5001

I wonder if at this point it’s boiling down to your server? Because I rolled a new Necromancer yesterday on Sanctum of Rall and adventured in the Norn and Human areas. While I was there a number of the newbie events went off including the Norn meta event with the Grawl and the Shaman (the only way I found out about that was because people were advertising in map chat for more players to come). At least a couple of other champion events went down too. And there were always a couple of people around when I was killing stuff. Granted it may spread out at the higher levels, but it didn’t feel lonely to me. If you ask why I was doing 2 of the newbie zones, I started doing the Norn zone then I realized my guild was going to do an event there soon so I switched to the human zone.

I’ll agree it seems a bit slower in general but it wasn’t unpleasant, and I never felt like I had to grind anything.

Don’t forget there’s also WvWvW and crafting, both of which can get you some experience.

The guild I’m in is very active, and there are quite a few events per week (include “complete the zone” events) so it’s pretty easy to level a new character on SoR.

5002

Probably because of my gamer OCD mentality. I usually do everything there is to do in an area, and then move on. I’m not a fan of jumping back and forth between zones. And if I were an actual new player, I don’t believe that it’s a very good option, nor something ANet should expect.

I made a Charr Warrior on Emhry Bay and the first 10 levels or so I saw maybe 5 people in total. I know it’s not a full server but it was on “Very High” population all day yesterday. Maybe people just don’t like the Charr starting area?

5003

Charr are very unpopular in general (since the beginning), so that’s probably even more exaggerated now several months later. Hopping to another starter area might be the ticket if you hit a wall in getting things done.

5004

I tried to play with a Charr during the beta but I couldn’t stand the walking/running animation.

5005

I believe population level of a server only shows how many accounts/players are registered on that server, and not how many players are actually playing at that time.

I haven’t had issues with leveling, though I do zones that are out of my level range (2-5 levels higher) at times. I also save my daily for when I’m leveling, though when its near completion, I’ll log on a higher level character to complete it so I can get max rewards. I also harvest resources which also gives a good amount of experience.

5006

I sympathize with Blah. I like to play my character’s normal progression areas. I wouldn’t want to jump around to other areas, especially if this was my second character and I had to move to an area I already played. I get confused when I’m mixing quests from areas with the story quests. I don’t want to be too far from the story quests. (In fact, I think a nice option would be to select a story quest in your log and click a button that says, “Take me to the quest” – especially if there was an option to return to the player to the previous area when he was finished with the quest or just decided to return.)

5007

Some exciting changes coming soon for you WvW folks:

Wintersday is coming and along with all the other goodies there will be a few updates to WvW. Some of these changes are the result of forum feedback while others are part of our longer term plans for WvW. Here’s a quick preview of what WvW will get for Wintersday:

Advance notification of new builds
In order to allow WvW players to make good decions about siege placement, assault timing, etc. we’re adding a new build pre-announcement. This will be in the form of a message broadcast to all players some time before the current build expires. Because this notification is tied to one of the final steps in our build process, and those final steps take a variable amount of time, we won’t be able to say exactly when the current build will expire. Instead, the message will provide a window of time in which the new build will become available.

Alt+F4 is no escape
If someone that you’re fighting disconnects during combat (via Alt+F4, killing the client process, etc.) their character will be instantly killed, death penalties will be applied, and XP & loot will be handed out as usual.

No more insta-build walls & gates
Destroyed walls and gates will now rebuild when they reach 10% health rather than on the very first repair. This means that when attackers down a wall or gate defenders won’t be able to instantly rebuild it. Walls and gates which are destroyed can still be damaged if they have any health.

Breakout events
We’ve added a new event type to WvW called Breakout events which trigger when one or more teams have been pushed completely out of a map. They’re designed both to help players break out of severly camped portal keeps and to provide assistance in establishing a foothold in each map. Here’s what designer Matt Witter has to say about them:

Break Out Events are special WvW events that will happen when a team has lost control of all defensive structures, not counting supply camps. An NPC commander will appear in the team’s start area and an event will start that prompts players to gather around. Once enough players are in the commander’s presence he will summon his trusty dolyak to give all allies in the area full supply. He will then lead the charge to the nearby objective and give players protection and assist with building siege to assault the objective with. Those benefits, along with a defensive boon that he applies to all nearby allies, makes the attacking players a force to be reckoned with. Defenders will have their work cut out for them, as once the gate or wall piece is destroyed the commander will move to the tower lord inside and attack anyone in his path.

These changes are just a small part of what the WvW team has been up to lately. As you may have already heard, we’re hard at work on some larger updates that we plan to deliver in February. We’re not quite ready to talk about the details yet but as February gets closer we’ll start to reveal more of our secrets.

Happy Wintersday and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

5008

Kudos to the harsh Alt+F4 penalty. This mechanic was starting to get out of hand on the battlefield.

In the bad news category, the recent attempt to tweak culling in WvW seems to have missed the mark. The weight of posts on the forum indicates no real improvement. I ran into invisible enemies throughout last weekends skirmishes.

5009

And the Wintersday video is out! Looks like another doozy of a jumping puzzle. :)

5010

I really like the Alt-F4 change and the changes to repairing destroyed walls and gates. It always seemed kind of silly that they could be instantly put back up with one swing of the hammer.

5011

New information released about Wintersday! Looks like we’re getting a new instance (dungeon?) too! Very impressed and excited!

5012

Aside from some pretty nasty technical issues with the Karka events, these events have been pretty well done so far. I look forward to this… after my 3 hour run with the Hobbit of course.

5013

Who would even use Alt-F4? It would take longer to restart the game than to respawn. I will never understand some people. :)

I am very curious about the Windersday stuff. Sounds like a lot of fun activities, we’ll see how they are implemented.

5014

Some people will do anything to avoid “losing”. Or rather, some people will do anything to deny their enemy the satisfaction of “winning”.

5015

What happened previously when you alt-f4’d in WvW? When you reconnect, are you right where you were? Or do you get kicked out to LA? Or something else?

If you reconnect right where you were, I can see how that might throw things a bit. You’d be able to possibly avoid a zerg who might have moved on by while you were reconnecting, or any number of other situations.

5016

There have been a 3-some of bots farming an area for over 2 weeks and we’ve had at least 5 people report them all. Why haven’t they been banned? They’re there every day 24 hours a day running the same pattern killing everything in their path.

5017

Currently, it places you back from where you originally entered WvW - not in WvW territory. If you are in a downed state, I think you might also need a rez when you log back in, but I am not 100% sure. Some folks were hitting Alt+F4 when fleeing from enemies while in combat. As an aside, if you are not in active combat, you can always use an active waypoint to move about the map.

Players justify it by claiming they do it to avoid the repair costs to their armor, or they do not think it is fair to die to a zerg, etc. If you play on a server with few/no queues, you can pop back into WvW and repeat.

I will avoid bringing any drama to the forum by not naming the server or guild, but there was a particular guild we encountered in our recent matchups that ran in a pack and routinely Alt+F4’d whenever things looked dire. How this particular mechanic was allowed into the game from the beginning is a head scratcher.

5018

The human area was much more populated last night, but this morning I’m still having to to go back and do the same events multiple times to level. Right now unless I go to a different zone I’m pretty much stuck because it’s a ghost town in non-peak hours. I’m level 13, and all I have left in the zone to do are level 14 and level 15 hearts, and zero events are happening or are even doable. I’ve been harvesting non stop and even tried WvW, which I hate, but got little exp or fun out of it. To make matters worse, it seems it is accounts registered and not people actually playing, which makes transferring pointless because the ones you can swap to are just as dead as EB and the ones with actual people on them are locked out of the transfer service.

Maybe it’s just me, but the idea that new characters should have to do multiple starting zones, pvp, craft, and harvest just to level at a normal progression after the launch rush is absurd. Those things should enhance your leveling, they shouldn’t be basically required. Even the worst MMO’s (and least populated) on the market allow for normal solo progression when no one else is around. ANet did a lot of neat things with GW2, and it seems very solo friendly at face, but most of it doesn’t work so well when you are actually playing alone as opposed to solo with a million people around.

5019

Anet’s explanation for this is that they are gathering information from these various bot groups in order to cast a wider net in the next round of bannings. How long these smaller bot groups should be allowed to function is up to debate. On the WvW side of things, I have only seen a handful of bots lately. Not sure if that is due to Anet or if the bot wranglers grew tired of being eagerly harvested by players.

5020

You said it yourself - it worked well last night but you are having issues in the off hours. So what do you think ANet could do here?

You have this artificial idea of “normal solo progression” that should bring the player from one “1-15” into one “15-25” zone into one “25-35” zone and so on. This kind of progression was never advertised or suggested by ANet or other players. Level range “15-25” does not mean “there is enough stuff for anyone to level up from 15 to 25 under all circumstances”. It means “Level 15-25 players will find level appropriate stuff to do here”.

The game is more dynamic than other MMOs, there is some static content but a lot of it is not. Some people will be level 13 by the time they finish a “1-15” zone, some will be 17.

If you like the game, get a couple of levels in another zone, or do some city map completions or crafting or something - leveling is fast here. Or re-do the same events and grind mobs if you think it’s more fun. Everyone is free to play the way they want. :)

Or eat some dirt cheap food while leveling, +10 xp from every mob does add up.