Mike Ferguson updated the ArenaNet blog to explain how the Guild Wars 2 team has been working to improve the World vs. World (PvP) experience for the upcoming Beta Weekend Event #2 (tomorrow!). Included are some fixes to issues I had with WvW like arrow towers needing shorter range, and longer cooldowns. The fixes to the chat system are also great in that they make a chat system work like one should. Better chat channel functionality, chat bubbles, and UI improvements were posted two days ago as well. I’m anxious to try out the changes to “a sense of hitting” — I thought the GW2 combat felt rather good compared to most games — to see what’s new.
While those little changes are good, and a real necessity, I’m mostly interested in performance improvements. I have a system that falls somewhere in the ‘average’ range for bleeding edge gaming, and WvW is unpleasant when attacking or defending keeps because of frame rate issues.
I read on Reddit that the new dungeon is purely a “PvP dungeon” with no monsters. I was thinking it was more like Darkness Falls, and I was totally wrong in that assumption. The Mini-dungeon/Dark Room sounds more like an underground area to fight with a treasure chest acting as bait to get people down there skirmishing. I was hoping for more. That’s disappointing, but I’ll reserve judgment until I try it this weekend.
Last test, which was actually only a Monday stress test, I found a new love in the Elementalist. Since I was so shocked by a class that I originally wrote off as ‘another mage’, I’ve decided to expand my horizons even further this time by playing the Ranger. If you’d like to join me, and others from our forums, we’ll be on Ehmry Bay — a server that did alright for itself last beta weekend according to the BWE1 World Standings.
| NA World | Wins | Losses |
| Sea of Sorrows | 6 | 0 |
| Maguuma | 5 | 1 |
| Ehmry Bay | 5 | 1 |
| Darkhaven | 5 | 1 |
Update: Mistakenly referred to the dungeon as “Mystic Forge”, which is actually the name of the gift-exchange djinn thingy that sounds like gambling away items with bonuses you don’t want for, hopefully, items you can use.
Is there any doubt that the combination of:
Something Awful community + Unofficial Oceanic server = Sea of Sorrows wins.
I don’t see how any other North American server will ever be at the top. The goons will keep the primetime sufficiently zerged, and they don’t even have to win… just hang onto most of the gains the Oceanic guilds acquire overnight.
Sea of Sorrows only loses to a 100% unified effort by two other servers. They’re simply going to have more bodies in the field at all hours of the day than every other server.
@Gali: It will be interesting to see how one server’s domination affects ArenaNet’s development. Some developers are prone to making everything fair for everyone, but in reality this is how it should be. A server may not be able to hold keeps 24/7, but if they are more skilled they should be able to take them when they play.
Remember, the zones are capped to allow even numbers. If two realms team up, they outnumber the enemy two to one. If Sea of Sorrows manages to dominate two servers all the time, it’s not from having more people.
Keen
On an unrelated note. I Hope Your Proud OF Yourself…. Allods Online is down to one server.
Maybe. I certainly see much forum teeth gnashing when folks realize the Goons rolled on the unofficial Aussie server and what that means for waking up in the morning to login to a WvWvW map turned whatever color Sea of Sorrows is for that round.
Maybe ArenaNet will do some official Oceanic servers to head the forum outcry off at the pass.
@Gali: Imagine how horribly boring it would be to play on their team. Never having anything to fight for or struggle to take.
@Jay P.: Yeah, I saw that. I’m still saddened by the great parts of that game being destroyed by a horrible cash shop.
As long as those dickheads (excuse the expression, that’s my true feeling) stay out of European servers… yeah, very selfish, I know, but I can’t understand how MMO companies allow asshats like that to keep on playing their games.
Is there any mix of PvE/PvP? Or are there no mobs/questing/etc. in the WvWvW areas at all?
I hope that is not the case. In my view, that was one of the great things about DAoC’s frontiers that was missing from WAR’s PvP lakes. WAR’s PvP lakes felt empty and lifeless, especially during slow times. If you couldn’t find people to kill there was nothing to do there.
I thought it was a lot more fun leveling there as well being able to experience spontaneous PvP.
@balthazar they just added dynamic events, skill challenges, etc.. to WvW
@Keen – This is from the document link I posted on the forums:
Q: Hello!
What can we expect from this BWE regarding optimization? Is there major improvement from the last BWE? Any info concerning optimization (like details on CPU vs GPU usage) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for doing this AMA and for making GW2!
A: We’ve spent some time on performance improvements and will move more of the team on to performance as time goes on. Specifically, we’ve moved some of our processing that was done on our main thread on to other threads.
-Peter
Right now the forced lockouts on some of the older servers stops friends from playing together. We have several people playing on Ehrmy Bay, but friends who recently bought the game can’t make a character there because the server says it’s full. However, those of us already on the server can make new characters and log in any time.
Queue people or something, but don’t bar them from making a character on a fuller server.
I actually just transferred to Ehrmy Bay about 2 to 2 and a half hours ago…
They opened up more space this evening.