My day in WvW. Is it just me or is it always like that?

Hi there,today I decided to do some WvW. I wanted to progress a bit on my GoB, well the 4 I need at this point. I usually go for EotM, start or join a karma train and get done with it. For a change, I thought I'd give the real WvW a shot, hbl and eb had queues, so I thought it might be good day.

Joined a com, spent the next hour rushing to fight a blob double our size, getting obliterated, regrouping then rushing the same fight again. Then the com left, no one took over, the group dispersed. I switched to hbl. Another comander. I follow the squad, ask for an invite. I get told to join on discord. "K, what discord?" - "Join discord for invite" - "What's the adress?" - "Join discord" Finally one of the other group members managed to post the link. I go there, get asked to verify my identity. I'm ok with server secrecy and want to join the channel, as I want to be a good zergling, you know.

I create an API key needed for verification, head over to discord to get virified. I'm asked to join a different discord to get verification for the discord the com is actually using...wait, there's news! The com switched to a ts server in the meantime. "Join ts for invite." - "K, what ts?" - "join ts" - "can someone give the adres please?" - "join ts". Again someone posts the adress. I head over to the ts server. Can't join the channel because missing permissions. I ask for permissions in /d, no one cares. Others ask as the lobby fills up.

I still follow the commander around, we bash our head against a blob doubleour size. No strats, no alternatives, just respawning, rushing to the fight, getting instakilled(wearing minstrels gear and stuff), rinse and repeat. The commander gets frustrated but doesn't seem to change his/her approach to the situation at hand. I've been moved to a verification waiting area in ts in the meanwhile. The squad gets spawncamped for another ten minutes, then the comander leaves "no ppl here, this is pointless." I'm still alone in the waiting area, no further instrucions given, no one to verify me or tell me how to. I leave the ts.

At the time of writing, I'm waiting for my q to eb to pop up. Maybe things will get better, but is it me or is this the WvW experience you regularily get? As I said, I've been doing my GoBs in the edge of the mists for the last years now, is this WvW?

verfication for ts/discord is not everyday once you have been verified, they dont change it daily.as for failing and trying the same again and again without learning from the loss? yep that happens daily.

if you just want your GoB and dont want all this community drama i would advise you to go roaming, if you are not that confident in your abilities to kill opponents, know that many you will encounter feel exactly the same, so no worries. if you still want to avoid fights and just your GoB, roaming on desert you can get around with limited fights if you avoid making too much 'noise'. meaning be aware of what your opponent can see on his map.for GoB the only thing that matters is participation and the pips that come with it so roaming and running in a zerg getting wiped will get you GoB at the same speed.

@"lokh.2695" said:Hi there,today I decided to do some WvW. I wanted to progress a bit on my GoB, well the 4 I need at this point. I usually go for EotM, start or join a karma train and get done with it. For a change, I thought I'd give the real WvW a shot, hbl and eb had queues, so I thought it might be good day.

Joined a com, spent the next hour rushing to fight a blob double our size, getting obliterated, regrouping then rushing the same fight again. Then the com left, no one took over, the group dispersed. I switched to hbl. Another comander. I follow the squad, ask for an invite. I get told to join on discord. "K, what discord?" - "Join discord for invite" - "What's the adress?" - "Join discord" Finally one of the other group members managed to post the link. I go there, get asked to verify my identity. I'm ok with server secrecy and want to join the channel, as I want to be a good zergling, you know.

I create an API key needed for verification, head over to discord to get virified. I'm asked to join a different discord to get verification for the discord the com is actually using...wait, there's news! The com switched to a ts server in the meantime. "Join ts for invite." - "K, what ts?" - "join ts" - "can someone give the adres please?" - "join ts". Again someone posts the adress. I head over to the ts server. Can't join the channel because missing permissions. I ask for permissions in /d, no one cares. Others ask as the lobby fills up.

I still follow the commander around, we bash our head against a blob doubleour size. No strats, no alternatives, just respawning, rushing to the fight, getting instakilled(wearing minstrels gear and stuff), rinse and repeat. The commander gets frustrated but doesn't seem to change his/her approach to the situation at hand. I've been moved to a verification waiting area in ts in the meanwhile. The squad gets spawncamped for another ten minutes, then the comander leaves "no ppl here, this is pointless." I'm still alone in the waiting area, no further instrucions given, no one to verify me or tell me how to. I leave the ts.

At the time of writing, I'm waiting for my q to eb to pop up. Maybe things will get better, but is it me or is this the WvW experience you regularily get? As I said, I've been doing my GoBs in the edge of the mists for the last years now, is this WvW?

hehe =) you will get used to it.

If these are the bad kind of pug commanders they're only using discord, teamspeak, etc. so they have an excuse for quitting when they face any actual opposition while ktraining. The group gets wiped a few times and suddenly there's not enough people in voice comms and they're done playing for the day.

@Clownmug.8357 said:If these are the bad kind of pug commanders they're only using discord, teamspeak, etc. so they have an excuse for quitting when they face any actual opposition while ktraining. The group gets wiped a few times and suddenly there's not enough people in voice comms and they're done playing for the day.

I wasn't looking for a ktrain, more interested in what's going on in WvW. I guess after a while you get to know the good/capable coms/guilds and so on.

@Sovereign.1093 said:

hehe =) you will get used to it.

I'd love to. Never played much WvW. So the way it is now feels much more rewarding and has a lot more interesting percs and features than back in 2015/16.

@MUDse.7623 said:verfication for ts/discord is not everyday once you have been verified, they dont change it daily.as for failing and trying the same again and again without learning from the loss? yep that happens daily.

if you just want your GoB and dont want all this community drama i would advise you to go roaming, if you are not that confident in your abilities to kill opponents, know that many you will encounter feel exactly the same, so no worries. if you still want to avoid fights and just your GoB, roaming on desert you can get around with limited fights if you avoid making too much 'noise'. meaning be aware of what your opponent can see on his map.for GoB the only thing that matters is participation and the pips that come with it so roaming and running in a zerg getting wiped will get you GoB at the same speed.

Yeah I figured about the verification and maybe it was just bad luck. Think if I want to grind the GoB I'd still go for EotM at the moment. But the real WvW could be an alternative for the fun of it. As I said, rewards feel accurate and you get stuff you don't get in EotM so that's that.

Thx a lot for the answers. See next post for Part 2. :)

Usually open raid squads are open for players even outside voice comms.

Reasons for open commanders to require voice comms for squad aren't many. Mostly because they want to recruit players in their guild or their commander has some problems with his self-confidence.

Id say the commanders you were trying to follow weren't very good as they had to rely on methods like this. But do notice that there is 0 reason to play WvW unless you plan to join voice comms occassionally as it makes fights and capping objectives both more interesting.

I personally don't even join open commanders (exception being guild raids) who close squads to only people on ts as it creates a bridge between newer and older players.

Soo...I basically afk'd(wrote a lenghty post about my day in WvW) while waiting for my q to pop, earning rewards and progress towards my GoB while doing nothing. I switched maps again. A new com. No vc or invite required, I join, I run along. It's still mostly pushing back and forth but at least we're making some progress. Pushing the enemy back and finally taking over their bastion. This part felt really good, eventhough we still lost more often than we won. The com seemed to have a plan and tbf a bigger zerg to work with, going by the numbers in squad.It was 2 hours of fun, good loot and more what I imagine WvW to be like. However, after the com left, no one took over and the group dispersed quickly. /m and /t are mostly silent right now and I've q'd up for the next map right now.After afk'ing and responding in the thread, I figured I could go and find some solo stuff to do, to keep participation up and not fall asleep while waiting.

I'm playing on SFR at the moment and I don't even know what tier I'm playing in right now. Is this part of my experience, i.e. is it different on higher/lower tiers? Do coms have a schedule or are there servers you're more or less "guaranteed" to have at least one squad running?

@Threather.9354 said:I personally don't even join open commanders (exception being guild raids) who close squads to only people on ts as it creates a bridge between newer and older players.

I'd take this with a grain of salt. New players do join voice comms and they usually come with lots of questions which helps facilitate good conversation. The only bridge being created is between people who like to talk and people who don't.

@"lokh.2695" said:I'm playing on SFR at the moment and I don't even know what tier I'm playing in right now. Is this part of my experience, i.e. is it different on higher/lower tiers? Do coms have a schedule or are there servers you're more or less "guaranteed" to have at least one squad running?

SFR is in highest tier so it should be relatively active there for 1½ weeks more until relinks.

There is something to be said about that though as lot of Far shiverpeaks players moved to the SFR Link, Aurora Glade, 1½ months ago. in 2 weeks SFR will be delinked from them and fall to like t3-t4 again which have about same activity as higher tiers in EU but you should be noticing drop in commander quality as I don't think SFR has many good commanders.

Anyways WvW is lacking commanders these days. Your best bet would be joining SFR discord and AG Discord so you get a pop up when someone is tagging up on voice comms. Works while doing PvE, PvP or even on your phone. Primetime starts in 2 hours (18 GMT), this is when guilds and commanders raid so you can usually find commander around that time. It continues usually 3-4 hours from that moment.

@Chaba.5410 said:

@Threather.9354 said:I personally don't even join open commanders (exception being guild raids) who close squads to only people on ts as it creates a bridge between newer and older players.

Eh. We were all new at some point. I didnt join voice comms for like first 2 weeks of my WvW history as I couldn't figure out the server password as first time user (lel, it didnt have any). But squad system didnt exist back then. Anyways there are plenty of good reasons I have run into why people cant join ts (have to take care of baby, disconnections, playing from work, don't talk english etc.) even from good players.

The bad players not on voice comms will be weeded out by commander movement anyways.

Is there days when WvW suck?

Yes. Yes there is.

Sounds like the sea guilds on my server running around with a map que wipe in left and right

@Brian.1289 said:Sounds like the sea guilds on my server running around with a map que wipe in left and right

Do they have sea guild to figtt on other servers?? xD usually its blob queue vs empty servers.

If there are equal or similiar numbers the players that start loose will alt+f4 or change map to avoid fights and get rewards wich ends in the other side fithing empty strucutres :\

At least for my exp, when we rarelly get out of outmaned and have similiar players other server tend to bail out of map :\

No my experience is usually asking people to get in coms join squad and bring proper builds for hours until they finally do and then winning almost every fight until the next day where it often seems like everyone forgot how effective it was the day before.

@"lokh.2695" said:I'm playing on SFR at the moment and I don't even know what tier I'm playing in right now. Is this part of my experience, i.e. is it different on higher/lower tiers? Do coms have a schedule or are there servers you're more or less "guaranteed" to have at least one squad running?

No far from it. You're exceptionally lucky to be linked to AG which provides the majority of comms. In general, I'd say you're quite likely to NOT have any commanders on any maps on most servers. If your standards are higher and you expect your commanders to also know how to play basic WvW, then the chances of finding one at any given moment on a random EU server are probably sub 20%.

Servers used to have schedules and organisation. But that all died along with the rest of community-based WvW. Nowadays servers are mostly a hub for daily farming

I simply refuse to join team speak and or what ever else hoops they want me to jump through. Its not real hard to run a zerg, take objectives, and do well with out it. I know, I have tagged and done it, seen others as well do it. Everyone pretty much knows what to do. Keep the walls hot, watch for incoming, rinse and repeat. How having team speak or whatever offers a better advantage is beyond me. If your gonna jump maps, link the wp, and off you go.

you may simply be a good player.

for guys like me and my team, we are nothing like that. we simply try to get things done and we do that thru voip.

does it make us better? probably not, but it is easier for me. and less stressful.

not many will join ts, but thats fine. they can always make their own team or follow or what not =)

@tym.3791 said:I simply refuse to join team speak and or what ever else hoops they want me to jump through. Its not real hard to run a zerg, take objectives, and do well with out it. I know, I have tagged and done it, seen others as well do it. Everyone pretty much knows what to do. Keep the walls hot, watch for incoming, rinse and repeat. How having team speak or whatever offers a better advantage is beyond me. If your gonna jump maps, link the wp, and off you go.

Depends on how organized the opposition is. If there is no serious opposition then I agree with you.

@Israel.7056 said:

@tym.3791 said:I simply refuse to join team speak and or what ever else hoops they want me to jump through. Its not real hard to run a zerg, take objectives, and do well with out it. I know, I have tagged and done it, seen others as well do it. Everyone pretty much knows what to do. Keep the walls hot, watch for incoming, rinse and repeat. How having team speak or whatever offers a better advantage is beyond me. If your gonna jump maps, link the wp, and off you go.

My guess is that tym has never run with an organized fights guild where strategy against another guild cannot be communicated well without voice.

@"lokh.2695" said:Hi there,today I decided to do some WvW. I wanted to progress a bit on my GoB, well the 4 I need at this point. I usually go for EotM, start or join a karma train and get done with it. For a change, I thought I'd give the real WvW a shot, hbl and eb had queues, so I thought it might be good day.

Joined a com, spent the next hour rushing to fight a blob double our size, getting obliterated, regrouping then rushing the same fight again. Then the com left, no one took over, the group dispersed. I switched to hbl. Another comander. I follow the squad, ask for an invite. I get told to join on discord. "K, what discord?" - "Join discord for invite" - "What's the adress?" - "Join discord" Finally one of the other group members managed to post the link. I go there, get asked to verify my identity. I'm ok with server secrecy and want to join the channel, as I want to be a good zergling, you know.

I create an API key needed for verification, head over to discord to get virified. I'm asked to join a different discord to get verification for the discord the com is actually using...wait, there's news! The com switched to a ts server in the meantime. "Join ts for invite." - "K, what ts?" - "join ts" - "can someone give the adres please?" - "join ts". Again someone posts the adress. I head over to the ts server. Can't join the channel because missing permissions. I ask for permissions in /d, no one cares. Others ask as the lobby fills up.

I still follow the commander around, we bash our head against a blob doubleour size. No strats, no alternatives, just respawning, rushing to the fight, getting instakilled(wearing minstrels gear and stuff), rinse and repeat. The commander gets frustrated but doesn't seem to change his/her approach to the situation at hand. I've been moved to a verification waiting area in ts in the meanwhile. The squad gets spawncamped for another ten minutes, then the comander leaves "no ppl here, this is pointless." I'm still alone in the waiting area, no further instrucions given, no one to verify me or tell me how to. I leave the ts.

At the time of writing, I'm waiting for my q to eb to pop up. Maybe things will get better, but is it me or is this the WvW experience you regularily get? As I said, I've been doing my GoBs in the edge of the mists for the last years now, is this WvW?

a person like you, should either do Havoc or roam.i mean sounds like ur not enjoying following the commander but somewhere u do enjoy smashing ur enemy around.Havoc is by far most fun if u got some decent people around.roaming is okay whole server hates u for being solo asshat but when a camp needs to be flipped the whole server is crying at you for not doing it, and if u do happen to do it no1 cares just some roamers doing it.

for me whole WvW has split community roamers dont give a rats ass about blob peoplehavoc squads dont really give a fuck about either 1 but are like buddies from both. as they do flip small objectives and can assist a commander with some extra dps or w/eand u have em blob players who are often very clueless what to do if no commander is online.

@tym.3791 said:I simply refuse to join team speak and or what ever else hoops they want me to jump through. Its not real hard to run a zerg, take objectives, and do well with out it. I know, I have tagged and done it, seen others as well do it. Everyone pretty much knows what to do. Keep the walls hot, watch for incoming, rinse and repeat. How having team speak or whatever offers a better advantage is beyond me. If your gonna jump maps, link the wp, and off you go.

dunno what kind of bullcrap servers u have been fighting but sounds like ur playing on NA server while ur from EU or other way around or ur servers are completely dead.cus thats not gonna work vs any group that is using TS.the ts group will just lure out ur bombs as no1 is calling em so they randomly go down not giving a good spike.the ts group will dump a massive bomb on your ass cus they do call em out and will strike down most of your people in no time.

your group shrinks in no time cus people are mad cus ur bad commander cus ur not on ts telling em when to bomb etc.yes people know when to bomb but people do not know when every1 else is gonna bomb.

Again, thanks a lot for the replies, opinions and insights. I agree that running along a com and kindasortasomewhat know what's going down is possible w/o VC. On the other hand, I haven't been to real WvW in the last, it's safe to say, 3 years. I know siege disablers were just introduced and it was a long time before GHs, gliding or desert borderlands being a thing. There's much I don't know, that becomes obvious after a few hours, but still, I need to know these things and others might as well. VC makes communicating things faster and not reliant on typing, which comes in handy if you want to speak and communicate at the same time. I know VC isn't a necessity, it just makes things easier I guess. Also it gives the coms the possibilty to coordinate fields/blasts and the likes. The hoops seem a bit over the top but I guess it's necessary if you want to keep the spies out. I can understand how having pairings instead of each server going for thier own has hit the communites pretty hard and made things like a schedule harder to organize. I think if I joined a dedicated WvW guild this would be a solvable problem, I don't think I'll WvW enough for that though.

Anyway...here's part 3:So I went out and cap'd some ruins to keep me occupied and my participation up, while waiting for the next q. It's kinda relaxing, I'm lucky I don't get ganked or ran over by a zerg. The q is rdy for me to go and I switch. I join the squad and run along. Get asked to join ts, this time the process seems more streamlined and I'm now verified. Hurray for me! I enter the channel, mute the music bots. The com is basically telling the group what to do, where to go, when to stack and all that. At the moment I join, blobs of equal size from all three worlds stare eachother down, we manage to not get sandwiched and manage to take players out one by one. The usual, as I've always experienced it, rinse and repeat, push and shove begins, but the fights, or at least my stay on the frontlines, are fun and take long enough to feel engaging.

However, maybe 15min after I was able to join the map, the com calls it a day and leaves, the group of 35 ppl disperses in game as well as on ts. A guild is opening up their group, but with most of the ppl leaving/switching, the zerg s less successful. I decide to afk at spawn, prepare some dinner, take a break and come back later. I enter the q for eb and check in on my pc every now and then to make sure the que hasn't come up.

I change maps. A com is leading a campaign far into enemy territory. I get killed on my way there and decide to wait for a regroup. Rewards still ticking, everything is fine. /t hasn't quite yet decided wether the com is using ts or dis to lead. I look at the time and see that I probably have another 45 mins or so for this. A regroup isn't happening anytime soon so I make a run for the squad as soon as they got closer. Made it and was able to follow along. I decide to not join ts this time, as it's getting late anyway and I won't be here for long today. I follow the tag for another 30 min, I see that the GoB, which was at maybe 8% when I started the day, is almost done, maybe more 15min of standing around. My guildmates log in, I wait for the last tick to get the GoB and we run fractals.

Today was a good day. What I learned is that WvW is great and exciting when it's good and boring and frustrating when it's bad. At least from a zerglings perspective, there's not much in between. If I was a more dedicated player, I could certainly get more out of it and/or could improve my overall positive experience by getting involved in my server, looking for a guild, getting to know the coms and guilds of my server and so on, and maybe I'll do that one day. It didn't take me much longer in real WvW today to get a GoB than it took me in EotM, so I guess it's a matter of taste. Real WvW is more rewarding though and has unique rewards you can't get anywhere else. EotM is the better farm for levels, maybe that was just today, but after running the same amount of time on the edge I usually have made something between 8 and 12 lvls, today I made 3.

Now all that's left is that stupid JP, so I can feed my GoB to a cat...why am I doing this to myself, but I think I might be doing it again ;)

Thanks a lot for reading and sharing your thoughts.

@reddie.5861 said:

@"lokh.2695" said:Hi there,today I decided to do some WvW. I wanted to progress a bit on my GoB, well the 4 I need at this point. I usually go for EotM, start or join a karma train and get done with it. For a change, I thought I'd give the real WvW a shot, hbl and eb had queues, so I thought it might be good day.

Joined a com, spent the next hour rushing to fight a blob double our size, getting obliterated, regrouping then rushing the same fight again. Then the com left, no one took over, the group dispersed. I switched to hbl. Another comander. I follow the squad, ask for an invite. I get told to join on discord. "K, what discord?" - "Join discord for invite" - "What's the adress?" - "Join discord" Finally one of the other group members managed to post the link. I go there, get asked to verify my identity. I'm ok with server secrecy and want to join the channel, as I want to be a good zergling, you know.

I create an API key needed for verification, head over to discord to get virified. I'm asked to join a different discord to get verification for the discord the com is actually using...wait, there's news! The com switched to a ts server in the meantime. "Join ts for invite." - "K, what ts?" - "join ts" - "can someone give the adres please?" - "join ts". Again someone posts the adress. I head over to the ts server. Can't join the channel because missing permissions. I ask for permissions in /d, no one cares. Others ask as the lobby fills up.

I still follow the commander around, we bash our head against a blob doubleour size. No strats, no alternatives, just respawning, rushing to the fight, getting instakilled(wearing minstrels gear and stuff), rinse and repeat. The commander gets frustrated but doesn't seem to change his/her approach to the situation at hand. I've been moved to a verification waiting area in ts in the meanwhile. The squad gets spawncamped for another ten minutes, then the comander leaves "no ppl here, this is pointless." I'm still alone in the waiting area, no further instrucions given, no one to verify me or tell me how to. I leave the ts.

At the time of writing, I'm waiting for my q to eb to pop up. Maybe things will get better, but is it me or is this the WvW experience you regularily get? As I said, I've been doing my GoBs in the edge of the mists for the last years now, is this WvW?

Running in a small private group and flipping smaller objects was fun back in the days, for the two or three times we managed to get it organized. For WvW, my guild is hardly suitable, we're spread across 6 servers and no one has a primary interest in WvW. And I haven't gotten around, or saw the necessity to seek out for a guild that does these things so far. Maybe when alliances remake the world(s) of WvW I'll look into the matter agian and find a team like that.I like the zerg/blob fights, but they used to be better after HoT and before PoF it seems. Also I don't get why a big chunk of the community seems to be fixated on killing enemy players. Why chose fighting the blob that handed it to you twice already over going another direction and caping something. There might be a concept behind it that I don't get, again coming from EotM, where neither defending objectives nor hunting blobs really matters, my opinion might not mean much.

Your day is pretty typical and why WvW is in the sorry state it is.

It really depends on your server, you might be on a server that is more concerned with defending objectives, but the commander you were following clearly wanted to go for the fights. That's always rough if the majority of the server is more of the mindset of defending, although you can still get participation defending structures, it's just not as fun as going out and fighting. Although 2 maps were queued, the guilds on your server may not have been running, so maybe you want to find out when guilds run, as they are generally much more organized, which usually means funner fights.