Bloodwinter Clan

I was on Fort Aspenwood for the BWE, I couldn't figure out the chat channels, So I mainly farted around with my buddy all weekend. On Saturday morning I got a really good DAOC vibe as myself my friend and about 4 others defended one of the smaller keeps against 20-30 for a good 2hrs or so.

Cannot put into words the feeling I was a guardian but I had a ball. I tried Engy, Ranger, Guardian.

Engineer felt weak as hell, but in WvW dropping medkits and reviving I felt very helpful.

Ranger was very enjoyable in WvW for the limited amount of stuff I unlocked.

Guardian was a mixed bag, the limited range meant keep defense was touch and go, but running in and out of the keep smacking ppl was fun, as was 5v5.

TL:DR Did the zerg thing enjoyed it sort of , liked the game. I'm thinking structured WvW with communication would make this game 200x better.

I actually had limited to to play due to a bachelor party all day Sat., and a hangover all day Sun. But the little i did get to play was awesome. I only got out for WvW once and it was surprisingly stable with lots or random fights happening around the keeps. Definately brought back frontier memories...

Iplayed a bunch of toons looking for the playsytle I enjoyed the most. I am looking for a archer spec so I played bow war/ bow thief/ bow ranger.

Like ya'll said the war is nice and versitle with some nice burst through adrenaline, the ranger has great sustained dps and nice cc/range, but I really enjoyed the thief bow skills due to +crit traits and 2 bomb AE skills they get. That and the overall movement excape mechanisms of the thief will most likely make it my name, which i really wasn't expectinga t all.

I also really enjoy the staff and Axe/dagger Necromacer setup. Two huge I dont die/melt face cooldown and some really nice group utility with Lifestealing and staff marks. For you guys looking at casters definately try a necro out.

Mesmers are also badass but their damage is really hard to set up unless you go sword/sword.

It was good ... think it will be a good fix for a few months at least.

/ZoidLuvsU

I definitely got the DAoC vibe from WvW, as did Scott. He even texted me about about it on Saturday while I was at work. I was really thinking that I needed to be range for WvW for keep sieges, but after playing a few of tehm I've realized that the real deal for breaking offense/defense on keeps are arrow carts. God damn arrow carts. They are cheap, easy to make, easy to aim, and make asses bleed real bad. That alone allows for the thief to be more viable in my eyes. Plus I love the thief traits, I felt there was a great balance between the benefits of specing for damage and for defense. The ranger was also damn fun and pretty versatile, but I didn't think the traits were as good overall (for example, I felt less benefit for specing into the toughness tree with the ranger and the warrior than I did with the thief), which is great for those of us who just want to rape face, but isn't as cool for those of us that want to counter other play styles that revolve around outlasting burst cooldowns and quick frontloaded damage (ala guardian, toughness spec'd thief, shield warrior, necro, etc.).

I also think that ANet has verified that the Engineer was less polished than the rest of the classes, and that it is something that they will be actively working on before the next beta push. Hopefully they do the same to the ranger pets, because god damn were they pieces of shit that constantly had me rezzing them instead of PCs and NPCs on accident. Of course, I think if they do fix ranger pets then we would need to watch the class a bit more closely, because they may shift some damage from the player to the pet (which I think was the original intent, but which they revised because they hand't gotten the pets where they wanted them yet).

Anyways, I'm definitely looking forward to more game time, and I hope they get the next BWE out before I head out to Europe. I was very happy with the way this BWE turned out, and I think that this game is definitely going to hold my interest for as long as other people want to continue playing it. Damn that stupid static endgame shit from all these PvE games.

WvW was very cool, I just hope they add personal or server rewards for it. Having your server go up or down in rank or a 1% HP buff won't be enough to hold population IMHO. Id like to see some public rankings like DAoC's camelotherald. The arena's and "battle grounds" were kind of half ass so it seems the open world pvp is going to be were it's at which is refreshing.

I love how each class has their own dynamic. I played the Eng and Elementalist to 9 and 11 respectively and a Necro to level 20. Each of them had completely different mechanics. Two of our guys were playing Mesmers and I heard great things about them as well. I agree with Sirion about illusions and pets being annoying. They path and get stuck in gates, walls and other random areas and cause a lot of ressing confusion for everyone. Pets need to have a different key bind for their revive. The pet UI needs work all together.

Twystyd wrote:WvW was very cool, I just hope they add personal or server rewards for it. Having your server go up or down in rank or a 1% HP buff won't be enough to hold population IMHO. Id like to see some public rankings like DAoC's camelotherald. The arena's and "battle grounds" were kind of half ass so it seems the open world pvp is going to be were it's at which is refreshing.

I think that rewards that are too big aren't really a good incentive to make people want to pvp. It hasn't worked well in games like WoW or SWToR in terms of sustaining a growing population, and even DAoC started to see problems with it once ToA was firmly established. At this juncture it's almost impossible to jump back into DAoC because everyone in the game that still plays regularly is RR10+ with so many additional skills that it's impossible to fight against them unless you are coming back on a toon that's RR8+, have a partner, or you are surfing with the zerg back and forth across the frontier.

I think that a stat board like the Camelot Herald built off of things like Glory in WvW and some form of ranking prestige in GvG would be awesome to have for each server so you can compare to the people you play with, but rewards that empower characters in pvp stymie admission to the system once the initial push has been made and power dynamics are affecting character balance beyond things like counter classes (and perhaps gear in WvW - not sure how that will work out yet honestly). I've always said that the best pvp rewards promote prestige rather than power; things like mounts, cool weapons and armor skins, titles, and other general character customization are likely enough of a draw to keep people playing without making people fundamentally more powerful than new characters.

As long as the characters are similar in power level then new blood can easily transition into pvp. I decided to try out SWToR about a month and a half after the game came out because the guys were messing around with the pvp in it. We started on a dead server and after playing for two weeks I convinced half of them that we needed to re-roll because there would never be fun to be had on a server that had like 180 people at primetime logged in. After the transition it took me ~2 weeks to hit 50 but once I hit 50 I quit the game because I didn't feel like getting my ass stomped by people in full battlemaster gear a week+ before I could essentially setup a fight that was only mildly lopsided in their favor. That was even farming warzone and commander medals so that when I hit 50 I could immediately purchase 6 bags (plus the one I had in my bank).

If they have to pick a road that rewards people for participating in pvp (honestly, I think the fun should be its own rewards, but I'm not naive enough to presume that most people will play for anything less than shiny rewards), then it should be through things that offer no ostensible benefit outside of visible perks or online prestige.

Sirion wrote:I think that a stat board like the Camelot Herald built off of things like Glory in WvW and some form of ranking prestige in GvG would be awesome to have for each server so you can compare to the people you play with, but rewards that empower characters in pvp stymie admission to the system once the initial push has been made and power dynamics are affecting character balance beyond things like counter classes (and perhaps gear in WvW - not sure how that will work out yet honestly). I've always said that the best pvp rewards promote prestige rather than power; things like mounts, cool weapons and armor skins, titles, and other general character customization are likely enough of a draw to keep people playing without making people fundamentally more powerful than new characters.

That really would be awesome. I even felt WoW missed the mark on community building. There is no reason you should have to go to Wowjitsu to look up standings and no game has done as well as Mythic in that regard.

Here's what to expect from people who know wtf they are doing in OWPVP. God this reminds me so much of DAOC and the glory days. It's long but soooooo entertaining. The assist train is coming to town, choo choo bitches!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bRYEE1k-xk

Zeratulx wrote:Here's what to expect from people who know wtf they are doing in OWPVP. God this reminds me so much of DAOC and the glory days. It's long but soooooo entertaining. The assist train is coming to town, choo choo bitches!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bRYEE1k-xk

Know what they are doing is an understatement! Several of those guys are professional "paid to play" gamers and wreck every game they are in. They really did a great job utilizing the map setting up pinch points for Elemental AE. What we saw a lot of last weekend was keep siegeing with fire squad response teams roaming. The coordination between the roving groups and the defense will have to be quick and clear. You could definitely tell which teams had full beta access and which teams had only several hours in game. You'll love it bro.

Hello!!!!

I did play some beta. /hooray Been a while since Star Wars

I have to upgrade my computer though.

Jim emailed me that video yesterday, I think we are going to make a bomb group like that with some alts. I was gonna do Mesmer and necro as alts, but I'm considering elementalist now.

This game is amazing. I can't wait for release. Finally got to WvW a bunch last night and was surprised at the stability while taking/defending keeps. Very minimal lagg with close to 59 people on each side is very impressive.

Still in the air on my main class though...My alt will be Necro but I am deciding on my main to be a bow user.

I've crossed out warrior due to its bow sucking comparitively to the rifle, also bow.rifle warriors have like no mobility.

I really like the shortbow thief mobility and damage, some of the poison combo fields you can setup are pretty deadly.

Gonna try the ranger again today and see what I feel but last time i played the bow dmg seemed subpar unless your at maximum range with the longbow.

Anyone else leaning toward an archer have any thoughts on these 3 classes?

Hey guys -- been a few years since I have seen any of you. I did not realize you were all on Fort Aspenwood this weekend. I was rolling under the Ruin tag. Name was Face Smash. Don't know if anyone remembers me, but I would be interested in fighting with you guys again. BWE2 was a heck of a lot of fun and the closest thing to DAoC that I have played since the good old days. I LOVE ballistas. Got a woody every time DC broke down the Red Briar door and ran up the stairs because a ballista on the central building roof there just mowed through them all repeatedly. Fun times.

I'm a huge fan of the ranger class with the only exceptions being the pets' terrible survivability, if not beast spec'd or using a bear, and the lack of cool elites outside of something that is going to be half worthless in a WvW where pets are dead 95% of the time. Of course, rezzing dead pets instead of players is annoying as shit too, but yeah, that bothers me less than the fact that the pet just dies all the time.

I tried the thief. I love the aesthetics and the conception for the class, but I do not like the playstyle in melee and I don't know that I think the bow is strong enough to be a compelling weapon choice in actual combat. If the melee skills on the daggers/swords didn't constantly force movement in a game that demands that players be mobile both offensively and defensively, sometimes throwing you out of sync with good players, then I would have probably liked the thief more than the ranger (because pet classes are always either overpowered or underpowered depending on how they are balanced with relation to their pets).

I liked the warrior for the utilities that it brought to the group for WvW, but I did feel as though the longbow skills were too gimmicky and the rifle skills were too narrowly focused.

I loved warrior. Warhorn speed buffs were invaluable in group RvR. I like greatsword/frenzy and focused on CC - bull rush, bolas, the thrown weapon snare and using charge to close gaps for a KD/frenzy/hundred blades combo. I want to try a double eviscerate build next but I cannot see giving up warhorn for WvW. Only thing I am disliking is character load ins taking a while for big groups or in big fights. Hoping that gets fixed.