are saying OP is, be straight forward and communicate(without salt and whine) with the Devs , also we should all agree on the same things, am I correct?Ok, then I say, End the Pirate Ship meta, Fix the balance for professions and condi /power and fix the lag for better large scale battle experiences.

That means cheange how classes work, and would afect pve since classes cant behave to much diferent from pve to pvp.... that will never be done, since might get out of the PVE ideals ANet have for the game, wich imo are the culprit to the game state between gammodes, thereoff causing lack of quality in the game overall.

And somethign that is pve, is sacred it's holy, wont be fixed nor changed.

This is the future of wvw.

I understand you initially came from discussing linking, but there are bigger picture stuff going on too. Linking is better considered as a feature creep addition that impacts the social aspect, but doesn't actually provide playable content (game play). So, I'll start from the get-go Guild Wars 2 was essentially 2-3 game modes (You can argue WvW is just a larger Spvp...but regardless). So it is obvious there would be a "division" in the community anyway. Then you get to the division in play styles that are prevalent in Pve/Spvp/WvW itself. The difference is WvW didn't try to intentional divide the player base initially (until Eotm I guess?). Although pvp games in general due tend to find a split between those that play for objectives, for kills, and for both.

Because of the variety of game modes at launch it is obvious that those various game modes help sales/hype for Guild Wars 2 since those things were beyond the standard fare that was prevalent in MMOs previously (Everquest(s) and WoW). This isn't to say Guild Wars 2 was the first to feature pvp, but MMOs started to either add in or include more of PvP around the time of GW2 (Skyrim's or Planet Side 2 as examples). GW2 may have the most fluid action based combat system when compared to other standard MMOs, and deserves it's praise for it. It also deserves initial praise for its attempts at essentially making three games for the price of one. But now? It's aged, and hasn't adapted fast enough to remain "perfect" (due to budget or technical reasons).

Back to focusing on WvW. In my opinion, WvW tried to give something for everyone, but failed to be everything to somebody. Meaning, it mashed those that play for objective, kills, and both into one place while also adding GW2's specific divisions (pve stuff vs. pvp stuff). Which no doubt lead us all to making the "WvW Community" very hard to "cooperate" with.

So where do we go from here?

Realistically, no where. It's 2017 after all.

Despite the topic's preliminary focus on linking, it's the game itself that influenced a divide in the community that needs to be acknowledged as well. As for the game itself, history seems to suggest that it is impossible to make the Perfect Pasta Sauce to please everybody, especially when there is already a cheaper/better option before you. I thought GW2 had the right idea of offering the three perfect flavors, but as many have noted that two of the flavors spoiled due to neglect or inability to adapt fast enough...and we're back to the old philosophy of attempting the single Perfect Pasta Sauce, while spicy, and extra chunky remain largely untapped.

Why am I talking about Sauce? Right, context. Here, from your pal Jim Sterling relating Preggo's history to the game industry at large:

By all means, form your own interpretations. Skip to 1:30 btw.

@Swagger.1459 said:You are completely wrong about... “Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.”...

I understand your point of coming together as a unified community, but we already tried that long long long ago... It’s all on the dev team now, and what is it they need to do???

...The community has already done their parts, it’s all on the devs shoulders now. I’m sure the community is willing to rally again if the devs step up their game.

Yeah, my apologies, that was sarcasm. Didn't realise just how many heads it would fly over though. xD

I think it's easy to say "We tried that already." and then just give up and expect the Devs to pick up after us. If all we do is give up after every first failure, what can we ever hope to achieve?

Has it really though? Because all I've seen the Community do is devolve into various squabbling factions with no clear voice or directive on what anyone wants. We can't keep being reactive to what Anet says and does, at some point we have to be pro-active. And I believe that point has come now, it doesn't matter whether or not we've tried before.

@XenesisII.1540 said:First, thank you for the well constructed post.

Second, part of the problem has indeed been Anet, for the desert borderland it took them well over six month post release to get fixes done on the map to make it more playable. We've seen ideas are almost a no brainer to implement, such as megaserver obsidian sanctum, and not even one word from them. I'm not going to deep dive into this, as in the past year they have recently implemented many other ideas tossed around previously by the community for years. There's still a ways to go to make wvw a better place, and it's certainly up to the community to present those ideas to Anet in proper form to be heard.

Third, we are indeed a divided community. A community mostly made up of "me" people and not "we" people. Players who think only they know what's best for their own wvw, and not what's best for the community as a whole. You can see this many times in almost every thread, there is no real discussion or compromise to ideas, mostly extreme yes or no. I've seen it on topics I've brought up and why I won't bother to bring up anymore ideas of my own.

We have players here that outright asked to delete the desert borderland, giving no consideration to those that do indeed enjoy playing on it, or no thought to the massive amount of time Anet probably spent on developing it for "free", instead of continuing to work with Anet on improving the map. I understand the frustrations of years of not being heard, and the desert map was just another example of that happening again, where they didn't bother to listen to much of the beta feedback and then dragged their feet for six months as wvw crumbled after HoT release. But the year after that there's been a huge effort made on Anet's part to make wvw better, we should look at that and stop looking so deep into the past.

There's also too many one track minded people roaming these forums, it's all about "balance" and nothing else, shooting down ideas because of reasons the wvw developers don't even have control over, why bother posting in the wvw section of the forums?

Lastly, this may just be me, but I think wvw development currently is at the end of the line at the moment, with not much else in the pipeline to develop since the majority of items stated for release last year have been delivered. Only things I potentially see in development at the moment is a new map, megaOS if they read about it, or another population control system like the old alliance system they had scrapped for links. Am I wrong? Notice we haven't even gotten a "priority poll" in quite some time?

If I'm not, then we're going to have to work together and come up with a "top" five or ten list of things we would like to see developed. Or I guess we can continue to chicken scratch just about balance.

You're welcome, I'm glad you liked it.

There's definitely things that Anet are a fault for, it'd be ridiculous to try and pardon them from everything. But yes, in order for things to progress any further, we need to come together and really solidify what we want from them and show Anet that we're not just a bunch of screeching idiots. Even if that means only harnessing 60% of the WvW player-base into a unified voice. Anet are only ever going to listen to the majority and the sooner we can rally that majority, the sooner we'll see things change for the better.

As for the Top Five or Ten List, we've done that before and it worked! It shocking just how many people have forgotten how all these polls started. It was from a thread on these very forums that outlined what WvW players wanted from Anet in a controlled and constructive manner. That's the kind of thing the Devs want to see, yet here we are constantly churning out polls that either derail or end up with troll results.

@Aeolus.3615 said:@OPI miss the old tier system as well, but that no longer works! and it never worked that well....

If this topic is all about unlink the server, that would not be a good thing, servers are basicly concatenated/trimmed in temporary way, WvW, IF servers combined already have huge dead timezones and server A ktrains on B and C dead timezone then its B Ktrain while probably C will never be able to ktrain, well the fact is that the word Ktrain implies something is not working as in there no fight or lack of, dont forger that fight with the current class skill design provokes tons o lag, fps drops etc.So.. if u unlink servers some server will be suffering from huge population gaps and that they cant even play wvw, cause after some tier up.. the population gap is way to huge, even with linked servers, by the other and most server would mostly try to cap empty structure and avoid figthing, theres would be mostly roammers but still lots of structures to take easy, and avoid fights. ( it wont be good if that happens....trust me ive been in mmo's that ended with low populatin taking castles )

The problem with unlink servers is that another solution is neededm and i dont think Anet wants even to spare time coding for WvW to be truth. (wvw was suposed to be a spvp for pver's show gimmicks and stack for rewards....) so i imagine Anet is quite happy with the dullness of the gamemode for wath is suposed to be.

I think theres alot of mistakes to Anet to take it to lightly as they are doing (it looks like it), but that is just my opinion, for some they love to PVD a empty server and say that is very skilled thing to do, well... each one to each own right??

So, imagine that dev's unlink the servers and most server become deadzones(obvious thing), wich already some links are... with lots of stuctures to take.. @OP u think this is a good thing?Doesn't that will force changes again later, with the same issues we had before?. Cause lack of players was what caused the link systems.

I think players are not picturing the real issue here, and not noticing the redundancy of the changes to older problems.

Initially when I started writing this post, I was going to focus on Unlinking as a proposal. But you can probably see that mid-way through writing it I changed the tone to address the larger issue at hand, which is our distinct lack of community and internal communication as a whole. I also mentioned at the end about compromising in order to come to an agreement that most people will be happy with. I'm under no illusion that Unlinking the servers will actually go ahead, in fact it'll probably be a disaster if it did. But the sheer fact that a lot of people seem to just be wantonly calling for it as a resolution to all of WvW's problems, without thinking of what happens next, is ridiculous.

Too many existing WvW players, like myself, are far too hung up on the past and want things to go back to the way they were. Only difference with me is that, I want to discuss our next move properly before we just blindly leap. And I'm willing to entertain compromises in order to secure a better future for WvW.

The primary issues are clear; population balance and power creep balance.

Power creep balance is totally up to anet, players' only expectation is make it acceptable.Population balance there are divisions; blow up, merge, unlink, eotm, battlegroup or etcs. This over the years, opinions have changed a lot, it can be seen from the recent poll thread.

However, the last time I got a respond from dev is that our perspectives are limited which I assume implying that therefore our suggestions are missing something, which is pretty vague. In any case, it also means it is pointless to suggest anything :disappointed: .

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:You are completely wrong about... “Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.”...

I understand your point of coming together as a unified community, but we already tried that long long long ago... It’s all on the dev team now, and what is it they need to do???

...The community has already done their parts, it’s all on the devs shoulders now. I’m sure the community is willing to rally again if the devs step up their game.

@XenesisII.1540 said:First, thank you for the well constructed post.

Second, part of the problem has indeed been Anet, for the desert borderland it took them well over six month post release to get fixes done on the map to make it more playable. We've seen ideas are almost a no brainer to implement, such as megaserver obsidian sanctum, and not even one word from them. I'm not going to deep dive into this, as in the past year they have recently implemented many other ideas tossed around previously by the community for years. There's still a ways to go to make wvw a better place, and it's certainly up to the community to present those ideas to Anet in proper form to be heard.

Third, we are indeed a divided community. A community mostly made up of "me" people and not "we" people. Players who think only they know what's best for their own wvw, and not what's best for the community as a whole. You can see this many times in almost every thread, there is no real discussion or compromise to ideas, mostly extreme yes or no. I've seen it on topics I've brought up and why I won't bother to bring up anymore ideas of my own.

We have players here that outright asked to delete the desert borderland, giving no consideration to those that do indeed enjoy playing on it, or no thought to the massive amount of time Anet probably spent on developing it for "free", instead of continuing to work with Anet on improving the map. I understand the frustrations of years of not being heard, and the desert map was just another example of that happening again, where they didn't bother to listen to much of the beta feedback and then dragged their feet for six months as wvw crumbled after HoT release. But the year after that there's been a huge effort made on Anet's part to make wvw better, we should look at that and stop looking so deep into the past.

There's also too many one track minded people roaming these forums, it's all about "balance" and nothing else, shooting down ideas because of reasons the wvw developers don't even have control over, why bother posting in the wvw section of the forums?

Lastly, this may just be me, but I think wvw development currently is at the end of the line at the moment, with not much else in the pipeline to develop since the majority of items stated for release last year have been delivered. Only things I potentially see in development at the moment is a new map, megaOS if they read about it, or another population control system like the old alliance system they had scrapped for links. Am I wrong? Notice we haven't even gotten a "priority poll" in quite some time?

If I'm not, then we're going to have to work together and come up with a "top" five or ten list of things we would like to see developed. Or I guess we can continue to chicken scratch just about balance.

@Aeolus.3615 said:@OPI miss the old tier system as well, but that no longer works! and it never worked that well....

If this topic is all about unlink the server, that would not be a good thing, servers are basicly concatenated/trimmed in temporary way, WvW, IF servers combined already have huge dead timezones and server A ktrains on B and C dead timezone then its B Ktrain while probably C will never be able to ktrain, well the fact is that the word Ktrain implies something is not working as in there no fight or lack of, dont forger that fight with the current class skill design provokes tons o lag, fps drops etc.So.. if u unlink servers some server will be suffering from huge population gaps and that they cant even play wvw, cause after some tier up.. the population gap is way to huge, even with linked servers, by the other and most server would mostly try to cap empty structure and avoid figthing, theres would be mostly roammers but still lots of structures to take easy, and avoid fights. ( it wont be good if that happens....trust me ive been in mmo's that ended with low populatin taking castles )

The problem with unlink servers is that another solution is neededm and i dont think Anet wants even to spare time coding for WvW to be truth. (wvw was suposed to be a spvp for pver's show gimmicks and stack for rewards....) so i imagine Anet is quite happy with the dullness of the gamemode for wath is suposed to be.

I think theres alot of mistakes to Anet to take it to lightly as they are doing (it looks like it), but that is just my opinion, for some they love to PVD a empty server and say that is very skilled thing to do, well... each one to each own right??

So, imagine that dev's unlink the servers and most server become deadzones(obvious thing), wich already some links are... with lots of stuctures to take.. @OP u think this is a good thing?Doesn't that will force changes again later, with the same issues we had before?. Cause lack of players was what caused the link systems.

I think players are not picturing the real issue here, and not noticing the redundancy of the changes to older problems.

I understand you made this thread with good intentions, but your thought process is like 4 years late.

We’ve been through these rodeos before and provided a plethora of feedback from alpha, beta, launch... and up to this point. You’re thinking as if the community hasn’t tried and tried and tried to provide feedback on every aspect of the game.

Provide some concrete suggestions for this mode, but don’t act as if players haven’t made the effort to communicate with the devs. We have done so ad nauseam. We can’t force the devs hand, nor force the leaders of this company to care enough to devote the resources to make substantial efforts to the competitive sides of the game, and fix the plethora of issues that need addressing.

For me I have 3 major issues:

1. Server Linking.
2. Population Balance
3. Power Creep

I would love for them to ditch server linking and just merge servers, I think it will help with the population balance issue also. Right now we may have servers that are linked up but they are still playing like separate servers as no-one wants to take the time and effort to organize a newly linked server only for it to be gone in a couple of months.

If you can add back that stability it means the other servers can start to become more organised which in turn may give them a fighting chance against higher population servers. As it will be more competitive fighting against organised servers rather than unorganised ones.

Power creep is something that is out of the control of the WvW team and is in the hand of the balance team. Not to be too disrespectful to them but if you're waiting for the balance team to add some semblance of balance to this game then you will be waiting forever. I have learned to live with the fact that the balance in this game is awful, unfortunately the issue is two fold.....too long between balance patches and balance patches that do not want to do large sweeping changes at once incase it has a major impact on the game. You cannot have long time between patches and little changes and expect the balance issue's to be resolved, it's a bit like Microsoft with their Edge browser. Long time updates with very little done means they will never close the gap on Chrome or Firefox.

For me a good start would be to ditch server linking and just merge servers. I have always felt that WvW has been a wasted opportunity for GW2, they seem to intent on pushing sPvP whereas very few games can pull off large scale combat as well as GW2 has.

@Swagger.1459 said:

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:You are completely wrong about... “Before, we were a bunch of people who all wanted the same thing out of WvW: Badges, Bags and the ability to Spam 1 against our foes until they died.”...

I understand your point of coming together as a unified community, but we already tried that long long long ago... It’s all on the dev team now, and what is it they need to do???

...The community has already done their parts, it’s all on the devs shoulders now. I’m sure the community is willing to rally again if the devs step up their game.

@XenesisII.1540 said:First, thank you for the well constructed post.

Second, part of the problem has indeed been Anet, for the desert borderland it took them well over six month post release to get fixes done on the map to make it more playable. We've seen ideas are almost a no brainer to implement, such as megaserver obsidian sanctum, and not even one word from them. I'm not going to deep dive into this, as in the past year they have recently implemented many other ideas tossed around previously by the community for years. There's still a ways to go to make wvw a better place, and it's certainly up to the community to present those ideas to Anet in proper form to be heard.

Third, we are indeed a divided community. A community mostly made up of "me" people and not "we" people. Players who think only they know what's best for their own wvw, and not what's best for the community as a whole. You can see this many times in almost every thread, there is no real discussion or compromise to ideas, mostly extreme yes or no. I've seen it on topics I've brought up and why I won't bother to bring up anymore ideas of my own.

We have players here that outright asked to delete the desert borderland, giving no consideration to those that do indeed enjoy playing on it, or no thought to the massive amount of time Anet probably spent on developing it for "free", instead of continuing to work with Anet on improving the map. I understand the frustrations of years of not being heard, and the desert map was just another example of that happening again, where they didn't bother to listen to much of the beta feedback and then dragged their feet for six months as wvw crumbled after HoT release. But the year after that there's been a huge effort made on Anet's part to make wvw better, we should look at that and stop looking so deep into the past.

There's also too many one track minded people roaming these forums, it's all about "balance" and nothing else, shooting down ideas because of reasons the wvw developers don't even have control over, why bother posting in the wvw section of the forums?

Lastly, this may just be me, but I think wvw development currently is at the end of the line at the moment, with not much else in the pipeline to develop since the majority of items stated for release last year have been delivered. Only things I potentially see in development at the moment is a new map, megaOS if they read about it, or another population control system like the old alliance system they had scrapped for links. Am I wrong? Notice we haven't even gotten a "priority poll" in quite some time?

If I'm not, then we're going to have to work together and come up with a "top" five or ten list of things we would like to see developed. Or I guess we can continue to chicken scratch just about balance.

@Aeolus.3615 said:@OPI miss the old tier system as well, but that no longer works! and it never worked that well....

If this topic is all about unlink the server, that would not be a good thing, servers are basicly concatenated/trimmed in temporary way, WvW, IF servers combined already have huge dead timezones and server A ktrains on B and C dead timezone then its B Ktrain while probably C will never be able to ktrain, well the fact is that the word Ktrain implies something is not working as in there no fight or lack of, dont forger that fight with the current class skill design provokes tons o lag, fps drops etc.So.. if u unlink servers some server will be suffering from huge population gaps and that they cant even play wvw, cause after some tier up.. the population gap is way to huge, even with linked servers, by the other and most server would mostly try to cap empty structure and avoid figthing, theres would be mostly roammers but still lots of structures to take easy, and avoid fights. ( it wont be good if that happens....trust me ive been in mmo's that ended with low populatin taking castles )

The problem with unlink servers is that another solution is neededm and i dont think Anet wants even to spare time coding for WvW to be truth. (wvw was suposed to be a spvp for pver's show gimmicks and stack for rewards....) so i imagine Anet is quite happy with the dullness of the gamemode for wath is suposed to be.

I think theres alot of mistakes to Anet to take it to lightly as they are doing (it looks like it), but that is just my opinion, for some they love to PVD a empty server and say that is very skilled thing to do, well... each one to each own right??

So, imagine that dev's unlink the servers and most server become deadzones(obvious thing), wich already some links are... with lots of stuctures to take.. @OP u think this is a good thing?Doesn't that will force changes again later, with the same issues we had before?. Cause lack of players was what caused the link systems.

I think players are not picturing the real issue here, and not noticing the redundancy of the changes to older problems.

The problem isn't feedback, the problem is the community wants the game mode to be turned into something that it's not. It's a RvR game mode, there's no room for GvG in theory, yet you see people complaining to get that all the time. Provide feedback within the parameters of the game mode. Roaming isn't the priority. GvG is an afterthought. As soon as everyone can agree on this then we can start discussing the issue the game mode may have, because spamming irrelevant feedback is pretty much useless.

OS ring was made for the GvG BS and see its not having much success most people play solo or small guild and have little to no interrest to follow a guild leader to feed his ego doing some guild vs guild dance fights. xD People need an objective in order to fight for hence RvR WvW will always have people on with or without guilds.

well the way i see it to move WVW foward create a new map and new zone with some new mechincs in it. also change rewards and put wvw only costumes weapons and outfits and make some really hard to get to make people want to work for them. have like underground tunnels and small pathways etc in this new map

Thanks for your well thought out post using paragraphs.

Most of your thread is about population, so I'll provide my 2c. They need to make the hard decision and delete the bottom 12 or even 15 servers. No more links. This will help server identity. Yeah, the identity of those getting deleted will be gone, but they will find new ones with their new servers. The other option is to delete all servers and make 9-12 new ones so everyone has their identity deleted and they have to reform to new ones. Threre is the worlds option that has been floating around for years, but honestly, it seems so convoluted, I can never follow it.

But I have an issue with your second part

@KalasDelRio.8921 said:

But my point here is this: The WvW Community has always been difficult to cooperate with, a fact that was highlighted by the Desert Borderland debacle. ANet invested a lot of time and effort into that map, going so far as to reach out to specific WvW Guilds to play-test it, and we shot it down completely. Now, who's fault was that? It can't be ANet's, since they were supposedly following the feedback from their play-testers. So It can only be us. Why? Because WvW has never really had a central voice, a person or group of people that listens to the Community and uses their platform to speak to ANet like Wooden Potatoes does for PvE. We're just a bunch of separate WvW Guilds, with our own agendas, who only speak up when there's something to complain about. We don't have our own space to come together and discuss WvW matters as a group, we certainly don't utilize the one we've been given at least. (I suppose you could mention GW2wvw but that was mostly full of trolls and kitten-talking)

You seem to be white knighting Anet here and your facts on the DB BL are just wrong. I played during the DB beta. Most of the people were excited and having a lot of fun. Sure, there were some folks who just didn't like it at all, but those were in the minority. After the beta, most people were looking forward to playing on the new BL, but we had some apprehension. Things needed to be fixed, and we pointed them out. There were way too many trash pve mobs, while the map was the same size as ABL, it took too long to get from point A to B due to all the zig zagging, there were too many choke points to lords rooms, FK being the biggest offender with only one entrance, the laser event was dumb, seemed to statistically favor the 2nd place server, wasted peoples time by forcing us to repair, and the biggest, made the game unplayable due to massive lag.

So that was our feedback, and what happened on release? They decreased the pve mobs somewhat. That's it. So of course, the forums blew up, because now, you have all the rest of the players giving feedback that reflected the beta testers.

The horrid laser event was still in the game. Even if you disagreed with the mechanics, it made the game unplayable and DCed people left and right every two hours. This went on for, what, a month and a half? This would never exist in pve. And even if they believed in the event, they never did fix it, they just got rid of it. And it took them another @5 months to address the other issues. They finally added more entrances to lord rooms, added hay bales, shrine changed to zip around (came even later) and little steps to make moving from point A to B faster, decreased the trash mobs even more to ABL levels. Now it's definitely more fun and a good map. But it was a fiasco for SIX MONTHS after release.

My point is that it was totally Anets fault, not ours. They exposed the map to the community as a beta, meaning it was baked in and we were there to just stress test and not provide meaningful feedback. Despite all our warnings, they released it anyway on all three maps with the glaring, game breaking laser event. So, yeah, we raged, and justifiably so. Add to that some big class balance issues and people left.

Your post seems to want to bring some rationality to the game and place a lot of blame on us. I disagree. Anet makes big changes to WvW without any justification. Look at the stability change from the march patch a few years ago (this was done for PvE mechanics btw). That ruined melee combat and created massive lag (as there's no test server). It took them about a year to create the system we have now. Sure, we've gotten some good changes, mostly in the form of rewards, but that's mostly due to us constantly bitching here in the forums. So yes, they do listen to us, but it takes a lot, a lot of complaining and the changes take forever to happen, making us jaded or just quitting.

Unfortunately, and this might go to your point, DBL was such a volatile change, combined with HoT classes, that they basically burned themselves. I feel that they just don't want to touch WvW anymore and do anything drastic that would fix issues for fear of a repeat.

Now we have PoF, further proof that they did not keep WvW in mind. In beta, we all warned about how scourge would ruin WvW game play. They made some nerfs, but it just wasn't enough. I think Nov 7th will be a breaking point for people. They need to just do the hard work and split the game modes and make class balance seperate for each mode. But that requires a lot of work and attention to WvW, something I think they're apprehensive about.

If anet isn't willing to puutty finalyl some serious efforts again into WvW, to brign this game mode back to glory, then I'm already so far to say, that its better for GW2 then, that anet completely removes WvW from the game and uses the ressources better for more, better and imprioved content in PvE, like fixing so many things, that are wrong and bad there (Dungeons just to say, missign full reimplementation of Season 1 content, missing content from day 1, like Polymock/Town Activities, bringign back in an overworked way Town Cloths, the Personality system in a way that it actuayl affects you ,resdiesn and rebalance finalyl the whole untewater content and so on.. so much stuff in PvE suffered practically for years, for a game mode, that Anet has already practically as it looks abandonded for already 3 years...with absolutely no clear intention or vision, to bring this game mode back to a point, where actually playing it makes fun for people, due to beign balanced and interestign to play and beign more, than just only a zergfest/karma train, full of powercreep that completely destroyed the fun out of roaming with ridiculous overpowered Specializations that provide braindead 1hit kill builds witgh that you can defeat whole parties in a blink of an eye out of mass stealth as mirages, or where spellbreakcers full coutner 1hit kill you and are permanently immune to all sorts of damage, until you dare to attack them and kill yourself practicalyl, or full of scourges with their macro controlled (otherwise its impossible to spam all 3 nearly instantly) instant kills with their 3 sand shades, that condi burst you to death with them in a matter of seconds)

it has been like this with Anet from begin on.. they always do only something, as like it sounds cool on paper and the very moment they receive some harcher/negative critics, then they play ostrich and don't fix these thigns that have been negatively criticized to the point, that they simply instantly giveup the content, because they don#t want to put in any of their precious ressources into fixing the bad stuff of the game, because thats a pure money losing buisness project for them.. and with a gemstore, that is alone to week to finance everything, having to fix old content is naturally always bad for ANet.. thats why they always want to focus rather on working on new content, because new content can generate money income, when its put into the gemstore... or is part of an expansion now ...its sad to see, that a company like ANet has become so extremely money driven in regard of their decisions and how fast they fix things in this game, unlike in GW1, where broken thigns got fixed alot quicker and wherre the game wans't reliant on a gemstore to finance everything, because there you got every 6 months new content in form of more standalone games that sort of worked liek expansions and due to it comign fix every 6 months, there was a steady income of money, so there was no need for a gemstore at all....

I think by now, it woudl be eventually good for GW2, to return to this model... GW1 runs very well with this for over 12 years now!!! Actually I was never able to understand, why ANet had actually to change its financign model to a gemstore for GW2.. as if a gemstore alone would be so much more powerful, than adding constantly every 6 months basicalyl a Micro Expansions full of new features, content, bug fixes, balance changes and so on ...

Regarding Servers/Links/Merges/Etc, I can't really agree with any of them, because a server is supposed to contain a static number of players, and the game mode generally works best around a set amount of players active (at any given time). Simply put, the server system isn't dynamic enough to deal with coverage/population/losing players over time.

So the Server structure is one of the largest problems with the entire game-mode. And as long as they keep it, WvW is going to be the mess it is.

I think that is why they developed EotM, judging from what they talked about, it seemed closer to what they wanted WvW to be in the first place, but never mind. The important part is that EotM solves this problem, by opening/closing maps, and bunching multiple servers together. It is Dynamic and adapts to the players. (Though not perfectly)

Another way would be to Open/Close maps (as in EotM) but in normal WvW. So at night when 10 players are online for each team, shut down the other maps and leave EBG as the only map. Reset, open 5-6 maps so there is no queue's.

(Notes: to make that work, you'd need to set a new queue system so that the server with most players can't have more players than the Server with second most players +X to avoid some crazy mess. Also, it means all the borderland maps would have to be re-designed slightly for more EBG style 3 way battles.)

@Orpheal.8263 said:(snip)I think by now, it woudl be eventually good for GW2, to return to this model... GW1 runs very well with this for over 12 years now!!! Actually I was never able to understand, why ANet had actually to change its financign model to a gemstore for GW2.. as if a gemstore alone would be so much more powerful, than adding constantly every 6 months basicalyl a Micro Expansions full of new features, content, bug fixes, balance changes and so on ...

Doubt ANet will ever try to make gw2 getting a bit closer to gw1 in some aspects of skills for a balance sake and better pvp design/orientation.

If gw1 start to receive more active players i would drop this game instantly, already installed gw1 on my common gamming lappy, and actually that thing even runs smotth with whine on linux....I actually will try to get less time in this thing and try to spend more time try to find a way to get into gw1 pvp again.