What will be Guild Wars 2 primary choice for proving ones self?

[Lithios]

So in the days of World of Warcraft there was always a clear cut top of the line way to judge a guilds progression path. You could go to a website and know in a fly who was the top dog on there server. With any doubts or questions this is the primary way of "winning" world of warcraft among the community. If you are part of the top 10 world wide guilds then it is really hard for anyone to really doubt your skills. Now the question I have for you is what do you think will come out at Guild Wars definitive end game mode? Will the world itself be enough and people settle for the dynamic event system? Will people look at WvW pvp as the creme-de-la-creme for judging a guild? Will structured pvp offer the control and small group focused combat that will boost it to instant esport masterpiece? Below is a write up of some of the things I think could potentially go wrong as this game grows. Now bear with me on some of the ugly scenarios because I had to stretch it. Remember everything posted here is purely speculation. Any and everyone's opinions are welcome here!

OR

Will Guild Wars 2 lack this sort of community driven badge of merit?



WvW
THE GOOD
It seems likely that with Guild Wars 2 lacking battlegrounds people will gravitate to World v World v World for their "large scale pvp" fix. As disorganized as some of the early beta WvW videos look I can see the tactical depth in it. Looking at the cast of siege vehicles along with the point totals for holding keeps/towers/supply post I can really see the top guilds being focused on WvW as their primary game type. Of course players in these guilds will log on and also explore the world, structured pvp, and try out all other game-types. Still, I see many guilds popping up as big "WvW Guilds".

I know after the first few cycles that people will start to watch the servers that stay on top. After the first 6-7 cycles (or so, dont know server counts) it is inevitable that we will have a meeting of three undefeated servers. I could see this turning into something pretty huge. If the known top server is out there and then a new comer server comes up to take them on I see the top guilds of the defending champion banding together and figuring out the best strategy's. Then of course I see other people figuring out ways to counter these strategy's and then as always I see counters-to the counters poppin up also. People will create websites to watch WvW progress. As the community grows. People will look at your WvW experience as the primary method of recruiting new players. Champions of WvW will be looked at as shiny golden gods against the community developing the strategys and guides for combat. People will literally write the book on WvW. Podcast, weekly youtube channels, and blogs will devote themselves to looking exclusively at World v World. At the end of the day no matter your structured pvp ranking, no matter the explorable dungeons you have tackled, or the amount of complete armor sets you have acquired it will all come down to your WvW.

THE BAD
World v World comes out and it is certainly a fun way to past the time. As you dive into it you are just in awe of the amount going on at once. For the community it is instantly looked upon as certainly a fun way to pass the time. For people first stepping into guild wars at release, the thought of instantly having access to a fully leveled character is certainly appealing. A few months after the games release more and more people start reaching max level on their main characters. After reaching max level the attraction to WvW starts to wane as more and more people gravitate to structured pvp or different forms of character progression (monetary gain, crafting, achievements, etc).

As more and more people join the GW2 community from other MMOs and gaming community's and with the added free time of summer vacation the WvW numbers skyrocket. As more and more people buy the game and jump into WvW with almost no experience of the game besides reading a few tips the overall experience starts to wane. As more and more new people join the game WvW is looked upon as a casual play ground. The hardcore community members dismiss the game type almost entirely because of either the lack of challenge, the lack of coordination because of the influx of new players, the lack of structure.

THE UGLY
The game releases and people dive right into WvW late nights because of the allure of being able to try out a character before fully leveling one within the game world. As more and more players attract large battles commonly form. With this comes a new problem. Wait times for WvW servers reach up to one hour at some times. Players that do get into the games also have increased server instability at peak hours. Players begin to dub the game type "World v Lag" to poke fun at the scenario. A very small dedicated group of people still insist it is their favorite gametype. The broad player base dismisses WvW for all value because of the obvious stability issues associated with competitive play on such a large scale. Among the elite and common player WvW is looked upon as an utter failure.


Structured PvP
THE GOOD
Looking at Guild Wars structured pvp it is pretty certain that Arenanet is trying to mold this into the most fair way for tight knit teams to prove themselves. The experience offered is looked upon sort of like WoWs Arena system only deeper. People interested in fair competitive PvP spend the majority of their time organizing teams and seeking out the strongest compositions among the community. Websites and think tanks pop up exclusively looking at the best strategies to winning structured pvp. Soon after launch the structured pvp system is looked upon as one of the best and most balanced systems in all of gaming. Players of other popular esports communitys (lol, sc, dota) start to get curious on what all of the buzz is about.

A year after release the top GW teams will be wearing their teams t-shirts on G4 TV talking about coming off of their recent win in Norway and how they are looking forward to their upcoming tournament in Taiwan. Websites will pop up that are fully dedicated to tracking the best players within structured PVP. As the community grows thousands of people will upload youtube videos, people will write extensive in depth guides, and people will always think of structured pvp as the definitive gametype for the very best players. Top guild are judged not based on the amount of explorable content they have cleared, not by the squad they assemble to dominate WvW, but by the caliber of their top structured pvp players.

THE BAD
When Guild Wars 2 releases people immidiatley start to try out all of the game types. As people progress through the game more and more and get closer to reaching maximum level and start to dive into structured PVP. People start to notice obvious balancing issues as certain classes turn out to be better suited for small scale pvp battles. These compositions start to be the premiere setup for any pvp teams. Newer players that try to dive into structured pvp are turned away by the quickly growing elitist attitude. As the community grows larger people look down on structured pvp calling it a watered-down clone of WoWs Arena pvp system. People from other gaming communitys shy away from GW2 because of how bad they have heard it is. People that are looking for a real pvp experience gravitate to WvW because of the uniqueness of the gametype amongst other popular industry leaders. At the end of the day people will have limited respect for the players that chose to make this their primary gametype. Of course their will still be a niche for this among Guild Wars 2 elitist.

Although the gametype itself will be unbalanced and "cookie-cutter" when it comes to its viable compositions required to win, a small part of the community will cling to this because of the fact that it is a tighter and more controlled pvp environment that WvW and because they lack the neccesary drive and dedication to dominate WvW pvp and the end-game content offered through explorable dungeons along with large dynamic events.

THE UGLY
Soon after guild wars launch the QQ begins about the obvious unbalance of the "structured" pvp system. Players ask for some changes and Arenanet takes it time on a patch to fix some of the unbalances. By the end of the summer the patch launches and it is almost too little too late. Players that were waiting on the changes have all but moved on to other games. As the community grows people begin to look at more exploits and class stacking to win at structured pvp. The best players of this gametype are generally disregarded among the server because of the blatant work-arounds required to prevail at structured pvp and the fact that almost every other MMO has done this gametype better. At the end of the day statements like "Structured pvp LOLOL" become common among players. At the end of the day it will cater to a very very small amount of players that dont want to be bothered with the strain of WvW and dont have the necessary drive and commitment to build up characters for the large scale dynamic content.


Dynamic Events
THE GOOD
At launch of the game the thing there's no doubt that the thing that will separate Guild Wars 2 from other games of the genre is the living breathing world around you. As more and more players gravitate to guild wars people will start to realize just how in depth this part of the game is. Larger servers will commonly have large groups of players in any part of the world at any given time clearing out some of the harder events. At maximum level players who are interested in taking down more of the world bosses start to ban together and form more and more dynamic event based progression guilds.

As more people hit maximum level this part of the game becomes the definitive reason for most people to log on 2-3 times a week. The fact that there is almost no limit on how many people can participate in these events along with the approachable design of the encounters will make then a huge draw for casual and competitive players alike. Websites will start to pop up with more in depth guides for taking out these massive events. For players looking for the hardest challenges in the game some of the hardest events begin to distinguish themselves and offer a progression path for raiders. More and more players from other MMO communitys migrate to Guild wars 2 exclusively to participate in these events. Because even the low level events an be done even at max level to pose a challenge, you begin to find more casual guilds hopping on to conquer even the easy content. The most elite guilds will start tracking world first kills and as new content comes out people will race to try and clear the newest harder events. After all is said and done people wont look at the top guilds based on WvW, structured pvp, but by how many dynamic events they have cleared.



THE BAD
Soon after Guild wars 2 launches more and more players storm through the dynamic events at a radical pace. Some people start to post discontent in the fact that some of these events seem broken. NPCs that are usually supposed to spawn and stop waves of enemies will never spawn leaving players in death traps. On top of this players also start to harp on the fact that top guilds bring more and more players and that the events scale so poorly this trivializes most of the hardest encounters. As more players gravitate to the game and the community grows larger it becomes very hard to find any difficulty in this system because almost every event is just packed with players walking around 1 keying their way through. For most this system offers a breathe of fresh air and for the casual players this system becomes a playground because of the lack of commitment and coordination needed to prevail. Players looking for more of a challenging pve content stay tucked away in the games instanced locations. As the game grows more and more people start to progress into the explorable mode dungeons because of their control and individual skill required to complete the encounters. People who reach max level still venture into the world to level alts but it serves mostly as the games leveling component and nothing more.

THE UGLY
The game launches and people notice right off the bat that the dynamic events are just a ploy. After hardcore members of the community run through the system a few time they start to notice the limitations of it. In the end the game type is similar to the hyped leveling system offered by SWTOR. The community will praise this at release but at the end of the day the false "choice" given to players will start to show through. Many players will avoid the dynamic event system altogether and level characters strictly through WvW and structured PVP. At the end of the day only the lore fans and extreme casual players will look upon dynamic events as a success.


Dungeons (Story/Explorable)
THE GOOD
Players diving into Guild wars 2 at the start will instantly notice the dynamic events. As the community grows more people start to dive into the dungeons. The hardcore players rush to clear through all of the dungeons on story mode as soon as possible and even most of the explorable mode dungeons are cleared also relatively quick. As more players hit maximum level people start to realize that the difficulty increase between some of the story mode dungeons to explorable is pretty significant. On top of this players will start to regard these armor sets as the most desirable because they will know how hard they are to obtain. Websites, videos, and in-depth guides will pop up around the internet detailing strategys on exactly how to clear these dungeons. Some of the top GW2 players will start to judge progression based on how many guilds have cleared out explorable mode dungeons. Players who have the rare armor sets from these dungeons will parade them through town and players on their servers will look on them as shiny golden gods amongst men.

THE BAD
Players will dive into the game and simply be in awe of the aspects of the game that are different from other games in the industry. Dynamic events will allow large groups of players tackle unscripted pve content and people will complain about the restrictions of the 5 man dungeons. As the game progresses and the community grows, more people coming over from other MMOs will consistently compare the dungeons to that content and revile them as "watered down" versions of something that has been done better else where. Casual players and a small portion of the community will still do the dungeons but people looking for more of a challenge will dive straight into WvW, structured pvp, and large scale dynamic events.

THE UGLY
Upon launch most of the dungeons are operational but on top of this some of the are almost unplayable past certain bosses. Whether it is spikes in difficulty, broken puzzles, or just broken content in general players will start to notice that the dungeon content is the most rushed and unbalanced portion of the game. As the community grows people will start to look at dungeons almost as a waste of time. As people level they will grab the armor sets and then never look back into the dungeons expect to maybe help a friend. One of the primary concerns is that the rewards of the explorable modes over the story modes dont offer enough reward for the trouble.


Something unforseen
Maybe the game will launch and most of the "THE GOOD" scenerios will happen for different gameplay aspects with different groups of the community looking at different parts of the game as the peak of progression. Possibly there will be something else that is realized as the biggest end-game judge of skill in this game or the lack of this at all. Possibly the game launches to criticial success and the community breaks free of these typical ways of judging skill/progression based on single particular gametype and people will just play for fun. Maybe the part of the community that is usually invested in distilling and boiling the content down to one boss, or one pvp score threshhold will just relax and realize we are dealing with something larger and more innovative than we have before.

I also realize that some of the scenerios I have posted as THE UGLY have a very very slim chance of happening. Personally whether or not the elements of this game succeed with the community or garner critical acclaim I have seen them as something that I myself will enjoy. Still crazier things have happened at MMO launches and with any launch of any mmo these days something is almost always bound to go wrong. Either way voice your opinions on what you think people will use to judge primary endgame progression and please take the time to vote in the poll I have posted above.

[Badpaladin]

I think there's going to be some community backlash for "lack of dungeon creativity" for having hard modes, but ultimately it'll be just fine (like hard modes for WoW went). Dunno if 5 people really justifies guild prestige.

Dynamic events are probably going to be incredible when the game is new, but may end up completely ignored later on. Guilds will probably not bother with them for a multitude of reasons.

Structured PvP looks fun as hell and I think it'll be a smash hit if class balance is reasonable. Lots of guild potential here.

WvWvW will probably be great, although I could see some whining about "how fast you die when ganged up". Overall it should be okay, but there will probably be too many people playing to have a guild really make a difference.

Overall great post. My vote goes to Structured PvP, because I could see it drawing a lot of attention for competitive gaming communities.

//edit: I should be way more clear. Because these things are so crucial to the game's stability (and life span), I feel that the most stable thing is ultimately going to be the clear-cut way to determine how good a guild is.

[Mif]

(Good post, I appreciate the effort you've put it )

I don't think even Wow had a primary way of "being number one", ask a PVP gladiator and a world number one guild who they think is top of the food chain and you'll get very different answers. I suspect GW2 will be similar in that it will have it's own niche communities, and the organised PVP'ers and the PVE exploration mode speedrunners (they did speedrun ranks for challenge missions in GW1...) won't really care about the other side.

[Larynx]

I personally don't see GW2 have any "competitive" PvE, such as things like world firsts or any of that. That'll probably deter a lot of the bigger guilds, but in reality that is quite literally less than 1% of the market. It'll probably be very different for PvP though, especially with Structured PvP. It fixes the issues most MMOs have with being Esports. So as long as it is entertaining to watch and the class balance is there I don't see why it wouldn't.

[Squirrelbanes]

Interesting read
I hope the uglies don't arise, and, as you say many seem remote.
About what you say about imbalance in structured pvp...gw1 was apparently amazing in it's balancing fixes. Izzy oversaw this, who's still doing it, and changes would be made every week.
These are people who adore their own game. If there's problems they fix them.
GW2 is a different animal and will require more work, especially if it becomes very popular.
But I think they're determined to make it a success.

The concerns are largely subjective, but somewhat plausible. All I can say personally is that I have faith it won't work out like that. I know I've seen enough that I'm going to be devouring this game.

[Deleted]

I don't think there's a way to tell beforehand how the game will "click" with the community when you consider how different each of it's aspects are compared to current mmos, at least on the PvE side.
Well, as long as there are some highly difficult parts of the game (either skill-wise or just entry-wise) and the community goes out of it's way to support it somehow (ie:wowprogress for wow-raiding) it'll work out someway or an other.
That'll probably be easy to do for WvW and strutured PvP but i really can't get my head around it for PvE...
Hope Anet will surprise us somehow, i'd hate to see the pve side of the game slowly dieing off like in gw1.

[Deleted]

my ugly thoughts about WvWvW

a zone is limited to 500 players. means 166 of every server can enter it. 4 zones with 166 players is 664. in my opinion to little for a well populated server, especially if you think that some guys hang around in the zones just to gank and enjoy the open pvp instead of fighting for the keeps.

what happens if a keep is attacked under the controll of a guild, but the zone is full so they cannot enter for defence. they will loose the keep without a possibility to do something against it, that will be frustrating. the only possibility that this not happens is to hang around the hole time in the zone with the keep, but thats not good because of the player limitation.

will servers from different locations fight against each others? for example an american vs an european. because of the time difference this will be weird. in the main time of one server, most people of the other server are sleeping. thats no fun and not fair.

i hope this will not happen because i'm looking forward for this content, but there's a high possibility that it will happen.

[Fencers]

So in the days of World of Warcraft there was always a clear cut top of the line way to judge a guilds progression path.

Well, there is no "endgame mode" as you term it. GW2 is totally not a bimodal MMO w/r/t max level content. So yea... super confusing.

Don't care for PVP at all but from a rather hardcore PVE perspective, I do not believe GW2 will hold merit for fellow xcore PVErs. 5 player only dungeons are too limiting in group size and there is no progressive tract. Further the entirety of Guild Wars 2 is meant to facilitate casual play. That breaks one of the most important components of prestige PVE groups; exclusivity.

Structured PVP holds the most potential for prestige overall in GW2. Seeing as GW1 PVP was quite tough and demanding far above any content Anet put out themselves. There is the potential for a meta-game of sorts around PVE in the form of clear times [PSO, Vindictus or Rift style]-- though that will likely attach much smaller and less rigorous supporting communities due to accessibility & looseness vis-a-vis other bimodal PVE MMOs.

WvW is said by Arena.net to be their casual PVP. Not sure how open battlegrounds would be a means of proving progressive worth of a guild The notion seems flimsy and fantasy on the part of fans. Things everyone can do or contribute toward = no prestige.

[Deleted]

Some good points in this thread.

I think it will be quite easy to list top 10 guilds on the server, but it will be very hard to do it in order =]. GW2 is not a cut case like it was with WoW.

I would like to point out that WvW "fame" will be much easier to distinguish than people think. During and after WvW period you can always view VERY detailed score board: who (guild name, home server etc) owned what objects and for how long. Considering how much emphasis they are putting on making it visible which guild owns that keep or tower, we can easily conclude that stories about how "X guild hold that keep against Y attackers" will quickly become viral (including videos of sieges etc..). So yeah, WvW will be definitively a good way for gaining server recognition.

Second activity that can get attention for your guild is structured and ranked PVP. Of course everything is based on the assumption that class balance will be relatively good, but this part of the game has huge potential.

Third is PVE, coming in last doesn't mean it's "bad". It's hard to predict REAL difficulty of explorer mode dungeons (the 80lvl ones), we can safely assume that they are more difficult than WoW's heroic dungeons and are close or equally complex to WoW's normal diff raids. But how far really Anet is going to push them.. we don't know yet. Fortunately we have ELITE events, this is deff something that can put your guild "on the map", although details are unclear there was suggestion that one organised guild can become the catalyst of that event and be credited for activating it (no details about credits for defeating it).

PVE may not be the "ultimate" rep generator, but considering how hard explorer skins will be to obtain, if most of your guild is wearing them, the odds you are "on the right path".

[grandpab]

Except for the 2 lvl 30-40 dragons have we even seen an elite event yet?

[Larynx]

Except for the 2 lvl 30-40 dragons have we even seen an elite event yet?

Shadow Behemoth

[grandpab]

Ah yes, I had forgotten about that one.

I wonder if we'll see anymore, or if Anet is a fan of keeping spoilers quiet, like what they say they might do with the Asura and Sylvari races.

[Deleted]

I'll be honest, I've never quite understood why people try to prove themselves in a game. To me, games are all about having fun and enjoying the time spent. Online games even more so, as you get to do it with whomever you'd like.

The way I'll "prove myself", I guess, will be through meeting new people and have good times with them.

[Deleted]

I'll be honest, I've never quite understood why people try to prove themselves in a game. To me, games are all about having fun and enjoying the time spent. Online games even more so, as you get to do it with whomever you'd like.

The way I'll "prove myself", I guess, will be through meeting new people and have good times with them.

Couldent agree more.

[Chrno]

I'll be honest, I've never quite understood why people try to prove themselves in a game. To me, games are all about having fun and enjoying the time spent. Online games even more so, as you get to do it with whomever you'd like.

The way I'll "prove myself", I guess, will be through meeting new people and have good times with them.

People want to be acknowledged in real life
People want to be acknowledged in games

it's really the same. Not everyone value's a game high enough to want to be acknowledged or be the best, but for allot of people it's important. Some people fail in real life so they try to be the best in gaming land, some people want to be the best in both and then a small group doesn't care about either

I'd call it natural to strive to be the best.

Anyway OT: Looking back to GW1 i can't recall any 'top' guilds. I was playing casually but since i never noticed any excesssive guild spam like i do in WoW and the lack of a realm forum (their were no realms) i never knew what guild was AMAZING.

I am guessing it will be kinda the same, unless maybe there will be realm forums but i think it's been confirmed there wont be any. (Call me wrong if i am)

[Deleted]

I'm afraid the community will latch on something to measure other players on. Problem is there is always some controversy (at least in PvE) regarding exploiting etc.

Also, since explorable instances and dynamic events are not straight up comparable (Explorables: Yeah we killed it first/fastest vs. but you had the easy dynamic event in the instance etc, dynamic event: Well, guild B + C + 12 radnom persons helped beating the event so it's not really guild A's kill etc).

In the end I would put my bet on the e-tournament part Anet hopes to implement, and I'll keep my fingers crossed we won't be plagued by PvE rankings at it would be going a good way towards making the game less fun imo.

[Deleted]

In my humble opinion, the way to measure "skill" will come down to stractured PvP and people like Kalimist/Hydra/Buhdist/Reckfull/Cdew etc etc etc will come up in GW2.But then again i might be wrong.
For better or worse if the community grows bigger and bigger there will be people trying to prove to their fellow gamers that they are top notch players by streaming/making videos of their gameplay.It has been done in most likely every game there is out there and,in my opinion always,it's bound to happen at GW2.Whether that is a bad or a good thing,who knows time will show

OT : When WoW was released there was no way to track World Progress but only Regional (at best) by spending your whole day on each server forums to check out killshots,all really skilled guilds back then were/are never even heard to 80% of the current WoW community (hello Death & Taxes).

[Deleted]

We all know
WvWvW
Structured PvP
Dynamic Events and
Dungeons

I'd like something unforeseen or unexpected in the game. Whatever that might be. One thing I was blown away with was the frog people's return as well as the kodan emcampment.<--- don't click or click. spoiler alert.

[vicious796]

I think the big thing for GW2 is going to be WvWvW and the sense of community it will bring to those who partake in it as well as those who don't who happen to be on the "top" servers.

All of the mentioned things, however, will require a certain amount of time to fully develop. As the OP mentioned, most of the WvWvW videos available show how lost people can be in that huge of a map. I think it will take the full 6-7 cycles the OP mentions, if not more, for the WvWvW world to really get sorted out. At the end of the day, though, I think that's the kind've thing that builds a server and an actual community - not just a guild.

[Malthurius]

The entire game is based around social play. Dynamic Events, WvWvW, both have avenues for large groups of people to play and perform, and ultimately prove themselves in those PvE and PvP fields respectively.

I feel that Dungeons and Structured PvP, the 5-man content, won't lend itself well to guild notoriety, but more to individual notoriety. Our "Swiftys" "Athenes" and "Cartoons" will be born in Structured PvP. Our "Lores" "WoWhobbs" and "Ciderhelms" will be born in Dungeons. That's just the way I see it