• A world wide PvP channel for people to communicate and plan their next tactical moves in.
• An invite/vote only leader channel. The best way this can be done, in my opinion, is by allowing guilds or alliances to assign ONE leader to speak in this channel. This can be an option once a guild and/or alliance reach a certain level.
• Markers for the leader to pin point where exactly he wants each group or warband to defend or attack.
• An active alert system. It needs to be easy to see/know when your realm is under attack and where you need to be to defend.

Originally posted by Relidar

 

(Remember, this is  MY point of view, so don't freak out or overreact!)

 

A constructive discussion is welcome!

First off welcome!!  I agree with nearly everything you posted.  Most of what I'm extremely excited about in GW2 is the scale in which WvW will be played out.  It can take a good amount of time to siege a Keep / Castle and even longer if you do not cut off its supply lines.

As a guild leader I look forward to planning out tactics and having a few of my commanders ready groups to help cut off enemy supplies as well.

The game has a feature for, I might be wrong on the name, captains or commanders.  You pay for the position, I'm assuming Guild leaders take this and it marks this particular person on the map for everyone to see.  I do not know much more about this but you explained some major points that would help make GW2's W v W awesome.

Why I quoted what I did?  As you will soon see, this forum contains a massive amount of people who will twist the smallest semantic of the dumbest thing out of your entire thread, Mind you their argument usually has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic but they demand to have their opinion recognised...  By stating "don't freak out or overreact" that was a cattle call for them to come running and troll the hell out of this thread.  Ready yourself for the extreme display of nit pickiness.. lmao

Anyways again welcome and from the sounds of it I would be honored if one day we find ourselves drawing blood on the battlefield in the Mist!

Good post.

So far from what I've seen of world layout and siege mechanics, it's very promising; plenty of sneaky passages, small and large objectives and fairly large scaled zones. (A tad funnely though: lots of "passage way" geography).

There are other important things we still need to see though:

- Will there be queues to get into WvW when you play on a high pop server? If so: How long wil they be?

- Will guildmembers running with a very rich / large guild have a huge advantage (through buffs bought with Influence > Gold > Gems > Cash) over a similar amount of players from smaller / poorer guilds? (I.e. will your group of 3 friends be totally devastated by 3 random oponents from a large, rich guild, just through the buffs they could afford and you couldn't?).

- Will the incentives for individual players to participate in WvW be interesting enough in order not to soak up a huge amount of pvp players in battle grounds instead?

- Will it hugely favor ranged classes?

- Will it be like WAR: sneaky zergs going mainly for undefended objectives at off hours and essentially "PVE'ing" them?

- What will the lag be like when you find yourself in a 100 vs. 100 battle?

Originally posted by TheTrueKing

Originally posted by Relidar

 

(Remember, this is  MY point of view, so don't freak out or overreact!)

 

A constructive discussion is welcome!

 

 

First off welcome!!  I agree with nearly everything you posted.  Most of what I'm extremely excited about in GW2 is the scale in which WvW will be played out.  It can take a good amount of time to siege a Keep / Castle and even longer if you do not cut off its supply lines.

 

As a guild leader I look forward to planning out tactics and having a few of my commanders ready groups to help cut off enemy supplies as well.

 

The game has a feature for, I might be wrong on the name, captains or commanders.  You pay for the position, I'm assuming Guild leaders take this and it marks this particular person on the map for everyone to see.  I do not know much more about this but you explained some major points that would help make GW2's W v W awesome.

 

Why I quoted what I did?  As you will soon see, this forum contains a massive amount of people who will twist the smallest semantic of the dumbest thing out of your entire thread, Mind you their argument usually has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic but they demand to have their opinion recognised...  By stating "don't freak out or overreact" that was a cattle call for them to come running and troll the hell out of this thread.  Ready yourself for the extreme display of nit pickiness.. lmao

 

Anyways again welcome and from the sounds of it I would be honored if one day we find ourselves drawing blood on the battlefield in the Mist!

 

 

Thank you, TheTrueKing!

First of all, yeah i don't expect much from open forums these days. No offense to the people who can bring something to the table, but most open forums are filled with whiney little brats. But i won't go into that discussion here, because i hate it and i rather stay away from the drama.

I would like to talk more about that 'Pay to lead' feature actually. I'll be blunt here, i truely dislike it and i hope they change the way it works before launch.

Trusting someone with leadership is something that needs to be earned through time, experience and respect, in my opinion. Now granted, a freshly released game will lack leadership for months if we follow this model. And that is why i suggested that guilds or even alliances earn levels, and at a certain level they will unlock the feature to assign their own leader(s).

This will give leaders credability, these people weren't picked as leaders because they had the time to farm money and buy their position, they were chosen by their community.

I tend to agree and here is why.

As a guild leader I know my limitations.  I'm great at planning events, managing the politics and drama, and making sure the daily in and outs are structured and well orginized.  This gives the guild a sense of security and stress free enjoyable environment to play their game.  I might not be the best battle tactics leader but I know my second in command is great at that.  I'd much rather him lead our guilds battle under our guilds statutes then myself.   

I know some of us have seen some yahoos trying to be leaders and they don't know their head from their hole on their back side.  I'd prefer someone level headed, not easy to explode at people, and decisive.   (Mind you I haven't slept in 48+ hours so if spelling / grammar are off thats why)

Originally posted by DarkPony

Good post.

So far from what I've seen of world layout and siege mechanics, it's very promising; plenty of sneaky passages, small and large objectives and fairly large scaled zones. (A tad funnely though: lots of "passage way" geography).

There are other important things we still need to see though:

1 Will there be queues to get into WvW when you play on a high pop server? If so: How long wil they be?

2 Will guildmembers running with a very rich / large guild have a huge advantage (through buffs bought with Influence > Gold > Gems > Cash) over a similar amount of players from smaller / poorer guilds? (I.e. will your group of 3 friends be totally devastated by 3 random oponents from a large, rich guild, just through the buffs they could afford and you couldn't?).

3 Will the incentives for individual players to participate in WvW be interesting enough in order not to soak up a huge amount of pvp players in battle grounds instead?

4 Will it hugely favor ranged classes?

5 Will it be like WAR: sneaky zergs going mainly for undefended objectives at off hours and essentially "PVE'ing" them?

6 What will the lag be like when you find yourself in a 100 vs. 100 battle?

 

 

Very good points, DarkPony! I can assure you that you are not alone in this, i think the majority of the competitive audience have the exact same questions on their mind.

Here's what i think (i numbered your points to make it easier to see what i'm replying to)

1 - Yes there will be queues, atm they've said that each zone within the WvWvW map will each hold 300 players, so 4x300 = a total of 1200 over all. I think it's good that they've split the zone up like this, so that you won't have to queue up for all 4 zones if you only want to join to defend an objective in one of the maps. I think they will determine a lot more on the stress tests they will perform as we get closer to release. If the servers can handle more, I'm sure they will up the limit. As long as you don't lag to death in the large scale fights!

2 - I'm not sure what to reply to this, the shop is still very new and we don't have the raw data that we need to make realistic speculations. Such as, how much gold will you be making as you level up? What exactly will we be able to buy from the shop? WHY do we need to buy stuff from the shop? And so on.

3 & 5 - I think these two points are tied together. It's extremely important for ArenaNet to monitor this as the game progresses. People went for empty keeps and objectives in WAR because you got the exact same reward as attacking a fully defended keep. In fact, if you attacked a defended keep and failed, you even rewarded your enemy and got nothing out of it yourself. (apart from the occasional kills) This is why it's so important to reward people who actually go for objectives that help in the bigger picture.

4 - Sadly this is the curse of all MMO's. Ranged classes have always dominated PvP untill very late game when the melee classes got better gear and abilities to either get away or close the gaps before they died. I hope this isn't the case here.

6 - As far as i can read in posts made by the beta testers, the lag isn't that bad actually. Even people with pretty old computers are able to compete in the large scale fights. Again though, the stress tests will tell us a lot more about this. I just hope that they do something about all the particle effects that currently clutter the combat. Also, the white and red circles on the ground are somewhat a turn off, but that might just be me.

Regarding the Zone size, objectives and environment of WvW; I don't think we'll have anything to worry about because the zones are large and the objectives are numerous and scattered between open fields and mountain passes. Just check out this person's tours on the Zones and the amount of variety in the terrain.

Eternal Battleground

Borderlands

You do bring up some interesting points regarding castle sieges but I feel that if seiges are too long then the majority of players will find them boring and an arduous task to undertake and instead focus on the lesser time-consuming aspect of WvW (like ganking players open field). Whereas if they are too short it will, as you said, will feel unimportant and the memory of the siege will fade quickly. I think this vid shows that the game is on the right track, because it's a 20min siege on Tower, with some back and forth going to not make it a long boring stalemate or steamroll. However it is only the easiest of structures to capture (Tower = 10), whereas Keep & Castle sieges will be a different story altogether. Will have to wait and see how that pans out, during this month's beta.

Good OP. I agree with most of it and my disagreements are minor.

I don't think that we know enough yet on the WvW leadership options. I was under the impression that a guild can pay to mark one guild member as a leader, rather than it being a free for all to who ever is willing to spend the coin, but I'm not sure about that. We'll definitely know a lot more after the April Weekend Beta Event and at that point we'll be able to provide more informed feedback.

I'm very impressed with the design decisions Arenanet has made with the game on just about all fronts. These guys seem to get it and have a design process that lets the best ideas come to the surface. I'm pretty hopeful that they have a good idea about what World vs World needs in order to provide the next evolution of Realm vs. Realm style mass warfare and from what I can tell they already do address your ideas on what is needed for World vs. World to be successful.

Welcome to MMORPG.COM

Originally posted by Master10K

Regarding the Zone size, objectives and environment of WvW; I don't think we'll have anything to worry about because the zones are large and the objectives are numerous and scattered between open fields and mountain passes. Just check out this person's tours on the Zones and the amount of variety in the terrain.

Eternal Battleground

Borderlands

 

You do bring up some interesting points regarding castle sieges but I feel that if seiges are too long then the majority of players will find them boring and an arduous task to undertake and instead focus on the lesser time-consuming aspect of WvW (like ganking players open field). Whereas if they are too short it will, as you said, will feel unimportant and the memory of the siege will fade quickly. I think this vid shows that the game is on the right track, because it's a 20min siege on Tower, with some back and forth going to not make it a long boring stalemate or steamroll. However it is only the easiest of structures to capture (Tower = 10), whereas Keep & Castle sieges will be a different story altogether. Will have to wait and see how that pans out, during this month's beta.

I think that well defended fortress seiges will be long, drawn out affairs, but it will require an active defense, not only of the Fortress itself, but the supply lines that allow the defenders to repair, reinforce and build defenses. Having all those minor forts, supply lines and resource camps won't mean much if they have little impact on how a siege plays out.

After launch, even if all these things do matter, it will take a while for most players to understand how all this works together and plan complex strategies for seiges and defense. The servers that are early big winners will likely be those with leaders that get all this from the start and are able to get enough people to follow them to make smart strategy work.

Originally posted by fiontar

Good OP. I agree with most of it and my disagreements are minor.

I don't think that we know enough yet on the WvW leadership options. I was under the impression that a guild can pay to mark one guild member as a leader, rather than it being a free for all to who ever is willing to spend the coin, but I'm not sure about that. We'll definitely know a lot more after the April Weekend Beta Event and at that point we'll be able to provide more informed feedback.

I'm very impressed with the design decisions Arenanet has made with the game on just about all fronts. These guys seem to get it and have a design process that lets the best ideas come to the surface. I'm pretty hopeful that they have a good idea about what World vs World needs in order to provide the next evolution of Realm vs. Realm style mass warfare and from what I can tell they already do address your ideas on what is needed for World vs. World to be successful.

Welcome to MMORPG.COM

There is a leadership option, where anyone on your server can purchase a buff to become a Squad Commander. There is a special chat channel for that Squad and only the Commander can chat in it and place waypoints on the map (effectively giving directo orders to the squad). I heard it cost A LOT to become a Squad Commander.

Originally posted by Relidar

Originally posted by DarkPony

Good post.

So far from what I've seen of world layout and siege mechanics, it's very promising; plenty of sneaky passages, small and large objectives and fairly large scaled zones. (A tad funnely though: lots of "passage way" geography).

There are other important things we still need to see though:

1 Will there be queues to get into WvW when you play on a high pop server? If so: How long wil they be?

2 Will guildmembers running with a very rich / large guild have a huge advantage (through buffs bought with Influence > Gold > Gems > Cash) over a similar amount of players from smaller / poorer guilds? (I.e. will your group of 3 friends be totally devastated by 3 random oponents from a large, rich guild, just through the buffs they could afford and you couldn't?).

3 Will the incentives for individual players to participate in WvW be interesting enough in order not to soak up a huge amount of pvp players in battle grounds instead?

4 Will it hugely favor ranged classes?

5 Will it be like WAR: sneaky zergs going mainly for undefended objectives at off hours and essentially "PVE'ing" them?

6 What will the lag be like when you find yourself in a 100 vs. 100 battle?

 

 

*snipage*

1 - Yes there will be queues, atm they've said that each zone within the WvWvW map will each hold 300 players, so 4x300 = a total of 1200 over all. I think it's good that they've split the zone up like this, so that you won't have to queue up for all 4 zones if you only want to join to defend an objective in one of the maps. I think they will determine a lot more on the stress tests they will perform as we get closer to release. If the servers can handle more, I'm sure they will up the limit. As long as you don't lag to death in the large scale fights!

*snapage*

Thanks I looked that up but found a conflicting source: 500 players per zone, 2k total. But whatever the eventual numbers, I wonder how the mechanics will work in a specific scenario:

A large surprise attack on one specific zone by multiple guilds and/or servers, flooding a zone's player allowance with enemy players: defenders are vastly outnumbered and won't be able to enter the zone to help out as the 500 cap is reached already.

They could prevent that by giving each server their own zone cap: i.e. a third of the total zone allowance.

In that case it will limit the amount of attackers that can participate in such huge, surprise offensives. This may be better even though it's kind of sucky to be the 500 / 3 + 1 guy and not being able to cross zones to help out your budies.

Good post op, and welcome to the forum. :)

Originally posted by Master10K

Originally posted by fiontar

Good OP. I agree with most of it and my disagreements are minor.

I don't think that we know enough yet on the WvW leadership options. I was under the impression that a guild can pay to mark one guild member as a leader, rather than it being a free for all to who ever is willing to spend the coin, but I'm not sure about that. We'll definitely know a lot more after the April Weekend Beta Event and at that point we'll be able to provide more informed feedback.

I'm very impressed with the design decisions Arenanet has made with the game on just about all fronts. These guys seem to get it and have a design process that lets the best ideas come to the surface. I'm pretty hopeful that they have a good idea about what World vs World needs in order to provide the next evolution of Realm vs. Realm style mass warfare and from what I can tell they already do address your ideas on what is needed for World vs. World to be successful.

Welcome to MMORPG.COM

There is a leadership option, where anyone on your server can purchase a buff to become a Squad Commander. There is a special chat channel for that Squad and only the Commander can chat in it and place waypoints on the map (effectively giving directo orders to the squad). I heard it cost A LOT to become a Squad Commander.

Ok, here is the reference for the official wiki's sparse info on this subject. It appears you are right, but it's unclear if other factors play into this. Not much info, so there might be more to it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q45rm/iama_guild_wars_2_game_designer_ama_about_world/c3uka48

Originally posted by Relidar

 

Before you read my post, yes i am a new member, my friend recommended this website for me to share my views on Guild Wars 2. So here i am, sharing!

 

Introduction

 

My background with online gaming, being mainly MMORPG's, go back to the days of UO, DAoC and EQ. I know this will sound very cliché and very worn out by now, but i genuinly believe that the old gamers have a different view on online gaming today than the current playerbase has.

 

Now bear with me here as i try to explain why. Before i go into detail, i also want to mention that patience is one of the biggest factors in all of this. Patience today equals time, and people either do not have the time or are just not willing to spend the time on an MMO to let it evolve and grow into what the community wants it to be.

 

People set expectations and standards before an MMO is even launched. They create an image of the MMO and ask from their designers to make a game that is not created by them (the devs) but by the community. And there is the biggest flaw.

 

I recently activated both my DAoC and Warhammer accounts, and by playing these games it reminded me all over again what Guild Wars 2 needs to be successful, and what made the mentioned games so hard to forget.

 

PvP - Zones, objectives and environment

 

The importance of a BIG PvP zone seems to have been filtered out over the years. It is the number one key to creating a competitive community where team work and pride is the incentive.

 

Short distances and going from objective A to B within minutes will eliminate the element of surprise and tactical advantages. You can see a byproduct of what happens when this is ignored in other MMO's. People tend to just hang around the major objectives and 'camp' for easy prey.

 

This not only eliminates the element of surprise, but it also discourages soloing or smaller operations to be carried out.

 

By having bigger PvP zones with longer running distances and good environments inbetween them, the game does not only become more fun to play, but it feels REAL. The excitement of going out into a battlefield and having absolutely no idea of what will happen next, isn't that really what MMO's are about?

 

Castle and keep sieges

 

If there's one thing we can learn from DAoC (and there are many things to learn from DAoC when it comes to sieges!) it's that castle and keep sieges are supposed to take time and require a lot of team work.

 

Castles and keeps that take hours of effort, resources and tactics will establish a sense of identity for the leaders, guilds and people involved. People will talk about what a great leader Bob was, and what a wonderful job did with their flank at a resource objective that eventually lead to a victory for the realm!

 

This also includes the money spent on upgrading your castle, or setting up siege weapons such as ballistas and trebuches.

 

Sieges that come quick and easy will fade out of memory fast, no matter how big the reward was.

 

Communication

 

All of the above will eventually come down to this, communication.

There are a features that will be extremely vital for all of this to work.

 

 

• A world wide PvP channel for people to communicate and plan their next tactical moves in.
• An invite/vote only leader channel. The best way this can be done, in my opinion, is by allowing guilds or alliances to assign ONE leader to speak in this channel. This can be an option once a guild and/or alliance reach a certain level.
• Markers for the leader to pin point where exactly he wants each group or warband to defend or attack.
• An active alert system. It needs to be easy to see/know when your realm is under attack and where you need to be to defend.

 

(Remember, this is  MY point of view, so don't freak out or overreact!)

 

A constructive discussion is welcome!

hello and welcome ! 

Constructive discussion .. lets try this out.

To begin with and i am sure you are aware of it the maps sizes are HUge and one of the largest ones in the game itself. They have made it the biggest ones they could. And then having a sneaky feeling and such have been taken care by providing alternate routes to castles like for example there are castle that have underground waterways to enter them. So sneaky and rogish you can be if you so choose to be. You can see where the battles are being seiged so if you want to out flank your opponent you can, again a stratergy guilds can choose if they so like.

They have designed the map with objectives for large guilds and small groups. Both can significantly further the progress of a server. Remember not everyone likes and will be a part of a major sieging guild. So they can help out by taking smaller forts and supply camps and help out the server in the long run.

From the little i have played and seen taking a castle is not very easy. It does take Looooong to begin with to break open a god damn door. You need siege weapons etc etc and a lot of people helping out providing suuply defend seige weapons etc etc to make through the door it self. So the Epic feeling of getting a fort is undeniably there. And the back and forth is always going to be there and it being a 2 week event there will be a lot of that.

Some people have stated about balance of small guilds vs Bigger guilds. Sorry but as per ANET W V W is not a balance fight. BIgger is better. THey will and should as per game design take over smaller guilds with much ease when compared to fighting an equal guild. WvW guild buff from bigger guilds will give them that direct advantage. WvW was made to keep unbalanced PVP in game. their balanced pvp is as we all know is the esport element of it.

Now communication bit. Yes the game allows for leader/commanders that are not easy to get by guilds but once achieved are to those who are the chosen ones, will be able to be seen by all players and these commanders can help coordinate the fights. I am not sure but if a commander does not fulfil its duties as expected by guildies there is a mutiny feature ( i cant be 100% about it)

Well this is My Story oh i mean my point of view.

Originally posted by fiontar

Originally posted by Master10K

Regarding the Zone size, objectives and environment of WvW; I don't think we'll have anything to worry about because the zones are large and the objectives are numerous and scattered between open fields and mountain passes. Just check out this person's tours on the Zones and the amount of variety in the terrain.

Eternal Battleground

Borderlands

 

You do bring up some interesting points regarding castle sieges but I feel that if seiges are too long then the majority of players will find them boring and an arduous task to undertake and instead focus on the lesser time-consuming aspect of WvW (like ganking players open field). Whereas if they are too short it will, as you said, will feel unimportant and the memory of the siege will fade quickly. I think this vid shows that the game is on the right track, because it's a 20min siege on Tower, with some back and forth going to not make it a long boring stalemate or steamroll. However it is only the easiest of structures to capture (Tower = 10), whereas Keep & Castle sieges will be a different story altogether. Will have to wait and see how that pans out, during this month's beta.

I think that well defended fortress seiges will be long, drawn out affairs, but it will require an active defense, not only of the Fortress itself, but the supply lines that allow the defenders to repair, reinforce and build defenses. Having all those minor forts, supply lines and resource camps won't mean much if they have little impact on how a siege plays out.

After launch, even if all these things do matter, it will take a while for most players to understand how all this works together and plan complex strategies for seiges and defense. The servers that are early big winners will likely be those with leaders that get all this from the start and are able to get enough people to follow them to make smart strategy work.

Yeah I've noticed that cutting of supply lines will be vital for any siege. Like in the one I linked earlier, the blue team was able to prevent the Tower from getting any supply, effectively starving the Greens of the Supply needed to Repair the Gate and build defensive structures. However Towers can only hold 100 Supply, whereas Stonemist Castle can hold 1,800 (in latest beta), so who knows how long players will be able to hold out for on Stonemist. It will likely be only those large guilds with great leaders will be able to capture and hold Stonemist, but like DarkPony brought up earlier, this could mean that guilds will schedule Stonemist raids for 3am when it's mostly undefended.

Argh! I really wanna try it out for myself to see how it is when full servers duke it out.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Thanks I looked that up but found a conflicting source: 500 players per zone, 2k total. But whatever the eventual numbers, I wonder how the mechanics will work in a specific scenario:

A large surprise attack on one specific zone by multiple guilds and/or servers, flooding a zone's player allowance with enemy players: defenders are vastly outnumbered and won't be able to enter the zone to help out as the 500 cap is reached already.

They could prevent that by giving each server their own zone cap: i.e. a third of the total zone allowance.

In that case it will limit the amount of attackers that can participate in such huge, surprise offensives. This may be better even though it's kind of sucky to be the 500 / 3 + 1 guy and not being able to cross zones to help out your budies.

There is a cap on the zone total and a cap for each faction, so you can't flood a map with one faction to prevent others from entering. The numbers for the caps are still going up while the game is optimized.

If I remember right that was clarified in the reddit post that fiontar linked further up.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by Relidar

Originally posted by DarkPony

Good post.

So far from what I've seen of world layout and siege mechanics, it's very promising; plenty of sneaky passages, small and large objectives and fairly large scaled zones. (A tad funnely though: lots of "passage way" geography).

There are other important things we still need to see though:

1 Will there be queues to get into WvW when you play on a high pop server? If so: How long wil they be?

2 Will guildmembers running with a very rich / large guild have a huge advantage (through buffs bought with Influence > Gold > Gems > Cash) over a similar amount of players from smaller / poorer guilds? (I.e. will your group of 3 friends be totally devastated by 3 random oponents from a large, rich guild, just through the buffs they could afford and you couldn't?).

3 Will the incentives for individual players to participate in WvW be interesting enough in order not to soak up a huge amount of pvp players in battle grounds instead?

4 Will it hugely favor ranged classes?

5 Will it be like WAR: sneaky zergs going mainly for undefended objectives at off hours and essentially "PVE'ing" them?

6 What will the lag be like when you find yourself in a 100 vs. 100 battle?

 

 

*snipage*

1 - Yes there will be queues, atm they've said that each zone within the WvWvW map will each hold 300 players, so 4x300 = a total of 1200 over all. I think it's good that they've split the zone up like this, so that you won't have to queue up for all 4 zones if you only want to join to defend an objective in one of the maps. I think they will determine a lot more on the stress tests they will perform as we get closer to release. If the servers can handle more, I'm sure they will up the limit. As long as you don't lag to death in the large scale fights!

*snapage*

Thanks I looked that up but found a conflicting source: 500 players per zone, 2k total. But whatever the eventual numbers, I wonder how the mechanics will work in a specific scenario:

A large surprise attack on one specific zone by multiple guilds and/or servers, flooding a zone's player allowance with enemy players: defenders are vastly outnumbered and won't be able to enter the zone to help out as the 500 cap is reached already.

They could prevent that by giving each server their own zone cap: i.e. a third of the total zone allowance.

In that case it will limit the amount of attackers that can participate in such huge, surprise offensives. This may be better even though it's kind of sucky to be the 500 / 3 + 1 guy and not being able to cross zones to help out your budies.

The number is still fluid. I've heard devs say "500 and we are working on more", but I've also heard "at least 300". Per zone, or course.

They have said that each server has it's own cap, so what ever the zone cap is, it will be divided by three, so no flooding a zone to prevent defenders from getting in.

Also, players can teleport to safe areas for their server in each of the WvW zones, so you can't bottleneck people and block their access to any of the zones.

Edit: References

http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-takes-your-wvw-questions-here-and-on-reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nclu0/im_a_guild_wars_2_developer_ama_about_professions/c380zj5

Originally posted by Relidar

 

Before you read my post, yes i am a new member, my friend recommended this website for me to share my views on Guild Wars 2. So here i am, sharing!

 

Introduction

 

My background with online gaming, being mainly MMORPG's, go back to the days of UO, DAoC and EQ. I know this will sound very cliché and very worn out by now, but i genuinly believe that the old gamers have a different view on online gaming today than the current playerbase has.

 

Now bear with me here as i try to explain why. Before i go into detail, i also want to mention that patience is one of the biggest factors in all of this. Patience today equals time, and people either do not have the time or are just not willing to spend the time on an MMO to let it evolve and grow into what the community wants it to be.

 

People set expectations and standards before an MMO is even launched. They create an image of the MMO and ask from their designers to make a game that is not created by them (the devs) but by the community. And there is the biggest flaw.

 

I recently activated both my DAoC and Warhammer accounts, and by playing these games it reminded me all over again what Guild Wars 2 needs to be successful, and what made the mentioned games so hard to forget.

 

PvP - Zones, objectives and environment

 

The importance of a BIG PvP zone seems to have been filtered out over the years. It is the number one key to creating a competitive community where team work and pride is the incentive.

 

Short distances and going from objective A to B within minutes will eliminate the element of surprise and tactical advantages. You can see a byproduct of what happens when this is ignored in other MMO's. People tend to just hang around the major objectives and 'camp' for easy prey.

 

This not only eliminates the element of surprise, but it also discourages soloing or smaller operations to be carried out.

 

By having bigger PvP zones with longer running distances and good environments inbetween them, the game does not only become more fun to play, but it feels REAL. The excitement of going out into a battlefield and having absolutely no idea of what will happen next, isn't that really what MMO's are about?

 

Castle and keep sieges

 

If there's one thing we can learn from DAoC (and there are many things to learn from DAoC when it comes to sieges!) it's that castle and keep sieges are supposed to take time and require a lot of team work.

 

Castles and keeps that take hours of effort, resources and tactics will establish a sense of identity for the leaders, guilds and people involved. People will talk about what a great leader Bob was, and what a wonderful job did with their flank at a resource objective that eventually lead to a victory for the realm!

 

This also includes the money spent on upgrading your castle, or setting up siege weapons such as ballistas and trebuches.

 

Sieges that come quick and easy will fade out of memory fast, no matter how big the reward was.

 

Communication

 

All of the above will eventually come down to this, communication.

There are a features that will be extremely vital for all of this to work.

 

 

• A world wide PvP channel for people to communicate and plan their next tactical moves in.
• An invite/vote only leader channel. The best way this can be done, in my opinion, is by allowing guilds or alliances to assign ONE leader to speak in this channel. This can be an option once a guild and/or alliance reach a certain level.
• Markers for the leader to pin point where exactly he wants each group or warband to defend or attack.
• An active alert system. It needs to be easy to see/know when your realm is under attack and where you need to be to defend.

 

(Remember, this is  MY point of view, so don't freak out or overreact!)

 

A constructive discussion is welcome!

First of all, i am as you a DAoC veteran, and played the same games(didnt like EQ though, but that is another story) and i agree with all of your points.

Distance.. this was one of the points which made DAoC good, and WAR not so good, but there are even worst games in this respect(Alterac Valley/WoW). This point is also important in regard of the ability how fast and easy reinforcement can join. If they can instantly, and without trouble join the fight again, the fight becomes more or less insignificant, and endless zerg(WoW-> Alterac Valley, Barrens etc.)

About GW2.. well i can not judge it finally, i saw, just as everyone only vids about it. But at least what i have seen, it is larger, with longer running ways then WAR, but not as huge or long ways like DAoC(pre frontier), maybe similar with new frontier. But as said, i dont know exactly, we will see.

About the castle, as much as i have seen, it takes more than enough long to take down the doors, or everything else, i have seen even a successful counter attack as they were across the doors. They have the supply resources(WvW only) for all sieging weapons, doors to repair and stuff like that. All that indicates, that GW2 will be good in this regard, so i dont worry about this.

About the communication channels.. i guess we will see. They have at least at their WvW map battle indicators, like in new frontiers(DAoc), but a general WAR chat/alarm, for your realm/server is important to "call to the banners".

Overall as much as i have seen(just opinion up to now, didnt play it), it looks a lot better than WAR(longer distance, 3 factions, etc), if it will be as good as DAoC or even better remains to be seen. But overall it looks very promising.

Just to clarify on some of the posts made in here guys.

I'm not saying that ArenaNet have already failed on the mentioned points, or that they are completely ignoring them. Some of the things i mentioned are already in game, which is awesome! I'm just saying that with today's standards and at the rate that MMORPG's come and go, these are must haves for a game to be successful and stay competitive for a longer period of time.

Originally posted by Apraxis

Originally posted by Relidar

 

Before you read my post, yes i am a new member, my friend recommended this website for me to share my views on Guild Wars 2. So here i am, sharing!

 

Introduction

 

My background with online gaming, being mainly MMORPG's, go back to the days of UO, DAoC and EQ. I know this will sound very cliché and very worn out by now, but i genuinly believe that the old gamers have a different view on online gaming today than the current playerbase has.

 

Now bear with me here as i try to explain why. Before i go into detail, i also want to mention that patience is one of the biggest factors in all of this. Patience today equals time, and people either do not have the time or are just not willing to spend the time on an MMO to let it evolve and grow into what the community wants it to be.

 

People set expectations and standards before an MMO is even launched. They create an image of the MMO and ask from their designers to make a game that is not created by them (the devs) but by the community. And there is the biggest flaw.

 

I recently activated both my DAoC and Warhammer accounts, and by playing these games it reminded me all over again what Guild Wars 2 needs to be successful, and what made the mentioned games so hard to forget.

 

PvP - Zones, objectives and environment

 

The importance of a BIG PvP zone seems to have been filtered out over the years. It is the number one key to creating a competitive community where team work and pride is the incentive.

 

Short distances and going from objective A to B within minutes will eliminate the element of surprise and tactical advantages. You can see a byproduct of what happens when this is ignored in other MMO's. People tend to just hang around the major objectives and 'camp' for easy prey.

 

This not only eliminates the element of surprise, but it also discourages soloing or smaller operations to be carried out.

 

By having bigger PvP zones with longer running distances and good environments inbetween them, the game does not only become more fun to play, but it feels REAL. The excitement of going out into a battlefield and having absolutely no idea of what will happen next, isn't that really what MMO's are about?

 

Castle and keep sieges

 

If there's one thing we can learn from DAoC (and there are many things to learn from DAoC when it comes to sieges!) it's that castle and keep sieges are supposed to take time and require a lot of team work.

 

Castles and keeps that take hours of effort, resources and tactics will establish a sense of identity for the leaders, guilds and people involved. People will talk about what a great leader Bob was, and what a wonderful job did with their flank at a resource objective that eventually lead to a victory for the realm!

 

This also includes the money spent on upgrading your castle, or setting up siege weapons such as ballistas and trebuches.

 

Sieges that come quick and easy will fade out of memory fast, no matter how big the reward was.

 

Communication

 

All of the above will eventually come down to this, communication.

There are a features that will be extremely vital for all of this to work.

 

 

• A world wide PvP channel for people to communicate and plan their next tactical moves in.
• An invite/vote only leader channel. The best way this can be done, in my opinion, is by allowing guilds or alliances to assign ONE leader to speak in this channel. This can be an option once a guild and/or alliance reach a certain level.
• Markers for the leader to pin point where exactly he wants each group or warband to defend or attack.
• An active alert system. It needs to be easy to see/know when your realm is under attack and where you need to be to defend.

 

(Remember, this is  MY point of view, so don't freak out or overreact!)

 

A constructive discussion is welcome!

First of all, i am as you a DAoC veteran, and played the same games(didnt like EQ though, but that is another story) and i agree with all of your points.

Distance.. this was one of the points which made DAoC good, and WAR not so good, but there are even worst games in this respect(Alterac Valley/WoW). This point is also important in regard of the ability how fast and easy reinforcement can join. If they can instantly, and without trouble join the fight again, the fight becomes more or less insignificant, and endless zerg(WoW-> Alterac Valley, Barrens etc.)

About GW2.. well i can not judge it finally, i saw, just as everyone only vids about it. But at least what i have seen, it is larger, with longer running ways then WAR, but not as huge or long ways like DAoC(pre frontier), maybe similar with new frontier. But as said, i dont know exactly, we will see.

About the castle, as much as i have seen, it takes more than enough long to take down the doors, or everything else, i have seen even a successful counter attack as they were across the doors. They have the supply resources(WvW only) for all sieging weapons, doors to repair and stuff like that. All that indicates, that GW2 will be good in this regard, so i dont worry about this.

About the communication channels.. i guess we will see. They have at least at their WvW map battle indicators, like in new frontiers(DAoc), but a general WAR chat/alarm, for your realm/server is important to "call to the banners".

Overall as much as i have seen(just opinion up to now, didnt play it), it looks a lot better than WAR(longer distance, 3 factions, etc), if it will be as good as DAoC or even better remains to be seen. But overall it looks very promising.

As to size, World vs. World takes place in four massive game zones for each three server match up. here is a snippet from the Reddit on WvW with the Arenanet dev:

[–]ArenaNetTeamGuild Wars 2[S] 95 points 3 months ago