GW2: If You Can’t Please Everybody…

…why not piss them ALL off instead?

Or at least make it damnably inconvenient for a good many more people now.

Someone’s dropped the PR ball on this one badly.

The scenario: 8-10 days ago, someone expressed on the Guild Wars 2 official forums a wish to have separate WvW reset times for NA and EU servers, as the current midnight UTC reset means an understandably difficult 2am reset time (and worse) for much of the European continent.

The current WvW developer Devon Carver was listening in on the thread and tried one of those neutral PR lines about it not currently being possible to separate NA and EU server resets. Quite naturally, no one affected by this was satisfied with this answer, and two people suggested moving the reset time two hours earlier instead. One or two guys chimed in with some support.

Shortly after, the developer makes a cryptic post to “Stay tuned…”

Then the bombshell officially drops:

“Greetings WvW players! As part of our ongoing effort to improve the game experience with changes big and small, we’ve decided to change the time of the WvW match resets. The current time is 00:00 UTC on Saturdays, which is mighty inconvenient for our European friends who want to get in on the action of the newest match right away. We’ve decided that moving the reset time back by 2 hours to 22:00 UTC on Friday night to try and find a more happy medium for NA and EU servers. This will go into effect beginning this week and will be the new time going forward. Hopefully this makes it easier for you all to jump right in at the start of a new matchup. Cheers!”

So… how many newbie PR mistakes can we count here?

1) Short Notice

There’s three days to the next WvW reset. The only post about it is one stickied announcement in the WvW forums. At least it’s on the official forums.

And most hardcore WvW players are linked with a guild that should have at least one person trawling the forums and feeding back that info to the rest, but it’s still a bit of a ludicrous scramble for guild leaders and officers who have to now check their guildies’ schedules and have a new WvW reset discussion and make new plans and strategies in just a couple of days.

To say nothing of guild members or WvW participants who would be keen to participate at the new reset time but may have to rearrange their real life schedules to do it.

What’s wrong with giving one more week’s notice, eh?

2) Hasty Decision Making (Implied, anyway)

8 days since the issue was first brought to the current developer’s notice and acknowledged. 4 days since the cryptic “stay tuned” post.

That doesn’t seem like a very long time to really think all the implications through on this one.

Y’see, folks have realized that there are actually four major timezones in play on a round-the-clock WvW map. NA, EU, SEA and Oceanic.

UTC -6 to UTC -8 is North America

UTC 0 to UTC +3 is approximately Europe, I believe.

UTC +7 to UTC +8 is Asia.

UTC +8 to UTC +10 is Oceania/Australia.

The old reset time that has existed for a good eight months puts reset at 6pm-8pm on a Friday night for North Americans, midnight-3am for Europeans (which completely sucks, I agree), 7am-8am on a Saturday for Asians (which makes us wake bright and cheery on a nonworking morning, but we cope) and 8am-10am for Australians.

By pushing the reset time two hours earlier, we now have 4pm-6pm on Friday for North Americans (and I’ve lived in your country for a while, I’ve seen your commute from work times,) 10pm-1am for Europeans, 5am-6am for Asians (!!!!!!) and 6am-8am for Australians (which can’t be terribly popular either in a country that I believe has a very strong pub culture.)

By making it possible for the European continent to play a mere two to three hours of reset before it gets to an absurd timing, we have now disrupted three other timezones.

North Americans are screaming their heads off. Why shouldn’t they? 4pm is an impossible timing for anyone who works normal 9 to 5 weekday hours. All of the West Coast is smacked by this. I doubt East Coasters are crazy about 6pm either, that’s quite a rush to commute from work, get their dinner down and be ready to play. (I know I’ve never personally managed 6pm raid times, which killed any ability to raid on my part.)

I’m not terribly keen about a 6am wakeup myself. 8am could at least be coped with. I’m more inclined to say ‘screw it’ and shut the alarm clock off and roll over to sleep in on a Saturday.

I suppose the Aussies can more or less manage since most live on the east coast, but I’ll let them chime in for themselves.

3) Change for the Sake of Change

This, I must add, has been the state of affairs for eight months since GW2 launched. Any unhappiness about the scheduled times was already discussed, hashed and rehashed and WvW guilds all over the world have already settled down into some kind of routine, even if it’s not the most ideal one for EU guilds.

Now everyone has to react to this new change, and we all know how well people deal with sudden changes thrown at them, right?

4) Salt in the Wound: Absurd Cheeriness

“Hopefully this makes it easier for you all to jump right in at the start of a new matchup. Cheers!”

I’m sure everyone who can’t make the timing is going “YEAH, RIGHT” at this line.

—

I have to say, I’m very disappointed in ArenaNet for this one.

One of the most exciting times of the week has always been WvW reset night. It’s a time for guilds to come together and work together. The voice comms fill up, guild tags move in unison to their designated maps, all servers’ maps are filled to the brim and it’s a spectacular example of what WvW looks like with full coverage.

For a good 6-8 hours, the PPT scores tend to hold remarkably balanced and steady, and the colors on the map don’t shift around much, but it belies the furious raging fights and excitement and many many numbers surging around the map testing defences, making offensive sallies, rushing back to defend, fighting for that last scrap of supply and so on.

This two hour move wrecks that. I forsee NA guild numbers being cut in half or at least reduced to three quarters from the earlier reset time. People will end up staggering in in batches to WvW on reset night – which makes it no different than any other night, mixed militia and maybe a few guild groups moving around at a time that is convenient for them. The special fury of the reset surge is greatly diminished. The guild event-togetherness of moving around in force against other guilds just as filled to the brim is shot in the knee.

For what? A time that isn’t the most ideal for Europeans either, just better by a few hours.

I’m sure EU would much prefer a reset time that starts at a sensible time for them, like 8pm.

The best way to accomplish this would be continually request for separate WvW reset times for NA and EU servers. I mean, what was the point of having separate servers anyway, right? To cater for both parties’ needs and that would include non-absurd reset times for both parties.

Now, this has been repeatedly stated as quite technically unfeasible for whatever reason.

So players have suggested other compromises.

Put the reset on Saturday. It doesn’t solve the wakeup issues for Asia and Oceania, but Europe gets to play their couple of hours and Americans at least don’t have work or school conflicts. (Except Anet probably needs staff at work to reset WvW.)

Find another ideal time. UTC 5pm was suggested. This one makes Asians unhappy because it places the ex-Euro 2am wakeup problem squarely into their timezone, but I’ll grant that the servers are named NA and EU and us poor Asians and Oceanics are always getting slapped in the face with MMO timings regardless. And at least no one is at work, though sleep and health will be severely compromised.

But really, this time shifting thing just keeps moving the problem into different timezones. There is no one perfect time that can make everybody in the world happy.

Another interesting suggestion, and one I’m leaning towards in terms of fairness and potential for being the most entertaining, is to continually stagger and change WvW reset times to suit different timezones and continents. Ie. have a monthly schedule out that states reset happens at like, 8pm NA time on this week, 8pm EU time on that week, and 8pm SEA or Oceanic time yet another week.

This way everyone has to adapt their schedules, everyone may not be able to make it on certain weeks, and different regions’ guilds may come out in force, changing up the meta and the resultant strategies and score.

I hope Anet reconsiders.

This mismanagement has left NA unhappy, and EU taking a joyous schadenfreude pleasure that NA now shares their misery that they’ve been suffering for a long time, which is a very strange state of affairs for a game whose overall theme is to unite people and have them like each other and cooperate with each other.

Whatever the case, it’s evident a bit more thinking and change management should have gone into this announcement at the very least.

GW2: Random Fun and Adventures in WvW

Lemme just state something up front. I find very little point in blogging about who took what keep on what hour of which day, or how many loot bags so-and-so has dropped, or which guild or server is all that or sucks. You can read that sort of stuff everywhere else.

To me, it’s a cycle. Some days you win, some days you lose. I prefer to keep at least a modicum of respect for my opponents, regardless of their behavior. And it all resets to begin over the next week anyway, even if the scores are recorded and it’s fun to play to increase it and improve oneself.

What I really enjoy in WvW, besides the improving oneself and seeing others work together and better alongside you aspect, is the fun, crazy, never to be replicated in quite exactly the same way shared memories of the players participating.

To pull a random example from another team game I played the heck out of, I remember reading a Natural Selection dev discussing their map design, how they tried to make corridors and elevators that would encourage the Marine players of one team to be walking together beside each other, facing the same camera direction and sharing that similar “Oh shit” sinking feeling when they see a giant Alien Onos player stomp around the corner and charge them. The goal was shared emotions and a feeling of camaraderie.

And I’d like to share a random collection of fun and funny stuff that’s happened while I was running around WvWing, in the hope you enjoy it too.

—

The featured pic at the very top of the post is the fireworks meme that seems to have been going around lately in our server. Some guy keeps dropping loads of fireworks, and you know other players can’t resist picking them up and playing with them. I like to think of the above shot as “Quick, use these fireworks to camouflage our trebs so they won’t know we are here!” “Sure!” “…Ohh wait…”

And you know that reputation Tarnished Coast has for being full of ERP? (You can look up the term elsewhere if it’s not familiar to you.)

This was the unexpected view I had when logging back into the game on my Asura, getting ready to go into WvW after previously logging off the day before from the Super Adventure Box. Dat portal exit…

I see there are perks to being short.

For some reason, our commanders seem to love us getting all up close and personal with them…

No homophobes allowed on Tarnished Coast.

The biggest killer of Tarnished Coasters also appears to be gravity. We are beginning to suspect the commanders have a betting pool on how many they can get killed jumping off a cliff. Our reigning champion so far:

I stand by what my asura said. “Lemmings.”

The exact scenario went somewhat like this: Endeavoring to maneuver around another enemy zerg, the commander looked down the cliff at the river and said “Quick, everyone over here, jump down into the water, hmm, does that river look deep enough?” Except one or two others had already leapt by that time, and the commander decided that meant it was safe and followed.

Being of suspicious and paranoid nature, and no doubt, it also looked bloody high for my miniature asura, I found a two part jump/slope that got me down safely. One of a few. Phew. Hooray for rezzing.

We have extra liftoff!

Today’s reset was incredibly fun, the highlight an hours-long three way battle in the KNBL garrison. I’m sure there’s footage of it elsewhere, but I found this serendipitously amusing.

It so happened I got on the front-row seat superior ballista (that’s also asking for being the immediate target if our opponents got their way in, of course) and you know, you’re just targeting -any- enemy in which direction you want to fire it and keeping those bolts flying. Check out random asura’s guild name – some internet meme or other, no doubt. Here, lemme help you with MOAR liftoff with this ballista bolt!

We had a close call with the bay keep mid garrison fight. An FA guild team was spotted trying to catapult the water gate, and those that weren’t in garrison and were in bay had our attention occupied with taking out their catapults. Being, as I’ve often said, of very paranoid nature, I couldn’t help but stare at the crossed swords ticking down on the keep and think what if there were more somewhere else masked by this?

So I went to check on the northwest gate near the veteran wurm while the others were cleaning up, and to my horror, saw it in the far distance sitting wide open with a flame ram visible beyond. Now my graphics settings aren’t the best and it was foggy up there so I wasn’t 100% sure I could believe my eyes, but I reported it anyway and did a 180 towards the nearest inner gate to check. Sure enough, a KN WM ninja team was in the midst of ramming down the door and had it at 40%.

A number of TC came back to respond to the bay attack, and that pulled a sufficient number of us out of garrison that FA was able to cap it. Shortly after the bay attack was cleaned up, we were back to knocking on the gates of garrison and managed to cap it ourselves.

Some time after, I chanced by the garrison’s southwest wall and nearly died laughing at the guild banner hanging from it:

Er, hi there.

I’m afraid I’m not too conversant with all the guild insignias on Tarnished Coast as yet, so I dunno which guild this was. But it was so hilariously unexpected.

Late into the night when things were less hectic, there was some time for crazy shenanigans like a blue dorito train:

Need moar tags.

It’s, um, practising a strategy for when there’s a dedicated commander assassin around. Yep… That’s it…

The perpetrators of this atrocity were made to line up and shot to death by firing squad.

They are so leet, they don’t even render on my computer. I hear there were yak transformations and stuff.

Folks were in pretty high spirits today, there was siege overkill on an innocent gate:

NEED MOAR TREB

And one of our commanders was even spotted RPing, though I think everyone else needed a Babelfish:

For Gondor! Oh wait, wrong game.

Extra nerd points if you recognize the reference. I didn’t, but it’s not at all one of my favorite series.

In more curious conjunctions of serendipity, I had an exotic trident drop for me in WvW today. Which is crazy luck for me.

Except it was the cheapest valued lvl 79 rampager trident of something or other that was only worth a little over a gold or so. Which is murphy’s law playing its usual part for me.

I’d normally TP it, but I was feeling a little rich today, so I thought, since the tridents are so cheap and I hear Mystic Forging exotics have better precursor drop rates, instead of earning 1 gold, I’d waste an extra 3 gold on a gamble. So I bought three more.

The tridents had mysteriously arranged themselves into some kind of voodoo pattern around a sigil from a rare I’d salvaged.

I’m sure the logical explanation would have been I was selling blues and greens, salvaging rares and depositing all collectibles just before my mystic forge try, but it was kinda spooky to see the tridents like that in my inventory.

Then I forged them, expecting nothing but another exotic trident worth another gold or so to cut my losses, and hoping a higher valued trident might pop:

It’s official. I used up all my luck in this game.

Enter crazy luck lightning strike number 2.

Along with murphy’s law smack number 2 – of all the precursors, an underwater trident. It’s only worth 22 some gold on the TP, something I could actually afford if I dug into my current gold stores.

I think I’ll bank it and work on it much much later. Kraitkin doesn’t look half bad to me. And I’m not allergic to water combat as much as most GW2 players appear to be. (But I kinda still have half my heart set on the legendary torch, though its use and show-offiness factor is almost just as limited as an underwater weapon. And meh, that kinda goal drives a person into bankruptcy, so it’s still not my primary drive for now.)

The last hilarity before I logged off, I accidentally clicked the Guild Bank vendor while looking for the personal Bank one and ended up rofl’ing too:

Somebody’s not happy…

GW2: Strength in Unity – Building Community

This is just a thought that’s been floating around in my head for a while, steadily building up as I read forum posts (aka complaints) on seemingly disparate things like big guilds being favored by guild mission design, big dragons being a mindless loot pinata for the masses and WvW heavily skewed in favor of zerging.

I’d like to take us down a philosophical “what-if” road of game design.

What if small guilds and loners were equally favored or had an advantage doing guild missions?

What if big dragons were really tough to kill and required an organized group to take down (and for added chaos, an inexperienced unallied player passing by could wipe the group?)

What if WvW favored the small group roamers and the solo/duo gankers?

Here’s my guess as to what would happen.

Everyone would form their own private guild of one to do the guild missions for the goodies. Or at best, hang around with their small guild buddies and not have any reasons to interact with anyone else out there.

People would flock to an organized group for the sole purpose of dragon-killing (aka raids) and woe betide the poor n00b passer-by who unknowingly committed the egregious sin of “not supposed to be doing that, u dumbass.”

WvW would become an open world PvP land where no one would venture in besides the few wolves looking around for their fights (and now whining on the forums that there’s no one to kill instead of too many.)

In other words, Guild Wars 2 would turn into any other typical MMO – your standard cesspool of insular hardcore elitism ruling the roost while the not-so-hardcores, casuals and dabblers just get by with amusing themselves until the next big MMO launch.

Perhaps the most interesting (if slightly sweet and sappy) underlying theme that runs through the GW2 storyline is that there is strength in unity. That despite our various differences, it is worthwhile coming together in common cause.

I’ve been observing my server in WvW for a while now as a sort of “embedded correspondent” (though I’ve gotten lazy on any actual reporting and have been just enjoying participating instead) and one of the things that most impresses me about Tarnished Coast is how united everyone is (comparatively, anyhow.)

Guild members from different guilds regularly hop into each others’ guild channels and aren’t automatically shunned or made unwelcome. Guilded and unguilded militia alike blend seamlessly into zergs led by commanders from any WvW guild, producing very respectable performances (ideally anyhow, and it’s gotten noticeably better as time creeps on.)

Yeah, there’s still the odd ‘pugs’ comment here and there, still a couple players with more hardcore ideals. so do put a little thick skin on if yer gonna venture into WvW but on the whole, it’s not at all a toxic environment. People work hard, but still remember to have fun and do silly, absurd things for the heck of it.

It’s most telling to me that most commanders reacting to a poor performance tend to go into a sort of quiet frustrated despair and exhaustion, then look around for other constructive things for the group to do, or take a break and switch things up, or spend time teaching and instructing, rather than vent onto their team or let it all hang out on chat channels. It’s a very mature response to a loss.

And what this builds in the end is respect and loyalty, as well as an accepting and tolerant community.

(Now having been part of a server that imploded on itself, I’m not going to say this will last forever, one would have to be a very idealistic seer to predict that. Sometimes all it takes is the wrong spark to set off a firecracker chain reaction.

But based on the example and culture of other roleplaying servers from other MMOs like LOTRO and CoH, one is at least hopeful about it. Which is pretty optimistic for a obsessive paranoid like me.)

And to get back to my original point, I wonder if this would have formed without ArenaNet’s hand in the design?

If game success did not favor coming together and community building, anyone who did so would be making an uphill effort.

Weatherstock in LOTRO would never have happened without the music system to begin with.

Maybe we need to recognize that in GW2, coming together in groups do have clear advantages (but hopefully never forced, so everyone always has alternate, if somewhat-less-advantangeous options) and this is in the design for the long-term purpose of building communities.

(I know I soloed pretty much my entire GW1 existence, minus an out-of-game friend or two.)

And if one has issues with this, perhaps one is playing the wrong game.