17 replies to this topic

[LiveSpartan235]

https://www.guildwar...ins-october-18/

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Hello WvW players,

I’m here to make an announcement regarding season one of World vs. World. After careful consideration of feedback, we’ve decided to make some changes to both the timing of the inagurual season and the composition of leagues. We decided that it made more sense to split North America into three leagues, much like Europe. In the case of North America, the top six worlds will comprise the gold league and will battle each other in a clash of titans over a seven week period. The silver and bronze leagues will be made up of nine worlds each and will function exactly the same as the European leagues. We’ve made this change in order to have more competitive matches over the course of the season, while still retaining the variety of matching up with a wide swath of worlds during the season.

We have subsequently decided to delay the beginning of season one until Friday, October 18 in order to properly test the changes that we have made. We felt it was in the best interests of everyone that we make this change to the North American matchups and that we do our due diligence to make certain that it wouldn’t negatively impact any other aspects of the season. In addition, this will align the season start with upcoming balance changes, allowing us to maintain this balance through the duration of the season and across the entirety of the game.

The scheduled refunding of all spent World Ability points will still occur on October 1, and there will be no additional refund prior to the start of the season. In addition, we will be introducing bonus WvW rank up chests as rewards for placement during a matchup on October 1. At the end of every matchup of WvW players will receive one, two, or three bonus chests depending on their server’s performance. These chests are no longer character bound and will apply to your account instead. This is a permanent addition to WvW and will continue regardless of whether a season is active or not.

We are confident that season one is going to be a great success and that this new format is going to be even better than what we had previously planned. Season one will still have all the great features we’ve previously discussed, just starting two weeks later. We look forward to watching the results come in over the course of the season and to representing our chosen worlds in their fight for glory.

Cheers,
Devon Carver

[Silas]

3 leagues eh... better than 2... it's a good compromise as opposed to no change.

1 - 3 bonus WvW chests... It will be interesting as to what will be in these chests, and if they are appealing or just filler...

Thanks for the update!

[LiveSpartan235]

I guess I should post this here too its WvW related.

Devon also said on the forums that the Bloodlust buff would get some changes before the league starts.
https://forum-en.gui...e/5#post2924446

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Other points here:
1) My understanding is that we literally can’t match NA and EU servers up. It is about the physical locations of the data centers and the speed at which data travels. So, until that changes, interleague is off the table.
2) We are making some changes to bloodlust in advance of the season. More specific details will be out in the near future, I’m not sure when exactly.

[Rassy]

Either Dragonbrand or SoS is gonna get absolutely mullered. Fingers crossed that it's SoS, half my friends are DB players, would love to avoid the whining.

Actually, I feel bad for TC and FA as well, it'll be a month of kittens vs. the trash compactor. Not that that's not the case with the current system, I suppose.

[CriticKitten]

Dragonbrand's in third right now to us.  I smell a thrown match upcoming.

After all, if they throw this match and every match from now on, they may just drop to 7th....and be in prime position to dominate the silver league.  If so, GG.

Also, Carver moved to NSP, which is near the top of the bronze league according to this new league system.  Any people still want to claim that he's not doing this for his own benefit?

[Goldiy]

I think this is good news. Just as long as we don’t have to fight tier 1-2 I’m cool.
We should use all the time from now till league starts to get ready.  Guilds should be recruiting. It’s that time of year when people start playing more online games and  there is a lot of people just buying the game and coming here to Ehmry bay. Lets get them involved.

[Necros Stalker]

I still would have rathered 4 leagues but 3 is a good compromise and it will go at-least address some of the balance problems. Good to hear that Anet listened at-least. Now we and other middle servers can be competitive now as the only real zerg server we'll be facing is either dragonbrand or SOS (Hoping for dragonbrand cause there players are friendlier and they don't gank you if your just mining nodes). The World chests are a nice addition as well and should bring out a few more players. And we know bloodlust is getting some needed changes soon (hopefully the buff will now be based on server position. 1st only gets magicfind and Gank, 2nd gets 20+, 3rd gets 50+)

There is still more that could be done but I'm glad Anet listened and if they follow through with there word more changes after the first league. see you guys on the baltefield

[Grav]

This changes things.  Shit system is still shit, but not having to deal with T1/2 is definitely a good thing for us.

The big question now is who gets the #6/#7 spots?  The top 5 are locked up pretty tight.  DB look like they're starting to slide, which opens up #6 for potentially either Mag or SoS.  Both servers have certainly expressed a preference for fighting the upper tiers lately.

Personally I hope SoS makes it to #6 because fuck their night crew.  Also sad Mags, best Mags.

[Reisa]

Well, this hypothetically puts us at or near the top of our own league (we're rank 10 currently, rank 9 will be the 'lead' of the league).

It's sorta a shame they're pushing it back to the 18th of October, because I wouldn't put it past a couple servers to throw matches.

Which means we have to be really, really careful or we'll end up at the bottom of the top league and end up in T1/2 hell for almost two months.

CriticKitten, on 27 September 2013 - 11:09 PM, said:

Also, Carver moved to NSP, which is near the top of the bronze league according to this new league system.  Any people still want to claim that he's not doing this for his own benefit?

Yeah, I found this funny.  He'll be at the top of the bottom league AGAIN, which is where SBI was heading until they overshot.

[CriticKitten]

Reisa, on 28 September 2013 - 01:14 AM, said:

Well, this hypothetically puts us at or near the top of our own league (we're rank 10 currently, rank 9 will be the 'lead' of the league).

Actually it puts us in the middle of our tier.

The tiers would be thus, if the matches ended right now:

• Gold League: Sanctum of Rall, Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Tarnished Coats, Fort Aspenwood, Sea of Sorrows
  
• Silver League: Maguuma, Dragonbrand, Stormbluff Isle, Ehmry Bay, Crystal Desert, Borlis Pass, Isle of Janthir, Yaks Bend, Kaineng
  
• Bronze League: Northern Shiverpeaks, Darkhaven, Sorrow's Furnace, Henge of Denravi, Ferguson's Crossing, Anvil Rock, Eredon Terrace, Gate of Madness, Devona's Rest

And out of those opponents, we've only beaten one of them in a head-to-head since the last time we played them (IoJ).

This league is better than us vs T1/T2 servers, but it's still sort of a "GG" league as it stands.  We're not going to win very many matches, if any.

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It's sorta a shame they're pushing it back to the 18th of October, because I wouldn't put it past a couple servers to throw matches.

DB is already doing just that.

Or do you REALLY think we're beating them because we're that much better than they are?

[Reisa]

CriticKitten, on 28 September 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

Actually it puts us in the middle of our tier.

The tiers would be thus, if the matches ended right now:

• Gold League: Sanctum of Rall, Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Tarnished Coats, Fort Aspenwood, Sea of Sorrows
  
• Silver League: Maguuma, Dragonbrand, Stormbluff Isle, Ehmry Bay, Crystal Desert, Borlis Pass, Isle of Janthir, Yaks Bend, Kaineng
  
• Bronze League: Northern Shiverpeaks, Darkhaven, Sorrow's Furnace, Henge of Denravi, Ferguson's Crossing, Anvil Rock, Eredon Terrace, Gate of Madness, Devona's Rest

What, so they're not doing eight separate servers in each league?  Lame.  I was looking forward to Maguuma getting curbstomped by some T1 servers.

CriticKitten, on 28 September 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

DB is already doing just that.

Or do you REALLY think we're beating them because we're that much better than they are?

DB has always been shit.  They really have.  The only reason they've ever been so high is because they have one of the biggest off-hour populations outside of T1.

Every time we've fought them, we've always kicked the stuffing out of them in primetime or whenever we actually had people around, but they've always PvDoor's us to death.  It's not surprising that they're losing currently, but come the week, fully expect them to gain something like 30-40k points a night.

[CriticKitten]

Reisa, on 28 September 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

DB has always been shit.  They really have.  The only reason they've ever been so high is because they have one of the biggest off-hour populations outside of T1.

Every time we've fought them, we've always kicked the stuffing out of them in primetime or whenever we actually had people around, but they've always PvDoor's us to death.  It's not surprising that they're losing currently, but come the week, fully expect them to gain something like 30-40k points a night.

Their players have always been shit, yes.  But they have NEVER lost the PPT battle to us in the first 24 hours.  A link to the last match we had with them: http://mos.millenium...ers/view/44/101

They beat us by 100k in that match, and were never once ranked below us.  They also beat us in PPT nearly hour-for-hour throughout the entire matchup, even when we were at our best.  And mind, a mere month ago, this same server kicked the piss out of Yaks and Kaineng (two servers that still beat us in head-to-head matchups) by nearly 200k.

And yet, we're currently beating them by 4k, and they're losing to Mag by almost 10k (which is nearly a 2-to-1 margin of points atm).  That's not normal for them.  They also have yet to tick above 300 PPT throughout the 24 hours.  The highest they've gotten so far was 275 PPT at 5 AM, and we had 225 at that time period.  Yeah, 5 AM.  When we have literally NO players online.  And they still didn't tick above 300.

Hell, at the time of this post, they have 90 PPT.  That's just not natural for them, not against us.  Especially not against us right now, after having lost so much of our WvW strength.

I genuinely think they're throwing this match.  They've lost some guilds, sure, but this is a much weaker performance than we've seen from them in a very long time.  I don't see any other reasonable explanation for their performance to drop off so suddenly, and so soon after the devs' blog post about WvW.  The timing is just too convenient.  They probably realized they could drop into the silver league easily if they just threw a match or two, and with them in the silver league, they're almost guaranteed to win it, as the next closest competitive servers (SoS and Mag) have both lost by margins exceeding 70k when facing DB in the past.

I could be wrong, yeah.  But I think if they haven't overtaken us by the end of the weekend, then they're doing it on purpose.  Honestly they've never, ever been in a deficit to us for even this long, so if we last a full weekend ahead of them....then it's got to be intentional.

[Grav]

Reisa, on 28 September 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

What, so they're not doing eight separate servers in each league?  Lame.  I was looking forward to Maguuma getting curbstomped by some T1 servers.

8 is not a multiple of 3.  Every league has to be a multiple of 3 for every server to get a match every week.

[Grav]

CriticKitten, on 28 September 2013 - 04:42 PM, said:

I genuinely think they're throwing this match.  They've lost some guilds, sure, but this is a much weaker performance than we've seen from them in a very long time.  I don't see any other reasonable explanation for their performance to drop off so suddenly, and so soon after the devs' blog post about WvW.  The timing is just too convenient.

They were already slipping before the announcement.  Someone said a week or two ago that Rekz had been paid to transfer to Jade Quarry, and at that point DB fell below FA to #6 for the first time in a while.

The announcement itself would have been a double-whammy for them as well.  They wouldn't have relished the prospect of facing T1 for 7 straight weeks and more guilds will have left as a result; one DB guy said 6 dedicated WvW guilds had transferred off as of yesterday.  Then on top of that, they're facing Maguuma who are in full serious business mode this week to make sure they don't get trapped in the silver league.

Honestly, it would be easier to argue DB were throwing the match if they had anybody left at this point to do any throwing.

[Reisa]

CriticKitten, on 28 September 2013 - 04:42 PM, said:

Their players have always been shit, yes.  But they have NEVER lost the PPT battle to us in the first 24 hours.  A link to the last match we had with them: http://mos.millenium...ers/view/44/101

In the first 24 hours?  No, prolly not, because we have this thing called sleep and responsibility and real life.  Even on our best nights, we'll still have a coverage gap of somewhere like six or eight hours, and with DB who have a large SEA population (or did, anyway), if it's not prime time, then they outnumber us to the point where all they have to do is PvDoor.

So yeah, the first 24 hours I can see it, but that's mainly because they have ~4 hours of getting ~600 PPT (which is 12k points, at least).

That's why no one has any respect for their accomplishments.  Their NA presence has always been horrible even when they've had everything upgraded and sieged up, and their off-hour presence only PvDoors.

Grav, on 28 September 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

They were already slipping before the announcement.  Someone said a week or two ago that Rekz had been paid to transfer to Jade Quarry, and at that point DB fell below FA to #6 for the first time in a while.

What a bunch of server hopping dinks.  I really hope they get stuck in 3 hour queues.

[CriticKitten]

Grav, on 28 September 2013 - 05:15 PM, said:

-snip-

That would make sense as far as DB goes.  But Mag's shit out of luck, I think SoS has too large of a lead on them right now.  They'd have to beat us by a much bigger margin to slip around SoS, or get very lucky on next week's draw.

Reisa, on 28 September 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

-snip-

Not my point.  My point is that they've generally beaten us in PPT almost every hour of every day, even during our peak hours, in every single match we've faced them.  Their coverage was, simply put, that much better than ours.

At least, up until this week, where they can't even push 300 PPT against us at 5 in the morning, when we have nobody online.  That clearly means that some serious shit's gone down.

I had figured it was as simple as them throwing the match, but Grav's post would suggest that they've finally lost all their big bandwagon players.  Which means that DB's in serious trouble if so, because it was their sheer numbers across all hours of the day that kept them ranked that high.  Lacking that, they're very likely to take a Kaineng-level nosedive.

And I never said I respected their players' skill levels.  Hell, I've been more vocal about my complaints towards DB's players than anyone else's, because their players are almost disgustingly bad for a T2 server.  There were several occasions where I and a few other EBay PUG players would beat DB players who outnumbered us by at least double.  They're really, really bad if someone like me can roll them.

[Silas]

Regardless of whether or not they're throwing the match, at the very least, some of our new WvWers will gain some confidence and hopefully stay in the fight for the season. I too find it unbelievable that DB is losing by this much, but if it's true that many of the main guilds in the server have left, then it could be a mix of both throwing the match/matches to get into a more fitting league. I just find it hard for such a server to take such a drastic turn in performance.

Just an observation, I think Mag can still catch up with the weeks left over. At the moment, according to the new rating, there's only a 5 point difference between SoS and Mag after DB's falling in points.

[CriticKitten]

I doubt it myself.

SoS needs only to keep pace with FA to end the week with a significant lead over Mag.  Mag would have to pound us by a lot more than they are right now to make up the difference in score, and then they'd have to roll a lucky match for next week.  It's not looking great for them.