Passion has gone my friends [Merged]

[Vayne.8563]

4 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Thats not true. First of all constant gearing is the main wow loop. Each expansion has everyone start at the same point. And during expansion patches they usually introduce gear catch up mechanics through crafting, dungeon tokens... And older raids get easier because of that gear so its easier to do them and get more gear.

There are very limited catch up mechanics for masteries in gw2. You more or less have to do the whole grind.

I think you and I have very different ideas of what grind is.  I'm not running the same dungeons and raids over and over to get gear here. I'm playing the next content, pretty much in it's entirety. I do the new story I get some mastery points. I wander around the zone, I get some mastery points. I do some achievements I get some mastery points. There are very few masteries by percentage you need to play the game, and if you don't want them you don't have to get them, or you don't have to get them fast. 

As an example, I can play EoD without having the turtle. I can take my time getting it. Same with most of the skiff masteries in my opinion. And not everyone will care about fishing. You choose the masteries you want, and get only the masteries you need. And when you run metas later on, you get experience. But I'm running the metas anyone sometimes.

I have alt accounts that have leveled their masteries in EoD by just doing one HP a day, and never moving off it. It gives me a bit of currency a bit of experience and I'm done with all the masteries I need now.

Grinding originally meant to do something repetitive. but grinding out experience, particularly if you use buffs and know what you're doing is pretty fast and, for the most part, not required. 

[Labjax.2465]

21 hours ago, EverzSam.9214 said:

As someone who has recently moved from WoW for feeling the same reasons (and has become really engaged in GW2), I do wonder if MMO fatigue is an actual thing.

Anything fatigue can be a real thing. But it doesn't just happen randomly for no reason. There can be reasons relating to the thing itself or beyond it or both.

I think if I reflect on my life, there are a few key elements that contribute to how long I stick with something, game or otherwise, such as: how much it intersects with what I enjoy doing or believe in doing; how welcoming/friendly it is; how consistent/stable it feels (prob a couple more I'm forgetting)

That said, I suspect where a lot of friction with MMOs enters in is that people get used to viewing an MMO as a sort of "second home." And then you have these studios that, in my experience, like a timer ticking down, inevitably make small or drastic changes that destabilize that feeling. The person logs in one day and the living room has been redecorated and they're like, "Uh, what gives, can you change it back?"

And then, unless there's major shared and persistent backlash, the studio is usually like, "Sorry, no, this is our house."

And then the person is like, "Oh, right." sound of brain recontextualizing their understanding of the game and how they relate to it "This was just your place that I was hanging out in. That's not cozy to me, that feels weird. I guess I'll hang around a bit longer, maybe, but I don't know if I can do this anymore." (This being the more mild reaction - some are a lot more visceral, of course.)

I think especially with how popular live service is now beyond purely MMOs, it's imperative that more understand this. That, like, it's not just about some people disliking change or what they're used to. It's also about the way people emotionally contextualize these things in their minds. For a lot of people, it's never only a product because we just aren't wired to be that shallow in how we relate to spaces and people we spend a lot of time around. I think consciously, most people get it's "just a product" and would almost prefer they felt that way for their own safety sake of not getting burned. But we aren't robots who can flip our emotions on and off at will. And companies are often more than happy to profit from the attachments and praise the effusive praise, but rarely have any sympathy or understanding for when those attachments mean that changes pushed on the customer can impact a customer's day, week, month, year, depending on how deep the attachment was. It would be easier to say "that's on the customer" if the companies were presenting things as "don't get too attached", but they are usually more than happy to nurture attachment and reap the benefits and then want nothing to do with the other side of the relationship, the multi-dimensional personhood of it that is not always happy all the time and whose feelings are usually more complex than "in love" or "burned out".

[Holmindeboks.3490]

10 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I think you and I have very different ideas of what grind is.  I'm not running the same dungeons and raids over and over to get gear here. I'm playing the next content, pretty much in it's entirety. I do the new story I get some mastery points. I wander around the zone, I get some mastery points. I do some achievements I get some mastery points. There are very few masteries by percentage you need to play the game, and if you don't want them you don't have to get them, or you don't have to get them fast. 

As an example, I can play EoD without having the turtle. I can take my time getting it. Same with most of the skiff masteries in my opinion. And not everyone will care about fishing. You choose the masteries you want, and get only the masteries you need. And when you run metas later on, you get experience. But I'm running the metas anyone sometimes.

I have alt accounts that have leveled their masteries in EoD by just doing one HP a day, and never moving off it. It gives me a bit of currency a bit of experience and I'm done with all the masteries I need now.

Grinding originally meant to do something repetitive. but grinding out experience, particularly if you use buffs and know what you're doing is pretty fast and, for the most part, not required. 

Yes you cut the whole grind and split it in what you need or have the priority’s. Sure its a grind but you ignore parts to make the grind shorter. But thats EoD where they were out of idea’s. If you take heart of thorns as example then all mastery’s are needed. So then you cant cut on some trees. But many times (i think) everyone want max mastery’s. So its a huge grind. 
 

its the same as when you say in WoW that you only need a weapon and chest and leg piece so your character dont look nearly yes you know. A whole armor set is needed to do current content. You ignore masterys and take an expansion as example who has many useless masterys. Thats the same as grind gear from current wow expansion to do the burning crusader content. Then you have enough with only a weapon and ignore the grind for a full armor set. 
 

 

[Bladestrom.6425]

5 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

Yes you cut the whole grind and split it in what you need or have the priority’s. Sure its a grind but you ignore parts to make the grind shorter. But thats EoD where they were out of idea’s. If you take heart of thorns as example then all mastery’s are needed. So then you cant cut on some trees. But many times (i think) everyone want max mastery’s. So its a huge grind. 
 

its the same as when you say in WoW that you only need a weapon and chest and leg piece so your character dont look nearly yes you know. A whole armor set is needed to do current content. You ignore masterys and take an expansion as example who has many useless masterys. Thats the same as grind gear from current wow expansion to do the burning crusader content. Then you have enough with only a weapon and ignore the grind for a full armor set. 
 

 

you seem to be confused, 'grind' is a word someone applies to a long running activity or series of objectives when they want to present it in a negative light.  Its subjective, what 1 player thinks is a grind , another doesn't, for example some people think its ok to farm a boss 25oo times to farm for a rare drop, to others that's a 'grind'.  

[Holmindeboks.3490]

4 minutes ago, Bladestrom.6425 said:

you seem to be confused, 'grind' is a word someone applies to a long running activity or series of objectives when they want to present it in a negative light.  Its subjective, what 1 player thinks is a grind , another doesn't, for example some people think its ok to farm a boss 25oo times to farm for a rare drop, to others that's a 'grind'.  

True. Mmo in general is a grind. But some grinds are worth the time like skyscale. But having to kill a boss 2500 times is just an insult from the company that doenst care about someones life (time) same for the person i met on pinata. Gzzed him for the confetti infusion but he bought it after daily killing pinata for 2 whole kitten years. Ridiculous. 

[Bladestrom.6425]

32 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

True. Mmo in general is a grind. But some grinds are worth the time like skyscale. But having to kill a boss 2500 times is just an insult from the company that doenst care about someones life (time) same for the person i met on pinata. Gzzed him for the confetti infusion but he bought it after daily killing pinata for 2 whole kitten years. Ridiculous. 

still not getting it, ' some grinds are worth the time like skyscale' and 'having to kill a boss 2500 times' are both simply game activities that may or may not appeal to different players at different times.  That's like saying pacman is an insult because all you do is grind a highscore.

Edited March 23 by Bladestrom.6425

[Bladestrom.6425]

1 hour ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

True. Mmo in general is a grind. But some grinds are worth the time like skyscale. But having to kill a boss 2500 times is just an insult from the company that doenst care about someones life (time) same for the person i met on pinata. Gzzed him for the confetti infusion but he bought it after daily killing pinata for 2 whole kitten years. Ridiculous. 

You've actually got a bit of an unhealthy relationship with loot that has in all probability been a learned behaviour from games like WOW,  For example you said:

When i played wow last year someone got one of the rarest mounts in game from sha of anger. He pinged it. I first thought i insult him (why?!)  But instead i asked how many kills he made. He said 2300 boss kills. So i congratulated him.  So you were going to be toxic towards someone for getting a nice drop?!, but decided not because he killed the boss 2500 times?!, not a good look.

and

'Gzzed him for the confetti infusion but he bought it after daily killing pinata for 2 whole kitten years. Ridiculous.'

In GW2 its not about what other people have and being better than them, its about picking your own objectives and goals where the rewards appeal to you.

Edited March 23 by Bladestrom.6425

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

Yes you cut the whole grind and split it in what you need or have the priority’s. Sure its a grind but you ignore parts to make the grind shorter. But thats EoD where they were out of idea’s. If you take heart of thorns as example then all mastery’s are needed. So then you cant cut on some trees. But many times (i think) everyone want max mastery’s. So its a huge grind. 
 

its the same as when you say in WoW that you only need a weapon and chest and leg piece so your character dont look nearly yes you know. A whole armor set is needed to do current content. You ignore masterys and take an expansion as example who has many useless masterys. Thats the same as grind gear from current wow expansion to do the burning crusader content. Then you have enough with only a weapon and ignore the grind for a full armor set. 
 

 

Nope, a grind, in the old days, meant doing the same thing over and over again to progress. But here I can do different things to progress. Take Heart of Thorns experience. I originally could do anything in any of the four zones to get experience. Metas, event chains, killing animals with high bonus experience, adventurers, they all add to that total. In addition, I could do raids as well.   And then Season 3 came out, I I had six more zones to get that experience, for a total of 10 zones.  That's playing the game, not grind. Doing the same dungeon over and over again, hoping for that one drop, that's grind.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

17 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Thats not true. First of all constant gearing is the main wow loop. Each expansion has everyone start at the same point. And during expansion patches they usually introduce gear catch up mechanics through crafting, dungeon tokens... And older raids get easier because of that gear so its easier to do them and get more gear.

There are very limited catch up mechanics for masteries in gw2. You more or less have to do the whole grind.

What grind do I need to do catch up to others gear wise when I'm still running my level 80 Berserker Ascended Gear with Scholar Runes to catch up to the gear people are running today? Yeah, nothing.

You don't need catch mechanics when there is no need to catch up to others when you don't play for a bit.

[DeWolfe.2174]

For me, every change the Dev's make of late seem to say, "we don't want you as a customer". They seem to want a high churn of new players in and the OG players out. Especially as a WvW player and someone with multiple accounts ranging from 18k-32k AP. Now after 12 years they want to destroy our worlds and changed the rules on using multiple accounts.

They want OG players out.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

3 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

Now after 12 years they want to destroy our worlds and changed the rules on using multiple accounts.
 

What changes? The ones where they're covering their butts from multiple people using the same account and then having one of those multiple people abscond with the account, with the actual "owner" trying to get it back, by saying each account created can only have "one" owner? I feel like that was more explicitly clarifying the mutiple users (even in same household) one account thing, making Support's job less ambiguous.

Or the "You're not allowed to multi-box accounts in PvP/WvW" anymore (sans Custom Arena exception)? That's also not a bad thing. (For those who didn't know: https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013658134-Policy-Dual-or-Multi-Boxing ) 

[Shiyo.3578]

6 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

For me, every change the Dev's make of late seem to say, "we don't want you as a customer". They seem to want a high churn of new players in and the OG players out. Especially as a WvW player and someone with multiple accounts ranging from 18k-32k AP. Now after 12 years they want to destroy our worlds and changed the rules on using multiple accounts.

They want OG players out.

This is exactly how I've felt since EoD.

I've never seen devs just go "No, we'd rather you didn't play our game" until EoD in GW2.

 

[Sobx.1758]

9 hours ago, DeWolfe.2174 said:

For me, every change the Dev's make of late seem to say, "we don't want you as a customer". They seem to want a high churn of new players in and the OG players out. Especially as a WvW player and someone with multiple accounts ranging from 18k-32k AP. Now after 12 years they want to destroy our worlds and changed the rules on using multiple accounts.

They want OG players out.

2 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

This is exactly how I've felt since EoD.

I've never seen devs just go "No, we'd rather you didn't play our game" until EoD in GW2.

What exactly is this about?

[Batalix.2873]

8 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

What exactly is this about?

Whatever direction the dev team had been building in: the idea of horizontal progression as reflected in masteries, the idea of specialization of roles and job fantasies in the espec system, the expansion of challenging content and lore through raids, the design of very dense maps full of secrets and varied events/metas...it was heavily compromised around late 2019 and 2020 when there was an exodus/firing of talent. And everything since the IBS transition has been a push *away* from complexity, challenge, and modularity, and *toward* consolidating all of that into a simple, easy to pick up, singular experience. Nearly all of the reasons for players to populate HoT and PoF maps are being removed in service of forcing a much narrower, streamlined experience through EoD/SotO.

None of the "principles" that GW2's reputation was built on have been preserved. Everything has been abandoned in an effort to attract a new, casual market. That is what they mean by the current management/dev team doesn't want players who had been attracted to the game's design philosophy pre-IBS/EoD.

Honestly, it's not the worst sin, but I do think it is quite myopic and self-destructive, since GW2 is such an old-style game it has needed to be cannibalized so much in the attempt. It is too different from a "modern" game to become a modern game. That said, I had two major issues with this approach:

1. It is blatantly dishonest. GW2's old fundamental principle of horizontal progression and "play as you like" job fantasies have been totally lobotomized. Yet the devs and PR team have never had the guts to state that they are abandoning these principles for a new vision. It is utter cowardice and contributes to a lot of the disappointment from older fans. We occasionally get new things like a "balance philosophy"--which wasn't very well-developed to begin with--and then zero follow-through on that vision. They are foundering, and maybe they wouldn't be if they stopped trying to ride the line of ambiguity and just committed, publicly, to what they want to turn GW2 into, owning what is being abandoned completely.

2. It is killing GW2's longevity out of a desperate need for short-term profit. GW2 will have no real reason to be replayed by the time they are done. It won't remain the deep, rewarding traditional MMO experience it was in HoT/PoF era, losing much of its core appeal that built the oldschool GW2 playerbase. It will never be competitive with modern MMOs in spite of this, because it still has too much traditional MMO clunk, a slavish adherence to waning keyboard interfacing, and is easily outshined graphically. And in the event GW3 is released, assuredly that will be a much more successful iteration of the action RPG they are trying to refashion GW2 into because it will have been built from the ground up. They should have worked more on GW3 to release it sooner and let GW2 remain what it was, then they would have had *two* products with sustained playerbases instead of killing their golden child.

Point being, the above commenters are right. Everything about the direction of design is telling old players that the previous paradigm of rewarding long-term engagement with modular content is a thing of the past. Nothing means anything anymore. No point in grinding for a skyscale or legendary item when they may release an easier method next year. I mean, I actually haven't played the game in a year because I couldn't trust any of my especs to still play the same for long. The new dev team has been quite reckless in their approach and perhaps for the players who just want to faceroll in combat that's fine, but for those of us who liked the idea of especs actually having specialties and unique gamefeels, that game is well on its way out. We are not wanted.

 

Edited March 25 by Batalix.2873

[uberkingkong.8041]

On 3/20/2024 at 11:50 PM, quake.9023 said:

 i took 3.5yrs off after 6yrs playing. played 2yrs...now dnt feel like playing again

I feel the same. I played since day 1 of the game too.

Not sure what it is that makes you feel that way though.

I think doing more in WvW and PvP, ruleset competitive wise. I played when GW2 WvW was competitive people looking at the score last second type of competitive, and played when #essports was here. Both is gone so, burnt out from it still and when I play those modes the vibe is not there like how it was back in 2012-2015. 9 years later haven't had that vibe yet. Played PvE, EoD was very fun, I enjoyed trying and trying and trying to beat Soo-Wong. It was fun losing and commadrie, everyone being serious and what not. Winning the Soo-wong for the first was huge, I did like day 4. I remember everyone else losing too, I like that stuff. Tough open world meta events boss fights are fun.

Anyways I'm in the same boat.

New expansion, new zones, new raids, new enemies, and even new stories that doesn't sound appealing. I stories in GW2 but after you do so many you get burnt out, I'm kinda feeling WvW PvP right now but those modes have been neglected it hasn't had the vibe since 2015. 9 years.

Also, would enjoy racing, racing was what sucked me into playing the game again for about year. When it was introduced however long ago, like 2017?

So basically my timeline was pretty much 2012-2015 PvP/WvW, Silverwastes/DryTop 2017? 2019 racing what got me back into game, 2022 EoD meta events, Soo-Wong, fishing, exploring kaineng. Since 2022, not much.

 

Again sure aint looking forward to a new expansion or new zones, new stories. I'm more eyeballing they gonna do something to make WvW/PvP great again? #esports greatness?

Can old games like GW2 go #esports or is that a new game only thing? GW1 went #esports naturally, whats wrong with GW2 doing it. GW2 WvW or PvP lots of opportunity or is it just old? 

Rulesets, simple you already got the game just need rulesets, good prizes, something to drive competitiveness, play to win not PvDoor, participate for 5g and try not. Make WvW/PvP stuff where people actually try not not try. Where peope actually looking at the score last minute and being mindful of the tick and flipping stuff timely.

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

None of the "principles" that GW2's reputation was built on have been preserved. Everything has been abandoned in an effort to attract a new, casual market.

Fun fact. While the current game is definitely going into more "streamlined" and more narrowly directed player experience, it's not really more casual in its approach. It is now a game that primarily aims at mindless grinders who have no greater expectations for the content. Not the casual story/OW explorer types it used to be friendly towards once.

And no, that does not make it more "modern". It just makes it easier and cheaper for devs to work on.

Edited March 25 by Astralporing.1957

[kharmin.7683]

6 hours ago, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Can old games like GW2 go #esports or is that a new game only thing? GW1 went #esports naturally, whats wrong with GW2 doing it. GW2 WvW or PvP lots of opportunity or is it just old? 

 

It had gone esport and failed. Miserably.

[Batalix.2873]

On 3/25/2024 at 1:20 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Fun fact. While the current game is definitely going into more "streamlined" and more narrowly directed player experience, it's not really more casual in its approach. It is now a game that primarily aims at mindless grinders who have no greater expectations for the content. Not the casual story/OW explorer types it used to be friendly towards once.

And no, that does not make it more "modern". It just makes it easier and cheaper for devs to work on.

I would agree with this, adding some additional nuance:

1. To some extent this paradigm definitely represents some sort of *attempt* to make GW2 into a more modern, single-player, action RPG experience like what is more casual-friendly these days. The attempt just isn't very successful when they aren't investing a lot of resources into varied, meaningful content to counterbalance the homogenization of the class system. Rift hunting is mindless, and a strike or two just isn't enough content isn't enough to appreciably show off the "new" combat system, even if it were any good (which I hold it really isn't, now that all 27 especs are "action" jobs I do not consider them to be very well differentiated playstyle-wise).

2. To some extent this strategy, despite its inept execution, is still working and pulling in a lot of new players. Most of the videos I see on youtube are new players who just got into the game raving about how "slept on" GW2 is...not even realizing that it is merely a shadow of what it used to be, and what they are actually enjoying are the vestiges of HoT/PoF design.

In some aspects it is clearly attempting to and appealing to a more modern casual market...though to be honest I think that is more due to aggressively positive PR, the cultural normalization of gatcha games, a bunch of shiny skins, and superficial baity "additions" like skyscale and weapons. I cannot attribute it to the actual meat of the development, which just hasn't put out much that we could consider legitimately new content.

Edited March 26 by Batalix.2873

[Batalix.2873]

On 3/25/2024 at 3:49 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

It had gone esport and failed. Miserably.

Ironically the current dev team still seems to really be hoping for a revival in PvP with all of these "balance" patches, despite adding nothing else to the game mode. It is truly baffling to me, given that PvP participation is so small and absolutely not what is sustaining the game's revenue.

This is yet another reason why I believe GW3 will be solo-action oriented. The devs would(at least theoretically, not say they will be able to execute) get the satisfaction of making the sustainable PvP game they always wanted GW2 to be. As Moba-style games have shown, you can exponentially increase replayability on fewer development resources with a solid PvP setup. I think that may be why they are deluded into thinking GW2 PvP should be salvaged, but again it's just not going to ever gain traction if they aren't developing new maps, new modes, new tournaments, etc.

Edited March 26 by Batalix.2873

[Gwynnion.7364]

The most straightforward explanation about GW2's direction is they want to invest as little time and money as possible while keeping people playing and paying for gem store items and "expansions."  I don't think they have a coherent design philosophy beyond stuff like, "We don't want to put the work into making new elite specializations so we'll just stuff all those half-baked ideas into weapons and call it a day."  It's why "balance" is just swapping numbers around and changing stuff randomly to shake up the meta monotony.  Keep the players busy.  That's why SOTO is entirely about using Obsidian Armor as the carrot to keep people doing the same boring, repetitive content.  The only reason I think we'll get a fifth expansion is they need the sales, and I would expect it to be late and even thinner on content than this one.  

I have no idea where their resources are going but they obviously need GW2 to keep making money in the meantime.

[soulknight.9620]

13 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

1. To some extent this paradigm definitely represents some sort of *attempt* to make GW2 into a more modern, single-player, action RPG experience like what is more casual-friendly these days.

I would even go further and say gw2 is adopting a lot of typical mobile gaming practices like battlepass, timegated resource farms, oversimplified class system (well like you know when you pick up a mobile game and pick a character it doesnt really matter which one you pick, the skills are similar, the dps is similar, the only thing that stands out is basically the "skin" of a class), constant "supersales" (that basically is focused on getting gold/gem prices to rise and push players to spend real money on gem store instead of farming gold), etc.

[Zok.4956]

On 3/22/2024 at 7:50 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

Thats not true. First of all constant gearing is the main wow loop. Each expansion has everyone start at the same point. And during expansion patches they usually introduce gear catch up mechanics through crafting, dungeon tokens... 

There are very limited catch up mechanics for masteries in gw2. You more or less have to do the whole grind.

Masteries are a progression system, of course. Each expansion has everyone start at the same point with the masteries for that expansion. You must play the content to progress. Masteries in GW2 are (with very few exceptions) tied to their expansion (and following living world) maps. The idea was, that (for example) a "nuhoch-mastery" only matters in HoT-expansion maps. So, you only *need* it for that content and you get the mastery by playing that content. So, you don't need any catchup mechanics for "nuhoch mastery" if you want to play EoD or SotO, because you don't need "nuhoch mastery" for EoD/SotO content.

 

On 3/22/2024 at 7:50 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

And older raids get easier because of that gear so its easier to do them and get more gear.

It is precisely for this reason that Anet has decided against increasing the maximum level. Because increasing the level always means that the old gear becomes useless. And the old content created for older gear and lower levels will be devalued. Anet's progression system is far from perfect. But I think it's much better than increasing the maximum level during an expansion.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

7 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Masteries are a progression system, of course. Each expansion has everyone start at the same point with the masteries for that expansion. You must play the content to progress. Masteries in GW2 are (with very few exceptions) tied to their expansion (and following living world) maps. The idea was, that (for example) a "nuhoch-mastery" only matters in HoT-expansion maps. So, you only *need* it for that content and you get the mastery by playing that content. So, you don't need any catchup mechanics for "nuhoch mastery" if you want to play EoD or SotO, because you don't need "nuhoch mastery" for EoD/SotO content.

You may not require previous masteries, but many of them (like mounts, gliding, or mushrooms) do make the play easier. There's a reason why SotO did add a "catchup" skyscale mastery.

[Zok.4956]

On 3/25/2024 at 5:03 AM, uberkingkong.8041 said:

Can old games like GW2 go #esports or is that a new game only thing?

In theory, yes. In reality, no. GW2 tried Esports some time ago, there was a lively sPvP-esports scene in GW2, but it failed. Because Anet was not able to balance the classes properly. So it became a bad joke and the sPvP scene left GW2.  I don't think the balancing in GW2 is now better. Some say its worse now.

On 3/25/2024 at 5:03 AM, uberkingkong.8041 said:

whats wrong with GW2 doing it. GW2 WvW or PvP lots of opportunity or is it just old? 

WvW is not suitable for real world-versus-world competitions. Firstly because it is a WvWvW three-way game mode, secondly because the matchups take too long and thirdly because Anet not only has the balancing problem in WvW (at least as bad as in sPvP), but also a population imbalance problem. Every serious game fixes the number of players in the teams, but this is not possible in WvW.

[Zok.4956]

10 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You may not require previous masteries, but many of them (like mounts, gliding, or mushrooms) do make the play easier

Yes. That's why I wrote "with very few exception".  

My point, however, was: In games in which there is a max level increase as a progression with each expansion, new players first have to reach the necessary level (e.g. through catch-up mechanics) in order to be able to play the new content. In GW2 players don't have to do this (apart from the level 80 scroll). Therefore, in GW2 there is no need for catch-up mechanics to max out *all* of your masteries.