Gos.5816

About 6mos after launch I had to do map completion. I was on EBG and needed that f'd viewpoint on green keep and anz Poi. I think I must have been red. I was being stubborn, no one would come help me with anz so I set up a ram on my own, running back and forth from the camp. I very slowly and pathetically thumped away at the door while meanwhile an entire enemy zerg broke down the opposite wall, flipped it and murdered me. For whatever the reason (was it shame?) this woke a fire in me for wvw and I have played -just a tiny bit- of wvw over the last eight years.

At first I really liked it because I thought "finally I can run with my group while getting my guardian mantras going after a wipe" but no, unless I already get super speed from an engineer as I pick up the buff, I am gonna be trotting along behind doing my precasts. It's a shame because it could be a benefit to both mounted and unmounted and getting backto a fight quickly - out of combat it should happen immediately in my opinion. I do sometimes use it when running on thief with mounted roamer buddies because it makes a nice hiding place - enemies will typically lance an ally instead of go for me but talk about specialized uses... and not the intended use at all.

I love wvw and I feel like even more people would play it if it wasn't a massive lag fest (when I ask my pve friends to join me they often mutter something about lag). Last night in reset we had at least four people drop saying that the lag was too much. I was personally lagging as well with most skills locked out. I stopped playing a couple hours earlier than usual because I usually do a bit more in wvw than press 1 (sorry the meme is not true). This was not around SMC either but primarily in red BL, which has not been problematic in the past.

I am pretty excited for this change. Of course I have reservations but one of the problems it will solve is the inability to play with my friends who are currently all over the place on different servers, are interested in wvw but because it costs gems/money to move we have never played together. So my pve guild was alight with excitement this morning. Now I know the hardcore portion of the community won't care about this but wvw needs new people and it needs more mobility so that people can find places they like to play. Being able to be part of an alliance and able to choose if you stay or leave fairly frequently will probably help in the longevity of the game mode in my opinion. Currently if you are on a server and don't want to pay the price to transfer off or transfer off only to discover the grass really isn't greener and is in fact covered in turds, you're stuck. I am not a stranger to server loyalty (my main account has always been on TC and my alt has seen its share of turd covered lawns) and I am sympathetic to those who fear losing their server identity but wouldn't it be nice to choose your allies? I feel lucky in the guild that I am a part of, but I suspect not everyone on my server has such a cozy niche, especially since most of the old guilds have died or moved to other servers at this point.

I like the new garden plots for home instances. This gave me an idea that it would be neat to have a 'community garden' in the guild hall where members who find seeds can add to it. I know we already have nodes in there but the members aspect kinda made me happy. Additional ideas in regards to gardening if we ever get it as a guild hall thing or even just for home instances - bringing water to our plots or on a questing basis get special manure in the open world to bring back for extra yields on the plot - not a huge bump or anything, but just a little mini-game for people who like this sort of thing. I feel that with all the effort put into collecting cats for our instances, maybe we could have a gardening plot collecting/buffing type thing happen.

I love that there are a great variety of skins from the drab to the sublimely ridiculous. This caters both to people who don't want mounts with flames shooting from their butts at all times and for those who do. However it doesn't at all help either type of taste because you might get technicolor aura vomit if you just wanted a neat pattern with dye channels and vice versa. It cannot really make anyone happy. I go to the gem store to get myself a small treat. $10-15 for a glider or outfit set here and there is something nice but $5 for something that I might not use or that goes to a lesser used mount randomly is less of a treat and makes me feel cheated. $5 for something I choose I would probably start collecting over the next year or so and is a fair value.