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Guild Wars 2 Launch Date announced: August 28th, 2012

Something to remember is that for PvE/sPvP, your server literally doesn't matter because you can hop servers and even continents and you can play during prime time somewhere. For sPvP it's region wide anyways so that's not an issue. For WvW, let's say you're on a Med pop server and there's say 30 Med pop in your region. You will be ranked up against those med pop servers based on how you do each week, so your server can become the best Med pop server in your region and that's nothing to sneeze at. Even populations in WvW and actually getting to play is far better and far more important than rolling on a server that everyone and their mother rolled on and you don't actually get to play WvW, but instead you queue up and wait.

Wait, so you can switch server whenever? So why are there costs for switching servers?

That sounds like a good reason not to roll with a GAF Guild. I wouldn't want to be part of any Guild that would have me as a member.

I don't get what you're saying.

And on the Euro-US Guild dichotomy, my worry is the Euro side will be inactive and may as well be dissolved into the US side.
 
Wait, so you can switch server whenever? So why are there costs for switching servers?



I don't get what you're saying.

And on the Euro-US Guild dichotomy, my worry is the Euro side will be inactive and may as well be dissolved into the US side.

You can visit (guest) other servers which will allow you to do pve (and spvp i think if i'm not wrong) with people who is in that server, but you cant participate in the WvW battles of that server, you only can participate in the WvW battles of your home server.

If you want to participate in the WvW of another server, you will need to pay gems for a transfer to that server to make it your home server.
 
You also still get the WvW bonuses from your original server, not the one you're guesting on, and you can only guest on a server if you have a friend there. It's pretty generous though.
 
While the latter pictures without the borders seem artistic, I think the former is just cleaner and crisper overall. I prefer the former
 
The real question is can Jira put it up 1 week before the official launch or 1 week before the head start? Only time will tell ... let's watch ...

I believe it's 1 week before the game's launch regardless of headstart. Anyone recall what happened with TERA?
 
I believe it's 1 week before the game's launch regardless of headstart. Anyone recall what happened with TERA?

If the headstart fell outside the 1-week period before the OT could be created, and there were a lot of people discussing the game, it would make sense to start the OT earlier and have the discussion in the OT. That's not the case, so we'll be fine. And going by the real launch date for the OT just means you'll have to wait less time between the OT and playing the game! :)
 
Instead of doing borders I had an idea you could try by throwing some brush strokes across the images to try and blend it into the background, so you don't have to mess around with transparency.

Just did this as an example of what I mean...
http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i348/CadaveriaIX/Gaf/raceshuman.jpg[IMG]

EDIT: Just thought I would add, I don't want this to appear as being rude or disrespectful toward Jira by showing something visual, this is intended purely as a suggestion.[/QUOTE]

I think it sounds like a excellent idea, it would fit in more with the overall style they use often for Guild Wars 2.
 
No pun. I'm assuming your account has been hacked and this isn't the real Retro.

Bah, don't be a groucho, I should at least get high marx for the witty quote.

Wait, so you can switch server whenever? So why are there costs for switching servers?

When you select a server, you're doing so for your entire account; all of your characters are on a single home server. However, you can play as a guest on any server you want. This allows you to play with your friends who are on a different server entirely. This includes sPVP and PVE, but not World vs. World. Because WvW is built around servers fighting each other, you can only represent your home server.

Everything else though, you're free to play with who you want, when you want, without paying for a transfer. That option only exists if you want to WvW with other people.

And on the Euro-US Guild dichotomy, my worry is the Euro side will be inactive and may as well be dissolved into the US side.

We addressed this in the podcast that hasn't been uploaded yet. What we'd like to do is ask for volunteers for a EuroGAF Officer, to make sure that people have someone looking out for them in the guild. Not that it's a hard job, just that we want to make sure someone in that time zone is there as a go-to guy (or gal). All you really need to do is be there to manage permissions if needed, answer questions, help players organize, etc.

Anyone?
 
Any chance there will be a beta that's longer than a weekend? I want to try this out before I purchase it when it comes out but the huge file size is sorta killer to my bandwidth if it's only for a single weekend.
 
Any chance there will be a beta that's longer than a weekend? I want to try this out before I purchase it when it comes out but the huge file size is sorta killer to my bandwidth if it's only for a single weekend.

This upcoming weekend is the last beta. I doubt they'll have another one with the game so close to being launched. I really do recommend getting it though :)! What you're downloading now will be a good chunk of the final version, so you won't have to re-download everything again.
 
Any chance there will be a beta that's longer than a weekend? I want to try this out before I purchase it when it comes out but the huge file size is sorta killer to my bandwidth if it's only for a single weekend.

Nope, but the bandwidth concern is a moot point; the client you download for the Beta will also work at launch, so you'll only ever need to download it once.
 
Second part of the Colin Johanson interview:

ibyy2uWU47WSCm.png


http://www.guildwars2hub.com/featur...w-colin-johanson-part-two#.T_2CEIC8xy4.reddit

It’s worth noting that as you progress through the game, the event chains get much more involved and intricate, and in Orr—since there are no apple trees—things like the more relaxing, fun minigame-type stuff is left behind to help set the tone of the epic nature of the end of the game.
 
With your grasp of WvW mechanics, that's probably the best solution for everyone.

If you're trying to defend a keep and the enemy can just instantly reappear at your gates as soon as you kill them, you can't possibly ever win. You need that travel time to give players room to breathe and actually complete objectives. If you could just respawn at the front lines automatically, nothing would ever get done except by zergs.

The way it is now, you can hold the line or use siege gear like Arrow Carts to break up a zerg at your gates or trying to push a chokepoint, and they come back slowly one at a time instead of all at once (which would suck) or right on top of you again (which would really suck).

Does a long trek back to where you died suck? Yeah. But making zero progress would suck harder.

I didn't say instantly reappear. Do you play games like WoW battlegrounds or even Battlefield where you can instantly reappear? Not even my Planetside example does that. They handle respawn with a timer.

The difference is, they design respawn to be closer to the battle, not at the freaking gate in which you came in. Even if my proposed respawn method creates an advantage for the defenders, GW2 just need to create more ways to be offensive, to allow capture opportunities that is based off skill and tactics rather than the number of players you have. Right now, even laying siege on a keep gate is boring. Everyone just afk autoattacks the gate.

I simply don't see how WvW is fun in its current state. The fundamental designs screams out "not fun!" We'll see after they fix the server balancing issue.
 
I didn't say instantly reappear. Do you play games like WoW battlegrounds or even Battlefield where you can instantly reappear? Not even my Planetside example does that. They handle respawn with a timer.

The difference is, they design respawn to be closer to the battle, not at the freaking gate in which you came in. Even if my proposed respawn method creates an advantage for the defenders, GW2 just need to create more ways to be offensive, to allow capture opportunities that is based off skill and tactics rather than the number of players you have. Right now, even laying siege on a keep gate is boring. Everyone just afk autoattacks the gate.

I simply don't see how WvW is fun in its current state. The fundamental designs screams out "not fun!" We'll see after they fix the server balancing issue.

There are waypoints that minimize travel time. Even if it was on a respawn timer or something so traveling is minimized then it'd still be zerging. With the amount of people participating in WvW, it's hard to do thing using spawn times. While it would work something like in MOBA games, the effects are magnified. It just simply doesn't work.
 
There are waypoints that minimize travel time. Even if it was on a respawn timer or something so traveling is minimized then it'd still be zerging. With the amount of people participating in WvW, it's hard to do thing using spawn times. While it would work something like in MOBA games, the effects are magnified. It just simply doesn't work.

MOBA respawn timer is based on the match length. That design can't be applied to persistent games.

And waypoints are blocked when there is action, which is pretty much the opposite effect of what I want. Not only that, waypoints need to be built with a lot of resources, and if I remember correctly, takes forever to build.

So if you're on the losing team, you go into WvW to see if you can help out. The winning enemy has contained all the resource camps so no one can build waypoints, so your choice is to spend 10 minutes of travel or go back to PVE. My guess is that most people won't bother with the 10 minutes as they want to play the game, not auto-walk for 10 minutes, so the losing team will stay losers because fundamental design doesn't provide reinforcements a faster method of getting into the fight.
 
The travel time back is to mimic troop movement/reinforcements to the battlefields. If you just respawned back in the battle after a set period of time you lose out on all of the tactics that are involved in troop movement such as the sieging force having to also worry about controlling troop supply lines. WvW is designed to be more than just killing shit, resource control (which includes players, gold, upgrade supplies, ally npcs) is a vital part of that game mode's design.

If you just want to get in and kill some people and not worry about anything else, hotjoin some sPvP matches and only concentrate on your K/D ratio.
 
Jira, are the usual suspects like Rajn Cajun going to be playing GW2?

I know I'm rolling with the GAF guild because of the people in it. I don't know a single person IRL that is going to play GW2 so I have no commitment to any server or anything. GAF is the closest I've come to talking about the game with others and plus I've played MMO's with some of the people that will be in the guild so it's kind of a no-brainer.

EDIT: Holy shit, only 45 days left!

Yep, I know 8 people who will be playing.
 
Instead of doing borders I had an idea you could try by throwing some brush strokes across the images to try and blend it into the background, so you don't have to mess around with transparency.

Just did this as an example of what I mean...
raceshuman.jpg


EDIT: Just thought I would add, I don't want this to appear as being rude or disrespectful toward Jira by showing something visual, this is intended purely as a suggestion.

Well shit...could you pm me the psd for that because that is beautiful.
 
The travel time back is to mimic troop movement/reinforcements to the battlefields. If you just respawned back in the battle after a set period of time you lose out on all of the tactics that are involved in troop movement such as the sieging force having to also worry about controlling troop supply lines. WvW is designed to be more than just killing shit, resource control (which includes players, gold, upgrade supplies, ally npcs) is a vital part of that game mode's design.

If you just want to get in and kill some people and not worry about anything else, hotjoin some sPvP matches and only concentrate on your K/D ratio.

That's too realistic to be fun! I want to be like a phoenix that get killed and get ressed in the spot, i don't want to walk to be in the hot of the battle, be dammed strategy.

Joking aside, WvW is fine right know by me, there are some nuisances but i will wait to see how the first two week battle develops to make a better opinion. I didn't like at first that i had to walk long distances to be again in the battle after being killed but i understood after a while why they did it, also in the BWE nobody cared to make waypoints so i think that after release when people pay more attention to upgrades, the flow of battle will be different and better.
 
The difference is, they design respawn to be closer to the battle, not at the freaking gate in which you came in.

There already is a way to spawn closer to the battle. You can get additional waypoints by upgrading the keeps. However, upgrades are expensive, you cannot teleport to contested keeps and your waypoint can fall to the other factions.

There really should be no other way (apart from getting resurrected, obviously) to get into the action after dying as that would defeat the entire purpose of multiple WvW mechanics like map control and supply routes.

Even if my proposed respawn method creates an advantage for the defenders, GW2 just need to create more ways to be offensive, to allow capture opportunities that is based off skill and tactics rather than the number of players you have.

I captured and defended several locations while being vastly outnumbered during the first beta event. Sure, numbers always provide an advantage, but it's not like the combat system does not allow for skill to play a role in skirmishes. It's hard to judge after only two weekends, but I'd actually argue the skill ceilings are rather high compared to the genre average.

They went out of their way to fill the WvW maps with bottlenecks, hiding places and opportunities to ambush larger forces and clever use of siege weapons seems to be fairly effective against the classic zerg.

Right now, even laying siege on a keep gate is boring. Everyone just afk autoattacks the gate.

You are supposed to bring siege equipment. Don't try to take any gate without at least one ram. It's not exactly bad design if players refuse to use the tools that are available.

WvW is simply more complex than the WoW battleground PvP the majority of MMORPG players are used to nowadays and you can't expect the average player to "get it" within a matter of days.

I simply don't see how WvW is fun in its current state. The fundamental designs screams out "not fun!" We'll see after they fix the server balancing issue.

You have never heard of DAoC, have you? The fundamental designs are heavily based on what has arguably been the best PvP system in the genre since long before World of Warcraft's success made it so massively popular. This system worked before and it will work again. You should give it another try once people actually understand what they are supposed to do and how WvW matches are actually supposed to be played.

Or maybe WvW is just not for you.

*Edit:
My guess is that most people won't bother with the 10 minutes as they want to play the game, not auto-walk for 10 minutes, so the losing team will stay losers because fundamental design doesn't provide reinforcements a faster method of getting into the fight.

It's not like all the keeps, towers and camps are located right in the center of the map. If your server is losing ground, chances are your supply routes keep getting shorter. The closer they get to your main base on the map, the easier it gets for your team to defend.

Also, you can't get rid of traveling times without getting rid of a considerable amount of depth as well. For example, there would be no room for ambushing or blocking supply routes and every single siege would turn into an endless zergfest.
 
Nope, it's actually from some excellent GW2 fan art. Now that you mention it though, that Ranger does have a bit of a Dragoon look to it...

That's really nice fanart indeed, all three pieces of it. They capture the large brush strokes style of GW2 art perfectly. That ranger does look dragoonish in your avatar, less so in the full size version. Bows are not a dragoon weapon but it all made perfect sense in my mind; you see, a bow shoots tiny lances! Shoot them arcing way upwards and it's like there's miniature, invisible dragoons attacking!
What? I'm perfectly sane, I tell you! >_>

I'm an officer because of the puns. I'm the Punmaster General.

Puns are the spice of life, man. Even the groan-inducing ones. Which are the only ones I can provide, being a non-native speaker. All the ones I make fall into two camps, the "... what?" camp that no native speaker would get (often because of the pronunciation is all wrong in my head), and the "... yeah, never hear THAT before (roll eyes)" camp.

Also, it's pretty terrible with the way travel works in WvW. They don't have "instant action" that puts you in a place that has battle, and respawn distance is just terrible.

Unfortunately, that's the only way to prevent turning battles into zerg-fests where people simply don't care about dying as it has no consequence. I for one am not looking for them to turn WvW into another Alterac Valley, with people constantly dying, ressing and rushing back to the middle zerg while it slowly pushes north or south. I want death to mean something, I want how you play to be a more important factor than how quickly can you rush back to die.

If you have any alternative at all that solves the mindless zerg, I'll gladly hear it. As it is, it may be discouraging at first, but as you learn to keep yourself alive and pick your battles, it becomes a much more exciting experience, since more is at a stake for each individual "life". Not being next to the battle also makes you consider alternatives and whether or not you could be more useful elsewhere; it also makes you flee from lost battles. It may not be as "glamorous" as going out in a blaze of glory every sixty seconds, but it certainly is more realistic and meaningful.

I will say I was one of those that thought the running times were too big. I now wouldn't change a thing.

Nope, Gafs the only folks I know getting these. All my RL friends are either still stuck in WoW or swore off MMOs entirely.

That sounds awfully familiar. :(

I dunno about you, but "Yay, my server won but I can't actually participate" sounds a lot less fun than "Yay, I get to play WvW and held win." If you want to head off on whatever server you think is going to win, that's fine, but the GMs and Officers who are organizing GAF Guild made the decision (and based it on a lot of positive feedback for Gate of Madness too).

I totally agree. I don't care too much about winning or losing in WvW; the perks are nice but nothing game-breaking. Hell, if you ask me, being in a low population server would be great; we'd be matched against other low population servers, and we (GAF) would feel proportionally more responsible for each fort conquered (or lost!). It would feel more like "our home". As far as I'm concerned, it's the same principle as raids vs 5-man, honestly; a hugely populated server would be matched against other similarly populated server, so GAF's contribution would be dwarfed.

Eh, I'm still torn whether to roll in Gates or in an Euro server, being in Spain.

Now it's just die to a zerg, walk for ten minutes, get ganked, walk for ten minutes...

That's the point, don't die to a zerg. Don't be a hero when you know you won't make any difference, fall back and regroup, or just go for a totally different objective. You know, like you'd do in real life. This is not WoW nor Alterac Valley. A lone person can do a lot in WvW, but facing a zerg is not one of them.
Whenever I found large groups when playing WvW solo, I turned and ran; the draw distance is huge, so you can scout ahead to see if any allies are engaging them before they even notice you. Sometimes one or two players peeled off to kill me; I would sometimes lure them far enough from the zerg to confront them. Remember that dying (not being downed, but dying) in WvW makes your armor lose durability; you're not supposed to be dying every 5 minutes.

What do you guys think?

humandemo.png

Awesome. I would probably make the "Human" header larger, and remove the dash, but the text is spot-on.

A little hard to sometimes see the text against some of the darker parts of the background, not so much it goes invisible but it requires a bit of strain I feel.

Was going to say this. Reducing contrast a bit more on the backgrounds would help indeed.

And on the Euro-US Guild dichotomy, my worry is the Euro side will be inactive and may as well be dissolved into the US side.

That's my worry as well, so I'm agonizing about whether or not actually make Gates my home server instead. I did just that in BWE2 and lag was pretty unnoticeable, so unless something goes horribly wrong in retail, it seems like a good choice. I just really want to WvW with Hawkian, Retro, Jira and the gang (puns and all).

It’s worth noting that as you progress through the game, the event chains get much more involved and intricate, and in Orr—since there are no apple trees—things like the more relaxing, fun minigame-type stuff is left behind to help set the tone of the epic nature of the end of the game.

Is it wrong if I find that a little sad? The whimsical stuff in the early zones is some of the stuff I loved the most.
Oh wait, downleveling means that I can go back to them anytime I want. :D

By the way, guys, is it consider bad form when I do this, i.e. do a megapost with answers to stuff that may be almost a day old? My window of opportunity for posting is relatively small but I still want to read everything and reply to many things... but if it's bothersome, I'll stop.
 
Now that the subject is about WvW tactics, i remembered that i found this WvW guide in reddit which i found very informative and interesting:

Melee in Keep Assaults: Reinforcement Prevention

Scope of this Guide
This guide is meant to cover the situation where one medium to large sized group is assaulting a keep that is being defended by a medium to large sized group but has been drained to zero supply. The types of encounters that will occur around Keeps are going to vary wildly, so I want to emphasize that the points here are meant to apply primarily to this situation; though I believe that the core idea can be adapted to a wide variety of situations.

http://teamlegacy.net/_/gw2/melee-in-keep-assaults-reinforcement-prevention-r526

And some Siege weapon tactics:

Ballista Tactics
Arrow Cart Tactics
Catapult Tactics
 
The travel time back is to mimic troop movement/reinforcements to the battlefields. If you just respawned back in the battle after a set period of time you lose out on all of the tactics that are involved in troop movement such as the sieging force having to also worry about controlling troop supply lines. WvW is designed to be more than just killing shit, resource control (which includes players, gold, upgrade supplies, ally npcs) is a vital part of that game mode's design.

If you just want to get in and kill some people and not worry about anything else, hotjoin some sPvP matches and only concentrate on your K/D ratio.

Unless you're assuming that I'm proposing that players should be spawned straight into advantageous position, it's less tactical when there are less points of interest. Providing more spawn points closer to battles will make those spawn points important.

Attackers should be worried about reinforcements and designate an amount of troops to defend the siege, and defenders can find ways to flank the siege forces and break their lines. Your concern about "troop movement and supply lines" is all because WvW is purely won by numbers. It was entirely proven by the server population imbalance.

You don't need tactics to win WvW. You just need numbers, and that's a flaw of any MMO pvp.

That's the point, don't die to a zerg. Don't be a hero when you know you won't make any difference, fall back and regroup, or just go for a totally different objective. You know, like you'd do in real life. This is not WoW nor Alterac Valley. A lone person can do a lot in WvW, but facing a zerg is not one of them.
Whenever I found large groups when playing WvW solo, I turned and ran; the draw distance is huge, so you can scout ahead to see if any allies are engaging them before they even notice you. Sometimes one or two players peeled off to kill me; I would sometimes lure them far enough from the zerg to confront them. Remember that dying (not being downed, but dying) in WvW makes your armor lose durability; you're not supposed to be dying every 5 minutes.

Ummm you can die to a zerg while defending a keep surrounded by several dozen of your allies. If they have the numbers to focus you down, you will die and get finished.
Armor durability doesn't matter. The penalty of respawn travel is far more penalizing.
 
By the way, guys, is it consider bad form when I do this, i.e. do a megapost with answers to stuff that may be almost a day old? My window of opportunity for posting is relatively small but I still want to read everything and reply to many things... but if it's bothersome, I'll stop.

I've been doing it for years and nobody has complained. Of course, I don't think anybody has bothered to read them either.

I'm the same way, I usually don't hang out on GAF all day waiting to post replies, so there's usually a day's worth of posts I want to reply to. The only thing I would watch out for is answering questions that have already been answered. I generally hit the (+) button next to quote and then reply all at once. If something has been answered, I can just delete that part from my post.
 
Nope, but the bandwidth concern is a moot point; the client you download for the Beta will also work at launch, so you'll only ever need to download it once.
I'd buy it retail which saves me the bandwidth. Plus pretty boxes! Guess I'll have to settle with checking videos or something.
 
I'd buy it retail which saves me the bandwidth. Plus pretty boxes! Guess I'll have to settle with checking videos or something.

Fair enough. I know Arken2121 was trying to set up a HD stream during the last BWE, so watch the thread and maybe someone will be streaming. At the very least you can watch it happening in real time.
 
By the way, guys, is it consider bad form when I do this, i.e. do a megapost with answers to stuff that may be almost a day old? My window of opportunity for posting is relatively small but I still want to read everything and reply to many things... but if it's bothersome, I'll stop.
Keep the megapost tradition alive! It is a Retro-endorsed technique!

edit: I always read them twice Retro <3

Now that the subject is about WvW tactics, i remembered that i found this WvW guide in reddit which i found very informative and interesting:

Melee in Keep Assaults: Reinforcement Prevention



http://teamlegacy.net/_/gw2/melee-in-keep-assaults-reinforcement-prevention-r526

And some Siege weapon tactics:

Ballista Tactics
Arrow Cart Tactics
Catapult Tactics
Also there are GOLEMS.
 
guys guys my spot in the BWE is reserved

bet you're jealous

Yeah, I'm not sure why I got the email. I guess it's nice to know it's extra official now?

So this BWE is going to be my very first. Any kindly gaffers want to go through some PvE with me? I'll be available to play the entire time (except friday night, when I will be watching TDKR)
 
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