So I have some feedback for the WvW beta. I tried to group it a little bit, I hope it's readable.
a) Bad times for casuals. I love playing WvW, playing with people and commanders I know, but I don’t have the time to play multiple guild raids a week and I like other game modes as well. That’s why I didn’t join a WvW guild again (used to be a hardcore WvW player). I’m not a roamer as well so I’m dependant on public commanders. That’s gone now. I got matched with nobody I know, commanders aren’t there or if they are, they don’t speak at all (language barriers) or only write in chat which is awful for coordinated fights.
“But WvW is for guilds.” No, it’s not just for guilds. A guild plays for maybe 3 days a week for some hours and usually during the evening. All other days and times are covered by public commanders. We established night shifts, early morning shifts and stuff like that. All gone.
“But there will be alliances.” Yeah, for up to 500 people. So you have five guilds teaming up and casuals are left behind. Either they are lucky and teamed up with their known guilds or are placed somewhere.
b) Languages once again. WvW is a mode needing lots of communication. You can mix all players for NA where everyone speaks one language (sorry French Canadians), but this doesn’t work for Europe. When asking what language a raid is in you get some kitten answers like “universal language” “get some IQ and learn English” and such. Not only do you have to deal with “English is the superior language”-people but what about the ones who don’t know English for different reasons? Some just have a hard time learning languages, others never had the chances to learn it (people over 40 had a different language education than people in their 20s) and others, like me, know English but don’t want to translate everything in their head when all they want is to relax.
Getting rid of the server based map chat in PvE and mixing all players was the death of PvE map chat. I don’t want this to happen in WvW as well where the chat is way more important. Scouts really are a thing and they are the ones guiding guilds and public raids.
c) Community feeling is gone. Yes, there is something like server identification. Some great fights happened because we didn’t want this other sever to get a stronghold. Servers have set up teamspeaks for the whole server so everyone knows where to find others to play with. Where public commanders are to find. We have server wide build recommendations so even public zergs are organised. There are server events, commander rotations (like mentioned above), regular meetings about what is planned and what to organize, guilds and public raids are on one ts for their raids so they can communicate and fight together. All this is obsolete with the new system.
You get a new team every few months, so no incentive for long time organisation. What to identify with? Some people you don’t know and won’t meet again after three months? A lot of the appeal of WvW is gone.
d) The plan to even out matchups and getting more coverage doesn’t work. After reset/during prime time were usually commanders on all maps, guilds as well. Now only one commander on EBG and I saw maybe two guilds. Nothing gets defended because people are split up and know they can just turn it again.
I have the feeling the whole system is planned with only NA in mind. If it gets implemented the way it is planned now, it will be a disaster for European players.
Some suggestions:
a) If it’s about guilds: Implement a real GvG mode and leave WvW alone. I know many guilds organize their own GvG but why not offering a mode similar to PvP where guilds can play against each other no matter how servers are matched.
b) Don’t mix up languages. If you want to get rid of servers, make language based alliances without a 500 people cap. Time zones aren’t a thing in Europe so the way the new system is planned doesn’t change the coverage over the day.
Cheers.