In The List today, we take a look back at the recent Guild Wars 2 beta weekend and the whole concept that Arena.Net is bringing to the genre with its World vs World system. We've got two full lists of what we think are the best features in WvW and what we perceive might cause some issues. Read on and then leave us your thoughts in the comments.

In our second chance to test Guild Wars 2 we got a good look at World vs. World PVP yet again. The gameplay in this area is fantastic for PvP lovers and when the game is launched the Eternal Battlegrounds will by far be the most populated zone in the game, at least that’s my guess. Here are several reasons why this system will be successful as both an endgame and progression system for Guild Wars 2.

Read more of Garrett Fuller's The List: Guild Wars 2 - Why World vs. World Will Rule.

Over population is the biggest threat I guess, because WvW is by far the biggest appeal to GW2 in the pvp department. If I have to wait an hour before getting into WvW on my own server I'd be really frustrated. Really curious about what the player cap will be and how soon it will be reached on an average server.

Another potential downside is the ability to buy Influence for gold and buy appealing guild boosts with that. This might give bigger and richer guilds another edge over members of smaller or poorer guilds.

The best thing I can say about WvW is this - The developers have said from the beginning that it's imbalanced.

What a great thing to say. To be able, as a creator to remove the pressure from yourself and just acknowledge that it's chaos. 

Anyone who will cry foul or for the lack of fairness will be told to shush and deal with it. And that's exactly what we need. Because the average MMO gamer has become a crybaby who think that he/she is too good to die. No. You shall die and you shall die a lot.

You shall try standing on the castle gates as you get swarmped by enemy invaders. But hopefully you shall also try sneaking into a keep, mounting a catapult, while destroying many enemies in glorious warfare. 

Nothing like this (and not even DaoC or Planetside) will ever be perfect. Despite what nostalgia says, and both of those classic games eventually ran themselves into the ground, killing themselves in the end. People tend to forget that. 

I see World Vs World as a social experiment. It's like the zoo keeper (ArenaNet) unleashed all the animals, and stuffed them into one big cage to see what would happen. That's what this is like. There is no right or wrong in the mist. There is only : have fun, and don't worry so much. 

Impressive... Most impressive...

I agrre with most of your Pro's and Con's as is.

For me though the biggest turn off is the total lack of cross team reputation. All my foes have to fear is a 'Red Invader', all I will see is a 'Green' or 'Blue'. No reputations to earn or lose. No names to spark fear and urge a response to swarm on.

Secondly, Imbalances,  these always lead to optimized play, and if severe enough you will be pretty much be forced into X, Y or Z builds for WvW. Other builds need not apply,  Especially if the WvW population limit is significantly lower than the players trying to get in.

It's still ultimately just a dedicated area for PvP. Because of this, there is no element of surprise. Eveyrone who enters this zone will be expecting PvP. Predictible.

I tire of such "dedicated areas", Warzones, Battlegrounds, etc. They make me want to vomit.

Doesn't the rotation of overpopulation/underpopulation get somewhat reduced by the rotation of the WvWvW's?  So it's not always the same realms.

I have to agree, this aspect of GW2 is the most appealing thing about it for me and could override all other concerns I have about the title.

I did see the comment that controlling objectives will impart great benefits for your server, and still wonder if this might incentive players to reroll (move their home server) over to those that tend to win more often than lose.

Yeah, I know the accounts are server locked, but hey, odds are good they'll let you pay to move servers and if not, you can always buy another copy.

All depends how "great" those server wide rewards really are.

Originally posted by CyclopsSlay

I agrre with most of your Pro's and Con's as is.

For me though the biggest turn off is the total lack of cross team reputation. All my foes have to fear is a 'Red Invader', all I will see is a 'Green' or 'Blue'. No reputations to earn or lose. No names to spark fear and urge a response to swarm on.

Secondly, Imbalances,  these always lead to optimized play, and if severe enough you will be pretty much be forced into X, Y or Z builds for WvW. Other builds need not apply,  Especially if the WvW population limit is significantly lower than the players trying to get in.

You may not get names however you do get the clan tag abreviation so some good pvp clans people may fear seeing your clan abbriveation next to red invader.

Originally posted by sanshi44

Originally posted by CyclopsSlay

I agrre with most of your Pro's and Con's as is.

For me though the biggest turn off is the total lack of cross team reputation. All my foes have to fear is a 'Red Invader', all I will see is a 'Green' or 'Blue'. No reputations to earn or lose. No names to spark fear and urge a response to swarm on.

Secondly, Imbalances,  these always lead to optimized play, and if severe enough you will be pretty much be forced into X, Y or Z builds for WvW. Other builds need not apply,  Especially if the WvW population limit is significantly lower than the players trying to get in.

You may not get names however you do get the clan tag abreviation so some good pvp clans people may fear seeing your clan abbriveation next to red invader.

 

I hope you can pick [Friendly] as tag.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Originally posted by sanshi44

Originally posted by CyclopsSlay

I agrre with most of your Pro's and Con's as is.

For me though the biggest turn off is the total lack of cross team reputation. All my foes have to fear is a 'Red Invader', all I will see is a 'Green' or 'Blue'. No reputations to earn or lose. No names to spark fear and urge a response to swarm on.

Secondly, Imbalances,  these always lead to optimized play, and if severe enough you will be pretty much be forced into X, Y or Z builds for WvW. Other builds need not apply,  Especially if the WvW population limit is significantly lower than the players trying to get in.

You may not get names however you do get the clan tag abreviation so some good pvp clans people may fear seeing your clan abbriveation next to red invader.

 

I hope you can pick [Friendly] as tag.

3 letter for the tag

Originally posted by sanshi44

I hope you can pick [Friendly] as tag.

3 letter for the tag

Hmmff ok.

V_V

Tired of doing personal story? Go into open and explore dynamic events? Tired of those too? Go into WvW and experience the thrill of chaos. Tired of chaos? Jump right into competitive PvP and improve your killing and tactic skills in this fast paced PvP matches. Got tired again? Go hang out with players in huge and beautiful capital cities.

Originally posted by thedarkess

Tired of doing personal story? Go into open and explore dynamic events? Tired of those too? Go into WvW and experience the thrill of chaos. Tired of chaos? Jump right into competitive PvP and improve your killing and tactic skills in this fast paced PvP matches. Got tired again? Go hang out with players in huge and beautiful capital cities.

Got tired of that go do some exploration, got tired of that go do some of the many achivments : P

I can't express how much I love this system.

In Guild Wars I liked going through the story once.  In SWTOR I liked going through story once.  I don't want to be forced in a Themepark game to roll alts and repeat story content just to get a different class flavor.

What this system allows me to do is this:

Have one main story character to experience the story, and to get items for all others characters.

Have one of each other class that lives in the Eternal Battlegrounds. 

That gives me one of each class from level 1 bumped up to 80 stats for instant PvP/WvWvW action on demand and lets me advance them while doing it. 

This is such a brilliant system I can't even explain how long it will keep me playing this game.  Well actually I can...  At least as long as it takes to get every class from 1-80 in Eternal Battlegrounds, and one of them from 1-80 in the story.  That will be a long time...

Originally posted by mmoDAD

It's still ultimately just a dedicated area for PvP. Because of this, there is no element of surprise. Eveyrone who enters this zone will be expecting PvP. Predictible.

I tire of such "dedicated areas", Warzones, Battlegrounds, etc. They make me want to vomit.

 

The PvP zone has really had its day. Noboday has ever made it work. WvWvW is also nothing really new. Any RvR style of game is always going to have problems with population balance between the factions, it just never really works out. And before people say DAoC, well folks thats run by Bioware now, and they didn't use that system for SWTOR as it has too many problems.   Major porblem is lvl 1+ being in the PvP. As we all know from SWTOR stat boostong never works out. 

Originally posted by sanshi44

Originally posted by thedarkess

Tired of doing personal story? Go into open and explore dynamic events? Tired of those too? Go into WvW and experience the thrill of chaos. Tired of chaos? Jump right into competitive PvP and improve your killing and tactic skills in this fast paced PvP matches. Got tired again? Go hang out with players in huge and beautiful capital cities.

Got tired of that go do some exploration, got tired of that go do some of the many achivments : P

got tired of that too and feel like doing some bussiness? Go to trading post or auction house and make some cash :P

Im not to worried about overpopulation / queues, as i see no reason they cannot use there 'overflow' servers idea for this world to as they said they will for the pve world.

Only thing with the overflow system, i guess it cannot effect your servers bonus as the live servers have different action going on to what is happening in the overflow. But still being able to get the WvWvW experience while waiting to get into the live server will be awesome.

It is one thing i am really looking forward to in GW2, they really get that having your customers stuck in a queue for hours isnt a good thing and i cant wait to see this overflow system in practice.

You missed the best part.  No outleveling content thanks to the automatic downleveling.  It is no longer a choice of PvP or PvE.  You PvP, gain a few levels, go back to PvE and it is still relevant and challenging.

Outside of CoH and EQ2 with their refuse XP toggle no other MMO can boast that.